About last week

Last week started ok until I woke up one morning to a barrage of audio messages from my ex which I initially ignored until he sent me a text suggesting I’m ignoring him when I’d decided I didn’t feel like going through emotions and feelings from the past first thing. His or mine, but I told him I’d listen to his audios later.  I made some coffee then pretty much listened to him telling me that I should be giving him more credit for being who he is, how much he’s done for me over the years etc.  I’m only speculating but he sounded a little chemically induced. I decided to not respond but it didn’t take away from the fact that my anxiety was triggered and I had to try and stop myself going over his messages and trying to decide if he was right or wrong but by midweek I was not in the mood to attend a therapeutic check-up so I didn’t turn up and pretended I had forgotten when she called. Saturday morning I checked my email and found out I didn’t get the job I interviewed for then by late evening I was still in bed flaking on a new acquaintance I said I would help on a photography session. I didn’t call, text, nothing and I’m still feeling pretty guilty and know I have to face the music, I don’t want to come up with a lie or excuse which I considered on the day and the day after and know I have to be honest. I just couldn’t get out of the house and I’m currently going through another existential crisis relating to my photography freelance practise I’m trying to pluck up the courage to get in contact. Tomorrow I’m putting it at the top of my list.

Back to the Future

Monday I spent the best part of my day writing a blog post “Back to the future”.  My last post Sometimes we need to go backwards was in the back of my mind.  I began writing about last week and led to incidents I experienced within the NHS Mental Health Trust. I went from talking about not wanting to attend DBT (because I felt by attending it would be an admission of a diagnosis I disagree with) to a previous diagnosis I disagreed with, being perfectly happy with my Bipolar and Anxiety diagnosis, being over medicated and why I don’t like medication, being sectioned (twice), needing talking therapy, waiting lists, not getting on with my care coordinator, telling the Junior Doctor I didn’t want to talk to him because I fancied him a bit, being stranded and asking for help with a cab, a random guy giving me £10 but feeling too guilty to keep it so I gave it back, having a panic attack and having to press the fire alarm, being called a mean name by a Senior Doctor, looking at my care plan and wondering why it suggests misuse of drugs, alcohol and nicotine. Not being able to have a blood test because I have Trypanophobia (a fear of needles) from childhood which was exacerbated after being locked in a room and held down by two nurses to get my blood and triggered flashbacks of being threatened by nurses who chased me around a room after I tried to refuse medication.

Today

After coming to the end I decided to leave it until today to proofread and work out how I could reduce it from 4,000 words. I realised it was a good way for me to get everything down and out and remembered it was what I was asked to do by an advocacy service but couldn’t because I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. I felt a sense of achievement that it was finally out of my head. Before I went to bed I listened to the radio and it felt almost serendipitous that the man on the radio was talking about complaining which was in the back of my mind when writing the post but because it felt cathartic I carried on and went with the flow.  Don’t get me wrong-a part of me wants to put in a formal complaint not specifically about individual people. After all, I wouldn’t want anyone to get in trouble but as a service user, I feel it’s important that they can recognise certain things from the perspective of a patient suffering from mental health.  Not to say I have the experience they have but I do feel I have valuable lived experience (a term I learnt while being detained in Hospital).  One thing for sure it’s got me thinking more about what I can do to make a positive impact.  For now to be continued.