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Disorganised attachment with the mental health system

The mental health system has become like an abusive parent. I have formed what we call in psychology a disorganised attachment style with them. A disorganised attachment style develops when a child’s caregivers- their only source of safety- become a source of fear. The child no longer trusts the caregiver, realising that they cannot rely on caregivers to meet their needs. The child seeks closeness, but at the same time, rejects the caregiver’s proximity and distances themselves due to fear. That is how I now relate to the mental health system. I called Lifeline this evening as I sat by the train tracks wanting to throw myself in front of a train. I knew what was going to happen. I knew I’d be taken back to the hospital. I wanted help, but I also know there is no help there. When the police came I told them there is nothing hospital can do for me and I tried to run away. A male officer grabbed me by my coat and made me get in the ambulance. The two paramedics were lovely, but even when they assured me that they would try to get the hospital to actually help me this time, I had lost faith in these places. I paced around the hospital corridor and almost picked up the bin and threw it. I was given two yellow olanzapine wafers, which I spat out. I was finally given a proper bed in the resus room which was quiet and had a door I could close. Maybe I should have stayed there, but shortly after the nurse left I got up and walked out through the ambulance bay. I passed a paramedic sitting by the door and gave her a look which said “if you tell anyone I’ll strangle you”. Something told me to run. And I kept on running, until I felt sick with a metallic taste in my mouth and was about to collapse. I caught a taxi home at midnight.

I don’t know what to do anymore. I have all these people in my head arguing. I have voices in my head telling me to kill myself, starve myself, do it all by myself, turn to authorities for help, run, flee, be chased.

I find comfort in Missy Higgins “Where I Stood”. Even though it is about a lover, it speaks to my feelings around the mental health system.

“I don’t know what I’ve done
Or if I like what I’ve begun
But something told me to run
And honey, you know me, it’s all or none

There were sounds in my head
Little voices whispering
That I should go and this should end
Oh, and I found myself listening

‘Cause I don’t know who I am, who I am without you
All I know is that I should”

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Chase me and leave me alone: the paradox

dont get attached

I am both in pain and emotionally dead. I don’t know how I can be in so much pain and so empty at the same time. I guess the pain doesn’t fill me, but consumes me. It is hard to write in this state. Nothing will take this awful feeling away. Continue reading “Chase me and leave me alone: the paradox” →

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Despair

 

“Oh, angel lost, where do you go? In this cruel world, you feel so low.” AiMusic, “She Was an Angel “

I am not okay, and I have not been okay for a long time. As Alanis Morissette, a fellow HSP, sings in “Diagnosis “, I no longer give a damn about things that used to matter. I don’t give a damn about my life, and I’m beyond giving a damn about what anyone thinks of me. I will take packets of drugs. I will go to the park at 2am in winter and skinny dip in the lake. I will dance without needing alcohol to loosen me up. I will go into public in my PJs. I have found posts written in caps lock I made while having a rage episode on Facebook the other night. As someone commented on a Florence + The Machine music video, the only way to be at peace with death is to live your life without fear and make full use of it. Earn your eternal rest, because death halts for no one. Continue reading “Despair” →

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Depths of despair

 

I’m going under, to a place no body can reach me. I have stopped fighting to stay afloat.

My tremor is worse when I get up, so I’m staying in bed all day. It’s making me sicker and sicker. I got up this evening to eat something, despite everything in me wanting to stay in bed. I put on my earmuffs and turn the blender on. I just wanted to be left alone but my dad comes over and I hear a low, constant muffle as he speaks. No body can see that I am dying. I ignore him hoping he will stop talking to me, hoping he will notice I am wearing earmuffs and leave me alone. But he keeps on talking. I don’t know what he’s saying. I can’t hear anything underwater. My head hurts, I’m dizzy, I don’t feel right on every level. I want to scream at him to shut up but I end up just ignoring him and going back to my bed which is both my safe haven and torture chamber. I leave my phone on flight mode. I am silently slipping away, losing all hope. I receive an email that I have been discharged from yet another mental health service. I hear car doors shut outside and a part of me hopes someone is here to rescue me, but there is no knock on the door. I feel like I’m dying, but it no longer scares me. I am ready.

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Still recovering from my overdose

“I wonder if it’s my last time

To visit this place Earth

I wonder if I have a choice

Come back as a rebirth

I don’t think that I will come back

I think my lesson’s learned

I think I’ve suffered quite enough

I don’t wish to return”

~ Silvia Rosario

It’s been two weeks since my overdose and I haven’t improved one bit. I’m terrified I’m going to be stuck with this tremor for the rest of my life, and all for what? One night where I didn’t have to face life because I was smashed, and two days in hospital? My doctor doesn’t want to give me any more benzos now and blames me for what happened. We have a mental health system where you show up at ED asking for help and are sent home, then when you injure yourself later in the week you are seen to be “attention seeking” and asking for help in the wrong way! I left that session with my shrink crying.

I tried to go back to badminton and table tennis this week. It’s difficult to play with the tremor, but I still can. I left early this evening though as I just couldn’t enjoy myself. The lights were too bright, I was dizzy and everything was a blur. This is not unusual for me. I did my best to return the shots through the fog, like driving a car through a rainstorm.

