How Not To Talk To Sick People

1. "It's all in your head."

You wouldn't tell someone with a fractured skull that it was all in their head. Don't say it to someone with a mental illness. The location of the damage doesn't change its existence.

2. "You're lazy."

You wouldn't say it to someone bed-ridden with a spinal injury. Don't say it to someone with depression. Being unable to function is harder on the sufferer than the bystander. Support, don't accuse. And if they manage to do something they enjoy? Congratulate them on doing that, because even that took more energy and willpower than you appreciate.

3. "What have you got to be depressed about?"

You wouldn't ask what someone had to get cancer over, don't ask a depressed person to justify their illness. Not all lung cancer patients are smokers and not all depressed people have a trauma in their past.

4. "Stop worrying."

You wouldn't tell someone with scoliosis to stop their spine curving, so don't ask someone with anxiety to stop worrying. It's a symptom, not a choice.

5. "You're doing this to manipulate/control someone."

You wouldn't tell someone who lost a leg that they did it to control someone, don't say it to someone who self-harms or is suicidal. You can't control anyone if you're dead, and self-harm is usually about coping, not controlling. Don't judge.

6. "It's a case of mind over matter."

You wouldn't say this to a paraplegic, don't say it to someone with a mental illness. Their mind is the problem, after all, it isn't functioning properly. It can no more force itself to function normally that someone can overcome paralysis by willpower alone.

7. "I don't believe you."

You wouldn't say this to your son if he found a lump on his testes, don't say it to your daughter when she says she's self-harms/wants to stop existing/feels empty. Many illnesses take away loved ones, both physical and mental. Get the appropriate help and stand by her.

8. "I can't be around you when you're like this."

You wouldn't say it to someone struggling through chemo, don't say it to someone who is getting their medication adjusted/suffering withdrawals. They are suffering. They didn't ask for it. Empathise.

9. "You refuse do to x/y/z."

You wouldn't tell a one armed man that he refuses to clap. You'd accept that he can't clap, which is a different thing. Don't tell someone with anxiety they refuse to pick up the phone/reply to a letter. Chances are they just can't do it, even if it seems like the simplest thing in the world to you.

10. "Just don't think about it."

You wouldn't say this about a heart attack, don't say it about a mental illness. It is not that easy. The person with a mental illness is very probably trying not to think about it in a way those with other illness never do because negative thoughts play such a huge part in so many mental conditions. If the sufferer could turn off the noise, they would.

Pseudonymous Zombie
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If We Talked About Physical Disability Like We Do About Mental Disability...

My aim is to do a comic strip every now and again. Something not as personal as my drawings but a more general commentary on life with a mental illness. Here's the first, Zombies Are Human Too, Vol 001.

Pseudonymous Zombie

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Labelling Mental Health

There was supposed to be another post before this one, following on from my PIP/Crisis Team posts, but as I was sat in my drowsy, exhausted-but-unable-to-sleep state last night, I doodled what I was feeling about myself. Now, as I sit in the small hours of the morning, in another drowsy, exhausted-but-unable-to-sleep state, I've decided to share it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to finally be getting treatment, a psychiatric diagnosis, but having listened to the list of 'problems with Pseudonymous Zombie', I feel like a collection of labels. Depression. Anxiety. Agoraphobia. Socialphobia. Avoidant Personality. Then there's my symptoms, which reads like a list of reasons to avoid me; reasons I'm a bad friend, bad daughter, bad sister, bad mother, bad employee, bad person. Part of that is because I'm blamed for a lot of my symptoms, partly ir's because I've grown up witnessing the stugma which is inherent in much of society. My reaction is to hide away as I try to somehow survive the criticism, accusation, and anger directed at me.

But here's the thing; I'm not my labels. I'm not even my symptoms, no more than a paraplegic can be measured by their disability. My symptoms may be hard to deal with at times. They're difficult for me too. I'm still me though, and when I'm judged for my labels and symptoms, it only makes my condition worse because I feel less than human; like a monster who should stay away from 'normal' humans.

I am not my labels. I am not my symptoms. Don't judge me on them because when you do, you make me into a second class creature. Instead, try to be patient. I know it's hard, but I promise that it's hard for me too. I don't want these conditions. I don't want these symptoms. 

I can't just change myself, no more than a man who loses a leg can just decide to walk without support, therapy, and medical intervention. I am trying to get better, so if you care, please don't shout and accuse. Don't shower me with scorn or tell me you've had enough of me. You wouldn't do that to a physically disabled person because you wouldn't confuse who they are with their symptoms (not if you're a decent person, at least). Please give me the same respect.

Pseudonymous Zombie 

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This Is Madness

Continued from last post...

