#2 Exploring my mental health

“Your present circumstances don’t determine where you go; they merely determine where you start.” – Nido Qubein

Hello dear lovelies,

I am hoping this reaches you in good spirits! I wanted this session to be a deep dive into my mental health experience, as someone who is turning 30 this year, what better way than to reflect?

Mental health refers, vastly, to our state of wellbeing in our thoughts, feelings, moods, behaviours and actions. To me, my mental health has been just as vastly impacted by my mental illness, but I have truly learned so much. Let’s explore my coping strategies, recovery, the power of post-traumatic growth, and reflecting in general.

You know from my intro page that I have a few diagnoses, and they are all inter-connected, I will not be telling my story, not yet, I don’t think it is as interesting right now. I want to reflect on everything I have learned. I will add I have had three rounds of therapy and am quite medicated so things have improved over time due to such an input, that’s not to say I’m no longer experiencing symptoms but I have recovered as far as I can.

Recovery

When I thought of recovery as a young person, I thought it was about being cured. I felt it meant that I’d never experience any symptoms and would be free to just be human. There’s some big words. Free. Cured. But what do they actually mean? We so often use words that look different for each individual. I thought by getting treatment young, it would give me the best chance but that’s not always true, it isn’t in my case. So as I grew I had to come to terms with the fact that I will have mental illness for the rest of my life. It took some time to understand this, and I can’t remember when it clicked. So I had to learn what recovery would look like for me.

When I started therapy, I had to talk about what I thought my limiting beliefs (what I thought of myself) were and the one that came up first was that I was polluted. Can you image a 23 year old saying that? By the end of my first round of therapy I learned I was light.

Recovery to me, now, is about where I want to be in life, how I could adapt and, like a river, find my way back to the source of myself. It took a long time to find it. I will not lie there are times when I do struggle, when I find myself in despair, but it’s a lot less frequent.

Identity crises are a big thing in people with BPD and I’m no exception, but that was my recovery: to have a solid foundation of who I am. This involved understanding my values, my morals, my likes and dislikes, my faith, my spirituality, even my hopes for the future. Identity is tricky because there are so many facets, from the way we want to dress, to how we want to act.

Recovery for me looked like someone who could handle the emotions, who could handle the voices should they come, who could see the beauty life has to offer, someone who could leave home and not cry, who could cope healthily with the numbness and emptiness and the fear of rejection.

I want to tell you lovely, I’m there. Most of the time. It was a lot of hard work, but I so desperately wanted to be where I am now and to keep it going I have had to learn a lot of coping strategies.

Coping strategies

My coping strategies for my mental health have evolved over time with a lot of experimentation as my symptoms evolved alongside my brain growth. My key one is behavioural activation, boosting mood through activity and pacing my activities throughout the day, but also making the day balanced of what I feel I should do and want to do. It’s tricky but my psychotherapist helped me. I’m getting better with balancing my weeks and can adapt through my little systems. By planning out the days and the week segmenting each day has allowed me to feel more fulfilled.

Now, my little systems, there are times when a different type of day is needed and I called these the DOGs, BODs, and LADs: day of goodness, basics only day, life admin day. So a DOG consist of nothing but hobbies, interests, positive activities. A basics only day is when I feel fatigued or really low I just cover essential hygiene, keep fed and hydrated and rest. Life admin days are exactly that, when tasks build up and I can no longer hide in the sand, I take charge and get it done.

Now when it comes to the nitty gritty, I have to rely upon my activities from the planned days. When I feel overwhelmed, distressed, or yes even angry, I journal, I use crystals and controlled breathing. When I need comfort I read, I will do mantras for focus. When I need to make the most of my day I will write it all out. When I’m agitated, I clean or do tai chi, or walk, then calm back down. It has all been about experimenting and keeping on top of my energy levels.

I should also mention support networks, I am very lucky and very grateful to have such a strong network from my family, partner and friend. They, all together, can see when I’m not quite myself or lend support in any way they can.

But one final thing that can help awareness is having a (self) care plan, much like the professional one in CMHTs, but pretty and personalised. You decide on triggers and what helps and how to ease experiences. It enables me to know what to do in any given situation. I have found what also helps me is a cheat sheet of warning signs in the form of traffic lights and a little checklist of essentials based off of my conditions. If anyone would like a template, just email at leanne@nurturedwords.co.uk

Post-traumatic growth

PTG is defined as positive changes following the processing of trauma.

This started happening for me toward the end of rounds one and three of therapy. I felt a state of bliss. It is over these two because sometimes people need refreshers. The third round was needed due to my dissociation.

I felt I had planted seeds for a hopeful future, and nourished them. I talked to them, gave them so much sunlight, learned the right soils and sprayed the perfect amount of water. I talked through everything, I listened to advice, I gave myself a chance to breathe, I knew this was the way forward. The darkness was lifting and I felt prepared for a brighter future.

PTG is a state of love for one’s self, and life, feeling the dark clouds turn to rainbows and then sunshine, though clouds could still come, they wouldn’t stay shrouding my light for long.

Since then…

So now here I am, if you read my quarter review, you will see I have accomplished a lot. That’s because I’m in my recovered state. I have my determination and resilience, my power back. This is not to say I don’t get down or emotional, please remember we are human and having ups and downs is human. It.is.human. I read the most recent book by Miranda Hart, and in it, she renamed her setbacks as lay-bys, because we are not going backwards, we just need a chance to rest and reflect.

I would also like to say thank you again to my support network, they give me the encouragement, the safety, the support needed when I am in a lay-by.