We’re coming up to four weeks into our lockdown in London now and I’m seeing more and more in the press about how this lockdown can affect mental health and what we should be doing to assist in staying healthy.
As someone with pre-existing mental health conditions, this comes with a whole host of new challenges. As I have mentioned before, the self-isolation and social distancing wasn’t a huge change to my usual way of life. For many years, the bins have gone out more than I have. I’m sure many of you have seen the joke doing the rounds on Facebook at the moment about “the cat now asks me if I want the radio left on while it goes out”! That’s exactly how it is in my house. The cat, compared to me, is a social floosey and she sleeps for 17 hours per day!
We already know that I’ve actually had to go out of the house more than usual because I can’t get an online shopping delivery slot so I’ve actually had to venture to the shops. Now that has become a more civilized procedure, I feel better equipped to deal with that. It is still very much of a challenge though and “just popping to the shops for a few bits” is mentally exhausting and, at times, incredibly scary for me. I have a permanent shopping list on the go so that when I feel ready to tackle the outside world, I can just pick up that list and go. Unfortunately, I can’t pre-plan going at 11am next Tuesday because I don’t know what I’m going to feel like at 11am next Tuesday so I have to go when I feel good enough. Hence, the ongoing shopping list. When I tried to get an online booking slot with Morrisons at the end of last week, I was greeted with the usual message. There were 5,647 people ahead of me in the queue and still nothing available. But, at least the queue has gone down. The last time I looked, there were 22,846 people ahead of me in the queue!!
However, what about being indoors? How is it really affecting me and what have been doing about it?
I can very easily and half-jokingly say that I already lived the life of a hermit, only occasionally leaving the house so this social distancing is not a problem for me. That is only true to a certain extent. The first week of the lockdown, I was absolutely fine because I wasn’t really adjusting to anything. It was just a “normal” week where I didn’t leave the house but was speaking to Mum and Jill every day. It has been the second week onwards where I have really started to notice an effect upon my mental health.
Something I worked out really quite early on in this crisis was to limit the amount of news I was watching and the amount of time reading anything on social media. At the beginning of the crisis, there was so much mis-information across all media platforms. I was guilty of falling for one of the mis-information posts. So, I decided that I should just refer to a couple of trusted websites for COVID-19 information. The NHS website obviously is my first port of call. The media outlets are just full of the same bad and sad news and now, instead of being just a health crisis, it’s becoming political. Just stop. There will be plenty of time for a post mortem of how the Government reacted to the crisis once we are out the other side. Let’s just deal with what is in front of us right now. I had to turn away from all of this because it was making me mad.
For those without pre-existing mental health conditions, the advice for coping with the self-isolation is to try to set and/or maintain a routine. For those who can and are working from home, they have been advised to set up a separate work area to differentiate between “home” and “work”. For those with children at home, it’s setting time aside for the home schooling and ensuring that the kids do the work that has been set aside for them. That’s great and really sound advice and is hopefully working for those who have been able to implement it. But, what about those who truly live on their own, aren’t working from home and are coping with a pre-existing mental health condition?
I have always tried to keep a routine. Tried being the operative word. Certainly, in terms of what time I go to bed and what time I try to get up in the morning, I have always tried to preserve that aspect of a routine. Obviously when the depression really kicks in, that doesn’t work. However, I have become very good at saying “well, it didn’t work today and that’s okay, I’ll try again tomorrow”. You have to be kind to yourself. Everybody does. Pre-existing conditions or not. We are in unchartered territory here and it is essential that, right now, we take everything day by day. It is absolutely okay if you don’t get out of your PJs today (whatever the status of your mental health). It’s absolutely okay if you didn’t brush your hair. It’s absolutely okay if the kids didn’t have a bath today. It’s absolutely okay if the kids spent more than their usual time on electronic devices. This is all okay. DO NOT beat yourself up about any of this. Just remember that you made it through the day, your kids are loved, you are loved and you are safe. Right now, take that and run with it (obviously keeping two metres apart and only for your daily exercise)!
Some people have seen this forced isolation as a chance to catch up on all those little jobs that they haven’t had time to do before. If DIY isn’t your forte, STOP RIGHT NOW. The chances are that you’ll have a DIY induced accident of some description and put even more pressure on our already overstretched NHS right now. Leave re-wiring your house alone. Don’t re-plumb your bathroom. Don’t put that set of shelves up if you’re not completely comfortable using your drill. Don’t get that step ladder out and clear the gutters if the ladder is a bit old and rickety. Leave it.
In terms of doing little jobs, for me as someone with mental health issues, I have found it useful to write lists. I don’t make the lists extensive because I could take one look at them and say to myself “well, that’s never going to happen” and give up straight away. I have a list of “little” jobs. This isn’t different to my usual way of life. They really do include the simple things, such as doing the washing up, washing my hair, putting clean clothes on. Really the day to day stuff that those without issues would think nothing of but, to me, can take an immense amount of effort.