So, having had an awful night which resulted in me being taken onto the Crisis Team's caseload, I had to wait for a PIP assessor to come and assess if my condition really is all that bad. Her time slot was 10:30 to 12:30. We'd arranged for her to come to the house my late father left me (because my husband is renovating the house so we can move in, and as I am a risk to myself I have to go with him.) I only go between our permanent address and the house which will become my permanent address. They're the only places I feel safe, and they're only a 10 minute drive apart.

Any way, as I said, we'd arranged for the meeting to be at my dad's but at 10:36 the assessor phoned to ask where I was because she'd gone to the other house. The conversation went like this...

Assessor: But this is where you live.
Me: Yes, but we have another house we're renovating and my husband called last week to make sure you could come here, not there.
Assessor: Oh no, we can only see people in their home. We'll have to cancel and reschedule.
Me (becoming ever more frantic, anxious, and frustrated): But this is my house too. It's where we're going to move to. My husband phoned and arranged this! Don't you understand what you're doing? How anxious this meeting has made me? I have a mental health problem. Anxiety has led me to cut over this. I had a panic attack yesterday and cut loads. I had to have the Crisis Team out last night because I wanted to kill myself!
Assessor: Ok. It's ok. I'll come to where you are.

She asked for the address. She asked for the post code. Fifty minutes later we'd pretty much come to realise she'd lied and wasn't prepared to make the ten minute drive between houses. Five minutes later my mobile rang and I handed it to my husband because I couldn't bear to answer. Sure enough it was Atos saying they were going to have to cancel they appointment and rearrange something. They guy on the phone asked to speak to me. He said there'd been an altercation. A claim I denied. I'd gotten frustrated but there hadn't been an altercation. Anyway, I couldn't grasp what he wanted considering it was their mistake which had caused the problem, so I gave the phone back to my husband.

It turns out the guy from Atos didn't mean altercation. He meant alteration. They'd altered my address of one database but not the other, and the assessor took my address from the unaltered database. Basically, they were adding further uncertainty to the life of someone suffering mental distress because their assessor had read the wrong database that morning. Yet that meant I'm going to be logged as having missed my assessment. It wasn't great news when I was still suffering the after effects of my night of panic and self-loathing.

I honestly feel sorry for my husband. He had to speak to the first Atos guy extensively, then he had to talk to one of Atos's nurses who was supposedly checking I was alright. Then he had to speak to a DWP nurse supposedly wanting to know the same. Then he had to speak to a nurse saying they wanted to try to process my application without a meeting, but the Crisis Team wouldn't release the information they needed. Matt then had to phone the Crisis Team, but accepts entirely that they can't release information without written permission from me. He then had to phone my doctor's surgery and leave a message with my GP stating that Atos would be contacting her and she had permission to release details. Then he had to talk to the DWP nurse again. 

Basically, he was on the phone all morning trying to sort a mistake Atos made. Not only that, but he asked if they had an email address because we've received several assessments on my mental health since I completed my initial application and we were more than willing to forward that information. He was told no, they only had a phone line...

Basically, we can't pass the information we have on.

We could have given them extra documentation the same day, instead, they couldn't get anything because it'll take time to get the Crisis Team and my GP to release the same information. It's madness...

(This is madness...
Madness? This is SPARTA!!!!!!
... sorry, I'm a bit of a nerd.)

The thing is, that in this version of '300', Atos are Leonidas and I'm Xerxes messenger. They're madness is pushing me into a black pit, and I could die down there. I don't know what's happening now. I have no idea if I'll get PIP. If they'll rearrange a meeting. Or if they'll cancel my application and I'll have to start over. My statutory sick pay is ending and I'm going to have nothing. I'll need to apply for ESA too, probably, in the coming months, but the PIP process has terrified me. I just don't know if we'll have the money to pay the mortgage and bills, to buy food, never mind give our children Christmas presents. And it's all just so unnecessary.

On top of that, there's an issue of trust. The DWP nurse phoned the Crisis Team to ask for information. Even after they said they couldn't hand that out, she continued to ask them if I was alright. The Crisis Team told my husband to be careful of her, that she'd raised they're suspicions.

Are Atos and DWP trying to sort my claim, or are they trying to protect themselves because they've caused me, someone with a mental illness and suicidal tendencies, excessive distress? I don't know the answer to that. Right now I don't have answers to much, and that's having a negative impact on me.

Continued in next post...

