Tag: recovery

Crashing

This is a hard post to write.

I have not been coping physically with my job for a long time. I have really tried to ignore this. Since I started it made my pain levels worse and ever since they have kept increasing. I kept hoping it would at least stop getting worse and maybe that I’d get better at coping with it. I wanted to be able to do it. Be some kind of normal. My job sometimes helps me mentally, engaging in something creative and focusing on helping customers and giving the best service I can. It takes my focus outward which I’ve long believed is really important in staying well. The tactile aspects of my work, handling the different fabrics and trying to create attractive displays, can in themselves be grounding and soothing. Additionally, it’s an area where I can try`to do some good and not feel useless. (I know that’s something I need to work on, how connected my sense of worth is with others’ outward perception of me, but I can’t deny it helps for the time being.)

Now I’ve come to the point of crashing completely. In the last 3 months in particular my pain and physical weakness has increased faster. Since around the time of my operation I guess marked a real down-turn physically and it was to be expected really that  my fibromyalgia symptoms will be worse for a while afterwards. Everything is worse really, my back problems (I had a slipped disc years ago), arthritis…

I know I haven’t really talked about it so maybe this sounds weird. Whenever I talk about my physical health I worry it all sounds stupid, nobody would believe me, I’m a fake and I should just get on with it and everything’s my fault. (There’s a lot I have to work on there too, I know.)

I feel like I’ve crashed suddenly. Gradually it has got harder and harder to – move, to put it bluntly…  Getting harder to get through the day….harder to be able to get home, having to sit and rest, and crumpling as soon as I get in, lying down most of the evening… Today I have had to spend most of the day lying down. Pain and shakiness in my legs makes any standing and walking really hard. My legs are cramping and jerking out of the blue. I can’t feel in my right foot normally and at the same time the pain is really bad through my lower back and hips, worst on the right… I’ve had all this before although not as bad, but I am very scared right now. I feel scared and shaky and lost and so tired. I slept a lot today too. My support worker came this morning and I was so tired I was struggling to literally get words out.

So I find myself admitting again that I am probably going to have to leave this job. The physical deterioration from trying to meet its demands is too much. I have tried to look into reducing my hours but it does not look as though this will be possible. I;d have to massively reduce them in any case. My manager has been kind and understanding in her approach but has to follow the sickness absence procedures set down by the company. Since I have been off sick 4 times within a 6 month period, this is flagged as a problem. I can well understand that it is not fair to colleagues to be off too frequently and I know myself that I am struggling more and more with daily tasks, which is increasing my anxiety and in turn my psychotic thoughts and my fears about what colleagues are saying and thinking about me and making it harder to cope with the hallucinations and all the mental struggles of every day.

Outside of work the effect is great too. Not only are the pain and mobility problems an issue, but I have no energy or coping resources left to manage day to day tasks like keeping my house clean, keeping in touch with people, doing positive things to bring a balance to life outside work, or perhaps most importantly right now, giving the energy to therapy and recovery that I need to. The months I have left with the PD service are precious and working on making use of my individual and group sessions is demanding. I want to be mentally “present” for it, not shut off protecting myself because I’m desperately trying to cope with pain and utter exhaustion.

I’m going to be referred to Occupational Health so I await to see what they will suggest.

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I also have to follow my doctors’ and my support worker’s advice. I believe they would all prefer me to reduce my hours. My support worker definitely thinks so.

The one thing that ironically, in a twisted way makes this situation possibly not quite so bad, is that I may actually not be worse off financially working fewer hours or not working at all. I want to talk about this more in a separate post shortly. It’s a bizarre situation that doesn’t sit well with me. At the moment I am struggling in pain and making myself physically worse every day, working part-time, earning just above the minimum hourly wage.  I receive less than £10 per week help towards my rent, I am not entitled to any help at all with things like council tax*, and although I was initially assessed as eligible for a small amount of tax credits, this decision has now been changed and I have been told that I am not entitled to any.  Now, I strongly believe that it is morally right to work as much as I can and not to expect to receive handouts when I could be earning myself. However, what I cannot get away from is that on my current earnings whilst I am working as many hours as I can (well, I have to admit now, more than I can) I cannot live. I do not have enough to cover basic bills and simple living costs and I would not be getting by if it were not for regular help from my family and even occasionally my very good friend who has lent me money for grocery shopping when money has been tightest.

