Mental Health Trends and Mindfulness: Just Give Me My Damn Pills

 Current mood: wine, bitter, pissed off. Improving.

 This is going to get a bit heavy and rambly in places, as I'm not in the best one at the minute.

 I've been going through some part of the mental health service or another since I was sixteen. I'm not embarrassed about it and I shouldn't be. The majority has been one-on-one counselling, though I had some brief flirtation with group therapy; that was a fucking barrel of laughs and it's just kept getting funnier. It's been wonderful in the past few years to see more people opening up and finally talking about the matter. Yet I've noticed as more people come forward there has been more and more marketisation of services and self-help. One night, at an extremely low point, I rang the Crisis Team and was asked by the guy on the phone if I had tried a colouring book, or a mindfulness app? Of course! Because when somebody is feeling at absolute rock-bottom all the need is to do some pretty pictures or piss about on their phone. Not to mention that sleep deprivation is a key factor in many people hitting crisis point, and the light from electronic devices being proven to negatively impact those sleepy hormones, so hunching over your smart phone is obviously the best thing to do. Anyway, I'm getting off topic. 

 Mindfulness has been lauded as some sort of mental health buzzword in the past few years and honestly? My mind is totally full. I know when I'm being a dick. I know when I'm being irrational. I know why I want to behave like this, even when I know it's not healthy. There's honestly so much crap in there I've reached the brim, and I know I'm nearing boiling point. Tell me one more time to colour in and I might take that pencil to your eye. The mental health system itself has a history of taking the sticky plaster approach: treating the symptoms rather than the root cause. I firmly believe that if service users had more one-on-one work to establish the cause earlier on rather than throwing them into whatever therapy type is trendy at the time then it'd save a lot of time, money, and suffering all round. 

 Historically, if you go back one hundred years or so then the popular thing to do was stick anybody with a mental illness in an asylum. It required two doctors' signatures for admittance, but eight for a release. Fifty years ago they were handing out lobotomies like they were "i didn't bite the dentist" stickers. Twenty years ago it was all about popping pills and self-help books. Now we're in somewhat of a limbo phase of what could be a brilliant mental health service, or the lunatics taking over the asylum, so to speak.

 I get that arts, crafts, and writing can be helpful for mental health. Fuck sake, I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't! Half of the posts on here are the result of some crazed manic or depressive moment. I've been through CBT, DBT, talking therapy, psychiatric evaluation, waitings lists, medication, medication changes, medication withdrawal. And what has been most consistent through all of that is my medication. Other than the brief month I had my meds changed and I believed I was the She-Kraken from the depths of Hell. That was... Not fun. For anybody. At all. Anyway. I had my last psychiatric evaluation over a year ago now and, while I have a Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) to work with and she's absolutely wonderful, I have yet to have an updated diagnosis from that evaluation. And the funny part? My original referral was for eating disorder treatment. Have I had any targeted help for that? Have I fuck! 

 But after countless rounds of CBT and Talking Therapy I was finally referred for DBT with my CPN (I'm busting out all the acronyms here!) I've had a look through what DBT is and to be honest? I get it. I get what Dialectical Behavioural Therapy is, I get what it's used for, and I get how it can be helpful. However I also believe that the whole premise of how it's presented is utter bollocks. In my last appointment I was asked if I'd been remembering my something-or-others, I'll call it my 'Here Man!s' for the sake of this post. And I truly couldn't remember what it was! Because it was, like, six simple points that had been over complicated in order to sound scientific and medical. It was something to do with physical health, eating, exercise and other bollocks. But having it called a 'Here Man!' when I'm trying to finish my final year of uni, at a time when what I should be focused on learning Sociology and key feminist theory, finishing my dissertation, I'm stuck in a counselling room trying to remember what 'Here Man!' stands for. And it isn't even that word, it's some other twisted acrostic poem to make the whole practice of therapy sound more scientific and weighted. Almost like those stupid songs or rhymes you learn in maths and science classes to calculate average speed and other bollocks. I can understand to others that it might make the therapy type seem more 'real' and 'provable', but to me it just makes me want to punch whatever bastard came up with them in the face. I get the principles, I get the helpful methodology, but asking me to remember what 'Here Man!' means makes me feel tested. It puts performance pressure on me in a space where I've come for treatment and I can't do it. It's like asking for help and then being reminded that you're under exam conditions and that you're the failure for not remembering it. 

