Positivity vs Negativity

At the moment there are a number of positive things happening in my life but at the same time my mood is more negatively based. Over the past few weeks I have finished my CBT sessions and attended a couple of job interviews; one resulting in work for one day a week in a jewellers that begins this Friday. But while these things have been happening, as well as the excitement, I have been feeling a decrease in my mood levels. I crave food all of the time recently which means I’m putting back on weight instead of maintaining or losing it. I hardly ever go out and do exercise which I had got into a habit of doing, I have no motivation to do anything during the day and my music taste has turned back to the more melancholy songs on my playlist.

I feel like my body is just filled with sadness, anger, loneliness, frustration, agitation, jealousy and anxiety; a feeling that I haven’t had in quite a while. Everything in my mind feels broken; I shouldn’t feel so sad, I shouldn’t want to die, I shouldn’t pull my hair out, I shouldn’t pick my skin raw, I shouldn’t feel paranoid, I shouldn’t feel worthless.

Already I’m thinking negatively about work. What if I’m out of my depth? What if I’m left alone? What if I get it wrong? What if they don’t like me? What if I hate it? What if I can’t learn it? What if they get angry with me? What if they fire me? All instead of thinking: This is the start of a new life, I can learn most things so I can do this, they hired me so they must see that I have potential.

The main focus of my CBT sessions was challenging negative thoughts. There were different ways to do this but I don’t have the time or inclination to sit down and write out the thoughts, feelings and behaviours and then take positive steps to change them. How do I change something that is hardwired into my mind set?

I’m thinking of making a couple of mantras on business cards that I can keep with me at work to look at and keep me going, but I have no idea what to put on them. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

More Gender and Sexuality Confusion

I did a post a while ago about an experience that made me rethink my sexuality but now I seem to be having some more issues. I am unsure whether this is down to my decreasing mental health or just one of those things that every teenager and young adult go through before they finally settle down with who they are. I will be going over some things I’ve talked about before but I need to try to get this straight (excuse the pun) in my own head.

• I am not feminine I do not wear skirts or dresses.
• I like being more masculine I wear boxer shorts, loose jeans, trainers, jumpers, shirts, t-shirts, hair tied back.
• I do not see me having children in the future. I don’t like children and I don’t want children. I am not maternal.
• I have kissed both a guy and a girl.
• I have only been sexually attracted to the girl I’ve kissed.
• I have been sexually attracted to many guys.
• I look at other girls and see them as pretty and think of having a relationship with them.
• I am attracted to male:male relationships.
• I would want to be in male:male relationship.
• I don’t know if I would want to be in a female:female relationship.

• If I could be anyone, I would be a man in a gay relationship.

What does this make me? A straight woman pretending to be more masculine? A woman looking for a straight man who doesn’t mind masculinity in a woman? A masculine woman looking for a gay man?

I am just so confused. This is why I have always wanted to be an actor, so I don’t have to be me. I can be anyone I want to.

What is there left?

I don’t really know why I’m posting about this because it’s not something I want to say out loud via speech or text. And especially not in front of anyone who might be struggling personally as well, but I need to get it out of my head before I can finally try to sleep.

I don’t want to be alive anymore. There is nothing at all worth living for, nothing I am looking forward to and while I have people who love me around and people I love in return, I feel more alone than ever. As I am sat here I am dreading waking up in the morning because I don’t want to have to go through job searching, looking at my bank statements, tidying the house, doing chores, taking my medication to be able to function, thinking about what I need to do to make everyone else around me happy, thinking about what I want to do with my life and having to live another day being me, I’m fed up of it. I just want it to stop.

Days keep going by and I have lost track of what’s happening, everything is the same day in day out. I am stuck in this boring and confusing life that I don’t want to be living in. I feel as though myself and everything around me is crumbling and disengaging with the rest, I am falling away from my life and my life is falling away from me.

I wish I didn’t exist. That way no one would miss me or get hurt by me. Because of this I feel trapped because while I want out of life I feel like I can’t because of the people I’ll hurt by leaving.

Every square centimeter of my being hurts, my soul hurts. I don’t want to be here any more and if I could leave so that I was erased from everyone I knows’ memory, I would without a second to think about it.

I used to be bright, energetic, clever, polite, friendly, funny, optimistic, confident and happy, but now I’m just hollow. I can’t tell my mum because she will get even more stressed again; I saw what it did to her before so I will not do it again. I can’t tell my therapists or psychiatrists because they will want to tell someone and then put me on some ward somewhere; they’ll change my medication and turn me back into a zombie. At least where I am now I can feel something even if it is pain and sadness.

I hope I wake up tomorrow feeling better. If not then I don’t know what to do.

