Tag: psychosis

Walking this Borderland #8: when it costs to smile

I don’t think that the saying “it doesn’t cost anything to smile” is true. It can cost a very great deal to get up, step outside, meet anyone’s gaze, smile, speak, even keep breathing, when you are crippled with anxiety, voices in your head, emotional pain, traumatic flashbacks and hurt or sadness that hits you any time, anywhere.

I believe in still trying. Through this cost, keep on trying to smile. Through the awful feelings, trying to do one little kind thing for another person and one little kind thing for ourselves. We may not succeed but the will is there. Only we ourselves and God may know the huge cost. Yet good will surely still come of the action, however small. We have taken an action opposite to our illness, opposite to the inclination of our anxiety and hurt, choosing goodness and strength.

This is a small victory and a small step forward in hope.

I emphasise that I do not mean we should try to push away what we are feeling, deny it or tell ourselves we mustn’t feel it or aren’t allowed to. Far from it. We should do quite the opposite. But every little action done in love – for others and ourselves – is a choice for good. When we are suffering very much and when it costs very much to smile, then every smile and every action is worth all the more because it is necessarily done with greater effort and greater love.

What makes you feel loved?  How do you love?

Ginny xx

I think, therefore I am, as the saying goes. ..

[Sorry. I know this post makes little sense. It’s a mess of thoughts in my head tonight since I realised how much I “am” what I am experiencing and feeling and cannot stand it and get lost along the way. ]

“I think, therefore I am.” ??

I think…

I feel…

It’s harder than you’d expect to separate thoughts and feelings. Thoughts can hurt. Thoughts are (must be?) quickly judged. Thoughts desire; thoughts need and long and that again is judged at once, answered or unanswered, and that brings feeling.

Can thoughts be stopped? Those that come unbidden, spiraling or shouting and yet never to be trusted, tell me I am deceiving, tell me – too bad to write… memories…

And feeling. Nothing. Terrible nothing with something clawing at me to come back, or blessed numb. Or everything.

Everything. Everything I am. All I am – pain, hurt, need, frightened – everything I am, all I am. Can’t anyone else see? Can’t you see? Everyone is in so much pain. Feeling it and absorbing it – theirs or mine? But it hits me like a wall and it’s all there is that moment, separated from time, not knowing what to do or what to be but – pain.

I think, therefore I am? I’m not sure about that! But I feel, therefore – I am not. My self, my certainties, are lost and all I’ve become is the feeling and the fear.

Back to work

I go back to work tomorrow after a few days’ annual leave. I’m really anxious right now. It’s harder than usual for me to go out at the moment. I’m better than in the last few days where I was crying all the time, but still feel dangerously out of control and shaky. This makes me feel like I have to double check how I’m behaving and what I’m saying all the more and the thoughts and voices in my head are all the stronger – you’re stupid, freak, ugly, fake, selfish, why did you say that, stop talking, deceitful, it’s your fault, disgusting, you’ve made it all up, why did you do that, not good enough, they know how bad you are now, they’re angry with you….it would all have been fine without you, everyone knows it’s your fault – until the frightening emptiness comes back and I just want to sleep.

I know it’ll just get worse if I don’t go to work and it does no good to think about all this. I need to turn outwards, look at everyone else, work, try to do good, try to do my job, try to just ignore the ache and the anxiety, not let it take everything over.

I’m going to try to do some things immediately to overcome it. I’m going to call a friend who I know has been having a bad time recently, having recently lost a friend of hers; I’m going to try to make some cards in preparation for a charity fundraiser in the Spring; I’m going to prepare my clothes for work tomorrow. I’m going to be thankful for having a job to go to.

Ginny xxx

Walking this Borderland #7: Pigs in the clouds

Walking this Borderland #7: Pigs in the clouds

It’s very easily impossible to believe “this too shall pass”.

