I dont know what to do and its all getting worse

[elementofsurprise]

I dont think i'm supposed to need help, I mean, I can't expect people to care or be there for me. But I'm not coping alone so I'm unsure what to do now. I keep trying to tell myself it'll all be ok and just keep pressing on, but in reality im spending more and more time just weeping and barely leaving flat and my world is so restricted and everyting just seems harder and harder. I feel like im completely spearate from others, like we speak a different language or something. I dont know how to ask for help or who to ask. My local MH services are very very overstretched and don't offer longterm therapy etc, im not an imminent danger to myself or others which is all they cover. Yet my problems are complex and disabling so the primary care team wont see me either as also dont meet their remit.

For years I've not had proper friends, just people I know, well maybe proper friends in some ways but all misfits like me. That sounds nasty, its not meant to, I just mean not people I can rely on or massively similar etc. And mainly just people I hung out with rather than proper friends. Bit of a studently feel to it, if that makes sense - I felt quite dfferent because i'd mastered stuff like housework . I have loads of aqauintances who are more simiar to me in other ways but because i'm unemployed and perceived as 'mental' I don't fit in. My marginalisation and lonliness has made me weirder, too. I barely see anyone now, the odd social event but apart from that just one person who pops in to see me. I can do socialising, i'm good at parties and things at chatting to people, I just cant seem to make proper friends and as get older is harder. But that is not the point of my post, just explaining why I cant turn to anyone. Although I shouldn anyway.

I want to give up. Im so frightened. Im not suicidal exactly but Im scred im going to go properly mad, or already starting. Im doing Open Uni and focussing on that but finding concentration so hard. Getting more anxious and shaky. Keep just crying. I just do not know what to do after trying so hard with evetything for so long. Open uni seemed like a good idea but it means i go out even less as getting the work done. Anything I try to do to make things better just seems another mountin to climb and means i have to give up something else. I'm less capable by the day. I feel completely overhlemed with the horror and pain that has been my life, I feel sick with the mess of it all despite always trying so hard. I dont even know how to ask for help anymore because if I see anyone I automatically cover it all up. Not completely sucessfully, I tend to just seem a bit dozy instead of sad.

I have a GP appt tomorrow but its to discuss referral to CMHT he made. They have asked him not to refer me again, so I expect they've rejected it. Even if they havent they are convinced I have BPD. If I do, I dont present with it typically. All their focus is on getting me to act the part and not ask for any help (I dont self harm or anything). They see me not being in touch as a success, the pressure to just keep quiet and please them is immense. I cant tell anyone how it feels inside and if I do they dont listen, or think it's attention seeking or something. I just can't get them to take any notice of or help with the problems I actually have.

Im so sorry, I just dont know what to do. I dont know what I'm supposed to think, whether Im suppsoed to need help or what to do either way. Im so sorry.

You have used my words back at me there foxy, but not sure you are answering my question. Someone is really distressed and says something negative has happened with a psychiatrist. It is not that unbelievable in my opinion but some here feel strongly that it didn't happen. Fine, everyone is entitled to interpret things from their own worldview. What I am asking is why keep challenging element on it? Its blatantly obvious how doing that is harmful but what is there to gain? No individual is mentioned so its not like challenging to protect someone. What is the harm in saying you believe her? The only motivation I can think of is to be hurtful to element? What other outcome do you envisage? Lots of folk agreeing that her experience isn't real? That's bullying.

I wasn't actually trying to answer that particular question. I was merely trying to understand why these threads always turn into a free for all. And I would say it is because other posters feel completely misrepresented and misunderstood while each time the OP's new representatives try and explain what she needs.

After a while it is a bit like bull baiting (but I am not quite sure who is the bull). I don't know if these threads help Element. She must get some sort of satisfaction otherwise I don't know why she keeps posting. And maybe they serve a purpose as a general outlet for frustration on the mental health board. Which is probably why I return to these threads rather than just hide them.

But I don't think it is a simple demarcation of one victim and some nasty bullies.

Sorry Foxy my mistake, I thought you were responding to me. I'm drawn back because I do connect with what element says and find it hard to see someone so distressed getting anything other than support. I appreciate what you say and of course it isn't as simple as a victim and some nasty bullies. I just cant get my head round why people are accusing element of lying. I'm not her representative though, these are my thoughts and opinions. I don't know what element wants or needs from this or other threads. In my experience service users need to feel listened to and believed and that isn't happening here and that's why I feel strongly and keep posting. I'm not trying to have a go at anyone just trying to better understand why this dynamic is playing out. Selfishly because I want to understand why people are not believed. In services I feel people are judged by their label so someone with schizophrenia might have disclosure labeled as delusions, someone diagnosed with bpd might have their experiences labelled as attention seeking and manipulative. I struggle to think that peers who have been through services would do this to another service user. So am genuinely interested in why element is being accused of lying when it obviously causes distress.

I am addressing you, HowcanIkeepdoingthis, as an aside. I find the dynamic of these threads quite fascinating and frustrating...

For my part, I have to bite back unhelpful responses because I have used up my energy trying to help and give advice gained from a lifetime of being a service user - 40 years, I started at the age of 9 - and having this advice dismissed in an extremely rude way by the OP. This was not advice that I gave lightly. Other people have feelings. Not just because this is a mental health board. In fact I think because it is a mental health board, posters try and keep hold of their feelings a bit more tightly so as not to cause offence.

I am saying that if others have had the same experiences as me with the OP, perhaps they feel dismissed, invalidated and indignant and perhaps it does make them feel like venting frustrations at the end of a long thread. Especially because there are invariably others cast in your role, trying to advocate for the OP.

