Tag: Mental Health

Accepting The Unacceptable

It has taken well over a decade.

In the beginning ours was an abusive relationship. Bipolar 1 Disorder entered my world by clubbing me over the head and dragging me away from myself and my life. There was no informed consent. No polite knocking at my door and asking ‘Are you ok with this invasion? Are you ok with me setting up camp in your head for the rest of your life?’

That first time, it committed horrendous crimes. It stole my most prized possession. All my control. It obliterated my reality, snatched me away from my husband and baby, sped me up and then poured concrete over me. I was convinced it would kill me…

But it didn’t.

When I finally kicked and screamed my way free, I sat panting on the other side of it, scraping all remnants of it out of my brain and off my skin, I vowed never to let anything do that to me again. This was the first and last time. I knew better now.

I knew nothing.

When my doctor told me it was unlikely that this would be my last encounter with it, I nodded but didn’t believe him.

It came, not immediately but in roughly two-year intervals again and again and again. When the early signs of those first recurrences nudged and poked and then slapped me in the face, I turned my back and raged ‘No, no , no this can’t be happening again!’

My denial fed the power it had over me to super levels.

I tried to fight it with sheer will and my bare hands grabbing at the invisibility of it. It laughed and continued to snatch my sanity, drop kicking me into hospital sometimes for months at a time.

In the face of this illness my denial was a house built of dandelion seeds.

Eventually a sliver of acceptance crept in. But only while I was sick. The moment I regained myself after each episode, I ran back into the arms of my previous life. Working and doing and being who I was before all of this. Driven by a need to prove to the world: ‘See I live with this illness and can still do it all!’

I can…but there is a cost.

In 2015 it broke me. It locked me in a torture chamber and made it clear that it was going nowhere. I sped into a brick wall, lost my reality, lost my living brain, had to have it shocked back into a feeble beginning again and again.

I limped away finally understanding that we were shackled together for the rest of my life.

I told my psychiatrist: ‘I don’t know what to do, I can’t keep doing this!’

He paused, then said:

‘Perhaps you have to learn to take this illness as seriously when you are well as when you are unwell.’

He was right.

By then I had learnt to pay lip service to my management of this illness when I was well by diligently taking my medication, living relatively healthily, taking care of sleep etc, But I had not mentally accepted that I live with Bipolar 1 Disorder every day, whether I am well or not.  I had made the easy, obvious choices, the choices that have become second nature, like exercising and taking my medications.

But it has taken much longer and been harder to make the longer-term decisions that are just as much a part of looking after myself.  Decisions like how to work and what is worth pursuing and weighing up the price I might pay for stress. Things I had the luxury of never considering before.

Fighting acceptance hasn’t served me well. Denial can damage me easily as much as the illness itself.

I have learnt acceptance is not giving up. Acceptance also doesn’t mean that the next time I get sick I will feel nothing but saintly calm. The unfairness of being yanked away from my life with no notice will still sting and ache.

I no longer leave this disorder behind in the rear vision mirror after each episode. It stays in my peripheral vision. But, the less I fight it, the milder the rope burn from being tethered to it.

It doesn’t define who I am, but I no longer expend energy proving it is not part of me. Because it always will be.

You may also like to check out the following posts:

On Uncertainty

The Well Times

Making Sense Of It

Choosing A Husband

I have been told I am lucky to have my husband.

But I did not win him in a lottery.

Michael and I met in our last year of high school. We were friends for over a year before we started going out. I remember why my feelings for him inched across the border of just friends. He was sure of himself, but not arrogant. We never ran out of conversation. He made me laugh.

I kissed him at a service station one night after driving around for hours talking. He kissed me back. I carefully considered my options for another six weeks. And then I chose him over the dying dysfunctional dalliance that had occupied me for the previous couple of years. I chose him over two other Uni boys who had nervously asked me out. I chose him over staying single because I sensed I’d regret not giving us a chance.

For as long as I can remember I never wanted to get married or have children, and I told Michael this repeatedly in the early years of our relationship.

We may have started going out when we were young, but we chose not to shackle ourselves to each other just because it would have been easy. We consciously followed our own paths.

After university we lived at opposite ends of the country for a couple of years. A year of FIFO (Fly In Fly Out) during which Michael worked 28 days west of Mt Isa and flew to Adelaide (where I worked) for his 7 days off. It was hard, but not nearly as hard as the following year of him living in Brisbane and me living in Adelaide. The long distance nearly broke us.

