Crisis – Drowning and Trying Not to Sink Any Lower

Trigger Warning: This is not a cheery post and talks about feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. Please don’t read on if you feel that this may upset you or cause you any form of mental distress. This blog is here to raise awareness, improve understanding and communicate difficult themes of mental illness that I experience, it is not here to cause any distress so please read with caution and look after yourself!

Crises are things that many of us go through at some point in our lives. Whether it be a mid-life crisis, a confidence crisis, a devastating loss, a sudden change in circumstance, they can all be crises to us that threaten to overwhelm, take control and force us to submit to the idea that we cannot and will not cope with whatever it is that we’ve just been dealt. I am very much going through this right now.

Despite being virtually housebound for 16 long months, I have mostly been able to keep plodding on, to keep my head just above water and to keep hoping and believing that I can and will get through this and get better. Sadly, this is a very fragile state for me and involves a lot of hard work and effort to keep the negative thoughts at bay and to keep moving forwards as best I can. I have to work at it every single day otherwise the drowning feeling quickly seeps in and takes over and I have to fish myself out again, always a little more damaged by the darkness that’s snuck into my head. Each time it gets a little harder for me to find the light, to find hope again, to believe that this may be temporary and I may be lucky enough to get my life back again.

So what sparked this crisis off? I’ve been waiting for the last month to hear from the support worker I’m supposed to have been allocated after my last psychiatrist appointment where I was finally diagnosed. I have been incredibly anxious about this phonecall and every time my phone has rung my heart has skipped a beat and my breath has caught in my chest while I check the caller ID and see if it could be them. But I haven’t heard anything. I’ve been feeling increasingly apprehensive about whether I’ll like the person, whether we’ll get on, whether the treatment will be set at my pace or whether I’ll be forced to do things I feel unable to do and pushed too hard or not be believed if I say that I cannot do what they’re requesting. I’ve worried about whether it will make me worse by pushing me too far too fast, whether it will indeed help and if it doesn’t, what, if anything, might help instead. All of these thoughts have been racing through my head every day for the last month and it’s exhausting. My head feels full, like it’s wedged full with cotton wool which makes concentrating on even the most basic of tasks increasingly difficult. It’s why my reviews are so sporadic, because some days I’m completely unable to get ideas down on paper or even pick a colour or a page to colour. Other reviewers complete around 5 reviews a week, I’m lucky if I manage half that despite not working, not having children and being a total disaster of a housewife because I find the task monumental and every single step takes longer than it should or would if I were well. I try to ignore this and just keep plodding on at my own pace but it’s hard not to compare myself to others and wonder how I’ll ever cope with a real job again if I’m struggling so much with doing this. Don’t get me wrong, I love reviewing and I’m unbelievably grateful that I’m being given the opportunity to write them for publishers who kindly donate copies of their books, but I find it very hard to keep on top of it and to not get overwhelmed. But, I refuse to give up – I refuse to surrender another part of my life to my condition. I have to challenge myself, to keep pushing my boundaries and to keep standing up to the anxiety or it will take over every part of my life and my personality. So I keep going, I keep fighting the demons, I keep telling myself that I can do it, that I am achieving something, that I am, in a small way, helping others with my reviews and that I’m not totally useless like I regularly slip into thinking.

Anyway, on top of all of these daily thoughts and worries about the support worker which are already added to my general every day worries and anxieties, I received a letter on Friday which was what triggered this crisis. I’ve been asked to attend yet another assessment, with another member of staff I’ve never met (this time a nurse) at a day centre I’ve not attended since I was 18. I don’t know what this assessment is for, or why I’ve been asked to attend. I’ve been sent a standardised letter which totally panicked me because the wording states that they’re assessing me “to determine the best course of treatment for you at this time” and that it will last an hour to “enable you to discuss your current difficulties and whether we can help you at this time”. I’ve already been given a treatment plan and was under the impression that the next step was a support worker being allocated to me and contacting me to arrange a home visit. None of this has happened and I have no idea what this assessment is for. I’ve phoned this week to ask my psychiatrist what’s going on and what it’s for but I’m yet to receive a response so I’ve now spent 6 days (and counting) feeling incredibly anxious to the point where my insomnia has worsened and I’m now unable to sleep before 4am instead of my usual 2am and yesterday I didn’t sleep until almost 5.30am. This then means that I’m even less able to deal with the anxiety and I’ve already had at least 4 panic attacks this week because of it.