In BPD, that can feel like the most hurtful thing to be told, in the midst of utter pain. Even if the pain was triggered by a very small thing, at the time, it is not minor – it is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back or the rope you were holding onto so so tight because everything else had been snatched from you, then this too disintegrates.

But the fact that is at once cruel and possibly hopeful, is that every time you go through that utter pain, and still continue, it is proved that “this too shall pass”.

On Friday afternoon this week I was about to end it because for the n’th time it was more than I could stand, more betrayals than I could bear, pain only for pain, the original source now lost amid the impossibility of existing beyond that moment. I was evil rubbish and the world was laughing at my hurt. It was time to overdose and walk in front of a train and end it. And perhaps I was going to hurt someone. My memory blacked out.

Somehow, on Saturday morning I was at my friend’s and she was cooking breakfast. She made “eggs in clouds” for a treat (look at the picture – literally a little egg yolk in a little savoury souflee cloud).  There’s chopped bacon in the soufflee cloud so we thought perhaps it should be “pigs in clouds” instead. We talked about everything, minutiae and serious: baby showers, Harry Potter, Alan Rickman, jogging, marriage, how to stay in love and what to do when something nobody else cares very much about is unbearable to you, a mutual friend who may be in a bad home situation, sunshine, work…

So you see, it turns out pigs do fly, and this too did pass. It seems ridiculous that both these scenarios were real and followed each other by less than one day. But both were real. The change, although I do not know what brought it about, was real.

Perhaps it’s worth keeping a short note of the times that pigs did fly, that the darkness did end, what you did to change things, if you can remember – but if you can’t, even just record the fact that you did change things. That although that night you thought you could not go on one more moment, the next day you took a few steps out of your house, maybe walked down to the bottom of the road and back. That through the terrible flashbacks, you held on, and now you are back in today’s reality.

Both are real. Neither are permanent, both shall pass, but both are real. Note it down, however small it seems. Then the next time when the darkness starts to come, you can look back and be encouraged.

 

You don’t waste good

“You don’t waste good.” [Or, Gibbs’ Rule #5, for NCIS fans 😉 ]

Don’t waste good…. I’m trying to hold on to that right now. Hold on. There is good even though it’s very hard to feel it right now. I have a home (for now). I have a job. I have an understanding employer. These things can be built on. Two very good friends seem to be able to see some hope that it will be alright, even though I can’t. Don’t waste good. Don’t waste it because I give up right now because it’s so scary and I don’t know how to get through this night. Don’t waste it because everything crumbles and I lose my job because I stop going to work and give in to the fear and drowning sensation that tells me to stay at home. Don’t waste it because I stop looking for little gifts and little joys – or big ones – my beautiful god children, compassion of a friend, something at work that makes me laugh, being able to try to do at least something to help people at work. Don’t waste it because I assume rejection and punishment is all I deserve and all I will get in the end. Don’t waste it because I get so wrapped up in my own little world and little problems that I miss chances to serve, chances to thank, chances to show compassion or do that little bit more to help another in some small way.

You don’t waste good.

Ginny xx

[“You don’t waste good,” – from NCIS Series ?8 episode “Baltimore”. All rights to NCIS series belong to CBS / Channel 5 and respective directors and artists]

Snowballing. Not the white fluffy kind.

It feels like breaking over and over at the moment. I hang onto something then it gets taken away. I don’t know why I’m quite so stupid and childish that I keep hanging on to things and people. Last week it was trying to get my tax credits sorted, so things wouldn’t be so tight. Resistance and obstructions all the way. Then it was trying to negotiate a payment plan for my rent arrears. No response (again) to my phone call and letters, so another letter to write. Then trying to get the harassment and discrimination at my last employer investigated. Dismissed without any consideration whatsoever by the regulator. Another complaint to write and my case to be presented again. Then plans with a friend – cancelled. Then hanging on until my appointment with my CPN on Friday – cancelled, because he has to go on training. I can absolutely understand he has to do the training, but I so needed that. Last month’s appointment was cancelled too. Letters I can’t understand about my Housing Benefit and yet another form to fill out to claim for a Discretionary Payment…terrified I’ll lose my home and so my job….