It took those couple of years for me to unclench from my outdated determination never to marry, to recognise it would be my loss to say no to his quiet proposal on our sofa bed one aching night before he headed back to Brisbane from Adelaide.

I knew when I said yes that he was secure enough in himself for us to be co-pilots in life.

When we married eight years after we started going out, our eyes were wide open. He knew he wasn’t getting a wife who would have his pipe and slippers ready for him when he got home from work. And I was never blinded by a desperation to get married and procreate. So, I never set up the toxic precedent of taking on all the housework and mental load.

For the many years I worked in small animal veterinary practice he had dinner and a listening ear ready at the end of my long shifts. The patience, kindness, and strength he showed me in the first thirteen years of our relationship made me reconsider my stance on children. If he hadn’t, I would not have chosen to have any. We didn’t have our first child until six years into our marriage, after we’d travelled together, after we’d each established our careers.

Neither of us could have predicted that parenthood would bring so much more chaos than the usual amount a newborn brings with them into our carefully considered lives.

Some things you don’t get a choice in.

Neither of us chose the episode of Postnatal Psychosis that hit me on day seven, that landed me in the special care unit of a psychiatric hospital while he took our daughter home. And that was just the beginning. We are living the rest of our lives with my eventually diagnosed my Bipolar 1 Disorder.

When people hear about my experience of severe mental illness or even just when I don’t relate to being buried under our family’s mental load, some tell me I am lucky to have my husband, lucky he has stayed, lucky he is so supportive.

It’s patronising.

I am not Michael’s charity case, and he is not my carer. Him not leaving me doesn’t make him a saint or me lucky.

The survival of our marriage has nothing to do with luck. It has everything to do with making a good choice in each other, and doing the work when things are hard.

This ongoing informed decision making doesn’t confer immunity against a future break up on us, but it does mean we aren’t currently sleepwalking through our marriage or wallowing in decades of resentment borne of drifting along in an uncommunicative, stagnant comfort zone.

I am lucky in many aspects of my life, and I don’t take this for granted.

Among a lot of other luck – I am lucky my husband wasn’t chosen for me and that I am not in a relationship with someone who is violent or coercively controlling. I am lucky my fertility was good when I finally decided I wanted children.

 And yes, luck brought Michael and I into the same place at the same time.

But in the 32 years since then it is not luck but many conscious decisions that have led us from the right place at the right time to sharing our lives today.

Decisions

Your Mental Load = Your Responsibility

The mental load 2.0 : Airing your dirty dishes on socials

Where’s Your Comfort Zone?

Losing My Senses

I have never been so grateful to smell cat shit in my life.

But let’s add some context for that sentence.

A few weeks ago, I went out for a friend’s birthday dinner in a small, busy restaurant. Indoors, noisy. There was a lot of leaning in and speaking loudly to hear and be heard. Within a couple of hours, tongue bitten from sitting across from someone who told me they didn’t believe Covid vaccinations had been sufficiently tested for safety, I was ready for home.

Three days later tiny terrorists held me hostage in my room. I was tethered to my bed by sticky tissues and vicious spike proteins digging in to my respiratory tract. Sick, but not my usual sort of sick. I cancelled plans for the week ahead as Covid leapt through the family. And I marvelled at how easy it felt compared to cancelling things for a Bipolar hospital admission. In 2023 everyone can relate to Covid cancellations.

Prior to contracting Covid, the things I was most concerned about, should I be infected, were likely to be things of no concern to most people. I am grateful I don’t live with any type of immunocompromise or chronic respiratory condition. Neither does anyone in my family. And yet I have continued to wear a mask to the shops without caring what people think.

Because I am vulnerable to collateral Covid damage.

Anything that potentially interferes with my sleep or ability to exercise increases my risk of a Bipolar episode. Covid does both. Then there is long Covid. The stress of living with this nasty reality would skyrocket my risk of multiple Bipolar episodes. And then there is losing my senses of taste and smell. As someone who begins to feel depressed if these senses diminish with a cold, the prospect of potentially losing them long term or permanently was horrifying.

I imagine everyone values their senses differently. When it comes to reasons to breathe, I am someone for whom smelling is as important as oxygenation. I don’t mean I am someone who just appreciates nice perfume and the smell of freshly ground coffee – although I do.

I am also someone who knows the smell of my husband’s sternal notch, the dip between his collar bones at the base of his throat. It is an olfactory hug, a smell I could pick out of a line-up of other sternal notches.

I know the softest fur behind my kittens’ ears smells of butter and air. The smell of garlic sizzling in olive oil or a chocolate cake just ready to be taken out of the oven are pure dopamine hits for me.

