Archive for the 'Mental Health' Category

The Toad Is Back!! Gwuar!!

Published
by
thetoad
on 5 June 2008
in Mental Health
. 0 Comments

Well, it has certainly been a while since I wrote on this blog. I haven’t forgotten about it – or you – my loyal reader audience – it has just been a difficult month and I have not felt much like writing. Alas, my muse left me for a while!

Things I have been battling with in the last month have been down to trying to get my mental health care sorted from the NHS down here on the south coast.

Each week I have been told something different by someone else – it seems I don’t need to see a psychiatrist about my medication when it has been over 12 months since it was last reviewed. This turns out to be something I alter myself or visit my GP for. This has been a big disappointment for me. When we had the first assessment – when TuT was present – the nurse conducting the assessment said, in front of TuT and to me, that a psychiatry appointment would be made. This has not happened.

The day hospital that the nurse was so positive about turned out to be another disappointment. After another gruelling assessment at the said day hospital, I was told that it ran groups, the groups are broken down into activity, support, and educational. I was not given a timetable and asked which groups I would like to attend or what I felt would be beneficial, I was told that they would have a meeting and decide which group would be suitable for me.

Nothing was heard from this assessment for over two weeks, until I got a phone call, saying that I was going to be put down for attending “The Holistic Group”; I am as much in the dark as you are reading this, as to what the said holistic group is and what it does.

This is a mystery that will remain unsolved for some time; the groups run in blocks and you can’t join a group that has already started. My window for joining the holistic group is not for another two months!

So I had all this going on with my medication, lack of psychiatry support and finding out the day hospital could do nothing for me for months. I am experiencing an increasing sense of loneliness and isolation with TuT out the door before 8am and not home until well after 6pm in the evening. It’s a long day with no friends or family.

In light of this, my CPN recommended that I get in touch with the local “Mind” centre. The mental health charity “mind” run a centre about 25minute walk from the flat that you can “drop-in” to. They cook a lunch and one night a week an evening meal, and you can get involved in helping to prepare that meal, or just have some company with people that may be in a similar situation to yourself. Just drop in for a cup of tea and a chat; whatever you feel like doing – there is no pressure, you can attend as often or as infrequently as you like.

I had made a few attendances at the mind centres in the north, so I went along for a look, then returned a week later for an interview. As it is an informal drop-in I didn’t think the interview would be too troublesome. It turned out to be another gruelling assessment of my life and experiences and mental health and medication that lasted over an hour and a half. I came out in floods of tears, and was told that I would have to wait for references from my GP and Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) to come back to the centre before I could start attending.

This was another blow as by now I was frustrated that the day hospital had come to nothing and was becoming increasingly unhappy with my long empty days that I just wanted some company and social interaction to fill. I was falling into dangerous waters of spending my time watching rubbish on the tv, not getting showered or dressed until late in the afternoon, and not making any effort to go out and do anything because I was just so depressed. At one point I said to TuT

“I can’t remember the last time I laughed”

It was not a good time. I met with my CPN last Thursday and she told me to chase the mind centre because they had faxed off my reference to them.

This week I rang the mind centre on Monday and went along to see them late on Tuesday afternoon. After a chat it was agreed I can start attending the mind centre and will also be having scheduled “one-to-one” time with a member of their staff to work on confidence and just feeling better in myself.

It’s been a long slog to get to this stage, but having the support of the mind centre, and actually having somewhere to go, to be with some company, is just what is needed for me right now.

So things are looking up and I am more inclined to write about my experiences now – so keep checking the blog – THE TOAD IS BACK!! GWUAR!!

1st May – New Month – New Start

Published
by
thetoad
on 1 May 2008
in Dieting, Food and Mental Health
. 0 Comments

Greetings audience, I offer my apologies for neglecting the blog for as long as I have.

Basically, after the psychiatric assessment I lost the plot a little bit – going over the past and stirring up the mud at the bottom of the pond is never good for me and I got a lot ill for a couple of days. I didn’t much feel like blogging, in fact, I didn’t feel much like doing anything much at all.

