Before lockdown i was weirdly in a okay place, i was going out more than usual, me and my family started to get on well again, i was eating healthy, i was having my driving lessons, i was taking my meds at the same time everyday, i was getting ready more often for the day ahead. I was actually doing okay in my recovery, even though I’m not 100% there i was doing better than I have in years, I can’t believe i actually started driving lessons and got half way through them. I think I would of been close to passing my test now, it’s okay though I’m keeping hope that I can carry them on when lockdown is over but that just leads me to what i want to speak about now..
I was doing well, driving lessons was like outside exposure for me in a way, which is something i haven’t been used to for a really long time, it pretty much was the biggest achievement i have made in years, which yeah makes me feel like an idiot because I know it’s not that big to some people, but it is to me. It’s hard to accomplish anything with going to work or education, because for years I have struggled with leaving the house. I can’t actually remember if I’ve spoken to you guys about this before but I have had problems with leaving the house for years, especially on my own & especially where i live. It started off with me as a teenager being to scared to go outside because of my trauma, but then eventually it just got worse and worse and I avoided as many people as I could. Where I live, it’s a really traumatic environment for me. There’s triggers everywhere and I haven’t felt comfortable living here in years, it makes me feel stupid when i talk about it. I don’t know why I just find it so hard to talk about, but I guess I’m trying my best right now. Over the years, my fears from my trauma just built up more and more to the point where I didn’t leave the house much, my social anxiety got completely out of hand & it was hard for me to even step outside the front door, but I felt more comfortable going out in a place I didn’t live which confused everyone around me. If I got the train to somewhere with a friend, I could go out there, I would still have social anxiety but I could enjoy my day without constant triggers around me. All this did was confuse people, people thought ‘if i can go to certain places, then i can go out at home’ and honestly i didn’t understand it myself at the time so I couldn’t explain why. All i knew was i was so fearful of going out where I lived, i was to scared to even step outside my front door, but if I went to somewhere I didn’t grow up it was a lot easier for me.
Over the past couple of years I’ve kind of just firgured it out more & do understand that aspect more of my life now. I am just constantly avoiding triggers here, which yeah maybe this is going to sound bad but I don’t think I should have to be around them. They put me through extreme amounts of stress, stress I can’t actually put into words & i don’t think i should have to just get used to them because I live here. My therapist tried to get me to go out more here, tried to get me back in education and work because she thought that was the answer, but again i wasn’t being listened to. When I started exposure therapy, she sent my support worker over one day when I wasn’t expecting a visit. Someone was knocking at the door and I didn’t answer. It wasn’t arranged & another thing with my social anxiety is it’s important for me, for things to be arranged and not be caught off guard because being caught off guard sends me into panic and often panic attacks because I couldn’t prepare for it. I guess if I prepare for it, I can control it more in a way. It’s like my therapist didn’t respect my boundaries in a way, she would put me in uncomfortable situations, which I don’t know is that what therapy is meant to be? But personally I don’t think therapy should be something that causes you more mental distress and trauma. My therapist rung me the next day, after arranging an unexpected visit with my support worker. I picked up the phone and straight away I could tell she was pissed off with me. Her whole attitude changed and you could hear the anger in her voice. She kept asking me why I didn’t answer the door to my support worker, i felt like an idiot, i felt humiliated and ashamed to be like this and she kind of just made me feel like I couldn’t be honest because of that so I lied to her and said I was in the shower and didn’t hear anyone knocking. She then laughed and said “how can you not hear anyone knocking, you don’t leave the house roxanne” she started to say other things like “i don’t think you are bothered about getting better” & she kept proceeding to make me feel humiliated by saying “you don’t go outside or leave the house”. I know it doesn’t sound that bad, but it was the way she was saying it, it was hurtful because I felt like she was mocking the fact i can’t go outside & tbh it was like that everytime i saw her, she would make me feel uncomfortable about my mental health problems and she made me feel like i was a loser and a waste of space. That’s genuinely how I felt and I can only put it into words how she made me feel, I can’t show anyone, I can’t explain it any better but the anger in her voice when I got that call has just made me feel like shit, even to this day. She never went over my trauma with me, she put me in uncomfortable situations even though i explained my boundaries to her. She treated our therapy sessions like a joke and wondered why I couldn’t co operate with her.