Snowballing, snowballing, problems everywhere there should be help.

Only able to carry on one day more, then one day more, and only by cutting and taking more pills than I should to knock myself out so at least then I can’t take even more and end it.

Hallucinations and flashbacks shaking me too much to breathe.

Hating myself for being so so weak and so childish and for hanging on to things I should by now have learned well not to count on. Hating myself for needing to be cared for and needing help and not being a proper adult, just a burden.

It is very hard not to become bitter and not to give up. I can only try to think, God is teaching me to trust in nothing and no-one except Him alone. “God alone suffices,” St Teresa of Avila wrote. It is right, of course. His Love is all we need and all we cannot lose. But it is very hard not to be angry, bitter, childish and wrapped in my own hurt.

Ginny xx

Hurting tonight

It hasn’t been a great week.

Hurting with physical pain from gynae problems and joint problems.

Going between guilt for worrying and burdening my family and not being able to do what I should, and feeling cut up that I’m “in the way” to them and need to be compartmentalised so I don’t intrude on their life – the part of it they actually want not just feel obligated to do.

Seeing far too many things. ..scary things. ..that aren’t there… that are hallucinations from memories that grip me and shake me.

Wishing someone would hold me and tell me it would be alright even when the flashbacks come.

Working through water or a fog each day and knowing I’m getting it wrong and doing wrong and so so tired.

I slept about 4 hours tonight if that. Tomorrow is group therapy again. I am so scared to go. I will go because I mace this commitment to everyone in the group, the therapists, and to trying to get better, to God, and I won’t throw away what I’ve been given. But I’m scared. I don’t know where we are, I don’t know how to be, I don’t know who to trust, and I can’t trust what I did trust or where I thought we were before. Everything unraveled last week. I wish I need not speak. I wish I could just sleep and stop it all.

I will try to go forward thankful. I will ask thankfulness for another day, to learn to thank our God for revealing His loving kindness in the tiny little helps of each day and pray to notice and see them not just the mess in my head. I will try to work to make something beautiful – even just draw, colour, sew, write to my family and my closest friends who mean so much to me simply by still somehow being here.

Somehow this moment will pass but good will remain. I’m trying to believe.

What if I don’t trust them?

I’m still struggling to process what I’m feeling after therapy group on Friday. Tomorrow I have my 1:1 appointment and I know we will be talking about it. It is going to be so hard to go and even harder to go back to group when it comes around this Friday.

Just when I’d dared to start to think it’s okay, it isn’t. Just when I’d started to think group might be a safe place, somewhere that you can dare to speak about things that are otherwise forbidden, it isn’t.

Just when I’d started to let my guard down a little and trust, it turns out I’ve hurt everyone and didn’t even know. How did I not know? Usually I can feel it right away and know it’s my fault and this time I didn’t. I so so needed to trust them there and now I can’t. I couldn’t understand what I was feeling then last night the thought hit me – what if actually I’m angry and hurting because I feel I can’t trust them? I did the wrong and I caused the hurt but what if I’m angry because I feel people didn’t say what was really happening?

What if I’m angry because I feel I can trust or speak anymore?

What if I’m angry because I really needed to trust and yet again it all breaks down, just as usual, every other time? I know and felt so so strongly they hate me, they are angry, they don’t want me there, they hate me, they’re angry, and they’re angry for each other too because I’ve done wrong and got it wrong and they think I’m nasty, a fake, no right to be there, they just want me to go away and just put up with me because they had to. What if that made me angry as well as guilty because I can never know where I am and know I must never ever let anyone close but so desperately need people?

Does anyone else ever just wish they could never have to speak again?

The hallucinations are multiplying as my thoughts spiral through all these things.

