The Proverbial Brick Wall

The physical health is still in a bad place, not really getting any better and slowly getting worse, and with no doctors willing to go near it I am stuck in limbo. So, as you can see, some of the factors that were causing me stress in the last post have been resolved or accepted – that’s just the way it is, not much point going on about things that are unchangeable.

Now onto the mental health stuff. In the last entry I mentioned this trainee that I was seeing for some assessments for therapy  - but we know how wrong that went. After many proverbial bangings of my head on the wall I managed to come up with a solution. It was a huge step but one that needed to be undertaken.

I complained very publicly about how poor the treatment options I had been offered were, and I also complained that the Trust where not doing their job properly.

Before I knew it the ball was rolling, and I had a meeting set up with a head of psychological services and my CPN. The news about the client seeking answers spread like wildfire throughout my Trust! My anxiety shot up, and I started to doubt whether I could go through with the meeting. But with the help of some Diazepam I went, and did not censor anything about what I felt was wrong - not only with my care but about the way the service was getting run.

I met up with a therapist - yes a proper one not a trainee - and he talked to me a few times and agreed that I need some therapy but in a long term plan. For me, ideally this therapy would be an open-ended thing that I could stop when I felt everything had been talked about. Unfortunately, the service will not offer that, so I am doing 30-45 sessions (I think). I feel this is too short, but I guess it is a start.

Why did I have to go so far to just get the treatment that I needed though?

All of the time I speak to people in similar situations to myself, and they cannot do anything - they do not want to cause a fuss, but cannot get the care they need. Surely there is a better way to air your grievances! I have been there, constantly going home and feeling like you are not achieving anything, feeling like nobody is listening.

I reached my snapping point, and I guess that is why I complained. In going through with the big meeting though, I was not thinking of myself but of how my complaining might help someone else within the same Trust, someone who felt they could not speak up.

Regarding the voices… well, they think that I am causing problems where there does not need to be problems, they think that I am a worthless piece of rubbish (putting it politely) and they think that I am the usual list of expletives. My head is pounding from the noise they are creating, even ‘resetting’ them does not seem to be working of late. So my mood is not in a brilliant place at the moment.

I decided to make a model style thing of my ‘ringleader voice’, as he started off a physical hallucination and is the nastiest, so I thought he would be the easiest to start with. I made a cardboard base and then used plasticine to add the features. He now is more real, and when I need to vent some anger at the voices it does not feel so silly shouting at a model of him - whereas in the past I always refused to shout at my voices, as I thought this was too close to being crazy (just how I felt). In the past I have wrote them letters, typed things out to them on the computer etc. etc. Not that they listen though.

Anyway, I took this model to my hearing voices group and people said they had  done something similar, or would like to do something similar. They said it could be a helpful tool to create a barrier between them and the voices. The voice hates the fact that I have done this though, and has really made my life a misery since I did it. mHowever, this is usual with my ten voices, as they really hate me doing pretty much anything that could be seen as constructive.

I do not think there is anything else to report in the world of Pyp, so I will go back to my proverbial brick wall and carry on banging my head on it… Thank you for reading.