Mental Health Awareness

As it is mental health week I thought it would be fitting to write about my own mental health issues that I have endured over the years.

My own mother suffered with metal health issues and was in and out of hospital all her life, as a result my siblings and I were separated at a young and age, I was adopted and my sisters were fostered.

My mother suffered with what was described as schizophrenia, low mental age and manic depression, now known as bi-polar.

My sisters and I have all inherited the depression to varying degrees and although I have never been diagnosed with anything officially, I suffer from time to time with severe depression and some manic tendencies.

I resist the pull of medication with all my might and refuse to take anything that I know will lead to a downwards spiral after watching my mother suffer with side effects that in my opinion are far worse than the illness itself.

My mother used to describe to me the electro therapy that she had as a young adult, she was terrified that they would do that again to her, she often displayed distress and thoughts that "they" were trying to kill her, initially I thought that was down to her illness, but really in theory I could see where she was coming from, as in the end they did kill her. 

When she was moved into the unit closer to where I lived, a doctor told me that the unit she had been in previously had given her enough medication to kill and elephant, and they subsequently reduced the dosage she was on, then finally when she was moved back they put her on the Liverpool care pathway, which is a frightening way to die as they remove all food and water and medication and basically wait for your body to shut down and you die over a period of two weeks. 

In their words her quality of life was not very good because she had bad teeth that needed attention, and she was suffering from pneumonia, which was eventually recorded on her death certificate as the cause of death. 

The conditions for patients of mental health services historically have not been very good so I have resisted any involvement with mental heath services, my earliest experience of mental health services was at the age of 14, after a long history of being sexually and physically abused by my adopted father and attempting to take my own life for the first time.

I experienced counselling, which on my first experience consisted of the counsellor sitting there and encouraging me to think of horrible things I could do back to him to hurt him.  For me that was horrifying enough, I had no ill thoughts towards him and had no desire to cause anyone any harm. I felt detached from the counsellor and just went through the motions enough so that I felt like I was doing what everyone thought I needed to do at the time, and therefore everyone would leave me alone.

I never engaged with talking over and re-living my experiences, I just wanted to shut them away in a box. I never took to counselling very well and never felt I could trust anyone enough to open up in that way that counselling requires.

Trust has been one of those things that I have always struggled with, relationships for me never work because of the trust issues that I have to face, caused by my early years experiences. Adoption on it's own raises issues, after all if your own mother betrays that basic trust a mother and child has, then who can you trust in this world, despite the reasons for the adoption not being my mothers fault that basic rejection as a baby sowed my seeds for the lack of trust I experience as an adult. A mother and child relationship shapes how you see the world and is the basic training for trust that carries through the rest of your life. 

The abuse is the second reason trust is something that will always be an enigma to me, for obvious reasons that I don't even need to go into here. Trust is a skill I have never been given the chance to acquire at the crucial moment trust should be learnt, I have reconciled the fact that trust is something I will never master, but I am happy with that and have come to terms with that a long time ago, it is part of me and who I am.

In my younger years I felt very angry towards the world, a misfit, I felt like I never belonged anywhere. I floated and felt very alone. The fact I was adopted into a white family caused confusion and resentment. No one understood how I felt with having to deal with the everyday racism that is just there, I had no one to talk to about it and no one I could share the experience with, or anyone to help me make sense of it all. I was never encouraged to be the best I could be and felt that I was struggling every day to just live. I never had a good relationship with my adopted mother and her family, I felt like a commodity, I felt like I was there for show only.

I have spent my whole life not enjoying life but at the same time knowing how fortunate I am to have life. Life has felt like something I have to endure. And for all the faults that people can come up with regarding religion, religion has been the one and main thing that has kept me alive.

Just that theory that killing yourself is a sin has been enough to make me try to stay alive and stopped me on occasion from carrying through with my deep desire to opt out of this thing called life, religion and my fear of pain have been my saving grace.

Instead I have punished myself over the years, I have been through a phase of cutting my wrists, even smoking was a self punishment, in my head wishing I could get cancer and die, I have starved myself  to the point that my stomach shrunk so much I couldn't eat very much even if I tried, 1 slice of toast was all that was on the agenda some days for many years. 

