Tag: depression

Total emotion

I want to write but I can’t. Everything I feel is so much right now. I’m very lonely and I really wish someone would be here and keep me safe. I’m lonely despite all the good I have and I feel so stupid for it. I’m hurting a lot for someone else. My emotions are still hitting me out of nowhere. They well up inside and I keep crying. Sadness. Fear. It feels like I can’t breathe and a weight is pressing me down. In prayer I scream silently and God is good and for a few moments some kind of peace warms me. That grounds me and I cling to it.

I’m trying to sit with the emotions. acknowledge them and feel them and let them be. Somehow, I’m not cutting or overdosing. Somehow, I’m not thinking of ending my life at the moment.

I am doing things. It’s not that I sit paralysed by the emotions all the day. I have done quite a lot in terms of cleaning and clearing my flat, shocked at the state I’d left it to and how I’d been living, making changes that I wonder why I did not do months ago. I do things, push myself to physical pain and exhaustion til I’m shaking and can’t stand anymore (I’m quickly exhausted with the fibromyalgia). Sometimes I’m driven to get things done; sometimes I’m trying to deal with the emotion; sometimes trying not to shut down totally.

The emotion is total. I feel it everywhere in my body. I feel so guilty for feeling this and thinking so much of myself, all the more when the emotions are to do with anger towards my family.

Ginny xxx

Fear, tears, pain, joy, guilt, thankful, anger, strength, shaken…

The emotions are crashing over me now. They stayed temporarily a little distant in the activity of yesterday afternoon and today. Now the activity has stopped. The rush of mixed experiences of the past week is temporarily still. I am physically utterly exhausted, shaky and hurting and it’s all I can do to get across the room. Sitting I feel like I’m being crushed. I’m cold and my chest aches deeply. I’m curled up in my dressing gown and blanket, needing all the comfort and grounding I can get. I feel childish and guilty for saying that, because I have no right to – what have I been through that’s so bad? – but it is true.

There’s so much to take in right now.

Intense waves of scary emotions jolted me through the week, especially fear and anxiety I cannot attribute to a logical cause that was there at the time. On reflection perhaps it was an emotional flashback to earlier times and threats, both distant (childhood) and more recent.

The hallucinations strengthened – auditory, visual, sensory – and scared me more.

My escape imaginary world was closer than ever and its pull stronger than ever.

Anger is raging and rising uncontrollably in me against my stepmother. All at once I feel huge guilt, fear, hurt, rage, the need to express what I feel and the impossibility and danger of ever actually doing so.

It’s feeding anger against my dad again; then against both of them together.

More memories of specific painful derogatory, demeaning, restricting, humiliating things my abuser did have been coming to the fore, along with memories of how her abusive power was perpetuated, and then in turn, more thoughts of how it feels – and this is so scary to write – similar patterns still repeat in my family. I need to get away from that.

It was goodbye to a friend in my therapy group for whom I care very very much. I’m still crying for her.

Another member of my therapy group to whom I also feel a particular connection, has suffered an unimaginable avalanche of hurts, struggles and illnesses. Now, he has been diagnosed with cancer which is likely to be late stage. The end of his life could be close. I’m crying for him.

Today was a special day. I had a little coffee morning to fundraise for Macmillan Cancer Support (part of the “World’s Biggest Coffee Morning” Macmillan run nationally). It is the first time I have ever done an event like this at home (following on from the courage I gained from having had some close friends over for my birthday earlier in the year). My anxiety was huge. I put as much as I could into the preparations. Good things happened today. My guests’ care and kindness was wonderful. This fills me up with gratitude.

So here I am now, afterwards, with this whole mix of soaring emotions. All of them I need to face and there is a lot of work for me to do. My individual therapy is tomorrow and I’m so glad. When the emotions are too much, every so often, I’m going to try to return to the thankfulness for today and remember everyone’s enjoyment and generosity. Somehow, this just a little restorative.

