Election Aftermath

So, the election happened…

From: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/NHS.svg/2000px-NHS.svg.png

Personally, I was convinced that we’d end up with a hung Parliament again, so the result was a bit of a surprise to me! I didn’t vote Tory, so I’m not ecstatic with the outcome, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.

From what I’ve been able to find, the Conservatives haven’t said a lot about what they plan to do to tackle mental health problems. There’s some talk about improving waiting times and focussing on mental health in during pregnancy, which is all great. The test now is to wait and see whether things actually get better.

One thing that annoys me about the attitude of all of the political parties towards the NHS (and by association, mental health) is that they seem to think that it just needs more money thrown at it. The election turned into a pissing contest about who could pledge to spend more money on healthcare.

It’s not necessarily about money, I know very little about the whole situation but I think they need to strip things back to basics, have a good look at how and where the money is currently going and have a little rethink. Throwing money at a problem doesn’t always have the intended result.

If you want a more concise, educated breakdown of the Conservatives promises about mental health, check this out, but for now I’m going to retreat back to my bed and shake off this bug…

’til next time,

Wren x

The Importance of Work

Things in my life are starting to pick up pace. R’s leaving date is coming closer and closer, it’s making me think a lot about life, relationships and careers.

I’m choosing not to go with R when he leaves. Instead I’m staying here to finish my degree.

I don’t like being idle, I have to leave the house everyday or else I start to start to feel a little trapped. Sometimes it’s nice to curl up for a day but it gets old pretty fast. As much as I hate my job I’d go a little mad without it; I’m the kind of person who needs to work.

The more time I spend working a dead-end job, the more I become determined to get my degree to do something else with my life. I have lots of things that I want to try and I’m happy to keep my ideas for the future vague. Right now I don’t want to pigeon-hole myself into a career.

Life experience is invaluable and can’t be rushed. The years I’ve spent studying on my own have given me such valuable experience, they’ve taught me independence and personal responsibility.

I could go with R when he leaves, but I wouldn’t be me if I did that. I need something to pour my energy into, I like having my days filled and busy. This year has been enough of a taste of that for me and I don’t want it anymore. My course finished a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been going out of my mind with boredom ever since! I’m so antsy right now, I think I must be driving R completely over the edge.

(On the plus side I’ve done a lot of writing and ploughed through some seriously dry history books.)

Getting out of the house and having a job, even a crap one, helps my mental health so much. I can’t even put into words the state I’d be in if I wasn’t doing anything. My job may be rubbish and (at times) a little degrading, but it gives me a sense of work and accomplishment. I love going and earning my own money and having that complete independence.

Work is essential for my mental health. I think it’s good for anyone’s mental health. Most of the time (depending on your job) it forces you to socialise, sleep and eat at regular times and get out of the house. I’m sure this epiphany is supported by studies undertaken by people far more qualified than I am, but personally it’s only just become clear to me.

So, thank you unnamed-supermarket-chain, for allowing me to maintain my good mental health for the last two years (two years?! Seriously, this was meant to be a summer job…) please give me lots of time off to go travelling this summer?

’til next time,
Wren x

Can I Ever Escape Self-Harm?

I got the urge again last week.

I haven’t felt that strange, burning itch to hurt myself in a long time. Last Monday night it came back, it lodged itself into my stomach and refused to let go.

Being the sensible and mature woman that I am I responded to this urge by crying my eyes out into my old teddy-bear. It was really frightening, I felt like I’d been thrown backwards five years into the skin of my insecure teenage self.

After picking over what happened with R the other night I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m struggling with control right now. I used to self harm for many different reasons; but one of the main ones was control. I was very depressed and I felt like my life was being controlled by people I hated, school was a miserable environment for me; but I couldn’t escape from it.

Recently I’ve been feeling very out of control, my life is changing and horrible things are happening that I have no control over. I think that’s why the old urge came back again, there was nothing else that I could do and my mind immediately offered up SI as a solution.

Another thing that I’ve been having problems with is intimacy. I haven’t had great sexual experiences, in fact, they’re so ‘not great’ that I can’t actually bring myself to talk about them on here. Maybe one day I will- but right now it still feels too raw.

When I get stressed and feel like I’m not in control the last thing I want is someone touching me, I’m happy to give touch and love- but I just want my own space and my own body to remain my own.

At the moment I’m trying to stay calm, rationalise what’s happening in my brain and work around it. The whole thing is a little frustrating and scary- I feel like I’m broken sometimes, that I can’t get over my knee-jerk reaction of panicking.

