Dignity and Respect – Being Treated Like a Human Being (World Mental Health Day)

October the 10th was World Mental Health Day and this year’s theme was dignity. I originally thought this didn’t apply to my situation because I am, mostly, dignified whilst being ill and treated with dignity, or so I thought. I started this post by looking up the definition which I found to be as follows:
Dignity – The state or quality of being worthy of honour or respect.
As soon as I read that, I realised that I was wrong – while I may behave in a dignified manner, I’ve certainly not always been treated in a dignified way and have often not felt worthy of honour or respect because of the way I’ve been behaved towards.

Dignity is something that is often overlooked when treating people with mental health problems and we are often not given the respect we deserve. Sadly, this behaviour is often directed towards us by the very people who we have sought help from, who are trained to deal with our conditions and who we are reliant upon to offer or refer us for treatment. Is it any wonder then that it takes most people such a long time to even go to their GP when they suspect they may be mentally ill? Stigma is still rife within our society and while it is improving and openly stigmatic behaviour is starting to reduce, there is still a really long way to go and unfortunately, nowhere is this more necessary than within the medical community.

My experience of seeking treatment has been very varied and it’s often a very lengthy process. Even when I’ve gone to my GP about physical problems, I’m often disbelieved or it’s assumed that my symptoms are psychosomatic or even made up – all because I have a mental illness. I’m regularly talked down to, patronised and treated with condescension and this has very much put me off doctors and seeking help unless I really have to because I simply don’t have the energy to fight for someone, who should be understanding and sympathetic, to even believe me. Couple with this, the responses I’ve had from doctors when attempting to get a diagnosis or treatment for my mental illnesses and we’ve got one hell of a problem.

A month before I turned 16, circumstances in my life led to me feeling incredibly sad and low and unable to cope anymore, pretty much over night. Mental illness was not something that had featured in my life up until that point – none of my relatives or friends were ill to my knowledge and my only experience was that of over-hyped and dramatized portrayals in the media of violent offenders and people muttering to themselves and rocking whilst strapped into straight-jackets in padded cells. So when I started feeling low and it didn’t go away, I didn’t know what to do. I thought people would think I was silly and that I should just be able to cheer myself up because nothing terrible had happened, no one had died, I hadn’t been attacked, things were just going wrong at home. Eventually, after 2 months of never feeling better, I finally plucked up the courage to go to the doctors. I thought I was going to get sectioned or medicated but I didn’t know what else to do and the thoughts I was having were starting to scare me. I explained to my GP what was wrong and that this wasn’t normal for me. After 10 minutes she told me that it was “January Blues” and “every teenager in the country is feeling like this at the moment”. I said to her at the time that there would be a lot of suicides if that were the case but I was sent home and she did nothing. Two months later I went back, I’d started self-harming and was feeling suicidal every day, she took one look at me and referred me to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service because I was very ill and needed help. The first doctor I met there was great, he treated me like a person and was very respectful and understanding about how bad I was feeling and that something needed to be done about it. I wasn’t so lucky with any of the other staff I met there. I was allocated a nurse who I saw once a week who spoke to me like a child and contradicted me every time I said I was feeling worse. I was put on medication more than once and never monitored properly and then told off and admonished when I took myself off it because it was making me suicidal and I felt unsafe. I felt like a naughty child, not a 16-year-old who clearly knew their own mind and felt in danger.

Fast forward to 18 months ago and dignity was thrown out the window by my new GP who decided that telling me to “try harder” whilst dealing with crippling side effects from medications that were later described by a psychiatrist as “virtually poisoning you”, was the best way forward. I practically had to beg her to even refer me to a psychiatrist despite having a history of medication-resistant depression because she felt that I didn’t need one and she was doing a “perfectly good job of treating me herself”. Eventually she conceded and I was able to see a psychiatrist. This has been a good and bad experience. I’ve been lied to, fobbed off, ignored, disbelieved and dismissed. At points I’ve been spoken to like the knowledgeable, well-educated adult that I am who is well aware of the limitations of the NHS and who has studied, worked in and experienced as a patient, the mental health services in this country. But that has been rare. Instead of treating me with dignity and respect, most decisions about my treatment are made without me, often without my knowledge and my very character is often questioned when it’s assumed that my conditions simply can’t be as bad as I’m describing. I highly doubt cancer patients are treated like this when vomiting because of chemo or dealing with hair loss – are they told by doctors to just “try harder” or “stop focusing on the negative thoughts”? I think not! So why am I? Why am I dismissed and treated with so little respect?