So, when Covid blindfolded my sense of smell on day five, and in doing so kidnapped one of my greatest sources of joy and information, I panicked…enough to google how long this was likely to last. It can be as little as five days…but sometimes this black out lasts for 6-12 months or is permanent.

This loss of smell was not like the kind I’ve experienced with a head cold. It wasn’t associated with nasal congestion. My nose was clear and breathing air in a world apparently devoid of all scents and odours. I realised quickly that aside from the discombobulation and depression of living with no nose, there were practical difficulties. Sniffing potentially spoilt milk – nothing. Toast burning to charcoal – nothing. A rotting potato decomposing in a black pool of noxious liquid at the back of the potato storage drawer – totally undetected.

Without smell to accompany it, my sense of taste was reduced to only being able to differentiate sweet from salty foods.

I began to bargain in my head. Which of my other senses would I give up in exchange for my sense of smell? Impossible. I don’t want to lose any of my senses.

Thankfully, for me, the blindfold loosened within ten days. I began to smell around the edges of the world again. Strong smells returned intermittently and then faded away again. The fading times lessened. I discovered the foul stench of the decomposing potato that had been reverse air freshening the kitchen for at least a week. Cat shit re-entered my nasal vocabulary. And with time so have the subtleties of air and butter on kitten fur,

As for the Bipolar risk factors that accompany my visit from Covid, I’ll have to wait and see. The last couple of months have carried other stressors with them too. From experience, my Bipolar episodes tend to sit back patiently while the risk factors peak and the stress unfolds, and then set in as a special treat once things settle down.

So I am moving carefully through the world with my fingers crossed, while I enjoy being back in the world of the smelling.

You may also like to check out

Covid Lockdown In A Psychiatric Hospital

When Covid-19 And Bipolar Recovery Collide With Unexpected Results

Writing On A Tightrope

What is the thing that could unseat you from your life?

For me it is attempting to control things beyond my control. This urge originates in my DNA and is exacerbated by living with Bipolar 1 Disorder. When this illness sweeps in unannounced and for however long it pleases, it rips my sense of control apart. The rebuild is always hard work.

And while I have learnt to loosen my grip a little more each time I recover, control of the control issues is still a process in progress.  

My kryptonite is sick children.

Over the last six weeks, various illnesses, hospital admissions and a surgery between my two children have threatened to overwhelm my relatively well-honed CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) skills. Neither child was ever in acute danger, yet I battled the clench reflex of control. I loathe feeling as though I am not in the driver’s seat of my life. This time I was on a bumpy road trip I never consented to, delegated to a back seat with no seatbelts and poorly locking doors.

But something unexpected helped.

At the end of April, I started a five week online Creative Writing Course with the Australian Writers Centre. Three to four hours a week to cover course material and submit an assignment. No penalty for not submitting the assignment, other than missing out on feedback from the lecturer.

I completed two weeks without distractions before the illnesses descended.

I immediately indulged in some classic black and white thinking and catastrophising and thought I’d abandon the writing course. Thankfully CBT skills prevailed: Neither child was on life support, and doing some of the course would be better than doing nothing.

I decided to do the minimum I needed to submit an assignment each week. Surprise, surprise – the writing was a welcome relief from the stress of sick children. Spinning and shaping words into new work left me feeling more in control of my world. The gentle nudge of an assignment due, felt as though someone had handed me a balancing pole as I walked my tightrope.

We are (hopefully) through the worst (of the sicknesses) now. The course finished a couple of weeks ago. But I thought I’d share two of the creative writing assignments I submitted, for those who are interested. Both are a scene with a 200-word limit.

I hope you enjoy this foray into another branch of my writing life:

Assignment 1:

Anton pulled on his fur lined hat with the ear flaps, leather gloves, woollen scarf, and snow jacket. He collected his fishing rod and box and left for the lake just as dawn poked its pink fingers through the patchy clouds. Snow crunched like fine gravel under his boots and his breath came in clouds.

He loved the peace and solitude of ice fishing. Some winters the lake froze into a clear pane of glass, and you could see fish moving sluggishly under the ice. This winter, the ice had incorporated snow, until it was as opaque as wedding cake icing.

Anton had barely lowered his line into the ice hole and himself onto the bench when he felt it. Not the usual twitch of a fish, but a heaviness.

He reeled in his line and squinted.

Waterweeds.

