Response

One of the biggest things that worried me about my breakdown becoming public knowledge was how people would react. Up to the point of my first admission into hospital, there was a very small, tight circle of people who were aware of the situation. Obviously, I’d had to tell my parents. Dave, Alexis, Jack, Jill and one or two other close friends were also aware. That was it. It wasn’t common knowledge by any stretch of the imagination. Making the decision to write this blog has also been peppered with fears of how it might be received by people who know me.

When it first became common knowledge that I’d had the breakdown and had mental health issues, the general reaction was disbelief. The common reaction was “f**k off, not you”. There are two ways to take that response. The first one is that people just didn’t believe me. That’s okay. People are entitled to believe what they want. They are perfectly entitled to form their own opinion of information that has been given to them. The alternative school of thought (and the one that I adhere to) is that with more than twenty years of practice of covering things up, burying emotions and just telling people “I’m just tired, I’ve been working long hours”, I’d clearly got really good at it so that when the real truth came out, it didn’t seem possible.

There are a lot of people in this world who don’t genuinely believe that mental health issues exist. Certainly, at the time I had the breakdown, I had a good job, I’d just got married and had a busy life so the general consensus was “what have you got to be depressed about?” This is a common question. You then get the follow-up comments of “there’s always somebody in the world worse off than you” or “you just need a holiday because of the hours you’ve been working” or “you just have to focus on the good things you have in your life” to quote but a few. That’s just the initial reaction to have had a breakdown.

Then there are the reactions to the details. I’m BPD with a side order of Bipolar. BPD isn’t as well known as Bipolar so people generally tend to disregard it and focus on the Bipolar. Unless you have Bipolar or have lived with someone with Bipolar or have direct experience of it, I think it is very easy to have what I would consider a slightly skewed perception of how Bipolar can manifest itself. Most people are aware that Bipolar comes with periods of mania followed by periods of depression. There are varying degrees of how long each episode can last which I think is where the mis-perceptions can happen.

My belief is that people can expect you to basically be running round at 100 miles per hour doing a cracking impression of Animal and Kermit’s love child from The Muppets and immediately straight after be curled up in the corner of the living room rocking backwards and forwards dribbling. That’s just not how it works. The UK Bipolar website: www.bipolaruk.org goes into detail about the different categories of bipolar should you wish to read further into it. It is almost as if I then have to justify myself in explaining what I’ve been diagnosed with.

The worst reaction is when I admitted that I self-harmed and had attempted suicide in the past. “Oh, that’s just attention seeking”. Just No. I am telling you now the fact that I kept all of it so secret for so long is the first line of proof that none of it was attention seeking. Secondly, and most importantly, the self-harming for me is what I call a controlled release of pain. At the point when I want to self-harm, it’s because I am feeling so much pain that I somehow need to get rid of it. I can’t process it and I want it gone. I feel that my emotions are out of control at that point. I don’t feel centred. I don’t feel calm. I feel that the only way I can regain control is to cut. Only on occasion have I needed stitches. Mostly, remaining in control extends to being able to keep the wounds clean afterwards and take care of them. I don’t want to cut deep enough that it would require stitches because that takes the control out of my hands further. I would then be subject to a whole series of questions if I was to go to Accident & Emergency requiring stitches and I don’t want anybody to know. It was my dirty little secret but it’s out there now.

I’m not very comfortable talking about it because I still feel a great deal of shame and guilt associated with it but I am getting better every day at managing the compulsion to self-harm and the incidents are becoming less frequent. It is still a problem and I hope to be able to one day be free of the compulsion.

Some might say that this whole blog is attention seeking. If getting the word out there is attention seeking, then, Yes. It’s not attention seeking for my own benefit. I’m in a position now where I feel stronger so I want to try to help others. Even if I reach just one person and they read this and gain some sort of support or at least the knowledge they are not alone, then my work here is done! If somebody reads this and then says to themselves “I get it a bit more now”, that’s a bonus in my book. I’m not a victim looking for sympathy. I have an illness and I’m working on my recovery one day at a time. I’m still the same person before the details became common knowledge. I still want to be treated as the same person but hope that any information that I convey is treated with acceptance and maybe one day, understanding.