Hello, Hi, Bonjour, Hola, Ciao, Ola, Namaste ....
Welcome back to Talk Tuesday!
This week I have another guest post. This time from the beautiful Jenna!
I am so honored and grateful that Jenna has been brave enough to share her story with us all today, but just like me she is so devoted to beating the stigma against mental health. I will warn you that this story may trigger many emotions - as it did for me - But grab your cup of tea, sit back and lets hand it over to Jenna herself .....
Who are you? Where are you from? What do you do for a living?
Tell my readers a little about yourself.
Why did you want to take part in #TalkTuesday?
I’m Jenna, I live in Sheffield, South
Yorkshire with my husband and our two cats (Izzy & Shelley). I work for a
well known Gambling company doing customer service for their online
accounts.
How has Mental Health affected you?
I was diagnosed with clinical depression in
2006, panic disorder with agoraphobia in 2008 and borderline personality
disorder in 2017. Earlier this year I completely broke. I didn’t want to be
here anymore. Living hurt too much. At times I feel afraid of everything, I
feel every emotion at 1000% which can be overwhelming and frightening. I can’t
process emotions properly and am convinced that everyone I love will abandon
me. I spend most of my time feeling like my head is on fire. I’ve been scaled from jobs for being “mental”
and have had people tell me there is nothing wrong with me. That I’m an
attention seeker and one person actually said to me that there is. Thing wrong
with me, I just read about a condition and decided I had it. I’ve had people tell me I use my mental health
to make excuses and have been called lazy more times than I can remember.
Stigma is horrendous and I’ve experienced a lot of it. When I was diagnosed with BPD someone broke
off our friendship telling me to stop banging on about my mental health as it
brings people down. Sadly my experiences with the NHS haven’t been
much better. It took me 11 years to be diagnosed as BPD even though I knew
there was something really not right with me and how much I struggled.
To help end stigma. Stigma ruins lives, I’ve
lost jobs and friends because of it. I am feeling stronger than I have in a
long time and if I can challenge some misconceptions I am proud to do so. I
also want to bring BPD into the public domain. I’ve heard and read horrendous
things about people with BPD that just aren’t true!
Why do you think it is so important for us to talk about Mental Health?
Similar to what I said above stigma needs
breaking down and we can only do that by talking about it.
How did you overcome this?
Did you receive any treatment?
How easy was it to gain access to the help you needed?
If you could give one piece of advice to someone who could be reading this suffering in silence what would it be?
I’m sad to say I’ve had a nightmare getting
any kind of help at all. In the end I had to go to the doctor with a written
list of points I wanted to make to make myself heard. I have had two
appointments with a psychiatrist and was then discharged!! When I phoned them
to challenge this they said that I am not in danger of suicide as I have my
husband and he can keep an eye on me. I’ve always said I don’t want to die, I
want to live. There is so much I want to do and see but this apparently means
the NHS can’t help me.
I was referred to IAPT who said they don’t
deal with BPD so have refused to see me. I have had 8 hours of group therapy
which introduced DBT and provided me with a to read list. That is it. My GP
says there is nothing more they can offer.
NHS services are beyond strained and the
government continues to cut funding. It’s heartbreaking. I’ve been stuck on
citalopram for years now, it helps with the panic attacks but very little
else.
Thank goodness for Mental
Health charities or we would have next to nothing.
If you could give one piece of advice to someone who could be reading this suffering in silence what would it be?
Reach
out. Please. You are not alone I promise.
You can find Jenna on Instagram HERE
Want to talk?
Please feel free to email me, or find me on social media (all linked on my blog) and I will be more than happy to speak to you. Use the Hashtag #BISDTT to get the conversation started online!
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