His stiff fingers untangled the dark green filaments around his hook. The curtain of weeds hid something fleshy, something covered in blood vessels. It had a cord, like a length of blue wool dangling from its belly.

It had ten fingers and ten toes.

 A gasp shot from Anton’s mouth. His fingers trembled across his chest in the sign of the cross.

Assignment 2:

It’s 2022. I should be used to wearing a mask by now. And yet, I suddenly notice the itchy edges on my cheeks. My breath moves hot and thick and sour inside it. Outside the mask (for a sip of water) the dry air is laundered with disinfectant, hand sanitiser and soap.

The bedside chair is designed to exacerbate my sore back. All the other parents’ anxieties hum around us. My own worries are a fistful of wriggling worms trapped in my stomach.

Th attempts to jolly up this space with zoo animals on the curtains dividing each bay, and jungle scenes on random walls, have failed miserably. The fluorescent lights erase all beauty. Behind my son’s bed a multicoloured cluster of tubes and canisters, buttons and power points sit patiently waiting for the terrible moments when they are called to action.

My boy’s soft hand is invaded by a plastic tube, covered in gauze, and clutches ‘Scrat’ his tiny plush toy wombat. The nails-down-a-blackboard screech of a toddler in the next bay jerks me upright. My back spasms.

In this place time obeys different rules, and my heart in its chest full of quicksand keeps beating, somehow.

You may also like to check out:

The Well Times

The Four Minute Teacher’s Gift

A giant digital clock rules the room. It ticks down the allotted six minutes in seconds, and an unignorable alarm leaves no one in any doubt of when their time is up. The space has a frenetic speed dating vibe.

But this is not speed dating. These are parent teacher interviews. And many of the parents are there to squeeze the most out of the teachers and every second they have with them.

I admire the teachers for being able to give the right information about the right kid to the right parents, respectfully and diplomatically. And I feel compassion for them because they are the shock absorber for a new parent’s emotions every six minutes. I’ve heard (from teacher friends) those emotions can be intense and not always politely expressed.

Teachers are overworked, underpaid, and too often disrespected by parents who should know better than to take out their frustrations on those who dedicate their career to educating our children. Parents should have the insight to recognise that their child’s learning outcomes are the result of many factors. What the teacher is doing is only one variable.

A child’s ability to function happily at school is affected by many things that their teacher has no control over.

Teachers (generally) have no control over whether a child has had a decent breakfast, no breakfast, or a slurpie for breakfast before they arrive at school. They don’t control whether that child is given the space to express their emotions safely at home, and whether they are given unconditional love and support in challenging times. Teachers often have no control over whether they have an adequate number of teacher aides and other support staff for the class they are allocated. Teachers don’t control whether a child has an undiagnosed and/or unmanaged medical condition that affects the child’s behaviour.

I appreciate that for many parents giving their child food, a safe home, and appropriate medical care, is something they are unable to provide. If a child lives with a medical condition or disability that is poorly understood or inadequately supported by the school, or if a parent suspects their child is being abused by a teacher, of course they must advocate for their child. But these instances are not what this post is about.

This post is about the parents who live with none of the above circumstances, stopping to appreciate what a fantastic job most teachers do with our children. This post is about stopping before you abuse or accuse a teacher of being responsible for aspects of your child’s development that they are just not responsible for.

I approach parent teacher interviews with empathy for my children’s teachers, even the teachers who other parents whisper sharply about. Over the ten years that I have had a child or children at school I have learnt that some years my children have brilliant teachers whom they love and work well with.

Some years their teachers do a good, solid job. And some years they have teachers who they don’t click with, who may not handle difficult situations in the classroom as well as one of the brilliant teachers might have. These last teachers may not be my children’s favourites, but they haven’t broken my children either. Because (unless a teacher is abusive) the ‘not breaking the children’ responsibility is largely mine and my husband’s.

I generally keep my parent teacher interviews to four questions:

How is my child’s behaviour?

Are they making an effort?

Are there any areas where they are falling behind enough to warrant additional support?

Does the teacher have any concerns about my child?

The answers tell me more than a six-minute gallop through their work books would.

I’ve found high school involves fewer parent teacher interviews. So, when the notification option to book in for parent teacher interviews was emailed out recently, I asked each child if they wanted me to book any interviews. The year 7 child nominated a teacher he wanted me to catch up with. I asked if there was anything in particular he wanted me to mention, and he said:

‘No. I just really want you to meet my favourite teacher.’

