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.  

A change of course

Yesterday I had an appointment at the hospital to get the results that I was due from when I was an inpatient a few weeks ago. I was not due to see the Neurologist untill sept 24th but I got a phone call on tuesday morning to change the day to yesterday and it just so happened that the call came just as I was walking in to see the Consultant Psychiatrist for a review. So me and most people who knew about the changed appointment assumed that because they had brought it forward, there was something neurologically wrong with me. How wrong were we! After 4 days of pannic and lack of sleep I walked in to the consulting room for him to sit me down and tell me that my scans were all clear and that what is causing me psychical pain is actually my mind, not something 'organic' as he put it.
Of course I was over the moon that nothing neurologically is wrong with me, but it was short lived because I started to think about what he had said- my mind is causing me psychical pain. Now I have not intentionally harmed myself since I came home from university. But in my eyes I have just discovered that my mind is harming me, and has been doing it to me without me controlling it for some time now. This worries me on a number of levels because I am seemingly in less control of myself and my mind than I believed I was and had been for a while. If you have read any of my pevious blogs you may well have seen that control for me is very important, control of myself, control of what I do, and control of situations I put myself in.
Forgetting the Neurology stuff for a minute I have become increasingly feeling out of control of stuff (but until now, not of myself), I worry about anything and everything and am anxious of every situation I am in when I am not at home. I am paraniod about pretty much everyone and everything around me as I said in the last blog I wrote. Yet up until yesterday I haven't felt out of control of myself, now it seems subconsciously I am, a thought I really do hate having because apart from this, I do feel in control of myself. Now I ask myself what the hell do I do now then? And the answer is at the moment I have no idea. The two Community Psychiatric Nurses that are in charge of my care and I have been discussing a number of options to explore; firstly I am to undergo a sixteen week course of Cognitive Analytical Therapy, apparently this entails a really close self examination of myself and what makes me tick, this to me sounds like a very positive but quite difficult step as I personally do not like to be so mentally exposed to anyone, like I will have to be for this to work. Secondly we are going to further discuss the idea that I have some sort of personality disorder, although I hate labelling myself or seeing others to it to me or other people, I am of the opinion that if this is caused by different things that stress me out combining together and making me feel this way. I need to know that that is definitely how my mind works (or fails to work properly). I say this because if in the future I see a big change coming in my life, and I know in advance my mind may not deal with it well, I am forewarned about it and can plan accordingly.
I would not wish anything wrong on anyone or myself but there is a part of me that really wishes the Neurologist had said there is something wrong, but that it can be cured with a pill or potion, that way it would have come and gone and life would stay the same. But because it is not and this cannot be treated or cured overnight or in a short period of time, wheels have been set in motion that I didn't expect would happen. One of my CPN's did say that this maybe the case, but I really hoped it wouldn't be that, purely because it means that I have to do so much more than that just take a pill to go back to 'normal'.