Then when I’d just about got myself together, TuT had to go away for a couple of days for a training course for his job. I know couples that don’t mind separation, that can deal with one of them spending Monday to Friday away and just spending weekends together, but that is not the relationship TuT and I have. We both HATE being apart. Especially at night. It was playing on my mind, TuT’s impending departure for a few days, and this further added to my stress in trying to get over the psychiatric assessment.

TuT left on the Sunday afternoon, leaving me with an empty hollow feeling in my stomach, that was never full, no matter how much food I ate. I tried to stick to my weight watchers points, but was comfort eating. I hate spending long periods of time on my own. I was also scared to death that something would happen to TuT on his long drive to the North.

On the Monday I decided to treat myself to something nice for lunch as I was hungry and hadn’t really eaten a proper evening meal on Sunday evening. In town there is a sandwich shop – doing all the typical sandwich fillings and jacket potatoes, but it is run by Thai people. In addition to doing the normal stuff you expect from a sandwich shop they have a Thai menu.

I was craving a Chinese take away with TuT away, but, they are never open at lunch time, so I thought I would satisfy my craving with a Thai Takeaway. I ordered the Thai noodle soup – with eager anticipation. What I got was a bag of micro-waved supernoodles, the vegetable component was carrots and cauliflower – I had no idea that cauliflowers were Thai?! And a few pieces of sandwich chicken. I was disappointed, but starving, so ate a fair bit of it, but then felt really bad.

Supernoodles can be up to 12 points – and they are certainly not worth 12 points. So I just felt like I had ruined weight watchers on something that wasn’t even worth it.

I recently read an article that explained that cravings are not actually your body signalling that you are low on a particular vitamin or mineral. For example just before your period you sometimes justify the chocolate craving as your body needing sugar and magnesium. Or if you crave crisps it’s because your body is low on sodium. In actual fact these cravings are down to a craving for comfort as these are the foods that we associate with happy and comforting times. It’s a psychological craving as opposed to a physical need.

I read this article after the Chinese takeaway cravings I’d experienced whilst TuT was away; and it made sense. Chinese takeaways are my favourite take away and TuT and I often enjoy one together on a Friday night at the beginning of the weekend – I have rarely ever ordered a Chinese take away on my own before moving in with TuT – so I was craving the togetherness of enjoying a Chinese takeaway together, which is something I always associate with Friday nights and the beginning of TuT and I’s weekend together.

On the third day of TuT’s absence my parents arrived for a short stay. They weren’t up for bedding down on the inflatable air bed in our spare room, so stayed in a nearby hotel.

Spending days with my parents also spelt diet disaster. Already, thanks to the evil “Thai” noodles and comfort eating I had a 1lb gain on the scales on the Tuesday morning weigh – in. It was annoying, but not unexpected, due to the foods I had been eating.
My parents took me to the posh sandwich shop over the road for Tuesday’s lunch and then we had some lagers whilst watching the football in the evening, and finally, for me, a Chinese takeaway!!! Craving satisfied, whilst sharing with my mum.

The next day saw us going to Brighton for the day and we went for a lovely lunch at an “all-you-can-eat” Italian – pizza, pasta, salad and garlic bread. It was delicious and I tried to focus on filling up on the delicious salad bar.

In the evening I wanted some “mum cooked goodness”; so I got mum to cook tea for us all out of the ingredients I had in the flat. We had savoury mince with mashed potatoes (the aunt bessie’s frozen version! – thank you Delia!) and vegetables. It was comforting and delicious and fairly healthy I would say; although by this point I had abandoned sticking to my weight watchers points allowance as I had no idea how to point what I had eaten so just tried to keep things as healthy as possible, whilst not pointing.

