GUEST BLOG - Susan Pola - Growing up surrounded by Mental Illness

Happy Wednesday everyone!! :-)
There will be no blog next week as I'll be busy on stage!!
Shameless plug - 'Table' by Tanya Ronder, be there, or be square... - https://twitter.com/ATS_Presents_

This week's blog is from Susan Pola sharing her incredible story.
*Please note that Susan's story may contain sensitive content that some people may find upsetting*

Always on the lookout for guest bloggers, whatever your experience of mental health! Get in touch with me on facebook or twitter:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/letstalkaboutmentalhealth
Twitter - @letstalkmhealth

Xxxxx


Susan Pola is 51, living in Brisbane, Australia  with over 30 years experience in the Administrative field,  based mainly in the Education sector. Susan's mother was diagnosed with a mental illness before she was born and Susan herself now suffers with anxiety and depression.


*Please note that Susan's story may contain sensitive content that some people may find upsetting*


"Thank you to Suzy for the opportunity to share my story on her blog and many thanks to two people who have already talked about their experiences with mental illness, and given me the courage to write this blog: Wendy Waters and Patsy Pease.  Patsy first shared her story back in the 90’s – and promptly gave me someone to relate to where there was none before. Thank you Patsy. 

My story is twofold and begins even before I was born – my mother was diagnosed in the 60’s with schizophrenia (wrongly I believe she had what was then called manic depression and now renamed bipolar)  and given electroconvulsive therapy (more commonly called electric shock treatment or ECT) when she was pregnant with me.  The process horrifies me and it is still being utilized in Queensland hospitals today – but that’s another story.

My mother became increasingly unwell throughout my life, and though I had a wonderful father who was very present – his job demanded shift work, so I was left alone with this very ill woman for much of my formative years.  I point out that my father always made sure I knew this wasn’t my mother Audrey’s fault, she was ill, she was doing the best she could.  I grew up parenting my mother through her illness and it was my father’s mother and  books/television that supported me as well as my Dad. 
 
My mother suicided when I was 16 years old, she chose the most painful and difficult death she could, as the mentally ill often do.  She used turpentine to set herself on fire and those screams will always live with me.  The system couldn’t make her well, and this was her only way out.  As one of our sympathy cards said “Audrey had her purgatory on earth”.  My one hope is that she has found peace away from this plane. 

Flashforward to my adult life – and 3 nervous breakdowns over 30 years later - my life has been peppered with workplace bullying. I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression most of my life but it’s been the nasty, bitchy, and downright horrible bullies that have been my undoing. I would work all week with exclusion and screaming then come home on Friday evenings to swallow 9 Valium to try and escape the pain for just a little while. All I wished for was death, escape from my life.  If this blog has a message past telling my story, it is for zero tolerance for bullying to be achievable in my lifetime.  If you are a bystander, or you are in charge of staff, please - please stand up to bullies and make your workplace or school an inclusive and compassionate place for ALL.  

I’m in a really good place at the moment, my depression has lifted and anxiety is managed thanks to several fabulous counsellors.  I’m working part time and though I want full time work, I’m still not at that place yet physically or emotionally where I can achieve it.  

What I’ve learned in my life:  dark times don’t last, ask for help when you need it and keep asking until you  obtain it, do the things that give you pleasure (for me that’s watching figure skating and attempting to skate  myself – and I DO mean attempt).  “Love Torvill and Dean” was the 80’s catchcry and they are still the only skaters most Australians recognise – LOL – their goal setting techniques were and are my inspiration. 

Most importantly don’t focus on those who abandon you when you need them the most, focus on those who stay, who know your story and say it doesn’t scare them.  I have plenty of those – my best friend Susan who I’ve known since I was 5,  Josie, Jenni, Sherryl, Helga - the list goes on.   I also have a wonderful cousin Kathy, without who I wouldn’t be here, and whose family enveloped me when I was sick and alone with love and support.   

And you know what – I’m now in the cool group – finally!!!  I’ve found my home on social media, so much love and fun and care, Twitter’s my spirit animal!  Thank you to my special friends online Sarah, Andrea, Amanda and Danielle  – you rock my Twitterverse girls!!! 

