More Psychiatric "Services"

This is the latest in a series of posts about a breakdown I had in 2010.

The first post is here.

Me, at the top of Snowdon -
better therapy than anything Psychiatric Services had to offer!

Although I am glad to have been allowed to take gardening leave from work, I am well enough to recognise that sitting about navel-gazing is not the best thing for me right now. At first I continue to go to Group Therapy, and to sit in cafes reading books.

A different lady from Psychiatric Services calls and asks me to go in for another interview. When I get there, she looks at my notes and realises I have already had a preliminary interview, which is what she had been planning to do with me. She tells me I have ended up with her through a series of errors. My GP originally referred me to Primary Care, and when that wasn't working she referred me to CMHT (Community Mental Health Team). CMHT then referred me back to Primary Care (no explanation as to why), and Primary Care referred me to this lady. She is Intermediate Care. If I ever get to see a proper therapist, that'll be Secondary Care. I resist the urge to point out that, since they are dealing with people who have a reduced ability to function, perhaps they should make these things a little more simple.

She tells me there is a 4-month waiting list for any one-to-one assistance, but I can continue to see Primary Care (the counsellor who seemed scared of me and was no help). There is a group called Working Through Depression that starts next month, and they've put me on the list for it. She thinks the course runs for 8 weeks. Meanwhile, I can join some Open Groups. I tell her I am already doing those, and they are not helping.

I wonder what a person has to do in order to get proper psychiatric care around here.

Having visited a friend in the locked ward recently, it seems even getting sectioned doesn't guarantee any sort of assistance to get back on one's feet.

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Wordless Wednesday: Instagram Love!

Here are some of my Instagram posts from the last week.

Here are some other Wordless Wednesday posts:
Autumn
Self Portrait
Peekaboo!

Up and Down

This is the latest in a series of posts about a breakdown I had in 2010.
The first post is here.

I give the Sertraline a few weeks, and then I go back to the doctor, indignant that it’s not working. I’m still miserable, I’m still not eating, I’m still not sleeping, and I still want to die. The Sertraline has failed, and I am distraught. The doctor tells me not to panic; it can take a month or two to begin to really kick in. (A month? Or two? I can’t wait that long, I won’t survive!) And also, 50mg is still only a low dose. They can always increase it. Some really crazy people are on up to 200mg a day. This guy is not the doctor I usually see. He realises, after he’s made this comment, that it was perhaps not the best choice of words, and changes the subject. I go away under instruction to take my little white wonder pill in the mornings rather than the evenings, as this may improve my sleep. As I am currently averaging 3 hours a night, I am willing to take any and all advice where my precious sleep is concerned. I change my pill-popping routine.

After a week of the higher dose, I have a day where I am ridiculously manic. I get up early, bake and ice brownies, tidy the house, work a lunch time shift at the local pub, iron clothes, change bed sheets, work the evening shift at the local pub. Around 7pm, I crash and burn, and spend the evening at work drinking Coke and coffee, shaking. My eating is still an issue.

The sleeping is still a problem; I am still taking a lot of whichever pills are closest to hand before getting into bed each night. I know this is probably a Bad Idea, but I just really want to get a decent night's sleep.

One day a friend gives me some of the antipsychotics he's supposed to take but doesn't. I take one, and lose two days in blissful slumber. It is amazing. I am scared to ask him for more though, as I know I will end up just sleeping for months at a time.

The Sertraline doesn’t seem to have any side effects. Something seems to be sort-of working. I don’t suddenly wake up happy one day, but I do stop obsessing quite so much about killing myself. Instead, I am filled with apathy. I don’t not want to kill myself because of a new-found zest for life, but rather because I just can’t be bothered to make the effort. It’s as if I am standing outside of myself, watching. 

You know when you learn to meditate and they tell you to just sit and notice your thoughts like a passive observer, well I am doing that with my entire life, and I don’t even care. I’m not bothered that I’ve become the proverbial shadow of my former self, but I am slightly bothered about this lack of concern. Even in my addled state, I know that I should be bothered by the fact I’m on a slippery slope. I feel very much that I am walking down a road from whence there is no return, and have resigned myself to the fact that this is just fine; perhaps I will just keep going down this road, and never return. Perhaps I will just die. 