TuT returned on Wednesday night – hurrah! So happy he returned safely. The parents left on Thursday lunch time and I was pretty stressed out by all the changes. It was wonderful seeing the parental units, but a total change to my usual routine and with TuT being away as well, plus still getting over the psychiatric assessment; the upshot was by Friday I lost the plot big time.
I had this constant churning feeling in my stomach and was convinced that cosmic forces were out to get me. I couldn’t stop crying and my head was constantly buzzing with sounds and thoughts. I managed to get through to the nurse that had conducted my psych assessment – by this point I was thinking that I needed to be on the psych ward I felt so spaced out and frightened, all the time, with a churning stomach. It was awful.

The nurse agreed to see me that afternoon, and there was talk of a doctor being called in to potentially give me something to calm things down a bit for me. I was a total state.

After seeing the nurse things calmed down a bit. I talked through everything and the churning feeling eased off somewhat. The psych nurse explained that there had been a mess up with my referral to the day hospital and it would be a while before they picked me up, so in the meantime she would see me – “off the record” as it were, to keep an eye on me until my support system was properly in place. This was reassuring.

TuT and I enjoyed a wonderful weekend together, without the shadow of TuT going away as we had had the previous weekend.
Tuesday morning revealed another 1lb gain, which to say I had been comfort eating with TuT away and hadn’t pointed my food the whole time my parents were staying and when TuT came home, was expected, and to be fair, with what I’d eaten, I could have deserved to have put on a little more.

I just need to focus now. I bought one of the weight watchers journals, and I am going to fill in every single bite of food and every single drink and track all my points properly from now on.

I am also wearing my weight watchers points pedometer and trying to beat the previous days bonus point earning score.
So yesterday, armed with my trusty pedometer on my pocket, I marched to see my psych nurse for my second appointment with her and to find out the progress of my referral to the day hospital.

What surprise news I was greeted with when we met, She has arranged to take me on her case load officially and will see me until my referral to the day hospital comes through and continue to support me during my attendance at the day hospital. She is my official care co-ordinator and I now have the support of my own permanent CPN (community psychiatric nurse). This level of support is something I have not had since I lived in the north and is a big relief.

Today is the 1st May and I am a big believer in starting new things, or improving on old things. So first thing, I need to keep all you readers entertained and get blogging again! I think I’ve got off to a good start!

Psychiatric Assessment

Published
by
thetoad
on 16 April 2008
in Mental Health
. 0 Comments

So, yesterday was different from my usual Tuesday – no Weight Watchers weigh-in, not out of choice, but after a good two months of waiting, I had my psychiatric assessment for the mental health team based in my new coastal location.

I was very anxious about it. With all the moving around TuT and I have done in the last twelve months we have had experience of four different NHS mental health services and it really is a post code lottery of what is on offer depending on which part of the country you are in.

Living in the north had different ideas of what was a good level of support, and the same is true of the south. The problem with these psychiatric assessments is that you have to go through everything; I have been involved over the years, with various mental health teams since I was 15. At 28 years old now that is over 10 years to go through to give an accurate background of my mental health.

So when the CPN (community psychiatric nurse) took TuT and I through to the little office to do the assessment I was very anxious, but reassured that she had my official looking file and had got some notes from Milton Keynes, where I lived for five months before moving here.

The seats were uncomfortable and I ended up sat on this rotating-retro square desk chair – I felt like the director! And so began the tale.

Beginning with the abuse that I can remember occurring from the ages of 10; to being taken to the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinic when I was 15 because the school told my mum I was acting strangely and that was why I was getting bullied; apparently I was bringing it on myself with my the way I was behaving.

Then through sixth form when I discovered self harming as a way of coping and perhaps enjoyed getting drunk and messy a little more than my friends.

Then from sixth form to university with the beginnings of my disordered eating, through the famous “breakfast/tea diet”.
Into university where I nearly ended up being admitted as an in-patient to the psychiatric ward in the north, but managed to persuade them not to as I wanted to finish my degree in Liverpool. The agreement to skirt my admission was that I would see a Psychologist.

So then into my third year at university I had to come home to the north every other weekend to see the Psychologist.
Then graduating, starting work in administrative roles, with the psychologist tagging along in the background whilst I ended up on anti-depressants and was struggling to get any sleep.

