Anxiety and Alcohol - My Journey
Let me start by saying in the grand scheme of things, I was never that far gone, I can only discuss my experience, my perceptions and my conclusions from my own personal experiences. This doesn’t mean I have any answers for other people, and it doesn’t mean I pretend to know what my actions caused to my close family and friends. All I can do is give my thoughts, feelings and emotions on my experiences and people can take from that whatever they would like.
Pity Party
I have suffered from Anxiety and depression since I can remember, I was an anxious child and I was diagnosed with it when I was 17-18. It is quite a difficult thing for people to understand that have never experienced it, but surprisingly enough, it is the most on the rise issue with people in today’s society. I honestly think anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications are given out far to freely as an easy fix, and although they assist they don’t give people the skills to deal with the problem, they just mask the symptoms of it.
I don’t know why I developed OCD when I wasn’t even old enough to know what it was, I remember checking under my bed, under the pink cloth over my side table and making sure my window was shut from before I even know how old I was when I did it. I remember an over whelming fear of death when I was too young to even comprehend what the cycle of life was all about. I used to lay in bed as a child and when trying to sleep I would get this intense feeling of nothingness that I still get to this day sometimes but now I know what it is, that would be my first experience of what I now know is a form of a panic attack and anxiety. I would be interested to know what would cause this reaction in a child, but with the hindsight that I now have I can look back over my life and recognise these types of symptoms from a really early age and notice that perhaps anxiety and depression can be ingrained into a person from a young age. Interestingly enough, I don’t have a lot of childhood memories aside from anxious times, my first memory is of a nightmare I had when my parents were in South Korea when I was approx. 5.
Hindsight is a funny thing now that I have hit rock bottom and come back from it and got the help I have probably needed for quite some time.
Do I think that medication for people with my form of anxiety and depression should be given out at the first signs of issues…… no. I think had I have had the education on the actual ‘disease’ at the time it would have made a huge difference to my life dealing with my anxious and depressed tendencies.
The problem with anxiety is that you will go to the doctor not feeling right, or when panic attacks start and they will give you medication. What they should do is educate the person on what causes their anxiety, what makes it progressively worse, strategies to manage it and then medicate. Medication has its place, but not until you understand what is happening to you.
Instead when I requested to go off medication I was sent to a councillor, which was helpful, but it still didn’t give me any understanding. It first taught me how to manage the particular type of panic attack I was experiencing. And this in turn stopped the panic attacks, because the shear fact I knew what to do when I started having them makes this issue halve.
For me, education on anything that is an issue for me, makes it easier to deal with. With a breakdown comes a solution, in the form of a 10 week anxiety course that would teach you enough about anxiety that I could educate others. The first thing I learnt in this course was that I by no means had a bad case of anxiety, not to compare is a good thing for anxious people, but mine wasn’t debilitating, I could function normally when I wasn’t trying to self-medicate it. Some people don’t have that luxury and that becomes a whole separate issue.
Comparison
It is difficult when you seek treatment for any sort of mental illness not to compare yourself with other people who are also seeking treatment. First you feel a sense of guilt “what do I have to complain about?” “These people actually have real problems!”, you question why you are the way you are with none of the tragedy that other people have had. Then at first you want answers, you want to know, I haven’t had traumatic events in my life, why can’t I deal with my emotions like a “normal person”.
That is what it comes down to, my anxiety worsens when I don’t deal with my emotions. When I don’t talk to anyone, when I don’t express myself, and when I make assumptions about how others are feeling about me.
I may not have had any real tragedy in my life, beyond the normal struggles and being human, money, relationships and general life. It is the way that I have always dealt with them that was the issue. I don’t like talking about myself, I don’t like expressing when I feel bad and I don’t like confrontations in relation to myself. I’m the one at dinner that listens to everyone else and doesn’t mention myself unless asked. I’ll answer questions vaguely
On the flip side, the interesting thing is, I don’t mind confrontation in relation to anything I believe in, or my morals and certainly if I need to go to bat for anyone I love. But when it comes to confrontation in relation to myself or my feelings I used to shut down. Someone hurt me to the point that I didn’t know how to process it I would cut them out of my life completely “they are dead to me”. I think this is the way I dealt with my betrayal or hurt. It only happened a couple of times but it was when I genuinely felt betrayed and hurt and that someone had broken my trust so badly that I didn’t know how to process that sort of emotion without spiralling into a depression. I didn’t want to talk about it, I didn’t want to discuss it, I was mad, I was angry, I was hurt and that was it. Rather than deal with it in any way, I didn’t deal with it at all. I believed that worked for me, in hindsight again, I was setting myself up for a massive fall. It took years but eventually my burying any feelings or any shared emotion, my avoiding being hurt resulted in years of pent up anger and distrust and depression coming down on me like there was no tomorrow. It was like, the only way I can describe it is that I felt like I had been wound so tight for so long that once that string started to fray with the slightest part of vulnerability I unravelled faster than I ever expected.