We tell our stories not for pity, or sympathy but in order to break the stigma and I proudly stand with those who have gone before and have been risk takers to stand in their truth .  Thank you Suzy for starting this blog and giving us a place to share our stories – you’re one brave girl!"  

GUEST BLOG - Jessica Lee - OCD & Anxiety

Hey guys -
This week's blog is a guest blog from Jessica Lee.

I know I haven't done a personal blog for a few weeks now - things are incredibly busy at the moment - I have an upcoming show I'm performing in at the end of July so am struggling for time to write!
Thank God for you guest bloggers who are all fabulous!
Anyone interested in guest blogging please get in touch! -
Twitter - @letstalkmhealth
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/letstalkaboutmentalhealth

Xxxxx


Jessica Lee is a 21 year old business management student experiencing anxiety and OCD.

Hello everyone, 

First of all I’d like to say how grateful I am to be able to share my experiences of anxiety and OCD on this fantastic blog, and hopefully I can provide some comfort to anyone struggling with similar issues to me.
As a person I am an open book and totally wear my heart on my sleeve, however when it comes to discussing my mental health I find that other people are scared of the subject, causing me to hold back. This frustrates me because talking about it helps endless amounts, and none of us should feel ashamed, which is why we need to get rid of the stigma! 

Mental health problems run in my family and my dad, who passed away when I was quite young, suffered from severe depression. I feel that my dad was a victim of the judgement that society holds over people with mental illness, particularly being a man and having to conform to the strong male stereotype. I think that for this reason he did not get the help he needed, and I am so passionate about raising awareness in order to change this. 

 It’s difficult to pinpoint when I first experienced anxiety or OCD as it only became a major problem around a year and a half ago.
However looking back, I know that it has always been there, lurking in my brain. For instance when I was younger I remember that if I had a negative thought, i.e. that something bad was going to happen, I’d have to say a little phrase in my head to stop it from happening. I’m not sure if I ever wholeheartedly believed that the bad thing would happen, but I simply couldn’t take the risk. I grew out of this particular compulsion, but sure enough other ones have come into play.  

The anxiety side of things began about a year and a half ago, when I changed university course. I went to university as an incredibly confident and sociable individual, and spent a year making wonderful friends so starting again really freaked me out. I would be sitting in lectures and all of a sudden I felt like I wasn’t really there, as if I was in a dream. This is a common sensation amongst those who have anxiety known as depersonalisation, but at the time I didn’t understand it at all. I then started having strange episodes in nightclubs where I felt very claustrophobic and uneasy, and I had to go outside to be calmed down by my friends. Obviously I now know that these were panic attacks, but at the time I was just confused about what was happening to me.

Around Christmas time the same year I was diagnosed with a heart condition, and this really knocked me for six because I had never had any sort of physical health problem before, nor expected I ever would. This led to extreme worries about my physical health, and I was constantly googling my “symptoms” hoping for reassurance, but of course this made things worse. The overwhelming feeling of anxiety soon became constant and relentless. Anxiety feels different for everyone but for me it was like when you trip over and get that horrible flip in your stomach, only the feeling never went away. At this point I honestly thought I was going mad, I felt that I couldn’t control my own thoughts and that I was completely losing who I was as a person. It felt like my brain had been removed and rewired, and then put back in. Everything escalated over the course of 6 months, which doesn’t seem very long at all considering the contrast between how happy I was before, and how low I was in my darkest times. 

In order to get myself out of the relentless downwards spiral, I tried various types of treatment from counselling to hypnotherapy. However I felt that what I was experiencing was an emotion that I couldn’t control no matter how hard I tried to change my thinking. I therefore decided to go on anti-depressants, something that I was very apprehensive about because of the huge stigma attached, but I am so happy that I did because they put me in a position where I was able to fight my illness rather than be swallowed by it. I became proactive in getting better and took up meditation (the Headspace app is incredible!), which calms me down no end, and also adult colouring books are so therapeutic and pose as a great distraction when I’m having racing thoughts. Finally, I am very lucky to have a wonderful support system made up of my family, friends and boyfriend with whom I have always been very honest. Even though sometimes they have been taken aback by what I have said, and may not have known what to say themselves, I am always guaranteed a listening ear and a cuddle which is simply invaluable. 