If I was making jibe at the OP, I think my impetus might be that I have suffered vast abuse over the years, mostly non-intentional, by mental health services as I have been sectioned and restrained and drugged and given ECT, and yet I have had to find a way to view my experiences so that I don't end up a warped and bitter old woman! And I would think that most mental health staff do the best they can in a difficult situation. I have found that looking back with black humour has helped me and that endlessly cataloguing misery hasn't.

And I should just avoid these threads, but something keeps drawing me back!

Thanks foxy, sounds like you have had a fascinating 'career' in services. I find it amazing that you are able to see thongs so positively, wish i could let go of some of my outage! I am happy to be shot down on this one but I wonder for people who have been in services and experienced the power imbalance forced upon us by psychiatry that this relationship plays out again here. People give advice because they want to help, it is mainly well thought out and based on their own lived experience so understandably is not given lightly. However this mirrors psychiatry in that someone else knows best, you as the service user are weak and powerless and must take this advice. In this situation the anger and resentment towards that power discrepancy spills out especially when the advice isn't helpful. I have no idea whether that is how it is for element. I am totally speculating. Hearing how someone else has got help and recovered can give hope but it can be really hard to hear when it feels so impossible. And then of course the person giving advice is hurt by the angry responses as they were trying to help. I don't know if this makes any sense? I wonder if this is the case then a better way to be supportive is not to offer endless solutions but try to just listen and support the op to come up with her own. This might all be irrelevant bull shit, I'm not sure.

Hope you are ok element, sorry for totally derailing your thread!

Urgh shocking typos- sorry fat fingers on a shit phone!

I think you are right, and probably a better way of supporting is to keep listening and not giving advice but at some point people crack and become human! And I think on here it is peer to peer support from humans and so it shouldn't just be one person moaning while everyone else supports and then gets criticised for the kind of support they are giving. That is what a counsellor is for. And so we go round in circles - because there isn't a counsellor for OP and in the past they have been flawed.

I am not cured. I have bipolar and take vast amounts of drugs and am still have episodes. But I have made the best life I can for myself and am very lucky in a lot of respects. And at my ripe age I have finally accepted my illness and just get on with living the most fulfilling life I can.

And as an afterthought, I would say that is what the outrage here is all about: that the OP keeps putting posters who are offering the best advice they can, in the role of infallible experts, and castigating them for not reading posts and making silly suggestions and offering advice that is beyond her capacity. And that is what makes some posters (me included) absolutely furious. Because we are all fallible and (at some point before we got infuriated) we were just trying to be nice and kind and imaginative and supportive....

i.e. if there is a 'power imbalance' it is of the OP's making. Now I will shut up and let her get on with it.

foxy I have posted again in desperation - any port in a storm, as it were. Same as I sometimes go back to the GP or call the crisis team, even though history says it won't help, its just desperation really. (Although in the past year the crisis team have really improved - now it's possible to speak to someone who actually has the interpersonal skills to talk with someone who's upset.) And some of the posts here have helped, in particular howcani, just understanding. And I appreciate Broken trying to stop the more unpleasant, unhelpful posts.

I know the kicked by a psychiatrist thing sounds unbelievable; I also know that it's true. It wasn't a big incident in itself, that specific thing isn't something that I have intrusive memories of. It's more just part of the whole crappy way they treated me and the things they did, which astounded and frightened me as I'd always viewed the NHS fro the physical side with kindly nurses etc. It is horrible to struggle with something others don't believe - but I know there are other out there like me. And I don't know if I'd believe me, if I wasn't me.

It's weird, it feels like I have some kind of insight into the dark side of human nature that most people don't. But others with certain experiences do. It makes me feel set apart from others.

There's psychological studies about the shocking things people do, and how they justify it, even if people don't like to believe it happens. Ordinary people committing terrible acts because they've been put in a certain position, or forced to, but somehow justifying it in their minds. Pre 2007 the conventional wisdom in the NHS was to exclude those with BPD, they weren't seen as ill, just annoying and attention seeking, 'bad' people. If staff have to ignore and exclude people who are obviously struggling and in pain, perhaps with a history of suffering abuse, then staff have to justify it to themselves. It's what people do. So they would dehumanise the person diagnosed BPD in their mind. Even if you don't believe my actual experiences; they are absolutely in line with what we know about human behaviour.

Selfishly because I want to understand why people are not believed ... So am genuinely interested in why element is being accused of lying when it obviously causes distress.
Exactly. Some kind of denial perhaps? The world is too frightening if you believe that could happen? It often seems too frightening for me, knowing it can...

It also makes me think of the accusation levelled at people diagnosed BPD, of 'splitting'. The implication is that they are somehow deviously manipulating MH staff to turn them against each other. ln my opinion, the reality is staff disagreeing over how to treat someone. But not minor disagreements, in fact majorly different incompatible approaches. That process seem to have happened on this thread. Now I'm feeling better and not emotionally wrecked by it, it's actually fascinating... That's not supposed to be flippant, by the way, I just feel I'm on a neverending quest to figure out how humans tick :)

x posted lots there...

I have found that looking back with black humour has helped me and that endlessly cataloguing misery hasn't.

I tend to use a lot of dark humour about it all irl... probably would more here if felt amongst people who were on the same page re. services. Once came up with a diagnostic report on MH service/psychiatrists (they are very ill!), and other bits and bobs including a "how not to be diagosed BPD" leaflet that others have done have made me . (One of the pointers was something like "relish the thought of being abandoned, whether in reality or imagination"...)

I guess I post when in darkest places so normal coping has been overwhelmed. I don't 'catalogue misery', memories force their way into my head and make my heart race etc. It spills out here.

Your experiences with the MH system sound very distressing and difficult, albeit in a slightly different way to mine. I'm glad you have found a way throught it.
I keep pushing to make life better and stuff, but it seems sooo slow going and I still get very overwhelmed at points. On the subject of pressing on though it's back to the essay....