What’s wrong with depending on medication for your mental health?

Have you ever told someone with cancer to stop taking painkillers for their pain?

Or told those who inject themselves with insulin daily for their diabetes to stop? To question what they are putting in their body? To not to become dependent on the drugs?

One of the biggest stigmas that still exists in the context of mental illness is medication. As a society, we’re starting to accept mental health issues more and more. We know the '1 in 4' stats. We know it’s common. We know that young men are at risk of suicide.
We’re okay with people admitting they had a down day, they have depression, anxiety, OCD. We weren't always okay with it, but we're getting there. In fact, we think ‘fair play to you’ for coming forward and speaking publicly about their mental health.

But we’re only okay with it if their mental illness is not being treated with medication. Not being currently treated that is. If you used to be on meds but now you’re off, ‘fair play to you’.
But currently taking meds? Society hasn’t come to terms with this yet.

Non-pharmaceutical treatments are favoured. People want to talk about how exercise saved their lives. How they found recovery through meditation. It’s all about lifestyle changes.

If you just change the way you start your day, you’ll defeat anxiety! 

Exercises releases ‘feel-good’ endorphins, just like meds, but it’s better for you! 

You need to change your diet to improve your mental health.

There is merit in these points. Everyone should exercise, eat well and practice good, healthly mental health techniques regardless of having a mental illness. It’s how we build resilience and help fend off ever developing mental illness in the first place.

But when you have a mental health problem, it’s not that easy.

When I wrote about what it was like to forgot to take your meds after being on them for six years, it started a discussion. I was told 'Don't get dependent'. As if depending on medication that works for you, that helps you is a bad thing.

This wasn't new to me, I'd heard it before. In fact I've been hearing it my whole life, since long before I was diagnosed with a mental illness. I heard it when my doctor insisted I stop taking them so that I didn't get addicted. I heard it in interviews with people in recovery; in editorials and opinions pieces about the danger of pharmaceuticals for mental health. I heard it in comments from friends; 'Are you still on medication?' 'When do you think you'll stop taking it?'

And when I reply 'Yes, I'm still on medication. I don't know if I'll ever stop taking it because it works for me.'

I get asked, 'Oh really? What type of medication are you on?' Or they offer their advice. 'My friend had depression, and she found exercise helped.' 'But have you tried mindfulness?'

In what other health setting do we think it appropriate to grill people on their treatment choice? Or to ask specific questions on what brand of drugs they've bought? Do we question cancer patients on whether they're choosing a holistic cure for their tumour or a scientific one?

I proudly defend my use of medication as a treatment because I didn't have a choice.
I had no motivation to exercise, I had no appetite to eat at all, yet alone healthily, and I didn't know how to recognise, never mind change, negative thought patterns. I needed something that would allow me to live again. I needed something that would keep me alive.

I’d rather be medicated for the rest of my life, dependent on pharmaceuticals to function, than to not be here. And that’s the risk I'd have to take if I ever stopped taking them.

And I am sick of people judging me, looking down on me from their high homeopathic horse.

I get that medication for mental illness differs to medication for physical illness in many ways.
The side-effects differ per person. You can’t look at someone and see how severe their illness is. There’s no physical wound to measure and treat. It’s inside. It’s in your head. There is no consensus on how to treat something you can't see.

The same drugs that worked on one person may not work on another. It could take years of different combinations to find a treatment that works. Some people may never find a combination of pharmaceuticals that work.

But why should we discourage medication when it does work?

Last week I forgot to take my medication and this is what it felt like

Last Sunday I was staying over at my boyfriend’s house. It’s a regular enough occurrence, regular enough that I instinctively pack my bag without much thought before I go. Except on Sunday my instincts let me down. Coming off a 20-hour shift, I forgot to add my anti-depressants to my bag.

I knew the outcome wouldn’t be good. But I put on a brave face and said “I’ll be fine” every time my boyfriend asked. I went to sleep around 10:30pm, well aware that the next day wasn’t going to be pleasant.

My alarm went off at 7am, and I could barely open my eyes. Four snooze buttons and 20 minutes later, I knew I HAD to get up or I’d be late for work. But when I tried to get up, when I tried to tell myself I had to go and shower, I didn’t want to.

I’m not talking about the ‘I don’t want to get up this morning’ feeling that me and everyone else has every morning as we struggle with our wake-up call. This was a total shutdown of my systems. My legs didn’t want to stretch out of bed and stand up, my eyes didn’t want to open, my body didn’t want to stand under a shower and get wet, my head did not want me to get up.

I had no motivation to move.

