Wobble

I’ve had a wobble. I say a ‘wobble’ but what I really mean, in terms of the impact on me as a functional human being, is more like a quake somewhere in the region of 7.5 on the Richter scale (aligned to a ‘major’ quake - causing serious damage, but not quite a ‘great’ where communities are destroyed).

As a 25 year veteran of The Great Head Fuck Challenge (TGHFC – a deserved acronym if ever I did hear one) I’ve had wobbles, blips, hiccoughs and near disasters. These have ranged from a few days of feeling particularly dysfunctional, to an evening in the company of a new razor blade through to a few days lost in the fog of suicidality and the odd trip to hospital for a stomach pump (isolated incidents I’m pleased to say).

So this wobble wasn’t my first but it was different. The reasons for the difference I’ll come to a little later.

The initial earth tremors started probably over a week ago now although the source was a few months back (one of my jolly trips to A&E leading to a psych referral) as I built up to my first psychiatrist appointment in over a decade.

You see, despite being a long time player of TGHFC, I am often able to play the trump ‘high functioning’ card. Holding this card in your hand allows you to dodge the system (going past Go but collecting a few additional crappy experiences instead of £200), get stitched up and out the door of A&E or a doctors surgery, speak to 111 regarding an overdose query or present to a GP requesting some diazepam for a week or two without raising the at risk alarm.

This card had allowed me to avoid the moment when a healthcare professional suggests a referral to a psychiatrist might be in order. Indeed I was under the ‘care’ of a psychiatrist only once during TGHFC in my early twenties when I first raised my head above the parapet and mentioned that my head was perhaps not all as well as I may hope (the chance cards were more building fines than beauty contests). This went on for a couple of years and it was never fun.

Having been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder early into my psychiatric interaction I had enjoyed the preconceptions, assumptions and suspicion that accompanies this, the modern day leprosy of psychiatric disorders. I knew from this interaction, as well as those in A&E and GPs in intervening years that you start somewhat on the back foot when you pull open your cloak to reveal the horror of a fundamentally flawed personality dwelling within.

I wanted to attend this appointment though and I thought that was because I was trying to do the right thing, see anyone who could help me complete TGHFC (I’ve been round and round the fucking board, stung by the hotel on Mayfair repeatedly and prayed for bankruptcy) before I throw the board in the air, flick my hair and leave the room for the last time.

So I keyed myself up, told myself this was a good thing. I’d be brutally honest and seek her opinion on the relevance of my old diagnosis and ask for advice on the medication I took and whether to continue, try something else or cease and desist (I thought I meant the medication but subconsciously I wonder if I was seeking a green light to exit stage left in general).

I’d talked through that I was planning to go with my superhero therapist (missing the cape and underwear over trousers of course because that would be more distracting than healing for a 50 minute session) and he’d supported me and offered sound counsel that I must not go anywhere that didn’t feel safe (in my head that is) and that he’d be there to debrief with after. In I went.

She was nice enough, she was a shrink for sure, no smiled cracked despite my always excellent humour and charming company. And I did a good job I told her it all and asked her opinion and, well, it didn’t end up quite like I expected.

Essentially I can boil down her insight as follows:

• I need to leave therapy ‘that length of therapy only creates dependence’.

• I am, most likely still borderline and I always will be

• But I’m functional so should be grateful.

• I’m clearly an intelligent and articulate person who understands herself and simply need to use the intelligent part to instruct the emotionally ‘backwards’ parts

• I’ve hit all the key life ‘milestones’ (marriage, children, job for more than a week) so I’m not really of any concern and she wasn’t sure why I was there

• I don’t understand well the difference between facts, thoughts and feelings. She recommends the only therapy I consider is DBT because we are ‘just talking’

• I should give mindfulness a try and count to 10 when I have the self harm urges

I didn’t feel overwhelming optimistic about myself after this 2 hour marathon appointment and I most certainly felt sure that I was, as my inner gremlin often told me anyway, making a mountain out of a molehill, pretty much deciding to be a bit crazy and wasting the time of previously mentioned superhero therapist.

