Full Mental Normality

[Enpoid]

Kubricking it.

Ouch. Tough one. For me it would depend how close you are and how much she already knows about your mental health - if she knows you struggle with your mental health and you're generally quite friendly I would say it's not too bad to be upfront about it if you're having a bad time, and that people shouldn't ask if they don't want to know. But on the other hand I've never worked and am not one of life's social adepts so anything I say about appropriate interpersonal interactions has to be taken with a tanker of salt.

Tricky. I imagine if she isn't comfortable with it, she wont respond further. When I was in an office there was a blur between friends and colleagues, so it depends how that is for you I think.

(please take with a pinch of salt, because I have visible disabilities too it was easy for colleagues to ask personal questions).

well it's done now so no point crying over spilt milk and all that, but yeah, really the only answer to 'and how r u?' is something very brief and vague and non-worrying like 'pretty good thanks, you?' or 'not too bad, how about you?'

you don't have to have a mental disorder to do that oversharing thing though, people do it quite often about their placentas and slipped discs and stuff

maybe it will be good for them to know, maybe can be a source of support for you at the moment?

She knows. She's the poor soul who had to rescue me from the ladies at a work event a few months back, when the voices weren't allowing me into the meeting room. She was very good about it, considering. But as kind as she is, I would never have chosen to tell her about my MH issues.

I never used to be allowed to see my care plan either tooth. It was considered inappropriate when I tried to see the paragraphs written about me in hospital when I was on obs (which turned out to be largely because they were at best inaccurate and frank lies at worst).

When I requested a copy of my notes back in 2007 or so, I was utterly surprised by so much of what was written as it was just completely wrong (and not in an "I lack insight" kind of way, more in a "basic factual inaccuracies and bizarrely bad medicine" kind of way).

she sounds lovely and you can probably trust your judgment on this one, it might be a good call

why should you have to go through it alone?

snowy I have visible disabilities too, and so I do get what you saying.

'99 was the year I was asked to sign a blank care plan when I came out of hospital after my first episode of factitious hypomania so in Suffolk at least lipservice was being paid to the whole transparency thing

another slogan we don't hear about much these days

Ooops post to mitchy disappeared. But the gist was that certainly, I will see from her reaction to me tomorrow - whether she seems different with me, whether she asks more. TBH I could really do with an ally in the place

enpo I've never dared request my notes, for that reason. I think it might upset me.

mitchy In about 2001 I had the care plan with diagnosis blacked out. Has anyone else had one of those?

Yes, mine really upset me when I have to read them.

I think more people should do it though. They might be surprised by what they find in there.

blacked out? No! did they say why?

that's really weird

And by how bad most doctors' and nurses' spelling is

It was an old-fashioned carbon paper copy. The imprint of what it said was pretty clear!

no, and thinking about it everyone was always very very clear about what they were thinking although it made no real sense to me at the time

I was in one hospital first and saw two psychiatrists who were talking about bipolar disorder which I thought meant there was something wrong with my kidneys, which seemed legit for whatever reason, I can't remember much of what they said because (although am not usually one for hallucinations) I was watching Blake's tyger slide in and out of the grooves on the radiator, looking incredibly sad :(

then they moved me to a hospital closer to home and the consultant there, who I was stuck with for years and years, was honest about not knowing what was wrong with me and one of the things he had in mind was the impulsive type of emotionally unstable personality disorder aka borderline which have always felt was a really good fit - when he delivered his verdict (after failing to make me stay in hospital for another six months) he called it manic depressive psychosis and it just made me think of drunk tramps spattered with dried vomit wandering around muttering to themselves and reeking of stale piss and I wanted to surge across the desk and rip his face off with my teeth

I can't think of any very good reasons for concealing this sort of thing from people? at least with my hated diagnosis came lots of leaflets about the manic depression fellowship, which I got quite involved with over the years, and self management courses and CBT and stuff - how can patients manage their conditions if they don't know what they're up against?

My care plan doesn't say a diagnosis. I only know it's eupd/bpd because I saw it on the screen when I saw the gp a while ago.

do you think it might have been typed there in error and they were crossing it out rather than a secret they were trying to hide from you?

my care plan doesn't say a diagnosis either, but there's a box in the middle of the front page saying 'useful information for those providing care - when mood is elevated mitchy will become impulsive and irritable and may become aggressive (I give us all a bad name, soz) recorded incidences of random assaults, possibly in response to auditory hallucinations. Mitchy may drink heavily at these times. Self neglect when low in mood, past history of impulsive and planned suicide attempts, last time July 2011'

and then a list of people involved from which agency, it looks quite out of date actually

Does thinking you can tell what other people are thinking count as a hallucination?

that's probably for you to decide, what is it like?

maybe it's a delusion, or maybe you are highly perceptive

Never said it was me

it was though

When people ask, I say I don't experience psychosis, because I pretty much never do (except a weird and scary thing that happened for a couple of weeks when I was seventeen involving a complicated delusion thing).

But sometimes during the weird agitated depressions (not the immobile horrors type) I used to be convinced random strangers were thinking utterly horrible thoughts about me, that I smelt rotten, thwt i looked smug, who did I think I was, that kind of thing. I couldn't hear it though, just sense it, which is why I never classified it as a hallucination or a psychotic thing. Was weird. Also weird thinking about these things - it's like I'm talking about another person, it's been so long since I was like that.

I was reminded Mitch because you said you didn't usually get hallucinations and I was thinking "yeah me neither except on butane", then wondered if this thing counted

I don't think it's a hallucination.

The tiger thing, though, that sounds incredibly odd to experience.