An update about the Mental Health Blog Awards which I’m in the nominations for (links below), how therapy is going and the exhaustion which mental illness brings.
Mental Health Blog Awards Voting link – https://s.surveyplanet.com/nr1nm3nv
Mental Health Blog Awards Nominees – https://www.mhblogawards.com/2022-nominees
Voting closes on the 6th of June 2022.
An update about how I’ve been for the last 6 months, my anxiety worsening and starting therapy recently.
TW: Non-graphic mentions of Self-Harm and Suicidal Ideation.
It’s Children’s Mental Health Week and I wanted to share a few things because historically, mentally ill children have often become mentally ill adults. I’m one of them. While a mental illness doesn’t have to be a life sentence, if it’s not treated quickly and effectively, it can fast become one. I’ve long been documenting my present and past issues with mental illness and as each year passes I’m shocked by how many years I’ve given up to these illnesses. It’s certainly not been willingly. Thanks to originally being fobbed off by doctors as just another down teenager, who rapidly spiralled into full-blown depression and was then put onto unsuitable medication and given no therapy until I was able to go private 18 months in, I’m left angry and disappointed that I was left to fall so far into the hole of depression. I try not to spend time now wondering what life would have been like for me if that first GP had taken me seriously and immediately given me someone to talk to. Maybe I’d have still spiralled, maybe where I’ve ended up is exactly where I was always meant to, but I have to say, I doubt that!
I was 15 when I became mentally ill. A series of traumatic events led to me feeling unable to cope pretty much overnight. I sought help really quickly but I didn’t get it. Leaving me to deteriorate, for depression to take hold of my developing brain, with no concept or understanding of what was happening to me, leaving me to develop deeply unhealthy and damaging coping strategies that have left life-long marks on my skin, not to mention the scars inside my mind, has altered the course of my life. Where I veered off course into the path of illness, I’m sure I just needed a gentle nudge from the right therapist to get me back on track, to validate my struggles and confirm that life was difficult at the time and to teach me positive, healthy coping strategies to set me back on the right path. Instead, I’ve spent very nearly half of my life mentally ill, constantly sharing my headspace with the most hideous thoughts and feelings. It feels like a waste. It feels so unfair. I look at pictures of me as a child and I feel so sad for that little girl and what her future holds. While there are exciting and wonderful things in my life and those are the things I cling onto, there are so many tinges of sadness and difficulty and everything feels marred by my mental illness.
My anxiety kicked in out of the blue when I was 23. It hit me like a ton of bricks. It cycles up and down, lessening and worsening and morphing over time but never going away. Recently my anxiety has ramped up to a crippling level that has often left me in a crying heap and wondering how to continue because it feels so utterly unbearable. I’m 31 and I still don’t have any coping strategies that reliably work, although I’m proud to say that I have removed the unhealthy coping strategies and work everyday to keep those out of my life. Dealing with such extreme anxiety feels like torture and there are so many days recently where it’s felt like it’ll actually kill me. I get awful physical symptoms which I then become fearful of and the cycle continues and spirals. There are days where anxiety occupies my entire mind, no other thoughts come or go, just fear and panic crashing over in wave after wave. It’s completely exhausting. I often think when I’m writing these posts that those of you reading who are lucky enough to not have suffered mental illness must think these are exaggerated accounts that should be taken with a pinch of salt. I can assure you that not only is that not true, these descriptions only really scratch the surface of the things your brain can make you think and feel when it’s gripped by mental illness. It’s all-consuming and terrifying and what makes it even worse is the fact that this assault is being orchestrated by your own brain and yet you’re completely powerless to stop it. It grips you like a vice, pinning you to the spot and squeezing the life out of you and yet no one around you can see it, they can’t see why you’re struggling for air, or understand why tears are pricking in your eyes, or you’ve come over in a cold sweat. Nothing outwardly in your surroundings has changed and yet for you the fear has enveloped you and it’s all you can perceive. And for days now, weeks in fact, that’s been my near-daily experience.
