Mental Health Awareness Week

I wanted to acknowledge Mental Health Awareness Week. So many people are suffering every day with mental illness. Feeling unable to talk about it, for whatever reason. It’s hard to know what to say to offer up any kind of helpful advice so, I thought I would share my own mental health experience’s.

I see and hear advice all the time for those suffering with mental illness to talk. ‘Don’t filter feelings’, ‘don’t suffer in silence’, and, absolutely, ‘its good to talk’. It’s not that simple though is it. There are lots of reasons why those suffering don’t speak out. For me, it was not knowing I was suffering. Not understanding the feelings I was experiencing or what was causing them lead to me not really knowing I was suffering. Not right away anyway. By the time you do realise, there is then so much to say you don’t know where to start. You don’t know how to bring it up. How do you explain those feelings because there is not just one feeling. There is not just one specific cause. It’s a whole number of things that all contribute to that feeling and the longer it goes on the more factors increase that feeling, the harder it gets to talk about and it becomes a vicious cycle you are desperate to get out of but can’t.

Having a chronic illness was definitely a factor for me. It still can be. I didn’t talk about that either and still don’t really. No one understands unless they have gone through something similar. How do you explain to someone you don’t want to go because it physically hurts to wear jeans, a bra, put on shoes. To get in and out of a car I have to suffer the pain to do for work every day. I don’t want to do it on my day off as well. The worst part for me was being made to feel lazy. Comments from friends and family, said with no intention at all to hurt or upset me, would make me feel so awful. I suffered with fluctuating weight for years due to pain and being unable to exercise regularly and side effects from different medications. This impacted on my self-confidence massively and any comment about not bothering to dress in decent clothes, make my bed, do the washing up, hoover, put washing away, ‘oh the tele’s on again’, kind of comments just made me hate myself. I didn’t know at the time but, by not doing those jobs, by resting my body, it was my sub conscious, it was self-preservation.

Every day waking with pain and stiffness. Having a really bad night’s sleep the night before due to waking frequently in pain so feeling exhausted. Struggling with movement due to pain. All whilst working full time. I had no idea I was already suffering with depression and anxiety.

When I first developed Uveitis (inflammation of the Iris), I had never heard of it before and ignored the initial symptoms thinking it was hay fever related, until it got so bad, I could no longer see out of my right eye. I had to go to hospital and have a steroid injection into my eye to save my sight. It was one of the most frightening experiences of my life and absolutely destroyed my confidence. I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t go out on my own and when I did go out, I had to hang on to my husband’s arm so tight as the light hurt my eye so much, I couldn’t look up. We were living in a busy city at the time. My husband didn’t yet have his car licence so, we would walk into town to do our shopping. I remember feeling absolutely terrified. People brushing past me out of nowhere because I couldn’t see them coming. I’d look up periodically to see crowds of people coming at me. It was terrifying. That said, this did speed up the referral process and lead to my diagnosis. I remember feeling relieved initially. There was a genuine cause and reason for my symptoms. It wasn’t just all in my head. Shortly after that relief, came fear. What would be my future? I’m only 28 and in this much pain all the time. Physically unable to put my own socks on some days. I honestly saw myself wheelchair bound in 10 years.

Two years later saw me pregnant with my first child. I had been told prior to this; I would be unlikely to conceive due to Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. This had all been happening alongside the symptoms of the AS and was diagnosed two years later following months of blood tests and an ultrasound. This was all happening whilst I was in the middle of completing my degree. The pain I was suffering due to the POS led to me having to delay my final placement during my final year and was suggested I would not graduate that year. This devastated me. I had given up so much to return to education full time in my late 20s. To be told it may be another year felt totally crushing. Thankfully, this did not happen and I graduated with everyone else in my class.