I am still unable to cope with social interaction, and have not answered my phone for weeks. I leave it on silent, in the spare room. I read some of the messages that come in, but rarely respond. I have deleted my Facebook account and feel bad that friends have texted asking if I’m ok, why have I deleted my account… and I just can’t bring myself to respond. I feel intensely guilty that I may have hurt people’s feelings or made them worry, but I still can’t get around to doing anything about that. During this period I will end up losing a lot of people I thought I could count as friends, because I simply cannot explain my actions to them. And I’m not entirely sure they’d want to understand any way. People steadily stop calling or texting over the weeks.

I begin to read every memoir of depression I can get my hands on. Even though most of what I read doesn't go in, I keep reading. I search Waterstones and then Amazon for books by people who have survived this, in the hope that by reading about them, I will somehow figure out how to help myself.

In one book I read, the author describes how, frustrated with the doctors and pills, she researched supplements. I take a note of everything she takes: fish oils, magnesium, 5-HTP. Then I take myself off to Boots, and buy a ridiculous amount of supplements. Surely the contents of one of these little pots will fix me, and I will be normal.

After the apathy comes the mania. It starts with a vague sense of purpose, and within a couple of days I am up at the crack of dawn, baking brownies, cleaning, tidying, moving furniture, doing laundry. Anything and everything, to an OCD-like level. I cannot sit still. I am suddenly super-productive, getting everything done. The house is spotless. This lasts a few days, and then I crash and burn. And suddenly this is worse than it was before. Because I thought it was over. I thought this was the magic cure-all pill that was going to save me from all my troubles. But it’s betrayed me, and here I am, back wallowing in my familiar despair. It’s like that line from that song: “If I hadn’t seen such riches I could live with being poor.” 

I want nothing other than to lie down and die. I feel lost and am convinced nobody of my family or friends wants to find me. While all this is going on I still have the tiniest modicum of self-preservation instinct. Alone in the house and scared of what I might do, I try my best to contact an acquaintance who lives on the other side of the park from me. He doesn’t work; I figure there is a good chance he will still be up at 2am, while I am having my crisis. He’s fast asleep and cannot come to save me. I drink more and go to bed feeling terribly alone. I have had 29 years of feeling that I am surplus to everyone’s requirements, and it does not matter what happens next; open the vodka, take some more pills. I take more than is strictly necessary (since none is necessary) and lose myself for a while. 

It is July now. This has been going on all year so far. I'm sick of it. The phrase "shit or get off the pot" keeps coming into my head. I am impatient with my own inability to get well; if I'm impatient, no wonder I'm losing friends left and right. 

You know that scene in The Beach, where the Scandinavian man has been bitten by a shark, and keeps howling in pain, and everyone just wants him to either miraculously recover, or get on and die? 

That's me right now.

The next part of the story is here

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Group Therapy

This is the latest in a series of posts about a breakdown I had in 2010.
The first post is here.

Mount Snowdon: a turning point

I have agreed to attend Group Therapy courses because if I turn them down, there is nothing else. No other help available. The GP thinks it will be good for me to have to get up and be somewhere three times a week. The lady from Psychiatric Services thinks Group Therapy will keep me going until she can get me into the "Working Through Depression" group. I would rather just stay in bed and wait to die. But I said I'd do it.

And so, the following Monday, I get myself up and wander into town. I stop in a cafe and buy myself the largest possible latte, with added syrup, and sip it on my way to group therapy. I try to look as inconspicuous as possible as I wander along a main road of almost stationary traffic, and turn into the grounds of the mental institution. In reality, they probably don't care one way or another. I'd like to think I don't look particularly crazy; it's entirely possible that even if I am noticed, people would just think I was a member of staff, or visiting someone. Or not even care.