When I’m feeling so unwell now, it’s hard not to look back, to look at where this began, to think back to when I knew there was a problem and plucked up the courage to ask for help, only to be fobbed off, dismissed and belittled. It breaks my heart to think of the 16-year-old sat shaking in her doctor’s surgery wondering if she’d gone mad and being so scared of what was happening in her head that she risked being forced into hospital which was what she was sure was going to happen. She had unscarred skin, she ate healthily and had good self-esteem, she just felt sad all the time and didn’t know how to cope anymore. I wish someone had realised something was wrong and rather than pretending everything was fine, listened to her, held her hand and helped lead her back to the light. I shouldn’t have needed to self-harm, I shouldn’t have needed to develop an eating disorder and I shouldn’t have needed to plan how and when I might end my life because it should never have got so unbearable that I even considered those things. For all of these reasons and so many more we desperately need to fund children’s mental health services, increase awareness of what to look out for and have quick and efficient assessment and treatment services to rescue those who veer off the path, so that mentally ill children no longer have to become mentally ill adults. I wasn’t destined to be like this, but my fate was sealed when mental health services tried to prove me wrong and talk me out of being mentally ill when I knew I had every reason to feel the ways I was feeling and had no skills to deal with it. Until we overhaul these systems, we’ll continue to have hundreds if not thousands more follow the well-trodden path from mentally ill child to mentally ill adult and what a complete and utter travesty and waste that would be. During this Children’s Mental Health Week I’d ask those of you who have children or who work with them to read about mental illness in children, to look up the signs and symptoms that something is wrong and to find out what to do in those circumstances, so that you’re prepared! Mental illness was much less known about when I became ill and it was barely mentioned in relation to children so no one around me had any idea what to do but things could’ve been so different if they’d known how to help. You can be that change and you could help stop a mentally ill child from becoming a mentally ill adult.
I wrote this post for parents – 10 Ways to Help Your Mentally Ill Child; and this post about my experiences of being excluded from school – Excluded For Being Mentally Ill.
Earlier this year, I was sent a letter by my psychiatrist stating that it had been 2 years since our last contact and asking me to update him about how I’m doing and whether they can provide any help. I struggled with this. 2 years is a long time, especially when you hadn’t realised it had been that long and trying to put down in words how I’m doing, how I’ve changed in 24 months, has been really difficult and something that actually made me quite anxious. This might surprise many of you because I blog and vlog about it (albeit not very regularly) but those are done on my terms, they’re about topics that are important to me, at a time that suits me, when it feels right. And often, I take months or even years to hone posts and finally share them with the world. I had originally planned to write the letter the same week I had received his but somehow weeks went by and after writing two thirds of it I just drew a blank. Much as I’m always open and honest, I don’t think on a day-to-day basis about how I am. It’s a running joke with my Nana and close friends that I really have to think properly when they ask me how I am because I’m so used to either saying I’m fine or people not even asking. Seeing how I am in black and white, in polarised terms about improvement and deterioration isn’t easy and having to face the fact that I expected to be back at work and well by now, or at least well on my way there, has been really hard. I had no intention of showing this letter to anyone other than my psychiatrist, and Joe, who I got to proof read it and check it was accurate. It was Joe who suggested I should share it here. I’ve been quite reluctant and despite getting him to take it in to my psychiatrist a few days ago, I’ve just had the Word document sat open on my laptop, not quite ready to post and not quite ready to close it and file it away. It’s nearly 1am and for whatever reason, I’ve finally decided to bite the bullet, to listen and trust in Joe’s wisdom and share this here now. In some ways I think it makes me sound worse than I am but Joe thinks the opposite, that depending on what people focus on in my words, it may well give a less accurate picture and sound like I’m better than I am so hopefully you’ll read it just as it is, the good and the bad, without giving one more weight than the other. I often think that I’m so used to this now, so used to being ill, that I can no longer give an accurate picture, no longer compare to “normal”, or life before these conditions because the memory of that is so faded and distant. Hopefully it’ll give you a bit of a picture of how I am now though and another snapshot into my life.
Dear Psychiatrist,
Thank you for your recent letter. Sadly, there isn’t a lot to report in terms of progress or improvement. When I wrote to you 2 years ago, I fully expected to be well on my way to recovery by now but that hasn’t been the case. Having now been ill with these conditions for over 4 years, I’m starting to notice patterns of improvement and deterioration though I seem to have little to no control over these. Certain times of year are worse for me due to increased external demands and I struggle greatly when under pressure or when demands are placed on me. Having said that, I’m doing well at maintaining a mostly positive mood and keeping my depression at bay. I do my best to keep busy and keep my mind occupied with productive tasks so I get a sense of achievement and satisfaction. I do a lot of creative activities including baking, crochet and adult colouring. I am also doing what I can to help others suffering from mental illness and run two blogs and more recently a YouTube channel where I am constantly pushing my boundaries in order to create content to raise awareness, increase understanding and decrease stigma. I remain motivated and hopeful of recovery.