I slowly got my bearings. I didn't have a choice. Like following instructions from a manual, I went step by step, following the same routine I do every day.

Get up.

Shower.

Dress.

But when I came back to the room after my shower, I just sat on the bed in my towel. 3 minutes passed. I knew I better start moving. 7 minutes passed, and I had one item of clothing on.  I can’t tell you what I was thinking of in that time. I couldn’t have told you just 2 minutes afterwards. But I sat there, spaced out for 10 minutes until I finally started to move. Moving was much opposed by my whole body. It required significant effort.

Hair.

Make up.

Breakfast.

Almost ready to leave, I turned to my boyfriend and said “I don’t feel right today.”

It’s difficult to explain what not feeling ‘right’ means. But I knew this feeling, I was familiar with it. It put me right back into the shoes I wore seven years ago. I didn’t feel like me.

The world looked different when I left the house that morning. Not metaphorically different, literally. It was like I couldn’t see clearly. It was hazy, blurry. My sight wasn't focused.

I had an overarching, ingrained feeling that something bad was going to happen. A feeling of impending doom. I was anxious and scared.

And my head. Oh good God, my head. I could feel the pressure pushing between my brain and my skull. Or was it the noise? At some point the pressure turned into noise. I couldn’t think clearly.

The rest of my day continued in the same vein. I watched the clock move ever so slowly to 5pm, just waiting til I could go home, take my tablets and get into bed.

Missing my medication shook me for the whole week. I found myself chasing that sleep I missed every night afterwards. It's been even harder to shake the anxiety and the not feeling like me.

Something similar happened on my family holiday back in July. Rather than packing my two types of medication, I brought only the one kind (and double of it). The whole week I took twice my usual dose of this medication, completely missing the other medication. I didn't even realise what I'd done until the day I arrived back home.
I hadn't been able to explain my low moods, mood swings and general feeling of unease all holiday until then - it finally all made sense.

Despite what these two recent occasions might suggest, I don't make a habit of forgetting to take my medication. It's usually very rare - missing one type of medication on two nights out of 365 say. But it has huge effects. It shows me how much I need my meds to sleep, concentrate and just function in my everyday life.

On these rare occasions, I'm only a mere shadow of myself. Without my medication, I'm not me.

I accidentally went to a weight class and now I lift weights. And other stories from my summer.

My summer mental health journey

It's been a weird few months, but it's been a few months I haven't managed to capture on the blog. Whether because my priorities shifted or my writing motivated faltered, I just haven't been sharing my mental health journey over the past four months. And I want to share it, because it's been a transformative summer and I'm so proud.

So to sum it all up, here's what I did this summer:

Did weights for the first time and now I'm addicted
I bit the bullet and bought membership to my local gym over the summer - the fear of wearing a bikini on my holidays spurred me on to finally commit to regular exercise. I started attending one of the free classes in the gym. It was called the 'Burn and tone' class. There was no description other than the name, so I presumed this would be some sort of Zumba-esque cardio + squats. Nope. I turn up and everyone is bringing weight, kettlebells and steps over to their floor space. Trying to act normal, I just copied everyone else.

And so began my first experience with weights. While I felt physically sick and struggled to walk home at the end of the class, I didn't give up. I started attending the gym just to do weights by myself.

I'd love to tell you that I lost weight and my body confidence improved. It didn't quite happen like that. My weight has stayed pretty much the same (muscle weighs more than fat, so there's solace in that). But I did start to feel better about myself. I love the sense of strength and control I had while leg pressing 120kg. I felt strong and capable and empowered.

I learned that weights are not just for male bodybuilders (even though they are intimidating when you're in the gym). And weights also work wonders for your mental health. I'm okay with my body, there's work to do, but I'm proud of my progress so far.

Due to a move I had to give up my gym membership and find a new one, so I haven't been weightlifting in almost a month now. But I've no intention of stopping, just pausing until I find somewhere else to work my muscles!

Tried to eat healthy
Attending the gym has also been accompanied by trying to eat healthy. I must admit though, I am a firm believer in not dieting and never restricting yourself to treats. But at least my main meals are pretty healthy, right?
I've been eating a lot of salads as well as cooking new meals like turkey rashers, courgette pasta, and an egg fried stir fry. I felt like Nigella Lawson, but in her early days where she was still prone to a mini disaster or two, and without the finger-licking baking.

However, my eating habits are starting to fall out of sync again (I'm blaming my break from the gym for this). While I still eat well for lunch and dinner, I keep going for 10pm toast or cereal or chocolate. It's like I know I've done well during the rest of day, so I'm allowed to keep snacking come bedtime.