Avoidance
Writing this experience and what I want to put down and now being educated I am a little all over the place, now that I sit back with a clear mind and actually think about things, it is probably a lot easier for me to see where my mental state went haywire and possible reasons why. As I say I am no psychologist, all I can say is what I went through and why I think I dealt with things in the way that I did.
I have been questioning why now, why did I decide subconsciously at least to unravel at this time. I guess in the last three years I have had a lot of changes in my life. I have never really dealt with change well in general, so I’m not sure why I am surprised with the events that occurred. Since I was a teenager I have been determined to never be hurt, this stems from being hurt as a teenager I suppose. Everything is amplified when you are 15 or 16 and think you have such adult feelings. I do remember the hurt, which wasn’t fun and probably set me up for the next ten years of my life with any type of relationship. At the time I felt betrayed, hurt and angry and I vowed to my little teenage self that I would never ever let anyone make me feel that way again. A little dramatic but if we haven’t realised at this point that emotions seem to be amplified in my brain, then at the time I thought my world was crumbling around me. I don’t recall discussing this with anyone, I may have but I just remember feeling a determination to never let anyone get close enough to be able to do that to me again. I suppose that is when I decided that I didn’t want to be vulnerable to anyone, I didn’t want anyone to see any cracks and I didn’t want anyone to be able to get to me. I didn’t want anyone to defeat me and to make that happen I stopped letting people in. I stopped showing vulnerability because I believed at the time this would prevent me getting hurt. And that’s how I lived in relation to others, I had my close friends who if I did want to talk was always there for me, but I had no interest in letting anyone new in. Or even opening up to them or my family in the way that I probably should at times.
I had a string of one night stands, never a real relationship, I would pretend that is how I liked it, when really the one thing I now think I was craving was some form of intimacy. The problem was by the time I was 21 I had ingrained the don’t let anyone in phase so well in my mind, that when I wanted to let people in, I didn’t know how. Then I found a way…… inhibitions are always lost with alcohol.
My relationship with alcohol
I’ve never had a particularly great relationship with alcohol. First it was fun, the normal teenage stuff, then it was going out and having nights at clubs and pubs and social events. All fairly innocent stuff really, did I probably always drink to get drunk….. yes. But who doesn’t when they are 18.
My unhealthy stage came probably when I realised that I could use it help me sleep and manage my OCD.
I had always had problems sleeping, just one of those people that went to bed and couldn’t switch my mind off from thinking, catastrophe situations, worrying about people, about life, about death, about things that are out of my control but seemed to want to haunt me as soon as I crawled between the covers. Things that would seem so petty during daylight hours, seemed like such big things when the lights were out. Even as a child I had never been a great sleeper but as I got older I suppose the need for sleep was greater. I needed to get up for work, or I was tired and please let me sleep. Which after the anxiety education only makes things worse, one of the best pieces of advice I got in relation to sleep is don’t go to bed to fall asleep, just go to bed. Going to bed saying I need to sleep, I need to get up in X amount of hours, makes everything ten times worse, when I started going bed to just relax and read, or be on my phone and once I was tired turned off the light or did some relaxation, my sleep got 100% better. As soon as the pressure to want to be asleep is removed for someone in my situation, the want to sleep sets in. To be told relaxing in bed is just as beneficial to the body as physically sleeping, something in my mind switched and I realised my want to sleep outweighed my need and I was preventing sleep when pressuring myself to sleep. Ironic really.
But that is beside the point, at the time with both the lack of ability to sleep, plus the added pressure of my OCD, whereby it would take me 30 minutes to actually get to bed, I wanted a quick fix.