It’s clear that many doctors have never been mentally ill, and they’re very lucky. But for those of us that are, it’s hard enough trying to deal with the conditions we have and the things that go hand-in-hand with that like low self-esteem and self-worth without having to deal with doctors judging us, accusing us of faking it, exaggerating, or causing it ourselves. It’s so hard to pluck up the courage to even go to the GP and admit that there’s a problem that you can no longer cope with or hide, without fearing how they might react to you. In an ideal world, we would all be treated as human beings, with dignity and respect, regardless of what symptoms or conditions we have. But currently, this isn’t the case. Something has got to change. Medical professionals, especially those that don’t work in frontline mental health services, are vastly ill-equipped and under-trained to deal with mental illness and instead of seeing people like me as people who are ill, they just seem to see us as walking labels. They still seem to have hugely stigmatic beliefs about us being in control of our conditions and able to just “snap out of it” or “pull ourselves together” and we’re treated accordingly, with disdain, coldness and even aggression sometimes.

First and foremost I’m a human being. After that, I’m many many things – I’m Lucy, I’m female, I’m 24 years old, I’m kind and caring, I’m creative, I’m a great friend. I’m also mentally ill but I’m not those conditions. I’m not anxiety, I’m not depression – I have those, but I’m not them. I am a human being and that entitles me to be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of what conditions I might have. The sooner I’m viewed as a person rather than a list of symptoms, the sooner I’ll be viewed as someone who is suffering and should be treated with dignity rather than a problem that needs to fixed or made to “see sense”. I might be mentally ill but I’m not mad, I don’t lie, I don’t make things up, I’m completely rational. If I say I’m ill, if I say I’m suffering then I’m not trying to gain another label or diagnosis for fun – I don’t get points for it, they certainly don’t convert to prizes. The only reason I seek diagnosis is in the vain hope that it might lead to treatment. Being spoken to in such a dismissive way has stopped me seeking help for most of my conditions and has had a major impact on my self-esteem because it makes me feel less of a person to have a doctor questioning me and treating me with so little respect.

Finally, while I’ve focused on the medical profession within this post, they are certainly not the only people that have not treated me with the dignity and respect I deserve. As you’ll have read in previous blog posts, I’ve been treated disrespectfully by a whole host of people throughout my time as an ill person and this has got to change. You can be that change. Next time you’re talking to someone who’s mentally ill, really listen to what they’re saying, don’t try to fix it, dismiss it, or make them see the positive – just listen. Then think about how you would want someone to respond if you’d just said all of that and were feeling that way. Chances are, you’d just want to be acknowledged, to be accepted and to feel heard. Most of all, you’d want to be treated with Dignity and Respect – you’d want to be Treated Like a Human Being. Be that change today!

N.B – A huge thanks goes to Steve “Squidoodle” Turner for his amazing Breast Cancer Awareness Ribbon Colouring Page which I coloured in green for Mental Health Awareness. If you’d like to get a copy to colour yourself, he’s generously offered it as a free download on his Facebook Page which can be found here. Enjoy and help raise awareness!

You Wait 15 months for One Diagnosis and then Three and a Half Come Along at Once.

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.

One Year On – One Year of Fear

This time 371 days ago I was interviewing for a job that I’d been trying to get for 9 months. It was a permanent role on the ward that I loved working on and meant that I would finally have job security, guaranteed hours, proper support and training.

370 days ago I was on top of the world after being offered the job. I was in work that day and the patients and staff were all thrilled for me and very excited that I was officially joining the team. I was filled with pride and excitement that I’d finally got to where I wanted to be and was one step closer to my dream career of Clinical Psychologist.

369 days ago and things weren’t as rosy. I felt strange all day. I was worrying a lot and felt a lot less confident in my ability to do my job and keep my patients safe. I started to doubt myself a lot and felt very insecure. In the evening I went out for a meal with my boyfriend to celebrate my new job and I deteriorated over the course of the meal. I couldn’t stop worrying and felt really on edge. I didn’t want to walk anywhere, even to the loo, because I felt like I was going to collapse and like everyone was watching me. On our journey home I was clinging to him and when a drunk sat opposite us on the train I could barely hold it together. I just couldn’t deal with it all. I burst into tears the minute we got through our front door and struggled to sleep that night because of all the worries going through my head.

