I think I am losing it...

[ItalianinLondon]

I'm so sorry for this needy, desperate post!

I've been sick for most of the Christmas break (pericarditis, so not serious, but debilitating), OH is on a 4-month work stint abroad, DDs are unsettled, I'm back to work on Monday... and I feel like I can't hold it together.

I'm worried I have borderline personality disorder or something, because in my head it's just me, me, me. I'm worried that I'm being a rubbish mother, a useless friend. But I just can't get it together.

I went to the GP today and begged for some time off work... the poor woman was a locum, and obviously didn't have time to hear my tale of woe! So I left instructions to pull myself together and get on with things.

And I know I should, but... I just can't stop crying. Everything's on top of me and I feel like it's all slipping out of my control. I'm being so selfish and I hate myself for it.

Your gp is rubbish. Make an appointment with a different one. Ring in sick in Monday.

What you're experiencing is very normal, you're overwhelmed and need to mind yourself for a bit. It'll be ok, but take the time to recover.

I've heard it said that doctors don't like being told what to do - e.g. 'you need to sign me off work'.

You're better describing your symptoms and it should be fairly clear if you're unable to continue as you are.

Were you feeling like this before you got pericarditis?

I didn't mean to tell her what to do, I just meant to ask... but it probably came out wrong.

I was feeling a bit stressed and down before I got pericarditis, but it wasn't like this.

Call in sick on Monday, and go back to the GP and hopefully she a different one. I hope you feel better soon OP asking for help is hard

Wasn't meaning to sound critical. If you feel the way you've described above then it's their duty to assist you in finding a genuine solution.

I've found that different GPs can be worlds apart.

Thank you, and I'm sorry if I sounded defensive. I probably did approach it wrong.

I think I'll call sick tomorrow and take it from there... I know it is cowardly, but I just can't face it.

OP, it’s normal to feel this way every now and again. Try not to pathologies it, particularly when you can identify what it is that may be causing you to feel this way. We do need time to overcome our difficulties and getting time off work sounds like the right thing to do at the moment.

It sounds like you desperately need the rest and the doctor wasn't a 'poor woman', she was a thoughtless cow.

It's not cowardly to call in sick- you haven't recovered from the pericarditis or you'd feel fine. Currently you are still sick.

I just got so upset after the doctor's appointment and I was crying when I was there. That makes me feel manipulative. I didn't mean to, I'd written everything down that I was concerned about and I wanted to keep it together, but she kept saying "that's not relevant" or "I don't need to know about that" and I got stupidly upset. It was the doctor who mentioned EUPD (she said, "do you have a mental health diagnosis, like EUPD perhaps?" and I'd never heard of it, but I looked it up later). Oh God, i just need to get it together, really.

How rude and insensitive of that doctor. Definitely call in sick and ask to see a different doctor. I bet they will sign you off and you can rest and have peace to feel better.
Pull yourself together? She shouldn't be a GP with that rubbish attitude.

Thank you, but I do wonder if perhaps I really do need to pull myself together! I am being selfish giving in to this. I just can't seem to help it.

I didn't mean to activate votes on this btw. Sorry!

As someone who has a diagnosis of BPD I would like to hope they don’t throw that diagnosis around willy nilly.

It took 10 years for me to get a diagnosis and this was 8 years ago now. BPD can be a selfish disease of the brain however it’s not just about us being selfish. In fact I put a lot of people before myself and my own needs due to me feeling worthless and that I don’t deserve to be happy.

You could be depressed, there are lots of different stages of depression. For us women hormones also play a huge part in how we are feeling. I find around the time of my period things heighten so much.

Fear of abandonment is our biggest worry, usually stemming back to trauma from our childhoods. We just want to be loved but then don’t let people love us due to the fear of them leaving us. It’s a vicious cycle.

I always say to my husband when trying to explain BPD. You are like a burns victims in the fact that it’s like we have barely no skin (This is my counsellors metaphor not my own). Comments that most would often brush off as nothing will probably hurt us, or we dwell on negative things that the usual person wouldn’t worry about.

Most mental health problems are selfish, and there are tons of personality disorders out there too. If you really want to go down the route of getting a diagnosis you need to demand to see your local mental health services and start from there. It’s a long road to recovery, and if you have BPD there potentially is no full recovery but just learning to cope.

I had 2 suicide attempts, self harming for 5 years, addiction to drugs, sleeping around as well as how I felt inside and about myself which contributed to me being diagnosed with BPD.

On a positive note however I did manage to get my shit together a few years back and now hold down a part time job as well as just having a baby and getting married to my husband. So we are not all bad or incurable!

It’s learning to cope as I said beforehand and keeping your shit together. It can be hard when life gets stressful though. There are some amazing articles online from BPD suffers letting you see what it feels like to have it. Perhaps do some more research and go back and see another GP.

Word of advice though don’t go in saying you think you have something they see that as being a bit melodramatic or that you’ve been googling stuff and have found it not to help in the past.