Pseudonymous Zombie
xxx

Hitting Crisis Point

This week has been hard. It started out hard. It continued to be hard. Work phoned me asking me to go to an occupational health meeting, which my anxiety means I can't do, and they started the conversation about whether I'd come back at all. They asked me to phone back on Thursday to tell them what I'd decided.  On top of that I had a PIP assessment scheduled on Friday. The result of this added pressure was a complete melt down.

It started with a panic attack on Thursday. My heart raced. My throat closed so I couldn't swallow or breathe and the thoughts in my head spiralled out of control. I cut to regain control. I cut a lot. And my mind was telling me to cut deep enough to die. Normally I cut my left leg, my calf is scars from ankle to knee. Thousands of marks on my skin. But right then it wasn't enough. I've cut the other leg too. I've cut my arm.

It took a lot for my husband and friend to calm me down. My friend wanted me to phone the Crisis Team and it was after work hours before I managed to get cleaned up and go downstairs. I missed my chance to phone human resources but tried to push it out of my mind because my husband had been trying to phone my boss all day, he'd sort it the next day. I thought I'd come through the panic attack, but I hadn't.

The worries didn't stop swirling and lying in bed at night, I wanted everything to stop. I didn't want to deal with work and my failure to keep my job. I didn't want to deal with a PIP assessor judging me. I decided I would rather die. I wasn't sure were husband had my pills and he'd removed all sharp objects after my earlier self-harm session. However, I knew he'd left his car keys hanging from the front door. I knew I could get up, go downstairs, drive away, drive off the coastal cliffs. So I rolled over and woke up my husband. I told him to phone the Crisis Team.

The last time I'd felt so bad, I started swallowing pills. I intended to swallow enough to kill myself. I'd promised the doctors that if it happened again, I'd phone the Crisis Team. Initially, attempting that made me worse. The Crises Team triage nurse asked why we hadn't phoned a GP earlier. Why I hadn't contacted my GP for something for anxiety. It made me feel I'd done the wrong thing calling. She added guilt to my already swirling emotions. But that wasn't all. One of the first things I said was that I'd tried to overdose on fluoxetine previously, then when I said I was planning to get in the car and drive off a cliff, the conversation went something like this. (Paraphrased slightly because I wasn't fully focused and 4am while planning my demise.)

Nurse: "Have you ever done something like this before?"
Me: "Well I've gotten in the car and started driving before..."
Nurse: "No, no... But you didn't actually do it."
Me: ... At this point I was dumbfounded and couldn't say what I was thinking, which was 'clearly not as you're talking to me tonight.'
Nurse: "Have you ever attempted suicide before?"
Me: "As I said earlier, I've taken a planned overdose of fluoxetine before."

Right then, I was back to thinking my depression wasn't bad enough. My suicidal thoughts weren't bad enough. The nurse thought I should've phoned my GP, not her, even though my GP referred me to the Community Mental Health Team because I need specialist help. Then getting in a car and starting a drive towards death wasn't enough because I turned back. What she failed to realise was that to me, that drive and my attempted overdose are the same. Someone intervened.

With the overdose, my husband came in and grabbed the pills off me then phoned the paramedics. During the twice I've almost taken the car and gone, a chance phone call has intervened. Once, my husband phoned just as I put the key in the ignition. He said my son wanted mammy to come in and say goodnight before he went to bed. (I'd come home from work and parked outside, then spent an hour thinking about suicide before putting the key in the ignition and preparing to do it.) My son wanting me was enough to draw me into the house.

The second time, when I actually did start driving, I had to pull over because I was crying too hard to drive. My mam phoned. She talked. She persuaded me to wait for my husband to come to me. He did, with our kids in the car as we had no babysitters. Seeing my kids dragged me back from going through with my plan. To me, there's no difference between the overdose and the times I got in the car. In all three cases I was intent on completing my plan. I was going through the motions of doing it. On three occasions, my family intervened.

On paper, I've made one suicide attempt, and because of how few pills I managed to take I feel medical professionals don't feel I was genuine. What they don't realise is that my husband had to grab the pills away because I continued swallowing them even after he came in. They don't hear the desperation of those telephone conversations in my car. To me, I've started implementing suicide plans on three occasions. 

If I'd actually driven off the cliff, it would have been a suicide, not an attempted suicide. What I did was an attempt, an attempt where my husband intervened. Turning on the ignition was the same to me as swallowing the first pill. Putting my foot on the accelerator was the second. Releasing the handbrake was the third. Pulling out of my street was the fourth. To me, each step forward made it more likely I'd kill myself, but until the point of death there was still a chance for my family to intervene. At the moment the triage nurse said 'but you didn't do it', my need to get in the car grew exponentially. I wanted to hang up. Fight my husband for his keys. I wanted to end it all so I didn't have to fight anymore.

