[strangecupoftea]

It is a long, long time since I posted anything on Tumblr, and I have no idea who is still around, but it felt important to write something about where I'm currently at, just in case it might be what someone needs to hear.

Two years ago, I was coming up to discharge from my second EDU admission. I'd spent 4 months on the unit, weight restoring and trying to unlearn the habits of a lifetime. On discharge, I was still deeply depressed and chronically suicidal, and remained so for a long time afterwards.

Today, I'm curled up on the sofa at home, cuddling my daughter, who is a week old today. I'm tired and sore and deeply, deeply happy.

I did not believe that this was possible for me. I had lost hope. I thought I had been too unwell for too long for things to ever change or get better, but I was wrong. It took a long time, a lot of support, and a lot of hard work, but my life is unrecognisable from where I was two years ago.

[strangecupoftea]

Today makes it two years since my cousin died, and it's been a hard couple of weeks. She would have been sixteen if she were still alive, and when I stop and think about how young that still is, how young the sixteen-year-olds at work seem, it takes my breath away. Mia was fourteen when she died and there was so much she didn't get to do- that she will never get to do. It still makes me so angry, and I don't know if that anger will ever really go away.

But despite all of that, I'm doing better than I have in years. Probably about 18 years, since starting secondary school. Although I have eating disordered thoughts, I don't act on them. I'm still mildly depressed (or perhaps dysthymic), but the overwhelming sense of hopelessness and futility and exhaustion has gone. The suicidal thoughts that were incessant and debilitating have faded to the odd intrusion here and there, which is much more easily dismissed. I'm coming to the end of 2 1/2 years of RO-DBT therapy, and I'm finally able to use some of the things I've learnt. I'm more open- about my thoughts and feelings and difficulties, to new experiences, to uncomfortable and challenging ways of looking at things. I'm enjoying work, and it gives me moments of genuine happiness. I'm reaching out to colleagues who are struggling and using my experiences to help them. I'm advocating for the patients and challenging unhelpful and stigmatising narratives around care-seeking behaviour, and I feel good about it. I don't know if I'll get onto training this year (I haven't even looked at my application yet!), but I don't think I really care. I love my job, and I'm not going to put my life on hold in order to qualify, so whether I get a place on the doctorate next year, or the year after, or never, it doesn't really matter.

Today has been hard, and this week has been hard, and next week is probably going to be hard too. But I'm not as scared as I was of feeling sad and angry, and I'm better at taking care of myself than I have ever been.

[strangecupoftea]

I had my first 1:1 session with a patient since returning to work yesterday, and it felt so good to be back. This kid had been either surly and uncommunicative, or rude and verbally threatening/aggressive since coming, but I had an inkling that she was testing people, seeing how far she could push them, and trying to provoke a negative reaction, so I decided to react with humour rather than strict boundary enforcement. It worked a treat! She was having to try hard to hide a smile within about 10 minutes, then opened up enough that I'll be able to work up a decent initial formulation to share with the rest of the team.

It's already obvious that she's going to be a pain in everyone's backside whilst she's on the ward, but I really like her- this funny, scrappy, street-wise kid, who's determined to get one over on everyone. She's going to be hard work, but I'm so excited to start!

[unwelcome-ozian]

[strangecupoftea]

I had my first full day back at work today! Occupational Health still haven't cleared me as fit to work, but we've ended up just cutting them out of the loop entirely. They're supposed to facilitate my return to work and recommend adjustments to make the job more manageable for me, but they've been nothing but obstructive over the last few months.

A few months ago I suggested that my managers at work could just speak directly to my care coordinator, rather than waiting for OH to act as go-betweens, but HR weren't convinced. Then, at the beginning of the month, some complicated managerial/organisational stuff happened which left the unit without an HR representative, so we seized the opportunity. Things moved fairly quickly after that- I met my new supervisor just under two weeks ago, had a half-day on-site last week and was back on the ward today.

Being back is weird. It's this strange combination of feeling like absolutely nothing has changed, but simultaneously feeling like everything is totally different. There are different patients, new nursing staff, an entirely new psychology team, and a different timetable, not to mention all the new Covid regulations (including wearing masks all the time. ugh.), but so many things are exactly the same as they were nine months ago. The team dynamics are the same; the split between inpatient and community teams is the same; the struggle to get our safeguarding referrals taken seriously is the same; the discussions in handover and ward round could have been carbon copies of discussions we had months ago about a different set of patients. And although every patient is obviously an individual, there are so many overlaps in their presentations and their experiences- their struggles, their traumas, their families. The same systemic issues cropping up again and again, in a way that was both reassuringly and depressingly familiar.

I want to hit the ground running and get stuck into everything, but my supervisor is (very sensibly) holding me back, and I guess I'll just have to learn to sit with the discomfort that causes.

[strangecupoftea]

I got an email from Occupational Health this morning... it's only taken them 16 weeks longer than it was supposed to! Still, better late than never, right? 🙄

The irony is, my service manager is so appalled by Occupational Health that he's making an official complaint and has got permission from HR to just cut them out of the loop entirely! The lead psychologist is now in charge of my return to work, and she's astonishingly efficient; she spoke to my care coordinator last week, called me on Tuesday, and I'm going in to meet her next Wednesday. I think I might stage a sit-in and refuse to leave the building without a start date for my phased return...