 My CPN said to me this week that I seemed unusually distracted. She's used to me spacing out sometimes but this session was rife with periods of me staring off into space, partially listening and not really taking anything in. And I wholly agree. I felt that I'd failed, not remembering what 'Here Man!' stood for, as it was something I should have been practicing in order to get better. But again, when you're at such a low point that you don't even want to get out of bed or open your eyes, do you really want to waste your time trying to remember what the H, the E, the R, the other E, etc, all stand for? 

 One of the suggestions from this session was that I check out something called the Recover College Collective. It offers BTECs and stuff and helps with mental health apparently, it's like peer-mentoring for crazy people. I had a look at the 'prospectus' with my CPN and, while it sounds interesting, I completely zoned out. Emotional regulation through interpretive dance? Art classes? Writing? This is the shit that turns me off therapy. I'm sick of sticking fancy labels on simple concepts to make them sound more credible. I'm sick of colouring books being the cure-all solution for anxiety. Because when people hit a bad patch, try these things, and they don't work, we feel like failures. We feel like we're failing at getting better. And it's not fun. It's really not fun.

 I'm not writing this as something against these therapy types or anything else, I'm writing it from my experience. Giving something a stupid name and label doesn't make it a cure, and it doesn't make it helpful. It might make it sound more credible to those who try to measure it as a biological experiment, but for me it just means frustration. It means headaches I don't need, reading I don't want to do, and interacting with new people that I don't want to meet. All I want is a therapy type where somebody will tell it how it is, without making it sound either sciency-fancy or arty-farty. Is that too much to ask?


 Note: this isn't me condemning these therapy types, I can't stress that enough. But shoving them down somebody's throat when they're already sick to fucking death of saying 'help, I don't understand' isn't helpful.

Street Harassment: A Short But Sweet Insight

So in the past twelve days I have been catcalled or otherwise harassed on the street I live on. Given that it's the main street of Heaton, you can account for more footfall, more people passing through etc, therefore more wankers passing through but in less than a fortnight I'm starting to feel less safe in my own community. I have called Heaton my home for almost five years now and I'm not going to let dickheads make me feel unsafe on my own streets.

The first, believe it or not, was a bloke pushing a pram telling me to get my tits out. Given that his kid was of toddling and talking age I can just imagine their child going back to nursery next week, the staff asking if he enjoyed the holidays and him going "yes...get your tits out!". Some top-notch parenting there.

 The second was last Friday, the day after I'd truly earned my Darwin Award by stabbing myself in the leg while loading the dishwasher. So limping, full of stitches and painkillers, and generally feeling sorry for myself, I had a wander up to Boots for some more dressings and ibuprofen. I stopped in at a few charity shops on the way - notably the Newcastle Dog and Cat Shelter shop on Chillingham Road, awesome prices, nice stuff and they do wonderful work - and I found some lovely bits and pieces, three dresses and a top for a tenner! So feeling nice and perky, I was walking home and I'm stopped by three knobheads in a shitty corsa. The guy in the passenger seat goes with the ever original "oi oi sexy!", and when I tell him to go fuck himself him and his mates thought they'd be big and clever and go "oooOOOoooOohh!" in that patronising way, you know the one I mean. And because these geniuses are stuck at the traffic lights, what's a girl to do? So I went and kicked the bastards car. It was just sat there being all shiny and provocative with three idiots inside! Who could resist!?

 Today was a double-whammy. I was walking home from the shop and some prick thinks he's big and clever and makes kissy noises at me; and when I turn to do a double take he grabs his crotch. Mate, given that your hands looked smaller than Trump's, I wouldn't go comparing them to your dick as a scale, they'll just make you think it's big.

 Then tonight I was out doing some Pokémon hunting, there was a Bayleef at the corner shop! And some bloke going into the chippy asks me "how much?" with one of those sickening eyebrow-wriggles and a smirk you just want to remove from his face with sandpaper.  I was wearing my pimp coat (big, fluffy leopard print one that I love), polka-dot playsuit, over-the-knee-socks, and Docs. But why should it matter what I was wearing? So, unable to think of a witty comeback on the spot and having finished my cigarette, I throw the end at him. Consider it up-cycling - of him, not the tab end. He went from being human garbage to an ash tray with a pulse.

 It might seem like an overreaction but... I don't give a shit. I'm sick of the men who think this behavior is okay. When I told Paul when I got home he said "if I ever thought speaking to lasses like that was okay then my Mam would knock my block off." And so she should! In fact I would love to see a reality TV programme where men have to read out the shitty things they say to women they don't know to their mothers. Then the mothers are given a score out of ten for how well they kick the shit out of their sons. Hey, it's more educational than Keeping up with the Kardashians.

 And for any whiny "ugh, stop complaining and get a life" folk out there, this is my life. And the lived experience of almost every other woman I've ever met ever. And they need to learn to not be shitty.