Ginny xxx

I am…. (she said)

(My mother told me that) I am:

Ugly. Greedy. Too plump here. Fat.

Pretending. Deceiving. Manipulating.

Pretending to be a little girl. Doing my act.

Punishing. Getting my own back. Repeatedly Punishing.

Deceiving.

Holding her in chains since I was a baby.

Not supposed to be crying. Look who should be crying, she’s the one who should be crying. [And she was – and shouting and screaming and ridiculing and sneering and shaking me and throwing glass…]

Going to make her have a heart attack.

Wearing her out. She’s lying on the floor unable to move because of what I’ve done. [I called out and nobody would come. ..]

Going to make my dad so upset he’ll have a car accident. He’s lying on the floor curled in a ball unable to breathe. Because of me. That’s what I’ve done to him.

Going to come down the stairs one morning and find her … [dead – I will not write here the graphic description she made].

A silly little thing.

Madam treating everyone like servants.  Reclining like an emperor on the cushions.

A baby that has to go on a walking rein. To show everyone what a baby I am.

…Pretending….

Repeatedly Punishing. ..

A threat to her personal safety. Putting her in hospital. The reason she goes into hospital because I frightened her so much. God help anyone I ever work with.

Impossible to live with.

When I’ve got what I want…

Reacting so weirdly to everything and I have to remember how all my reactions are weird and the damage I’m causing to the family.

Getting too much fat again.

Demonstrating that I’m damaged.

Leaving things hidden in places so that she finds them so as to show her that I’m damaged.

Pretending ( – I’ve already told her!)

A genius. Nobody is able to understand my incredible intelligence. She planned the moment of my conception and the moment of my birth. She wrote freedom into my very name. I was a genius and they could not cope with my intelligence. I was going to change the world.

Aware of her every thought and she knew exactly mine. Knew everything she was saying (on the phone to someone else). Knew exactly what she wanted.

Wearing her out( – look at her with 4 children and look at what my one’s done to me! )

Stopping her ever having any more children.

Causing the end of her and my father’s marriage.

Copying.

Pretending to be…

Testing. Testing the testers. Objecting to the test.

Those are just some of the things my mother (with her psychosis and disordered and abusive,  the doctors said) told me I am.

(She’d ask) what if:

Anyone’s watching?

Anyone hears?

Anyone from the government is watching?

The police are going to be called?

Anyone can see what you’re doing?

Anyone found out?

Anyone saw [what you can’t do]… are you very worried about the effects of your pretending. ..at how bad you ate at x … (you must remember you’re a whole school year older. ..stop associating with the little ones. ..)

If anyone found out. She’d be taken away. My father woUld be taken away. I’d be sent to a special school for morons. If anyone found out, they’d never imagine it was all because of me. They’d think it was her. Nobody would realise it was actually me. But I’d know and she’d know it was actually me. And she’d be taken.

So we had to cover it up.

Those were some of her ‘what if’ threats.

He (Father) agreed. Can’t you see how much you’re upsetting her? Look how much she’s smoking because of you. Stop snivelling like that. That’s what people do when they’ve had something really bad happen to them. Could you actually make a bit more effort? Is mummy even in the room to you? He’d sit there hugging her and stroking her feet and nobody would help me whilst I was crying and terrified and didn’t know how to end it.  This was the first day I felt I didn’t need to phone up to see how you were getting on with each other. Now look what I’ve found out. Why were you pretending? Where is she? What are you doing in here? Look how exhausted she is because of what you’ve done. She wouldn’t have to go to bed all day if you didn’t do these things. We could have had a nice day if you hadn’t done that.

She’s very lovely, he’d say. Isn’t mummy lovely? She’s very good at all of this… She’s amazing when she does that…isn’t that fantastic. ..

And he says he didn’t know what she was doing.