The interview was last night. Just after the screech of the alarm ending the previous parent’s time, I sat down opposite my child’s favourite teacher. We introduced ourselves. She sipped hot tea from a big, green mug. Her voice was a little hoarse. A Covid leftover. She asked me what I’d like to cover. I told her:

‘He just wanted me to meet his favourite teacher.’

The teacher’s whole face smiled: ‘That has made my day.’

We briefly touched on my usual questions and as I stood up, I said: ‘Thank you for everything you do.’

The whole interaction took exactly four minutes.

The teacher stood with me and smiled again: ‘I’ve got two minutes left to get a fresh cup of tea before the next one.’

You may also like to check out these other posts:

Rewards For Reports: Entitled or Deserved?

Mental Health Parenting Truths 101

The Parenting Trap – Is Information The Enemy?

Mental Health Snobbery

Is stigma surrounding mental illness only generated by people who have never been mentally ill?

No.

There is a version of the S-word that lurks below polite conversations about ‘stigma surrounding mental illness’. It occurs amongst people who experience mental ill health, and it is camouflaged by the notion that we are all in this together and all experience a similar level of stigma.

But we are not, and we do not.

I first became aware of this after my encounter with acute Postnatal Psychosis, and the rupture from reality that accompanied it. My experience didn’t fit the binary mould of the common Perinatal Mood Disorders: Perinatal Anxiety (PNA) or Perinatal Depression (PND).

Over time, I discovered that (not all but some) mothers who have experienced PND or PNA, especially if it is mild, carry harsh opinions about those of us who need medication and hospitalisation or who live with other diagnoses.

Some examples:

I once read an account by a woman who was able to resolve her mild PNA by going to a special mother’s group, which, she wrote:

‘Thankfully didn’t have any loonies in it, just normal mums who were struggling a bit.’

Another time, when I was hospitalised in the Mother Baby Unit of a private psychiatric hospital, I heard a group of mothers cackling in the common room:

‘At least we aren’t like the real crazies in the rest of the hospital.’

This snobbery irritated me at the time. Several years later, I became one of the ‘real crazies’ (patients in the main hospital) and… felt sad for these women who left their experience of mental illness with the same narrow mindset they had entered it with.

That said, most of us start the ride into mental ill health with biases.

I remember during my first admission, two of the mothers in the Mother Baby Unit were having ECT (Electroconvulsive therapy). I didn’t have any strong conscious opinions about ECT. But if I’d been asked, I suspect I’d have said: ‘That will never be me.’

Six weeks later, that was me.

ECT is still one of the most stigmatised treatments. Some of the strongest perpetrators of that stigma are those living with mental illness who have not had ECT.

 A couple of years ago, I encountered another patient in the hospital to whom ECT had been suggested as a treatment option. She asked me about my experience, and then said:

‘Well, I am a scientist and need my brain to work properly, so I can’t consider having ECT.’

I swallowed the prickly implication she had just hurled my way and thought of the surgery I had performed, the book I’d written, all the ways I’d successfully used my brain post ECT. I avoided that person for my remaining admission.

Patients new to mental illness often inadvertently extend their self-stigma to others.

During my last admission another patient told me that they had been in hospital for a week and that they were worried about the length of their stay. They asked me how long I had been in for. I replied: ‘This admission? Three weeks’

They visibly recoiled. Their thoughts may as well have been printed on their forehead:

‘More than one admission? Three times the length of my stay? And you are still here?’

I didn’t add that for me, three weeks was a minimum length stay, that in the past I had spent months hospitalised, that I would never be cured. Instead, I said:

‘Just take one day at a time, and don’t compare yourself to anyone. Everyone is different.’

But I know it can be tempting to play the comparison game. When I feel frustrated and vulnerable, my thoughts can turn poisonous:

‘Must be nice, to only have to take one medication or none.’

 Knowing very well that there is nothing nice about having to take even one medication or being unwell, even if you don’t need medications.

And that moves us on to the medication debates.

Before I came down with Postnatal Psychosis and Bipolar Disorder, I was a reluctant medication taker. I wasn’t specifically anti psychiatric medications. It had just never occurred to me that I would need them. Then I got so incredibly sick, that the prospect of refusing something that might help me was ludicrous.

Today the debates around psychiatric medication stigma tire me, because it is simple. If you don’t need medication to help manage your mental illness, that is awesome for you, but it doesn’t make you stronger, or better than anyone who does.

Anti-medication stances are a luxury not everyone can afford. Voicing that stance without acknowledging the accompanying privilege, can stigmatise those who do need medication to manage their illness.

