(Selections from May, 2008)
Despite reassuring me excessively that she would definitely send my referral letter before she left the office (for another job) that week, my GP didn't send it.
The disappointment leaks in me like a heavy treacle syrup.
It was hard for me to seek diagnosis and treatment for my PTSD / mental health. Now it's my responsibility to make sure I don't get lost in the system? I've been lost in the system for decades; it's a sore subject for me. It's hard accepting that the one person you tried trusting with this part of you ended up failing you, too. I don't know where the strength to keep pushing for help despite these disappointments is coming from, but I'm characteristically numb.
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I don't understand what I'm going through.
I just left a place with major triggers for my PTSD, but in returning home I feel more empty. It seems that as my life becomes more stable, my own mind is letting go. Two serious emotional and visual hallucinations (delirium) in the past few months plus constant dreams (nightmares?) filled with anxiety … plus feeling like I'm dying, literally dying, every time I wake up now? I never felt like I was dying before, when I was more sick, when I was constantly stressed, and when I was fighting everything.
I can see how people who feel like this all the time become suicidal; it's an awful thing to feel. But I know it will go away, no matter my increasing fear that someday it won't (and what would I do then?).
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The administrator for the mental health team called me today to let me know she's still chasing up the counsellor for my referral letter, does not know my place on the waiting list but has not forgotten me. She's been extraordinarily kind and thoughtful, and I was happy to express gratitude to her for it. It has helped to quell some of my anxiety and fears and distrust towards the team.
I've been reading up on PTSD and listening to Naked Scientist. Explained the details of the delirium to my husband and remain constantly amazed at his steadfastedness. The stress must be loosening its reigns, because steadily my cycle continues.
No, addendum. I amaze myself. I continuously push for a better life, inside and out. I seek help. I achieve wellness, no matter the setback. I have hope. Any doctor or therapist should be lucky to work with someone like me, because I'm trying and because I care.
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This is the best I've felt in weeks. My moods have been rapidly oscillating between agitated depression and melancholic depression, but I haven't felt remotely manic in a while. This is, all things considered, a very good thing. I've been self-managing depression for a very long time now; when my mood approaches mania, I feel less prepared for the consequences.
It's times like these that I realise quite seriously how much I 'settle' for day-to-day with my moods. It's so easy to feel something and attribute it to whatever has happened that day. But my mood is rarely, if ever, reactive. I need to be even more aware of my feelings and what they mean in context of my choices.
Learning more about PTSD, step by step, brings its own grief, but that is how therapy works, uncovering small patches of a larger picture, until we can see more clearly who we are.
I still don't know where I am on the waiting list, and I still don't have my referral letter. But I am taking my vitamins and supplements regularly, my house is reasonably tidy, I've managed my workload with extraordinary efficiency, and this is the first holiday I've had in years that hasn't begun with a headache and a tense knot in my stomach. That must be huge, because this holiday is spent entertaining my parents, and they are my biggest trigger.
But these are challenges I can handle; I've not gotten here without handling them, and each time gets easier.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
