#didnt help that the mania was triggered by some bad news

[super-duper-stupor]

Last night's mania wore off and now I'm depressed😔

[poetic-beats]

Update: Good news

The lady I saw with the crisis team was absolutely amazing. Honestly I wanted to hug her at the end but i felt that would not be appropriate.

She sat and listened to us for over an hour. Like we were literally in there with her until gone 8pm...

I was like what now...its gone 8 wow...but she didnt like say anything about it she didnt like stop us or whatever...you know she let me and my mum talk away and she asked the questions she needed to ask.

She was just so lovely. So SO lovely. She completely empathised and understood my situation and my mums feelings and situation handling all this.

She is gonna refer me back to meadow lodge but hopefully i get the other psychiatrist not my old one.

But also it was more because i obviously need emergency care and to refer me to a brand new psychiatrist place outside of my area too would take longer. 

Also there is this whole thing because i was discharged less than 6 months ago when the crisis team put in a referral the process should happen very fast from her sending in the referral to the psychiatrist team at Meadow Lodge making an appointment for me. Because of the time span between the referral from her and me being discharged from Meadow Lodge.

Where as a new place I would just be getting an appointment as a new patient with no record of ever being under their care and I wouldn’t necessarily get seen as fast.

I am hesitant if i do end up with my old psychiatrist again but she told me I can always write in a complaint to my psychiatrists manager. I did not know this was even a thing as she is the head of the psychiatrists at Meadow Lodge but the lady explained to me they should usually and always do have someone in charge of that whole place as they have more than just psychiatrists working there so its like the top guy who runs the whole meaodw lodge and the psychiatrist i saw just was sort of the manager of the psychiatry department within the lodge but thats comforting to know there is someone above her at the lodge that i can file a complaint with if i get her again.

Also my GP and the crisis team lady were confused about why i’d never been offered CBT or even told that there is a free self referral place in my town that offers CBT the crisis team lady was very shocked that I was NEVER given this option or ever told about it.

Because I had mentioned I had asked my ex psychiatrist for CBT as an example of the other kinds of therapy I had wanted. Because one thing to point out.

BPD’s main treatment is DBT with mindfulness. Bipolar therapy is CBT. 

The mindfulness portion of the BPD therapy which i sat through before having to leave for my own good due to a Mania that was not helped by the teachings of the mindfulness course which told me to live in the moment and forget the future or past and consequences basically like trying to reduce anxiety i suppose but someone in a bipolar mania cannot handle that youre basically giving me a green light to spend all my money and be reckless. 

And the lady at the crisis team completely understood this! Which was refreshing. It is as if they didnt take into account BOTH my conditions when offering me this therapy. And when i brought up this issue to my ex psychiatrist she got defensive and rude and then discharged me. 

But yes...I am excited now that i can do CBT which is not gonna trigger the BPD and will be effective for the Bipolar oh and its not that CBT doesnt work on BPD patients its just they believe BPD patients might respond better too DBT.

But as you know every patient is different and its not a one shoe fits all. Also this information only goes on the basis of someone having JUST BPD not that AND bipolar. 

So you cant say oh BPD patients respond to DBT that is what you will do. Because I also have Bipolar and DBT is NOT recommended for obvious reasons for that. So they should have taken that into account. AND CBT on patients with BOTH conditions well it can work. 

Obviously in an ideal world I would receive a multi disciplinary approach a psychotherapist who draws the best bits from multiple therapeutic techniques to combat the issues within both my disorders. But I NEVER have and NEVER will expect that on the NHS given its current state. Sad thing is when looking for private therapists in my surrounding areas. They do not seem to be helping out BPD and Bipolar patients. Let alone someone with both.

Most just offer therapy for PTSD OCD ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION and GRIEVANCE THERAPY like literally the BASICS.

I found one woman who is trained extensively in BPD adults. and has done a therapy which ive read up on and sounds amazing and results sound amazing but its relatively new to the Therapy world as most therapies have been around for a LONG time so this schema therapy completely redefines how we treat a patient with BPD. But as i said its shown amazing results. 

But she IS around £80 a session possibly up to £100.

and I would more than likely be having bare minimum fortnightly meetings with her. So that could be anywhere between 200-400 pounds a month depending if its weekly or fortnightly.

That is a LOT of money. 

Money neither me or my parents have right now.

However if i DO get my DLA (PIP) which currently I cannot do given the horrible letter my Psychiatrist gave me. Then I might get enough money from that to pay for my therapy. 

But right now though I can self refer to this CBT therapy so that might be enough and might be all I need at this moment in time to help myself and unlock the tools i need to further my development and recovery. 