An example of nightly routine for OCD during the peak of it, check windows, turn off power points, toilet, brush teeth 3 times, mouth wash 3 times, check door 12 times, check oven and grill, make sure correct doors were unlocked, open wardrobes to make sure nothing inside, check under bed, strip bed to check for spiders, scan entire walls for any spiders and then turn the light out. If this was interrupted I had to start again, if I was having a particularly anxious night I would need to do certain parts of it multiple times more, and sometimes things would slowly add to it.
This sort of routine sucks the life out of you, then by the time you finally get to bed and you want to sleep and you can’t. The hardest thing to deal with for me and the OCD is I knew how ridiculous it was, I knew that the world wouldn’t end if I didn’t do it, but if I didn’t do it I was anxious and I couldn’t settle until it was done so it was ultimately easier just to do it. It’s a difficult thing to describe, its unsettling, restless, no sense of ease, the easiest thing I can liken it to is when you have restless legs. In that you don’t want to move your legs but you have the over whelming urge to for no reason. This is what would happen when I didn’t do my OCD routine, and it got to the point where it was just easier to do it, or it would just make everything worse. Alternatively, I found another option to when I just couldn’t be bothered, or just wanted to sleep, or everything just got too much.
Alcohol, if I drank my OCD stopped and my inability to sleep disappeared, so when I was just sick of it all and still not understanding any strategies to help with it, and instead being offered medication or put up with it, I found something that worked.
Starting out and for years I drank to sleep, or I drank to unwind, or I drank to go to bed without having to spend half the night checking things. Some nights I just wanted to have a break, I wanted to be one of those people who just went to bed and went to sleep, not someone who stayed up later than they should just because they literally couldn’t be bothered going to bed because the process was just to exhausting, and not in a way that would help sleep anyway.
The drinking never really became an issue until I would be going through some emotional issues or some depression and then it would get a little worse, and then it would be ok, it probably spiralled up and down for some years. But to the point where I somehow mentally associated alcohol not as a means of relations or a means of social fun, but more of a means to deal with a mental issue. The first mental issue it helped with was OCD and sleep, then depression and my now inability to express my emotions and not letting anyone in to the little fortress I had built for myself. That in hindsight wasn’t a fortress at all, it was just a really lonely place to be.
Diagnosis
I was diagnosed with self-medication, not alcohol dependency, which I think is predominately correct. Although at the point of stopping I don’t think I would have been able to do it on my own, every time I tried I felt nauseous and did feel the effects of withdrawal.
The only way that I can explain the difference between my relationship with alcohol and perhaps other people’s relationship with it, is the reasons for drinking. I wasn’t drinking to relax or be social, I was on occasion but ultimately my reasons were unhealthy, I was drinking to avoid, or stop feelings, or sleep, or dull emotions I didn’t want to deal with, or because I was mad and didn’t want to talk. But I also think sometimes I used it because I wanted to talk and I didn’t know how, and that is where another facet of it came into things. It enabled me to be open, it enabled me to express myself, even if sometimes in an unhealthy way, or an over exaggerated way, I just wanted to express myself and my feelings so bad sometimes that I would drink in the belief that I could do it that way. Because a few drinks down and I am a lot more comfortable discussing issues and it is why at some points and towards the end of my drinking when I did drink I was getting so angry, I was getting so emotional. I think I was using it as a way to want to express myself, but once I got the alcohol into me I didn’t know how to control the pent up emotions that I hadn’t been dealing with whether they were small and petty or not, I would get to the point where I wanted to explode, and I wanted so badly to talk but didn’t know how to. I didn’t feel like I had the ability to for whatever reason and if I drank I could.
Initially this tactic probably worked, have a few drinks and everyone sees I’m more chatty and open. But when you get to the point where after years and years of refusing to feel vulnerable and starting to feel so vulnerable with the combination of years of using alcohol to fix things, and using it when you have needed to talk or cry, a pattern starts to emerge.
It wasn’t so bad when I was by myself, as I would just have my Friday drinks and head to bed, everything started to change when I started to date, I started to have relationships, and my cosy little world I had built started to change, but my way of dealing with things didn’t.
