Tag: recovery

Somehow

[TRIGGER WARNING FOR SUICIDAL THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS, SELF HARM AND OVERDOSE This post may be disturbing please read with caution if this may be unhelpful for you. ]

Somehow it’s nearly morning. Well, it is morning. I’m numb and “out of it” like it’s not really me, but everywhere at the same time. I thought I came to the end. That was supposed to be it. But I’m still here.

I’m scared to write this because it makes it real. What I did. And what is. And that I’m still here and that it’s morning. No question.

(“The watchman counts on daybreak and Israel on the Lord” I can’t remember what Psalm that is right now. ..)

I’m scared to write because I don’t want anyone to hurt and it was noone’s fault but mine and no one’s doing but mine and my responsibility. I lost it, I snapped and gave in. I didn’t deserve it but they cared for me.

I know I was so nasty to someone who has only cared for me. I needed too much. I still do. I’m so sorry.

But I have to write this. I have to write this in order to go on. I’m scared and I can’t remember chunks of time.

So…

I got to the end on Saturday. I screamed. I smashed things in the kitchen. I cut. I took an overdose. A lot more this time. This time it was the end.

But it wasn’t because I’m still here. And I have to get up soon. I have to get up and get dressed and go out and get something to eat and then go to the hospital to see the psychiatrist and my therapist. I promised I’d do it.

I’m okay. I don’t want to scare people. I’m okay physically. I got help. I’ve been in the hospital Saturday and Sunday. I came home late last night. They monitored me – blood tests and ECG and blood pressure and everything – so I’m fine physically. They were kind. They looked after me. I ate. I saw the duty psychiatrist. They’ve sent a report to the personality disorder team. I already had an appointment set with my therapist this morning and I’m to go early to see the psychiatrist too. So I’m safe. I don’t want people to worry.

I’m going on. Nearly time I can get up. It’s cold this morning. I have to decide what to do about work and what do I tell them. I’m meant to be in this afternoon.

“The watchman counts on daybreak and Israel on the Lord.” Keep saying that and get up and it’s morning.

Ginny xx

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.

 

Walking this Borderland #6: Shine

Walking this Borderland #6: Shine

Stars can’t shine without darkness.

To everyone who is alone, hurting, fighting, crying, tonight –

Don’t give up. If you can’t say, one day more, say, just one hour more.

When all you can see is that everywhere is darkness and you are breaking and cannot believe that it will pass, if all you can do is breathe, then that is how you can go on.

In this darkness, you will be the stars, and this struggle you give your strength and your heart to will make you shine the brighter.

Ginny xxx

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry – Eating Disorders and Personality Disorder – #1

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry – Eating Disorders and Personality Disorder – #1

Protection in emptiness

Eating Disorders and Personality Disorder

Chapter 1 – Introduction

I’ve been talking with a couple of people recently about eating disorders, eating difficulties and weight. Also, a kind reader commented that it was of interest to read a previous post in which I discussed some of the ways in which eating / not eating was (and at times still is) a coping strategy for me – a harmful one, but nevertheless a way of coping with something even more terrible to me than the eating disorder itself. I’d been planning to write more on this at some point and these comments have encouraged me to post on this topic now.

There are a couple of points I wish to make clear in this introductory chapter and I would be very thankful if readers would visit here before reading any of the other chapters in this Series.

Firstly, I want to make it explicit that my intention in this post (indeed any post on this blog) is not to promote eating disorders, food restriction, purging or any of the actions or thought processes that form part of them. This post and this blog are not “pro-ana”, “pro-mia” or for “thinspiration”. These terms are painful to me to write because I know just a little of the raw emotions and suffering that go along with them, for those struggling and their loved ones. I hope that there is nothing in this post that would come across as promoting starvation. Though it is something we may use to try to cope, it does immense physiological and psychological harm to us and I really, really hope that readers suffering in this way are able to get regular, face to face, professional medical and psychological help and support. I know how hard it can be to access that, both because of how hard it is to ask for help and because there may be so little specialist treatment available, with such limited criteria to access it. This is really painful and it’s a topic I will write on during the course of this Series.