But good luck and also if there is one tip I could give anyone with mental health problems is.. lay off the booze! Makes everything a million times worse. Have been sober since my diagnosis and best thing I ever did.

Yup. Sign off sick and see a different GP.

Unless there's a HUGE dripfeed coming, the GP is a complete fucking idiot to diagnose a personality disorder in one 10 minute meeting, when a psychiatrist would take some time and several appointments to do so.

One of the first things psychiatrists learn is to not diagnose a mental illness until physical causes of symptoms are excluded. Unfortunately, other doctors seem to miss this lesson, hence psychiatrists often being the ones to diagnose weird syndromes. So rather than a personality disorder, it's far more likely you simply aren't recovered yet.

I don't think there's any dripfeed... I don't have a history of mental illness other than having been quite anxious in the months after the girls were born...which probably is on my medical records as generalised anxiety or something. But nothing apart from that.

@PlainJane28 thank you for sharing about your own experiences. I guess it's a difficult thing to speak about, so I do appreciate that.

Your husbands away for months, your children aren’t settled, you’ve been ill. Anyone would feel phased out by these things.

Sometimes the best thing is to have routine again like going to your job. That could take away some of the anxiety going round your head as you will need to forget about that and focus instead on your work for a while. Take your mind off your worries so to speak. Routine can be reassuring and chatting to workmates nice.

However if you think your job would cause you additional physical mental or emotional stress and/or you would be crying in there, then it would be better to phone in sick. and get a doctors appointment. The other doctor will take you seriously. Even by the fact that you intended to follow the doctors advice to go back to work but just can’t. Surely that proves you are not shirking work and are genuinely unwell.

Hope you feel better so. OP.

I'm just not sure what's best to do. Maybe I should go in and try to get back on an even keel, I'm just scared I'm going to totally break down when I'm there...

You poor thing! I’m not going to try and diagnose you, but it sounds like you’ve been through a really tough time and need some proper rest to recover.
I’ve had a couple of ‘burnout’ episodes, and this sounds like how I was at the beginning of each one. Just so exhausted from holding it all together that every tiny thing seemed impossible.
Thank god I didn’t see your GP because if I’d pushed myself further, I would have ended up in a much much worse place.
This is not to say the same thing is happening to you, just that I recognise those feelings and to tell you that it’s ok to take them seriously. You need to look after yourself.
Call in sick tomorrow, and go to another GP. Is your DH away right now? Do you have a friend or anyone who could go with you?

DH is working in Brussels for the next few months, but he is due back for a weekend on Friday evening. I have a couple of really good close friends who I know would go to the doctor with me, but one is away till Wednesday and the other is a teacher, so I'd need to get an appointment outside schools hours (should be poss though).

I'm just terrified about tomorrow at work. And I totally lost my temper with the girls this evening, I'd forgotten to get the shopping in and we ended up having a selection of Least Favourite Foods for dinner. They were both refusing to eat and I snapped and said they could starve then, and see if I cared. I ended up giving them frozen croissants and apples and oranges, which isn't exactly a nutritionally balanced diet. I just feel like such a rubbish parent.

(Although, just to clarify, I did put the frozen croissants in the oven...)

Do you know what I think OP?

I think you sound run down and knackered. Nothing more than that. It sounds to me like you need some TLC. So here's what I would recommend.

Sign yourself off work for a week, which is permissible under the law for up to seven days. By the way, you can reclaim leave from when you were ill.

Do a supermarket order for a load of reasonably healthy ready meals, chopped fruit and so on, so nobody has to cook much or think about what they are going to eat. Include some of the children's preferred foods, to avoid arguments.

Ask one of your friends to help with a bit of support in the early evening with children's tea, bath time and so on.

Spend the days with your feet up as much as possible, long baths, reading magazines and generally taking things easy.

Then review at the weekend. I bet you will feel a bit better by then. You can always visit the doctor next week (go to a different one though, someone experienced).

A week is nothing in a lifetime - in the bigger scheme of things it sounds like you owe this week to yourself to get your health back on track.

Are you definitely all clear of the pericarditis? Are you possibly a bit breathless? I think your next GP apt should be to also thoroughly check out the physical symptoms you have, because if you are a bit breathless without noticing it, you will feel very anxious. Now, evidently if you are anxious you can feel breathless so it can work both ways (helpful!) which is why you need a dr to take a look in person and see which way round it is.

Sometimes getting back into a routine of school / work can help, so it may be worth seeing how you feel in the morning and giving the first day back a try. But if it's genuinely too much, then you need to rest, and see a much better doctor.

That doctor sounded terrible

Thanks for the positive suggestions :) I'll do a supermarket order now and hopefully it can arrive tomorrow..... I can't face another fiasco like tonight and I know it's all my fault for not getting round to it.

I think the pericarditis is better, it's not so painful anymore anyhow, but I still can't breathe really deeply without it hurting... so yes, perhaps that's not helping!