I've been spending some time recently working through what happened when I was unable to get my medication and now I feel a bit more able to talk about what happened and the impact it had. For those of you who are reading for the first time I currently take 2 types of antidepressant: I take one that helps me to get through the day and then one to help my brain switch off at night time so I can sleep. I have complex PTSD, Severe anxiety and depression. The last time I was in England we were trialling the dosage of both of these and had got it to where it seemed to work for me. I was getting more sleep and able to function without being crazily anxious or lost in the moment throughout the day. The Anxiety can be crippling just by itself. It is at the point where I consider the feelings of pretty much everything. For example: you can't leave food on your plate or it will get sad that it hasn't been eaten. Sounds fair yeah? You also should chew with both sides and the middle of your mouth the same number of times or they might get sad. Also wherever possible things should be done in 3's. Try and appear normal while doing that out. This extends to clothes (if you pull something out to wear it and then change your mind it might get sad) the floor (you have to clean all of it equally or something bad might happen) and even things like driving (never ever skip a gear- only dire things happen when you skip a gear). Now we add in a generous helping of depression. When you start thinking about how you have to make sure everything else is ok and then you start looking at the bits you think you are doing wrong. Then you spiral down until it is very very difficult to pull yourself out of this. You can see a lot of areas in which you are failing at life and in which you are failing others around you and other things around you. Sometimes it just gets too much and you have to let yourself be swallowed up by it. There is literally no other way to get yourself out of it. When you mix these two it often becomes too much to handle. You do have to continually work at it and start to recognise when your brain is telling you something that is not true, that it is an illogical feeling and perhaps you don't need to worry about it quite as much as you are. It takes a lot of work to be able to recognise these feelings and then it takes even more to be able to stop the process that would usually happen in your head. Now we look at the complex PTSD. This is complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Most of the time people who go through a trauma or a traumatic situation have some form of PTSD but when you go through an incident that lasts years or months then it effects you in different ways and results often in Complex PTSD. So it's the effect of repeated trauma over a sustained period of time, rather than of one incident. (My relationship was almost 3 years and then there was a period of 4 months where he refused to move out and various things happened while he was in my house) So this means that you typically have the symptoms of PTSD with some nice extras chucked in. Basic symptoms include: reliving the traumatic experience; avoiding certain situations (things that remind you of the event); changes in beliefs about yourself and others (typically that you're not worthy or that others will have a skewed view of you; Hyper-arousal (Not quite what it sounds like, it means that you are over aware of things and constantly on alert - goodbye sleep) and fun things that are called somatic symptoms (things that happen but aren't medical like tightness in your chest or feeling sick or dizzy but without an actual cause). The add ons can vary but the ones I have been experiencing are: Lack of emotional regulation (it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a lid on your emotions and know when it is safe to show them, which leads to breakdowns and also means you respond to situations in strange ways); negative self perception (basically you see yourself as worthless and having to prove yourself as being worth the little that you could be worth); Difficulty with relationships (I am incredibly lucky to be in the relationship that I am in now but this means also with family and friends too of which I have had negative experiences); disassociation (this means you try to remove yourself from yourself in a present situation - I spent a lot of time doing this when I was in a traumatic situation. You don't know how you can make it better so you try to remove yourself mentally from the situation). The issue with this is that basically to doesn't turn off the 'fight or flight' response that your body will have when it detects danger. This means that your mind is sensing danger when there isn't necessarily any danger around. This means that you find everything a potential dangerous situation. It also means you don't process and react to situations the way that other people. You don't see someone just having a conversation: you think that they are pointing out what you have done wrong, what you haven't done or ways in which you are failing. One of the first things you have to learn is to recognise when this is happening and you are perceiving something in a negative way when it is not intended to be. The other issue with this is that your emotions go up and down so many times a day it is exhausting just by itself. You are constantly swinging from happy to sad to worried to critical to tired and everything in between. It becomes increasing exhausting, especially when you are not sleeping. Everything seems so much worse and so much harder to keep together when you are knackered - this is no joke, my family used to celebrate every time I managed 6 + hours of sleep. (Now I fidget every time I go to sleep and it takes forever for me to drop off, it's a technique I'v used for a long time because I had to be so aware for such a long time) If you look at someone it is almost impossible to determine that they have a mental illness just from looking at them. Occasionally you will be able to tell through things that they do but it takes a bit of watching and a bit of knowing them reasonably well. For the most part it is a battle that you fight inside your head. It is the ultimate invisible fight. While stuck without medication and away from support systems that had been built up, it made me feel increasingly like I was back when I first moved back to England. I felt unworthy of anything, I flipped between emotions so quickly and was unable to shake dark thoughts I would have. It really scared me because it made me feel like I hadn't grown or developed ways in which I was helping myself and I wasn't able to be there for others in the way I normally am. Luckily I was able to communicate with people and let them know what the situation was, however I wasn't able to do really much more than that. It is a huge fight every day and the medication makes it easier for sure but there is so much work going on behind the scenes all of the time. It's a battle. And we will get through it. One day at a time. You are enough, You are not alone. You are OK.
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