In these posts I discuss and share my personal past and current experiences and feelings. Almost certainly they are not the same as those of the next person who has/had eating difficulties (although some of the themes I’ll explore I have heard other people with eating disorders talk about as well). I think it is important not to be afraid to discuss the reality of eating disorders and how they affect someone across their life – that is, across all areas of their life and often across many years as well. I think part of not being afraid and being able to find a way to recover from disordered eating is acknowledging this impact and the factors which may have been involved in the disorder taking hold and continuing.

Part of this process, for me at least, involved admitting that not eating, purging and so on and the state I attained through these things, did serve a purpose. Perhaps that is horrible and shocking. Possibly it is no longer as horrible and shocking to me as it might otherwise be, because I have gone through years of difficulties with eating, weight and body shape myself and I have also known many people with severe eating disorders.  However, I do know, and share the feeling in myself, that it is a very sensitive topic.

I hope that acknowledging the purpose and even “need” for something that the disorder gives in a sufferer’s life, is a way to begin to understand the person and what will help them best to heal and walk the path of recovery. I believe that unless we find another way of reaching what the eating disordered state provided, or an alternative means of living, it is completely impossible to break out of the disorder to continue to exist without it.

The second thing I want to make explicit at this stage is that by talking about a “need” for something the disorder gives, I do not wish to imply any blame on the sufferer (or anyone else) or that it is anyone’s fault or choice to be ill. I state vehemently that it is my belief that nobody with an eating disorder chooses to be ill or should be blamed for it. I believe we are incredibly hurt in a way even deeper and harder than the disorder itself shows.

It is cruelly true that whilst there is no choice or fault in the illness, great strength is needed in the sufferer to contemplate breaking out of it and reaching for another way of living.

I am not yet sure quite how long this Series will be and I am open to any questions or comments readers may have. I would love to hear from you. Especially as this is so sensitive a topic, I would really appreciate you asking any questions on things that are not clear or you sharing your own experience and thoughts, which likely will be very different from mine.

Please do leave messages or questions in the “Comments” section. Sometimes I am slow to respond to comments because I have poor internet access and I am very sorry for this. I am not deliberately ignoring you when it seems that I take a long time to approve a comment or reply. I do read all you say and I am very thankful that you take the time to visit this blog and to write. I hope that soon in the New Year I will be able to set up better internet access and thus reduce these delays.

As always, thank you for reading.

Ginny xx

P.S. The title of this series was inspired by The Killers’ song “Dustland Fairytale”. I In the final chapter I will explain the meaning I intended behind the title.

Walking this Borderland #1: Introduction to the “Walking…” series

Walking this Borderland #1: Introduction to the “Walking…” series

I’ve decided to start a new series which I’ve called “Walking this Borderland”. I’m going to try to make each post in this series short and readable. My idea is that each will share an idea, skill, or thought that I find helpful in coping with an aspect of the symptoms of my Borderline Personality Disorder. Some of these are things that have been suggested to me by health professionals. Some are ideas a friend (perhaps who also has BPD) has given me permission to share. Some I have come up with or encountered myself in my path living with BPD.

I am sharing these in the hope others may find them interesting or helpful. Perhaps if you suffer with BPD or another Personality Disorder or know someone who does, you may find they are things you can identify with or are relevant or helpful to you. Perhaps they might equally be helpful to people who struggle with other mental health conditions – or even to anyone curious about emotions. Perhaps as a reader you would like to share your own experiences and ideas that help you, in the comments. I’d love it if you did want to do that.

As I have said many times before on this blog, what I’m sharing is personal and every person is very different in what is helpful to them or how they experience emotions. I really hope there is nothing I post in this “Walking…” series that would be unhelpful to anyone reading but please bear in mind that I am only sharing from my experience. Though I have worked in many mental health treatment settings and had some non-clinical training, and receive therapy myself, I am not a doctor, I am not clinically trained, I am not medically qualified to provide support or help to people with a mental health condition. So whilst I hope that this series is going to be useful, I very much urge you to please please access and rely on support from clinicians who are trained to help you.

Ginny xx

Another year ended (Perhaps, just for a minute, I can believe.)

Another year ended (Perhaps, just for a minute, I can believe.)

Today in my church we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday of the church calendar year. Next Sunday will be the First Sunday of Advent.

Time passes too quickly.