Change
I think that the big issues came for me when I moved in with my partner. Not because I wasn’t happy, just simply that everything changed and that although at the time I thought I was good, I thought I was dealing with everything well and my OCD even got 60% better, my mental state probably suffered.
Saying that makes it sound like I was unhappy and that couldn’t be further from the truth. I was scared. Really scared.
I had met someone who I loved, and I don’t think I had ever genuinely loved anyone before. And with love comes vulnerability and I think this is the feeling I couldn’t pin point at the time but thinking about everything that was probably the start.
I went from being myself, my happy little bubble, seeing **** a few times a week and having my own routine that I have had for 10 years, I thought I was going in leaps and bounds with my relationship, and I was genuinely happy. Then he asked me to move in, and perhaps it was a little early for us but the opportunity came up and I was far too old to be living in my parents flat so it was a great opportunity.
What I didn’t realise at the time was what would come next, and I didn’t realise it when it was happening, I only recently realised what sparked the whole entire downhill spiral.
I was always pretty open with Brad, more than I probably ever have been, but not when it came to my past, not in relation to not letting people in and not in relation to giving up my vulnerability. And he was very much the same which was perfect. We knew each other’s routines we knew so much about each other, but until we moved in we never really knew a lot of personal stuff about each other. And this is probably what I began to struggle with.
I went from being at home, cooking when I wanted, parents looking after me, money to waste, to paying rent, living with someone other than family, let alone a partner, cooking, cleaning, washing, and ultimately trying to be the Martha Stewart I for some reason believed I should be. I don’t know why I thought that, **** certainly didn’t think it, but I never asked him, I just assumed that this is the role I should be doing. I essentially got married, over night and I was by no means ready for that.
I wasn’t ready emotionally. I thought I had to be this perfect girlfriend, this perfect house keeper and this perfect perception of what I thought it should be. I wanted to be my mum, I thought that is what I should be. In hindsight I didn’t have to be anything, **** certainly didn’t expect it, but at the time I thought he did. I was putting so much pressure on myself to conform to all these 1950 ideals I had on myself that I completely lost the plot, and I lost myself. Then what is insane I see now, I started to resent him for it. I started to blame him for turning me into this person because in my mind I had made the assumptions that that is what he wanted me to be. He doesn’t care…… But being the way I had been for 10 years, I didn’t talk about it, I didn’t say, “can you cook tonight”, I didn’t bring any issues up, I just kept resenting all the changes I had made and felt like he had made none.
I sold most of my stuff to move in, I cut my money down to pay to move in, I did this, I did that, but what did he ever change. What I see now is it had nothing to do with ****, although granted he could communicate more, but how can I blame him for that when I didn’t do it. He would annoy me with the slightest things and I wouldn’t just go hang on, just back off, you are being annoying, leave me alone. I would just leave it; I would be so passive. Then I would let everything build up. When if I had have just said 2 words or anything and stood up for myself, and just stopped being so passive aggressive, they would be non-issues.
In my mind I was scared, I felt like I had sacrificed everything, that it was all about him, but I never told anyone, I never mentioned to anyone, I certainly never said anything to **** and when I eventually brought little things up over time after letting myself explode he would generally fix it. He hated to talk out issues but he does if I actually bring them up and not assume he won’t discuss anything.
The huge changes and my pre conceived ideas of what a “housewife” should be were about to set me up for a massive fall. And when his brother moved in is probably when I started to unravel a little. Because now I wasn’t just trying to be Martha Stewart I was stuck in the middle of a family that I didn’t know well and I just smiled and nodded, his mum came more often, his brother was always there, I was cooking for three and this is when the melt downs slowly started. And my fear, vulnerability, mental ideas and bottling everything up started toppling over. In hindsight through mostly no one’s fault but my own.