So yes. I also really need to be on some form of anti psychotic or mood stabiliser as i am currently on a high dose anti depressant and my psychiatrist discharged me on this dose without warning really oh this is probably very dangerous and your risk of Bipolar relapse is VERY high.

So..yeah and here I am now. Although every meeting I actually had with her this year before discharging me I was in a Bipolar relapse. My GP when i got discharged and went to see him did make a comment on my moods there and then.

Something my psychiatrist either did not pick up on or did but chose to discharge me anyways because as she said to us in our final meeting that other people are waiting for this service we cant help you forever and ive got to learn to manage my conditions on my own and handle it on my own.

Which we get but if youve not given me tools to manage on my own im going in blind which is why i need therapy. To increase the tools in my toolkit to help myself.

That is like taking a persons walking stick away and saying youve got this problem with your leg but more people are in the queue behind you so you need to learn to manage this on your own and find out your own ways of coping but we arent gonna give you any tips or tools to help you good bye...and then expecting someone to know how to help themselves aka get a walking stick although its an obvious answer to get a walking stick so the analogy maybe doesnt work at that level but you get my point.

But I feel a lot less worse than i was yesterday. So I am not too bad right now given how yesterday went.

[psychicwolftraveler-blog]

Bipolar and the stigma

Bipolar and the stigma against mental illness

When people hear mental illness they tend to shudder with fear and smugness as if there better than anyone who suffers from something. When people hear Bipolar they run a mile! Some may say I am exaggerating but I am not. Iv seen it first hand. I myself suffer from Bipolar Type 2. Now i emphasise the type as thats important. When people hear Bipolar they think of manic, mania, psychosis, hyper, unhinged...the list goes on. But I am none of those things. Type 2 sufferers tend to have long bouts of low periods and very intense anxiety, in all honesty the anxiety can manifest into paranoia-so there is an element of psychosis but nowhere near as much as a Type 1 sufferer.

I was diagnosed 3 years ago at the age of 27 going on 28. Prior to this, Id only ever had one other breakdown and that was 10 years before hand in my late teens. I had always suffered from some form of anxiety but i had always managed to control it. My job as a manager kept me mentally busy and challanged and i thrived on stress, in fact in one interview i even said i loved it! but in the end it was stress that broke me down, and now sadly that aspect off any job i do in the future will be a no no for me! But since my diagnosis iv noticed a wave of stigma attached to mental health. People are geniunly scared of it! There scared of what it means and what it can do. they dont realise the effects that can have on the person suffering!

I myself have never told any of my employers about my illness for this reason, because a lack of understanding on their part can make them nieve, and regardless of how qualified I am I wont be fit enough for the job because my brain ever so slightly works in a diffrent way to others! I know my triggers and I can control it to a point...the only thing that stops me having control is pregnanacy, because adding those hormones to an already altered mind makes for very confusing times! I spend weeks indoors not talking to anybody or seeing the outside world-but its all for the greater good, and though i can turn into a hormonal nightmare when pregnant, having a baby is a blessing and ill take all the bad that comes with it!

I recently wrote an open letter on twitter to many celebrity ambassadors for mental health, including the young royals- below is the letter i wrote:

I am writing to you today as I have been reading about all your work that you are doing surrounding mental health namely the stigma surrounding it. I am writing to you in a capacity of desperation to get my voice heard. You both are the voice that can speak for the millions so I figured it was worth a shot so here goes. Let me give you a background on myself. I am 31 and am a freelance journalist/poet and a manager within the NHS. I has my first mental breakdown when I was 16 at the time people thought it was a mixture of hormones and family factors, none the less I had to leave 6th form and was medicated for a few years. When that fog lifted I returned to college and went onto university to study new media journalism. To support myself I had to work in the post room within a NHS trust. I worked my way up that corporate ladder very quickly and after graduating kept the journalistic side to freelance and continued to work my way up in the NHS,  iv worked in A&E as admin manager, iv worked as unit managers for CNWL's Addiction services, and even ended up managing the admin team at the same unit that treated me when I was 16 within west London mental health trust, which was ironic really but also showed how far I had come and accomplished! The same doctor that treated me still worked there too! I went from being her patient 10 years before to drinking with her in a pub at 26 a fully fledged cured adult who managed the admin team including her secretary! The signifance of me telling this will become apparent soon.... In november 2014 I suffered a severe break down and voluntarily went into a low secure mental health unit just to rest and get the treatment I needed! Again it was west London mental health I was treated by, but this time I had two perspectives, one the patient and two the employee! The same doctors and nurse I had been drinking in a pub with 2 years before now saw me as a patient, some wouldn't even say hello.  The only people to acknowledge me were the patiebts who rembered me from the services they attended, but now i was one of them. This was my first experience of the stigma of mental health, I was no good anymore I was just another patient. It was at this point I was diagnosed with Bipolar type 2, I would like to emphasize the type 2 as that's another stigma I get. The difference between type 1 and 2 is vast, there is no mania with my type and more anxiety and depression. It was a hard diagnosis but it hadn't come from nowhere I had it since 16! It made sense all the times I'd have down patches I just put down to environmental factors, a bad relationship, argument with friends, stress at work etc... I just thought it was what the doctors had said when I was 16..hormones and family factors, but it wasn't it was bipolar.. So the entire time I had been working I had bipolar and nobody had known, not me, not my colleagues not even the doctor who treated me at 16 and drank with me on Friday night and now wouldn't even say hello to me after seeing me in hospital! Stigma is stigma and even employees and doctors have them. Knowing that keeping busy controlled it and stress made it worse I went straight back to work in a brand new job at the RNOH in stanmore in January 2015!! I took a step back and went in as a EA to the hospitals operations director....not an easy job but less stressful than managing things myself but it wasn't long before I got the urge to take the reins once more and within 9 months I was unit manager of paediatrics at the same hospital!  Again nobody knew until I fell pregnant in March 2016, I was not on any medication apart from calming pills to stop my anxiety flaring up but I stopped all these when I found out. I had my first and only encounter with perinatel who are a great team and service, unfortunately I miscarried at 20 weeks, and within 3 days I was discharged from the perinatal service and was on my own. The pregnancy hormones and lack of medication had made Me very edgy and anxious more so than I had ever been, then losing the baby caused more emotions which were hard to deal with. I had to finish at my job in the June of 2016 as the stress and the commute were making me sick again and being pregnant I had to make that my priority not my career. It was the first time I hadn't worked since I was 18 and being at home made my illness worse. None the less me and my partner tried again and I fell pregnant in may 2017 but again lost it at 6 weeks. This sent me into a downward spiral and I had to make a decision to try again or go back to work but we tried again and here I am 11 weeks pregnant and everything thus far going well and being monitored  everything but my mental health. Iv had no further contact from a perinatel team and  am on no medication. When I do see my midwife my mental health always gets used as a weapon. Iv been told I must have a cesarean for my own health but I also must have meeting regarding mental health to see if I could cope with a baby and what my support network is. That is what has pushed me to write to you both.... The stigma. Just because I have a diagnosis does not mean I am not capable or of sound mind! I went 12 years with nobody none the wiser not even the doctor who had originally treated me at 16, but now they can name my problem I'm not a worthy and am treated a second class citezen. People Dont talk about mental health because of this reason, and things need to change. If I had another invisible illness like epilepsy would I have the same stigma... Probably not. With my corporate mindset I ask you, when you work with mental health issues, departmentalise each issue.... Suicide, depression, psychosis, anxiety, insomnia, eating disorders . within each of these things there is a stigma and within each of those boxes is a person like me who can control, hide and survive through my issues everyday with nobody knowing, working in high level jobs too scared to say anything because when I do I become somebody everybody is scared of abd treat differently just because I'm labeled with a mental illness and as the voice of the many I do hope the work you all do goes someway to helping the case I have put to you today because this is an issue that needs changing and changing fast.I have enclosed copy's of 2 poems I have written about mental health which are also published online, I look forward to your response Yours faithfully

Needless to say I never got any replys-which made me more determined to start a blog, to have my voice and get it heard!!

Iv recently read in the news today that they believe the grand old president of the USA, Mr Donald J Trump is apparently suffering from a mental illness-which could in effect cost him his job! According to the BBC, experts believe he is suffering from narcassistic personality disorder- now hes the kind of person that gives people with genuine mental illness a bad name! He's not mentally ill, hes an egotistic old man who is too twitter happy and obscessed with big red buttons. Everything he says is pathetic and he cant be taken seriously, the way the USA can justify thier horrific mistake of electing such a gorrilla is to brush it off with, "we didnt realise he was mentaly ill"!! cop out if you ask me!!! Just take his tweets with Mr Kim Jung un- iv seen 3 year olds in nurserys have better arguments than that!! Thats not a mental illness its a child in a 70 somethings body!! Hes the human real life version of Tom Hanks's character in Big, just not as nice or as clever or as entertaining!! I defenitly wouldnt want to play the big piano with him in a toy store-god forbid you were better than him- you'd be banned from America and called a loser on twitter before being handed a shovel and some bricks to go and build his mexican wall!

My point is, mental illness is a stigma and when its used to describe somebody like Donald Trump its no wonder people get scared!! We should be allowed to talk about it more freely and openly without the fear of being judged-but if that will change who will know...Until then all we can do is live on and fight the big fight that is mental illness which ever one it may be..... we'll talk more on this subject... but until then take care...

The typist behind the screen xxx

www.gogsworld.net