world mental health day
Today is world mental health day, 1 in 4 people will have a mental illness at any time, but what happens when the 1 in 4 people is the nurse looking after you? I never saw myself as one of the 1 in 4 people, I’m not people I’m a nurse… I look after people I’m not one of them. In 2007 I became one of the 1 in 4 people, I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression and had talking therapy, I met with a newly qualified MH nurse who was good at his job but missed the most important glaringly obvious thing. I didn’t have anxiety and depression and I wasn’t fixed after 20 appointments.
I carried on alone until the summer of 2014 when even I couldn’t deny that the 1 in 4 people had moved back in again. It took 6 months of conversations with a pain psychotherapist for me to go back to the doctor’s to ask for help, the reply was “you are just reacting to the environment you are in, you need to pull yourself together and get on with life, stop thinking about it”.
How??? How do you stop thinking about wanting to be dead? How do you stop thinking you are worthless, useless and that your husband and children will be better off without you? How do you stop being elated, high and feeling like you can conquer the world one minute, when the next minute you feel like you are an embarrassment, absolutely stupid and not worthy of being alive. How do you cope when these emotions change in seconds, not hours, days or weeks but in seconds and minutes, the fallout for your family and friends is mind boggling, they can’t figure you out, they tread on eggshells and then when they can’t cope anymore they blow out, shout, argue and hurt, they don’t know what to do for the best. One minute they are the Kings and Queens in your life the next they are the devil, evil, horrid. It’s bad enough to be the person swinging like that; I can’t imagine living with someone like that.
Eventually I made a huge decision and changed GP’s, this one listened, recognised I was a professional, acknowledged that I had done a lot of work before asking for help and started me on the most horrific journey I’ve ever travelled (even worse than the 4 hour journey to travel 3 miles on the A30) I met with a mental health nurse who acted as a point of contact nurse and whose job it was to decide if I was “ill” enough to meet the criteria for Community Mental Health Services, in 2 hours she managed to destroy my sense of self, I can say with a degree of certainty that she had the 2nd most negative impact on my mental health than anyone of the other professionals I’ve come into contact with over the past 8 years. According to her I was a dependent personality who had transference problems and was too reliant on my pain psychotherapy nurse for the parental approval I obviously didn’t get from my mother.
I was utterly devastated, I was one of the most independent people I knew, I worked hard, had a good job with a lot of responsibility, I helped people, I was a nurse I didn’t need one. I wasn’t dependent, I certainly didn’t need parental approval, and I didn’t know what transference was. The only thing I could think of was I needed to see my pain psychotherapist; I needed to know what she meant. Then I started thinking…… thinking is fatal especially when you are me. My thoughts started talking back… you are dependent, you see, the first thing you thought of was you need to see your therapist, why? Because you rely on him, you seek his opinion, you enjoy his company, YES you are everything she said…. Then I started looking for research into transference, attachment, dependency and by the time I finished I had decided that I definitely wasn’t fit to live, I was never going to get better, the problem was I didn’t know what I was trying to get better from.
A few weeks later I came up to the brick wall that is the diagnosis. It wasn’t anxiety or depression. It wasn’t something that is going to go away with a pill and a chat. I met with a psychologist who told me that I have borderline personality disorder on the back of complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
Remember when I said she had the 2nd worst impact on my mental health, well this guy still holds 1st place. There is currently a 2 year wait for treatment, so he told me to research the hell out of the condition, talk to people with it (there are lots of forums) and read a book with the unfortunate title of “borderline personality disorder for dummies”, while he was apologetic about the title I wasn’t bothered, I get that it’s part of a series, I didn’t mind buying ECG for dummies or other nursing texts… what I didn’t realise and I’m not sure he did either or I hope he didn’t, is how much damage this book can cause. (I won’t spoil your enjoyment of reading this book; but suffice to say Longfellow’s little girl poem makes an appearance as does a comparison to the worst people in the world). But the worst thing comes at the end when it tells your loved ones what to do to prepare for leaving you, what to do if you are friends with a BPD person, and what you should not do if you are the therapist of a BPD patient.
After reading this I was alone for the next few weeks, I spent a lot of time talking to the Samaritans, to MIND, to Saneline out of hours.. they kept me on the straight and narrow, I spent 2 weeks in pj’s to stop me going out of the house, I couldn’t drive the car that’s my escape route and I’d promised my husband that I wouldn’t try to kill myself this time. It didn’t stop me wanting to though. I couldn’t believe just how much power one book could have, and I’m an avid reader….
During this time I was making a transition from nursing to education, I couldn’t decide whether to disclose this on my application, or even at my interview, in the end I didn’t, not because I’m ashamed of having a mental illness but because of the stigma and other people’s assumptions about it. In fact one of the things that bothered me the most was the psychologists opinion when I asked if I needed to disclose it was if anyone asks tell them you have complex trauma, they are more likely to be sympathetic and understanding rather than the BPD which frightens people.
One of the things that bothers me the most about mental health awareness days is the constant singular focus on those who are disadvantaged by it, there is a lot of information about mental illness and specific groups and while I understand a lot of people have problems following diagnosis, there is little information for people who manage to live a fairly successful life, have a good marriage, and participate in society, it’s almost like you can’t be really ill if you fit into one of these categories, I feel I should apologise for being successful and that I shouldn’t be accessing services because I’m obviously not too bad if I can function at work… there are people who need the specialists more than I, but it’s because I have access to those specialists that I am still working and functioning at the level I do.