Self harm isn’t the problem, it’s a mechanism to cope with the problem. I don’t self harm anymore, but that doesn’t mean that I’m fine- it means that my control issues just get expressed in a different way. I think that different way is avoiding intimacy and sex.

I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do to fix this problem; to be honest, realising it and talking to R about it has already helped a lot, so I think I’m just going to try and be mindful of what’s going on in my head. Also, I’m essentially trying to write a blog post about sex without giving too many details of my sex life… sorry if I’m just coming across as frustratingly vague.

Sometimes I feel disconnected from the Wren who couldn’t get out of bed and cut herself in the school toilets between lessons; then things like this happen and I realise that we’re the same person. It feels like a strange mixture of fear and nostalgia- I don’t know which one worries me more.

’til next time,

Wren x

An Open Letter to Cameron, Clegg and Miliband

Something is happening that is making me both very happy and a little worried.

The election campaign is rolling on, it’s only a couple of weeks now until we have to make a decision about which way we’re going to vote.

So far a lot of politicians have been making a lot of promises about mental health, and what you would do to help those with mental health problems if we vote you into power. Firstly, I want to thank whoever gave you the idea of pushing mental health issues. It’s incredibly gratifying to see mental health being actually talked about openly, it seems like the incredible lack of funding for mental health problems is finally being recognised.

The way that mental health care has been swept under the radar for such a long time is shocking, and with a rise in mental health problems (or at least people being open about their mental health problems) it’s an issue that can’t be ignored any longer.

Secondly, I want to stress that I hope you keep your promises; obviously, you’re politicians- so I’m not hoping for too much- but I hope that you understand that raising the hopes of a group of people who desperately need help and have been ignored for a long, long time. You have a real chance to help quite a large minority, and you’d better get it right.

And thirdly, if you do start to implement measures to improve mental health care you’d better think about it. Throwing money at the problem won’t help, you need to step back, think and consider things properly.

Talking about mental health breaks down the stigma, but the words that you’re saying won’t be enough to make real changes to the lives of people who suffer. If you’re going to talk about mental health and use it to get yourselves votes you’d better be prepared to make good on your promises. If you can’t do that, then stop trying to use mental illness to gain popularity.

’til next time,

Wren x

 

 

Happy Fourth Birthday!

It’s been four years since I started writing this blog!

I honestly can’t believe how fast the time has gone, it feels like a couple of months ago that I was commenting on the weather, telling you how my counselling was going and showing off a new pair of sunnies.

For me, blogging is about love. I do this because I enjoy it; yes, I get a lot of satisfaction from people subscribing and commenting (if you’ve ever commented on here I want you to know exactly how much I love and appreciate you, I’m not joking, you make my day!)

The next time I write a post like this I’ll be celebrating five years, that’s even crazier to me. I have a lot of hopes and dreams for how my life will be this time next year; I can only keep my fingers crossed that they’ll actually come true.

So, what can you expect from the next year?

Obviously I want to keep writing about mental health, feminism and a sprinkling of history. I’m starting to edit one of my stories and research for the next one, so I’m probably going to be posting more about that when it really starts to take over my brain.

In terms of my personal life, I’m just doing the final edit of my essay for my LTCL, once I’ve sent that off the next life project is going to be getting my driver’s license! I start my final year of University in late September, I’ll be joining an established group, which is going to be very daunting.

R is leaving the country at the start of June, I’m in a production with the RSC (I know, get me!) in late July and then will be travelling late August/early September.

Get set for a very interesting next few months!

Once again, thank you to everyone reading this, whether you’ve been here from the start or this is your first post. Let me know what you like, and I’ll try and post more of it. This blog wouldn’t be what it is now without you.

’til next time,

Wren x

Germanwings: Mental Health in the Media

From: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Germanwings_A319_D-AILK.jpg

So, mental health is in the news again.

I think it’s very interesting and potentially frustrating that for all the campaigning it only takes one incident for people to throw away their reasonable facade and show their true colours.

There’s been so much work in recent years to try and break the stigma and silence surrounding mental health problems, I think that, for the most part, it’s been working. There are still some pretty questionable newspaper headlines though- and the common denominator seems to be people acting in ways we don’t like.

When people commit horrible crimes we like to use things like mental illness as the excuse. It may or may not be, the truth is irrelevant, but it makes people feel better to distance themselves from the perpetrators.

I find it incredibly frustrating.

Mental illness is not a box to put people in, it’s a sliding scale. We all have mental health, some people have good mental health; others have mental health problems. We can all experience mental health problems, and we probably all will.