The next day, 368 days ago, I got up for work and just felt paralysed by fear. I tried to work through it and make myself go in knowing that I’m obviously good at my job if I’d just been offered a permanent role but the fear took over and I had the first panic attack of what would soon be many and had to phone in sick.

Over the weekend I deteriorated further. I needed to do a food shop and simply couldn’t face doing it on the Saturday. I don’t remember the exact thought processes but I just felt unable to cope and unable to deal with that many people and pressures and how busy the supermarket would be. On Sunday I felt that if I didn’t go that day then I’d end up stuck indoors and frightened to leave. I don’t know why I thought that but it was a very strong feeling and I knew I had to try. It was awful, the train ride there despite only being 6 minutes felt like a lifetime and the shop was really busy. I got the bare minimum that we needed and more than once I almost abandoned my basket because I felt so anxious. The only thing that stopped me was the worry of what people would think if I just left it. I cried the whole way home and got stared at a lot by other passengers on the train who couldn’t understand why I was sobbing surrounded by shopping bags.

365 days ago I went to the doctors. It’s a 2 minute walk around the corner from where I live and I had to force myself to go because being outside was now terrifying. The noise, the brightness, the people. Everything was just overwhelming. I cried as soon as I started talking and was immediately prescribed medication and signed off sick for 2 weeks while I waited for the worst of the side effects to wear off and for the drugs to kick in. I haven’t returned to work since. The drugs didn’t work, the side effects never wore off. Neither did the following two medications.

I’ve been medication-free for just over a month and am still no closer to returning to work and my level of functioning has barely changed. I’m less physically ill now I’m finally drug-free but the anxiety is not shifting. I now realise that a huge amount of why I was feeling so bad was because of the side effects of the medications I was on rather than the condition itself. This has been very difficult to come to terms with – to know that for 11 of the last 12 months I’ve been made worse by the very thing that was supposed to be making me better. I still don’t have a diagnosis, I haven’t had a new psychiatrist allocated since mine left in October and I’m still not receiving any psychological therapy on the NHS. I’ve just been left to deal with this condition that has no name on my own.

Now my reality is that everyday mundane tasks are completely terrifying. I think back over things I’ve done in the past, things that were huge achievements like my degree, getting the job, moving into university miles away from home and it feels like a completely different person did those things. I think back to all of the small things I used to think nothing of doing like popping to the shops, going on the train to Brighton for the day, visiting my mum on the Isle of Wight, taking the bins out. Now, just thinking about those things makes me feel sick and tense. I can’t fathom how I was able to do them when I’m so frightened of everything now.

My existence is almost solely contained within the walls of my flat and my world has shrunk to be unimaginably small. The person I once was is (I hope) hiding, but it feels like she’s gone. All of the things I’ve done in the past, the small things right up to the huge things don’t seem to count towards my confidence because I can no longer associate with them because they no longer feel like something I did. I’m now the girl who’s scared of her own thoughts, who’s surrounded by wool and spends her days watching tv, crocheting and cleaning. I don’t even recognise the girl with the psychology degree who was going to change the world.

So here I am, one year on. One year and a week ago the world was my oyster and I felt excited about the future, my career, the lives I would try to help change. Now my world mostly consists of fear and distraction from fear. I’m not excited about the future, I’m fearful of it, I don’t know what my future will hold and it’s currently unknown whether I’ll get better, stay like this, or get worse. The biggest thing I have going for me though is that I’m determined, more determined than most and I fight, despite feeling weaker than I thought it possible to feel. I don’t give up and I carry on hoping. I try not to set time-limited goals because I fear failing and feeling even worse, so instead, I hope and I aim for things without setting a time limit. My hope is that my future will be normal, quite uneventful and that I’ll be able to recover, not relapse, and be able to help others because I truly believe that’s what I was put on this planet for. My aim is to get better and to stay well, to decrease stigma, to increase awareness and understanding of mental illness and most of all, to no longer be afraid to go outside and do normal things. Here’s hoping that one year on from now this will all just feel like a bad dream and I’ll be well, working and helping people, if that’s not doable then I just hope that I’ll be better than I am now and I’ll be able to look back and see the improvement. One whole year of fear has been exhausting and this has been one of the longest years of my life. I’m not sure I can face another year like this but at least I’m facing it medication-free and with a few really supportive people around me who cheer me on no matter how small the victory and cheer me up when the condition gets the better of me. Maybe this coming year can be One Year of a Little Less Fear!