Not only can this situation not go on – I am over 30 now and I simply cannot go on needing financial help from my dad; I have to support myself – but the cost of this job physically is just too much to go through to still not be able to live. It is painfully ironic that because if I were not working or were working fewer hours, for example for a few months or so whilst I complete my therapy, my financial situation would actually be more stable because of the greater help I would get towards rent and living costs. That makes me really really uncomfortable and it isn’t right. Yet I have to be able to live.

It isn’t the main factor that has led me to this point. If I were coping physically I would keep going and if I could I would see if I can increase my hours. But I’m forced to accept that just isn’t so and physically things are not good right now.

I feel really worn out and vulnerable right now. The last time I was so low physically, about 7 years ago, I didn’t feel so afraid or sad. I wonder why that change has come. Perhaps I feel more responsible now. Perhaps I am sadder about potentially leaving my job because there are aspects of it that I genuinely like this time. Perhaps I feel more of a failure that this has happened again.

I need to focus on the good things that could come out of it if I do have to leave. My health problems are not life threatening or anything that serious and so many people are going through much worse, much more medically severe, perhaps without friends to help them and understanding doctors. In moments I can see that there can be ways that in the next few months I can try to turn things around.

I don’t want anyone to feel bad for me. Tonight I just needed to get all this out and admit that I’m scared.

Thank you for listening. I can’t imagine where I would be right now without this blog and the support of you lovely people who read and care and comment. There’s so much more I should say on that. I hope you know how much you mean to me. Hugs xxx

Ginny xxx

(*apart from the 25% single person occupancy discount. For non-UK readers, council tax is a roughly monthly fee payable towards local government spending like policing and other emergency services, refuse collection, some elements of care for vulnerable people, etc. Most working adults pay council tax. The amount payable depends on the value of the property you live in.)

Image not mine, sourced on the ever useful Google – I am afraid I do not know the artist (it says in the top left I believe but I was not able to expand it to read it.

Cards and crafts

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I’ve been trying to devote a bit of time each week to something creative. I find it’s encouraging to be able to make something pretty even when you’re not feeling good. I’ve been making some greetings cards again. A colleague is fundraising for the charity Tommy’s , which does amazing work and research to help those who have suffered with a miscarriage or stillbirth, and I’m going to sell the cards for donations to this cause.

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Not very good images I’m afraid;  I should try to get some better snaps.

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I took the pictures used in the photographic cards. As I think I’ve posted about before, taking photos is another activity I enjoy and it helps me focus on all the good things in the here and now. So it’s nice to be able to use the images this way.

Ginny xxx

Finally online!

Finally online!

It feels as though it has been a long wait but finally I have broadband at home. Yay! Now gradually I will be able to get caught up on replies owing here. I’m looking forward to being much more able to visit your blogs too. Thank you for your patience with me during the past weeks of problems with connection and posting.
I’m not too well physically at the moment so I am sorry that it may still take me some time to get caught up.
Hoping you have had a good day.
Ginny xxx

Ten Dishes #3 – full of beans

This month has been even tighter than usual financially. Someone extremely kindly gave me some groceries to help. I received a few items I wouldn’t usually cook with. Two of these were a tin of ‘tender broad beans’ and timed cannelini beans. I decided to see what I could make with those using just the ingredients I had already in the cupboard.

This was the result:

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It is hard to make it look appetising in the photo however it was actually really nice (though I slightly over cooked the rice)! I used onion, tinned chopped tomatoes, salt and pepper, mixed herbs and some stock. Using half the beans made plenty for my dinner plus another generous portion I put in the freezer. I still have the other half of the beans left over in the fridge to make something tonight. So all in all it has been extremely economical.

I think it was also nourishing and healthy. I’m really trying to take steps to improve my diet at present because it had become so poor due to trying to keep costs down. I am very unhappy with how my weight has been increasing with my medication and I really want to try to take control back in a healthy way that looks after my body.

Ginny xxx

To blog anonymously or not…

When I first started this blog, I was certain that I was going to keep it anonymous. By “anonymous” I mean, for example,  I don’t use my full name, I avoid posting anything that would indicate the town I live in and I do not post photos of myself or my loved ones. Recently, I’ve been wondering whether I might change my approach slightly, for instance, disclosing a little more about me, or sharing photos sometimes, or no longer refraining from talking about local groups, services, activities etc that might give away where I live.

It’s a hard decision. I was talking about it with my friend S who suggested “Why don’t you ask other bloggers what they think?” I thought that was a great idea.

So, I’d like to ask you a question: what do you think about blogging anonymously versus revealing personal details? Was this a difficult issue for you? What led you to choose how much you reveal and whether you write anonymously? If you started your blog anonymously but later decided to share more about yourself, or vice versa, what led you to that decision? If you’d like to make any comments I’d be very grateful. Thank you.