In thinking about it now, I believe that what happened was with selling everything, and with starting something new, rather than embrace in, mentally I felt like my whole identity was stripped away and I was struggling to be me. In all the changes instead of taking with me a sense of self, my sense of self was in my surrounding, in my routine, in my OCD and when I took away the surroundings and the belonging and even the OCD to some extent, I had nothing left. I didn’t know who I was anymore and I didn’t really know or understand my place. I knew I wanted to be with **** and I knew I wanted everything to work out, I loved him and I loved being with him, I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else. But I know longer knew me, I know longer knew who I was or who I wanted to be anymore, I didn’t know what I had gotten myself into and I was struggling to find my place. I stopped being me and tried to be who I thought I should be. There were still pieces of me, I still enjoyed life to some extent but I didn’t have an identity anymore, and the person I was trying to be and thought **** wanted me to be and probably who I wanted to be, wasn’t me. I lost myself completely. I wanted the happily ever after without the journey. That combination, plus anxiety and depression and no ability to express emotion to others, the pressure I put on myself, and no one actually realising anything was wrong because I was so good at hiding my feelings from other and putting on the happy face or overting other people’s attention elsewhere I was able to get away with it undetected. I think that is when it all went to shit. And with hindsight…. It was no one’s fault but my own. I now had so much to lose, and felt like there were no fall backs. I was lost and although I didn’t want to be any place than with ****, he was becoming the brunt of my resentment and it was all about it head downhill. I didn’t know any other way to deal with my feeling of isolation that I created only for myself, I was on a downhill course that was unavoidable.
The Clinic
After I admitted to having an issue, which I find funny as I sit writing this now, I think about if I would have had the opportunity for this help if I had not of started abusing alcohol like I did. I honestly don’t think I would have, so essentially I had to become an addict to get the help I needed with my anxiety and depression. Bit of a sad situation there really. What does that say about all the other people who don’t have access to this sort of help?
Luckily for me I have always had health cover and that was something that was great for me at this point. I was covered for the hospital stay. I guess most people would be concerned about going into this sort of facility, but by the time I had come out and said “I am not ok”, I already felt like a huge burden was taken off my shoulders and so the first time in a long time people were taking me seriously. I had a problem, and it wasn’t alcohol, that was what I used to deal with the issue that no one probably ever took as seriously as they should have.
I think when it comes to mental health a person really needs to have developed some sort of ailment to actually get the help they need. It shouldn’t be this way, I suppose it doesn’t help with people like me that I don’t like to talk about it, but at this point I had seen doctors, I had seen therapists, no one actually wanted to address any problems, no one wanted to bring anything to light. Even my family in some way would prefer to hear she is abusing alcohol, rather than she is mentally ill. Which brings me to my initial psychiatric evaluation, self-medicating anxiety and depression.
I didn’t fight going to “rehab”, which they don’t call it anymore, they call it a mental health facility or some rubbish, but let’s be fair you can call an apple anything you want but it’s still an apple. I was looking forward to it, I was exhausted from all the admissions and the pity party I was having for myself, and the lies and the worry that once I finally got it out there I was so relieved that I was literally exhausted. No one would leave me alone because of the cutting, so I was constantly with people and I genuinely just wanted to be alone, and I knew as soon as I got into that clinic I would get to be alone for the first time in a long time.
You see a doctor and you see a psychiatrist and obviously the first couple of days if you have been abusing anything you start detoxing. The first day detoxing my anxiety was through the roof, they take your blood pressure and heart rate a couple times a day, to check you levels of anxiety and at the same time question if any symptoms of detox, i.e. headings, nausea and for those worse than me some times hallucinations and vomiting. That first day my heart rate was through the roof, he took it with the computer and then he took it the old fashioned way because he thought the computer was broken. Needless to say I got my biggest dose of Valium that day, and I went back to my room and slept like a baby for 3 or 4 hours.
Detoxing isn’t fun, I only had a mild case with the nausea and shakes etc., my hardest day was probably the day before I went to the clinic because what my family and **** didn’t know was that I had already started detoxing and I felt awful, probably again why I wanted to go to the clinic, least then people told me what I was experiencing, I just thought I was dying!
Everything is searched when you go in, to make sure you don’t have drugs or alcohol or anything that you will hurt yourself with. I never really understood why anyone would bother going unless they actually wanted to get better, but what I came to realise was not everyone had a choice to be there. Which in its self is fairly pointless, because the one thing I definitely knew was that there is no way that I would have got help until I was actually ready to do it. It would just be pointless and a waste of a good spot for someone who actually wanted it. Although I do feel for people with the same issues that I experienced, who are wrongly diagnosed, or who are their own worst enemy, you need to support them, but they have to make the decision to get help. They need to say it is time. Otherwise you might as we bump your arse against the moon. It gets to the point that you are so lost, and tired, and shameful, yet admitting to all of the shame, and lies and being a mess just seems so much better than living through another day of the insanity.
