Where to even start with this statement. I am the QUEEN of saying it, much to my friends and care teams’ despair. This post is a bit about my mental health story, and how much I have had to deal with feeling like I’m never “ill enough” to deserve the right care, at every single stage of my journey.
I’m writing this in the hope that there might be a couple of people out there who resonate with that feeling, and can realise they are not alone, and yes, it’s your brain lying to you.
Rewind to 4 years ago. I was in my final year of uni. I was avoiding all uni work like the plague (probably not a phrase we can use in 2020?), frequently self-harming and feeling constantly low. About the only time I could pull myself together enough to function was when I was at placement. But when my friend said I should speak to my GP about my mood, I laughed.
I wasn’t ill enough. I would be laughed away by the GP because I would be the most not mentally ill person she would have seen in her whole career. I was only a bit down. I only self-harmed superficially. It wasn’t a big deal.
Right?
Well, apparently not. She listened to me speak, and read my body language well. I was going home the next week for the Christmas holidays and she said she was worried that I would be leaving the area and wouldn’t be able to come in for weekly reviews, so she would call a couple of times a week to check in. She also persuaded me to start on an antidepressant, with the aim of getting a bit more stable and then starting CBT.
I was gobsmacked. I was so confused about why she had thought I was ill enough to start on medication or need such close follow up. Then I started to think that I must have tricked her into thinking I was ill. I had clearly lied. I didn’t deserve what she was offering. I was a terrible person for giving her more work and not only that, doing it because I was overreacting.
It took a long time to accept that the medication was necessary, and that going to CBT was ok, not because of any stigma around accessing mental health support, but because I had to constantly work at convincing my brain I actually needed it.
Fast forward to May this year. Throughout the year my mental health had got significantly worse, frequently requiring treatment in A&E for self-harm. The first few times I needed to go to A&E, I received treatment for the physical wounds but was told I didn’t need to see the mental health liaison team because I wasn’t “at risk to myself”, despite my frequent and worsening self-harm.
This of course fuelled my belief that I didn’t need or deserve support. There were so many people so much worse than me, and I was nothing more than a time waster. I had ended up seeing liaison a few times, but rarely had any follow up. I was having monthly reviews by my GP but that was all that was available to me. After an overdose in April, I had a review by liaison when I was in hospital and was discharged with no follow up.
It felt like a constant battle to get heard and get the support I was being told I needed, but I can’t begin to explain how hard that battle was when deep down, I felt like I wasn’t deserving of the care I was asking for.
When I moved home for a few months, I re-registered with a GP in that local area. I was registered at 11am, had a long conversation with a GP at 2pm, and by 4pm I had been referred to the community mental health team (CMHT). The next week I was accepted under the crisis team and had frequent input for a few weeks, and then got allocated a care coordinator and officially came under the CMHT.
The next couple of months was spent getting to know my care coordinator and talking things through. So many sessions I started to get upset and I would immediately stop the dialogue. I didn’t want to open up because obviously I was going to be discharged from CMHT straight away, despite my poor care coordinator repeatedly telling me that yes, I deserved to be under their care, and that she wasn’t going to discharge me.
Back in September, I became acutely unwell. I was becoming paranoid and extremely anxious and the intrusive thoughts were becoming unbearable. My care coordinator told me she wanted to refer me to the crisis/ home treatment team.
Again, I cried down the phone to her because I didn’t need that level of input, there are others that need it more than me, and obviously as soon as the crisis team saw that referral they would reject it because I wasn’t ill enough. And I just couldn’t face that rejection. She told me to trust her, trust her knowledge and her experience and to at least just let me humour her to do the referral. It was only the fear of it being documented that I had refused any element of care that made me agree to it.
I clearly did need that referral, because two weeks later, I ended up in hospital. Following a lot of discussions with a lot of people, it was agreed that I would be admitted to an acute psychiatric ward. I agreed to the admission so it looked like I was engaging, but then I went straight back to thinking I didn’t need to go, it was a waste of a bed, I had tricked them into thinking that was the level of care I needed.
Because I hadn’t been held under section, I thought it wasn’t valid. I had managed to get to one of the most intensive levels of psychiatric care, and still didn’t believe I needed or deserved it. I still thought I had tricked them into thinking I needed that support.
From walking into my GPs room that first time, to sitting on a psych ward. Every single point in my mental health journey I have thought “but I’m not ill enough” for this. I don’t deserve this.
I don’t know where the constant “but I’m not ill enough” thoughts came from. I often wonder if part of it comes from working in health care. I have seen and cared for some very acutely mentally unwell women, and so maybe I then compare my personal experiences against what I have seen professionally.
One way my care coordinator tries to challenge this with me is by asking what I would do if one of my patients presented with the same issues. I respond to her “well of course I would take it seriously and do everything in my power to get her the right support”. But its always followed with “but it’s different for me…”.
Here is a spoiler alert: It is not different for you.
You deserve that care as much as anyone else. Listen to your friends and family, their worries are often more accurate than your own. They don’t have that added voice of self-doubt and worthlessness that makes so many people turn away from accessing/ fighting for the support they need and deserve.
So if any of my rambling story I have just written strikes a chord with you, whatever stage you are in your own mental health journey- you are worth the support, you deserve the support, and I really hope you get that support.
-Lis