Ginny xxx

A very hard goodbye

This morning, one of the members of my MBT therapy group left, as it is the end of her time in therapy. It was her last group today. The MBT group is a “rolling group”. The group runs weekly, continously; members join (usually at least 2 people at a time) and are in the programme for 18 months, then leave. Usually, new members join to take their place and the group carries on. Sometimes new members join at other times. This means members start and leave at different times rather than a whole group doing a course together for 18 months and everyone finishing at the same time. Usually, at least 2 people would finish at the same time. It was a bit unusual that one person left alone today (someone else who would have left with them had to switch therapy groups earlier in the year).

It was a really emotional goodbye. I cried so much. A lot of us did. The depth of feeling at the point of saying goodbye was intense and in the group time passed much too quickly. At the start of therapy I would not have understood the depth of feeling for and attachment to another person that grows in group. She is a hugely kind person who has given so much more than I think she knows and I hope she does continue to know more of that good that’s in her.

I’ll write more later. Right now it feels very raw and surges of emotion are welling up out of the blue. It has been that way all week.

I need to get things done this afternoon because tomorrow I’m having a little fundraising coffee morning. It’s probably a good thing I have to be busy but I need to not push down my feelings totally either.

Ginny xxx

Constant anticipation of the next error – and consequential disaster: Part #1

I try hard to look for good things to appreciate. I’m trying to counteract my anxiety and overwhelming emotions by looking for the positive, hopeful things that can come from a situation. (It’s something of a DBT technique which I’ll elaborate on in another post.) I’m told I’m not yet very good at finding positive things about myself. I think gradually I’m getting better at seeing positive things in the outside world.

However in some areas it’s hard not to not only feel overwhelmed by both emotions and external negative events and also to expect them.

Benefits is a case in point right now and it has been for years, every single time I’ve needed to claim a Benefit when I haven’t been able to work / haven’t been able to work full time, because of my health.

Today, I received a letter from the Tax Credit Office about an error made in my tax credits earlier this year, when I was working at the department store. I was aware of that mistake. They had incorrectly recorded the income figures I had given them and given me only partial information about eligibility. Consequently they paid me tax credits I wasn’t entitled to. The letter I received today was rather confusing but essentially confirmed that. So far, that wasn’t too bad – I will have to pay back the overpaid money when they ask for it but I already knew that.

Next, I opened two letters from the Housing Benefit Department. The first contained two award notices both almost the same but with completely confusing dates, entitlement and income figures. What’s that about, I wondered. One of them was marked “change in personal circumstances”. What change in circumstances? I haven’t had a change recently. I opened the second letter from Housing Benefits, with a certain sense of foreboding!

Yup, disaster again. The letter told me that the Housing Benefit Department had been informed by the tax office that I am in receipt of working tax credit, therefore I am working and my housing benefit has been suspended until I give them details of my new job and current income.

Oh my days. I assume they have received a copy of the letter I got from Tax Credits. If they took time to actually read the letter, they would have seen it was saying that I am not entitled to tax credits. If they had looked at the dates in the letter (not to mention previous documentation I’ve supplied them and previous discussions I’ve had with them about my receipt of tax credits) they would have seen that it referred to a period earlier this year, not to now. They also know that I am not working – I have given them proof that I am currently in receipt of Employment Support Allowance because I am not working because of my health.

So, my housing benefit has been stopped. I will have to contact my landlord on Monday to explain why the benefits payments have stopped. I will have to contact Housing Benefits and try to prove to them that I am not working. This will probably involve chasing around the tax office and the other oxus involved in my employment support allowance. I have to make a written statement and gather together copy documents from my employment support allowance claim and tax credits. Quite probably I will have to take this in to the housing office, queue for a long time to see someone, which physically I cannot cope with at the moment as I can walk so little. My anxiety has skyrocketed because of the financial problems this suspension in my housing benefit will cause. Worse, from my past experience, once one benefit gets stopped, all the other benefits get stopped too. I am anticipating that I’ll be contacted by the employment support allowance office next week saying they’ve received information I’m working so my benefit has been stopped. Then I’ll have nothing coming in.