Femininity Degradation

As I have mentioned before, I am not very feminine. I don’t wear dresses or heels, or pink, or like ponies and many of the other stereotypical feminine attributes. But recently I think that my preferences have accelerated in the opposite direction to be more masculine than feminine.
This whole post may seem stereotypical but I don’t know how else to convey what I mean. This is just how I feel and you may believe something entirely different and that’s fine to.
I seem to like many of the stereotypical male characteristics; I like action movies, I read graphic novels/comics, I like dinosaurs, I swear, I do boxing. More recently I have been wearing men’s boxer shorts, I have been covering my boobs with baggy tops and thinking even more about methods to stop my periods.
I hate my periods. I know that no girl loves having them but any feminine girl or a woman thinking about childbearing in the future has a reason to accept them for what they are. But I am neither of these things; I don’t like being a female and I don’t want kids. I’m aware that many people will think that I might change my mind about children and I understand but at the moment I can see no way of it happening.
I have been looking into ways of stopping periods and I am even considering the new high tech medical procedures used to remove the womb lining and thus stopping the period. I would obviously need to do more research but any permanent solution would render me infertile.
Today and yesterday I have been experiencing the slight cramp twinges in my lower stomach to remind me that my period is on its way to ruin a week my life. If I don’t want kids then why do I need to go through this month after month?

Facebook Ignorance

I’m the darkest blue, my two other friends are the palest and middle.

This is a conversation I had this evening with my two friends. Basically, we were planning to meet up tomorrow at some point to exchange christmas gifts and after the hectic week I’ve had, I’m not in a very good mood and therefore don’t really fancy meeting up. This is the response I got. The middle blue is my friend who has also had mental health problems that they are trying to overcome but the palest blue friend has had a couple of counselling sessions in the past but with no diagnosis of mental health problems that we know about.

I thought I’d post this because I thought that the two responses were completely opposite with one friend trying to encourage me out of the house by offering lifts and sounding more upbeat and the other seems rather hostile and lacks a basic understanding of my situation. Strangely enough the more disregarding friend was the one without mental illnesses and the more comforting one in my opinion is the one I’m in the same boat with.

I think that this scenario plays out with many other people, some people understand it but others don’t as much. Even with those people we love and are loved by in return, without meaning to they sound ignorant and uneducated about the basics of mental illnesses.

Blow After Blow

Sometimes it just feels like life has a personal vendetta against you and deals you the rubbish cards. I think that life is unfair.

Personally I believe that life is composed of a set of cards that are dealt out to us, but these cards may be infinitive. For every stage in life, a card is drawn for a person. For example:

Stage: Birth, cards: alive or dead, boy or girl, premature or overdue, ill or healthy etc.

These cards then have other options, an example for the ill card would be to have subsequent cards displaying particular illnesses and problems. Imagine having a hat with hundreds of millions of infinite outcomes for every event in your life from how your parents react to your prom date to whether you have an accident and survive or not. Sometimes the worse outcomes are dealt in quick succession.

In my life I’ve been given the parent divorce card, the good GCSE grade card, the college acceptance card, the depression card, anxiety card, OCD tendencies card, therapy card, self-harm card, step-grandad death, step-great-uncle death and great-grandma death cards as well as numerous pet death cards and others.

Today I have been drawn the “bad blood test results for your dog” card. For me pets are a part of my family and to hear that if the vets are correct in their diagnosis ideas, best case scenario is steroids for the rest of my dog’s life or worse case scenario pancreatic cancer and symptom management until he dies.

I understand that people and animals live and inevitably die one day but why like this? Possibly in pain for as long as he lives, dosed up on medications, just before Christmas and at only 8 years old?

I am sincerely hoping that the vets are wrong in their judgements but if not then what?

I’m sorry that this post is kind of me drivelling on about nonsense and it’s probably really confusing but I need to go to bed and I can’t keep this on my mind. So this hurried post is the best that I can do.

Diagnosis to Exist

Does there need to be a diagnosis for you to have a disorder?

This question has been on my mind for the last couple of days and to be completely honest I don’t have a clue or idea as to the answer.

Anyone who looks at or read my post from yesterday will know that I have found both obsessive compulsive personality disorder and impulse control disorder very alike to my symptoms and behaviours. I am however, not in a position where I can ask my psychiatrist for a number of reasons which I will not go into today.

Because of this I am just sitting on these ideas, unsure whether I can say I have OCPD or ICD or whether I need a formal diagnosis to be able to say these things. As I said before I feel like I need labels to understand what is happening. The not knowing whether “I have or have not” is really distressing me but I see no way of finding a definitive answer without speaking to my psychiatrist.

For example, say a person has had symptoms of OCD since they were 16 but was only diagnosed at the age of 32, have they had OCD since they were 16 or 32?