Promised to delete my blog 34 times
I've been writing on this blog for over four years now, and for the past four months, I couldn't decide what was the best thing to do for my mental health. Should I give up? I'd have more free time, and less stress about numbers and views. Should I give it my all again? Fully commit and post every few days? Or should I carry on halfheartedly?

I'll be honest with you all, writing about your own mental health publicly is hard. I've deleted my blog's Facebook page for this very reason. And my motivation for writing has been waning. There are so many mental health bloggers out there now, and they're so much better than me. They write well, write often, and know how to promote their blogs and build a huge following. That last bit is the part I struggle with the most. Engagement.

Since I stopped blogging often and promoting as much on social media, my engagement has fallen a huge amount. Less and less people are visiting my site, sharing my posts and giving me their feedback.
All summer I criticised myself for failing. Why wasn't I writing like everyone else? Why wasn't I joining Twitter chats or talking about my meds online?  Working two jobs, I don't have time to take beautiful staged photos accompanying every post. Schedules and planners just sound like pressure to me.

It's been an internal struggle for some time now, but I've finally accepted that I'm different. I'm never going to be doing brand collaborations or winning awards for my writing. But I need this space for myself. For my own mental health. For my good and bad days. I've finally renewed my blog domain to keep it going for at least another year.

I went on holidays and the world didn't collapse
I feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders. There's not a day goes by where I don't feel a bigger responsibility than I can handle. Whether it's in work, at home, with my friends or family, I just feel responsible for everything that goes wrong. I always feel like my whole world would collapse if I ever took a break.

However, I did go on holiday for 10 whole days, the longest holiday I've ever had. My boyfriend and I went to Lisbon, leaving my two jobs and responsibilities behind.

Yes, there were many times throughout the break where I felt extremely guilty for being away. I felt horrible for leaving my work colleagues behind with my shifts and my tasks to cover. I struggled with the ball of guilt in the bottom of my stomach.

But I've also never enjoyed a break more. I needed that respite from responsibility. I came back chilled and relaxed and with my work/life balance in perspective (I'd very much been getting this balance wrong). My world didn't collapse without me. I came back and everything was how it should be. I'm allowed to take a holiday, who knew?

Until next time,

Why are we still okay with ‘haunted’ asylums at Halloween?

It’s that time of the year again. I love autumn leaves, autumn colours, pumpkin spice lattes. I love Halloween. What I don’t love, is the constant use of Halloween to reaffirm the stigma around mental illness.

I’ve written about it before. But at this time every year, another event, another TV show, another movie, uses former lunatic asylums and mentally ill patients as a trope.

The Nightmare Realm, who run ‘haunted house’-type experiences in Ireland, are adding some new elements to their popular scarefest this year in Dublin. One such addition is a haunted asylum.

NightmareRealm.ie 

It’s all a bit of fun. I’m overreacting right? I mean, there are scary doctors involved with inhumane treatments, not just scary patients!

The problem is that there still remains a stigma around mental health. People with mental illness are still seen as and treated as second class citizens. Mental illness changes how our friends, family, and workplace see us. We lose friends, we lose our jobs, we lose custody of our children.
Many people struggling with their mental health are still to afraid to seek help. They hide it because they don't want to lose any of these things. They don't to be seen as weak, helpless, pathetic. They don't want to be seen as scary, dangerous or unstable. But the asylum continues to reaffirm the image that we're dangerous, threatening and savage.

Despite modern psychiatry having moved away from not only the word 'asylum', but the very idea of confining people with a mental illness, horror loves to reuse and rehash it for cheap thrills.

It's a widely popular theme and it's directed into our homes on an almost weekly basis. From Supernatural to American Horror Story - it's all over TV. The local ‘asylum’ is commonly used in Pretty Little Liars and Teen Wolf to add an element horror. Even Modern Family have gone there, receiving backlash for their homemade asylum episode, full of insensitive jokes about mental health:

“Sexy people go crazy too. Read a People magazine.”
“She spent six months in a cuckoo farm in Nevada… She gets mad when I say that. It was in Utah.”

As a teenager, lacking any sort of mental health education in school, I thought asylums still existed. I thought that sad, mad and bad people were all locked up. I was scared of those people. They weren't like 'us'. When I started to struggle with my own mental health, I worried that I too would be locked up if I told anyone. I didn't want to end up in an asylum.

Don’t get me wrong. Asylums were horrific, horrible and terrifying places. Patients were not treated with dignity, in fact many were not ‘treated’ at all. Bedlam or Bethlem Royal Hospital, the most infamous such institution, is best known for how it publicly displayed the interned ‘lunatics’. Like animals at a zoo, people would visit and walk by the cages either pointing and laughing, or jumping in fright at what they saw.