This may sound like an exaggeration but it has happened to me and to friends of mine before. And it could all so, so easily have been avoided. How easily the housing benefit office could have seen that the correspondence referred to months ago. How easily they could have checked with the tax office to see if I was working. How easily they could have made a quick phonecall to me or my support worker, if something wasn’t clear or they needed a particular piece of evidence. Wouldn’t this have cost them less, as well as me? The situation would have been resolved in minutes. Instead they have sent out a letter, required a statement, someone has to take copies of this, take copies of documentation, probably see me for an appointment, restart everything, set up payments to my landlord again (God willing!). Even without counting the cost and distress and anxiety caused to me, it is a hive waste of resources and confusion for nothing.

Since I first had to claim Benefits in something like January 2015, I reckon I have been paid the correct amount I was entitled to for a maximum of one month at a time, before the next error or mess-up has occurred and at least one of my Benefits has been cut, stopped or refused incorrectly – and completely avoidably. Last year when I rented as a lodger in a private landlord’s family home, this array of errors left me so very close to being on the street; if it were not for an extremely generous friend who paid my rent one month, I would have been out with nowhere to go. It is hugely fortunate that I now live in a housing association flat where I will not be thrown out immediately if there is a problem with my housing benefit. It is hugely fortunate I have the expertise of my support worker who will help me get this resolved as fast as possible and stop me going to pieces in the meantime. Most people don’t have those two blessings.

I don’t want to complain and whinge and expect money for nothing. I don’t think I deserve other people’s constant support. I could very well have nothing. I need to try to become independent and able to support myself. Support doesn’t come for nothing and I should expect to take responsibility, not have everything handed to me.

I think one thing that makes it so hard is when you have been through every process as well as you can, given all the information asked of you, taken all the steps you can, and despite this everything still crumbles. My experiences over the years tell me as soon as there’s any stability, it gets taken away again through error or miscommunication, despite all your best efforts. And the error seems to have an effect like tumbling dominoes on all the other areas of your life there is any stability. Losing stability has immediate big consequences when you have very little to live on. It also drains all your energy, time and emotional resources, which go into trying to correct the error before disaster point (losing your home, no money for food, etc) rather than leaving you any strength to recover, contribute something to your community in your day to day life, benefit from opportunities that might make your situation better (and even maybe less dependent on social and state support, not that needing it is a bad thing). When you are constantly using all your resources fighting the next mistake and next disaster, trying to ensure that you have the basics you need to get by, in a state of anticipation of the next disaster so you can try to minimise or allow for its impact; when you feel as if you’re being knocked back, kept vulnerable, denied any security, despite your hardest work to set things right; then there is no way you can do more than just get by, in a constant state of strain.

So, I’m wondering what I can change. It seems I cannot change the fact that mistakes constantly occur, despite me trying my hardest to do the best I can for my part and to take steps to pre-empt the problems. I don’t want to feel so spent, trapped, angry, vulnerable and at risk as I do at the moment as a result of the repeated cycle of mistakes.

So, what can I change?

[Part 2 to follow, not that I have any answers yet! Thoughts are most greatly welcome, as ever.]

Ginny xxx

 

Ten dishes challenge #4: jacket potatoes with a difference

I haven’t been able to cook much at all recently but I’m trying to persevere with this series and remember my aim of rediscovering some of the enjoyment in cooking as well as building a little range of familiar dishes I can prepare economically.

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I made this when my friend visited. We both enjoy simple oven cooked jacket potatoes with the lovely crispy, salty skin and fluffy insides. This recipe adds a slight difference. Once the potatoes are cooked, you cut them in half and carefully scoop out the inside, taking care not to puncture the skins. You mix the fluffy potato with some very finely chopped lightly fried peppers and onion (you could use lots of different veg of your choosing) and a little finely diced ham, a beaten egg (mainly to bind it together and stop it being too dry) and some seasoning of your choice. After that you spoon the mixture back into the potato skins, sprinkle a little grated cheese on top and bake them again in the oven for 15-20 minutes or so.

And that’s the end of Ready Steady Cook for today!

