Just needed to be heard for a little while

metalswan

Takes a deep breath! Have been reading along and have been so moved, I felt the rare urge to post.

You are so expressive and write so beautifully (as others have also noticed) Thank you so much for sharing your experiences of mental health lows and highs.
You are helping me immeasurably by sharing! I can identify with many parts of your experiences, I am shaking and close to tears as I write this but am fighting the anxiety to send you an internet hug/ handshake or whatever you need.

I have read (and continue to read) the mse forums in times of blackness and personal difficulty and have never failed to be reassured, uplifted and encouraged by people's stories and strength.

Love your sense of humour by the way and another vote on team WaS for a book.

Please keep reading and posting when you feel able, you are real and are very much appreciated.

Sending you love, peace and calming vibes xx

Waves_and_Smiles

I love head massages! I wonder if it is possible to have someone come out to your home and give them? One of techniques used when I was hospitalised once was for the nurses to brush my hair, it would soothe and comfort me and reduce my anxiety. I shall have a look into it, thank you for the suggestion!

Aw metalswan, hello, and I am glad that this thread is helping you. Have a hug in return, I like hugs. It clearly took you a lot to post which means even more to me, please do feel that you can write here anytime. Everyone here as has been beyond lovely to me and they will be to you too, but if you can't post I know that you are reading along and that helps me feel that I am being heard, so thank you for making my day a bit better.

Today isn't too bad. I did have to check that I was real earlier but my partner assures me that I am. I find that I still cannot think of the other worlds that I visited at the weekend, I feel my sense of reality slipping when I do. It is like the feeling you slip into when you are nearly asleep and you can feel yourself drifting, except this happens within seconds. It is so hot today that I have had to open the window and sounds are horrendous, everything is still magnified. I can't hear my partners voice at all, the traffic and people outside all blend into one who huge roaring crowd noise that blots everything else out, the bad voices are joining in as well but luckily they just blend in to the overall loudness so no luck for them being annoying right now. I can probably tolerate another 20 minutes of this before the window has to close, nevermind the fact that I am on the first floor and still checking every few minutes to ensure that no one is trying to climb in. I do know how daft that is, but fear says it will make me panic anyway. So there is still a little psychosis around but it should be gone by the weekend.

I also need to eat today, I haven't done since the weekend. I have felt sick and had an upset stomach ever since, it tends to happen as a result of the terror of the psychosis. Plus I still have the headache that also occurs afterwards so eating isn't at the forefront of my mind really! I do have diabetes however and long periods living on sweet tea are not good for me so today I must make an effort.

I wish this psychosis would hurry up and go, I have a subject to pick everyone's brains about! The problem is it is a stressful one to me and I can't consider making myself anxious while psychosis is still present, nothing good lies there. I shall wait and watch bird webcams...

Waves_and_Smiles

I frequently have 2 reoccurring dreams, sometimes several times a night, at least twice a week. When I begun therapy as a child my therapist told me to record all of my dreams onto a notepad by the bed, she said they were extremely important. I was having reoccurring dreams back then too. People who have had therapy find their dreams become more vivid in a lot of cases, I remember a lot of mine very clearly.

One dream is always about train journeys, I will get onto a train with a destination in mind but then suddenly forget where I am going, or the stations will look unfamiliar and I will realise that I am on the wrong train. When I try to change trains I find that the service is about to be stopped, or I do not have money for another ticket. I also cannot leave the station as I do not have the money to pay the extra for the places I ended up visiting so I am stuck travelling on trains indefinitely. I am always very anxious and often cry.

The other dream involves finding a small hole in metal or a wall. I look through the hole and know that I need to get onto the other side. After initially believing it to be impossible I place my hand on the wall and stare through the hole. I allow my eyes to go out of focus and enter a dream-like state and imagine myself passing through the wall. The drifting feeling is very similar to psychosis. I feel myself pass through the wall to get to the other side and then I wake up.