How it all started

Blogging about Psychosis is one thing, but no where have I told you why it happened, so I want to today, it is a little complicated but bare with me if you will. The doctors have said that I always had it in me to have a psychotic episode, I guess some people are just born with it in them. But my actions or lack of actions over the two years I was at university brought my psychosis out of me, but there is little doubt it would have happened at some point anyway. Indeed my current relapse is proof that it doesn't have to be brought on my something, it can just happen.
In terms of me bringing it out of myself, it literally started on the first day of Uni. When across the hall from me lived a a true gent, who would soon become my best friend, was rolling a joint. Now I have never done or been into drugs before, well nothing illegal and nothing potent. Except for a couple of times at new year's party's. He asked me if I smoked weed and to be honest I don't know what the answer was but from that day onward weed played a big role in my life, at the start if term it was just something we did in the evening or before a night out but soon it became all we did, after the Christmas holiday when we got back to  Uni the routine was get up at about 11am get to my friends by 4pm and we would sit in his room until the early hours smoking weed. Whilst that was happening I began to neglect contact with my family and it was the first year ever I didn't send my dad a birthday card because I was too scared too go out in public to get him a card because of the anxiety and paranioa. Plus I was going through a fairly awful break up. I couldn't attend lectures because I was too paranoid to go to them and to anxious of the people there. I was only comfortable with people inside my circle of friends whom I knew and trusted. Then dad came and rescued me and it was only when I saw him did I realize what a state I was in, I was living in a state of total mental and psychical squalor and that is no exaggeration. I neglected everything; myself, my family, my lectures, totally everything.
So my first psychotic episode was 'stress induced' according to the Dr's which I agree with. But they have all said that the cannabis played a big role on bringing it on so soon and so fast. Whatever people say about weed, it isn't good for you. I am a walking advert for that. I have made mistakes, smoking so much weed was one of them, it was foolish and done partly because it felt good to rebel against the system, and partly because getting high feels good. But all it does really is mask what it is actually doing to your body. Messing it up.
When I left I knew I would have to resit my first year, so I went back and tried to do this, while I was there I didn't go near weed at all. This episode was different, I just entered a deep, deep depression as I did the first year but this year was different because I couldn't go to lectures due to the residual anxiety and paranoia, which still plague me today. I tried numerous times but I just couldn't do it. So I sat in my room brooding. I do not know what brought it all on, but there was a lot of self harming and it is lucky I had the friends I did because they carried me until nothing more could be done and so I came home again. Knowing I couldn't go back. What brought on the depression I am not 100% sure, failure to be able to go out to lectures or socializing was a big part of it, but I don't know what the other causes were. Should I have gone back for the second attempt at my first year? On paper probably not with hindsight, but I thought I owed it to my family and more importantly to myselfto give it another go.

I do not regret the decisions I have made as they have made me a stronger person, do I wish wish i didn't have Psychosis? Of course I do but I've got, it so I want to use it in whatever way I can for the good of myself and of others.

My strange duet

'Sing once again with me, our strange duet' - Phantom of the Opera

 As my mind feels fairly jumbled after starting some new medication you may have to bare with me a little bit.

I don't know why I am finding quotes that I have heard so many times before relevant to my Psychosis, but this one I think is. Generally I am not necessarily a fan of quotes for stuff like this because it feel like I am hijacking someone else's thoughts. But since I am taking this one so out of context I think it's more ok- If that makes any sense.
The quote is EXACTLY how I feel about not only this relapse, but also about how my mind is fighting it. I think it does want to sing the strange duets again (inside my head). This duet is being sung between me and the voices like the ones I heard last time, so far I haven't dueted with him or anyone else this time. But it is a battle with the voices that wants to sing once more. Most days battling them is dead easy but like most things, sometimes on the bad days it is a struggle. It isn't a case of if I give in it will happen for certain; but there are days, which are hard to describe, during which I sort of unravel and they are the days that are harder to keep them at bay. It would take a number of bad days in a row for it to happen so I am hopeful that it won't. At the time of the start of my relapse it came very very close to being in a place where it would happen again. Having said that it isn't a case of everything or nothing; it builds up, like the introduction to the Phantom of the Opera, then he sings.
I find myself in a catch 22 situation, because I am ultra paranoid and therefore aware of all the things around me. So everything I hear I think to myself, is that in my head or actually happening? Which can be very difficult, especially when there is no one else to confirm the noises are psychical. But this vicious cycle can be broken and I think at the moment I am doing this. I think I am doing this in a number of ways, preempting trouble, or difficulties before they arise. Which is great and the people that help me do that are great, but as people with mental health issues know, it can be a bit random, and spontaneous 'unraveling' like I did at the start of my relapse.
At the moment the paranoia is doubled with anxiety for which I have been prescribed a drug called Pregabalin, which works wonders and keeps me calm when I am in somewhere new or with a crowd of people, but it is not a cure to it it is just a treatment and as such I have to learn how to cope in these situations slowly. We went to town today and I did struggle a bit with there being so many people around and about. But as I said the Pregabalin did the job that at the moment  I cannot do.