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This Week in Mentalists – The Where Did Everybody Go? Edition

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Good morning! This is Katie from Giant Fossilized Armadillo. I’ve done TWIM once before so wasn’t quite as nervous about it this time, but I swear my blogroll has been extra quiet this week just so I’d really have to hunt for posts to include! Trigger warnings this week include eating disorders and spiders. 

First up this week is an old friend of mine who is new to the blogosphere, Mustard, who deals with recovery from mental health issues and Multiple Sclerosis. This week (oh okay, last week – but she’s never been included in TWIM before and I wanted to introduce her!) she published her Spartacus Story.

I am scared, I am scared of M.S, scared of not knowing how long my body will hold out, scared of not knowing with each relapse what symptoms will remain with me forever, scared of depression, scared of feeling suicidal, scared of dying at my own hands, scared of dying of M.S, scared of how this is affecting my loved ones. However more than all of those fears, I am scared of David Cameron and his Welfare Reform Bill and the ability that one small group of people with no experience of life on the bread line, has to make all the things I, and millions of other disabled people and their carers, have to face anyway, so much harder.

None of these things in my life can be helped, they are the hand I was dealt and I don’t proportion any blame or expect special treatment or sympathy because of it.  But I do expect to be able to LIVE, ideally, with some dignity, although in the current climate maybe dignity is just too much to ask, but living? Surely not.

Surely not indeed. Mustard is an awesome lady and I really hope she keeps blogging.

Extra Long Tail is another good friend of mine who began recovering from anorexia in her forties, who also has the interesting perspective of having been a biomedical scientist. This week she wrote about how her anorexia was very similar to her other phobias, which do not include spiders. However, if you are scared of spiders, you might not want to read this post on her blog, where there is a full size photograph of a big one she caught recently!

I have always been somewhat ‘adept’ at involuntarily conditioning myself to be terrified (actually phobic) of various things. For example, I once saw a kid at school eat parsnips, then vomit. I was so convinced that parsnips make people vomit that I wouldn’t touch them for another 20 years. I also developed emetophobia as a child, which took on a whole life of its own and has always contributed a dominant facet to my OCD. Emetophobia is the primary stimulus for my compulsive handwashing. In a similar way I was taught as a child that smoking increases morbidity and mortality in various ways and so I have never touched a cigarette in my life, even though most of my peers couldn’t wait to try out smoking. I have always been very ‘rule-bound’… I seem to develop rules around all aspects of living that I am scared to break lest the sky fall in.

I know that feeling!

Zee Aitch Bully has had a shaky but very picturesque week.

Even though this felt like a shaky week, looking back at my photos, I remember there were a few things to make me smile. One of the reasons I like carrying my camera with me.

Her post reminded me that I haven’t taken my camera out for ages! It’s a great source of comfort to me during shaky weeks too :)

I like Dream Electric‘s blog because she writes about such diverse topics – her own experience of anorexia, her training as a psychologist, fashion and gender politics just to name a few. Her blog last weekend was on saying thank you to mental health professionals who do a good job:

I had an amazing experience recently. In a lot of ways it wasn’t particularly extraordinary, but it was special in its own way. I’m discharging my first client. We’ve come to the end of therapy and it’s time for them to leave the service and move on. The timing felt right, we’d focused on a particular problem, and now he felt that it was much better. We’d got on well and at the last session I did feel a bit sad to see him go. As he left he quickly gave me a bag, saying ‘this is for you’, and then slipped off. I was completely stunned, I felt a bit like I might cry! I’ve never had a thank-you gift from a client, and it felt really moving, it left me on a high that lasted for days.

Now I’ve checked my trust’s policy, and given that there’s no sign that the gift was meant as a bribe or some kind of inappropriate intent, and it’s of low value, I can keep it…It got me thinking. I’ve seen countless health professionals throughout my life, doctors, nurses, therapists and others, but it’s never occurred to me to even send a card to give some thanks.

I’ve given cards and small gifts to professionals who have made a difference before, but then I was always the type to bring my teacher a present at the end of the school year as well!

My Bear friend is back to blogging after a bit of a break, and having a hard time:

I hurt, mentally and emotionally, at the moment.  It has been a tough week, even without the eating disorder there was a load of crap to deal with…  I started writing a post about it on Tuesday night (the only night I didn’t binge), but burnt out pretty quickly – there had just been too much emotion that day.

I’m totally rambling with this post… I suppose I just wanted to ask for some support.  I am so so done with this fucking torturous way of behaving, but I have kept finding I can’t fight hard enough.

I’m sure everyone who followed Bear before will send her love and hope she gets back on track soon.

Little Feet is still chasing up the complaint she made to PALS, but is otherwise doing well:

Dear Person Who Acknowledged My Complaint
 
Over a month has passed since I contacted PALS making a formal complaint. I have not heard from The Complaint Person in relation to my concerns. As a result, I would like to enquire whether my concerns have been looked into in further detail.
 
I look forward to receiving an update.
 
Regards

LittleFeet

Long may the doing well continue!

Finally, I wanted to introduce TWIM to Chananth, who is – full disclosure – my awesome girlfriend :D and in recovery from her own stuff. She’s been sat here next to me on the sofa posting at the same time as I was writing this because I was whinging about the blogosphere being so quiet this week!

I’ve not been so great at keeping up with blogging. I’ve not exactly had loads going on…work, essay deadline, folk festival last weekend. But in terms of what Ihad been doing previously, that’s nothing.

The thing is, I reduced my hours, and then sort of crashed a bit. Not remotely on the scale that happened on several previous occasions – not a proper mental health type crash. Just a sort of lessening of the general pressure I’d put myself under doing so many things at once, which led to my brain going “oh, a break, I NEED a break, lets have one now” when I was all like “um, no…essay deadline, remember, brain can’t just decide to stop working”. The essay topic was definitely challenging, and the OU book that it was based on had been pretty challenging also, but this would not usually result in a full scale “I just can’t” type protest from my brain. After much anxiety, refusing to concentrate and flat out staging a protest, I persuaded my brain to cooperate on the promise that it had made it’s point and I ‘got’ what it was trying to tell me.

If you go to her blog you might find a clue as to where I found the Wildcard from this week!

It’s been stuck in my head all week, being simultaneously hilarious and annoying. So I thought I’d share ;)

Don’t forget to enter the TWIM Caption Competition!



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