My therapist told me that my dreams are windows into my subconsciousness. I have always found that when I correctly interpret a dream that it will stop and only returns if I find myself back in a similar situation, I tend to learn a lot from the ones that keep appearing. I have attempted to figure these out but clearly haven't managed it as they are present most nights.

Any suggestions please? Just if you are bored...

Pyxis

Hello WaS.
Interesting dreams.

The train one, reminded me of a lot of anxiety dreams I used to get, until you said that, as a result, you would be travelling on trains indefinitely.
At risk of STBO (!), this could be you searching for a way out of the psychosis treadmill. The feeling that you're stuck on this 'journey' forever.

On the other hand, the hole in the wall sounds more positive. It sounds like you know there IS a way out, and importantly, you are able to figure it out. You need to think about what's required for the transition to occur, but it is possible.

Are either of those feasible explanations?


Edit. Have you ever had hypnotherapy? Am just wondering if the hole in the wall is referring to the possible benefits of that.

whitewing

I had a revolting dream recently about mucus that came out of nose. When I googled it, the interpretation was that I was in for a windfall! (Hasn't happened yet).

When you have your dreams, does it disturb your husband? I wonder if he hears anything that may shed some light on it.

jobbingmusician

OK, here's my take on the dreams.

Firstly, I think they are both about the same thing - trying to get to where you want to be. And I think where you want to be is somewhere I will call the 'Land of Health' - somewhere where your fears and psychoses can't get to you, somewhere safe.

The train dream is especially frustrating, I should think. You are travelling through life with a sense of purpose, and suddenly the illness takes over (or life just goes wrong!) and you realise this. Whatever you do to try to get things back on track (lol see what I did there - but actually our use of language is related to the way we dream....) doesn't work, and you flail around passing from unreal world to unreal world (to relate back to your description of what happened at the weekend) and you feel that you will be stuck in that nowhere land forever.

In the wall dream, I'm not actually sure which side of the wall you think is the 'right' one - or perhaps you don't feel like that about it? Is one place/side of the wall better than the other side? Do you feel you 'belong' on the side you start from, or the other side? Are you trying to cross over because you want to go to a better place, or simply out of curiosity?

As it says in The Reluctant Messiah 'everything you read in this book [post] may be wrong'.

Waves_and_Smiles

Eeeeek! Mucus, whitewing? You deserve a windfall just for experiencing that!

Thank you for the interpretations! I think they are linked too as both have the theme of trying to get somewhere. The train interpretation makes sense, I do feel like I am 'de-railed' a lot of the time. The hole in a wall dream always involves something better on the other side and I can get there by passing through the wall but to do so I have to let go of my present world and let myself imagine that I am on the other side? For example last nights involved a heavy metal wall with a tiny slit in it. Through the slit I could see the most amazing exotic animals and wanted to be closer to them. I placed my palm flat on the wall, allowed my mind to drift and imagined my body had no substance and felt myself pass through the wall. Sometimes the wall will be blocking where I need to go, other times it will contain food or drink that I desperately need. What is behind it changes but the process for passing through it is always the same and I will actually remember other dreams where I have passed through within the present dream and re-enact it.

My partner has great fun with me sleeping. I talk in my sleep, I often scream and cry and to top it all off I sleepwalk! The sleepwalking can be a little hazardous as ironically I often try to leave my flat. I have always suffered with it, on one memorable occasion back when I was 19 I remember waking up feeling hot and fell back to sleep. Next thing I awoke in the late morning with my room door wide open (my room faced the stairs so everyone passing could see in), my nightdress left in a pile outside of the door and me laying naked on the bed in direct view of the open door! Not my best moment! My dad used to tell me that I would sleepwalk as a child too, I would frequently wake up in a different room sitting on his lap and wonder how on earth I got there.

Sleep has always been very hard for me to achieve and then very eventful with many vivid dreams. I also find it very hard to let go of the dream world and am often confused and not really here for the first few minutes after waking up, the line between reality and imagination is generally very blurred for me. A psychiatrist summed it up with I never quite let go of reality when I sleep and never quite let go of the dream state when I am awake. The switch that flicks between the two is faulty. This does mean that I have a lot of lucid dreams though which I quite enjoy, and many recurring ones which almost always contain a message from my subconscious.

