Turning 21

So today I turned 21; how do I feel? The answer is I don't feel that different to be honest. At least, not as different as I thought I would feel. Your age changing can sometimes change the way you think and feel, but the content of todays blog would not change if I was turning any age, I just feel it needs to be said.

Dr Bruce Banner turned into the hulk when he got too stressed out in the latest Avengers Assemble film, and  you clearly see the way people pussy foot around him, like he is some sort of runaway train on a broken track or a ticker on bomb that you can't turn back (thank you Mr Loaf for the quote there). This is the way some people look at me, if they know about my mental health history, and I think it is a way that other people with a mental health history are viewed; always with a little distrust. Either that or they see the scars on my arms and this triggers some sort of defense mechanism in their minds where as in reality the correct feeling should be compassion, it would be if they saw a plaster cast on my arm instead.
Don't get me wrong, I sort of understand why people do it, and I am sure most of them don't intentionally do it, but their eyes give them away. That is something I struggle to get over because I don't always think it is necessary but I am caught because at the same time I do get it. I see it everywhere, when people are getting interviewed on TV or whatever.
So much is made about the verbal and physical discrimination we as a section of society receive and rightly so, but I would take if further and say that actually for me it is the unsaid discrimination that people receive is actually worse; when people say they are cool with stuff (and I am sure the majority of them want to be) but their expressions and eyes say something totally different. It is difficult to blame people for what seems to be a gut, defensive, instinct but I guess we should be able to live in a world where we are not seen as a potential Bruce Banners' but as ourselves who may or may not struggle at times.  

Approval, acceptance and friendship

 This is my 20th blog and I must say I am a bit surprised, surprised because I have actually stuck at something, but I am more surprised that people have actually been reading it- this I did not expect. So thank you! :)
My life has changed so dramatically over the past 2 years or so, even more so in the time I have been doing this blog. So doing this has been very therapeutic for me, it is difficult to examine yourself enough to be able to tell others, and I think I have only even realised 10% of who I am and what makes me tick but I am learning. The journey of self discovery can be very long and at times very painful but I think half the battle though my eyes is knowing yourself. For me knowing why something is happening is just as important as dealing with the problem, and I believe they are both linked.

'If someone lives with approval, they learn to like themselves. If someone lives with acceptance and friendship, they learn to find love in the world.'

I think this quote sums up the three things a person needs and yearns for when you are living with a mental health condition; Approval, acceptance and friendship. Perhaps the hardest one to find in other people is approval, or certainly it feels that way. It feels that if you don't have that approval from your friends and family you cant even start to be open about how your condition makes you feel. Everyone needs that feeling before they can then get the acceptance we need to live our lives openly and honestly,we need to be honest to both ourselves and to other people to live our lives to the full and the way we need to to make ourselves better. However we still live in a world where we are not understood and we are stigmatized by other peoples snap judgement when we tell them we have mental health problems. It can take weeks and weeks to get people to understand how feel and what we need from other people to help us get better. I have been very lucky, I am very lucky to have a very supportive network of family and friends around me, but it didn't appear over night and it was very hard to open up to them and be truly honest about how I felt and continue to feel. My parents have literally picked me up from the squalor both mentally and physically so it is them that I owe the most to. There is no doubt that friendships save lives, they are often the first port of call when you need to vent. When I look back at my time at uni I realise just how lucky I was to have the friends that I make while I was there.
The most important issue we face is to come to terms with ourselves, and how we have changed due to our illness. This requires so much soul searching and it only comes with time, as our illnesses evolve we too must evolve with it. For while I hated myself and everything I was but I learned that that is who I am now, so there is no point trying to fight it. Finding light and love whilst in such a dark place can be very difficult. Finding or seeing love whilst in this place is very difficult as the darkness is blinding and overwhelming. But I have learned to find it  in the small things, in beautiful places and in the inner beauty of the people around me, but this is a slow process and can be very frustrating. But when you see the light it makes you feel a whole lot better. Trust me.

Forward back forward back

I know it has been a few days since my last post but I have struggled to find the words for what I want to say at the moment, my mind feels a bit like scrambled egg and so it is taking a while to get anything done that needs thinking about.

So I just had an interview to get some help with getting myself set up with little flat somewhere local to me. However I thought I was going to an interview for Assisted Housing, rather than Assistance with Housing. So the two pages of questions I had prepared were totally useless and for the first five minutes or so my mind was in total disarray to say the least. And to be fair the lady doing the interview could obviously tell, so kindly let me have a minute to get my head around what she was actually offering support with. With hindsight in some ways the unexpected has turned out to be more useful than what I had been expecting.
To be fair to myself I think I dealt with the unexpected a lot better than I normally do, maybe because it was in a public place or something. I don't know. But my mind sort of compartmentalized my feelings and then they sort of all came to a head when I got back in the car afterwards.
This whole experience is not just alien but also quiet scary, I walked down the step afterwards thinking 'shit, I am actually like an adult.' Which may sound silly but if you do the uni route, from my experience, you don't really have to grow up as soon as you arrive, or at all in the first year. So all of a sudden I have/had a lot of growing up to do in the space of an hour. Which of course, sent my mind into over drive. It automatically gave me a huge sense of freedom and of moving on with my life, but I worry slightly that it will be like how I described my second attempt at uni. Just me brooding in a flat instead of a room. But then I thought that actually, although I had lots of support at uni, there is even more down here, and it is more specialized too. So when it happens it should be fine, but to be honest it isn't something I will be doing in the next month or two at least. Freedom is an awesome and empowering thing but if I get left with too much time I get lost in my own mind and that is when I start to go downhill.
This good and affirmative step did make me feel a lot better, and it still does, just not as much now, because I have found myself slightly worsening in terms of my mental health. It is not bad bad, but as you can imagine, every time I slip up I always imagine what could happen rather than what actually will happen. I have found myself getting so incredibly paranoid of everything and of nearly everyone. To the extent that the paranoia is bringing anger with it, internally I am starting to get so full of rage that it can be hard to control at times, but so far I am managing to cope well with it; using coping mechanisms of my own and ones I have been taught by my CPN's. This anger is not directed at anyone or even myself, it is just a feeling that I get when things start to go backwards rather than the forward steps I am trying to take.
I am not in full blown hallucination mode thankfully but because of everything else I am doubting whether what I hear is real or in my head, unlike last time there is, so far no real anger in what I do think is not real, it is more like hearing in on someone else's convosations. Like whispers in the air. But as it stands I am aware of all this and it is all in hand and no where near the worse levels it hit last year. What I fail to understand is why it is happening, it is seemingly so random which makes it so frustrating. The new style of support I am getting is so action orientated that I feel more of in control of it at the moment. Which can only be a good thing. My general mood is still pretty up beat but the medication I am on is making me feel a bit like a zombie, everyone comments on how red the bags are around my eyes, which I don't like, but if it keeps me sort of well, it is sort of worth it.