I’ll share a few of my own thoughts on the decision I’m trying to make.

Ironically, it’s partly because some of what I post here about my emotions, experiences and relationships is so very personal that I refrain from sharing personally identifiable information. Many of the experiences I talk about are very painful and intimate, especially those from my childhood. If someone I know as an acquaintance or colleague (rather than a very close friend) came across my blog and learned what had happened to me then I might feel really uncomfortable to say the least. At the start of my blogging, anonymity let me write more freely. Also, I didn’t know what kind of reaction I might meet with. Allowing myself to be identified could have made me vulnerable if I encountered unpleasant or harassing “followers”. In fact this hasn’t happened at all; since I started my blog I’ve been very blessed to have caring and supportive visitors to my pages who have become friends and that’s a huge gift.  THANK YOU! It’s now partly because you have become friends that I’d feel comfortable sharing, and indeed would like to share, a little bit more.

However I also know that if I were to be identified my blog might affect not only me but my friends, family and the professionals who care for me.

I’ve written about relationships breaking down and hurt I feel. I’ve shared sensitive experiences that involved others, such as my childhood abuse and relationships in my family when I was growing up. When I mention someone else I never give their name, only an initial sometimes, but if I were to be identified through my blog by someone who knows me (say, through work or a friend of a friend) then other people I’ve mentioned in my posts potentially are more likely to be identifiable too. It’s a small world, as the saying goes, and I don’t have that many friends! 😉 My friends and family may not want to be identified, or they may be upset. The anonymity of the internet does not give me the right to be horrible about people and I try hard not to write personal things about other people or things I wouldn’t say to the person directly. However I’m inevitably only writing my own experience and perception. In another person’s view it may not be balanced. On the flip side of this, I try to write positive things and express gratitude about the good friends I do have in my life and it would be nice to share more of that.

As well as considering my friends, I have to consider the hospital and my doctors and the therapy programme I attend. There aren’t many specific personality disorder services in the UK and if I say where I live, which hospital I attend will likely become clear to anyone else vaguely local with knowledge of PD. I might worry about anyone making a judgment about the hospital or therapy on the basis of what I write. It’s just me, after all.

Equally there is a lot about the support I get that is great and I would like to share this to help others. Having experienced at least 15 years of mental health issues, slowly I’ve come across sources of support and services that can really really help, some in times of crisis and some day to day. A lot of them are not easy to find. I’d love to write about them and how they’ve helped me, in case this in turn helps others and because I think they deserve recognition. So far I’ve held back so as to avoid revealing my location. Perhaps that is over-cautious of me.

You get the picture that I’m in two minds about this at the moment!

Ginny xxx

Do you think hope is a choice?

Two things were said to me yesterday which have given rise to strong feelings and thoughts for me.

The first was that hope is always there and it’s a choice and we choose whether to accept or deny it.

The second was that healing of even awful pain is possible but we have to want it.

These statements and what they imply and the thoughts they lead to are very hard for me.

Tomorrow I will post again on this topic. For now I’m really interested to know what you think. Do you agree? What do you think? Do the statements imply particular things for you or give rise to strong feelings?

I know it’s a bit strange without the context but I did not want to cloud the issue with my own strong interpretations and what I felt. Tomorrow I’ll write about that…but first I’m really interested in any thoughts you may want to share in the comments.

Thank you.

Ginny xxx

The garden of souls

Lots of lovely wildflowers are coming into bloom this time of year, sometimes in unexpected places.

I found some especially bright poppies by the supermarket:

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Where I grew up we called this one cow parsley!
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The other day I stumbled across this stunning rose in an otherwise unkempt garden.

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I love how sometimes you find brilliantly coloured, delicate flowers growing in the most unlikely places, like little purple blossoms growing across a stone wall or this poppy springing up from arid, grey, hardened soil.

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The little blooms are not as fragile as they appear. They thrive in barren conditions. They draw their life and water much deeper than we see.

Perhaps it’s the same with our hearts and souls when we have travelled a hard road of suffering and abandonment and pain and are trying to find the way to recovery. Gradually  or suddenly the path bears fruit and something beautiful comes to life at the most unexpected time. As we draw deeper and deeper strength we bloom like that poppy in arid, unstable soil, finding something unshakeable that lets us flourish. Exactly what it is, is probably different for each of us. Then we can even inspire and strengthen others.

Ginny xxx

….