The first day of my stay I just settled in, had a look around and just relaxed really, it was nice, a little daunting not knowing what I would find, but everyone seemed very friendly and being a private health facility it wasn’t as daunting as what I think a public system may be. I had my own little room and all meals were provided. The daily groups were not ‘compulsory’ but what’s the point if you’re not going to commit and it was encouraged for the benefit of the treatment it was important to go. Which I did. I took them all and didn’t miss one. I enjoyed them. I enjoyed the whole experience, I started to realise how lost I had been, and started to find myself again.
Being on my own and meeting new people for the first time in years and not only that but people who had problems just like I did. The sense of community. The support and companionship. I was happy there, which is a strange thing to say, I started writing again, I had time for myself, I didn’t have to worry about work, or life, I just got to think about me for the first time in a very long time, if ever. There was no judgement there, no one asked anything of you, if you needed something you could get it 24/7. It’s a strange feeling, particularly with someone with mild OCD, a complete feeling of safety I suppose. But at the same time gaining back my independence, I had never been alone, when I think about it I always had the option of being with people. I never lived alone, and I didn’t really enjoy staying by myself because of my OCD. But being in a secure environment, by myself, was new, it was exciting and strangely enough it felt like where I needed to be.
No sooner had I arrived I had to leave, and at first I was looking forward to it, but as the day got closer, the more apprehensive I became, I hadn’t been home since I left not even to visit which the nurse thought was strange. That really scared me.
I would recommend the clinic to anyone, the program is amazing and gives you everything you need. It is tough at first but once you get over the initial hurdles it becomes a safe place that you don’t really want to leave. Sometimes even these days when I am having an anxious moment I remember the nights I was in my room, just completely relaxed, writing in my journal, being nothing else but myself. Sleeping when I was tired, no responsibility, my only mission was to get myself better. This at the time is what I needed, but it also poses a problem I think for people and even myself when you leave.
Myself and the majority of the people in the clinic are there because they struggle to deal with their emotions or they self-medicate, or they are a risk to themselves or others. But the majority end up back there, they go multiple times, if not for the rest of their lives on and off. I don’t really have any desire to do that, because I would prefer to be mentally well than be dependent on being unwell. I was only there for 8 days but I certainly came to understand a little bit of the word “institutionalised”.
Institutionalised
My stay in comparison to anyone elses was small. I think it was probably one of the smallest stays they have had. I kept being asked, is this your first time? I kept thinking, yes, and it will be my last time.
When I was released from the centre it is very daunting going back to “real life”. Because “real life” was the problem to start with. You have just spent the good part of a fortnight being taken care of, all meals, making friends, in a sense in a reality that isn’t real at all. Which again is ironic considering the reality I had upon going in there was not a real sense of reality, yet the way they treat it isn’t really a true reflexion of reality either, in fact it’s the opposite, it is a safe place with no responsibility, it is for an anxious person with issues beyond mine probably more addictive than any substance they could take.
I noticed not only during my time at the clinic, and my time in my anxiety course that people became reliant on the program. For instance, when I came out everything wasn’t great to start with, it was a real struggle to go back to a life that was no different to what drove me in there to start with. I think people and the clinic probably underestimate that. It isn’t a quick fix. You come out to the same issues you struggled to deal with when you went in, it is just hoped that you have been able to gain the skills to deal with it better.
This is a really strange feeling, because you come home and everyone seems to expect everything to be ok, you have done your time, you have detoxed, you have your medication everything is changed for the good. Don’t get me wrong it is, and you have been relaxed and had your counselling, but it is very difficult to break a habit of how you have spent the last 10 years. There is no overnight cure and 8 days isn’t going to make everything better. It is certainly going to help, but it took me 10 years to become this version of myself, it isn’t going to take 8 days to undo it and just suddenly become my “best version of me” like Oprah would probably like to describe it.