I am also a carer for my Grandad who has Alzheimer’s and go as regularly as I can to my grandparents’ house nearby to look after him. Despite them living in their house for my whole life and me visiting on a weekly basis, my anxiety about doing this has not lessened. For periods it seems to ease up and then comes back with a vengeance and I can identify no reasons for either the positive or negative changes. Currently, I’m feeling more capable and confident whilst at their house and am worrying for less time beforehand and it’s not as severe which is a welcome improvement. I don’t know why this has changed and sadly in the past this has always been temporary but I’m enjoying it while it lasts and trying to maintain and improve my abilities as much as possible whilst not getting my hopes up too high that this will last this time. My IBS has been exacerbated by the anxiety and fairly regularly leaves me unable to leave the flat even when I feel mentally capable of doing so. Last January, I bought a new camera and took up photography. This has been a great tool for helping me stay outside and remaining calm for longer because it provides a great focus and distraction and also requires concentration to get good shots. There are times when I can go out for hours taking photographs with Joe or my mum but it doesn’t get easier and has no consistency; almost every time feels like the first time when I’m trying to get out of my front door. I know the research says that practice makes perfect, that systematic desensitisation will work but that really isn’t my experience though I do still persevere and fight as hard as I can to do as much as possible as often as I can.
The focus of my anxiety seems to periodically shift with one aspect easing up while another gets worse so as soon as I seem to learn a strategy to reduce one lot of anxieties, another lot pops up. For the last year, I have struggled less with being outside in people-free areas thanks to doing photography but I’ve become increasingly anxious about health, getting ill and getting food poisoning. My eating habits have changed, I’m much more cautious about what I eat and have a huge fear of being around anyone exhibiting any symptoms of illness, even a cold. It’s exhausting trying to keep up with the constant changes and having to explain these to others while not even understanding them myself.
In terms of help, if there’s anything I can be offered either in my home or remotely then I’d really like to know. I stopped the therapy I was having via Skype over 18 months ago as it really wasn’t helping and I was making no progress so I’m now dealing with this pretty much alone apart from the support from a dwindling number of relatives and friends. I’m doing a very good job of getting through each day, albeit with a huge amount of difficulty and discomfort but I’m not improving, just changing and trying to adapt to each change. My Support Worker still visits occasionally and I really appreciate those visits and very much look forward to them, I really hope they can continue. Although I’m not improving, having a professional to talk to and check in with and also have a link back into psychiatric services when I’m well enough again to attend appointments is really important to me. If you have any suggestions of things I could be doing to help myself improve then I would appreciate them, I am nowhere near well enough to attend group therapy or any kind of appointments, as I mentioned before, I still struggle every time to visit my grandparents at set times and any kind of deadline or time pressure causes me overwhelming anxiety and increased IBS symptoms and attacks, but if there are any self-help tips or resources I should be made aware of then I would really like to know.
Just to make you aware, my GP has now left my surgery and I don’t know who I’m under the care of now, I’ve not met any of the doctors currently practising there. I do not want to be discharged back to their care and wish to remain under yours so that I don’t have to go through the lengthy waiting list process again when I’m eventually well enough to attend appointments and engage with services. I know you’ve not suggested discharging me, I just wanted to make it very clear that my wishes are to remain within your services.
Kind regards,
Lucy
Living with an invisible illness is like living in an invisible prison. No one can see the bars, the shackles, the chains and so they forget. They see you do the “normal” things that you’re capable of doing and then wonder why you can’t do the rest. Why you don’t do the rest. They think you choose not to do those things or that you’re not putting in enough effort. That if only you would try a bit harder then you’d realise you can do all of those normal things that are so natural for the healthy world to do. They don’t see the prison walls around you, the confines in which you live. They have no idea of the price you must pay or the pain you must go through to function. They try to cheer you up with encouragement and positive comments but these often just isolate you further as you realise just how little people understand about your imprisonment. They know little of the torture you endure as you battle your body, your mind, just to complete simple tasks that they don’t even think about. There’s so little comprehension of the hours spent worrying, planning, trying to appear as normal as possible – to function as best you can. You experience judgement, accusation, disbelief. You’re challenged, questioned, pushed, even interrogated and threatened. Then their frustration starts and turns into nasty comments and digs. You’re told you’re not trying hard enough, you don’t want it enough, you don’t put in enough effort, you’re too negative. You hear helpful suggestions like “think positive”, “smile more” and “if you believe you can do it then you will”. I grew up hearing this from all angles for year upon year and it caused me so much pain. Almost more pain than the condition I was trying to live with every day (ME). I couldn’t understand why people didn’t believe me, why they couldn’t see from my pasty complexion and dark circles under my eyes that I wasn’t well and that I needed to be listened to and understood, not pushed and made to “see sense”. These comments from so many sources have now caused me untold damage. From what my psychiatrist and numerous therapists over the years have told me, I now have secondary mental health conditions because I absorbed all of those comments – all of the misunderstanding and disbelief and turned it in on myself. I couldn’t comprehend how people that knew me so well could possibly think those things of me and be so wrong. The more people said it to me, the more I started questioning if I was mad, if they were right and I was making it up, enjoying it and seeking attention. Deep down, I knew I wasn’t, but when you’re 11 years old and countless adults and children around you are all accusing you of the same thing, you really start to believe it and question yourself.