But haven’t we moved past that? Haven’t we all accepted how wrong and immoral it was for mentally unwell people to be publicly displayed for entertainment and horror? So why do we keep returning to asylums at Halloween?

The Nightmare Realm, like many other similar events around not only the country, but the world, would like to reaffirm that stigma. They want to show you how the patients ‘live’. And considering some of the images they use in their promotion, I can guarantee you it’s not going to be an accurate, fair depiction.

Source: The Nightmare Realm

The straitjacket is a nice touch.

Is it too much to ask for a Halloween where people with a mental illness are treated as PEOPLE, not jokes?

We are already stigmatised on a daily basis. People are scared of us. Your straitjackets, gurneys and shackles reaffirm people's incorrect beliefs of us. Your inhumane treatment tells people that we are less than human. That we are so less than human we can be experimented on, laughed at, poked and prodded for your own pleasure.

Running an asylum for Halloween is not and should never be acceptable. It perpetuates the stigma around mental health. Asylums scare people into not seeking help, because no one wants to end up like that. It creates an us vs them. And like anyone else, even I want to be on the 'us' side.

I am not less than human. I deserve better than to be represented by the image of a straitjacket in an asylum.

Five things I do every day for my mental health

There are many things that those of us living with a mental illness have to do just to get through the day. Some days are harder than others, some weeks don't even have ONE good day. But through it all there are five things that I do every single day to help manage, protect and promote the best possible mental health.

Here are the five things I do every day for my mental health.

1) Get up early
I love mornings. I get up in plenty of time before work to allow me to shower, do my hair and make-up and generally get ready without feeling rushed and stressed. I make the time to have a sitdown breakfast, catch up on any messages I received over night, and look over my planner journal before I have to head off and face the day!

2) Make a to-do list
I usually make this list the night before, but having my to-do list to hand keeps me right. I need a routine. I need to write down tasks and goals so that I actually do them. I need the sense of accomplishment you get from ticking off an item on your to-do list. I need to feel like I’m not back on my worst days where I'm unable to function, and I have nothing to show for staying in bed. So, every day I write down dates and tasks and anything that comes to mind, then combine them in my journal in the evening. Before I leave the house in the morning I always take a look at my tasks for the day and leave with a focus in mind. Here's to productivity!

3) Eat well
I'm not good at sticking to this, and I don't stick to it religiously but I do try to make a conscious effort to eat more healthy than I used to. I keep my bottle of water refilled in work, I always have berries and yoghurt in the fridge, and just love the evenings where I can prepare a nice salad or make a some healthy eggs. Don't get me wrong, I love to snack on cereal and some chocolate at night, but I rest assured that at least my lunch is healthy and that makes me feel better about life.

4) Take my meds
I need to take medication to manage my mental illness. This one time I stopped and my entire world collapsed and I thought I was going to die. So now I take them every single evening, around 9:30pm, before I go to bed. Within an hour and a half (at the very longest!) I am sound asleep. I'm okay with the fact that I've been on medication for five years, and they're a very important part of my daily self care.

5) Go to bed early

One thing I've learned over the years of battling my depression and anxiety is how much I need my rest. Not only does my medication make me tired, but after a long day of acting like a mentally-stable and fully-functioning human being, I need SLEEP! Trust me, pretending you're okay is mentally draining and exhausting, and my 9:30pm I'm in bed watching a TV show and colouring in to recover from the daily stress. This means 1) I'm asleep by around 11pm every night, and 2) I wake up at 6:45am with eight hours of sleep and feeling refreshed, and ready to face another day.

It's not always easy living with a mental illness. What do you have to do daily to stay sane?

I’m not happy with my body

I'm getting very personal today. It's something I've been struggling with for a while now, but have been too self-conscious and embarrassed to share. But it's about time I was brave and admitted I'm struggling and I'm not okay. Trigger warning: weight issues.

I wanted to let you know that I'm struggling with my body; my new healthy body. 

I don’t like the way I look.

When I’m out, in particular out in a dress, I feel self-conscious. And without meaning to, I compare my body size and shape with everyone else’s.

I wish I was thinner.

For the past year I’ve been struggling with my body confidence. It comes and goes. Some days I’m happy with how I look, how my curves fit into my clothes, the slight definition of muscle starting to form.

Other days I’m not. I hate how my tummy hangs out over my jeans, how my love handles are prominent under a tight t-shirt, how thick my thighs are. I feel fat and frumpy and big.
The word big sticks out in my mind.