Anyway, I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here. But the point im trying to make is. I wasn’t ready to just jump into work & education and to just live a abled life, how could I just switch off years of trauma and years of finding my own way to deal with that trauma just because a therapist wanted me to. It doesn’t work like that, when you have so much going on inside your brain, when you have chronic mental illness you don’t just get over it because a therapist wants to throw you back into work and put you in uncomfortable situations, if anything all that does is put patients like me off because it makes me realise how much people don’t respect my boundaries and they don’t even want to try to understand.
Im not diagnosed with agoraphobia, so it’s a mystery to me what this actually is. maybe it’s a part of ptsd im really not sure, it’s confusing to say what it actually is when I don’t know, but I have never got the right treatment or help for it and because I’m to scared to go out a lot of the time people think I’m “not trying to get better” when that is so far from the truth. People want me to get better in their way, they have these ideas for me but they aren’t listening to my boundaries and they aren’t listening to how I cope. I haven’t met that many people in real life (especially MH professionals) who have respected my boundaries with recovery in that sense, even family members have tried to get me out to help to look for work and taken me out literally during a panic attack and think it’s going to make me better when they can see how much fear I have inside me. What they don’t realise is all it’s doing is making me worse, I need help with getting to the route of my issues, I need to be listened to and not just forced to do what they think is best, i need to go at my own pace because it always ends up with them being angry at me. I won’t do things that put me in mental distress because I’ve had enough of it and I don’t understand why people think forcing me into distressing situations is going to help me to get better.
The thing is, I’ve tried explaining to people what I think is best for me and they don’t want to hear it because they don’t care enough about my trauma, they just want me to work and be a functioning human and don’t realise I have years upon years of trauma and distress that I need to go through, it hurts to be treated like your whole mental state doesn’t matter & the only thing that matters to them is to just be like how they want you to be.
For the first time in years, driving lessons were my own choice. They were something I felt ready for and I did in my own time and it felt right. I finally felt like I had more control and I was being exposed to a small fraction of being functioning, but it was something i was comfortable with. It didn’t put me in mentally distressing situations, my driving instructor was amazing and actually listened to me and when I did panic she sat with me and told me it’s okay, when I made the smallest achievements of being able to just drive through town she would be so positively uplifting and she would say to me it’s a huge achievement not a small one and I genuinely believe that when you are ready to do something & you aren’t forced to do it, it will be a lot easier, you will feel a sense of security. For the first time in a long time, I have actually actually put my trust in someone because she took everything slowly and constantly reassured me we could go at the pace I needed. I wasn’t thrown into the deep end with unsafe situations & eventually, when we drove to new places where I lived. They were places that used to trigger me to the point I couldn’t breath, but before I knew it i was driving through them & the reason why I felt like I could get through that was because I trusted my driving instructor because she always respected my boundaries. She constantly reminded me that if at any point I feel uneasy we can take a step back or do whatever I’m comfortable with and that’s how you help someone living with mental illness. When you are patient with them, listen to them and don’t force them. I was getting more and more comfortable driving in different places where I lived, sure i was anxious and a few times felt panic but for the first time in a long time i was ready to battle it. I knew I could do it and each time it was becoming more and more easier.
It may of been slow and took a while for me to feel more comfortable but i was truly getting somewhere with my driving and i hope that i can go back to driving again when lockdown is over and everything has gone back to normal again. It’s hurtful to think that people trained in mental health never really knew how to help me properly, but my driving instructor who isn’t trained in mental health helped me more than a mental health professional ever has, it is hurtful but i am also grateful that I found someone for the first time in a long time who i could trust, it’s a relief for me and has given me hope again.