Tragedies happen, they can happen to any of us at any time for any reason. We like to find things like mental illness to blame, to convince ourselves that we could never do anything like that; or that something like that could ever happen to us.

To the best of my knowledge they haven’t found a real reason for the Germanwings disaster, so we have no idea what influence, if any, the mental health problems of the pilot had on the outcome. As usual the media have jumped on it and exploited it for all its worth.

Breaking down stigma can take years of hard work, but when times get tough we still use mental illness as a scapegoat. It’s beyond frustrating.

If mental illness scares you, there’s only one way to tackle it; talking about it. The more we talk, the more we offer treatment, the less likely we’ll be to see disasters (potentially) caused by mental health problems.

Shaming and stigma will only make people hide their problems away.

’til next time,

Wren x

Thoughts On: Life After Suicide

From: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/BBC_One_2002.png

Last Tuesday night I caught a really brilliant documentary on BB1 called ‘Life After Suicide’, it looked at how people coped after losing a loved one to suicide. It was really poignant and did a wonderful job at lifting the lid on suicide and grief.

One thing that was discussed was the level of guilt felt by people who worked in the mental health profession when friends, colleagues or loved ones took their own lives. I write a blog on mental health, but I still missed the signs when someone I cared about was thinking about ending their own life. After B died I really questioned myself and whether I wanted to continue writing this blog. I felt like a complete failure.

When you spend a good deal fo your time and effort on writing about and exploring mental health yet fail to notice when someone you know is in distress it makes you feel extremely guilty. I was so convinced that I’d be able to help anyone who needed it, that I’d spot it a mile off… and I didn’t.

Another problem that was explored was the fear of ‘normalising’ suicide by talking about it. I think it’s a very difficult and dangerous line to walk; on one hand we want to be open and honest about how a friend or family member has died- but we don’t want to put ideas into people’s heads. That’s why media reporting on suicide is so closely governed. This kind of thing can lead to copy-cat behaviour.

Dealing with any death is hard, but suicide has such a stigma attached to it. It makes me so angry sometimes, it almost feels like you’re not allowed to grieve for someone who has taken their own life. It feels like the world is carrying on and you can’t breathe. People don’t want to talk about it, because it scares and confuses them; so they don’t talk. They pretend that everything is still normal, when it’s not.

Trying to reconcile the person that you knew, with the person who took their own life, is hard. Sometimes it feels like they must be two separate people, because the person that you knew would never have done that. It’s one of the strangest feelings I’ve ever had.

People who’ve never been suicidal can’t understand what it feels like to say goodbye to loved ones. The pain isn’t numbed, when you know you’re going to kill yourself and you say goodbye to the people that you love you feel the pain of leaving them; but you also feel strongly that they’ll be better off without you, and possibly not even feel much grief at your death. It hurts so much to walk away from your family, knowing you won’t see them again.

Overall I can’t speak highly enough of this documentary. If you get a chance to watch it then please, please do. It’s the sort of thing that we should all be made to watch; suicide and mental illness will touch everyone at some point, it’s important that we try to break down the walls of shame and stigma that surround them.

In that vein, I think it was frustrating that the BBC chose to air this documentary at 10:30pm, when most people had gone to bed; why not put it at the popular 9pm slot? Too delicate? Too unsavoury? Stigma isn’t always obvious, but its frustrating that it even managed to touch something that tried to break it down.

’til next time,

Wren x

The Government Wants to Teach Teenagers About Sexual Consent…

About a year ago I wrote a post on sexual bullying, you can read it here.

In that post I wrote about my experiences, and about how I feel that it’s a topic that’s being swept under the rug. it’s not something that anyone is comfortable talking about.

Lately, the UK government has floated plans to make 11-16 year olds undertake ‘sexual consent lessons’. I don’t know what these lessons would entail, but if they’re planned well then they could offer a solution to the problem of sexual bullying.

From: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/2009-0617-Ontonagon-school.jpg

This is one of those plans that’s been a little sensationalised by the media. However, I think that it’s a great idea and fully support bringing in anything that helps teenagers to talk about and understand sex and sexuality.

In the UK having sex is illegal for under 16s. However, this doesn’t mean that everyone under the age of sixteen is completely innocent and ignorant on the matter. We have one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe, something that shows the law makes little difference for many teenagers.

As well as that, anything that tackles the issue of sexual assault is good in my book. The silence surrounding anything of this nature is awful and only hurts the victims, so giving guidance on where and when to get help is a good thing.