I sign in at the reception desk, which is behind a glass screen as if the staff need to be kept away from us, lest they catch our madness. I am told to wait in the waiting area. There are some chairs and some magazines. I am early. I take a seat. More people turn up; the waiting area is tiny and packed with people who don't make eye contact with each other. Eventually a lady comes out from behind a locked door, and takes us through to another room. We all sit down, and don't make eye contact. I assume this is the first week the group has run, but actually most of these people have been coming for several weeks. I am the only new person; they just don't speak to each other. Except for one lady, who turns up late and talks enough for all of us put together. It basically becomes her own personal therapy session.

Group therapy consists of this: a group of socially awkward, horribly depressed and anxious people sitting in a small conservatory crammed with too many vinyl hospital chairs and some dusty plastic plants. The lady running the course goes off to get her folder, then comes back. We all get a handout about today's session, and then she sits and reads it to us. I sit there, incredulous. Do I have to sit through two hours of this? How is this going to help me with anything other than my insomnia? Ironically, this is the assertiveness group, and I am not assertive enough to stand up and tell them what a crock of shit this is. So I sit and sip my coffee while we read through the worksheet, pausing every couple of sentences for the loud lady to tell us all how this point is relevant to her life, her week, her dog. Sometimes the lady running the group tries to be assertive herself, and ask whether anyone else in the group has anything to add. Mostly, though, she lets the loud lady do the talking.

There is no Goal Setting group that week, so I am granted a few days' peace before the relaxation group on Friday. The loud lady is in the relaxation group too; as is my brother in law, who I barely know. We don't really get on. He usually tries to tell me what to do, and I usually bite my tongue so as not to start a family feud. Between the two of them, I don't feel very relaxed. The same lady comes in to lead the group again. She hands round sheets, and reads them to us. I am sensing a theme for group therapy. After an hour of discussing how the loud lady finds it hard to relax, we go into the gym and lay on camping mats with pillows under our knees. The lady puts on some relaxing music, and reads a text to us while we close our eyes and "relax." Afterwards, the lady tells each of us how well we did at relaxing, or whether we still seemed tense. And then I leave, as quickly as I possibly can.

The groups are the same the following week. I am not impressed. 

This week is my first time at Goal Setting group. The loud lady is there again. My heart sinks. The same lady is running the group, and seems powerless to stop the loud lady from taking over. We spend the first hour having a sheet read to us, like story time at school. Then we all get a "goal setting" sheet. Apparently in the second hour of this group, we review the goals we set last week, and set a goal for next week. This weekend, I am being taken by a friend to climb Mount Snowdon (more about that here). It's something I agreed to ages ago, and he is holding me to it as a way of ensuring I am ok and making me Get Out And Do Things. On my goal sheet, I put "to climb Mount Snowdon and get to the top." When we go around the room and read out our goals, I have my first ever inkling that actually, I'm not so bad; actually, I may be on the mend and not as hopeless as I thought. Everyone else's goal involves doing the washing up or writing a letter. Jaws drop when I read out my goal.

I attend Group Therapy for a few more weeks. Irritatingly, my GP is right - it's not the therapy, so much as having to get up and out of the house three times a week that helps. After therapy, I go back to the cafe, order another large latte, and curl up in an arm chair upstairs, alternately reading a book and watching the world go by outside. It's my own form of therapy. Sometimes I have two or three coffees, curled up in my armchair, reading endless memoirs of depression and madness.

After a few weeks, I start missing groups. I'm going away for the weekend, or the weather is nice and I want to go to the beach for the day. 

One day the loud lady is in a pub I am having a drink in with friends. She asks me, in front of everyone, whether I think Group Therapy is helping me. I do not return to Group Therapy after this. They call to check I am ok, and I say I don't appreciate being "outed" in front of people who may not have known I was attending Psychiatric Services.  She doesn't have an answer for that.

The next part of the story is here

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Psychiatric Services, and Other Jokes.

This is the latest in a series of posts about a breakdown I had in 2010.
The first post is here.