Then into 2003 when I made my first suicide attempt and ended up in hospital. The hot summer of 2003 when I spent most of my nights sat in my bedroom self harming and taking overdoses. Whilst getting angrier and angrier at my parents for allowing the abuse to happen when each night I was reliving terrifying flash backs and just felt completely unable to cope.

Days were spent in the psychiatric day hospital and nights were spent losing the plot and drinking with friends I’d made from the day hospital.

Things between my parents deteriorated to the extent that my new psycho-therapist placed me in supported housing for people with mental health problems.

I lived there for about a year before moving home and going back to work part-time as a legal secretary. Which went well for about two months then the solicitor I worked for took on defending a man accused of abusing his step-daughter. When having to photocopy daily his step-daughters statements, which I couldn’t help but read, but mirrored my own experiences of abuse, I knew the step-daughter couldn’t be lying, but we had to defend the step father.

By the autumn I was back in hospital as in-patient following another overdose. From there followed a cycle of returning to work, getting ill and stressed, getting admitted as an in-patient, going back to work etc.etc. and so on. Until my employers got sick of having to find cover for my secretarial role, and on discharge from my admission in August 2004 I came home to a letter sacking me and telling me not to return to work again.

At around this time I started seeing and soon moved in with, my ex-partner, who turned out to be a violent and abusive, manipulative alcoholic. Life was based around alcohol and was total chaos. I returned to my parents on a couple of occasions but he would always talk me round with promises to change and that life would be better.

I was totally unable to contemplate going back to work with how badly my mental health had deteriorated and couldn’t see any way out, any way to improve my life. So in January 2006 I started the year with a massive over-dose, my most serious and nearest I’d got to actually finishing the job and ending my life, and on recovery, another in-patient stay on the psychiatric ward.
My new psychiatrist had taken me off all my medication and I was just flying along through life, trying to keep things as normal as possible whilst living with a violent alcoholic. I started attending Weight Watchers and losing weight, which made me feel a bit better about things and improved my self-esteem. The improvement in my self esteem meant increases in the violence from my ex-partner.

Eventually in June 2006, wandering the streets at 4am after the ex had locked me out I decided to take control of my life and declared myself homeless. The ex went on holiday and trusted me with the flat keys to feed the fish and collect his post, I used the opportunity to clear the flat of all my belongings, re-housed my fish with my brother; and spent another hot summer, this time three years later, attending the day hospital and living in a bed and breakfast whilst I waited to be re-housed.

During this time I met TuT and after six weeks of being with him moved to South Yorkshire to live with him; I knew I loved him and wanted to be with him forever and I wanted a fresh start away from everything that had happened in North Yorkshire.
There’s been plenty more that has happened whilst I have been moving around the country for TuT’s work and we have been at the mercy of whichever mental health team we were living under.

I was pretty exhausted after covering all this history with the CPN conducting the assessment. There is a place fairly near to us that will be able to help me come to terms and deal with the abuse when I am ready. In the mean time she would like me to attend the local day hospital here. So I am now waiting to hear from them and am just hoping that I won’t have to go through another assessment at the day hospital and go through the whole story again!

I spent the rest of the day exhausted and feeling like I’d sat a couple of A-Level examinations.

Today the sun is shining and the weather is wonderful. I am going to a different Weight Watchers meeting at 10:30am to find out how the last week of tracking my points has gone – I am at the mercy of the scale-gods! Wish me luck and I will post my weigh-in result when I get home.

Watching My Weight – An 11 Year Brief History of Dieting Time

Published
by
thetoad
on 2 April 2008
in Dieting, Food, Losing Weight and Mental Health
. 2 Comments

I have always felt big and fat. Looking back at childhood pictures of me, I wasn’t exactly a skinny kid and I have always loved nice big home cooked dinners, but I certainly wasn’t the monstrosity that I had built myself up to be.