[strangecupoftea]

The most recent crochet creation- for a friend's birthday. The poor thing's ears are sadly wonky, but I'm choosing to believe that it gives her character!

[strangecupoftea]

P and I spent most of my appointment today talking about the obsessive/compulsive type behaviours that I've been thinking about over the past week, and I'm exhausted. I feel absolutely drained. The appointment finished over an hour ago, and I'm still just lying on my bed, processing, and waiting for the energy to get up and go and entertain Tom's parents (who, in some slightly unfortunate timing, are staying with us this week).

We were both very careful to avoid using the term 'OCD' (and I clarified that I wasn't trying to diagnose myself, or even seeking a diagnosis), but did refer to 'obsessive thoughts' and 'compulsive behaviours'. Initially, I don't think she quite grasped the extent of the behaviours, and said it was quite normal to rehearse conversations in your head; it was when I said that I spend several hours a day (at least two, and usually considerably more) mentally rehearsing scenarios that make me anxious that she began to ask a lot of questions and take an awful lot of notes. She was particularly interested in the behaviours I use to atone for and/or punish myself for being a 'bad person', and was really curious about the skin-picking/dermatillomania thing; how intentional the behaviour is, whether it's easy to stop, if it's a way of harming myself etc.

She agreed that, whether the behaviours we discussed meet diagnostic criteria or not, they tie a lot of things together and give us a whole new way of understanding my difficulties. It explains where my 'core belief' about being a bad person comes from, and there are obvious links between the things I do in response to that belief and the origin and maintenance of my eating disorder, depression, and suicidal thoughts. She wants to continue talking about it next week, even though it isn't technically RO-DBT.

I feel quite flat, and not nearly as calm or relieved as I anticipated, but I don't feel disappointed with her response; perhaps it's just that there's still a lot of uncertainty around it all, and I feel more comfortable with definites. I think I was hoping for some answers, and instead I'm just left with even more questions!

[strangecupoftea]

This really feels like it might be something big- the missing piece of the puzzle.

I've always known that it was weird to spend several hours most days mentally rehearsing how I would react in various scenarios, and the fact that those scenarios are often horrible- distressing or traumatic- has made me very secretive and very ashamed of it. I've hated myself and been scared of myself since it started when I was seven years old, but I've never told anyone about it. Despite being under my current mental health team for almost five years, I've never even spoken about it with them. I've never allowed myself to consider the possibility that this weird behaviour could be part of a mental health condition; I've always seen it as proof that I'm 'bad'. An evil, twisted person who needs to hold herself to the highest standards, because any slip might mean that the 'badness' could leak out and cause irreparable harm.

If I'm right, this could be where some of the core beliefs at the root of my depression come from. If I'm right, and I can look at this behaviour through the lense of OCD, it gives me a whole other way of seeing myself. It raises the possibility that maybe I'm not evil, twisted, toxic. Bad. Maybe I don't need to continually punish myself. Maybe my depression is treatable. Maybe killing myself isn't inevitable. Maybe I don't need to protect the people I love by ending my life.

I feel close to tears and completely overwhelmed. But I also feel excited and hopeful about the future in a way that I don't remember feeling. Perhaps ever. I don't want to overstate this and I don't want to self-diagnose, but it does feel really big and I want it to be true because it could answer so many questions and change how I think about myself. I know wanting it to be true doesn't make it true- I just want it to be Monday already so that I can talk to P about it.

[strangecupoftea]

This week I treated myself to a book I've wanted for years, and I'm so glad I did.

It's a beautiful, beautiful book- from the illustrations, to the writing, right down to how it makes me feel. I don't know how to explain it, but it speaks to something deep inside me, and as I read it I can hear myself thinking: 'Yes, that's it. That's how it is. That's what I believe. That's what I want.' This book describes exactly how I think and feel about food when I'm well, how I want to think and feel about food, even when the eating disorder is screaming, and the depression makes even moving feel hard.

Things have been hard for a while and, although I love it, I haven't really been cooking because it just feels like too much- too much effort, too much energy, too much time, too much everything. But reading this makes me want to start again (start somewhere, start anywhere), and reminds me of the comfort to be found in a bowl of pasta, or soup, in a crispy cheese toastie, or a fruit scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam. It prompted me to make a cup of strong, sweet, milky tea to have with my breakfast this morning because it's ok to find that soothing, and it's ok to choose sugar in my tea when I want to.

[shirleyjacksons]

i know this will make me sound old and boring but once i’m home for the night i’m home. i don’t like upsetting my plans even when i don’t have any. yes it’s only 8pm but i spent the whole evening believing i’m not going anywhere, i cannot perceive or be perceived right now, try again later

[booksandcows]

[midnightmurdershow]

Planet Earth II (2016) Episode 05 “Grasslands” Directed by Chadden Hunter

[sailorcuba]

the purest form of serotonin is when a cat looks at u and u go like “what?” and it meows at u

[focusedandfearless]

[flower-swift]

physically i'm in july, but mentally i’m still processing february.

[strangecupoftea]

A ridiculously sunny day on the South Devon coast path ☀️