The first few weeks of lockdown I was doing okay, I felt in my recovery I was actually doing well for the first time in years but as the weeks go on I feel like I’m more and more anxious to go back to normal life again, i find myself becoming kind of avoidant again even with my family and it’s scary for me because I don’t want to get worse. I had come such a long way with my driving lessons and for me that was huge because it was like being exposed to the outdoors but at my own pace and I felt like i was able to manage that and that is huge progress for me, honestly it just sucks because lockdown came at a time where i was finally making progress but now the effects lockdown are having on me, it’s making my social anxiety worse again. I really want to carry on my lessons when all of this is over and touch wood that i will, but at the same time i am petrified because not seeing anyone is sending me back into a place where i don’t feel like i want to see anyone when this is over. My family try and get hold of me and ive started to become really distant, I feel guilty but I feel socially anxious even to talk to my own parents and now I keep having intrusive thoughts that im never going to see them again because i am to anxious to see anyone. I know it’s just a blip, but it’s hard not to feel so low, I feel so alone but in a way i guess I’m getting used to that and the thought of just seeing people again is sending me into a panic.
My sleeping routine is becoming so bad as the days go on, ive lost my motivation for a lot of things and I am becoming avoidant. The last couple of days I’ve been dissociating and felt like im kind of losing touch, i just feel disoconnected in a way and this really isn’t good for me. It’s like there’s two parts of my head, one telling me this is just a blip and everything will turn out okay and the other telling me im going to end up even worse and more ill than i used to be, but i know the bad thoughts are just intrusive and that’s what my mental health wants me to believe, so im trying my hardest to fight against that.
I know for everyone it’s so hard, but the stress of everything just seems to be getting worse each day, even the little things that probably just make me sound so ungrateful, but I don’t have a toaster, i don’t have a fridge freezer, i have a mini fridge in the kitchen, which if it wasn’t hard enough buying food the mini fridge makes it even harder because i can only fit like 6 things in there. The majority of the food from food shops, i have to buy for the cupboard which isn’t much choice to actually get anything healthy and my health is important to me more now than ever. When the food is put in the fridge, not everything that is meant to be kept in the fridge can actually fit in there, so we just end up leaving it on the side but it goes off within a few days so it doesn’t last. I just needed to vent that, because if we had a fridge freezer our food would last longer and life would atleast be made a little easier, i am grateful to have a roof over my head but it is hard not to be this stressed when you don’t have much money and everything just seems to be going wrong. There’s also mold in our bedroom which i think is making me more ill than i already am, thankfully the weather is warmer so it’s got better but it worries me breathing this in everyday and it’s stained the whole wall. I don’t have the money to just fix these things, I don’t even have the money to keep buying food that lasts for a couple of days let alone to buy a fridge freezer when they cost 100s of pounds.
I keep having nightmares to which is another thing to add to the mix of stress, thankfully it’s not at the top of my worries but they really don’t help. I just wish i was more mentally stable so I could deal with stress more, i thought at the start of lockdown because I was in a better place that i was going to be okay but im just getting worse & worse each day and it’s scary for me. It’s like something I can’t even explain because i don’t know what’s causing me to get worse, but i think it is just everything at once and I am struggling to find a way to cope.
TW SELF HARM & SUICIDAL THOUGHTS
Life is really getting on top of me & i know lockdown is hard for everyone, i know this is effecting everyone’s lives so badly but I guess i just never expected it to get this bad. It’s like everyday things get worse or there is a new problem and if im completely honest i have been so close to self harming again, i haven’t given into it yet & i am praying that i don’t because i have come so far but i keep thinking of it everyday and i keep planning ways in my head on how i could just end this. when i feel ill with my physical health, i secretly hope that it will just get it done and over with and kill me. I feel like im heading back down that dark road again and it’s really distressing for me because ive been in recovery and relapse so many times in my life, when is it just going to end? I know I was bad before lockdown, but things in my life weren’t as dark as they are now, my life had hope in it again and it had light in it and now with each day that goes by all i see is the dark & im not sure what is causing this. i know it’s everything that’s happening, i know it’s because im not seeing anyone, im not having any distractions or any sense of routine but why can’t i just make a new routine which is temporary. i had one before all this happened so why can’t i do that again, im just sinking into a rut and it feels impossible to get out of it.