And appearances can be deceiving. Someone experiencing moderate or mild symptoms without access to good mental health care, may suffer more than someone, like me, whose symptoms and treatments may look worse on paper (psychosis, ECT, etc) but who has had consistent access to excellent quality mental health care.

No one’s lived experience should be used to minimise or stigmatise someone else’s.

So, whether this is your first and only episode of mental illness or it is one of many, or you’ve been lucky enough to never experience one,  when you form an opinion about others living with mental illness, please replace judgement with compassion and think before you speak or write.

You may also be interested in the following posts:

Psychiatric Medication And Stigma

World Maternal Mental Health Day: It’s Not All Postnatal Depression

Welcome To Motherhood

ECT: Blowing up some myths – Part 1

ECT: Blowing up some myths – Part 2

The Well Times

What does well look like for you?

I have painted many pictures of myself when a Bipolar episode knocks me out of my life for a while.

But what about my well times?

I don’t identify with the cartoonish cliché of Bipolar Disorder. I don’t spend each day either drowning in depression or being supersized by mania. This depiction of the illness lacks nuance. It’s a stereotype wheeled out for memes or lazy reporting.

I can only speak about the fingerprint of my own experience. Severe, but well managed.  

Sure – when I am unwell, I tend towards very unwell. I won’t sugar coat that.

But, for me…for me – when I am well, I am well…well.

In my well times my life is not a daily struggle. If anything, I struggle less than many ‘mentally healthy’ people. Thanks to my Bipolar Disorder, my box of psychological tools to deal not only with my illness but life in general – is full. But before it thundered into my life, my toolbox contained the equivalent of a pair of tweezers and some toenail clippers.

I am well now.

And it looks a little like this…

It is settling into myself. It is being alert to all I am capable of. It is a beautiful, clear, hard-won self-knowledge

It can be simple things – being able to read and drive and go to the shops, immerse myself in my family.

But it is more than the simple things.

It is actively pursuing my edge, courting the possibility of foundering, because I know the feeling of foundering will be fleeting compared to the dull ache of regret which could plague me for years.

A couple of weeks ago an interesting job opportunity dropped into my direct messages. Both it and I were great on paper. Veterinary qualifications and experience. Writing qualifications and experience. Listed as the first requirements.

 It lit the spark I needed to update my CV, which had been languishing back in 2015.

I applied for it. I was invited to interview.

And perhaps for the first time I thought about what I wanted, rather than blindly throwing whatever I needed at it to get the job.

And so, I clicked ‘join meeting’ with all the skills and experience I could bring (for example writing well) and all that I couldn’t (for example managing stakeholders).

I came away thinking – I could do this, but do I want to? If offered the position I think my ego may have convinced me to squash myself into a shape I didn’t naturally fill, just to prove I could.

Thankfully, being authentic in the interview paid off.

Having a way with words was more important to me, and stakeholder management was more important to them.

And when I got the email thanking me for my time but telling me that I wouldn’t be progressing further in the application process, I felt – a sharp little sting and then… relief, because I really didn’t want to squash myself into someone I wasn’t.

There is always a danger in well times.

It is the fear of what may happen in the unwell times.

There are times, even when perfectly well, I have to resist the pull to sit in a metaphorical corner rocking with my hands over my eyes doing nothing, because I know what has happened to me, could happen again.

I’ve felt that pull many times. I have resisted it many times. Over time I’ve gathered proof that resisting is the only way to have the life I want, even if it is a life lived with this illness. Without that resistance I would lack a lot. My second child and my self-worth top a long list.

Most recently that resistance has gifted me an updated CV and a stronger sense of who I am and what I want.

I know in the last couple of years, mental unease has crept into many people’s lives and distorted their thoughts, feelings, and view of life. It’s a foreign and frightening landscape to find yourself in. And finding your way back to the well times can feel impossible.

For me, the first steps back to wellness always start with a couple of questions:

What does well look like for you?

Does your toolbox contain more than a pair of tweezers and some toenail clippers?

You may also like to check out:

Where’s Your Comfort Zone?

My Mental Health Toolbox

On Uncertainty

From Holiday To Hospital In Under A Month

The place from where my words usually come is wrapped in wet cotton wool. I am in hospital.

For years now my prodromal signs of loss of concentration and short term memory – which can be precursors to either a manic/psychotic episode or a depressive episode – have always landed on the manic/psychotic side.

This time the signs were the same. My psychiatrist and I gambled, counted on the past history of manic psychotic, adjusted medication accordingly.