 So when I was discussing this with my lovely friend Becky at the weekend we came up with a brilliant idea: stickers. Industrial strength stickers. To put on the vehicles or general person of men who think it's big and clever to catcall. Stickers so sticky that they'll have to pay for it to be removed professionally or wreck whatever it was stuck to by peeling it off. It can be their penance and punishment for being so shitty to women. Big, fuck-off sticky stickers that say "I'm a misogynist, do not approach!". Yeah...

So yes, this ended up a little longer than intended but I can't think of another title. And I'm sick of shitty men.

TL,DR: men, stop being shitty.

Not a Bitch to be messed with 😘

No, I Don't Want To Be Your Friend

Every now and then, as I'm sure you all do, I get a friend request from somebody from my past. Old friends I've lost touch with, acquaintances, and - most bizarre of all - from old bullies. In the years I've been on social media I have yet to fathom why somebody who has made my life hell at some point would think I'd like to get back in touch with them; maybe they think I've forgotten about it and moved on, maybe they think what they did wasn't too bad, or maybe they didn't even realise they were a bully. It puzzles me.

This is normally the part where I'm told "oh, you're oversensitive, move on", but when something that you have indeed moved on from comes back and shakes itself in your face it's hard not to let it gnaw at you. And I'm entitled to that anger. It may not be healthy, maybe it is, I don't know but it works for me. And I also dislike people who aren't my psychiatrist telling me how to manage my emotions, so opinions to yourselves on this one please.

But what I cannot stand is, after receiving a few requests from somebody and ignoring them several time, thinking they'd get that I don't want anything to do with them, I received a message from them. If anything it was an intrusion. Part of me said I should just delete it, but another told me to read it and really let them have it. It would be a wonderful outlet for all of the rage they brought up for me each time they tried to get back in touch.

I won't post screenshots as I didn't grab any, I didn't want a digital reminder of them every time I went back through old posts. It was a partial apology, albeit insincere, though I found the rest rather troubling. It went into how they would really like to meet up and talk feminism and old times. Yes, after having stated that "old times" meant physical and mental violence and intimidation.

 That really bugged me, trying to play on my interests to make me think maybe they aren't so bad, maybe I should give them a chance. Maybe fucking maybe. Maybe fuck off? A half-hearted admission of guilt and now calling yourself a feminist doesn't absolve you of past sins. Sure, you may be into equal pay and abortion rights now, but to me you will always be the person who tripped me, pushed me, called me fat, and advised me rather nicely to kill myself. Which at the time you made seem like a rather appealing option, but I wasn't going to give you the satisfaction.

 Trying to use something I'm so passionate about, something which had given me back my self-worth and self-esteem, to try and make yourself feel less shitty is a dick move. In fact it's beyond that. It makes me want to sink to your old levels and scrub your face into a wall, just because I can and I would if I got the chance.

I've done it before though, attempted to reconcile with a person who did a shitty thing to me. In fact she's up there in the top three of people who have done the most damage to me. A toxic mutual friend, who I cut from my life afterwards, pushed me into meeting with her. I resisted but when I ran into them by coincidence I caved. And I felt helpless. I still seize up and get tense when I think about her hugging me and telling me how good it was to see me, how happy she was I was giving her another chance. There was no apology. This person had spread rumours and tried to turn friends against me. Not in a petty "she said this about this person" way, but something very damaging which stopped me from getting help, internalising the issue, and becoming self-destructive.

After I got home that day I made sure I would have no contact with her or the friend who had forced the meeting again. I felt dirty just thinking about her, and the slimy way she had tried to pander to me. I made a promise to myself that day that I'd never let anybody make me feel that way again.

So the other day while reading that message, reading how that person was all good and sorry now, and wanted to make amends for telling me I needed to get raped and that he hoped I died etc, I could only think of one response:

Soz dude, Doctor's orders ╮(╯▽╰)╭

 Short, simple, and says what I need to say. I wasn't going to dignify that person with a calm, collected, and sharp response. I was going to let them stew, realising that he won't be able to mentally wank over what a good person he is for apologising to me and being forgiven. I don't owe anybody forgiveness. It might sound unhealthy but in all honesty I never intended to be liked my everybody, so I'm going to keep on having my ranty bipolar rambles and reserving my time and energy for people I actually give a shit about. 

 In short, I've written this for future reference, to pass on to anybody so up themselves to try this in the future. So if you received a link to this in response to a message you sent me then no, I don't want to reconnect with you, kindly crawl back under your rock and let me carry on thinking you don't exist. This is my way of coping and moving on. I suggest you do the same.