Hi
I don't know if anyone can help - but i hope so.
where to start?? about 4 years ago life got too much and i was constantly feeling low, i was having uncontrollable behavioral patterns such as feeling fine one minute then the next second i flipped to feeling angry and upset over the slightest thing. i would cry uncontrollably for days and have trouble breathing, i was having frequent panic attacks and palpitations daily and i eventually found some courage to go to my GP.
my GP sent me to a local Mental Health Trust who at first seemed OK as it was good to be able to talk to someone but then after a few months i grew to resent and fear the place. i had regular hourly sessions with the duty team but i became more anxious each session as there was no continuity - i never saw the same person and felt i was having to constantly start from the beginning over and over again and getting nowhere as there was never any feedback or help suggestions.
i eventually got referred to a consultant psychiatrist who prescribed medication - paroxitine (if i remember right) i went up to the highest dose but i felt worse and had physical shakes every day. my medication was then changed to fluoxitine and again i was put up to 60mg which did help ease my shakes but didn't change the way i was feeling or my moods. At this point i was feeling very low very depressed very anxious and very upset that the place i had been sent to for help had done nothing to 'actually' help me. i had an outburst of anger panic and tears all in one go where i was in a really bad state - in front of the psychiatrist, i told her that all i wanted was some help and i wanted to know after 2 years of waiting when i was going to receive some? to which she replied in her black and white tone that people there were trained to deal with seriously mentally ill people and there was nothing they could do to help me! she made me feel like i was a lier even though the week before she had changed my medication to venlafaxine 175mg and referred me to a psychologists waiting list. Her saying that completely wiped out the very little self worth i had left and i decided i was never going back there. i felt like maybe they all thought i was wasting their time and i was inconveniencing them. that was a year and a half ago and i have been struggling desperately to get through each day since. The only good thing i feel came from all those sessions was it gave me time to think of only me and talk about only me, with that i discovered i had been suffering in silence since early teens and i felt that it all started in childhood - which made a lot of sense at a time where nothing made sense.
The thing is (and getting back to my initial question) for the past 6 months the voices in my head have been getting worse. for a while now i have had voices sometimes my own and sometimes a male voice. i just did my best to ignore it best i could but on really bad days i couldn't leave the house or face being around people especially those closest to me. The male voice used to be quite a strong demanding tone telling me that I'm worthless and to end my life - somehow i found strength and i argued this as i believed my children needed me and i needed them, he has also told me to run away many many times leaving my husband and children behind as they would be better off without me - i have again argued this and not done it but a few times i have almost done it. over time i feel these arguments must have helped as the male voice is still there but he is not so strong in tone but he is more frequently there telling me i am being followed, i am being watched, that I'm going to get attacked ect. i feel he has compromised on the ending life as instead he tells me to hurt myself - which upsets me and i cannot always control, in the last 6 months i have drawn blood from my arm twice and cut the word help into my arm 2 weeks ago which now looks like a scar and i suspect will be with me for a long while. this is done not in order to end life, the word my head uses frequently is 'pain transference'. i thought voices in the head were normal until i recently found out that your own voice in your head is normal but a voice of the opposite sex is not - which has raised the scitzophreic quesion.
i don't know anything about scitzophreia but when mentioned I've always thought it was a condition where 1 person has 2 or more personalities people controlling their life?
The condition 'scitzophenia' has started worrying me today as i have consistently told my therapists and GP that i feel like i am 2 people and one of me is hiding behind a mask that i put on to get through each day while the other me is sitting inside empty lonely and crying in pain. the mask enables me to leave the house to take my children to school and put on a fake smile to the other mums, the mask enables me to go food shopping without a panic attack, engage in short conversations, appear normal to society by doing the bare minimum of what is expected of me and worst of all appear normal to my family. The me inside just wants help and until that help comes it just wants to be left alone, avoid people, not get up in the morning, not leave the house, not talk, not eat, not drink, not be alive at times - sometimes this overwhelms me and i don't leave the house or talk to people for days but knowing my kids need to have a normal life forces me to do things. worst of all is i don't know which one is the real me? i used to believe i was the one hiding away and when i got the right help i would be able to stop using the mask but thinking about it today has made me question that because the masked side seems to have more strength and courage the majority of the time?
Today i got my appointment through to see the psychologist for cognative therapy on Friday 13th. I'm hoping this will be the help i have waited desperately so long for but i also feel terrified that if i tell him about the voice and my harming that ill be sent to a mental institution which i strongly believe will tip me over the edge to suicide as without my children i have no purpose to live. i suppose i will just have to see how i feel when i see him??
I'm sorry to have babbled on so long and i hope there is someone still awake out there to reply, i would really appreciate advice on schizophrenia and on how to tell the psychologist without getting whisked off in a white coat, lol.
Many thanks x
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I'm sorry but I don't know anything about Schizophrenia, but I do agree with both Donna and Milly in that you need to tell someone, everything that you have told us...they won't put you in a mental hopsital, because as you have said, you have done nothing!!
