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.

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.

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.

 

 

All That I Am…

All that I am is not what I want to be.

One of my main goals in life is to be a somebody. A somebody in my eyes is a person that is an icon, is looked up to and admired, and doing something either worthwhile or what they have always wanted to do. But I’m not any of those things.

All through my younger years, I strategically planned everything I wanted to do with my life. I aspired to be many things over the years; a librarian, an actress, an archaeologist, counsellor, psychologist, mental health nurse, forensic scientist, police man, you name it I wanted to be it. I wanted to pass my driving test before my 18th birthday, I wanted to travel to China for the Great Wall and India for the colourful festivals, on my return I would go to university to study whatever caught my attention. I would get my qualification and my dream job. I would be good at my job, highly valued and admired. I have never added a family into my plan, it’s not what I want to spend my life doing, I want to do something worthwhile instead of bringing a child into this damaged world. I would earn a good wage and pay off student loans, and never get into debt, I would get the car of my dreams, an apartment of my dreams, the life of my dreams.

And now here I am.

An 18 year old girl with no confidence, no self-esteem, depression, anxiety, OCD, only just passed my A-Level exams, no hope of getting into a university, can’t bring myself to start driving again let alone take an exam, no job, no money, no life.

Everything I ever wanted has gone wrong. I am not only mentally ill but mentally damaged. My thoughts are all so wrong. I feel like I am living the wrong life, none of this was meant to happen. I was meant to be happy. I was meant to be as determined, inspired and motivated as I was when I was little and made those plans. But I’m not. I’m a shadow of who I used to be. And I don’t know how to step out from the shadow and back into the light.