long story short

[deanna]

hi all,

new listener, new to the forum, but this seems like a good place to start!

my name is Deanna. I am 24 years old, and I live in England.

My mental health journey starts ten years ago with a bout with depression, but my emotional issues stem from an unhappy but largely uneventful childhood.

More recently - two years ago - I experienced my first psychotic break. Or at least, that's what they told me it was. I am still not sure. There's always been a confusion for me between what I believe to be spiritual experiences and real mental health issues. Accepting that what I experience is nothing more than psychosis is something I've not been able to do.

In the process of my break, I heard a sound like nothing I’d ever heard before. I was hearing the stars sing to me. What I heard in their music was information beyond human understanding, beyond the limits of our consciousness. And somehow I understood it. It was like a vast data download into my mind, and it was too much for me to handle. I went a bit off the path at this point, and started hurting myself to cope with the feelings overwhelming me. I was taken to my doctor who sent me up to the emergency room where I had my first experience of the medication that was to come.

I was referred on to a mental health team where I spilled the lot - everything that was too much for me came spilling out to a psychiatrist and a nurse who asked lots of questions, listened to my disjointed ramblings and made copious notes. They said I was paranoid and hallucinating, that I was delusional and psychotic. They started me off on antipsychotic medication and referred me to the early intervention in psychosis team.

The early intervention team sent a nurse and a doc to assess me. They were keen to make me understand that nothing I was experiencing was real and that it was entirely psychosis. They wouldn’t consider that there was any truth to it - as far as they were concerned everything was down to illness.

The medication did have an affect on the experiences. The thoughts and feelings were dulled, but they were still there to a lesser extent. But I became anxious, and uncertain, when I begun to doubt myself and my beliefs that what I had been through was other-worldly.

I became depressed. Medication had taken away what was essentially a pure joy, even if it did overwhelm me. I missed my connection to the spiritual and the truth of the universe. while I never lost it, became a faded memory

So I came off meds, in October 2012, and quickly everything started coming back to me. I heard the stars again. They told me I was Eve incarnate and that I was returned to earth to die for woman’s original sin. I became suicidal - I was certain I would be able to return Eden to Earth if I died, because that was what the stars were telling me.

It was only down to the excellent mental health system here in the UK that I stayed out of hospital. They sent a nurse to visit me daily and make sure I was taking my medication again. But I was falling into a pattern. Without meds everything was too intense for me to handle. With them, I was depressed, anxious and uncertain of my place in the world. Although I became a danger to myself when unmedicated, I loved the experience and felt such vitality that was missing when I took antipsychotics.

My team’s response to this was to add yet more drugs to the mix. I started taking an antidepressant to try to combat the desperately lonely, lost and sad feeling that was my constant companion. But it didn’t replace the feelings I had when I was free of drugs altogether.

Recently we’ve added another antipsychotic to the mix. I’m not totally certain why, but for now I’m going along with it. As much as I hate the regime of medication and psychology, I don’t want to die before my time. I feel that’s very selfish of me, because I would also like to save the world if I could, and probably should.

***possible triggers below***

Last month my depression resurfaced and I attempted suicide a number of times in a couple of weeks. I was crying out for a break from the constant darkness. I wanted to end everything because I simply couldn't face another day like that. I was given a chance to take a place at a crisis house and I took it. The week away with supervision gave me a chance to reset. I do wish respite care was available to everyone as it is a real and viable alternative to hospitalisation.

Now, everything is very confused. I don’t know what’s down to truth and whether any of it was true at all. But I really do feel that this isn’t how I should be. I miss being tuned in and switched on.

Thanks for reading. I'm happy to share my experience in the hope I find others like me to talk about all this confusing matter to.