Category Mental Health

Dec 11 2012

December Update – Part One

Sorry to those of you who commented on the last post that I haven’t yet responded to. When I started my ex-blog, I felt compelled to reply to every comment that was left for me, and that continued for a while. When it waned, I vowed that any new blog would not fall fowl to the same affliction – and yet it has. In my defence, my mental health isn’t great at the minute and I’ve always been a terrible correspondent, but I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better.

Anyway, for those of you that follow me on Twitter or Facebook – my real life Twitter or Facebook accounts, that is, for I have not been following the ones allied to this blog for several weeks – you’ll know that further to my dilemminating last entry, I did in fact go to Edinburgh with my mother. I emailed the letter I’d composed to my therapy centre and they were gracious enough to accept it, instructing me to simply turn up at the next week’s meeting. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only person to miss the first week, but I’ll come to that.

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Nov 28 2012

Group Therapy vs Mother’s Birthday Showdown

Just a quick post. I have got myself into a right disaster here. My mother was 70 in September, and not having a clue what to get her, I bought her a couple of days in Edinburgh for said city’s Christmas markets. My usual terror of the phone prevented me from having the bloody sense to ring one of her friends and ask if they would be available to attend. So, with a reluctance I shouldn’t be allowed to feel, I booked myself on the flights with her.

No problem. Not my idea of an exciting few days, but whatever. If my mother enjoyed it, that was the main thing.

Moving on. Having discussed the potential group therapy with my therapist, it was agreed that I would go ahead with it. At our last individual session last week, I said to him, in relation to same, “well, I’ll see you in a fortnight then.” The fortnight in question is up on Tuesday coming when the group assembles for the first time.

I was sitting about picking my arse yesterday when I realised with horror that the Edinburgh trip is from Monday to Wednesday coming. It clashes with the first group therapy session.

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Nov 22 2012

10,593

This post is a pity-party of misery. You probably don’t want to read it, particularly if you’re feeling low yourself.

As of 8.15pm yesterday evening, I have existed on this planet for 10,593 days.

It means I’m now 29.

I remember once as a child, a friend and I talking about blokes we fancied. I genuinely don’t remember who I referenced in the conversation, but it was someone over 30 (I’ve always been attracted to older men. Indeed, The Man is 10 years older than me.) My friend posited that “30 [was] really old,” was I mad?! (Quite probably, but for entirely different reasons.)

I didn’t see being 30 as “old.” Much as still do as an adult, I’d sit there and imagine myself at the age I now find myself as someone successful, happy, witty, everything going for her.

Not as an overweight Venlafaxine addict with no career struggling with bills and state benefits and bi-fucking-polar disorder.

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Oct 31 2012

Group Therapy?

So many ideas, so little motivation. My drafts folder is overloaded with stuff. I think of an idea, whip out my iPhone and note the idea plus some basic points about it down, then get back home and stare at the closed laptop in contempt, and go and do something else (until yesterday, that was mainly playing Dish0nored, although I’ve completed one ending of it now. Gamer? Go and buy it if you haven’t already done so!). Or, more frequently, nothing else.

I go through periods like this quite frequently, so if you’ve heard nothing from me on Twitter, on your own blogs, via email or in response to comments left here, it’s because I’m hiding from the world. It’s not that I’ve lost interest in any of I'll Be Backyou – never that. It’s just that my social awkwardness often extends into the online world, particularly when I’m feeling low. I wouldn’t describe myself as depressed as such, but I recognise that the symptoms of an episode are wider ranging that just mood. Not that I would describe said mood as sublime, having said that. Does that ever happen outside a manic episode? I don’t know what I believe about that any more – a subject of one of these billion unwritten posts, indeed. Anyway, sorry. To coin a cliche, it’s not you, lovely people; it’s me. The whole SAD thing doesn’t exactly help matters.

Anyway, I’ll be back!

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Oct 10 2012

World Mental Health Day 2012

The below is pretty much an exact replica of a piece I wrote elsewhere for 2010’s World Mental Health Day. The facts remain essentially the same, and I have a different audience here, so I’ve decided it was worth posting on AtMoM in the spirit of awareness-raising and stigma-busting. It’s reprinted with permission, yakka yakka blah.

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Today is World Mental Health Day.

Anything I can say on the subject will have already been much better said by others, so I will just add some facts, figures and information here.

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