Having illnesses that are invisible means that I’m entirely reliant on trust. You have to trust that I’m telling you the truth about my condition and I have to trust that you believe me. I can’t show you the exhaustion from the ME, the muscle pain, the headaches, the constant nausea. I can’t show you the difficulty I experience in dragging myself out of bed every day, when my depression constantly tells me there’s no point and that I’m worthless and useless and might as well be dead. I can’t show you the intestinal spasms that my IBS causes that make me wince and even double up in pain. You might think I’m being dramatic when my face contorts mid-conversation in response to the intense pain of what can only be described as feeling like my guts are wringing themselves out. But I’m not. I’m simply unable to hold up the “healthy” façade when there’s that much pain inside me.
Anxiety is invisible, it takes over like a parasite. It robs you of rationality and replaces it with constant worrying about ridiculous things that you know would never happen and yet still you can’t stop the obsessing going on in your head. Anxiety makes you fear everything. Things that were always fine and easy to do, suddenly become scary No one else can see or hear the terrifying voices in your head. They can’t hear the constant worrying, the constant stream of thoughts that you can’t do it and you can’t cope. They can’t see the effort you put in all day every day, just to get through 24 hours without a panic attack. Getting out of bed each day is a battle because in bed you’re safe, you can’t fail, you can’t let anyone down. But you also can’t achieve. You can’t succeed. You can’t thrive. You can’t effectively live. So you drag yourself out of bed and face the day and all of its challenges. You keep on top of your racing thoughts as much as you can and you force yourself to be productive and do things you need to do. But one small glitch, one badly worded email, one rejection for a review, one slight perceived criticism and the walls come crumbling down and you’re left trying to pick up the pieces. Again. You build yourself back up again, you plaster back together your already shattered self-esteem, you try to ignore it and not make it mean anything about you. You try to move on, to not mind, to not let it matter. You try to distract yourself knowing full well that most of the time when this happens, the whole day is ruined because you simply don’t have the energy that’s been sapped from holding it together all that time, to be able to stick yourself back together again. So you just count down the hours until you can go to bed and hope that will give you some respite and that tonight you won’t be plagued with nightmares or panic attacks and that tomorrow will be a better day. This fragility means you’re constantly at the mercy of anything negative that manages to seep its way into your life. When you have an anxiety disorder your resilience is almost non-existent. Things that you’d normally take in your stride, suddenly floor you. You get phased by everything. A simple request (when you’re well) becomes an unbelievably mammoth task that requires hours of questioning, wondering, planning and worrying. These are not things we choose to do, they’re the things that our anxious brain decides we must do, especially at night when we’re desperately trying to sleep.
I know I’m strong, I know I don’t feel it but experience tells me that I am, but that doesn’t make it any easier to get through the battles I fight every day to have even the slightest bit of normality. I don’t know how to “snap out of this”, if I did, I would have, a LONG time ago. But instead I have to muddle through each day trying to work out what works and what doesn’t, trying to deal with the fact that fluctuating conditions mean that my ability to do things changes on a daily, if not hourly, basis and just trying to keep up with that is exhausting. So many people seem to assume that once I’ve done something once, it’s easier, but the truth is that it’s not. I know that’s hard to hear, I know it isn’t convenient but it truthfully isn’t easier after the first time of doing something, often not even after the 5th or sometimes 10th. Just because I did something yesterday doesn’t mean that I can do it today. I may still be suffering from doing it yesterday or I may simply not be in a place mentally to do it again. Please realise, it’s not simply a case of putting my shoes on and walking out the door when I want to go out – the demons in my head fight back with a vengeance and more often than not they win.
Living with an illness that isn’t visible is a blessing and a curse. You can’t see I’m ill, or see that I’m suffering. I can hide it, act, pretend to be well. I can cover it up and look “normal” as if nothing is going on inside. But it means you can forget – you don’t realise I’m fighting, can’t see what my needs are and don’t notice when I deteriorate. You don’t see what I’m dealing with which makes this battle incredibly lonely and isolating. So next time you see me, or anyone else with an invisible illness, please realise that almost all of our energy is spent in an invisible battle and that despite what you might see or believe, we’re Fighting An Invisible Fight.