In my head I know I value life, otherwise I would have ventured into the world of drugs and really destroyed myself. Like many of you, we all know someone who has ventured down that path, my own kids father is a heroine addict and my best friend died due to being an alcoholic leaving very young children behind and a trail of destruction. So I  know in my head that life is worth living, otherwise I would have given up long ago, but instead I keep fighting every day, some days are good and some days are bad.

I was once known as the bear because I used to spend so much time sleeping, I slept my life away, the pain of knowing I had to face another day lead me to sleeping at every chance I could rather than having to face the world.

Anxiety is something that I never recognized I had but I now know I do, I always recognized my anxiety as stress and still to this day describe it as such although I know that is it anxiety and that anxiety had me admitted into a mental health unit not so long ago for 4 days.

I was tipped right over the edge and experienced what can only be described as a mental break down. The years and years of anxiety going unchecked and not given the attention it deserved caused me to finally loose the plot.

It was a surreal experience and one I have learnt a lot from. I make more of an effort to take care of myself and learn to recognize how I am feeling and address anything by taking care of myself instead of just ignoring me and carrying on. 

In part the decision to start the photography degree came from that mental health unit experience, photography has always been something I have enjoyed, despite not being very good at it, it helps me relax and escape to a different world, the word through a lens is something that you can create for yourself, it is your own vision and interpretation and I need something for myself and photography seems like the perfect fit for me, it is a hobby that I could turn into a career if I get any good at it.

I love the kids with all my heart but since I was 17 I have been a mother and as all mothers know we tend to forget about our own needs and wants in life and focus on what everyone else needs, but my life is almost over and I want to go out knowing that I actually did something for myself be that selfish or not I don't care, at this tender age of 47 I want to do something for me and me alone, life is worthless if you do not have any dreams and it is about time I found some for myself which can make life more enjoyable.

The metal Health Unit experience gave me some tools to start to enjoy life in a more sustainable way, rather than just going through the motions of every day, I am starting to really enjoy every day and what each day can bring.

Since home educating the twins, life has been tailored to how we want life and home education has been a massive part of my survival journey. Opting out of the usual, go to work every day to a job I hate mingling with people I cannot stand, kind of mentality, and finding organic ways to live life I have come more alive than I ever have. 

I worried massively at the beginning about my reclusive ways, having to deal with people and mingling with people would become an issue, how would the kids find friends? how would we meet people we like to be around and who like having us around?. My tendency to be a recluse and my agoraphobia has slowly subsided, we can choose the groups we go to and we have found some lovely friends that do not place any demands on us, they just accept us for flitting in and out, I rarely feel under pressure to perform.

I feel more in control of life than I have ever felt, I am living on my own terms and learning that it is ok to do, even if others do not approve.

My metal health journey is something I am working on every day and even though I know the few attempts at taking my own life in the past failed and I am very thankful for that today, I know that may not be the way I am feeling tomorrow and I will have to battle those demons again to help me stay alive for the rest of my life.

 

I know I have people I can turn to for support when it comes to it and support is a key part of keeping my mental health in check and one of those avenues is probably a surprise to many but it comes in the form of social services. 

I know that some people fear social services but they have supported me over the past few months where there was no one else to give me that support. The two social workers I worked with, laughed with me, cried with me and most importantly kept my kids out of care. 

When we were discharged from their care a few weeks ago I was kind of sad that I wouldn't have them popping in and out irritating the kids and hearing me moan about the scruffy monkeys messing up my house, ha ha..

But I know that if ever I need them again when no one else is there for me to turn to in a time of crisis they will be there to whack me round the head and give me the push to get better that I need. All I need to do is pick up the phone.

One thing I always thanked my mum for was the fact that she approached social services when she knew she could not cope because of her mental health journey, she asked for help, that probably saved my life and kept her out of prison for murdering her child. 

I will be forever thankful to her for that, even though it turned out not so great being passed to an abusive adoption, it could have been worse. One thing that this mental health journey has tought me is that it is not usually intentional for someone to cause us harm, it is just a by product of someone living through their own mental health issues that produces victims and survivors.

The compex web of human lives, we are all responsible for other people's mental health in one way or another....