Last week was what I like to call a "wave week," meaning my emotions and moods have been going like an uncontrollable wave, up, down, with sharp rises and declines with no warnings which usually results in breakdowns full of wailing and enough tears to will an Olympic swimming pool. The million dollar questions at the minute is, "what is wrong with you now?", of course my reply isn't as straight forward as "if I knew I wouldn't be crying," or is it? This time last year, I had my first and long awaited appointment in Clondalkin Mental Health. This is the famous appointment were I was told "your depression isn't like the normal depression," with no indication as to what 'normal depression' is or what 'type' of depression I was suffering from. I was no clearer on 'what was wrong with me' or how to 'fix it'. Unknown to me then, this meeting would be the beginning of a dangerous and lonely chapter in my life as I began the search for 'what' was wrong with me, for a clear label, identity on the reason for my constant sadness Why are so many words or phrases in quotation marks above? The words within these marks were my permanent dictionary during the lonely and complicated summer of 2015, the summer of hell as I recently refer it to as. I used each and every one once, if not two or three times a day during those months. The thought of finding a certain thing, a diagnosis, an explanation as to why life was too much for me to handle, simply consumed me. In a weird twisted way, it gave me something to live for, to do, to focus on, it is only now I see it was this very 'mission' I had set myself that I believe distracted me from what was truly going on inside me, this mission in truth saved me, saved me from myself. Not to go all movie lingo on you all but it really is the reason why I am alive today. As you know, I eventually was diagnosed with Borderline Personality disorder. At the time, I thought that it was great that I was finally given a name to my 'illness', I finally knew what it was, I could start working on it and seek for help. However, looking back now, this label became almost like a crutch, every time someone said how I was paranoid, or how I was extremely anxious or that I was sensitive, I blamed my this new label, "I can't help that I feel like this, it is the personality disorder", or "I can't do that because of my anxiety etc." It wasn't that I was taking the easy way out of life, I was simply convinced that I was this disorder, and nothing else. This label made me feel like I would never be happy for more than 20 minutes, that my emotions weren't stable and that they never would be. The more I read up about it, although it made more sense and I started to understand it more, I associated every feeling and every thought that I ever had with this emotionally unstable personality disorder. Another big problem, is that when my family and I researched therapy available to treat 'my condition', there was no public help available in my area and the private help available was too expensive, at one point I was thinking of selling Katie!! On a serious note, this caused more stress and I felt like I was back to square one. Eventually, Clondalkin Mental Health said we could try a few sessions with them to see if it helped to ease my current situation. Although I was on a waiting list for so long that by the time an appointment was arranged for me that I was already feeling better due to hard work and research at home, this appointment was honestly the best thing to happen to me through this whole experience. Without explaining the past 6 months in detail, the psychologist who I was paired with could not have been a better match. They worked with me through the six months, asked for my opinions, listened to me and treated me like a normal person instead of looking at me with pity eyes, (oh how I hate pity eyes!!) I explained how I liked working on strategies and putting things into practice as opposed to sitting and talking about my feelings over and over again. Don't get me wrong, counselling too saved my life, but I had got to the stage where I was fed up of listening to myself talk about how down I was, I needed to get up and put skills into practice and make my life better. The first thing that this psychologist said to me was " I don't believe in labeling someone's condition or mental health problems." To be honest, at the start this annoyed me. What was the point in identifying these conditions if we weren't going to use them and work on these issues? How was I mean't to get better if we weren't going to use this information to our advantage? However, very quickly I started to have full confidence in them, as straight away I started to see the reason behind their thinking. If you rely on this label you were given, whether it is Borderline Personality Disorder, Depression, Bi-polar, Anxiety, OCD etc., you will never be able to break away from it. Although this diagnosis was made by a professional doctor, at the end of the day it was made by essentially from a person who doesn't know you 100%, who doesn't see you 24/7, who doesn't know your personality, your flaws your good points. I am by no means saying you should ignore their advice and just drop this diagnosis, it is important to have an idea of what was is going on, however this doesn't mean that this diagnosis will ALWAYS relate to you. It doesn't define you, this is just a small part of you that for the meantime has been a bigger part of your life than usual. Think of a balloon. There is no exact size that it should be. Depending on the person, it can be small, medium or big, however there will come a point when that balloon may be forced to be bigger than it should be, and it will eventually pop, explode and make a mess. The balloon is your diagnosis. It isn't always a big part of your life, however when you are feeling extremely low, the diagnosis can seem to be a bigger part of you and in some cases it can consume your life. So what do we do? DO we ignore this advice the doctor gave us? No!! Definitely not, however, we need to remember this is just a small part of our life, a part that we CAN control when we have the proper skills and tools to get us through the really tough times and make life easier. I don't know if I will always suffer from this personality disorder nor does it matter. What matters is is that I am now more than ever aware of myself, my emotions, my triggers and my anxieties. I am now equipped to deal with them to make life better, that to me is more useful than a label, a label that to be honest provided more stress, more worry and more confusion. I am not a label, I am not just one thing. No one can be described as one thing, no one characteristic can describe someone, we are all many things combined and everyone is different. The same goes for mental health. Two people may suffer from anxiety but those two people will experience it in very different ways and may deal with it in different ways. You can't put a label on someone's mental health and say "This is what you have so this is what you will need to do." Unfortunately life isn't that simple. It requires work, determination and a lot of emotions, but I am telling you it is worth it. It is worth the tears, the upset because I finally not only understand my mental health, my thoughts, my emotions and my ways, I now know how to express myself in better ways, to control my fears and emotions and how to make life that bit easier. Mental Health isn't as clean cut as a label and definition and neither is the solution. Although I am more confident in the fact I have tools to deal with my mental health, I know I will have my up and downs days. There may be times when I feel extremely low and I believe that if I relied on the 'label' I was given, that I would never get up or out of the house on a down days, in fact I wouldn't have left the house the past 6 months. For me, a label is too general, you need to explore your emotions and your thoughts, it is only being doing this and practicing exercises and tools that you will learn what works for you. Although last week was a 'wave week', this week has had more highs than lows. The difference between me having a wave week now than six months ago is that I would have stayed in a low mood, I wouldn't go feel happy even if it was for a few hours. I would remain said because that is "what my diagnosis says I do, it isn't my fault". That is not true, no diagnosis is going to tell me how I should feel, I make that decision, therefore I would take a wave week every week for the year instead of a low week. I am more than a label, and so are you. Love, Emma
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
What is this page?
This page is to keep you all up to date on where I am on my journey, what I am up to and general chat! Archives
April 2018
Categories |