Yesterday, my boyfriend and I went to see my new psychiatrist after not being seen by one since September because mine left and I never got put onto anyone else’s books. We were told we were attending to finally discuss diagnosis and I went hoping that would happen and I’d finally get a straight answer about treatment. Luckily, this psychiatrist is very thorough and seems to actually care. I met him once when I was 18 and liked him then as he was honest enough to tell me that because I’ve tried the main effective medications for my conditions with very negative effects to my health, I have medication-resistant depression and there was little to no point in trying those types of meds again in the future (sadly this information didn’t get back to my GP so when I originally became anxious I had to try taking these types of meds again before she’d try me on any new groups). The appointment was incredibly challenging. As usual, we were seen late and it turned out that slot had been triple-booked (I despair at the organisational skills of these places sometimes). I spent the entire assessment on the edge of a panic attack and cried twice because it was so overwhelming despite having taken diazepam in order to even get out of my flat to attend. I managed to get my points across though and have a tentative set of diagnoses that will be confirmed by letter within a fortnight. As a psychology graduate, I already had a fair idea that I’d be diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder as I fit all of the diagnostic criteria and have just about every symptom listed in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual – used for diagnosing psychiatric conditions). What I wasn’t expecting was to be diagnosed with Social Anxiety and Panic as well. I always thought Social Anxiety was extreme shyness and an inability to be around people or to socialise. It turns out, it’s not that simple and that actually I fit very neatly into that box thanks to my fear of judgement from others and excessive worry about failing to meet others’ expectations or letting them down in some way (more posts in the future about this I’m sure).
I also got a big shock when personality disorders were mentioned. I have, at times, wondered if I had a personality disorder because many people with as many stress-related conditions as I’m racking up do have one. I’ve looked at the diagnostic criteria and got friends from my degree course to look as well and none of us think I fit the criteria so I really started to panic when the psychiatrist started to mention it because sadly, a diagnosis of a personality disorder leads to a great deal of stigmatisation, particularly within the medical community. Having worked with 10’s if not 100’s of patients with them, I’ve heard countless stories from them saying their doctors simply don’t believe them when they state that their conditions have worsened, they put all symptoms down to the personality disorder instead of looking at whether they have a second, third, or fourth diagnosis that needs to be made and they’re often labelled as manipulative hypochondriacs. Luckily, my psychiatrist agreed that these diagnoses of personality disorders are often very unhelpful and that in my case this would be true and I don’t fit into the criteria to be diagnosed with one because essentially I’m not severe enough. I was very relieved about this. He said, instead, that I can be described as having Adult Sequelae (seemingly not a diagnosis but a description hence the half in the title of this post). I’ve never heard of this at work or at Uni and when googling it, there is very little information, particularly for lay-people, just journal articles investigating links into drug addiction and alcohol abuse. However, how the psychiatrist explained it and what I’ve gleaned from the few studies that described it, is that issues from a difficult childhood or a pre-existing condition cause a second (or more) condition to develop as a result of the first. Because I had issues growing up, my ability to deal with stress has not developed and has left me very vulnerable to any future stress or adversity. I then develop physical or psychological conditions because of this lack of ability to cope and when I then learn to manage each condition but still not the underlying stress, I then develop a new symptom or condition each time I’m under severe stress or pressure again. It’s essentially like turning on a garden hose that has a hole in it. The water is the stress and the hole is a symptom/condition. I keep patching up the holes but then the hose bursts somewhere else (a new symptom/condition). I never manage to learn to turn off the water or re-route it somewhere else so I spend my life patching up the holes and learning to manage new symptoms and conditions without ever learning how to deal with stress or the issues from my childhood. This isn’t as severe as a personality disorder because seemingly, all of the other aspects of my personality are fully developed but my ability to deal with the negative events of my childhood and negative events that happen in my life today is still not formed. The psychiatrist has explained that I need to deal with the current issues of the anxiety disorders so I can get back to functioning and then work on learning how to deal with stress generally and combat the problems I’ve had since childhood. This means I’m going to be having a lot more therapy over the next few years and he did point out that while there is no reason to suggest I won’t improve, recovery is a much harder battle and one I’ve not yet won with any of my conditions as all those I’ve been diagnosed with still affect me to varying degrees despite my management of them.
Leading on from all of that, I’ve also finally had my treatment plan outlined! I’m to be allocated a support worker who will visit me at home and work on practical things to get me going out more. If/when that improves I will then be enrolled onto a group CBT programme at the local day hospital which I will attend with the support worker. After that, I may well be enrolled to attend the local recovery college where I will be taught about the conditions I have, how they work and what can be done to manage them. I’m not sure how much use that part will be given that I already have a psychology degree where I extensively studied these conditions and have not only worked for a total of 11 months with patients with these conditions but have also heavily researched them since becoming unwell myself but if I get well enough to attend then I’m certainly willing to give it a go to see what it’s all about and whether there’s anything new and useful I can pick up. After all of that, my level of functioning is meant to be a lot higher and I will then be assessed by a psychotherapist who will advise me about what long-term therapy I need to have and I’ll hopefully be referred to a highly skilled therapist from there for treatment which is likely to need to last 12-18 months.