 

Patient Care Plan

Moderate Depressive Episode

Did not talk much except in monosyllables

She did not make eye contact either

She had a marked tremor when she saw us

She seemed reluctant to talk

She does not have much social life

 

 

Birthday Blues

Today has been full of the Birthday Blues. I dislike birthday’s and Christmas for many reasons;

– The expectation of happiness

– The social implications

– The anxiety of gift reception

– The “happy” masquerade

– The prospect of being another year older

The whole thing is fraught with difficulties for me. Today has not been a good day, and even the whole week hasn’t been great if I’m completely honest. And to top it all off tomorrow is my last CBT session before the two week Christmas break; while I don’t enjoy the sessions I am going to feel quite lost and alone when I don’t attend them. This past week I have been thinking of things I want to raise with therapist and psychiatrist tomorrow before the break.

My compulsive hair pulling is not getting any better, nor is the skin picking and biting. I was researching these the other day and found that all three belong to a group of impulse control disorders. Also while researching I stumbled upon obsessive compulsive personality disorder which seemed to be the answer to some of my other problems regarding my endless list making, extensive planning of things that get in the way of completing or even starting them, my strictness about rules, the “right way” things should be done, my stubbornness and rigidity, my perfectionism and problems with relationships.

I’m sure that people think I’m a hypochondriac for researching these things but I feel that if I understand something I can control it. If something has a label I know what it is. The unknown has always been a problem for me, I get anxious if I don’t understand something so by placing a name on my feelings I can accept it. An analogy to this would be someone giving you a page of symbols and characters you didn’t understand and being asked to decipher them. You can’t. But if they told you what language it was or gave you the key you can start understanding it.

Now I face another problem, how do I bring this subject up with my psychiatrist and therapist? Do I just say “Hey look! I’ve diagnosed myself and now I have more disorders than I can shake a stick at!”? I don’t know! I don’t want them thinking I’m attention seeking or making up labels to put on myself but at the same time I feel I need to know what’s going on and that I’m not alone in what I’m feeling.

I don’t know. I’ll think about it tomorrow.

 

Decline

Over the past three or four weeks, I feel like my mental health has declined rather drastically. Before I was starting to do things with my day, I got more motivated and creative with my art, I spent more time with my family and I just felt chirpier in myself. Now I have no motivation, I am withdrawing again and in general feel sad and depressed.

Every Monday I go to a group CBT session for an hour and a half. So far I have only found a little benefit in it; we are given many handouts and sheets which explain different ways to change our thinking and behaviour but I am having a serious problem applying them in my life. I understand what I need to be doing but I don’t have the motivation or inclination to do it. The handouts are the only part that I find helpful; during the session itself the time spent on me one to one with the therapists is lost. I can’t comprehend what someone is telling me face to face, I need to see things written down to understand them.

Today I had an appointment with my psychiatrist, Dr B and another person I see with him called G. To be completely honest, I don’t even know who or in what capacity G is. I remember little of the conversation as a couple of minutes in I had an anxiety attack where I couldn’t move or speak just bite my fingers and shake. I remember being asked about my sleep, medication, side effects, self-care, home life, plans for Christmas and about the CBT. I didn’t speak in sentences, I could only answer with a couple of words each time. I really struggle communicating with Dr B and I don’t know what to do about it; I have always had trouble talking to men about my problems. I don’t know why but I find it difficult especially when Dr B and G just sit there in front of me smiling and looking overly sympathetic, with G muttering under his breath “Aw bless her”.

Today I also relapsed and self-harmed for the first time in months, possibly near half a year. Probably 10 cuts or less on my upper arm and thigh, 2 on arm, 8 or less on thigh. I don’t know how to feel about it; part of me regrets it because I had been clean for so long but at the same time I don’t care. It hasn’t helped me cope with today but it hasn’t made it worse either. I should be ashamed but I’m not. I don’t feel any worse for doing it.

Yesterday I had a problem with my two best friends. The one with mental health problems has revealed to us that she has been taking drugs for months and took some pills yesterday as well as getting stitches once again a few days ago; she was on her way to the hospital. My other friend is having some personal problems which she won’t disclose because she doesn’t think I need to worry about her. Speaking to my friends about the serious problems that are filling our lives makes me deeply sad. I miss the way we used to be at college. We were so happy and hardly ever spoke about personal stuff that mean we didn’t have a care in the world when we were together. Now it seems so wrong and broken. I love them dearly but I want to go back to the way it was.

Everything feels like it’s falling apart at the seams. My friendships are strained as is the relationship between my mum and my sister whereby my sister is still unemployed, my mental health is deteriorating once again and I am just watching it happen.