I was out at the weekend in a pretty dress, bare legs and heels. And midday way through the night I realised I looked so much bigger than the other girls here. My legs looked so much bigger than my friends in photos. I couldn't stand how big I looked. And with that my night was ruined. I cried and called it a night.

But yet big feels unreasonable.

The average dress size in the UK is supposedly a size 16. I’m a size 10 and yet I still feel ‘too big’. My mind likes to defy reason, logic and argument.

When I was diagnosed with depression, I was 18 years old and I weighed 7.5 stone, which is 47kg. I was severely underweight. At first, the doctors thought I had an eating disorder, rather than just a lack of appetite because of my depression.

I was encouraged to eat and get to a ‘healthy’ 60kg. One of the side effects of the medication I was put on is weight gain. My mirtazapine stimulated my appetite. And over the years I started to put on and retain weight for the first time in my life.

Now I'm 25, and I've surpassed my 60kg prescribed goal.

And I've had comments about my weight gain for over a year.

'Zoe's put on a good bit of weight, hasn't she?'

'You are a little bit fat though, aren't you?' 

'You've a lot of meat on your bones.'

'A healthy 60kg' repeats in my head.

Too big. Too big. Too big.

I'm sick of feeling dissociated with my body. I'm sick of feeling like I don't belong in my own body. I'm sick of feeling awkward, ugly, BIG. And right now it's so hard to convince myself I'm healthy; that my body is worth cherishing - every roll, scar and stretch mark of it.

I wanted to let you know that I'm struggling with my body; my new healthy body. I don't know how to overcome it yet, but I'm trying. And I promise I'll keep trying.

Until next time,

All the good things this week

I have had a jam-packed, fun-filled week!

Keeping active is such a huge part of keeping me mental illness in check. I need a plan, structured activities, and many, many to-do lists to manage my mental health.

And this week was especially busy, but also mentally rewarding. I love how much I got ticked off the bucket list as my Summer in Ireland comes to an end.
Unfortunately, keeping busy often comes with a cost. And it's often difficult for me to achieve my much-needed sense of achievement and self-fulfillment without breaking the bank. This week offered a mix of free, cheap and also costly activities that may give you ideas for looking after your mental health.

1) Monday: Going to the zoo
Even though I was more than happy to pay my way in, we managed to get into Dublin Zoo for free (saving €20 each!). Sadly, a lot of life is all about who you know, and we were lucky enough to know someone who offered to get us in for free. I love Dublin Zoo and the efforts they take to invest in bigger and better enclosures for their animals, so it was fabulous to finally see the new Orangutan enclosure for the first time. (*hint* the climb on ropes above you!) This visit also offered my first chance to see the Zoorassic exhibition featuring the second largest complete T-rex skeleton ever found. I've told you how much I love dinosaurs, right? It was the most wonderful Bank Holiday Monday!

2) Tuesday: Tea and catch-ups
On Tuesday I went over to my friend's house where we drank many cups of tea, had a good catch-up, ate berries, watched some Supernatural, and updated our to-do list for the rest of the year! A nice twist on having a night in.

3) Wednesday: Abbey Theatre - Jimmy's Hall
I LOVE the theatre, and I really love the Abbey. Maybe it's the history of the place, but I just find it magical to attend. The boyfriend was very excited about seeing Jimmy's Hall, a new stage adaptation of the critically acclaimed Ken Loach film. Cheapest tickets are from about €15 and it was a fabulous way to mark the midweek.

4) Thursday: Exercise and journaling
After a very busy few days, I needed a night in! I got all the good endorphins from a quick work out, made my favourite scrambled eggs with turkey rashers, and then spent the evening organising my journal! My journal is my planner, diary, habit tracker, and goal recorder all in one. I would be lost without it!

5) Friday: Homemade enchiladas
Does anything taste better than a homemade meal? My boyfriend and I had so much fun preparing, cooking and then (the best part) eating our enchiladas and our own Guac. It was the perfect lazy Friday night in.

6) Saturday: Newmarket Sqaure
Saturday morning called for a bit of exploring around Dublin 8. We headed to Green Door Market and the Dublin Food Co-op for locally sourced and produced foods and crafts. I tried an onion bhaji for the first time, and I got the nicest coffee I have ever tasted from The Thursday Cafe.

7) Saturday night: Partying like it's 1920
Our group bought our tickets for this back in May, and then spent the whole Summer not only looking forward to it, but shopping for it! I love The Great Gatsby, but also just the whole fashion, style and auro of Prohibition-era America. We got glam and headed to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham (my first visit!) where there was prohibition punch, burlesque performances, Charleston dancing, croquet and live bands late into the night.

Until next time,