Only it went the other way. I flattened, unhelpful phrases trudged like a battalion of soldiers through my soggy brain: …better off without you…. Everyone. 

There is no need for alarmed raising of eyebrows. This is not my first go on this merry-go-round.

Those derogatory words and phrases are completely alien to me. I can see them for what they are. Just a clinical sign. Nothing more, nothing less. They don’t prompt me to hatch self destructive plans. They prompt me towards my psychiatrist, and towards hospital, because the world feels like sandpaper on my soft brain. The hospital won’t fix it quick, but it will bandage the raw areas while they heal.

At this level I find depressive symptoms are easier to manage, easier to live with than manic symptoms…unless of course I plummet to the complete paralysis of catatonic depression…and then it’s just as horrid, possibly worse.

I may expand on this comparison of symptoms  in the future. For now there is no concentration, and motivation feels like riding a slug to catch up with a leopard made of quicksilver. There is literally no point.

I do own a new hospital mug. The design is fresh, green, paisley, floral… It is sprightly. It’s the  small things that make it less bad.

2020 Ends In Hospital

Insight: The Essential Ingredient

Visiting Someone In A Psychiatric Hospital?

Covid Lockdown In A Psychiatric Hospital

Deciding To Hope

To hope or not to hope?

In one week my immediate family and I are leaving for a holiday on Heron Island. That was a difficult sentence to commit to. Not the sentence, just one word.

‘Are’

The certainty inherent in those three letters. Articulating it feels like I am going to jinx it, like I will alter the course of history, even though I know that’s impossible.

This is our third attempt at this holiday. The first was over Easter 2021. I almost needn’t follow that up with any explanation. To use a recently much reworked cliché -everyone was in the same boat…or in our case not in the boat bound for our holiday destination.

It was a time of global holiday cancellations. We were all still invigorated by the adrenaline of the early days of a pandemic many believed could be conquered and left behind.

We rebooked our holiday for Easter this year. But in a twist of acutely painful timing our city was locked down. Ironically only for 3 days. But they were the exact 3 days we were meant to travel to Heron Island.

By the time that little lockdown ended, everyone else was off to enjoy their Easter camping trips. We were left feeling slapped, as though we had been singled out by the universe to miss out on our holiday.

But we rebooked again. For next week. Knowing it might not eventuate this time either.

And about three weeks ago doom crept into the family. We began to censor ourselves and each other. Snapping ‘If it happens!’ if anyone dared mention anything to do with the holiday. We shot each other down with sarcasm and repressed feelings as though expressing any plans, hope or joy associated with this holiday would save us the disappointment if it had to be cancelled again.

So, just under three weeks ago our family decided – that instead of clenching everything, and white knuckling it through this will-we-wont-we time, we would allow ourselves to feel the joyful anticipation of this holiday.

We began to talk about what snacks we’d take on the car trip. What we were looking forward to most. We wondered if we would see clown fish. We started making packing lists.

Don’t misunderstand me. This is not about mindlessly Pollyanna-ing the reality we live in. All four of us are abundantly aware that things can look like they are going ahead one day only to have them snatched away in a minute.

While it is true that right now we have no control over whether our holidays or special events will be cancelled at the last minute – it is also true that we never did, we just weren’t as acutely aware of it.

But we can choose how we feel in the lead up to planned events. We can choose to anticipate disappointment or anticipate joy. Whether it ends up being disappointment or joy is almost irrelevant because it isn’t about the eventual outcome. It is about how we feel right now.

We can choose to scrunch ourselves into a ball of anxious negativity. But for what? Being able to say ‘See I told you it would be cancelled’ if it is cancelled? Like a sort of sick Schadenfreude directed at ourselves.

Or we can choose a more relaxed, positive attitude that coexists with the knowledge that it may be cancelled, but that the anticipation is pleasant. If the holiday goes ahead we will have had a much nicer lead up to it, than having to spend the first few days unclenching from the negativity.

If it doesn’t happen, we’ll be disappointed, but we won’t have wrecked the preceding few weeks with dread.

Choosing to have low expectations in an attempt to avoid disappointment is not only flawed, but in these times of immense uncertainty it doesn’t serve us well. It robs us of joy. The brave thing to do is hope in the face of uncertainty regardless of whether that hope ever grows into reality.

That said, I have two disclaimers for the hope approach.

The first is that the ability to conjure hope relies on reasonable mental health. Someone experiencing symptoms of mental illness, especially those featuring depression or anxiety will no more be able to think themselves into hope than a diabetic can think their blood glucose levels into the correct range. They will need the right treatment for them before hope can become a choice again.

