Mind & Meaning:Coping with Mental Health

Nice to meet you, reader. I’m Rachel — 40 years old, a Forensic Science graduate, married, a mother of three, a proud dog owner, and someone with 25 years of lived mental health experience under my belt. I’d like to include a trigger warning here for self-harm, depression, and suicide. If you don’t feel able to read about that right now, please stop here.

Mind & Meaning Post Partum

This is my first blog on my brand-new website. Mind and Meaning. The purpose of this post is for you to get to know me a little better, and for me to begin explaining my journey and why I’ve created this space. I’m about to embark on my Level 4 counselling diploma, with the ambition of becoming a fully practicing counsellor — first employed, and then in private practice. I’m about to sit in the “other” chair. I’m so used to being in the patient’s chair that this will be new to me, but am I excited about it? Definitely.

They say that a large percentage of mental health professionals have lived experience — in fact, a quick Google search told me it may be as high as 75%. However, I always wonder how many psychiatrists have lived experience. It takes a long time to train as a psychiatrist, and it’s tough going, which doesn’t leave much time for lived experience in my opinion. And these are the doctors dishing out the medication… but that’s a blog for another day.

Getting to Know Me

I was a typical straight-A schoolgirl at an all-girls school, and when I was 15, I watched an episode of Hollyoaks where Gemma Atkinson’s character started self-harming to cope with stress in her life. I may have been a clever schoolgirl, but I wasn’t clever enough not to be influenced by a programme raising awareness of an issue, so I decided to copy it. To this day, I cannot listen to Gemma Atkinson on the radio, and I can’t stand her. Was it her fault? Of course not. Was it the start of a 20-year self-harming habit? Yes, it was.

Masking

What started as teenage angst and an attempt to deal with some family “stuff” resulted in self-harm becoming my go-to fix for every problem life threw my way. I was good at it too. Not as a brag, but as an example of how something so innocent can become so dark, so quickly.

Fast forward through some exams and a 2:1 BSc honours degree, and I thought I was coping well. I was self-harming daily, binge drinking at university, socially smoking, and masking — there was a lot of masking. I have since been told by a psychiatrist that I have been a “high-functioning major depressive person” for most of my life. Let me tell you, that is not an accolade. When you’re a high-functioning depressive, the wheels don’t just fall off; the engine catches fire, the car careers down a ravine, and people die. Not you though — but you do try several times later on because you’re sad that you don’t. For those who have not heard the term masking before Masking in mental health means hiding your true feelings, struggles, or symptoms so you can seem “fine,” fit in, or avoid judgment. It can look like smiling when you feel awful, acting more confident than you are, or downplaying distress around other people.

It’s often a coping strategy, but if it becomes constant, it can be exhausting and may make anxiety, depression, loneliness, or burnout worse.

Psychiatry and Psychology or is it Medication Trial and Error?

In my 20s, I saw a private psychiatrist for nine years; she was only paid for three, but that’s a scandal for another blog. I tried every medication under the sun. I was taking medication for my medication, then my medication’s medication needed a mate, so there were three medications on the go at once. It was exhausting, and I’m not sure it was working.

My psychiatrist sent me to different psychologists. I didn’t gel with them. One even said to me, “You don’t like me much, do you?” How do you say “no” but make it soft and more psychological? I went with “not really, no.” That particular psychologist told me I had “the worst internal mafia she’d ever dealt with.” I didn’t like her, but what a way with words! That has stuck with me forever. When I’m feeling particularly depressed, I wonder if one of my impulses will be to let my internal "mob boss" leave a horse’s head in my marital bed, just for the laugh. It hasn’t happened yet. The mafia have instead racked up £45k of gambling debt, watched me leave work mid-meeting, drive four hours north, and nearly jump in the River Tyne. Lived experience, you see — there’s nothing anyone could tell me that would shock me. If I haven’t done it, then I’ve probably spoken to someone on one of my psych ward stays who has.

Moving on and trying to cope, the catalyst behind the Mind and Meaning web site

After university, I worked for the police for five years. Think masking, but with criminals. I was police staff, but I managed prolific offenders, so I worked with all walks of life and read about the crimes people committed and why. I then moved to headquarters, where I was an analyst and relied on a crime and safety survey to tell me where to instruct local officers to be more present. As you can imagine, a then-26-year-old telling coppers where to police and why did not go down well. That required my “I’m not scared of you, scary older police officer” mask.

I then flittered and fluttered in an energy company as an analyst until one day I took redundancy and decided to walk dogs for a living. That is a true story. I’d never been happier — until I wasn’t. I spent eight hours a day in the company of dogs, which I loved, but I was newly divorced and it was very isolating, and the chat was ruff. The mask slipped off, shattered into tiny pieces, and that was five years ago. No work, no mask — just hard work and dedication to making a life worth living. I became therapy-focused, and when I was mentally strong and responsible enough, my wife and I brought two babies into the world, carrying one each. That gave me even more reason to keep the mask broken and live an authentic life.

Coping with Mental Illness and developing Mind and Meaning

I want you to know that I am not making light of mental illness in any way, shape, or form. This is just my journey, my story, and why I now want to help people and remind them that there is always a choice. In my darkest days, in my riskiest days, I could have always chosen not to act on my impulses. But I did, every single time. The reason, I believe, is that I was medicated but not talking about my issues. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still medicated, but I’m so much healthier now. I believe that is because I embarked on DBT-based therapy known as the Complex Needs Service. I quit my job as a Criminal Intelligence Analyst and fully focused on my mind, and I gave my mind meaning. In turn, that gave my life meaning.

I have so much more to share, and I want to focus on some very serious topics, including the side effects of all the medications I’ve tried, the crisis team — and why not to call them in a crisis — techniques that actually help reduce urges, birth trauma, and how mums are not important once you’ve had your baby. This is not an exhaustive list. I just hope that some of the above resonates with you, and that you want to come along on my journey of helping others help themselves.

Stay hopeful,

Rachel