Enjoyable

Today things have been OK. Plucked up enough courage to go shopping with my Mum and daughter. It wasn't so bad as long as I didn't listen to the voices and kept my mind focussed. In the end you could even say I enjoyed myself so not a bad afternoon.

Now sat in front of the great laptopamable I feel pretty good.

Nonsense

Well I'm not sure how I'm doing, everything seems to be going in overdrive. I want to run away but that won't do any good as it will all come with me. Yesterday I was spoken to by my computer again - it tells me nonsense, an imperfect song of gibberish which washes round my head until I don't know if I thought it in the first place, but why would I think about such rubbish as that.

I am taking my medication, the Risperidone, the Haloperidol and the Venlafaxine, I am being a good psychiatric patient and still weird stuff happens. But then again things are better I haven't self harmed in ages and I haven't seen the spaceships (yes - you read it right) dancing across the sky like I have before. I am better than I have been.

Tag

I was invited into a game by The Quiet Borderline

 Here are the rules:

• Post the rules that are a part of this game
• Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and then create eleven new questions to ask the people you’ve tagged
• Tag eleven people and link to them on your post
• Let them know you’ve tagged them!

1. Light or dark chocolate?

I think this means plain chocolate or milk chocolate - Milk Chocolate but I would rather eat something savoury.....

2. Winter or summer and why?

That's hard..............Winter because it means cosy nights in but then again......... Summer because it means lovely summer evenings.

3. What’s your worst habit?

Chewing the skin by the side of my nails. I make it sore sometimes.

4. What is your favourite colour and why, what does it represent?

Cerise, it doesn't represent anything it's just a lovely colour.

5. Who is your favourite actress/actor?

Robert Donat

6. What did you dress up as on Halloween?

I didn't - last time I wore fancy dress I was one of the Blues Brothers.

7. How is your bedroom decorated and why?

Cream and light wood - because it's neutral.

8. Tea or coffee and why?

Coffee. I don't mind tea I just prefer the taste of coffee.

9. Pepsi or Coca Cola and why?

I don't mind either but I'd rather drink coffee or wine.

10. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?

Get sectioned!

11. Sandals or closed in shoes and why?

Depends on the weather - I like trainers and pumps. I don't do heels - I fall off them and look silly.

The people I have tagged are: -

http://chaosandcontrol.wordpress.com/

http://mentallygb.blogspot.co.uk/

http://giantfossilizedarmadillo.com/

http://www.thiscompassionatelife.com/

http://thebearistrying.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.ruftyroo.com/

http://anickdaler.wordpress.com/

This is all I can manage to find - I'm a failure I know


My questions are: -

1. What's your favourite meal?
2. What's your favourite board game?
3. Peanut Butter or Marmite?
4. Christmas - heaven or hell?
5. Trains, planes or auto mobiles and why
6. Beer or wine?
7. Skinny jeans or boot cut and why?
8. Do you have a pet? Tell us about him/her.
9. Linux or Windows?
10. What's best - Psychiatry or Psychology tell us why
11. What's the last mental thing you did?

Wellness

I aren't feeling as well. Today and yesterday the voices have been chattering away sapping my wellness, I am having strange thoughts, things I aren't thinking about. The person who follows me is around, I haven't seen him but I know he's there.

I have been practising "Mindfulness", concentrating on the here and now and slowing my breathing right down. This helps, it stops the anxiety, well some of it anyway. My mind keeps racing as well and everything gets mixed up.

Right now the voices are following what I am doing, giving a running commentary on my every action. I tried doing some housework but I could live without them telling me I was cleaning the fridge.

Psych Appointment 2

Well my psych appointment had good and bad points, let's be positive and talk about the good first - in a mutual conversation about my psych appointments we both decided it would be a good idea to cut them down a bit. So next appointment is going to be two weeks but the one after is going to be three weeks! So good result there.

Before then we had talked about my alcohol intake - it's too much - a bottle of wine a day. Not spirits but wine but then again it's far too much - about ten units a day which is seventy per week - far too much. I don't think I'm dependent yet but that I guess is only a drink away so I need to cut down or stop.

Psych Appiontment

Tomorrow I have an appointment with my Psychiatrist, I will call him Dr Psychiatrist because it suits him. I don't particularly get worked up about seeing him, mainly because I'm used to, by now, seeing him. I see him every two weeks for an half hour appointment, before that I saw him weekly and I have even seen him daily - one time when I was really off the wall.  So far, with the exception of a social worker I used to see, he has been the only mental health professional I have met who has made any difference to my mental health. So I feel I have a very good relationship with him, in fact he is the only person who knows my story from the beginning to now. I'm lucky in that Dr Psychiatrist doesn't just peddle medication, he listens to me and doesn't bust a gut at my more florid moments of psychosis. He has sectioned me once to stop me from killing myself, something I would have done without his intervention but on the whole he accepts that hospital is not the best place for me and as such it is an option that's very rarely mentioned.