The New

Today I got new glasses, not a big deal for most, but for someone that doesn't do change, to me it is a massive deal. It has got me thinking about how I deal with new things and change generally. To me this is one big hurdle I still struggle to climb but change happens all the time and to an extent you have to just role with it. I cannot really explain why change scares me and makes me nervous, it just does. However I have come to the conclusion that worrying about stuff you cannot chance is pointless. Of course I wish I didn't have Psychosis, but I do, so I have to get on with it and it is my desire to use it to use it in every way I can to help other people and myself at the same time. Mental illness is such that it changes frequently, it evolves from one day to the next. And I think people who don't have it need to understand this. We are not fighting a label. We are fighting an illness that may change in its nature as quickly as over night. So to an extent you have to live with the new, even if like me you cannot stand it. Some change can be good though but even that I struggle with. Change is everywhere and always happening and I think it is important to be mindful of it and to an extent you just have to go with the flow, because fighting it can make it even worse. As my illness evolves and changes I too find my self changing and evolving. For example the first time I became ill I really let myself go, and became all unkempt and the like. So this time I am fighting it by trying to keep on top of all that stuff, by making myself feel better by keeping an eye on how I dress and how I look. Not in a vain way but in some ways, feeling better outwardly can make you feel better both mentally and physically. So I think when change happens you just have to change with it and just keep an eye on yourself and be aware of the changes in you, and around you.

The most important thing I think to do in this situation is just acknowledging the fact that you can't change change. And although I wish I could you cannot control it all of the time. But I have found the trick is to become aware of yourself and of the changes that you will go through.
The changes can be difficult, especially if it is a change for the worse. This is difficult for you, but is also painful for your parents and friends to see, so keep them in the loop. Talk to them about it, because that is the only way the will be able to understand it, as it may be a change they cannot see. And if it is a change that affects them it is important, and it is their right to know about it. This can sometimes not be easy to talk about. So I sometimes try writing it down for them, especially when my brain is so muddled that I am in no position to explain it verbally to them. And I have found this silent communication works well, when talking can be too painful or hard.

Feeling the force

Well today dad and I got a new puppy. He was born on May the fourth and as such he has now been named Yoda.  It is great to have a dog back in my life and the force is definitely strong in him :P

Since the car journey home he has done nothing but sleep and chew stuff up.
Talking about sleep, weird things are a happening. I have been going to bed at a reasonable time, sleeping fairly OK and waking up before 8 each day for the past week or so. It is funny how the little things can make a big difference. My day feels so much longer, and as such I have more time to do stuff I really like. I am genuinely amazed how beneficial a sensible sleep routine can be. It may sound silly but it has made a big difference this past few days.

As I said in my last blog, I have been having quite a big problem with panic and anxiety. To combat this I have set myself a few small challenges. Firstly I am trying to organize my thoughts into specific notebooks etc. At a time when I feel my brain isn't firing on all cylinders it is much better for me to write down my thoughts, and plan what I want to say, if it important, before I do it. And it does seem to be working to an extent. The second challenge I have undertaken over the past few days was to go to Cribbs Causeway, which is a big inside shopping centre, which can get quite busy. So it was a test to see if I can cope in crowds and be away from what I would call a 'safe place' for a whole day. Although I found lunch a little tense as the restaurant was pretty busy the day was an overwhelming success which made me feel very good. I think when dealing with mental illness it is important to take baby steps. Slow and steady wins the race. Trying  too much to soon, which is what I have done in the past only makes things worse. Everyone is different but everyone knows what to them are big or little steps. 

Taking these little steps can be vital in regaining control of yourself and not letting the illness control you. Which is the worse thing that can happen but often does for a while. However being mindful of it is half the battle fought. After taking what others may see as baby steps you do get an overwhelming sense of achievement, and it feels GREAT, a buzz most people who aren't ill wouldn't understand but it is amazing.
I saw my GP yesterday, whom I get on very well with and he really got me thinking, we were talking about psychiatric wards and their pro's and con's. but what was interesting was the word he used and the explanation he gave. He said they should go back to being called an asylum, even though this word was abandoned many years ago. He said it because you are seeking help in exactly the same way people claim political asylum. He said it is not unrealistic to at times feel like you need to seek 'mental asylum'. I found that thought quite comforting and reassuring in a strange sort of way. Like it isn't something shameful to consider, but it is in fact, sometimes the best and most rational decision to make. However now is not the right time for me to claim it. But he just made me feel that if I ever do need to, that you shouldn't be ashamed of it. And  people shouldn't you wouldn't be ashamed of having your appendix out so why should you about this?