I tried doing silly diets when I was 14 – even having my best friend at the time come into the bathroom with me whilst I downed salt water in an attempt to make myself sick because I’d eaten some twiglets.

Mostly I accepted that I was larger; aged 16 I was wearing size 16 skirts for school, but I didn’t think about it too much until I was 17.

It was November and I stayed the night at my friend’s house. We had an Indian takeaway, stayed up late drinking wine and watching videos. The next day we slept in late and had our breakfast of rice krispies at lunchtime. Later that day my Dad came to pick me up and in the evening I ate my tea of homemade cottage pie with veggies and went to bed.

The next day when I woke up I felt somehow lighter. It was a strange feeling that I hadn’t really felt before. I thought about the previous day and what had been different in the way I’d eaten. In having breakfast at lunch time I had effectively skipped lunch. I weighed myself – the number didn’t mean much to me and my parents scales were really old. I then decided to skip lunch all week, and see how much I weighed the following Monday.

It was a tough week. I knew nothing about the GI ratings of cereal, so if I’d had rice krispies or corn flakes for breakfast I was often starving by lunch time. It was a hungry week, but I stuck to it. Eating my breakfast, skipping my lunch, and eating whatever mum had cooked for tea in the evening.

Monday rolled around and I’d lost half a stone. In a week. I thought I had found the dieting secret of all time – I can have a large bowl of cereal and eat whatever mum has cooked in the evening – pies, chips, anything and still lose weight just by skipping lunch. I believed the weight I’d lost that week needed to be “consolidated” ; which meant to me I shouldn’t expect or want to lose any more for a few weeks, my body needed to adjust month by month. So I decided to just weigh myself every four weeks on the “breakfast/tea diet”.

I stuck to it all over Christmas and the following months. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing and as a result it was always surprising if people said

“Have you lost weight?”

I wasn’t talking about losing weight to anyone so it was strange when people commented.

Eventually my steady half a stone a month began to come to a halt. My parents newspaper had featured an article about a couple following a low fat diet and how healthy and zippy they were. The article included a long list of the fat grams in common foods. So I continued with the breakfast/tea diet, but with a bigger focus on what I was eating for my tea – it now had to be low fat. I began to eat differently from my family at meal times. I’d shun mum’s home cooked food that I had no idea of the fat content of, in favour of calorie counted healthy choice frozen ready meals.

By the following November, a year into my breakfast/tea diet I was away from home attending university and had lost 3 and a half stone. Sometimes I saw the magical 9 stone something appear on the scales, but the numbers didn’t mean so much to me. I continued wearing size 16 clothes, sometimes submitting and believing I had got smaller, I’d buy a size 14. I liked baggy combat trousers and baggy band t-shirts bought from whichever recent gig I’d been to. So the weight loss did not encourage me to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe. Although I’d lost weight, I still believed I was meant to be a size 16 and my head would not catch up with the size my body actually was. I still believed I was fat and always would be. It was in my genes, the way I was built.

My weight stayed pretty steady throughout university. Thanks to some weight watchers leaflets and booklets my Nanna had given me, I started thinking about points and calories and did allow myself to have something low fat and low calorie at lunchtimes. Mainly soup or yoghurts. As long as it was liquid based it was allowed.

Finishing university and becoming prone to binges, after all the years of deprivation my body was starting to rebel, I put some weight on. Getting a boring office job with lots of diet-obsessed middle aged women I put more weight on and joined my first slimming club – Slimming World.

The first week I lost 5 pounds. I did the diet for a while, but binges were always lurking and getting harder to resist and control. So I’d have a massive binge, big weight gain, then chuck in the slimming club and go solo for a bit. Which would lead to a bit more weight gained, so I joined Weight Watchers, I knew all about points from my Nanna and even had a points calculator I’d got through the magazine at university that I’d used for a bit, following my own version of Weight Watchers.

So I did Weight Watchers for a bit, then stopped and went solo, put more weight on, went back to Slimming World, binged, gained weight, didn’t go back, joined another slimming club. This cycle continued for a couple of years, with my weight steadily increasing.