Tomorrow with Dr Psychiatrist I am going to mention cutting my appointments down to four weekly, I think I am stable enough for that now. I can't see that he will have a big problem with it, in fact, he will probably think it's a good idea.

I am pretty stable at the moment, I still voice hear but that's not really a true symptom of psychosis, it's more to do with who I am and my place in the world. The other stuff such as hallucinations and thought reading and insertion are really not a problem for me right now. I continue on my mix of medication which seems to be working and helping with things on the whole, there are side effects but they are better than what they are preventing so I guess I can cope with them.

Voices 2

At the moment the voices are playing havoc with me. I have a variety of voices, two main ones but sometimes I have a whole crowd and that's what it sounds like right now, a crowd, too many voices babbling away at once. I can pick out individual words sometimes but mainly it just sounds like white noise jabbering on and on.

Occasionally I have a running commentary whilst I am doing something but that's not that often; mostly my main two voices are telling me to do things or what a terrible person I am, sometimes it is just gibberish like "shoe pepper".

I don't have voices all the time and I can have voice free days but these are rare.

Sometimes I let the voices win and they can have a small victory but mostly I don't do as they say, if I did I'd be dead by now.

When the voices get too much there are things I can do to distract myself, today I have walked the dog, and done some cleaning to distract myself, right now I am blogging.

It's not as awful or as serious as some people think being a voice hearer, lots of people hear voices and don't have any psychiatric history at all. In some cultures voice hearing is seen as magical and sacred. I suppose that it becomes wearing when the voices are derogatory all the time. I am working towards changing my relationship with my voices but it's hard work at times.

I'll write more about voices later.

Reading this back it seems a little disjointed - Sorry.

Voices

Thought I would post a little bit on hearing voices, I once posted on Mental Nurse so if it seems you read this before maybe it was there.

Hearing voices is weird, I am sure it is different for every voice hearer. I hear voices that are spoken, they are not in my head or anything, they are outside just below my right ear. What is it like? It is like hearing someone speak to you, someone separate and different from you, but then again it is a thousand voices all vying to be heard. Imagine if you will someone speaking to you, maybe explaining the theory of quantum physics, they are right in front of you, you can see the perspiration on their top lip, you can hear them clearly, now imagine someone behind you, just to the right, saying you are worthless, a blot on the landscape, useless; that's what hearing voices is like, imagine it all at once.

Oh OK that's not clear, it doesn't make sense, imagine again the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd; that's somewhere close, somewhere near, it's all and nothing all at once and all together.

I have coping strategies, things I can do; take a hot bath, listen to music, take a brisk walk, watch a film, cut myself slowly, and they work or not - sometimes I just have to ride it out.

Does that make sense?

  

Blogging

Today I thought I'd write a little bit about why I chose to blog again. I used to enjoy writing my blog, I say "enjoy" but maybe that is not the right word, perhaps the right word is therapeutic but that makes me want to be sick at the thought.

Anyways blogging is good for me, it gives me the chance to say how I really feel or what I really think.

So here is how I really feel - I feel OK - No desire to kill myself or even to hurt myself. I am not about to burst into song or anything but I feel OK. My voices are manageable, I can cope with them, my coping strategies work at the minute. I haven't had any visions for a few months but I am still troubled by the laser lights but not too greatly. My thoughts are my own - no one planted them there or, worse, thought them for me. so that's a big fat "hurrah" for me. So you see I can blog again because I choose to.

First Post

This is my first post. There is lots to say and I don't know if I will manage it all in this first post.

First of all I want to thank Werehorse who has inspired me to blog again.

I say again because I used to blog. I used to blog around three years ago but deleted the blog when something unpleasant happened, maybe I will do a post about that in the future. 

This blog will primarily be about my mental health but I reserve the right to blog about other things too so maybe I should just say it's my blog and I'll blog about anything I want to.

My mental health at the moment is not too bad. I see a psychiatrist every two weeks and take medication but right now I don't see spaceships and the voices aren't too bad. I do take medication and whilst, like most, I hate taking it I will admit that at the moment it helps. I don't have a care coordinator or safety plan or anything of that nature. I aren't in therapy, I did try but it made me crazier. 

I am a chronic lurker and read all sorts of blogs particularly ones about mental health.

That's all for now. Just setting this up has been a task and a half.