A Day in the Life – 10th Feb

Just to give you all a bit of background about this post – The charity Rethink Mental Illness recently advertised for people in the UK with a mental illness to participate in a nationwide project that they are running called A Day in the Life. They have chosen 4 dates, 3 over the coming year, 1 in each season, for all of us who’ve signed up to blog up to 700 words about our day. We were asked to say what we did that day, what went well and went badly, and what helped our mental health and what made it worse, so here’s mine for the second day, the 10th of February. My first post for the 7th of November can be found here.

Today has been a day of two halves. I woke up exhausted after a night of very broken sleep but I was excited too because today a friend who I lived with at Uni and haven’t seen for 18 months was coming to visit. I spent the morning cleaning my flat and trying to get as much tidied up as possible – my anxiety causes me to worry a lot about what people think of me and where I live so I always make a big effort to make everything look nice before someone visits. My friend arrived and it was so lovely to see him. We spent hours talking, laughing and reminiscing about our time together at Uni and we did lots of baking as you can see in the photo above. We made some coffee cupcakes with coffee buttercream which were really delicious and some chocolate and pecan blondies which looked and smelled amazing but tasted unbelievably sweet and sickly. We had a great time making them though and it was a great distraction for me as I’m currently withdrawing from the medication I’ve been on for 6 months that’s not helped my anxiety and has just made me worse. The time flew by and before we knew it it was time for him to go home.

I felt very flat after he left. I always do when I’ve had visitors. It’s so exciting seeing people and having company and not being on my own. I don’t get visitors that often and due to being mostly housebound I’m pretty much reliant on people coming to me rather than being able to visit them myself. I’m always really busy before they arrive making sure that things are tidy and clean and that I’ve made an effort with how I look and I try to be as fun and as well as possible when they’re here because I worry that I’m bad company because I’m ill and don’t have exciting things to talk about or stories to tell. When they leave again it’s very quiet. I usually turn the tv on so that there’s some noise but it’s just me left with my thoughts and remembering all the things we’ve done during their visit. I really do love seeing people, I’m a huge extrovert and one of the hardest things about being housebound is the lack of contact I have with people and that means it’s always difficult when they leave again and I’m back to being alone.

Thanks to all the sugar I’d consumed by eating too many cakes and licking too many bowls of icing, I was well into a sugar low when he left so I curled up on the sofa and eventually ended up falling asleep. The withdrawal kicked in with full force by the evening and I was in a lot of pain and very disorientated and sedate. It took me until 9pm to go and make myself some dinner and I was wrapped up in so many jumpers because I was freezing cold. I don’t really remember the rest of the evening because my tummy hurt so much and I felt sick and confused. I tried to distract myself watching tv but I have no idea what I even watched because I was exhausted and poorly. Thinking through the time with my friend made me smile though and a couple of other friends are visiting later in the month which I’m really looking forward to. Their visits mean so much to me and keep me going even when I’m feeling really rough. My bed is calling me as I ache all over and really need a good night’s sleep!

Today, seeing a good friend and having lots of fun and being normal for a while really helped my mental health. Withdrawal is horrible and after 7 weeks and counting of it, I’m really ready for it to be over but nonetheless, today has been one of the best days I’ve had in a long time and it just shows the benefit of good friends, laughter and cake!

Medication Withdrawal

For a few months I’ve been considering coming off my medication (Pregabalin) because I’m experiencing so many side effects and few, if any, positive effects. I’ve given it a good go having been on it since the 21^st of June. I’ve increased to a level where I should definitely be feeling calmer and less anxious but I’m not and instead I’m experiencing a heap of physical side effects including, but not exhaustively: dizziness, sedation, nausea, agitation, inability to get to sleep, inability to stay asleep, visual hallucinations, slurring, poor concentration, poor memory, tiredness, disturbed vision, disorientation, weight gain, feeling drunk, increased appetite, anxiety and low mood.