Ginny xxx

I’m sorry – I haven’t forgotten you

I’m sorry I haven’t posted here or visited your blogs in quite a while. I haven’t forgotten you. I know it’s not obligatory but I feel guilty being inconsistent ams not being there for others.

It’s been a few weeks of pretty big changes in my home life, family, friendships, work (or temporary absence of!), finances, therapy – not all the changes are negative however they are all demanding and not necessarily unsettling but all taking energy to work through. Physical pain is still having a big impact on me at the moment and I’ve needed to take things much more slowly than I’d choose. It used to be something I could deal with but now I’m not coping well. I feel as if I’m constantly saying this. It’s not am excuse but it is a big part of my life right now.

There is another event I’ve been struggling with, which has held me back from blogging. I had a really upsetting experience in an internet based support group and blog, in which I had previously trusted, thinking I was finding a reliable source of information, understanding and solidarity with other members as well as being able to offer support to others. I don’t think it is the right time to go into detail here about what happened although I will explain a little more in a future post. Please don’t worry – I’m okay and safe; I was never in any physical danger and I have ceased contact that was proving damaging. Fortunately, I had never divulged personal information like my full name or contact details. Also, just to be clear, this experience was absolutely nothing to do with this blog or any of the lovely people who visit it. It happened somewhere completely different.

The experience has had a big impact on me. I was very distressed. I felt a huge loss although also a huge betrayal. I got very scared of writing anything online, including in my own blog and in messages to anyone, although that is not necessarily rational. My obsessional thoughts were very triggered and the voices got loud. A whole range of feelings and thoughts spiralled out of control about how I trust other people, how I feel about getting support or not and being believed or not; perhaps most scarily, whether I’m harmful to other people without knowing…

On the positive side, the events have brought up lots of issues I need to discuss in therapy. They’ve led me to think about how therapy is changing the way I think. They’ve shown me ways I’ve started to react differently (for example, I did not follow through the compulsion to self-harm).

Most of all, it made me all the more thankful for the genuine and compassionate support everyone who visits this blog has shown me. It’s a rare and precious thing. THANK YOU.

I’m trying to get back into writing, gradually.

Ginny xxx

Trying to climb back up out of this ice

It has been a really full month. I feel disoriented realising it’s September already and so much of the year has slipped past. I so much want to write today but I’m feeling shattered and something else weird and disturbing. Just low and empty and I can’t find my thoughts or find the way out of it. I guess it’s just emotionally cut off. I was really upset, really anxious, then happy and something almost felt like it woke up part of my mind that is not usually there as I felt hopeful about something…..but then hallucinations and then with no warning, this. Never felt quite like this before and nothing that’s happened today explains it or touches why I’m feeling this way. I used to self-harm in this kind of state. Now I can’t even do that. It feels like I should sleep but sleep is far away. There isn’t even anything harmful in this state itself. It’s only inside me. So why is it so unbearable…. I don’t know how to wake up out of it. I’m trying to fight through by writing, trying to do any little creative thing, draw something, keep on grasping to try to find the so so many things I should be knowing I’m thankful for right now no matter how I feel, and even was feeling thankful for, really was, until a couple of hours ago.

I haven’t blogged for ages because so much has been going on this month and taken all my energy. I’m sorry. I know I owe replies… I haven’t been here and haven’t kept up reading or keeping in touch with everyone…through everything you’ve been going through. I’m sorry.

I’m trying to find the way back up. There are several topics I do want to write on when I can manage to process the words and get them down, and so many posts I want to get caught up reading and comments I know I owe replies to!

Ginny xxx

Not my GP

I’m very fortunate to have been able to consistently see the same GP most of the time over the past two years and to have a mostly good rapport with him. I know this is a help that lots of people don’t have. My Surgery recognises the importance of seeing the same person if you have to attend regularly and have ongoing health problems. I find it helps so much practically, in not having to constantly go over your history every time and the cost on time and your emotions that this incurs, as well as gaining confidence in someone. I don’t find it easy to trust new people and the effect of the voices and hallucinations can be worse when I’m meeting with someone new and afterwards.