We were both shocked and ecstatic when we found out we were pregnant. Apart from the expected morning sickness, I had a pretty straight forward pregnancy and my symptoms improved, apparently to do with the hormones, and I really enjoyed being pregnant. The Labour was initially slow to progress, several days, but reassured this was normal for a first baby. Labour started properly on the morning of Father’s Day. All progressed well initially. I only had gas and air whilst in the pool until it was time to start pushing. After an hour it became clear there was a problem and with baby’s heart rate slowing, I was rushed into Theatre. I remember thinking, this is what everyone expected of me. A friend of mine at the time had her baby’s young and it had been an ongoing joke for years how I was ‘too posh to push’. She would say it every time we talked about her pregnancies and subsequent straight forward births. That, combined with stories of Caesarean sections told to me by my own mother who was an experienced midwife, all I felt was embarrassment, shame and failure that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even give birth properly. Of course, I know now this wasn’t my fault but it took three years to get there. I had a caesarean section due to the position my baby had gotten himself into. I was told during my pre-birth assessment of my second baby what happened and that he wasn’t coming out any other way. That it was nothing I had done or didn’t do, it was all baby. This was the first time I was told this. Two and a half years later. That feeling of shame, of guilt, of failure. I felt those feelings the whole time. I had been suffering with post-natal depression with no idea at all. I only realised this following the birth of my second child. It felt so different this time. I was much more content and happier but it made me sad to think I had been so unhappy all that time and didn’t know. Neither did anyone else.

It really affected me after my first baby. The recovery time for the C-section was much longer than expected. There was a step out of my house that I couldn’t get out of by myself so would spend days indoors on my own whilst my husband was at work. By the time I was more mobile after the section, my AS was flaring up again. I used to dread the baby needing feeding, or changing, or playing on the floor so much due to the pain and feelings of exhaustion that I, and everyone else, would put down to me being a new mum. I would look to mum friends with babies of similar age and be so envious of how easy they seemed to find motherhood. Of how organised they were and how much they seemed to genuinely enjoy meeting up and going out with their babies. I hated it. Receiving that dreaded text message asking if I was free Friday morning for tea and cake, knowing I would be and feeling unable to make any excuse not to go. Hating the fact these things were always arranged over nap time so we ‘could chat’ when, for me, it was my only time to be able to sit and relax myself. To rest my body and my mind to be able to carry on for the rest of the day. I started to become resentful of everything. I saw no joy in anything. I would go through the motions like I was supposed to. Smile when others smiled. Laughed when others laughed. Telling myself the brain fog I was feeling was just tiredness and that it would get better, easier. I started contacting people less. Put people off coming to mine preferring instead to go to theirs so I could make an excuse and leave after an hour while still appearing social enough by going in the first place. I would struggle with car seat and high chair straps due to the pain in my hands and fingers so I would avoid certain times of the day to make things like this less of an issue. I would appear stand offish without intending to be due to the pain and fatigue. People would say what’s wrong, I would say I’m fine just tired because I never had long enough to talk about any of it. I always had the baby with me. If people came over, it was to see the baby, not me. I remember those comments really hurting me at the time. No-one ever meant it to come across like that, in fact, if I told them now how it made me feel, they would be devastated, but it just made me feel so incredibly lonely. When I did start going out more on my own again, like of an evening, I felt then I couldn’t talk about how I was feeling either because I hadn’t seen my friends or family without being mum as well in such a long time, I didn’t want to bring the evening down so, again, I would laugh and smile when I was meant to and carry on.