I tried to write a mental health diary the other day in my pusheen book, which i still haven’t started to fill yet but im going to & i hope this will help me in anyway possible. I started to draw each page that I wrote out to on my tablet to make them printable, so im going to print a lot of them off and fill them out each week & i guess this is a first step. If it can help me get into more of a routine again and to atleast distract me then i guess some good has come out of it. I’m not sure if anyone would be interested because there’s lots of sheets like this already in the world but if any of you have been feeling similar to me, or just need more of a distraction or sense of routine, when I’ve finished drawing them out on my tablet I will upload them to my social media so they are printable or I will print them for you online if you don’t have a printer so you can get them sent to you. Or if you would like to print them that’s totally fine! They are free I don’t want to charge anyone any money, but if you would like me to print them online to be sent to you, i hope it’s okay that I can’t afford to pay for printing but if you would like to pay for the printing you can. Of course you don’t have to do this, or might not even want to it’s just an idea and I hope you guys that do want some of these sheets have printers because I really don’t want any of you to pay for printing because it just doesn’t seem right because I just wanted to do this as something we could all do together, i don’t really know what my idea is i just really don’t want any of us to feel alone. If I have enough money at the time & you are struggling with money I will pay for the online prints so please please don’t worry about that. please let me know if you would still like some sheets even if you don’t have a printer, we will figure it out <3. I think the positive thing I can take away from this, is making these sheets is a good distraction & maybe it could be such an amazing distraction if we all done it together if anyone wanted to or just however you want to do it, we could totally share with eachother each week our achievements, what made us happy and I think in a way it would give us happier thoughts, i hope it would, but even if you wanted to just do it alone, that’s okay to!! even writing things down can be a huge task sometimes when we are struggling so there’s really no pressure just an idea i had <3.
If you would like some sheets please send me a DM on twitter or Instagram or get hold of me in anyway you can & i will do what i can to help.
I’m so sorry if this has been a long post of just me moaning and being negative, I know this is a really difficult time for everyone but today I just needed somewhere to vent where I could write out everything on my mind and honestly I’ve needed that for weeks but there is just never enough room to write all the things i need to say. It feels like I haven’t posted on here in forever, but right now compared to when I first started writing this post i actually do feel a little bit better & I think that’s because i got so much out that i was bottling up and I know that twitter is more of an interactive place than my blog but this time I just wanted to express myself fully, I didn’t really want to write a couple of short paragraphs because I feel like I can’t fully express myself, sure it helps but I have a lot to say so I think i am going to start using my blog more, I think it could help me. It’s kind of like therapy but just talking to yourself lol.
I think I will try and upload on here more, i don’t really know why i stopped. It’s nice to just get everything out & to whoever is reading this thank you so much for listening, im not sure how you got this far but if you did hey :D lol! but also i am sorry if ive seemed negative or ungrateful in this post, i don’t want to bring anyone down because no one deserves to be bought down even more. But I do hope that if you have been feeling similar, that you atleast feel even a little bit less alone, because this is so hard as it is and no one deserves to feel alone, we all deserve support.
I hope you guys know how -
inspiring you are
kind you are
important you are
needed you are
loved you are
& i hope you guys know that you deserve happiness and hope and i truly mean all of this, it kills me to think that so many of us are struggling right now but i need you all to know how important you are to this earth and how appreciated you are.
thank you so much for reading, i love you guys & stay safe. i believe in you & i am proud of you
art/pictures are by @cynyassy on Instagram
& gif is by chibird
<3
art/pictures are by @cynyassy on Instagram
& gif is by chibird
<3
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