Tomorrow I have to see a different GP. The Surgery called me this morning and explained that very sadly, my usual GP has suffered a family bereavement and will be off for many weeks at least. I am sorry and sad for him, all the more as I think he is a really good person, so I feel all the more empathy with him in this loss. It’s very sad.

Tomorrow I am seeing a GP who I have not seen face to face before but I have spoken with on the phone. The conversation and trying to get help has almost never gone well. She has been what felt very dismissive to me. I don’t think she believes me. She has told me that I’m making nasty threats when I’ve been feeling suicidal and self-harming and trying to get help, absolutely at the most desperate I’ve been. She’s hung up on me. I’ve ended up getting very angry and distressed in response. It was after speaking with this GP that I completely lost it at the Surgery a few months ago. They called the police and I know that I scared people by being so angry and losing control and that they were worried about me. When the police came I was sure they needed to arrest me and begged them to take me away because I was so afraid I was going to hurt someone and was terrified of my loss of control.

I’m scared of losing it again and also scared of not being believed. Things haven’t been good this past week but I’m scared of talking about anything in case she interprets it as me making threats or thinks I’m lying. I’m sure already she’ll think I’m lying and that she hates me. I was sure of that as soon as I spoke to her last time and I’m even more sure now after how badly I behaved when I lost control. I need to get my medical certificate renewed but I don’t know what she’ll do – she has not seen me before and doesn’t know me – and I’m scared she won’t agree to do it. For some reason I’ve already convinced myself she’ll think I’m lying and she’ll say nothing’s wrong with me. She’ll think I’m a fraud and don’t deserve any help.

The voices are screaming at me in my head about what she thinks of me and all the evil, fraud, liar kind of accusations, telling me what to do to hurt myself, telling me all the terrible things I’ll do if I don’t, horrible images behind my eyes that disgust me.

There was no other GP I could see tomorrow. I didn’t feel I could say I didn’t want to see this GP or explain why because it would be rude and I feel so guilty for how I lost it before and how I upset people. I’ve booked in next week with another GP I know and trust and I know that will help and that it will mean however tomorrow goes, I still have this appointment next week with someone I am comfortable with. So that’s a help.

I’m already so anxious thinking about it and having panic attacks. I am so tempted to just cancel the appointment tomorrow. But I know I need to talk to someone and I do need to try to get the certificate renewed. I’m getting triggered so quickly by feeling I am not believed, which is ironic because I struggle to believe myself as the voices rarely give me rest from their suggestions (sometimes slowly increasing doubts, sometimes overwhelming screams) about how I’ve deceived people or how the evil inside me will be exposed. The emotions associated with the past abuse are so uncontrollable and coming back to me separate from the memory of specific instances of abuse and it’s really hard to understand what’s happening.

At least after the GP appointment I see my support worker, who is someone I trust, so that will help me to stay a bit safer.

Ginny xxx

Emotional flashbacks – Lilly Hope Lucario

It seems very providential that just after writing my post, Really Bad Day, where I talked about re-experiencing emotions and recognising situations that put me in the same emotional state and behaving according to the same patterns as when I was abused, and feeling shock for things that happened a long time ago, I then came by a blog post by Lilly Hope Lucario on emotional flashbacks.

You can read her blog post HERE. Further, Lilly’s website about healing from trauma, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD (CPTSD) can be found HERE.  This material is created and written by Lilly Hope Lucario and all rights belong to her.

I’m very new to her blog and it looks as if she has some fascinating material that’s going to help me a lot in understanding what’s happening to me. The concept of emotional flashbacks certainly goes a long way to explaining emotions I experience that I may be afraid of, or that seem too intense, shameful, inappropriate, or not warranted by a certain situation. I know that learning to accept my emotions and sit with them rather than exploding or doing something harmful to numb them is a whole separate issue of its own. But I think identifying when emotional flashbacks are happening is a critical part of understanding the extremes of feelings I get in my BPD and my consequent behaviour patterns.

Thank you Lilly! I think I’ll be visiting her site often!