In summer 2003 I lost my job due to my mental health problems and began attending a Psychiatric Day Hospital 7 days a week to keep me stable and out of being admitted on to the in-patient ward. I was back at Weight Watchers and losing weight steadily at 2 pounds a week. It was a wonderful hot summer and I successfully reached my 10% goal and got my key ring, and really thought I’d cracked my weight problem.

Into the autumn of 2003 I was prescribed an anti-psychotic called Chlorpromazine and an anti depressant called Mirtazapine. I lost all concept of what feeling full felt like, I was CONSTANTLY hungry. All I could think about was my next meal. I was aware my weight was increasing, I’d stopped attending Weight Watchers, I complained to people about my increasing weight, but they would always say comments along the lines of it being better to be mentally healthy whilst carrying a few more pounds, than thin but being psychotic.

At the end of 2005 my psychiatrist left the hospital and the new psychiatrist that took her place took me off all my medication. She believed that my mental health condition of Borderline Personality Disorder, did not need to be treated with medication. I was angry – I’d believed from my previous psychiatrist that I NEEDED my meds to be well. I got a second opinion, but the psychiatrist conducting the second opinion consulted the psychiatrist I was challenging, so I was not prescribed any meds again.

When I calmed down from being taken off my medication I noticed that I was losing a bit of weight without really trying. What would happen if I did try?

So medication free, January 2006, I joined Weight Watchers again. By this point I was classed as Disabled because of my mental health problems and was totally unable to work. So all my time and focus could go on getting slim. I cooked from scratch everything, soups – point free, a different flavour for everyday of the week, and meals out of the Weight Watchers cookery books. The weight steadily fell off and I began to get my confidence back and feel good about myself.

By the summer 2006 things in my personal life had gone a bit crazy; in splitting from my violent, manipulative and alcoholic ex-partner, I had ended up homeless. There was an attempt to get me into the women’s refuge as I was escaping domestic violence, but when this all fell through I ended up temporarily housed in a bed and breakfast in a town ten miles away from my home town.

I led a very chaotic lifestyle and with living in the bed and breakfast and having to use my parents kitchen for meals I was cooking fairly simply so as to not make the kitchen a mess. Plus I was much more active, rather than flopping in front of the tv with wine after tea, I was having to get the bus back to the bed and breakfast, which involved a long walk to the bus stop after my evening meal. It was a scorching hot summer in 2006 so I just never felt very hungry and consequently just ended up just not eating very much and following a kind of low carbohydrate Atkins diet that I had fashioned.

By the time I moved in with TuT I was very slim – a size 10/12 and had lost 5 stone from the January until the September. However, my slim frame came at the cost of being borderline anorexic and I was not very healthy.

Now I have pretty much gained back all of the 5 stone I lost in 2006 due to a combination of taking the depo provera contraceptive injection, being back on anti psychotic and anti depressant medication, and getting a bit content living with TuT and not doing enough exercise.

I am now back at the Weight Watchers coalface and want to lose the weight permanently and end this long story of gaining and losing weight once and for all.

Diet Starts On Monday!

Published
by
thetoad
on 31 March 2008
in Dieting, Excercise, Losing Weight and Mental Health
. 0 Comments

So here we are on a Monday and I always think to myself, right! – the diet starts today, we are going to change all the bad habits, eat healthily and lose some weight. This will be the week that changes my dieting lifestyle and will crack the weight loss once and for all. This mentality usually means that on a Sunday I eat a bit more than I should – “diet starts tomorrow” – so it is ok to eat a bit more than I should as I’ll be reining it all in on Monday and being super healthy and super disciplined.