But I held in the beginning of the quake, exchanged a nice email with my therapist and carried on. Except I didn’t. By 24 hours later the gremlin had puffed out his chest, grabbed a loudhailer and was busy broadcasting the above bullets in stereo from the very epicentre of my head. It was time for TGHFC bonus round.

I was, by this stage on my way back from a meeting (see above job milestone) some 160 miles from home. Long drives always represent a challenge – time to think, time where nobody really knows where I am and motorway reservations and bridges (the perfect pairing for my contemplations for how to reach my demise in an accidental manner). The tremors got worse as the M40 passed behind me and I began to realise that some of the smaller structures in my quake stricken head were indeed beginning to tumble.

I went to therapy the next morning whilst the quake was building. I sat in a room that is a safe place for me, with someone I trust and I know wants to offer me care and compassion and that gremlin, little fucker, he just wanted me out of there so he could get the loudhailer back out, make more noise and up the scale of quake.

I tried to talk but I was gagged, I was ashamed – the psych fuelled gremlin was clear I was a time waster in this room AND, he continued, my therapist thought so too. He didn’t like me or want me there he was just being professional until he found the right way to tell me that I was no longer welcome. He was going to take his piece off the board and I was going to be circling forever until I had the courage I needed to throw in the towel.

I made about 40 minutes I think, the tiny part of me that the gremlin hadn’t got to tried to stick to the seat and tried to find a way to say ‘help me’ but it was too small and had been over powered.

On my way to work I popped along to my favourite motorway bridge (you know how you ‘normal people’ might have a favourite park well I have a favourite ‘place I might kill myself’ – don’t judge), had a sob in a layby and, managed to turn off my head for the afternoon to be at work.

Late afternoon I look at my phone to see a text from the caped crusader – my exit from his room and lack of contact since (I am a prolific emailer as standard) had set off his internal alarm bells and he was demanding contact or he was about to literally send out the search parties.

Thank god for him, again.

I called him, we talked. He was cross which I got because I could easily have known that he cared enough to expect and want to hear from me, that he was prepared to help but that yet again I’d denied myself his care, dismissed his concerns and put myself more at risk.

I stayed at work, a safe(ish) place and we exchanged a couple of messages. The gremlin got a bit worried because someone was up against him and it was just enough to get me home.

The weekend which should have been enjoying a Christmas light switch on, supporting my daughter in her theatrical endeavours and wrapping gifts for loved ones overseas turned into a faux virus in order that I could sit under the nose of my loved ones hurting, broken and non functioning under the guise of a nasty bug.

Monday came, work came. Well I went to work and managed some horribly repetitive tasks that I knew was all I was capable off (my occasionally brilliant brain being fully consumed by TGHFC like a 14 year old and Instagram). I went dark on my superhero but he was having none of it – checking in on me and, by doing so giving me just enough energy to bargain with the gremlin to extend my stay of execution to the next morning when I’d have a final chance of 50 minutes in the safe room with the safe person.

And that was this morning. I broke and healed a bit all at once. I cried fairly solidly for a good 40 of the 50 minutes in front of another person (this is like my kryptonite). The world didn’t end.

I got the words out (snotty, choky words) about how scared I was, how lost, how ashamed and how I felt about the idea of being a time waster, a loser and the inventor of the TGHFC. And he listened and he heard me and he sat with me in it.

It was the scariest thing I think I’ve ever done (and I’ve been in a car driven by an ageing aunt who was given her license during wartime with no need for a test – she would stop reversing when she hit the wall behind, like parking sensors but more bricky than bleepy) and I’m so so pleased I managed it.

Don’t get me wrong I still haven’t figured out how to complete TGHFC but I think I finally managed to land on community chest, pick up few quid and take a breath. Plus, I’m certain that Therapyman has his piece on the board next to mine and that we’re rolling the same number fairly consistently. I’m hopeful that, after a few more laps around the board I (we) might one day put the game to bed.