Measuring Progress in Recovery

I'm at a strange stage in my recovery. It's not a 'crossroads', I'm not in 'limbo', I'm not even 'stagnating', but I am living with a sense of tension and unease. My problem is the future - or the fact that I cannot see what's going to happen in the future. Now, in reality I have never been able to see ahead in time, but I have always had plans, ambitions, career paths to follow, so it created the illusion that I had some control over how my life was progressing.

I don't think I'm any different or less able to read the future than anyone else, I have just become more acutely aware of how quickly my plans can go awry, just like Rabbie Burns' 'mice and men'. Having had an unremitting cycle of work and retraining, relocation and travel over the years, it is an alien experience to have lived in one place for more than a decade. Up until the last three years I have also had the stability of a career with a definite career progression. Surely that is what stability is built on? Yet, I don't think I have been as peaceful and untroubled by emotional storms as I have in the past year.

Nonetheless I am troubled by the short term nature of my ability to provide for myself. Going by the patterns of the past I SHOULD be relaunching myself in a new direction, be completely absorbed by a new job and praised for my external progression. My problem at the moment is that any opportunities to help out or volunteer are short term and sporadic. I feel the pressure to go back to work, but the idea of applying for full time work is so troubling that few people venture to ask and I daren't even consider the possibility, even though, on the surface, that would provide the greatest stability - financially.

As I write this, I realise I am in a process of adjusting my life to new priorities. My greatest needs are to manage my emotional life so that I don't regress to the inexorable daily cycles of damaging emotions and behaviours that have marked most of my life. That means that looking ahead is not helpful.

I am only able to plan up to a month in advance. I have a monthly meeting as part of the Experts by Experience group of my local NHS Trust. I am still meeting with people one to one to help them with Mental Health needs as part of my involvement in the church. Over the past three months, having had some disruption to my emotions caused by the pressures of managing the needs of elderly parents who live at a distance, I have learned to set the running of a five week course to one side - and learned that the sky didn't fall in because I put my own health first. Overall, it means that I have managed my mental health well and managed not to slip back into emotional dysfunction.

I need time to be able to reflect on these changes as realities which indicate that my progress in recovery and managing the symptoms of my BPD continues, but is not at an end, or, indeed an end in itself.

One of my biggest challenges is creating my own patterns without the regular hours of paid work. This includes valuing what I am able to do as helpful and contributing to those around me as I am able, without having the external validation of a pay packet at the end of the month. After over 35 years working in various jobs and careers this continues to be a battle. If I am able to turn up to events at church that means I am part of a community and I am valuable simply as myself. When I am asked to help out in developing a website and writing the odd article that means I can enjoy using skills and experience I have developed over the years. I need to change my internal validation compass to accept that I am contributing in a positive way without having a salary point to indicate my 'progress'.

Of course there is a daily reality of bills to pay. I know that it would be good if my progress could result in rejoining the ranks of those who are paid to work. At the moment I am learning to accept that whilst I am capable of working, my emotional resilience casts a question over how far I would be able to sustain a full time role. So, again I come back to looking ahead and seeing only bends in the road. Acceptance means that I settle my ambitious, career driven self to the here and now. Recognising the need some days to give myself a break means that I would not be the ideal employee at the moment, particularly in a nine to five, five days a week environment. Some structure would be nice, though.

I'm not 'melancholic' and I don't actually 'enjoy' being Depressed

No, I can't 'just cheer up' and no I don't actually 'enjoy feeling this way'. It doesn't actually result in me feeling noticed, it feels as if I am inside my own head screaming and no one can hear me. Often those of us diagnosed with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) also have 'co-morbidities' or identifiable mental illnesses which can be treated in isolation from the symptoms of my BPD. For me I am on meds to treat severe clinical depression and anxiety.

Of course none of these conditions lives in isolation within me - we are after all complex beings. Problem is when you are not living my life, you may have a number of straightforward (for you) responses.

1) Ignore the severity of my symptoms and thereby dismiss them
2) Decide that I'm obviously not trying hard enough to stop my symptoms
3) Try to rescue me by offering me inappropriate 'solutions' which make you feel better.

I was speaking to someone I consider very together, but who has been suffering a number of physical problems which have resulted in him feeling low. He was telling me about a friend of his who he needs to keep as a friend, he thinks, but who seems to spend most of their time together telling his friend just what he's been doing wrong, ie he is to blame for his physical conditions and therefore 'shouldn't' be feeling low about his situation. Sound familiar?

Depression is so misunderstood, maybe because it is the most common and identifiable mental illness. This article really struck a chord with me.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/07/not-talk-someone-with-depression?CMP=share_btn_fb

Why Do we Struggle to Humanise Mental Illness?

