Time To Change

If you live in the UK you might have noticed a few radio/television adverts regarding mental health awareness over the last year or so.  "Time To Change" is an initiative which aims to tackle the stigma and prejudice associated with having a mental illness.

This is an issue I feel strongly about, having struggled to maintain friendships once my mental health issues are mentioned.  I know I'm not alone in experiencing this.

I'm currently on state benefits due to my mental illness but find myself shying away from explaining to people exactly why I'm unwell.  It's a question I always fear and rarely answer truthfully.

Time To Change broadcast adverts such as this video, "Time to talk, time to change" (click here) which shows a man called Dave returning to work following mental illness.  When a colleague asks how Dave is you get to choose how the scenario ends by selecting the outcome.


As part of Time To Change you can MAKE A PLEDGE using this link to talk about mental illness, whether you share your own experiences with others or you just touch base with someone who you know suffers with mental illness.

Here is the pledge I made

The more mental illnesses are talked about in a positive light, the less stigma there will be.

From One Extreme To Another

One of the main symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder is swinging from one extreme to another.  This can be in any aspect of life, and for me, it tends to feature in nearly all aspects of my life.  I'm a very all or nothing sort of person, but unfortunately I don't always have control over whether it's all, or if it's nothing.

I find I drink no alcohol, or far too much alcohol.  You're my best friend one day, and I hate you the next.  I'm sexually promiscuous or I'm celibate.  I'm on top of the world, or the world is ending.  I also find impulsiveness is tied up with extreme behaviour.  There is rarely a happy medium.  It is often said that those with a balanced life are the happiest.  I think there's definite truth in that.  On the other hand, those with a balanced life probably experience far less excitement, and they certainly miss out on a lot of impulsive adventures.

Although my life has been at times, an absolute nightmare, it has undoubtedly been colourful so far.  I've experienced snippets of many lifestyles that the majority have missed out on.

I moved to Edinburgh more or less on a whim to do an MSc I knew hardly anything about.  It was a struggle but I completed the degree.  One time I was so upset and distraught I climbed up Arthur's Seat (Edinburgh) in the middle of the night with the intention of harming myself, but when I turned to look behind me I could see the city lit up, and it took my breath away.  I just sat in the calm and stillness and watched the sun rise.

The view of Edinburgh at night

I've know what it's like to almost die, but at the last minute fate has dealt me a royal flush and I've come through. I've been as high as it's possible to go, and I've been right down into the pits of hell.  I've met so many people, some good, some bad, but all different.

There a lot of things in my past (and present come to think of it) that I'm not necessarily proud of.  But then these experiences have made me the person I am today.  In my 24 years I've had numerous one night stands, some with married men, the majority with complete strangers.  I've drank so much alcohol I've suffered alcohol poisoning and almost shot my kidneys.  I've taken so many overdoses and ended up in a coma.  I've taken class A drugs.  I've slept with people for class A drugs.  I've slept so much I didn't see daylight for a month.  I've compromised my safety and as a result been sexually assaulted twice, and raped once.  I've lost my freedom for months at a time and had to live on a psychiatric ward.  I lost a Christmas and a birthday to that ward. I've driven my parents to the edge of their sanity.  I've made my Dad cry like a baby, something I've only seen him do on two other occasions, when he lost his Dad.  I've been handcuffed and detained by the police for running through 70mph traffic.  I've known what it's like to lose all your money to an alcohol addiction, and sit in an empty flat, with ice on the inside of the windows, eating dry bread which you payed for with a pound you found in the gutter.

I'm not proud of these things; but at the same time it has filled me with empathy for others.  I've seen snapshots of how other people live their lives.  And I've been able to walk away from most of it.  It has made me grateful for the life I have today.  I appreciate having food, and money, and warmth and the support of my family and mental health team because at times I didn't have any of that.

Two years ago I remember speaking to a friend about how I dreamed to live in the future.  My wish was simple.  I wanted to live in a nice little cosy house near the countryside with a couple of dogs.  And today I have that.  My life isn't perfect, but it's what I wanted.  I never anticipated taking the path I have done.  When I made that wish I expected to plod down a simple route and eventually things would simply fall in to place.  How naive I was.  Instead the road has been rocky, and at times impossible.  But it's true what they say; it's not all about where you've ended up, but how you've got there.  It's the journey I've been on that makes where I am today that little bit more special.  And I wouldn't change it for the world.

New Year Resolutions

Had a lovely Christmas with my family.  It makes a change from last year when I was stuck in hospital.  New Year's Eve was okay too.  I normally cry hysterically at midnight because of the rubbish year that's just passed and the new year that's bound to go exactly the same.  But not this year.  I'm quietly confident things are going to get better.