The people who are uncomfortable with this kind of legislation seem to be highlighting two things; the first is that these lessons will encourage teenagers to have sex. Personally, I think the law makes little difference when someone is deciding to lose their virginity or engage in intimate acts. Teenagers have always, and will always, choose to have sex when they want to. It might not be great, but it’s pretty much impossible to police. Giving them knowledge will simply help to stop any fall-out and give them power to make educated and informed decisions, as well as keeping them safe from people who want to use them.

The second is that we should be keeping children ‘innocent’ and not tainting their minds with knowledge that they’re too young to know. Frankly, I find that slightly ridiculous. Teenagers see sex everywhere, and not giving them the proper information about it is damaging. Sometimes, ignorance is not bliss; at the end of the day there will be teenagers who are sexually assaulted, bullied or raped. They need to learn when to recognise that they are in a dangerous situation, when to know that someone has crossed the line and where they can get help.

’til next time,

Wren x

The End of Friendship

This is a novelty; I have no idea what to write about this Monday. I’ve got plans for Wednesday and Friday, but my mind has dried up on the subject of mental health for the moment; maybe it’s because I’m happy?

I have to say that at the moment I’m really happy. I’m content with my life, it has its ups and downs but overall I think I’m the happiest that I’ve ever been. I have some serious challenges coming up in the next year, but I’m just going to have to grit my teeth and get through them.

As time is passing I’m finding myself discovering who my true friends are. They seems to be the people that I can just pick things up with when I see them again and who keep up with me mentally. It’s kind of sad to see how many of my friends don’t seem to be growing up- they’re still fixated on tiny events that happened years ago when we were at school.

I can’t join in when people start reminiscing about school; I don’t remember most of it and the memories that I do have aren’t happy ones. I was either being bullied or struggling with mental health problems when we were at school. Whilst they were ‘fraping’ each other I was cutting myself in a toilet cubicle.

That probably comes across as more self-pitying than I intended it to- it doesn’t make me emotional to think of, it was my life for a long time and I accept it.

What it does mean is that I don’t like to dwell on the past; some parts were great, but I don’t need to hear the same stories over and over again. If they’re the only things holding us together then our friendships just aren’t going to work. How long can we rehash the same stories before we realise how false our link is?

Things get awkward; time moves on and fewer people turn up to each gathering. There are a couple of my friends who seem desperate to hold us all together, and it isn’t natural. We’re meant to drift, to move on and develop new relationships. Yes, we’ll go for a drink now and then, but that’s it. Why can’t we talk about our lives now? Why can’t we forge new links and share new stories?

I have some lovely and amazing friends, I have friends I’ve known since I was a toddler. Those relationships are the ones that grow and change with time. Others are clearly only meant to last for a short period of time. People and friendships drift in and out of our lives. The hard part it knowing when to let go, and when to hang on.

’til next time,

Wren x

SIAD: A Self-Harm Free Year

It’s been a full year now since I last self-harmed.

I don’t know the exact date, I just know that it’s definitely been over a year since it last happened; I feel very strange about this accomplishment.

On one hand, I’m very proud of myself. I didn’t go cold turkey, it was something that petered off over the course of a few years and that I eventually made the decision to consciously stop.

On the other, it feels strange to look back and see the person that I used to be. She’s someone very different from who I am now- I’m such a confident person, I take things- even hard things- in my stride and I have good coping mechanisms.

I know that I could pick up a blade right now and cut myself; I wouldn’t and I won’t, but the mental barrier that would stop any non self-harmer from pressing down and drawing blood just doesn’t exist in my mind. I know exactly what I’m capable of.

It’s SIAD tomorrow, I always find that it creeps up on me (the logical explanation for that would be that February is the shortest month.) But I think that it’s partly because my feelings towards self harm are very mixed.

I know that it’s bad, and I want to do whatever I can to raise awareness and get people talking about it. If you’re self harming then you need to seek help and treatment- it’s something that can spiral out of control all too easily.

However, I will always feel that self harm was what kept me alive. It was the only thing that gave me the strength to keep going in the darkest times. When I was struggling so much that I couldn’t breathe and felt as though I was trapped in a nightmare the only thing that gave me enough relief to stop me from ending my life was cutting.

It’s not a popular opinion, and I would never, never suggest self harm as an answer- the answer is to go to a good doctor (NOT CAMHS!) who can and will give you drugs/therapy that WILL HELP YOU.

Because yes, I survived those moments- but I also had a damaging habit that stayed with me for much longer than those dark moments did.

I spent a very long time being ashamed. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know that; over the last couple of years I’ve been trying to move forward and actually talk about mental health and self harm in my real life. It’s been going quite well. I’m sick of having to hide.

Here’s to another self-harm free year!

’til next time,

Wren x