Please take the time to read this article and ask how often do we ask about 'them' and 'their' experiences and don't consider that we are all the same under the skin. I am no less human because of my mental health struggles than I am when I have the 'flu or have a broken bone.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/05/mental-health-lack-of-empathy-fear-ignorance?CMP=share_btn_fb

Why does my struggle with depression or Personality Disorder warrant less understanding than when I have a bout of the common cold. I get so much sympathy and compassion when I am snuffling, and no one tells me 'You know what you need to do....?'. No, when I am physically ill people consider me as one of 'them' - they will tell me 'this, or that helped me' or they ask me about my symptoms AND they listen to my response with understanding. When anyone dares to talk to me about my mental health, there is often silence when I am honest, followed by a minimisation such as 'Yes I get down sometimes too', or 'You should just shake it off and get out and about.'

The minute our differences start to dehumanise us is the moment when we are given permission to abuse others, just for being 'different' and as history tells us, that is the root of so many atrocities. Tackling stigma of all kinds is so much more than protecting special interest groups, simply because we consider 'them' weak, it is to acknowledge we have a shared humanity. If we are able to recognise our shared humanity then maybe societal scourges such as child abuse, elder abuse, attacks on the disabled and every religiously or ideologically motivated conflict will begin to be eradicated.

I Can't Cope with 'Disney' Films

There I am, a sodden heap on the sofa, sobbing uncontrollably. To any casual observer I must have received some devastating news about a loved one or something that devastates my life, but no, the trigger to my outburst of uncontrollable grief was a small sequence in the 30th anniversary programme made for Neighbours. The subject of the sequence was not even any of the human characters, but Bouncer, the Ramsay Street dog.



I tend to enjoy highly taut thrillers, crime drama with proper adult themes. I am unaffected by the most psychological of thrillers, particularly if there is intrigue to be worked through. However, present me with the highs and lows of family drama and I am reduced to incapability by virtue of the extreme emotional reactions evoked. I am sure there will be some professionals who might recognise the 'whys' of this situation, I am aware of the cathartic nature of some tv programmes and films.

The problem for me and those around me when watching anything is that I am fully immersed in the programme in front of me. As someone who is emotionally sensitive this means that if the main focus of a film is to evoke emotion, then my emotional response will be evoked - in buckets. One of the biggest challenges facing me due to my BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) is that I go to the heights or depths of emotion exceptionally quickly, but then it can take me hours or even days to come down.

Two weeks after watching the 30th anniversary Neighbours programme I am still experiencing echoes of the depths of grief I felt when contemplating the death of a pet I never knew personally who died well over 15 years ago. That is how powerfully my emotions can affect me.

I cannot watch 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' because of the panic evoked by the child catcher. I may laugh about it with friends, but I can experience the fear as if I were still a child watching it or as if the threat is real and immediate - yet I have managed to follow and be unaffected by series such as The Fall, and Hannibal. Perhaps, it is because I have survived real trauma and threat throughout my formative years, so constructed fear is nothing compared to what I have actually experienced. Or perhaps I naturally dissociate myself from these kind of threats as this is what protected me in the past?

Perhaps, my struggles with family focused stories is the identification with the pain and danger of animals or innocent children and an unacknowledged recognition of myself as a victim or as someone for whom sympathy or empathy is warranted. It is easier for me to feel pity or sympathy for the children or animals in 'Marley and Me', or 'Hachi', or 'My Girl', or 'The Bridge to Terrabitha' than it is for me to recognise the unshed tears for my own life.

I've studied the art of story arcs and such in film - I can divorce myself from most genres of film and focus on either the themes or intellectual properties of them. Even Beaches doesn't affect me in the same way that 'Homeward Bound' affected me. I can recognise the tricks which are designed to evoke the required amount of grief over the death of a friend. Today, however, I was unable to manage my emotional response to the story of a dog who waited outside a train station for over ten years for his deceased owner to return to him.

At Christmas I baffled my friends' children by becoming excessively distressed about the death of the lead character's father in 'How to Train your Dragon 2' and an injustice done to the 'lead' dragon. Actually, it was the fact that the little dragon was blamed unfairly which upset me more than the death of the father. An eleven year old assured me it would be okay.

Whatever the reasons behind my emotional responses, I need to either stop watching things which trigger uncontrollable emotions or practice the DBT Self Soothe skills I need to short circuit them. I guess the trick becomes being able to recognise when I need to be careful with my emotions and when I am able to emote along to a family film or programme without it interfering with the rest of my day or, even week.