So, I now have three and a half shiny new diagnoses and I’m still in shock about it all. I was so worried that I was going to be fobbed off again without knowing what’s wrong with me and what’s caused my life to turn upside down for the last 15 months. I’m pleased I now know officially what’s wrong with me, that I’m being offered treatment and now have a plan of what’s going to be offered and what we’re trying to tackle first, but naturally, now the worry is setting in about the pressure I’m likely to be under to improve, to constantly be getting better without being able to get used to any slight increases in functioning (there will be a lot of these in between being virtually housebound now and having a normal life where I can work and socialise). I’m worried about how I’m going to cope with a support worker when that’s the job role I was in when I became too ill to work, whether I’m going to get on with them, whether my treatment will be done at my pace or a pace set for me that I don’t get to have input into and a whole heap of other worries. The nature of Generalised Anxiety Disorder is that you worry about everything, particularly the unknown, so this is all very scary. I now have some labels that roughly describe what’s wrong with me and what I’m going through but I currently have no idea how long it may take to improve my functioning or even if the treatment plan will help. It sounds like the psychiatrist expects it to help but then he kept saying “if” so I don’t actually know what the likelihood is or what time-scale we’re looking at. I’m trying to just stay calm and take each step as it comes but such is the nature of the beast that I’m fighting that this is nigh on impossible for me to do and I’m already worrying about what if all of that doesn’t work and I’m left housebound still with another treatment option crossed off the list as not having worked. I’ll certainly be giving it my best shot and anyone that knows me offline will know how motivated and determined I am when I set my mind to something but the worries are still ever present. At least I know what conditions it is I’m fighting and have an action plan to try. Beyond that I’m just having to hope, and wait and see! Updates will follow as and when there are any. I’m still shocked and stunned that I’ve waited 15 months for one diagnosis and then three and a half came all at once.
Today I’m feeling anxious, I have been feeling increasingly so for the last couple of weeks because tomorrow I have an assessment with a psychologist. I was originally meant to have the assessment in December but wasn’t well enough to attend and moved it to the end of January hoping that I’d have improved by then. Sadly, it got cancelled with 3 days’ notice by the psychologist because she was striking that day. It got postponed again until after I’d finished withdrawing from my medication and hopefully improved. It’s now tomorrow. In some ways I have improved – I cope better when I have to travel in cars, I can go to the shops a little more often and stay out a little bit longer before the panic sets in, occasionally I even go out and don’t feel panicky at all. However, I feel incredibly anxious about tomorrow.
I’ve been fighting for this assessment since September and was originally deemed “unsuitable” but was never told why. I fought and explained why I should be assessed for therapy and stated that as medication clearly doesn’t work, psychological therapy was my only hope other than spontaneous recovery which we can hardly rely on happening. Eventually my psychiatrist gave in, seemingly because he could no longer justify saying no and I was sent an appointment.
They keep refusing to do my assessments by phone even though I’ve already missed one face-to-face appointment because I got so anxious that I couldn’t move and they keep telling me to “just try” and “keep pushing yourself”. I push myself every day. I have almost no support from the health services now and was really unwell for months due to withdrawal from my medication which wasn’t monitored because I still don’t have a new psychiatrist. I’ve now not been seen by a doctor since the 3rd of September and am still yet to be allocated one – it’s been 7 months.
When you’re suspected of being diabetic doctors don’t just make you eat sugar in front of them and then pump you full of insulin when it’s clear that your body isn’t processing it and is rapidly killing itself. Why then must I keep “pushing myself” to go to appointments so that they can see “just how anxious I am”. Why am I essentially being tested? Most of what I say and do currently seems to be skewed by doctors and psychologists who just use it in whatever way they like to back up their own point. I’ve attended 3 appointments so I was well enough to get to those, why not the latest appointment? I explain that I’m so anxious about these appointments that I stop being able to sleep for a week beforehand and my IBS flares up. These appointments are making me more ill but I’m expected to attend them in order to get treatment. I have to go to assessment after assessment with healthcare professionals with different job roles and titles and so far all I’ve been offered is Group CBT sessions. I regularly go weeks at a time without being able to set foot outside my front door so how is it feasible to expect me to do this? Asking me to “just go outside” is like asking someone with a broken leg to walk on it with no plaster cast. They can want it as much as they like but as soon as they try to put weight on it the pain will be unimaginable and their leg will buckle potentially causing more damage. Wanting your bones to fuse together doesn’t mean that it happens and it’s exactly the same with my anxiety. I hope, wish and even pray every day that I will be able to go out and do all of the normal things that I took for granted but that doesn’t make me any more able to do them than walking on a broken leg.