“Every flower created by [God] is beautiful; the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would lose its loveliness. And so it is in the world of souls, which is the living garden of the Lord.” – St Therese of Lisieux

Ten dishes -#2

You can read about what the Ten Dishes Challenge is here.

Time for my second dish in the challenge (and second time I’ve managed to cook within a week) – pasta bolognese.

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I know this is a bit similar in content to the first dish, cottage pie (both based round minced beef and veg). However as I’m a single person on a very tight budget I need to cook in this way to avoid waste and keep costs down. I was able to use ingredients I had left over from making cottage pie to prepare this (mushrooms, carrot, tomato, beef stock cubes, tomato passata, etc) and I had the pasta already in the cupboard. I only had to spend £1.70 for the meat.

Dad came for the afternoon so this was our lunch. It fed the two of us and I still have two servings left over which will feed me tonight and tomorrow, so it has worked out significantly cheaper than buying a supermarket microwave pasta meal.

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Ginny xxx

Why did the goose cross the road, and other stories

Q – What’s the difference between a Scottish man with a slight cold and an English man with 7 days’ holiday?

A – One has a wee cough, the other has a week off.

I hear you groan 🙂 That was one of the first jokes I learnt to tell as a child. (The other was what do you call a lavatory that keeps coming back to you? – A loomerang. Yep sorry about that. …)

Moving swiftly on! I’ve just had a week off myself and go back to work tomorrow. It was exceptionally bad weather until Sunday afternoon. On the news they said it was colder in my region one day last week than it was on Christmas Day! That same day my bus was delayed because there was a flock of geese that had escaped onto the main road and caused pandemonium. The bus driver said it was a shame it wasn’t really Christmas as we’d have got rid of the problem quite quickly (goose anyone?!)

My friend came to stay for two nights. She was my first overnight guest since I moved to my flat over a year ago. It’s a big step on for me that I was able to have someone stay over. My anxiety has always previously been so high that I could not cope and had to be able to escape from company after a few hours. I did have times I struggled and I was very tired from trying to make sure I stayed “okay” but we had fun together. My friend is in her eighties – she’s my friend L’s nan and I’ve been blessed to come to know her family over the past few years. They really make me feel like an adopted family member. I’m so thankful for all of them. We don’t see each other as often as we’d like as we don’t live very close by anymore but still the friendships have stayed strong and readers of this blog will know that true lasting friendships are rare and precious to me.

Also in my week off I’ve been able to make an effort to get on top of housework and clear my very tiny garden which I had not cared for properly since the winter. I am not a gardener and don’t enjoy it but I’m thankful for my outside space and try to keep it tidy. It really is very small.

Dad came to visit yesterday afternoon.  We had a coffee and walked through the park in the sun back to my flat. We had pasta bolognese for lunch (second in my Ten Dishes challenge) and a good talk in the afternoon. He’d just been on holiday with my step mum which they’d enjoyed. I’m thankful that I feel closer to my dad again now and more able to be curious about his life and express how things really are in mine.

This coming week I need to start a creative project. One of my colleagues is retiring at the end of this month. My other colleagues and I are putting together a scrap / memento book as part of her leaving present. We are going to decorate a page each for her. Some people are sewing, some embroidery, some photo collages – I’m going to put together some decorative text and decoupage based around one of her favourite songs. Updates to follow!

I hope you’ve had a good day. What do you like to do in your holidays?

Ginny xxx

 

 

 

Slipping through our fingers

There have been several cases in the news recently, in particular two this week, of children suffering unfathomable cruelty at the hands of their parents / caregivers. Much has and will be made of the failings on the part of social services and social workers. How could the horrors and suffering go unnoticed and why were concerns not followed up, staff nor taking a more joined up approach, so the children could slip through the net?

I don’t doubt that there certainly were failings in the services. I’m not denying that. I can’t imagine the guilt the workers involved in those two cases are feeling right now. I’ve suffered myself and so did my mother and so have several other people I care about, because of failings in the organisations that should give support and protection, which let us fall through the net without intervention in times of crisis and without promised follow up or communication across different services. Sometimes the services involved have seem totally unaware of the harm this causes and unwilling to take responsibility. That hurts even more. Fortunately I have never suffered anything approaching what the children in this week’s cases did.

I’m not trying to deny that there were failings and I don’t want to hurt anyone who has been through similar experiences. However I think the somewhat understandable jump to publicise the blame attributed to the social workers and agencies masks some important points.