I have no idea how to live my life. I feel like the last couple of months I've been in some sort of weird stasis; whole days and weeks have merged into one. I couldn't tell you what I did last week with any certainty, much less how I spent the month I was signed off work. I don't know how to change this. I can't even think what to wear to work tomorrow. The simplest of decisions is beyond me; I skip meals for days at a time because I just can't decide on what I want.

I am aware that this has been going on for far too long now. Several of the people who were very sympathetic and nice when I first started showing signs of being a bit "off" have either mysteriously disappeared, or openly told me to just pull my socks up and sort my shit out. I don't know if they're right or not. I probably should sort my shit out but I can't even sort out doing the shopping. I can't remember anything I used to do, how I used to function. I can't decide anything, it's like I'm just stuck. And everything is black and sticky.

The lady from Psychiatric Services calls me. We discuss my situation. When I tell her I am taking 25mg of Sertraline, she suggests I increase it. I speak to the GP about it, and we discuss the potential side effects of doing this. I go away with my prescription for the stronger dose, and try to watch myself for signs of further mentalness.

A few days later, I have my preliminary meeting. It is in Fountain Way, the local mental facility on the outskirts of town. I sit in a room with too many chairs, a table and a box of tissues. The lady wanders off to get my file, then comes back. I tell her all the same things I have told everyone else: I am broken, it's not fixable, I want to die. She tells me I should think of my younger sisters, and how they would feel if I died. I do not find this helpful.

On the phone, the lady said it would take "45 minutes to an hour." It takes two hours. There is a lot of crying.

The lady is nice to me. She tells me she has to go back and discuss my case with the rest of her team, and then I'll get a letter. They'll send a copy of it to my GP as well. She tells me that with the increase in my medication I should see an improvement. I tell her I have been self harming a lot; she doesn't seem bothered. I leave, feeling drained, and cry on the way home.

I know that these people cannot help me. Even if they do decide they will refer me for "treatment," the lady has already told me they have a "fairly long" waiting list, so I won't get any help for a while. I feel like I've been tricked; I sat in this too-hot room for two hours, dragging up all sorts of crap from my past that I generally just deal with by not thinking about it. Now I am left with it all spinning around in my head, and no clue how to deal with it. I feel like I have gone right back to square one, feeling worse than I did when I was originally signed off work - except now I have to get up and wash and dress myself and speak to people every day.

For the last few weeks I have been "hanging on," waiting for my next appointment with the GP, or the counsellor, or for this assessment, thinking "ok, just hang on until this appointment, and then you'll be okay." And every time I get to the appointment, and I'm in the room, I have this thought, "well, you managed to hang on and make it to here - but nothing has changed, you're not magically fixed, things are not okay, and when you leave the room it'll all just be the same." Now I've spoken to Psychiatric Services, I'm back to sitting in limbo, waiting for the next thing to hope will offer salvation.

I go home, and sit and stare into space, thinking to myself, "what are you doing? You can't just sit here and stare into space." The lady from Psychiatric Services had suggested I go for a run. She has clearly never been in my position, sitting in the house, petrified of going out and bumping into anyone I might know.

A letter arrives from Psychiatric Services a while later. There are leaflets for "group therapy." I put them on the floor next to my bed, and forget about them. 

I tell the GP I think "group therapy" is not for me; it seems stupid and a waste of time. She tells me that perhaps it will do me good to have a reason to get up and out of the house every week, now that I'm not working. I can't find the words to form an argument against it, and I don't want to seem ungrateful for the only help being offered, so I say okay, and leave.

A few days later, the lady phones. She tells me she thinks I would benefit from going to the group therapy for depression, but that the group is currently full, so I am on a waiting list. In the meantime, what do I think about the leaflets she sent me? I quickly pick the leaflets up and blag my way through the conversation: "er yes, I was thinking I'd do the Assertiveness, the Goal Setting and the Relaxation..." She seems pleased with this.

To be continued.

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Voluntarily Redundant.

This is the latest in a series of posts about a breakdown I suffered in 2010.