My New Year Resolutions

 Lose 40 - 50kg.  
This sounds ambitious but I've got a professional diet plan drawn up and now have a diet counselor so I'm confident this goal can be achievable with the right mindset.

My starting weight is 111.8kg

To help me succeed in this goal I have the following sub-resolutions:

a) No eating in bed.
I got into bad habits in hospital because I don't like eating in front of people.  I would take stashes of food back to my bed and eat it late at night.  My medication also leaves me feeling peckish and I often sneak forbidden foods up to bed and scoff them.  I'm hoping banning all food from my bedroom will help with this.

b) Clean teeth every night
Again, when you're feeling depressed teeth-cleaning isn't a priority.  I rarely brush my teeth at bedtime.  By doing this I'm hoping that it'll stop me from wanting to eat.  Nothing tastes good after toothpaste!

c) Only take water to bed.
I often will take fizzy drinks or milk to bed which discourages teeth-cleaning.  I'm only going to take a glass of water to bed with me.  

d) Limit gym sessions to 3 x 30 min work outs per week with an optional 4th workout of up to 1 hour.
I have a tendency to exercise in an extreme fashion which leads to unattainable fitness goals.  I feel like a failure if I don't burn 800 calories off each day.  Hopefully by just going for 30 mins at a time I can keep exercising goals at a realistic level.


e) Limit weighing myself to once weekly (twice max).
Another problem I have is excessive weighing.  On a diet I often weigh myself three or four times per day (or basically any time I walk past the scales).  This time I'm going to have a weekly weigh in (and maybe a sneaky-peak midweek) to try and become less obsessive about my weight.

"Living alone, I think of all the friends I've known, but when I dial the telephone, nobodies home"

The title are a few lyrics from "All By Myself" but at this current point in time they seem to suit my life quite well.  I've always been a "popular person", and never struggled to make friends.  As I've said in previous blogs, I never stuck to one person like glue, I would float around different friendship groups.

When I started University as an undergraduate at the University of Birmingham (about an hours train ride from home) I moved into halls of residence and instantly had another 11 friends, the other 5 girls I shared my flat with and the 6 boys next door who we all became close to.  For 3 years I'd got a great social life, with people always up, no matter what time of day or night, and they were always ready for a laugh.  It was a great distraction.  A few of them knew about my problems but I never really talked much about myself.

Following Birmingham University I moved to Edinburgh to start a post-graduate course at Edinburgh University.  There were another six people on the course I had chosen.  This time though I had moved in with a friend who was also moving to Edinburgh.  I thought I knew him quite well but it turned out I didn't know him very well at all. The other people on my course were living in halls apart from one or two.  The first two weeks started off fine.  I got on well with the others from my course.  We went out a few times and I had them all round to my flat for drinks.  Then my flatmate met them all.  That's where it all went wrong.  He knew about my psychiatric problems, and after a few drinks too many he told them everything.  After that night they didn't want to know me.  I became an outcast.  That's the first time it's ever happened to me.  I was never bullied at school, and although these people were never nasty to my face, I knew they spoke about me behind my back, and I felt very isolated.  Edinburgh was over 4 hours on a train home, and the train fare was over £100.  I was skint, having used all my savings and loan to pay for the MSc course. I developed an expensive drinking habit, and any money I had went towards that.  I often would go without food, or eat a 30p vegetable curry from a tin can.  I think that is the most miserable I've been for a prolonged period.

I moved home to my parents house after there were no more taught elements to the degree and wrote my dissertation from there.  That was in June 2009 and I have lived in this area ever since.

For a year I worked as a medical secretary whilst I finished my dissertation and so I would see people at work.  I would class them as my "friends".  We went out a few times a month.  They were all older and most were married with kids but we all seemed to get on just fine.

I left that job and became a carer, hoping to train the following year as a social worker.  Sadly, during that time I was signed off work sick, that was fourteen months ago, and since then I've been socially isolated for the most part, except for the time I've spent as an inpatient in the local psychiatric hospital.  I also moved into my own house in February.

I speak to a couple of people from my time at Birmingham.  The rest just seem to have drifted away.  Even the two I still talk to have their own lives.  It feels like everyone has gone to the next step of their lives and I've been left behind.

I always vowed I'd never make any lasting friendships with someone from a psychiatric ward.  My problems were enough without having friends who also have problems.   However, when you're living in such close company with other people it becomes difficult to avoid becoming friends.  I've spent a total of six months living on the same ward as one girl in the last year and I think she might be my first "best friend".  There was another girl who I was also friends with but due to her manipulative behavior I finally dropped her a few weeks ago.