It’s easy to regret, at this time of year.

Advent is a time of joyful waiting and hope in darkness – for me in my faith, preparing to receive in our heart’s God’s gift of love, and placing all our hope in a God who comes into our darkness just as He came as a helpless little baby to Bethlehem that first Christmas. He does not fear to enter our need, confusion and darkness and we need not fear our darkness and confusion because He delights to come to us.

This time of year is one of heightened scary emotions too. It can feel like being pulled back into too intense memories of the past, of past events and tensions, past failures to make things what I should have. We talked about the emotion of regret in my therapy group and I said, trying to give hope to someone else who said she felt regret, that the idea of regret implies perhaps that we know some way in which we would have liked things to have been different. Perhaps we can build on that.

Right now I don’t think I know how to make things different. Looking back this year or so has been terrible on the face of it with loss after loss. Loss of two jobs. Loss of a very close friend (former partner) when our relationship finally was dashed away completely. Leaving two temporary homes. Loss of the ability to carry on or hold it together. Loss of my job and loss of the ability to work full time; with it loss of stability, colleagues, confidence to be able to do anything at all good. I have been in hospital three times for a length of time as an inpatient and at least twice more for a period of hours when I was suicidal.

There is constant news of so much suffering, fear and terror (in all senses of the word) in the world and more and more hurt that cannot be stemmed. What do we do faced with this? What can we do that is good? What is going to win out in the end? I hurt so much too for people close to me who are ill or struggling or suffering and feel their pain to a point I cannot breathe. I wish I could be any good to them.

Is my grip on reality slipping further and further away? The voices, seeing things, explosive emotions, longing not to be alone…. trying to keep going seems more of a fake and more of an act, more exhausting and harder to keep up. Asking for help fills me with fears of unworthiness, having lied, being a fraud and my intense inner evil that I can’t purge.

Yet a couple of people close to me have said that they see a change in me and something getting better that wasn’t there before. I cannot see it yet but they can.

I have a flat of “my own” rather than just one room as a lodger. I can make it home.

I have discovered friends who do not abandon me even when to myself I am totally repulsive and when I cannot believe that anyone would choose me or want to be around me and when I feel I can be no good to them.

I got to work with someone I truly trusted and respected and learnt from him, not only specific skills and knowledge, but how to be fair and calm and how to give generously and work always in a dedicated manner, yet still keeping boundaries and structure and still holding on to a sense of one’s worth when everything around is screaming the opposite and deriding you. I cannot in any way hold that myself yet, but I watched and learnt and it stays with me somewhere. I hope we may stay in touch.

The Lord has treated me tenderly and shown me He is with me and in a moment of the most impossible despairing distress, showed me that at the deepest point and longing of our heart, there is love and there is Jesus, and just for a few minutes I could believe.

I have a therapist. I have one to one and group therapy. I can go to a support group sometimes. I can ask for help when I need it from a specialist PD service, which is a blessing and luxury in the NHS that such a thing is available in my geographical area.

I can join in a therapy which explores emotions and thoughts and reveals something to me every week. It hurts and shakes me but I have to trust that this can somehow lead me to coping and living better and being able to reach the same plane as everyone else in some way. I don’t think my BPD will ever suddenly disappear like with a magic curative pill but I do think I will learn to feel and live better and learn to let the good things ground me rather than the terror. The darkness will not grip so hard.

It’s the end of another year and Christmas is coming (and everything that means in my head, my heart, my family and out in the world). It’s a scary and shaken year and it has passed so fast.

Still, just for a few minutes, perhaps I can believe.

Ginny xx

My new way to relax

swirls

Currently, one of my preferred ways to relax whilst I’m alone at home watching TV or the like, is colouring in complex swirly patterns like this one. It can switch off some of the thoughts for a while, passes time and gives a creative focus outside of oneself, even a way to practice mindfulness. The results can even be used for something pretty, for instance, made into pictures or coasters. Seeing something lovely that you have managed to create, despite perhaps feeling depressed or low, can be encouraging. It is a relatively cheap hobby, especially as at the moment we seem to be fortunate that there is a range of “colouring books for grown-ups” around, often to be found in discount book stores / stationers’ / supermarkets. No doubt you could find template patterns on line as well, which could work if you have access to a printer. Then all that is required is a packet of crayons or coloured pens (note to self, curb tendency to multi-buy pretty pens!).