You have everyone’s eyes on you, either waiting or expecting for you to suddenly have a drink or for you make this miraculous recovery. Then when you do make a mistake or you decide I need this out again, because that is how you have done it for so long. The human brain doesn’t just switch over like that. The pressure to succeed whether placed on yourself, or that others have placed on you is probably more annoying than it is helpful. Because everyone’s version of success is different. Everyone’s perception of recovery is different. For some people I was recovering from alcohol addiction, which I don’t think is the case, and maybe that is some denial on my part. I was recovering from using alcohol in an unhealthy way and inevitably becoming dependant on using that way to deal with it. Do I think that I am better off not drinking, yes, did I fall off the wagon a few times and disappoint everyone, yes? But then I realised, this is my recovery, and unfortunately I’m not perfect. I won’t change overnight, and feeling guilt for minor mishaps I wasn’t going to apologise for. The lying is what I would apologise for. If I hid anything sure. In the grand scheme of things, I had done really well, I chose not to go back into the clinic. Not because I didn’t want to, because I did want to, why wouldn’t I. Maybe on the occasions I did drink because subconsciously because the idea of it was so enticing. I do think I would have benefited had I have stayed a few days longer, but at the time they didn’t feel I needed to. But once you start going back you are setting yourself up, it is far too easy to get used to that place and that would make dealing with life out of the clinic a lot harder.
You have your hiccups in the road, but you need to take responsibility for your actions. I stopped being so passive and don’t bottle issues with ****. He is a sarcastic person and I was taking it personally, now I can give as good as I get. I don’t take everything so personally and I don’t allow him to be condescending the way he can be sometimes. I pull him up on it and he doesn’t realise he is doing it. This clinic is a great place, it was the best thing I ever did, but it is not the be all and end all. It is not the cure. It gives you the tools to be the cure. Learning how to use those tools isn’t easy, and when everyone thinks your all better, you have a turn. Mental Illness doesn’t have a quick fix. This is what people need to realise. Addiction is also a mental illness, along with anxiety and depression. A person can be given the tools to make themselves better, you help them deal with the symptoms, to understand their feelings better. But if I have had this since before I could understand what it is, what makes people think it will ever go away? It may lay dormant, I may be happy and content, but it will always be there. Why wouldn’t it be? I think realising that there is no cure, that there is only management and not letting it win, is one of the biggest steps. Accept it, make the changes, stop using it as an excuse, communicate, recognise the triggers and the symptoms and live.
No one likes a pity party…. There will be bad times …. but if you rely on outside sources to cure you, you will always be in the dark. Educate yourself, look within yourself. You can talk it out, you can get support, you can get therapy, but YOU are the only one who can make YOUR life better. The sooner you realise that the happier you and your anxiety will be. Because at the end of the day, what’s the worst that could happen? If it isn’t death, then is there really anything to worry about?
I was never really into the whole self-harm thing, at school there were a few little teenage things but I never really had the urge to do any. I have probably only had 2 stages of self-harm, the first was when I was 16 and was going through a bit of a troubled time. I have no idea where the idea came from but I wasn’t happy with myself, I was probably depressed and anxious and for some reason I decided to bruise my rib cage. I remember it, not so much doing it, I think at the time I just started hitting and didn’t stop until I was satisfied. It was the next day that I probably realised that I had probably done a little more damage than I had intended to. I remember because we had P.E at school and I couldn’t run or anything because my ribs were so bruised. I went to the bathroom to have a look at the damage and the bruising was fairly bad. But that is really the only time I ever recall doing it up until recently.
It really annoys me when people confuse cutting with other things. It isn’t an attention seeking thing, because I never wanted anyone to know. I didn’t want anyone to see it, and I certainly didn’t want to talk about it. It brings a certain shame because people don’t understand. It isn’t until you talk to someone else who has done it that someone actually gets it.
It also is in no way any attempt on a person’s life, I have never had suicidal tendencies. Probably because A) I’m scared of death, but also because I think it is one of the most selfish things to do. I don’t believe that life can ever really get so bad there is no way out. It may feel fairly shitty sometimes, but to kill yourself is a complete cop out. It makes all your loved ones wonder what they could have done and don’t even start me on anyone with children that do it.
So for me, cutting was never suicidal, it was never attention seeking, because to be honest I would prefer that no one had ever found out. It probably is however one of the hardest things to try and explain from my break down point of view, particularly from the perspective of other people. In my head I understand it, but it is very difficult to try and explain.