Sadly though I feel the time has come to also say goodbye to this friend too.  She spends most of her time either depressed, or in hospital.  Although it's great when we can spend time together, one of us is usually down and I just think the friendship we can have is very limited.  I also think when I'm down I bring her down too.  She's often arranging to meet with me but then she stands me up.  Her reasons are always valid, but it's a source of stress I could do without,

So there goes my last friend.  Come the New Year it will be just me.  I feel sad about that.  But least if it's just me there's no one else to hurt me or let me down.

Filling the void

One of the symptoms of BPD is a chronic feeling of emptiness.  It doesn't happen all the time.  Sometimes I feel jam-packed full of life and excitement.  But when the emptiness strikes it's really difficult to deal with.

I find myself flitting through different coping strategies.  I self-harm to distract from the emptiness.  Sometimes I over-eat and buy myself loads of food to try and fill the emptiness.  Sometimes I do the opposite and go on a diet to give me something else to focus on, something which makes me feel like my life is worthwhile.  I often spend money on clothes, or other things to try and make myself feel better.  I used to go out and sleep with men to keep myself from feeling the void inside.  The biggest thing I've done is buy a puppy.  I'd been intended to buy a puppy sooner or later, but one afternoon when the emptiness struck I went out and brought one home.  She helped fill my emptiness for a month.

But sooner or later the feelings of emptiness return.  Sometimes it hurts so much I just sit on the floor and cry like a baby.  I'm lonely.  I don't keep many friends.  And sometimes the few friends or family I do have are all busy.  Sometimes I just can't bring myself to talk to them because I know they'll only end up worrying.  So I just sit and cry and cry.  I wish I knew a way of permanently filling the space inside.

But for now I guess I just keep cycling through various different coping strategies which all result in the same thing; I feel emptier and emptier each time the feeling returns.

Magical Thinking

After being referred to see an outpatient psychiatrist I had a few weeks to wait before my appointment.  I arrived slightly late, as was usual for me during those days, and waited to be seen.  A small woman came to fetch me, Dr Singhal she was called.  I sat in the chair of this old fashioned doctors room, which was cold and smelled slightly damp.  She asked me endless questions about my childhood, growing up and my current situation.  I remember being irritated by her referral to my self-harm as 'self-laceration'.  She diagnosed me with depression and anxiety, which came as no surprise.  I saw her a around once a week over the following months.  She had changed my medication to Citalopram and I was also taking Diazepam (Valium) for anxiety, and Temazepam (Restoril) to help with sleep.


I'd been seeing her for around six weeks when I took my very first overdose.  I won't go into detail of that at this point, but it was shortly after this she diagnosed me with obsessive-compulsive disorder.  I remember being confused.  I didn't see any of the behaviours I did as obsessive-compulsive.  My impression of OCD was that of checking.  I'd always been a little bit obsessive with hygiene, but I would never have gone as far as to say it was severe enough to warrant a diagnosis of OCD.


She explained to me that a less common symptom of OCD is "magical thinking" and an "inflated responsibility". An excellent run down of OCD symptoms can be found here but I'll just highlight the relevant bits to my diagnosis.

Inflated responsibility and magical thinking

If you have OCD you have an inflated sense of responsibility. This means that you believe you have the power to either cause or prevent bad events that are personally important to you. 'Magical' thinking - performing special actions to prevent something happening (an extreme form of superstitious thinking) - is closely related to this. It makes you feel more comfortable, as if you had more influence and control over what happens.

The over-importance of thoughts

This means the degree of importance that you attach to intrusive thoughts or images. It's crucial to understand here that everyone experiences intrusive thoughts and doubts - that are usually absurd and are the opposite of what they want to do or think. In the 1970s researchers carried out experiments where they asked some people with OCD and some people without OCD to list their intrusive thoughts. They could find no difference in the types of thought reported by those with and those without OCD. The difference is that people with OCD have more frequent and distressing thoughts than others because of the meaning they attach to the thoughts and the way they respond to them. OCD is maintained when you interpret intrusive thoughts as a sign that is there a serious risk of harm to yourself or others (over-importance of thoughts), and also believe that you can prevent the harm by what you do or don't do (overinflated responsibility).
The actual content of intrusive thoughts comes from your values - the things that are most important to you. The thoughts represent your deepest fears. So, for example, a mother might have intrusive thoughts about stabbing her baby, because he is the most precious thing in the world to her and she would be devastated if anything happened to him.


(Full information about symptoms of OCD can be found at www.overcoming.co.uk)

After several weeks of denial I completely understood where she was coming from.  I didn't suffer from the stereotypical forms of OCD such as checking etc, although many of the "traditional" traits were present, but the magical thinking side of things certainly rang true.  