Anxiety then started to follow. I remember going shopping once. I went on my own leaving the baby with his dad. I made a list and forgot it. Told myself it was fine, I’ll remember, it wasn’t a lot. Grabbed the basket on the way in, managed about 5 minutes before I started to panic. I couldn’t remember what I needed. The more I walked around trying to remember, the more panicked I felt. I just saw a sea of faces looking at me. I was getting really hot. My heart was racing. I put the basket down mid aisle and left. Those who suffer from anxiety will explain how it feels to them because it’s different for everyone. For me, it feels like a glass of Coke or lemonade bubbling up and fizzing over, only the bubbles represent fear and panic. It rises up within you and consumes your whole body. You feel hot and clammy. You can’t focus on anything. You can’t think straight, hear or see straight. Then all you can think about is how to get out of that situation the fastest way possible. With the birth of my second child a lot of these feelings went away. I realised I had been suffering with post natal depression and anxiety for three years and spoke about this to my GP at my eight-week postpartum check-up. The following year, my AS was flaring badly and I was referred to the AS specialist team for assessment for other treatments. Whilst waiting for these treatments to start, my AS deteriorated rapidly and when I woke New Year’s Day, 2018, I sat up in bed feeling very stiff with the usual pain in my pelvis that, by then, had become a daily battle, I went to stand up and fell, my husband catching me, stopping me from hitting the floor. He guided me down to an arm chair next to the bed that had been there since breastfeeding my second baby. I couldn’t weight bear at all. My pelvis felt broken. The pain was unbelievable and it tore through my body like a burning hot knife. I recall ringing my sister whilst sat in that arm chair. Frightened and in excruciating pain. I will never forget it. She told me, ‘you’ll be fine, this has happened before, you know that, it’ll pass’. Everything she told me was true. I had felt pain like it before. It had passed. I was fine. This had felt different because it was different but I now felt stupid for ringing her. For ‘making a fuss’. Something she absolutely had not intended and was truly kind and being supportive. The issue was with me. I instantly shut down instead of actually telling her more detail. That I could not physically stand up. That I couldn’t walk.

I had to have crutches and two steroid infusions. I was taking naproxen, codeine and paracetamol and there’s a whole weekend I don’t remember at all. This was the start of my darkest time, triggered by one event. I was unable to wash my own hair. Get in and out of the bath without support. Dress myself. The only way to get downstairs was on my bottom, one step at the time. My husband would go in front of me in case I fell and to help me get up from the stairs and to the sofa. I remember coming down the stairs and my then youngest, 15 months old, held his hand out to me and said ‘I’ll help you up mummy’. It absolutely broke my heart. I looked at my husband and just said I can’t do this anymore. Later that night in the bath I told my husband what I was planning to do because I couldn’t carry on. I didn’t cry. I wasn’t sad. It all made sense to me. I told him they would be better off without me and we’d lose the house if I couldn’t work so, financially they’d be better off too. In my head, if I was dead, they would get financial support from my life insurance and my death in service. (I realise now this would not have been the case but that’s honestly what I thought at the time). My husband was amazing. He was really supportive. He knew why I felt the way I did and understood. The next day my mum came round and then I was in Wales with her where she and my dad had moved to the year before. This literally saved my life.

I hated my body. I hated feeling I had let everybody down. My husband and children. My work colleagues and friends. My family. I spent two weeks away and when I returned home I was referred for counselling and for the first time talked to someone about it all. I was then diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder triggered by the caesarean section which was then triggered again when I became unable to walk.

My youngest is 7 months old now. At every appointment throughout my pregnancy I was asked how I was feeling, and I mean, specifically asked if I was feeling OK. How I was emotionally. How was I sleeping, was I eating and getting outdoors enough? After the birth, at every check up, every visit from the health visitor, I was asked how I was feeling. I had this with my previous babies except for one question I was asked this time I was never asked before, ‘are you enjoying him’? I remember being quite taken aback because, yes, I really was, so much, but it instantly took me back to my first where I absolutely was not enjoying him at all. It just made me think, if I’d been asked that question instead of ‘how are you feeling?’ would I had answered differently? We will never know the answer to that. All I know is, that by talking about mental health, will, hopefully, make those who don’t suffer, more aware for those who do.

I don’t think it’s very helpful telling people who suffer to just talk about their feelings because it really isn’t that simple. Time is needed. People need to slow down and really look around them. Notice what’s going on. Don’t ask if they’re doing OK. They will say yes because you already said that they are. Don’t take their first answer if you think something is going on. Don’t text, go round to their house. Listen. Not to what they say, but to what they don’t say, and, when they do talk, which I promise you, if you give them the time, they will. They don’t want to feel a burden. They don’t want to feel they will bring you down, so reassure them and just be there. When more people who don’t suffer are aware of those who do. When health professionals ask the question the right way, those suffering, will start talking.