First, the perpetrators of the terrible abuse the children suffered were their mothers, father’s and family members. That’s the greatest horror. It is terrifying that as humans we are capable of inflicting such suffering on another, let alone on one of our own family or our own child. It’s particularly horrific that a mother can do this to her own child. It so negates every good and nurturing thing a mother is. It means no relationship and no home is immune to evil actions and absence of love.

Secondly, that is such a frightening fact and we want to know why. How and why can a person do that? What does that mean about what’s possible? About our human race? That sounds like an overly broad concept really. But I think it shakes us. Can we conceive that our world is one where what should be the safest and most protective relationship, mother and child,  is used to inflict fear and hurt and pain?  We don’t want to. We at least need some explanation. It’s easier to label the failing of a particular social worker or agency, because that we can understand. That we can name. What brought the abusers to use their own children that way, we can’t.

Thirdly – and this is something that’s hard to explain but significant to me as a survivor of childhood abuse – these horrific abuses can and do happen in secret and undetected. Trying to come to terms with what happened to me and questioning over and over whether the things I can remember done to me are true, I’ve often doubted myself and told myself it must have been my fault or I must be mad and inventing it all, because at the time nobody else realised what was going on and nobody intervened and people thought my family was normal (er okay maybe not but they didn’t often suspect the full truth). These two tragic cases in this week’s news show the awful fact that abuse much worse than what I suffered can indeed continue in secret. Therein lies the abuser’s power to control, manipulate and deny.

Fourthly, no more resources are coming for social workers and care and protection teams at the moment. The little glimpses I’ve seen from my work in hospitals, psychiatric services, care teams and so on has shown me loud and clear that there simply are not enough hours in the day and not enough people on the ground to have the contact and communication and time to spend directly with children, families, patients in need,  as well as following the ever more extensive proformas and completing paperwork that is required to meet the rules and regulations (which are supposed to ensure good care is happening but at the same time take you away from doing it).

This is no new or ground breaking feeling. I think most people in nursing or caring services have been saying this for years. But it’s still frighteningly swept under the carpet and denied by those in power. When I worked in a service that supported teenagers and young adults with mental health needs and social support needs, I would take the minutes of clinical team meetings. In one such meeting, changes to documentation for care planning and recording were being introduced, which would require nursing staff to (a) spend much longer away from patients, sitting at computers completing databases and reports and (b) in many cases require nursing staff to spend already limited professional development time on training in IT packages, not in patient care.  Of course, the aim of all these whizz new care planning systems was supposed to be a magical improvement in compliance with regulations about good care. However, nobody could answer who was going to be delivering the care during the time that the already over stretched nurses were completing the compliance paperwork. I wonder whether there’s a box in the risk assessment screen to record the increased risk caused by the fact the nurses and carers are filling in the [expletive deleted] risk screen instead of assessing the patients? 😉 Time and time again there was no answer to this impossibility. In that meeting, one or two nurses directly asked, how in the same shift with the same staff,  were they to fit in their work with their patients, as well as completing the new compliance activities being introduced. How could they do both? Which was to go when the time ran out? In my eyes the response was appalling. The nurses were told that was an unacceptable attitude to display and there was simply no choice and the compliance work was to be done. This came from a senior clinician who I had greatly respected and her response was totally at odds with her usual very reflective approach. Of course I don’t know the history with that particular member of staff who asked the questions and perhaps there was more to it than that, but there seemed a forced denial of the impossibility of continuing to provide good care and the level of presence on the ground with those we are caring for,  which is so important if we are to prevent tragedies like the children who slip through the net where abuse and suffering goes undetected.

I left the service I mentioned because more and more changes were taking clinicians, and support staff like myself, away from being able to maintain the personal contact with patients.  (I’ve since regretted leaving, I’ll admit.) Clinicians left too, at least in part due to stress and sadness around similar issues. They were a great loss to their patients, in my opinion.

A little later I worked a temp cover role as a secretary for the legal team that supported my local county council’s child protection services. Round about this time I thought about training as a social worker. I didn’t in the end. I thought I’d find far too many situations where my hands were tied and too many times bureaucracy stopped me doing the good that was needed.

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I cry for the children that suffered and for those who so want to be present on the ground to help those at risk but who are taken away and whose voices are silenced when they highlight the lack of resources and impossibility of meeting the demands of keeping children safe in the field, and complying with everything that’s supposed to be ensuring children’s safety. One thing is sure and that’s that it is far too easy to be silenced – again both in the case of the victims and the carers pointing out the shortage of resources to help them. Let’s keep on speaking out.

Ginny xxx