The threats and what ifs and horrible things I was, stopped for a while when I was anorexic. That was all. At least then the anorexia and my body was all mine and in me it was hurting, cleaner,  safer, nothing, numb but burning, longing but cutting off,  hidden, weakening, less, smaller, not, not needing. As soon as I got stronger it all came back and all the horror too. I was the problem and the evil one again.

So I am – evil,  dangerous, liar, fake, deceitful,  hurt people, going to cause the greatest harm, greedy, ugly, selfish, nasty, like a ruler with people in chains, disgusting, foul… all without knowing the harm I’m doing. I didn’t know it then when I was a child but it still happened and all this awful damage erupted from me, she said.

How did I stop them coming to take her because of me? How did I keep her alive? She didn’t give me care. I didn’t need care from her. I learned to manage without. All I needed was to stop the damage and awful things I was doing.

Ironically I did end up having to actually call them to take her! They did take her as she’d threatened. And they did say it was her with the problem and the illness and being abusive. And they did say it couldn’t possibly be me. So everything she said would happen, did. And that was to be when she and I would know it was all because of me. 

Oh yes – I know it. It never leaves. 

So cut cut cut and purge and punish myself and maybe I’ll get all the badness out or else keep it all in and hurt only me.

When I controlled enough in anorexia all the evil seemed to have stopped. But I can’t get back there.

I still hear it and believe it all even though I’ve started to feel angry in the moments my rational mind tells me how it was twisted and wrong and she did what she liked and he let her do it all to me.

And I can’t even write yet about … those other times. In front of the mirror. In the bed. With the bathroom. Telling me how I liked it.

 

 

 

 

 

Psychosis… trying to process that word…

I saw a psychiatrist at the personality disorder service yesterday. I’d asked if I could have a medication review and talk to someone about my fears about my hallucinations (because of the focus of MBT therapy we don’t really talk about them at length in group or regular 1:1 sessions).

I was scared why are the hallucinations getting worse and why it seemed to be getting harder to know they aren’t real. They used to be voices inside my head. Now they’re often outside and at the time they’re totally real. Only after can I work out they couldn’t have been. And I’m seeing things too.

My mother had hallucinations and I’m just a year younger than she was when she gave birth to me and after that things got really bad for her. So I was scared is the same thing happening to me at the same age?

The psychiatrist was really nice,  understood me, understood my terror, understood the frightening experiences of my childhood and she took more interest in this background than I’d expected. Which was important because it allowed me to tell her about unusual, possibly hallucinatory (is that a word?!) visual experiences as a child and the very strong imaginary world I created to escape into, away from the bizarre experiences day to day caused by my mother’s weird beliefs and behaviour. I told her about feeling I dissociate into different personalities and worlds.

Then we talked about psychosis and schizophrenia. The psychiatrist used the words psychosis and psychotic symptoms for what I was describing. I asked if she thought I had Psychosis as another illness separate from my Borderline PD. She said it is hard to separate because having unusual external experiences is part of Borderline and I could be at a more extreme end of that, worsened by stress and perhaps as therapy is opening things up. Also she thinks I had a sort of ‘propensity’ towards it as a child – I can’t remember the word she used – and this interacted with my mother’s schizophrenic behavior and the abuse to make things worse.

I knew I have hallucinations. I was scared of Psychosis. One of the drugs I take is actually anti psychotic though I didn’t realise that.

It’s still scary that the word psychosis and psychotic symptoms is used for what I have. Partly, I think this is because I fear I’m going to lose all knowledge these things aren’t real and lose contact with the world and become as my mother did. Partly, it’s saying for sure I’m experiencing things that aren’t real. And I’ve so many fears about what’s real and what’s not real. Partly I don’t know yet.

I’m holding on to what the psychiatrist said, that if you keep taking the medication you do not tend to lose the knowledge that the hallucinations aren’t real. They might even go away.

So she’s writing to my GP for changes in my medication and higher dose of the anti psychotic meds.

I don’t know what to think right now. There seems a lot to get my head round again.

Ginny xx