For the last eight months I'd been performing certain behaviours, from something as small as moving an object to a different place, or something slightly more serious like overdosing, to prevent harm from happening to those around me.  At it's worst I felt I HAD to cut myself fifty times a day to protect my friends and family.  Although I'm slightly more in control of things now I do still carry out random protective acts.


I also suffer with very intrusive thoughts about those around me dying.  It feels like by having the thought in my head, the likelihood of the event happening is increased.  That leads to a great deal of anxiety, which in turns leads me back to magical thinking.


My symptoms have been exacerbated further as my mother spent several years in and out of hospital with various illnesses.  At certain points she nearly died.  All of this has fed into the process and sadly made things a lot worse.  Fortunately she's been healthy for a few years now and I think things are settling down.  


When my cleanliness and hygiene symptom gets bad I end up scrubbing at my skin with bleach, or bathing in it to keep clean.  Fortunately I've been able to downgrade from bleach to medicated Dettol of TCP liquid.  


I went on to attend ten sessions of OCD group therapy.  Although I found it slightly helpful, the majority of the group suffered from checking behaviours and my struggle with magical thinking was for the most part misunderstood by the others in the group.  It took me seven weeks to realise how the programme could possibly help me.  Still, I did learn a few valuable coping skills.

It reared it's ugly head for the second time

After having a two to three year period of having really good mental health, I was totally shocked when I found myself back in a similar situation to the one I'd been in 6 years earlier.  After a couple of agonising months enduring a messy break-up with my boyfriend of over three-years I lasted only four months before I found myself with a razor in my hand.

The very next day I bit the bullet and went immediately to see my GP.  The surgery I attended was a massive surgery with around 12 GPs working there.  It was a bit of a lottery who you'd end up seeing but to my absolute luck I ended up seeing a wonderful doctor, Dr Basra.  I didn't know at the time but he went on to be one of my closest allies at university, supporting me on a weekly basis, writing countless letters to my head of department and personal tutor explaining why my work was so behind.  I remember waiting very very nervously in the large waiting room for my name to be called.  When I went in to see him he asked me a series of questions to determine the range of symptoms I was experiencing.  I walked away from the surgery for the first time in my life feeling that someone had taken things seriously without over-dramatizing the situation.

Over the next week I read the literature I'd been giving regarding anti-depressants.  It was something I wasn't overly keen on, but feeling like I did I'd have probably shaved my head if I thought it would make a blind bit of difference.  I kept things well and truly hidden from all six of my housemates at that stage apart from one, Ali.  The following week, Valentine's day 2007, I returned to see Dr Basra and he prescribed Paroxetine.  That evening, as I had done the previous Valentine's day I cooked a big pasta feast for me and my other friends who were without plans.  Nobody had a clue that my arms were sliced up and I'd just been prescribed anti-depressants.

After a few weeks it became harder and harder to hide it.  I'd stopped sleeping and would often be red-eyed from crying.  One morning, after a particularly bad nights sleep, I talked to each of my housemates individually as they came down at their various times and ate breakfast.  They were all very supportive, and a little shocked, as I'd always been the life and soul of the party.  I felt utterly embarassed admitting how much I was struggling.  I remember hiding my face under a fleecy blanket I'd got wrapped around me to keep warm.  I didn't go into much detail, just that I'd had problems when I was younger and that I was feeling a bit down.  It was all they needed to know.  Over the following months I did end up talking more to another housemate, Joe, who was training to be a doctor.  I didn't mention a thing to my parents, although our relationship was very positive.

Sadly I didn't get on with Paroxetine (Paxil).  It made me feel sick and dizzy.  If I'd have known that most of the anti-depressants would have various side effects I'd have probably stuck with it a bit longer but after around ten days I was switched to Venlafaxine (Effexor).  This made my insomnia worse and so I was finally prescribed Temazepam (Restoril), after several weeks of hardly sleeping.  I got some relief from Venlafaxine, but on a routine visit to see Dr Basra I had to see an alternative doctor, who took my blood pressure and stopped my prescription there and then as my blood pressure was too high.

I then endured around five months of fluoxetine (Prozac).  That made me feel like I was being jolted with a few volts of electricity roughly every fifteen seconds.  It had absolutely no effect on my mood.

Alongside the medical treatment I'd been referred for university counseling.  I found this somewhat helpful, and after switching counsellors a few times I was able to build up a good relationship with a nice man called David.

After returning from the summer break in a worse state than I'd been in six months earlier and having not seen Dr Basra for around six weeks, he decided the time had come for me to be referred to a psychiatrist.  I was a little distressed by this.  It's not a nice feeling knowing you've reached a point where you need to see a psychiatrist.