The first part of the story can be found here

The pub garden where I spent my summer

As my time at work goes on, I realise I can't just carry on working only two hours a day for the rest of my life. I have to increase my hours, and start doing proper a proper day's work again. This thought terrifies me.

The whole company has been on notice for redundancy since January. It's July now. I could make all this effort to increase my hours back up to full time, and be made redundant any way.

I speak to my boss about it. He tells me that there are around ten people at my level, and only four jobs in the new structure at that level. 

I am tired. I am not enjoying my job any longer. I didn't want to come back, and I don't want to be here now.

I decide to ask if I can take voluntary redundancy. I speak to my boss again. He tells me that under the circumstances, the company may consider allowing me to take my notice period as gardening leave, something most other people have not been allowed. He tells me to leave it with him; he will speak to his boss.

So my boss speaks to his boss, and his boss speaks to HR. One Wednesday morning I am invited to a meeting with the nice lady from HR. She tells me that I can take voluntary redundancy, if I want. I can take my notice period as gardening leave, if I want. I can finish at the end of this week, if I want. I say yes please, and go back to my desk. 

I go and speak to the big boss, to thank him for getting the company to allow me gardening leave. He tells me that it's not a problem, and that I need to concentrate on getting myself well again; he can see that I was not ready to come back to work.

And that is how I came to spend the rest of the summer drunk and sunbathing in a pub garden, reading endless memoirs of depression.

The next part is here

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Single Parenting: The Good And The Bad

Photography by New Sarum Photography

Being a single mother is hard work. There's no denying that. Not only do you have to do the work of two parents, you have to put up with one of two looks from Joe Public:

1. the "oh-you-poor-thing" head on one side fawn, or
2. the "my-taxes-are-paying-for-your-child-you-useless-wastrel" down-the-nose glare.

 Neither is particularly desirable, if I'm honest.

Here is a list of good and bad things about being a single parent.

The Bad:

• When your nose picks up that tell-tale smell, there's no point in ignoring it. Nobody else will smell it and change the stinky nappy for you.
• You're the only one on duty for middle of the night cuddles, nappy changes, teething comfort and general shenanigans. There is no "just hold the baby while I..." - you have to learn to do it while you're holding the baby.
• You may as well give up; you'll probably never pee without an audience again.
• When your child picks up a bad habit... you can't blame it on someone else; they probably learned it from you.
• The buck stops with you. You are entirely responsible for this child. 
• When your child has a bit of a temperature/looks a bit peaky/may have put something untoward in his mouth, you have nobody from whom to seek a second opinion. There is nobody who knows their "normal" well enough to know if you are just over-reacting.
• Your friends and family may mean well, and show an interest from time to time, but realistically you are the only person who is that interested in your child's development. Nobody else cares that much about that cute little face she just made, or that she's just done the cleverest thing with her sun hat.

The Good:

• You get all the cuddles. You don't have to share them with anyone. All that love, just for you.
• You get to make all the decisions. You don't have to agree to disagree or compromise on what you think is the right choice for your child. 
• You can have an amazingly close bond with your child that may not be so close if there was a third person in the relationship.
• Did I mention the cuddles?
• When someone says "you're spoiling her" you can tell them to knob off; it's none of their business. If your partner said that, you'd probably have to take their opinion into account.
• You can do what you want, when you want. Let's have breakfast, and then go straight out to the park. Let's go to soft play. Let's go swimming. Let's stay in the house all day in our PJs and watch CBeebies. There is nobody to disagree with your ideas, and nobody to hold you up while you wait for them to have a shower/make a coffee/tie their shoelaces before you can leave.
• You know when you look at your child, and you're just amazed by how awesome they are? You did that. On your own. Not as part of a team or a group effort. You. Be proud.

Can you think of any more good or bad points? 

Add your own in the comments!

Thank you for reading. If you have enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends using the buttons below.

If you have enjoyed this post, you may also like:

An Example of Why I Am Happy to be a Single Mum

My Response to the CSJ Report on Single Parents

Things NOT to Say to a Single Mum