Years ago I followed a completely natural diet free from anything manmade. I had to have my therapist on the other end of the phone in order to take one eight of my first antidepressant. How did I get from being terrified of taking one eight of a tablet to taking packets of diazepam, sleeping pills, codeine and alcohol all in one night? I hardly reognise myself anymore. It was the worst overdose I’ve ever taken and definitely one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done. Just when you think life can’t get any worse, believe me it can. Never take for granted the little things, such as not having a tremor.

All I want is to feel comfortable in my body.  As Emilie Autumn sings in “What Will I Remember?”, when the body suffers is it really madness to want to break these chains? I used to be an active person. I used to enjoy walking, dancing and playing sport. Now those things have been compromised. It is even hard to type as my arms are weak. I feel like I’m just waiting until the day I die. I wonder if I will then, finally, get relief, or whether, as some spiritualists believe, I will find myself in a similar life because I have not learnt the lesson? I hope for the former.

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Post-OD

It’s taking some time to recover from my overdose. My body has experienced it as a trauma. Two days ago I started bleeding. It was as though I’d got my period, but the timing was all off because I got my period only two weeks ago and had stopped bleeding a week ago. I was out with my mum at the time. I told her something was wrong with me and left the shop. She wanted to take me back to the hospital but I just wanted to go home. I honestly didn’t care if I died, I was over everything. Continue reading “Post-OD” →

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Update: tinnitus and back in hospital

I thought I might be better without therapy, but it’s as though therapy has opened a wound in me which will not stop bleeding. I continue to struggle physically and mentally. I was awake all night for months. I think the lack of sleep started to make me paranoid. I also started getting some crazy mood swings, where I’d be up at night dancing and wanting to go to nightclubs, then the next day I felt dreadful, like I was hung over. In 24 hours I’d be manic, depressed, wanting to die, and then having moments where  I felt like I really was dying. My brain started doing some trippy things. One morning I fell into a very deep “sleep”. I found myself in a strange realm where everything was set in the future. The landscape looked different, though I still recognised it as my town. There was a tower like in the city. I visited my mum’s house and her room was empty. It’s like the world had moved on and I felt lonely and out of place. I had the sense that if I didn’t come back to my body on the other side I would die. I desperately tried to claw myself back to my present day life but every time I thought I was back I wasn’t. I could see my room but was still stuck behind a veil, still out of my body, and couldn’t interact with it. “Help me, help me” I called out but I knew no body could hear me or reach me. It was like Stranger Things come to life where I was Will stuck in the Upside Down world, an alternate dimension just behind the wall. He could only communicate through the electronics. Finally I managed to claw my way back to the world. It was, hands down, one of the scariest things I have experienced. It was like tripping on drugs. I felt like I was losing all contact with the world. I was for the most part glad to be back but it also sucked having a body again and having to feel my physical discomfort. I went to the emergency department and the staff seemed really concerned about me at first. I was put in a quiet, dark, private area and given Olanzapine. I had to wait all night as the psych people had knocked off for the day. When I was given a bed I had to listen to a noisy air vent above me on the roof, beeping machines and all the problems of the patients next to me as there was only a curtain diving each bed, only to be seen for 10 mins the next day and sent home with no support. The psych person who saw me went to consult his boss, who no doubt read over all the bullshit written about me over the years and decided I was just a difficult, dependent, attention-seeking Borderline Bitch so he’d send me home with nothing. Continue reading “Update: tinnitus and back in hospital” →

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Grace

I am on the train with my crush, a waitress I met at my favourite café. She agreed to have a chat with me, but she leaves early, telling me she has something on. She doesn’t seem to be all that interested in spending  time with me.

My life rewinds fifteen years to when I was in high school and my only group of friends has broken up. I speak with Jess, who had been distancing herself from our group for a while before things blew up between me and Grace and Fran, no longer hanging out with us.

“What are you doing at recess and lunch time these days?” I ask her.

She tells me she’s started hanging out with another group of girls. While Grace had always been considered her best friend, she actually felt closer to these girls. Unlike Grace, these girls wanted to see her “shine”. She was tired of Fran and Grace’s immaturity.

I run into Fran, who was my best friend before she hated me for quitting our debating team due to my social anxiety. I didn’t have her wit nor her confidence. For once, we have a civil conversation. We are on a platform at some kind of party, with music going.

I then see Grace sitting alone on a bench. We had started speaking again. I sit down next to her. She tells me I seem different.

“Maybe it’s the music,” I say. “Or maybe it’s because I’ve just spoken with Fran again.”

Grace was an instigator. Instead of trying to mend things between Fran and me, it was like she enjoyed watching us fight. But I still loved her. I reach out my hand and she takes it. We then have a race to the other end of the platform. I wake up.

Trauma can emotionally freeze us at the age it occurred. A part of me never left school. I still long for my old friends, even though they have all, probably, moved on with their lives now. I still wish we could have made things right. I left this school in Year Nine. Amongst all the people who hated me I couldn’t see the people who loved me.

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Hell

“I think there is an afterlife. I think there is a hell. I think that hell is in your mind. And heaven? Who’s to tell.” Silvia Rosario, ‘The Last Life’

I went back to bed an hour ago hoping to get some rest so I could play badminton tonight, but I just felt even worse. I felt overwhelmed and wanted to cry. I still do. I struggle to find the words to explain why I feel this way. All the tears are stuck inside, drowning me from the inside out.

I am not ok. I think I’ve only slept one night the past few months, and continue to live with the damage the mental health system has done to me physically and emotionally. Continue reading “Hell” →

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