I wouldn’t say since last week’s weigh in I have done anything that deserves a weight loss. For starters, last Monday was Easter Monday and TuT was off work and we did bank holiday stuff like having a homemade chicken and mushroom pie for lunch (small piece of pastry – 5 points – argh!) and going to the cinema, and me not doing any exercise. Tuesday’s weigh in revealed the pound loss – quite disappointing, but it had been the Easter weekend; although mine was entirely chocolate egg free! After Tuesday’s weigh in I decided to be good, but relaxed a bit in myself Tuesday night, knowing weigh in was not for another week and enjoyed a high pointed curry for tea and a couple of wineages in the evening, and did no formal exercise during the day.

Wednesday and we had TuT’s brother and his girlfriend come to stay for the night. The girlfriend arrived with chocolate covered treats and we all went out for a meal which included drinking pints of Stella and lime (!!) and I went over my points for that day. Thursday I was still recovering from my borderline day of illness and our evening meal turned out to be a mixture of convenience foods – savoury rice, pasta and sauce, chicken sticks etc. I was not well enough to cook, we just needed something to go in our tummies for tea that wouldn’t cause a lot of effort or time in the kitchen. It fitted into the points plan – just, but wasn’t the best.

Then Friday comes and we always have a take away, and I treated myself to a gorgeous sandwich from the special sandwich deli shop over the road from us for my lunch. I think the ciabatta bread alone worked out to five points without the filling (coronation chicken – yummy!) and then we had take away pizza for tea.

The borderline mentally unwell days meant I did no exercise all week except for a bit of walking about. I have been sticking to my points over the weekend, just about. But at the higher end of the scale. So I am drawing a line in the sand, I can’t change the fact I was mentally unwell last week and so did not eat so well or do any exercise, it is in the past and I am focusing on the present and what I can do to change things NOW.

So I am closing here for now – it is Monday – Diet Starts TODAY – so I am going out on my bike for a 10km cycle workout, with my Garmin GPS watch so I know how far I have cycled and what work I have done when I upload my cycle ride stats to the computer.

The Poorly little toad

Published
by
tutphish
on 27 March 2008
in Mental Health
. 0 Comments

As i write this the toad is sleeping, which is one of the main effects of when she has been mentally unwell. So i have a sight that is truely wonderous, the toad is curled up on the sofa with a sleeping bag drawn up to her neck. Her hair is flowing over the top and she is resting and at peace. A sight more cute i couldnt find…

Borderline Personality Disorder makes for Disordered Day

Published
by
thetoad
on 27 March 2008
in Mental Health
. 4 Comments

After posting yesterday’s entry things went totally crazy. I suffer from a severe and enduring mental health problem in the form of what is called a Borderline Personality Disorder. It is so called because it is a mental health condition that borders on lots of other mental health problems. I border on symptoms of schizophrenia, manic depression (bipolar), depression and have an Eating Disorder. I suffer from symptoms of these problems, without having enough of the symptoms to have something like Bipolar diagnosed in its entirety. I get very paranoid and lately have been getting really angry.

My anger is just crazy when it comes over me. I shout and totally lose my temper with TuT. I become convinced that my paranoid thoughts are the truth and anyone that disagrees with me just ignites my anger further. When I get into my disordered thinking as a result of my personality disorder I stop being able to care for myself. I don’t eat properly or take showers or baths. I can do dangerous things like self harming; my left arm is a mass of scars from the days when I would channel my anger towards myself. I’ve attempted suicide numerous times, and as recently as last August I locked TuT out of the house and took an overdose. I really am one crazy chick when the Personality Disorder comes out to play and it’s scary.

I am so angry about my weight gain. In gaining weight I have lost so much of myself. My confidence, self esteem and feelings of self worth are all rock bottom; bordering on non existent. When I first starting seeing fiancé TuT I’d lost a lot of weight and was continuing to lose weight. We had a big chat one day in the car coming back from shopping and TuT was saying not to lose any more weight. I agreed with him but said under no circumstances did I want to gain any.

“Just a small gain of a couple of pounds and it’ll destroy me. I won’t go out the house. I will be depressed. I stay this weight and that’s it – no gains!!”