After that the nurseasked me if the Crisis Team could send someone around to talk to me. I said I didn't know because I'm not good with strangers and her phrasing had made me feel guilty for phoning., in response, she asked to speak to my husband and I handed over the phone. That was when the nurse asked my husband if I seemed 'reluctant to engage' and his temper started to fray.

He told her that I that I'd been trying to get help for months. That I'd told him to phone because I wanted help. He told her that she'd made me feel guilty for phoning. He even asked her what her job actually was, and that's not like him at all. I'm not sure if she answered that, but he agreed she could send people over. Then I sat in fear, wondering if someone as guilt inducing as the triage nurse would turn up on my door step.

Luckily, the two guys who came out were really nice. They listened. They discussed options. They agreed with me and my family that I needed immediate help but that hospitalisation would do more damage than good. At 5am in the morning, two strangers walked in, listened, and came up with a plan. Once again, I'd had to be ready to die before that help arrived, but it was there, and that was a good thing. They promised to arrange a psychiatrist visit for later that day (Friday) or Monday at the latest. They promised I'd see a nurse on Friday if the doctor couldn't come, and on Saturday. Then they told me to wrap up and have a hot drink and they went on their way to begin formulating a treatment plan.

I'd like to say I was grateful, because I was, although the emotion was felt through a fog. I was exhausted. I'd cried myself out. I felt completely disconnected but at least I was safe and someone had promised help. I thought that if I could endure the PIP assessment, I'd be OK...

But, of course, Atos don't have a reputation for treating PIP applicants well.

Continued in next post...

Pseudonymous Zombie
xxx

Panic Inducing PIP

I have my Personal Independence Payment assessment tomorrow, but the very thought of it is dread inducing. My throat feels as though its closing, trying to cut off my ability to breath or swallow. My mouth is dry. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it. I feel sick. There is such a knot of tension in my back that my shoulder blades feel as though they're being pulled together and my neck muscles are burning. I want to cry.

But it's worse than that. I want to die. I don't was to see a person whose purpose is judging me. I don't want to say the wrong thing when getting through the assessment is essential. I'm wondering about running away. I could steal my husbands car keys. I could disappear. I could die.

Part of me wants to cut. It might calm me. Another part of me is scared that dragging a blade up an artery might be just too tempting today. I want to crawl out of my skin or tear it from my bones. I want this to end . Advisors tell people with physical disabilities not to do anything they'll find too painful... yet with a mental problem I'm supposed to endure. Do what they ask even though my anxiety is heading of the charts and I'm one palpitation away from phoning the Crisis team.

I need out of this. But I can't just cancel because I need PIP. What alternative is there?

Pseudonymous Zombie
xxx

I Wish You Weren't Here

Here's the thing about three year olds, especially three year olds you've created... They aren't cruel, but they can cut deeper than anyone else. You see, they rebel. And when they rebel and push boundaries, they're blunt. The open their mouths and they haven't yet learned tact, or metaphor, or sarcasm. What comes out is a mix of the truth of their feelings at thatb moment and words they know have upset you previously.

Tonight my son didn't want to eat his tea and he was being obnoxious about it. I told him he could eat his tea or he could have a time out on the 'naughty step' and that I'd have to tell Santa he'd been naughty.  He turned to look up at me and said, "Mammy, I wish you weren't here."

And my heart broke.

Logically, I know exactly what I said in the first paragraph; they rebel and they say things that hurt. The problem is that my depression has a voice and it whispers to me. Sometimes it yells, actually, and what it yelled today was, "see, even he knows he'd be better off without you. No one even wants you." I had to get up and go into the next room...

"I wish you weren't here" is among the most hurtful things that can be said to someone who often wishes they weren't even alive. Those words cut deep, carving a path right into the wound which is already trying to become fatal.

"I wish you weren't here" is the worst thing you can say to someone with a fear of abandonment and has had other loved ones turn away.

I'm not going to hold those words against my son. He and his sister are the reasons I'm alive. Maybe that's why it hurts. I draw breath for my children. Without them I would have attempted suicide more than the once I have, and maybe that's why those words hurt so much. It makes me want to evaporate, to simply cease to be. I will almost certainly cut tonight. It'll be the only way to stop myself walking out of the house and just leaving. Vanishing. Either to kill myself or die on the street.

That's the thing about depression; the slightest thing, like an off the cuff comment from a child you know loves you to bits, can set in motion a tailspin that you just can't pull yourself out of. That makes every conversation a risk. It means being around people is a risk. It could take one wrong word, one misunderstanding, one moment to kill me. Literally. And even the most innocent voice could be the one that makes me crumble.

Pseudonymous Zombie
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