Not only has my anxiety worsened significantly, I’m now able to do even less than I usually can because my baseline anxiety level is so high that it takes very little to push me into levels where I can’t control it or cope and have a panic attack so I’m now leaving the flat even less than usual and I’m now even more trapped in my own home and my own head. This has really scared me because normally a letter would shake me up for that day, maybe the next as well but I’m now at nearly a week later and I’m still not calming down. It’s got me questioning major parts of my life (hence the crisis) and I’m now wondering if I’ll ever get better, what might help, will anything help, what do I do if I stay at this level of functioning for a number of years without improvement? I have goals and dreams and plans for my life. None of these are especially big or outlandish. I don’t want to travel the world, if I can never go on an aeroplane again then so be it. I don’t want to bungee jump, skydive or put on a concert for 1000s of people. All I want is to be able to leave the house when I want to. I want to be able to work. To socialise. To get married. Most of all? I want to stop feeling scared. I’m fearful of so many things, it has taken over my whole life and I now overthink everything. I want to be able to get dressed and not worry about what people will think of what I’m wearing. I want to be able to work without the fear that I will fail or let people down. I want to be able to say no to people without the fear that I will be rejected and end up alone. I want to feel confident in my own skin, to feel safe, and to know that the choices I make are ok and accepted and that I don’t need to worry all the time. I want to stop feeling afraid.

This week has caused me to feel totally lost. I feel like I’ve barely made any progress since getting ill 16 months ago. I try my hardest every day and I challenge myself regularly. I’ll achieve something one day and then not be able to do that thing again for another month or even 6. At this rate of progress I still won’t be able to work in a decade and that’s hard to stomach when you’re only 24 and you have your whole life ahead of you. I want to be able to fulfil my modest dreams, to achieve the things I hope for. I want to know that somehow, someday, I will get better. That I will get my life back and grab it with both hands so that I can change the lives of others with conditions like mine. I’m desperate to make a difference, a bigger difference than I can possibly make sat behind a computer screen and trapped inside my flat. I have no idea how to get better, or what will work. I was so convinced that medication would work and I’d be back at work within 2 weeks. I thought I’d be able to drag myself away from the irrational fears and force myself into no longer being scared but that has not been the case. I’m rapidly losing hope and I feel like I’m pretty much out of options. I’m not religious, I don’t have faith, I don’t have the comfort of believing in a higher being that has a plan for me that I just have to wait out until it improves. I don’t have anything to rely on or to comfort me in these dark hours to prove that I will get better and that it’s just a matter of time. So I have to keep working, all day, every day, on trying to keep my head above water and when I can’t do that, like I can’t currently, I have to just try to prevent myself from drowning and falling further down under the water. My hope is that this anxiety will calm down again over the next few days and I’ll be able to build myself back up with the help of those closest to me who I know still believe in my ability to improve and get myself better. One thing I have in spades is determination so if anyone can do it, then I can, but right now that feels so untrue and so impossible because I can no longer think of a solution or method to improve and without that it feels like all hope is gone because I have nothing left to hope with. I have heaps to hope for but that just feels like torture, like showing a hungry child photo upon photo of plates of delicious food without giving them any way of having it. The hunger is easier to deal with and ignore if you don’t think about the thing that you want most – food. So I’m trying to ignore all of the things I’m missing out on, the things I’m desperate to do, the simple things that everyone around me takes for granted but that would make my day if I could just do them without fear anymore. I’ll keep on colouring and reviewing and keeping myself busy in the hope that it will keep my mind occupied at least some of the time and keep me distracted from the constant stream of “what if?” and “how the hell?” questions running through my head. Hopefully this crisis will pass as quickly as it’s hit me but for the moment I’m drowning and trying desperately not to sink any lower.