Happy colouring! 🙂

Ginny xx

An early morning surprise visitor

It had been the most horrible night, with repeated flashbacks. I felt surrounded by danger and panicky emotions boiled to the surface and repeated self-harming had only numbed it for a few minutes at a time.

I was exhausted but gave up on going to sleep in the early hours as I knew I’d soon have to get up for work.  As it got lighter, I was in a numb state where I was not sure any more if things were real or if I was watching everything through glass (this happens to me sometimes after an intense period of distress).  I was standing staring out of the window into the communal garden.

Suddenly, the tiniest little deer (muntjack?) came walking very slowly and calmly across the lawn.  He stopped to nibble some grass and stood for several moments looking around before, just as calmly, walking on and following the path round the side of the building out of sight.  He showed none of the timidity deer often have round people and what he was doing so far into the city centre, I don’t know.

Coming after the strain of that night, it was a most precious moment.  I don’t know what I felt.  It seemed ethereal.  Just I knew I was not quite so numb and disconnected the rest of that day, and I often think back to that little deer, walking in the early morning.

There really are beautiful and unexpected things everywhere, no matter how much pain we are feeling. Perhaps the times we are startled into watching them and drawn out of the pain by their beauty, will help our recovery.

Ginny x

Starting out

(I would be grateful if you would please read “About” before reading this, or any other post)

It has taken a long time to come to this point.  The idea of starting some form of blog has taken shape over several months.  Writing, on and off, has been an important part of thinking, processing experiences and emotions, praying, reflecting, sometimes reaching out to people, keeping in touch (sometimes when anything else is too frightening), building relationships.  Sometimes just a way to walk through the frighteningly frantic thought processes that spin round and round.

I’ve also hoped that somehow I may be able to bring something from my experiences that helps someone else.  I firmly believe that everything we experience, however bad, in some way eventually increases our understanding of the world, of others; increases our ability to empathise and love.  (Yes, I can say that now, because today I have some degree of calm… the next time, whenever it be, that I am in the midst of the terror and anxiety it will probably be impossible to comprehend this hope, but somewhere, very faintly, it remains, and I am thankful for that.)

So I guess I hope this blog may bring together the purposes writing serves in my life and the hope to help someone and to share with others experiences.

It is hard to know what is helpful, or interesting, to others – not least because I don’t know who will visit these pages and what they may need or feel.  Therefore, though I do deeply hope this site will bring about some good and help for others, I need to be clear that it’s a personal experience, a personal story. I am not clinically trained. I am not a doctor or counsellor. My knowledge of the conditions and issues I discuss here comes from my experience of my own life, the life of people close to me, the services I’ve come into contact with and the therapies I have participated / am participating in (also, some little experience of working in support roles in psychiatric healthcare settings and as a volunteer).

I also think I need to make clear that some of what I share here will be painful, because the reality of what I’m going through is painful. It is frightening, often feels out of control, often feels hopeless, often all I can see is dark and bad. Equally, there are surprising moments of encouragement, which are surprisingly easy to forget when the next stage in the struggle comes, and I hope to be able to explore those too, and genuinely be thankful.

It seems to me that a strong feature in Borderline Personality Disorder is that feelings become so very intensely consuming and real that they can block out all other truth and experience and in the midst of them, it can be impossible to know anything else, no matter how much the “else” is otherwise important to us, central to our lives.  Then, despite how absolute they seem, these feelings change so fast.  This does not mean they were not genuine at the time but can be very hard for me, and anyone around me, to understand.  Perhaps this means that what I express here will also be hard for anyone to understand at times.  If so I hope you’ll tell me.

And finally, I really am thankful to people who take the time and interest to visit here. I’d like to know what you think, for you to ask questions, or share your own experiences.

This journey is in no way the course I thought my life would take and I did not choose it. And I cannot see far ahead.  Perhaps that is a good thing in some ways – though I may want to, often the little I do see of the path frightens me because it seems insurmountable.  Yet I hope that this blog is one way that it can be a fruitful path and a shared one, and a way to keep taking just one step more.

Thank you.

Ginny x +