I also have a list of “big” jobs. These are the ones that I can really only consider doing when I’m having a really good day or, quite frankly, when I’m in a peak or “manic” courtesy of the BPD and Bipolar. Those days when I can go through the house like a tornado. That’s when the “big” jobs get done. Vacuuming the stairs, cleaning the windows, ironing. Again, they may still seem like normal day to day jobs to everyone else, but these things are absolutely mammoth tasks for anyone with severe mental health issues. Over the years, I have (subconsciously to start with) come to utilise the manic days as constructively as possible. The reason that I make the list of the “big” jobs is to give it some structure. Even though I’m manic, my brain is still not really functioning truly coherently. It’s running around in circles at 100 miles per hour and I need to reign it in a little and give it some focus. That’s why the lists work for me.
I didn’t actually start making these lists properly until after taking some time to reflect upon my manic episodes. This was as a result of watching a dart player have a manic episode on stage back in 2018 (see my post on “Is a manic episode good?” for full details). During my manic episodes (and to a certain degree the depressive episodes), I keep a diary of what I get done during the day. This allowed me to go back and clearly see when I was in a manic episode and see what I was achieving during that time. I also looked at the depressive episodes and, even during my darkest times, if I could put one thing in that book that I had done that day, I would consider that a massive achievement. Quite a few times, the only thing that is written in that book during the darkest days is that I actually made it through the day. On those days, that has to be enough. That also then puts me in the bracket of “functioning” with mental health issues. Thus, the “small jobs” list and the “big jobs” list were born!
Lockdown has really hammered home how much I rely upon Jill and Jack and their family. Even in previous times when I haven’t been able to get to see my parents and/or my sister and her family, I’ve always been able to pop around to Jill’s house if I needed a break. I can’t do that now and it’s starting to prove quite tough. I always knew that Jill and the London Family were a huge support for me but lockdown is really opening my eyes up to it. Jill and I still check in with each other every day or, worst case, every other day but the lockdown has made me realise how much I value her and the London Family and, quite frankly, that I do probably take them for granted. That is going to change once the lockdown is over. I am so going to take Jill out for the best slap up lunch and afternoon together that we can once we are through this, just to let her know how much she means to me and how thankful and grateful I am for her friendship and love.
Basically, my support network has disappeared into lockdown. I can’t see my parents either. I’m worried about them. They are squarely in the vulnerable bracket and I can’t just go and see them to check in on them. However, I did come up with sort of a solution for this during the crisis. I got my Mum, Dad and sister to all create Zoom accounts (other video conference platforms are available). I talked them all through setting it up and we now have a weekly family video conference call on a Sunday afternoon. That way, I get to see my family and my parents get to see their children and grandchildren, albeit remotely for now. It is helping me a bit and I think it’s helping my parents a bit too as I know how much they miss the grandchildren. It’s all we can do for now but something is better than nothing. The fact that I got my IT unfriendly family all on Zoom is quite an achievement in itself to be fair and that warranted a little tap on the back for me I have to admit.
How I can tell that I’m most definitely deteriorating in terms of my mental health is that I’m eating myself out of house and home right now. I know that I have put on at least half a stone (7lbs) in weight since lockdown. I spend my entire day eating. I know that many other people are doing the same. Again, there are so many joke posts doing the rounds on Facebook at the moment about how much weight people will have put on during lockdown and the fact that Christmas eating rules apply during this time, but for me it’s a vicious cycle. I’m eating everything in sight and then I have to go out again to the shops to re-stock. I hate going out to the shops so I’m on edge when I do get there. I’m emotional shopping as a result of being on edge and anxious so I come back with all sorts of crap food which I’m then shovelling down my throat. I am buying sensible food as well, there is lots of fresh fruit and salad in the trolley too but that is way offset by the amount of chocolate that’s accidentally finding its way into the trolley and the shopping bags.
I’ve never been a fan of phoning the Crisis Line in my borough for mental health or any of the other telephone support lines as I have never had good interactions with them. There’s no way I’m going to present at A&E right now and hope to see a psychiatrist. The NHS is under way too much pressure right now without someone like me rocking up having a total meltdown. So, I’m out in this lockdown on my own without my support network. I thought I was floundering before lockdown, but this is a whole new ball game. I’m desperately trying to implement the techniques that I learned during my Mindfulness training but nothing seems to be getting through right now. If this is a time where I just have to “Ride the Storm” (courtesy of Shotgun Messiah), it’s going to be the longest run I’ve been through for quite some time and I’m not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel just yet. My GP surgery is closed right now and I don’t even know yet how I’m going to get my repeat prescription for my medication sorted out. I’ve still got two weeks’ worth of medication but it’s something I need to start investigating now in case it’s going to be somewhat of a faff getting the repeat prescription.
Hang in there people. This will end at some point. Every day that we get through is one day closer to being out the other side. That’s what I’m holding on to along with a bar of Galaxy chocolate.
Living The BPD Life 