Patients having a lump investigated are told what the possible outcomes and diagnoses may be and in time are told what treatments may be available to them. They are given a diagnosis as quickly as possible and then told about treatments, prognosis and available support. They are not kept in the dark about these things and are allowed to make decisions about what they feel would help them best and how they want to proceed. I’m afforded none of these luxuries as a mental health patient. Over a year in I’m still yet to be diagnosed, I’m still having to go to assessments and have still not received any psychological treatment. I’ve taken myself off the medication that was making me worse because I have no doctor to discuss it with or to advise my withdrawal so I did it alone. I have been in and out of the mental health system since I was 16, I have a psychology degree and until a year ago I worked in a psychiatric inpatient unit. I know my stuff when it comes to what therapies are available and whether or not they’re likely to help me. I’ve had so much CBT that I could almost certainly deliver low-level therapy with no need for further qualifications and while it’s a great therapy, it hasn’t worked for me and there’s no reason to think that would be any different for this anxiety disorder.
In 2011 I received Cognitive Analytic Therapy which really helped me at the time and is the therapy that I believe in most to be able to treat my current difficulties. I have been asking my psychiatrist since September to refer me for CAT and have been categorically told that it IS offered by my local NHS Trust and within my area so I fought for it for 5 months. I’ve asked more than one health professional on numerous occasions whether it’s offered here and whether the therapy assessments I’m going to are assessing me for CAT or just CBT and have always been told that they are. That was until January when I phoned the day hospital and the person I spoke to immediately said that the Trust DO NOT offer CAT. I was shocked at this and nearly burst into tears. I told her that both my psychiatrist and psychologist had assured me that it was and that I was being assessed for it so she said she’d check. The psychologist then called and finally admitted that CAT is offered by the Trust but that there are no NHS funded therapists in our area and due to my condition preventing me from travelling, I would not be being assessed for it.
I’m now in a very difficult position where I’ve been lied to by the very people that I’m meant to trust. I have to open up to these people about my deepest darkest fears and tell them about all aspects of my personal life. I’m meant to trust in them to tell me the truth and to work for my best interests and to advocate for me when discussing my treatment in meetings. But they’ve lied. They’ve lied over and over again, when I’ve asked them direct questions about whether or not I’m being assessed for this therapy. It feels like I’m being conned. How am I meant to persuade myself to go to an assessment that I’m terrified of attending when it looks increasingly likely that I’m just going to be offered Group CBT or sent back to my GP. I keep asking what provisions there are for people who are housebound and I’m still yet to get an answer. I have explicitly stated that I do not want to be discharged back to my GP, the same GP who put me on medication that I should never have been given in the first place due to previous bad reactions to it and who told me to “just stick with it” and more worryingly to “try harder” and “think more positively” while I deteriorated thanks to the horrendous side effects. If I can’t attend tomorrow though I may well be discharged back to their “care” meaning I won’t get any treatment.
I know that I’m one of the unlucky ones for whom medication is not the answer, or even part of the answer. I know that I’m a nightmare patient because my conditions are treatment-resistant and complex but I wish they’d been straight with me and not lied. If CAT isn’t offered in my area and I’m not well enough to travel out of area for it then that’s fine. I don’t like it but it’s not unreasonable and I understand that particularly in this economic climate there are limitations on healthcare provision. I’ve directly asked over and over again and been assured that I was being assessed for it. I’m left wondering what would have happened if I’d been well enough to attend the original assessment? Would I have been told I was “unsuitable” for CAT despite being suitable for it when I was assessed in 2011 by a different NHS Trust? Would they have just tried to palm me off with Group CBT and then said that I was “refusing treatment” when I declined due to not being well enough to attend? Would they have ‘fessed up and said that actually they’d got me there under false pretences and that CAT isn’t offered? I’ll never know.
I am not alone in being treated in a sneaky, underhanded way. Countless patients with mental health problems are treated like this every day. It simply wouldn’t be allowed if I had a physical condition. I wouldn’t get put on medication without a diagnosis. I wouldn’t have to prove myself, my tests results would speak for themselves. You may be thinking that you can’t test for mental illness and biologically that’s currently true. I can’t have a blood test and be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder but there are countless psychometric tests that measure anxiety levels, depression scores and every other psychological condition under the sun and my score on the anxiety tests is through the roof. There is no mistaking or denying that I’m severely affected and that my quality of life is hugely diminished by this condition and the test results show that. And yet, I’m still expected to prove it by attending the appointments and for some reason, unknown to me, not being able to attend an appointment because I’m so anxious that I’m not able to move, doesn’t prove that I’m even more ill than they thought and therefore in need of urgent treatment. No, my inability to attend appointments just seems to elicit threats of being discharged back to my GP and receiving comments about not trying hard enough or putting in enough effort. This would be a disgrace if I were physically ill but it’s widely accepted when mentally ill – You Should be Outraged!