The second is that if you are attempting this with children, they need to be old enough/emotionally mature enough to understand that the hope does not guarantee the holiday.

For today, everyone in my family is well enough to hope that by mid next week we will get to see those clown fish and soak in the endless blues of the sky and the ocean surrounding our tiny Island destination.

You may also like to check out:

On Uncertainty

Covid Year 2: Timing Your Perspective

Razor Blades In Mud: Laziness Or Depression?

Welcome To Motherhood

(A letter from the mother I am today to the mother I was about to become)

Hello Anita in 2006,

I am writing to you from fifteen years in the future. You are about to have your first baby. You earnestly believe you have to know it all now.

You don’t and you can’t.

You have imagined who the person you are about to meet will be. But a newborn is full of secrets. It takes time to get to know your child.

I am making cinnamon scrolls and listening to Mozart at dawn on your baby’s fifteenth birthday. I remember her at just a few days old. I looked into the unfathomable darkness of her gaze and felt as though I was being interviewed for a job I had no qualifications for.

What have I learnt since then?

For everything you get ‘right’ parenting wise, you get something else ‘wrong’. Can I make a suggestion? Let go now of the idea of right and wrong. It barely exists. As long as you are not wilfully abusive towards your child, the rest are just lucky bullseyes and unfortunate missteps from which you learn. The things you think are important now will be things you won’t care about in the future.

For example – your baby will be born by caesarean and be breastfed for seven days. You don’t need to know why right now. But I can reassure you that fifteen years on, how she was born and how she was fed as a baby are irrelevant.

I know this information shocks you, because you are welded to the sticky stories you were fed at prenatal yoga and hospital classes. It’s not your fault that you believe this stuff. You don’t know better.

Always remember that even (perhaps especially) in times when you are completely baffled about what to do next, you know your child better than any expert. I remember when your baby moved into toddler age, she would have epic tantrums, that went forever.

I read a parenting book, which advised the best thing to do was to firmly hug your tantruming toddler. The pressure of the hug was meant to calm their nervous system. I tried this with our little girl. It escalated her further, and the tantrums would then take double the time to resolve.

I can smile about it now, because after years of learning who she is, I know that when she gets upset, one of the first things she needs is space. The hugs are helpful later.

Don’t believe the cliches cloaking motherhood. You don’t need to martyr yourself to be a good mother. Unfortunately, you will learn that in challenging circumstances. But you will learn it and be a happier and better mother for it.

Then there are generalisations. For years beforehand I was fearful of ‘the teenage years’ because we are fed horror stories. I don’t assume her remaining teenagerhood will be devoid of challenging times. But so far, I think – give me a teenager over a baby anytime. We can communicate. She can share her sense of humour with me. I know the things she cares about, and what she doesn’t.

I love the physical independence of a teenager. She sleeps through the night, goes to the toilet on her own, can make herself food, can catch a bus, and arrange her own catch ups with her friends.

No one ever tells you that (if you have lived with your child since their birth) you won’t just be dropped into parenting a teenager. By the age of fifteen you will have had fifteen years of getting to know what works for them and what doesn’t.

Lastly please remember – motherhood doesn’t happen in a vacuum for anyone. We are fed images and text and given lectures on the ideal way to parent. But often these are presented in a vacuum – as though nothing else aside from mothering were happening in your life.

As though when you are mothering you are somehow immune to life.

Immune to relationship break ups, job losses, bereavement and grief, homelessness, pandemics, diagnoses you never could have predicted, and all that can go astray in a life.

And while these things may temporarily compromise the ‘quality’ of your parenting, they are also what can make you a better parent in the longer term. They are the things that can teach your children that life is not perfect, and most importantly that their mother is not perfect.

Children don’t need a perfect mother. They need a mother who is genuine. Who tries her best. Who is able to admit when she has stuffed up. Who is vulnerable. Who, rather than sweeping away all the challenges in her children’s’ path, can sit with her child and agree that some things are just shit. And who after sitting with the difficulty can point to something that is good. Whether that’s a stack of banana pancakes, or the child themselves.

Welcome to motherhood!

Love

Anita in 2021

The beginning of motherhood also heralded the beginning of Bipolar 1 Disorder for me, starting with postnatal psychosis on day 7. To read more about this, you might like to check out a sample of my memoir here Book

Other posts of interest may be:

The Parenting Trap – Is Information The Enemy?

Mental Health Parenting Truths 101

My Mental Illness Makes Me A Better Parent

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