It’s been a very long time since I’ve blogged and this will probably be short as I’m typing it out on my phone at the bus stop. An hour ago I finished my first session of therapy in five years, and my first with my new therapist, Katya. She’s a consultant psychologist and psychotherapist at the day hospital, and we met a couple of weeks ago for an assessment at the end of which she said she would like to offer me 16 sessions of CAT (cognitive analytic therapy). I did have CAT in the past, but that was many years ago, I think as far back as 2004. I was delighted that we were going to start so s ..read more

Hi! I know it looks like I’m not really writing anything at the moment, but I promise I have been blogging from time to time. It’s just that I’m contributing to a project called Mad Covid at the moment. Set up to support mentally ill and neurodiverse people financially during these difficult financial times, and to capture the experiences of Mad people during the Covid era, the group has loads going on. If you head over there you can find me talking about: how mental health services care a lot about risk, and not so much about suffering the concept of kindness and the sort of kindness the serv ..read more

So although the UK isn’t technically on lockdown the way a number of other European countries are, most people are beginning to find out what it’s like to spend a lot of time at home. The over-70s and people with pre-existing conditions that put them at additional risk if they contract COVID-19 are virtually confined to the house, while millions of people are now working from home. Others are about to find themselves unemployed as the entertainment and hospitality industries reel from the advice to avoid pubs, clubs and theatres, and cafés and restaurants see dwindling numbers of customers. An ..read more

I’ve thought about blogging so often in recent weeks, with several abortive attempts. I considered writing about the therapeutic benefits of having a companion animal – if you don’t follow me on social media, I now have a cat! She’s just over a year old, small and black, and she’s called Cinnamon (or @MissCinnamon6 on Twitter). We’ve had her just over two months and she’s changed my life. I feel excited to see her when I get up in the morning, and I feel special and loved when she’s sitting on my lap, purring away (yes, yes, I am excited to see Tom in the morning and he does make me feel loved ..read more

It is often said that people with severe mental health problems exhibit poor compliance with drug regimens. I loathe that word, compliance. The only time I ever felt really annoyed at my CMHT consultant in London was when he said that it was “nice to have such a compliant patient.” It irked me because it made it sound like it was pleasant experience for him to give out orders and have them followed. I didn’t take my meds to make him happy; I took them because I wanted to try and be well. There are many reasons why people start on psychotropic medication and then discontinue (with or without me ..read more

I was sitting at my dining table with Tom and two members of the Crisis Team. They were there because I was experiencing overwhelming intrusive thoughts of running away and killing myself. My mind was totally out of control; I didn’t feel like “me” anymore. I was beyond self-help strategies, and that is why we were considering another hospital admission. I had thought we were all clear on these points, but then the healthcare assistant leaned in and said, “Have you tried mindfulness?” This was not the first time a member of a Crisis Team had asked me this very question. Well, crisis lady, as a ..read more

Trigger warning: this post contains descriptions of suicidal thoughts, including methods. Please don’t read on if you are feeling at all vulnerable. I want to run. I am desperate to run. When I wrote my last post my idea was to run from Smalltown to Biggertown or Bigtown, and from there on to The City, at least. Cardiff, better. Maybe even Bristol. I knew I would have to be on the run for several days to amass enough over the counter meds to successfully OD on. I thought about the need to keep my phone off so I couldn’t be tracked, the need to use hotel computers and printers to obtain maps. I ..read more

Trigger warning: suicidal thoughts and planning A depressing side effect of being a seasoned blogger with a fluctuating condition is that the archive makes it very clear that I go around and around, having better times, then having groundhog day times when it’s clear that I lived though similar crises to the one I find myself in now. I remember that almost exactly two years ago I was in a situation of extremely rapid cycling, moving from anxiety, emotional pain with a desperate desire to be in hospital, hypomania and a calm sense that there was nothing at all wrong with me, all in the space of ..read more

By now I am a veteran at completing application/review forms for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP). ESA is for people who are too sick to work, while PIP is to cover extra expenses associated with being disabled and can be claimed whether working or not. The standard suggestion by advice agencies is to explain your condition in terms of your worst day. A “mustn’t grumble” traditional British attitude, or answering questions on a good day while pushing the horrible times to the back of your mind, will make you look like there is nothing much wrong wi ..read more

Today I got angry after reading a tweet. Just a regular day then, you might think, except this one made me so angry I have had to blog for the first time in months. I was reading a thread about a conference on “rapid tranquillisation”. For those who don’t know, on a psychiatric ward this means administering a drug, generally by injection, which knocks the patient out. Patients usually have to be restrained by staff for this to take place. I am very, very fortunate that I have never been restrained or injected, but I can assure you it is difficult to watch, and I have read enough accounts by th ..read more