N.B I’ll post soon about whether I manage to attend tomorrow and what the outcome is.
I’ve adapted and added to this letter which I originally gave to my psychiatrist at the end of October. It’s now more up to date, strongly worded and passionate than the original and thus more in keeping with my thoughts and feelings about my treatment and care.
Dear Psychiatrist,
I would like to clarify a few things. I had marginally improved before our last appointment but not even enough to be able to leave my home more than once a week. I have not improved at all since then. At no point during this period of illness have I improved enough to even consider a month to go back to work let alone implying (as you stated in our last phone call) I’d thought of a start date to return to my position as a Healthcare Assistant on an acute psychiatric ward. When I recover enough to consider working, I will only do so part-time and I will be looking for less stressful positions in retail or offices until I get back to functioning fully. Given that it is still a major struggle for me to leave my home to attend appointments, I don’t think that returning to work will even be a consideration for a number of months.
In future, if I am deemed unsuitable for services that I have been told I will be referred to I would like to be informed of this immediately rather than waiting until the next appointment which could be some weeks or even months away. If treating me is an issue because I am an employee of the NHS Trust then I would like this to be discussed with me. I deserve to have all of the treatment options that any other patient would be offered and if these may cause problems for my future employment then I would like to discuss this rather than not even being informed and having critical decisions about my treatment made without me even knowing.
I would like to be treated with some urgency rather than taking little steps and seeing what happens. As you will have read in my notes and I have said in our appointments, medication does not work well for me. The Pregabalin is reducing some of the intense panic that I often experience and I feel calmer at home but I’m still not able to leave the flat when I would like and am feeling increasingly trapped by this. I am also suffering a huge number of side effects that do not wear off after each dose increase and this is also majorly impacting upon my functioning. I am trying privately funded psychotherapy however, this does not waive my right to therapy on the NHS which I requested in September. 8.5 months is a very long time to be feeling this unwell and money worries due to my inability to work are becoming increasingly severe. I am no longer able to “live life to the full” I’m merely surviving and getting through each day in the hope that I will get better. However, this hope is fast running out as medication options seem to have been exhausted and the only therapy I’ve been offered is group CBT which I can’t possibly attend. I’ve been told by every psychiatrist and psychologist that I’ve seen that I’m not a “typical” patient so surely I need to be given different treatment from typical patients.
Angry doesn’t even cover how I’m currently feeling. I hardly even know how to express what’s going through my mind. I feel so let down and hurt and knowing that the service that’s meant to help me no longer seems to think that’s possible, is very difficult to handle. I keep trying to hold on, to keep hoping and believing that I’ll get better but that’s fast running out. I want to make it very clear that how my life is at the moment is not ok and I’m doing everything in my power to get well but it’s not working. I have little to look forward to and am lonely and unhappy which along with not being able to do all the normal things I was used to is exacerbating my depression which I would like to remind you is not treatable with medication and so I have to take a huge amount of care to keep it under control. I really need proper therapy that will deal with the issues underlying my depression and now anxiety. I am very aware of what a lot of these issues are but I need a trained therapist to teach me how to deal with them because working through them on my own has proved unsuccessful.
I’ve worked in mental health and I know all too well about the pressures staff are under and the effect that governmental cuts are having. However, I’m ill and I deserve treatment, not to be fobbed off with appointments being eked out by spacing them further and further apart and assessments being delayed because I’m deemed “unsuitable” with no explanation of how or why I’ve been given that label. Why do I never get consulted, informed or even explained to about the decisions that are being made about my care? Why is it not discussed with me? Why do so many meetings get held about me where a group of strangers make crucial decisions about my care having never met me, based on the opinions of one man who seems incapable of advocating my best interests? Why do I not feel listened to or heard but rather pacified, silenced and ignored?
I truly hope that this letter will get across to you the severity of my condition and its effect on my life and that following this I’ll be consulted more about my care and offered suitable treatment so that I can finally get my life back and go back to helping others like me. I’ve wanted to work in Mental Healthcare for the last 7 years and desperately want to make a difference but at the moment I can barely leave the house so how can I do that? Please give me the treatment I need so that I can become a success story and not another in a long line of people let down or denied treatment by the NHS. You can help change my life.
From Lucy.
In The Midst Of Madness 