Honestly; I fear myself.
At present my unpredictability and volatile personality make me worried that I’m totally losing the plot.
Being up in the air again with my diagnosis I don’t have ways to explain why I am reacting the way I do. I have read that when people have ways to pin point triggers and explain reactions and motivations behind their emotions thus giving clarity in diagnosis helps with processing, but I don’t have a diagnosis.
Yet again I have been placed in the “we don’t know what’s wrong, let us start again pile” not really what I want to hear but starting again is better than me finishing it all off.
I was triggered recently and pin pointing the trigger was easy; family. Family triggers tend to be my worst enemy. But they are not the only things to set me on a downer.
When this happened, it took me at least 4 days to stop thinking about my worthlessness. Mostly locked away in my bedroom. Like a depressed teenager. I couldn’t socialise in my own home. So, to make this an understandable perspective, I just lost 4 days being present with my kids and MC. I was here on the couch, at the dinner table, doing drop offs and pick-ups but I was lost in my head.
I saw the nurse practitioner[1], and this is desperately necessary when I don’t know what to do with myself. NP has a genuine want to see me well. NP meets with DR to discuss cases. I tend to be on the discussion list often and together they want to start again. Seeing NP often on a weekly basis and finding someone that likes to give you physical information on ways to go, what to work on and what we are looking for is effectively a medicine within itself. NP wants me to be active, really help in the research process which has given me a motive to keep perusing recovery. After another “we don’t know what’s wrong” It would have been easy for me to drop off the face of the earth. Getting this said is heart breaking. Yet I am excited to find a remedy to assist with my recovery.
First, we need to break down my history.
Who was I as a child? Was I quiet? Reserved? Average? Exceptionally smart? Lonely? Weird? Sad? Just a normal kid?
This information is not easy to come by, I’m 34’. Recovering information from people that can remember me back then. Well that’s a joke. I think it is forgotten that I have had electricity through my brain over 15 times and my memory is totally shot but there are still these things happening that trigger me. Everyone’s perception of what happened, the memory is blurred and skewed. I need me. I need to find me as I was back then. What help has been given is appreciated. But to bullet point myself is going to be hard.
Looking for things that were missed by multiple psychiatrists, by psychologist’s, the mental health system. Taking this time to analyse possible triggers. If I am being triggered by something we haven’t thought of before. An example of what I mean is a trigger is like the smell of tequila makes me gag, sometimes the thought of it triggers memories of the night I was so sick on it. I have now totally wiped it from my drinking palate. I don’t think about the night tequila broke me but when I smell it. Ta Da.
There are likely circumstances that I haven’t considered but NP and DR can reassess their validity for my diagnosis.
Trying to look at myself from a clinical point of view is proving difficult. There are things that I am going through that do bring up physical and very emotional reactions. I know this is going to be a process and we have so many different things especially the little ones to find so we can start ticking the boxes.
I think I am feeling a little relief too that instead so shifting the diagnosis’ that have been following me for all these years that even if we do come back with the same things we tried. And know I do try hard.
I said to my sister that it is hard, hard to be me. It’s not always because of the mental health issues but because I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what kind of person I am under this disease. I have great ways of masking who I am. But really, I don’t know who that is. Its kind of like I will be removing layers, peeling my skin and baring my bones like the Robbie Williams film clip ‘Rock DJ’ although not as fun and sexual but I will take layer upon layer and bring it all back to the beginning, start again and see who I build through this new process.
[1] is an advanced psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner (NP) educated to a master’s degree level, registered and endorsed by the Australia Health Practitioners Regulation Agency and Nursing & Midwifery Board of Australia, to function autonomously & collaboratively in an advanced and extended clinical role. The nurse practitioner role is grounded in the nursing profession’s value, knowledge, theories and practice and provides innovative & flexible health care delivery.
She holds two master’s degrees – Masters of Mental Health (USQ) and Masters of Nurse Practitioner Studies (UQ) and is a member of the Australian College of Nurse Practitioners (ACNP).
Her clinical role includes assessment & management of patients, referral of patients to other health care professionals, prescribing medication and ordering diagnostic investigations. Caring for people of all ages with mental illness or mental distress, aged & palliative care, primary health care, chronic disease management, child & family health care