Ginny xxx

 

Managing money with Borderline Personality Disorder

I am bad with money. I panic about it. I’ll panic for days beside being able to sit down to look at my financial situation. Partly this is because it’s usually so dire and it’s a constant background stressor in my mind that sends me to extremes of distress when my thoughts are in the foreground and that I block out at other times. I even find myself dissociating from it. Additionally, there’s the fact that I find it hard to deal with figures and hold them in my head and follow steps through when I’m budgeting. I always did find dealing with numbers hard, even before I was particularly ill.

However, with help, for example from my lovely support worker or my very close friend L., I can list out all my money coming in and my expenses and I can draw up a budget based on that – even though the outcome for months has been that I don’t have enough to meet basic expenses. It may not be workable but I can at least get things down on paper.

It’s very hard for me to get to that stage but that’s not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is when it comes to spending. I have been very bad with money and very impulsive and out of control and I really want to change that. I must change that if I’m to stay out of debt and all the spiralling material and mental consequences.

Even if I have made a budget plan, when I’m most ill I do not stick to it. Best laid plans to waste, as the saying goes… When I dissociate, or flip, I am no longer in control. It’s my responsibility and I don’t want to deny that but I’m not mentally in control. I make decisions and act on impulses and spend money rashly. I act on a temporary conpulsion to buy things I’d never normally touch. Sometimes I know it’s temporarily squashing down the unbearable feelings. Sometimes I’m buying a different life. Sometimes I’m buying for one of my “others” or it’s the “other” wanting and needing it and making the decisions. Often I’m too far gone to have any awareness of what or why I’m doing it and afterwards I see what I’ve bought and have only a dim recollection of why and when i did it.

Afterwards, infallibly, I feel terrible: guilty, disgusted, that I’ve been selfish, greedy, confused, angry with myself, scared, an absolutely unbearable feeling I can’t describe. There’s dread there. There’s shame – a lot of shame. There’s panic. There’s something more. Yet I still do it. There’s always the next time I lose control and dissociate and spend again. I’d call it a kind of manic dissociation that leads me to spending (it leads me to impulsively angry and needy actions too), as opposed to the frozen and numb dissociation that accompanies self harm or the safe dissociation of slipping away from this world into the imaginary one in my head. The manic dissociation is probably the most socially dangerous.

I really want to break this. I can’t stop the dissociation and impulsivity yet but I’m trying to find ways to reduce its impact. It’s become very important right now because, having had problems for nearly a year with my disability-related Benefits, with my support worker’s help we have now resolved the problems and I am due to receive some back-payment of money I should have received some time ago. This is absolutely great for me because it means that I can pay off my arrears and make a stable budget going forward and it looks as if finally I will have enough to live on! I am so so so thankful for this. It also means that I have a lot more money than I usually do (even if only temporarily til I pay the arrears). This is scary because I know that I cannot be trusted with it.

I texted my support worker straight away about the back payment and he’s going to call me this afternoon so that we can make a plan, pay the arrears and make an appointment to look at my budget again now that I’ll have a bit more money coming in. I’m hoping we can come up with some things we can do so that, at the times I’m being impulsive and not in control, I can spot this quicker and ideally, my access to money could be strictly limited at these times. I’m not sure how we could achieve that but maybe he will have ideas.

I know that ultimately I need to get to the root of what’s causing the impulsivity and learn to take back control of my actions at those times and stop the dangerous behaviour. I’m hoping therapy is going to help me find this, though it worries me I’m so far through therapy and still I don’t think I’ve changed in this area. Until I can do that I need to try to stay safe and be as responsible as I can.

I’m interested to know, if you or someone you know has Borderline, or indeed any other mental health condition, does it affect how you / they feel about money and how you / they can manage it? Is it an area you feel vulnerable or find stressful? In all the years I worked at a hospital and in the various services I’ve been seen in, it isn’t talked about very much.

Just recently I saw a useful self-help booklet at the PD Service I’m seen in, on these kind of issues. I’ll share here the booklet here later today or tomorrow (I think there’s an online version). It was about the first publication about managing finances which I’ve come across targeted specifically for patients.

Ginny xxx