Living with Mental Illness, and opening up about it
I have lived with mental illness for about 20 years now. I never opened up about it and never really called it like that. The time is now.
A few months ago I went to my doctor to ask if I could have some kind of professional help with my ADHD. I was struggling with getting a job and feeling lost (this blog was one of my attempts at helping myself at the time).
A couple of weeks later I was sitting in an intake interview at Indigo, an organisation that gives support for people with psychological problems in the Netherlands. They call it Basic Mental Healthcare.
I entered that office to get help for my ADHD and I left with the recommendation to look for specialised help because the psychologist thought I would also have Borderline Personality Disorder.
Indigo received me and "offered" me a bundle of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy sessions. These sessions were very useful and they helped me to keep afloat but it soon became obvious that I/we were dealing with something way more serious complex that ADHD alone. But Indigo couldn't offer me more sessions and they didn't have anyone who could help me the Borderline diagnosis.
I am now being seen at i-psy, Intercultural Psychiatry. To join the conversation of what might be going on my brain, my therapist says that she suspects I also might be dealing with Bipolar Disorder. For now we are trying to come up with a concrete diagnose so we have no certainties about anything yet.
ADHD, Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar Disorder. I started this road back in 2015, when I started my course in London and went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama Student Affairs to seek for help with my difficulty in reading!
For twenty years I have dealt, on a daily basis, with suicidal thoughts, with mood swings, with concentration issues, with distorted self image ideas, with addictions and so many other things. All the while always thinking that I was just a bit more weird than the people around me. I hated myself for too much time.
Today I am opening up about these things for two reasons:
1 - this has had a great impact on all my relationships over these years. Everyone who had a relation of some sort with me, has also had a relationship with some aspects of these disorders. I feel tempted to write to so many people and apologise for some things that happened. I won't do it because the past is gone and I need to re-learn to live and step forward.
2 - for twenty years so many people thought that they knew me and thought I was a certain someone and, although I was that someone, I would also be sometimes thinking about how to end my life or destroy something important for me as a way to hurt myself. I was enclosed in the stigma of mental illness, I could accept people with physical disabilities, I could accept mental illness on others, but I wouldn't accept it on me. I still don't most of the times! This isolation was burying me more and more. I hope that by opening up about the storm in my head, I can raise some awareness of the silent suffering that sometimes sits on our side on people we love and have no idea about what they are going through.
This is yet another first step into my therapeutic path, trying to find a space in this crazy world. I used to be afraid of the consequences of opening up, losing friends, losing work opportunities, self judgement, etc. I have reached a point where the damage done of keeping all this inside feel bigger and heavier than letting it out. And, as I said, I hope we can connect more with the people who have hidden storms inside themselves.
I think this is as much as I can articulate in this post.
Thank you for reading.
A few months ago I went to my doctor to ask if I could have some kind of professional help with my ADHD. I was struggling with getting a job and feeling lost (this blog was one of my attempts at helping myself at the time).
A couple of weeks later I was sitting in an intake interview at Indigo, an organisation that gives support for people with psychological problems in the Netherlands. They call it Basic Mental Healthcare.
I entered that office to get help for my ADHD and I left with the recommendation to look for specialised help because the psychologist thought I would also have Borderline Personality Disorder.
Indigo received me and "offered" me a bundle of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy sessions. These sessions were very useful and they helped me to keep afloat but it soon became obvious that I/we were dealing with something way more serious complex that ADHD alone. But Indigo couldn't offer me more sessions and they didn't have anyone who could help me the Borderline diagnosis.
I am now being seen at i-psy, Intercultural Psychiatry. To join the conversation of what might be going on my brain, my therapist says that she suspects I also might be dealing with Bipolar Disorder. For now we are trying to come up with a concrete diagnose so we have no certainties about anything yet.
ADHD, Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar Disorder. I started this road back in 2015, when I started my course in London and went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama Student Affairs to seek for help with my difficulty in reading!
For twenty years I have dealt, on a daily basis, with suicidal thoughts, with mood swings, with concentration issues, with distorted self image ideas, with addictions and so many other things. All the while always thinking that I was just a bit more weird than the people around me. I hated myself for too much time.
Today I am opening up about these things for two reasons:
1 - this has had a great impact on all my relationships over these years. Everyone who had a relation of some sort with me, has also had a relationship with some aspects of these disorders. I feel tempted to write to so many people and apologise for some things that happened. I won't do it because the past is gone and I need to re-learn to live and step forward.
2 - for twenty years so many people thought that they knew me and thought I was a certain someone and, although I was that someone, I would also be sometimes thinking about how to end my life or destroy something important for me as a way to hurt myself. I was enclosed in the stigma of mental illness, I could accept people with physical disabilities, I could accept mental illness on others, but I wouldn't accept it on me. I still don't most of the times! This isolation was burying me more and more. I hope that by opening up about the storm in my head, I can raise some awareness of the silent suffering that sometimes sits on our side on people we love and have no idea about what they are going through.
This is yet another first step into my therapeutic path, trying to find a space in this crazy world. I used to be afraid of the consequences of opening up, losing friends, losing work opportunities, self judgement, etc. I have reached a point where the damage done of keeping all this inside feel bigger and heavier than letting it out. And, as I said, I hope we can connect more with the people who have hidden storms inside themselves.
I think this is as much as I can articulate in this post.
Thank you for reading.
Nunca imaginei, sempre te achei uma pessoa linda <3 Força e beijinhos para a família :)
ResponderEliminarDesde ha muitos anos que te considero meu irmão , meu mestre e uma inspiração, penso em ti tantas tantas vezes. Com este post , mostras-me o tanto que ainda posso aprender contigo e uma vez mais , das-me força e inspiração.
ResponderEliminarCoragem para mais uma caminhada.
Meu caro, conheço te há muitos anos conheço o teu talento, a tua arte manual e instrumental, reconheço e admiro a tua entrega ao que acreditas, lembro-me to teu primeiro croudfunding, do teu empreendedorismo, dos projectos que foste desenvolvendo e depois do teu ingresso nas artes cénicas mais a sério. Do nosso convívio nas feirinhas, dos teus maravilhosos didgeridoos que continuam a varrer e a tratar sonica e energeticamente o campo e o corpo das pessoas que vêm ter comigo para o Banho de Som... Para mim és um exemplo de como se flui na vida com alegria, com engenho e arte e com entrega ao próximo. Lembra-te sempre disto, pois isto ninguém te pode tirar, seja qual for o rótulo que te queiram colocar. Lembra-te sempre de quem ÉS. Forte abraço com saudades das nossas conversas e partilhas musicais. Paulo Raposo
ResponderEliminarCoragem, amigo. Um forte abraço.
ResponderEliminar