After speaking to a pharmacist friend, my mum, boyfriend, and two best friends, I decided to come off the Pregabalin. Normally I would do this under the care and supervision of a doctor but this is not currently possible because: 1. My GP barely knows me and refused to put me on Pregabalin when I requested it; 2. I’ve not been seen by a psychiatrist since the 3^rd of September and haven’t had any contact with him since the 29^th of October; and 3. My psychiatrist has now left and I’m still yet to be allocated a new one. Consequently, I’m doctor-free and feel like I need to take matters into my own hands.

So, that brings us up to the 28^th of December when I decided enough was enough and I needed to bite the bullet and start reducing. I was on 225mg a day and I will reduce by 25mg per week as long as I don’t feel too horrendous. Today is day 10 and as of Sunday (4^th) I’m down to 175mg a day. I don’t feel horrendous but I’m certainly not feeling well. I feel sick for hours after my evening meal and am often close to vomiting, I’ve got terrible tummy ache and have had a constant headache for 5 days. I feel dizzy and am suffering from visual hallucinations in the form of objects moving and seeing insects/spiders running across the floor in my peripheral vision. I’m also now feeling more anxious, paranoid and on edge, particularly at night, which is preventing me from sleeping and when I do sleep I’m having weird dreams and nightmares. I get feverish throughout the day and often feel boiling or freezing or each half of my body will be doing different things. It’s not a lot of fun.

On top of all of that, I’m trying to keep myself busy and occupied but it’s proving increasingly challenging because my concentration and memory are really poor and I often struggle to plan or make decisions. Today was a good day and I was able to go to my grandparents’ and help them with some things. I really enjoyed it and was amazed at how well I coped with it all when yesterday I had to have help ordering a Tesco food delivery because I couldn’t work out what food we needed or concentrate for long enough to do the order on my own (I’ve since updated it at least 6 times with things I’d previously forgotten to order). I find it really hard to be this useless and unable to do so many tasks that I would have found so easy when well. I used to do all of our food shopping and meal planning and we never ran out of anything because I would always stock up. Now I need help with all of that and my boyfriend has to help me plan meals and write down what I’ll eat and remind me to defrost stuff because I just forget or can’t work out what to make. I’m not like this every day but I’m affected like this more than 50% of the time and it’s not the withdrawal that’s causing it, it seems to be the anxiety disorder itself because I’ve been like this now for months. I need so much help from people, so much guidance, advice and support. I don’t feel like me, not the real me. I have to have help with planning things, prioritising, organising my day, starting tasks, continuing tasks, working out how to tidy things, even what to wear some days. All of these things that I can’t do or need help with just make me feel useless and worthless. I can’t work but I should at least be able to be one amazing housewife with a spotless flat and wonderful home-cooked meals. As it stands, I don’t even know where to start with cleaning and most days I simply don’t have the energy thanks to the medication and now the withdrawal.

People wonder why mentally ill people don’t like taking medication or come off it as soon as they’re well despite knowing it’s the medication that’s keeping them that way but it’s almost always because of the side effects. Most mood stabilisers cause weight gain which is no good for your self-esteem or your physical health. Many anti-psychotics cause slurring, dribbling, slowing of movement and thoughts and other very noticeable side effects. Anti-depressants often make you feel worse before they make you better and even increase suicidal thoughts and tendencies. Is it any wonder that we’re so resistant to taking medication when the drugs that are meant to make us better often leave us with debilitating side effects?! When I first started to feel anxious and realised that I wasn’t coping I went to my GP and begged for drugs because I had no idea how to stay calm. I went on medication 3 days after I first phoned in sick at work and have been on medication for the last 9.5 months for all but 10 days since then. All three medications have made me really really unwell and never touched my anxiety. By March I will be drug-free and attempting to overcome this anxiety disorder on my own and on my own terms without having to deal with medication side effects. However, I no longer have the hope to hold onto that there is a drug out there that will help me and increase my functioning.  My psychiatrist was very clear that this would be the last drug he’d put me on and that if this didn’t work then I’d have to be medication-free. That’s the biggest reason I’ve stayed on it for so long because I just kept hoping that one day I’d wake up and it would be making me calmer. That day hasn’t come. I already have physical health problems that mean I often don’t feel “well” each day but these drugs have made me feel terrible and so the only way forward is to come off them.  The withdrawal is likely to get worse as my body craves the substance more with each week that I’m reducing it but I’m determined to be off it so that I can just battle the anxiety disorder rather than the list of physical side effects on top of it. I’ll keep you all posted on how it goes but suffice to say that medication withdrawal is a bitch!