I said with strong emotions running through me. For the first time in my adult life I was a nice size 10/12. I loved buying clothes and getting dressed up. Now my uniform is my black track suit bottoms and blokey black fleece I flinched from TuT.

I know that the gain is not my fault, although I have spent the last 18 months thinking that I have been eating too much, and it is going to take some time before this way of thinking changes and I can enjoy a healthy meal without feeling guilty. I got a fantastic email that really made my day today from a lovely girl called Sara Lake. Her blog, www.sanafit.blogspot.com, is brilliant reading and so inspiring. I had some questions about how she was going about getting fit and slim so I dropped her a mail. Sara replied so quickly and had even taken the time to read this blog and told me she loved the story about the red-coated lady cheering me on when I was running. What was really interesting was what Sara wrote about my weight gain :

“As for your weight gain, I think you can stop blaming yourself. I have seen two cases like this of massive, ‘unexplained’ weightgain. One of them was taking Depo Provera injections (as a nice bonus, she also got full-face acne every time she got the shots), the other was on anti-depressants. Both returned to normal weight once the meds were changed.”

This made me feel so much better, especially the part that once the meds were changed their weights returned to normal. I had TuT frantically searching the web last night to find out how quickly the injection will be out of my system and when I can start to expect to see some improvement on the weight loss front. A part of me wants to stop trying to lose weight until the injection is fully out of my system, but doing this will probably lead to more weight gain and I will have to start from a higher weight once the injection gets out of my system. It just feels so horrible to diet hard at the coal face all week and have no chocolate at Easter to lose a mere pound. And this makes me angry. And Frustrated. The injection is not going to be out of my system until mid-May and this is stressing me out as that’s practically the summer and if I am still this weight into the summer it is going to be the worst thing – no vest tops, no short skirts, no nice dresses. Just me sweating away, probably in the blokey fleece that hides my rolls of flesh and fat.

As you can tell from today’s blog entry and the previous ones, this weight gain and trying to lose it is one of the biggest things on my mind at the moment. It feels like it is always there, never going away or changing or getting any better. This has had a knock-on effect with my mental health problems. TuT is worried that losing weight could flare up my borderline anorexia; when he expresses this I get SO ANGRY because I think he trying to stop me losing weight and wants me to stay fat and miserable. This is not true, I know this, he just wants me to be healthy. But yesterday the lid on the pressure cooker of my mind just exploded and I had probably my first borderline episode since moving. My anger knew no bounds, I believed TuT was playing mind games with me and my paranoia was out of control. All I could think about was how fat I am and there’s nothing I can do about it. I hate not being able to change things. My thoughts went round and round in circles winding me up more and more; getting more and more angry. Things got so out of control that I left the flat and refused to speak to TuT.

Things got so bad that TuT had to leave work as he feared for my safety. The state of mind I’d worked myself into, anything could have happened. He found me outside SpecSavers. He’d attempted to adjust my glasses the previous day and made them worse. This small thing became so important to me – it was essential that I got them adjusted correctly and did it that day, although I was wearing my spare pair. It was one of those days where the smallest things grow into mind-mountain-sized problems.

My glasses were fixed by a lovely optician and I started to feel calmer. TuT arrived and talked to me calmly and accompanied me to the library to return my books and bought me some lunch as I never eat when I have a borderline day. It took me a long time to eat my sandwich and drink my coffee but I felt better afterwards. Gradually things returned to normal, I just felt very very tired.

Today sees me back at the dieting coalface and not so out of control with my mental health. I managed to go out for a run after neglecting it for almost a week. I decided to walk for two minutes and run for three minutes for a total of 4km. This was fine until at the 2km mark it started hailing. Being pelted with sea-side hail hurts!! I managed to get shelter for a little while, but then the hail turned into steady rain and I just had to get wet and get myself home. I was reluctant to go running but TuT persuaded me as I haven’t been for so long. I can’t say I enjoyed getting pelted with hail and getting soaked to the bone wet, but now I am warm and showered I am glad I went for a run afterall, and wouldn’t you know it, the sun is now shining.