Doctors first ask if I was under the influence at the time of doing, and I was, but that wouldn’t have changed anything, probably just gave me the confidence to do it. I would have done it sober at that point and did.
I think for me it was about control. A lot of people say eating disorders are about control, you feel like your life is out of control and the only thing that you can control is food. So you do it in a way that is unhealthy just because you can. I think the cutting started when I felt like my life was so out of control and at the point I had shut down so much that I didn’t feel like I could feel anything. I felt so bad and mentally not with it and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know how you fix it and I didn’t understand why.
Cutting was a release. I knew why that hurt, I could physically see the outcome of that. I bled.
I was hurting anyway; my mental state was in such a place that I had no control but there was no physical sign of anything. If you fall over, or you hurt yourself you have a bruise or an injury, I felt severely injured, but I had nothing to show for it. It sounds strange writing it now, and it would read strangely to someone who has never had those feelings. People hated that a trivialised it when I first started doing it, but it really wasn’t a big deal for me.
The best way that I can describe the feeling is that in a world that seems to be crumbling and getting to the point where you are so over it that you just want to feel a pain that you understand, instead of constant pain that you can’t explain, it is the ultimate release. The human body is a funny thing I suppose, when you do hurt yourself your body turns into a fighting machine, it heals itself, it releases emotions, endorphins and adrenaline because of the “fight or flight” mode. So for someone that is experiencing mental issues, like I was at that point, my body wasn’t doing me any favours, I wasn’t physically hurt so I wasn’t getting the kick. It wasn’t until I physically harmed myself that I felt that my body switched to this mode, even if just momentarily. I felt better for it. I could feel again. It was a rush I suppose.
Would I recommend it to someone having problems….? probably not, did help me at the time. Yes, it did. Not only did it make me feel better at the time, it ultimately led me to realise that I probably needed help. A 30-year-old hanging out giving herself multiple superficial cuts to make herself feel better, clearly isn’t someone of a sane state of mind. Maybe it was a cry for help, I honestly don’t know, I do know that is wasn’t an attention seeking thing, because I to this day would have preferred no one knew.
The thing I probably found most interesting is how flippant my therapist and doctor were about the whole thing. It is obviously a lot more common than many people realise. Which is sad really, what sort of day and age are we in that this is normality. What does that say about the way people are living and the pressures of everyday life. At what point did society become a place where people had to resort to self-harm to get through the day. When did we all start shutting down, internalising and putting so much pressure on ourselves to conform to what we perceive is what should be. Life really shouldn’t be so hard, and I guess I just wonder why we make it that way. At the end of the day we are alive, so aren’t we all winning? But on the flip side I suppose we get lost in what we should be doing, we should have money, work hard, be educated, buy houses, housework, cook, have children, maintain the “social norms”, I suppose when you’re doing that you lose living and just start being. Cutting makes you feel alive again.
I watch documentaries a fair bit, and I really enjoy the docos on tribes and isolated communities. Just living an honest life, poor as anything, I don’t want to be poor, but at the end of the day wouldn’t we all be a lot happier if we lived more simple lives. I think people have somehow lost the important things in life, to trying to make their life have some sort of meaning. You always hear people say “on your death bed you will never wish you had more money, or spent more time at work”.
Ultimately I have never really had any huge career ambitions, I never wanted to make work my life. I don’t think that is because I’m lazy, what I do do I do well. If you’re going to do something, don’t half arse it. But it’s never interested me, making huge money, going up the ranks, going to uni. I work to live; I don’t live to work. Never have and never want to. Is that smart? I don’t know…. I just wanted the family, in hindsight maybe I should have gone for the money, because as yet I haven’t got the family as I intended. I guess that is the interesting thing about life, you can set out to do anything you choose, but you can’t control what chooses you. Maybe everything does happen for a reason…. Maybe there is an entity up there that is having a good laugh at all of our expense. I think once you realise that you control your own destiny, you control how people treat you, you control how you treat people and you control your short comings and how you deal with them, you really don’t need to control cutting anymore.
Ultimately you control your mental state. Don’t allow your mental state to control you. This is a big lessen us crazy people need to learn. Don’t be a victim of ourselves. At the end of the day we all run out of people to blame, and when we have a long hard look in the mirror, we really have no one to blame but ourselves.