So while I’m glad that mental awareness days happen I wish they were inclusive to everyone with a mental illness that is not depression, anxiety and stress when it comes to work and mental health
I carried on alone until the summer of 2014 when even I couldn’t deny that the 1 in 4 people had moved back in again. It took 6 months of conversations with a pain psychotherapist for me to go back to the doctor’s to ask for help, the reply was “you are just reacting to the environment you are in, you need to pull yourself together and get on with life, stop thinking about it”.
How??? How do you stop thinking about wanting to be dead? How do you stop thinking you are worthless, useless and that your husband and children will be better off without you? How do you stop being elated, high and feeling like you can conquer the world one minute, when the next minute you feel like you are an embarrassment, absolutely stupid and not worthy of being alive. How do you cope when these emotions change in seconds, not hours, days or weeks but in seconds and minutes, the fallout for your family and friends is mind boggling, they can’t figure you out, they tread on eggshells and then when they can’t cope anymore they blow out, shout, argue and hurt, they don’t know what to do for the best. One minute they are the Kings and Queens in your life the next they are the devil, evil, horrid. It’s bad enough to be the person swinging like that; I can’t imagine living with someone like that.
Eventually I made a huge decision and changed GP’s, this one listened, recognised I was a professional, acknowledged that I had done a lot of work before asking for help and started me on the most horrific journey I’ve ever travelled (even worse than the 4 hour journey to travel 3 miles on the A30) I met with a mental health nurse who acted as a point of contact nurse and whose job it was to decide if I was “ill” enough to meet the criteria for Community Mental Health Services, in 2 hours she managed to destroy my sense of self, I can say with a degree of certainty that she had the 2nd most negative impact on my mental health than anyone of the other professionals I’ve come into contact with over the past 8 years. According to her I was a dependent personality who had transference problems and was too reliant on my pain psychotherapy nurse for the parental approval I obviously didn’t get from my mother.
I was utterly devastated, I was one of the most independent people I knew, I worked hard, had a good job with a lot of responsibility, I helped people, I was a nurse I didn’t need one. I wasn’t dependent, I certainly didn’t need parental approval, and I didn’t know what transference was. The only thing I could think of was I needed to see my pain psychotherapist; I needed to know what she meant. Then I started thinking…… thinking is fatal especially when you are me. My thoughts started talking back… you are dependent, you see, the first thing you thought of was you need to see your therapist, why? Because you rely on him, you seek his opinion, you enjoy his company, YES you are everything she said…. Then I started looking for research into transference, attachment, dependency and by the time I finished I had decided that I definitely wasn’t fit to live, I was never going to get better, the problem was I didn’t know what I was trying to get better from.
A few weeks later I came up to the brick wall that is the diagnosis. It wasn’t anxiety or depression. It wasn’t something that is going to go away with a pill and a chat. I met with a psychologist who told me that I have borderline personality disorder on the back of complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
Remember when I said she had the 2nd worst impact on my mental health, well this guy still holds 1st place. There is currently a 2 year wait for treatment, so he told me to research the hell out of the condition, talk to people with it (there are lots of forums) and read a book with the unfortunate title of “borderline personality disorder for dummies”, while he was apologetic about the title I wasn’t bothered, I get that it’s part of a series, I didn’t mind buying ECG for dummies or other nursing texts… what I didn’t realise and I’m not sure he did either or I hope he didn’t, is how much damage this book can cause. (I won’t spoil your enjoyment of reading this book; but suffice to say Longfellow’s little girl poem makes an appearance as does a comparison to the worst people in the world). But the worst thing comes at the end when it tells your loved ones what to do to prepare for leaving you, what to do if you are friends with a BPD person, and what you should not do if you are the therapist of a BPD patient.
After reading this I was alone for the next few weeks, I spent a lot of time talking to the Samaritans, to MIND, to Saneline out of hours.. they kept me on the straight and narrow, I spent 2 weeks in pj’s to stop me going out of the house, I couldn’t drive the car that’s my escape route and I’d promised my husband that I wouldn’t try to kill myself this time. It didn’t stop me wanting to though. I couldn’t believe just how much power one book could have, and I’m an avid reader….
During this time I was making a transition from nursing to education, I couldn’t decide whether to disclose this on my application, or even at my interview, in the end I didn’t, not because I’m ashamed of having a mental illness but because of the stigma and other people’s assumptions about it. In fact one of the things that bothered me the most was the psychologists opinion when I asked if I needed to disclose it was if anyone asks tell them you have complex trauma, they are more likely to be sympathetic and understanding rather than the BPD which frightens people.
One of the things that bothers me the most about mental health awareness days is the constant singular focus on those who are disadvantaged by it, there is a lot of information about mental illness and specific groups and while I understand a lot of people have problems following diagnosis, there is little information for people who manage to live a fairly successful life, have a good marriage, and participate in society, it’s almost like you can’t be really ill if you fit into one of these categories, I feel I should apologise for being successful and that I shouldn’t be accessing services because I’m obviously not too bad if I can function at work… there are people who need the specialists more than I, but it’s because I have access to those specialists that I am still working and functioning at the level I do.
So while I’m glad that mental awareness days happen I wish they were inclusive to everyone with a mental illness that is not depression, anxiety and stress when it comes to work and mental health