I still experience obsessive thoughts and feelings of anxiety, and I probably always will because that’s just how I am wired, but I am no longer debilitated by it and I have come to accept it. In a strange way I also feel closer to my dad because I at least partially understand what he went through, and I take great comfort from that. 

GUEST BLOG - Gareth Cadogan - Perspective of a Friend

Hi guys!
Apologies for no blog last week!
Things are very busy at the moment with show rehearsals and I just didn't get around to posting.

This week's guest blog is from Gareth Cadogan, speaking not from personal experience, but from an observers perspective.
Anyone interested in guest blogging - feel free to message me on Facebook/Twitter:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/letstalkaboutmentalhealth
Twitter: @letstalkmhealth

Xxxx

Gareth Cadogan is a 24 year old male living and working in Birmingham. Though he does not suffer from social anxiety himself, he has a number of close friends who do and has observed the condition in them.

Social anxiety is defined as a disorder in which a person has an excessive and unreasonable fear of social situations. And while I may not have personal experience of anxiety, I have lived with it. I have a friend who lives with me. A friend who was afraid for a long time.

I first met my friend in early 2014. He was a shy man who didn’t talk much which seemed strange to me as it would only have taken a change of clothes and a leather jacket and he would not have been out of place at a biker rally. I had fully expected him to be loud, over-the-top and imagined he would become the centre of attention in any room he stepped in to.

If there was ever evidence that you can’t judge a book by the cover, then I’ve known him personally. Indeed, my friend turned out to be the opposite of what I had imagined. He only spoke when spoken to and, even then, he had such a soft voice that it was sometimes a struggle to hear him. We had just met then so I didn’t think much of it. He seemed a nice enough guy and that was good enough as far as I was concerned.

We began hanging out more and more and my friends became his friends. We learned more about his life. He lived with his parents and siblings in a house that seemed too small to contain them. It was a good and loving home but, all the same, I thought it would do him good to get out of there and live in a place of his own. Our friends agreed. At the time I was looking for a new housemate and so I asked my friend to come live with me. He agreed.

It was while we lived together that I learned that the root of his shyness ran deep. On the estate where he lived there were apparently a group of kids who would bully and pick on him mercilessly. This treatment had made him fearful of groups and strangers. He had created a shell around himself so that he could hide from the world. I have experienced some bullying in my life but I would never pretend that what I experienced was on the same level.

That is not to say my friend was a total recluse. He visited friends and still came drinking with us when we went to the pub. But he still preferred his own company.

Even while we lived together, he spent most of his time in his room. He only really came out for food, to go shopping or to hang out with the rest of us from time to time. Though he had gotten out on his own, he still seemed afraid of the world, but he himself said that he was better than he had been. That was apparent to all of us.

In the time he had been with us, he had grown more confident. He voiced opinions of his own without just going along with what the group said. He showed anger, something that came as a real surprise to me the first time I saw it. To see this man who I had always known to be so placid show emotion was more than a little shocking.

I am not a socially anxious person. I like my alone time but other people don’t worry or frighten me. I’m perfectly comfortable having a conversation with a stranger. Because of this I cannot say what it is like to be afraid of social scenarios but I have seen someone overcome his fears of social scenarios.

It seems a cruel irony that the best way to defeat social anxiety is to do the very thing that scares you most. You have to push out of your comfort zone. Out of the cocoon you have formed for yourself and re-join the world. But that is only half of it. I’d like to think that I the others helped my friend become stronger. I believe that you need people around you to help you stand on your feet when you are at your lowest. But you also need a real reason to want to get out and leave the safe zone you make for yourself.

My friend is now in Brazil, visiting a girl he met online (one of the few cases where she turned out not to be a catfish). I’ve heard from him once since he left when he wished me a happy birthday, so I can only assume he’s having a good time.

To see my friend as he is today, when I remember how he was, is truly humbling. He may not see it in himself but I think all of us around him can see how much happier he is. I don’t think a year ago he would have dared fly to Brazil yet he is there now because he took the risk.

Living with social anxiety in the house can sometimes be trying, as you want so much for them to feel happy in life and safe to be in the world. But all you can do is be there for them when they need it, providing comfort and reassurance as best you can. Because no one wants to be uncomfortable in their own skin or afraid all the time of what might be. They are doing their best for us so it’s only right that we do the same.