I spend 12 hours a day in bed as it takes at least 2 to fall asleep and then I seem to need 10 hours as it is so disturbed. I can easily sleep for 15 hours a day if I allow it but I think the amount of medication I take is part of that. Certainly less than 6 hours and I feel ill with tiredness and my mental health deteriorates rapidly after 2 days of little sleep. It has been this way since childhood and I did have a consultancy at a sleep clinic for a while which is where they stated that I was a slow-sleeper, e.g it takes hours for me to sleep even if I have been awake for 24 hours beforehand.

Initially we tried sleeping tablets which had no effect, then tranquillisers which resulted in a night of nightmares and waking up next day covered in an itchy rash with swollen fingers and face! As I have stated, medication works a little oddly on me and I show an allergic reaction to a lot of it. Now we have agreed on a large dose of anti-psychotics before bed which at least limits the waking up screaming and sleepwalking part to a couple of times a week. I tend to sleep at dawn as I wake frequently at night still half in a dream and it's terrifying if it is dark at the time. Also, to be honest there is less chance of me waking neighbours with sounds like I am being murdered!

ETA: Just for the sake of interest this only began when I reached the age of two. As a baby I had my hearing tested and a learning disability was mentioned as I simply never woke up crying. I would sleep through and if I did wake up just lie there in silence. I was an exceptionally 'good' baby who hardly made a sound until I began to talk (and then rapidly spoke in full sentences), never had a tantrum, hardly ever cried, didn't engage with toys and ate when fed but otherwise didn't request anything. The first games I ever played with my parents were talking about imaginary characters and pretending that I was one too. I stayed within my own world in my imagination it seems, which really has never stopped happening. Something was always a little different from the beginning which has always been of major interest to psychiatric professionals...

Pyxis

Thanks for that, WaS.

Going back to the head massages, yes a lot of practitioners would come to your place. It's usually done sitting and fully clothed.

It is very soothing.

An aromatherapy head massage is also lovely. How are you with scents? I know you said they can help to ground you. What's your favourite scent?

Waves_and_Smiles

I tend to like light musks or vanilla. A head massage actually sounds wonderful and I will see if anyone does it in my area, hopefully it isn't too expensive as money tends to be extremely tight as I use my DLA and some ESA to pay my carer for extra hours.

The above is a little frustrating as I do get payments for a carer but since my partners mother became ill he is also her carer so he needs to spend a lot of time with her, too. Social services didn't feel that they could really help, they recommended that my partner stay as my carer with the set-up we already had that worked and then his mother got carers of her own. They worked with her branch to set an assessment date and handed everything over. The only snag is she simply will not allow 'strangers' into her home so that idea has collapsed. She is of very sound mind (a lot more than I am!) so they cannot force her to accept help and anyway, that would be horrid. She is 93 and and in physical ill-health and we both think the world of her so neither of us would push her to do something that would distress her. It does mean, however that I need someone to help me with washing and dressing (arthritis), taking my pills (confused memory), cleaning and making sure I have a meal in the fridge that I can grab. As horrid as it is to say this situation won't go on forever and we both want her to feel as safe and cared for as we can so for now money is at a minimum but we are ok with that.

More than anything I worry about my partner, he drives 120 miles a day between us and gets very tired. I have offered to ask if I can be given a place in a hospital for a week to give him a rest but he won't hear of it and says he would still do the same journey everyday anyway to sit with me. Personally, I think it might still help as his exhaustion is from the effort of the caring itself and trying to remember everything that we need but he says no, so oh well. He does have a brother who stays with her in the daytime but he has alcohol problems (among a lot of others) and tends to start to drinking in the early evening and then it isn't safe. She simply won't allow anyone else in her house so there is little else that we can do.

Oh, a funny one! My pillowcase slipped off before I went to bed. I looked at it, looked at the bed, looked inside it and just sat there for a few minutes with no idea where it was supposed to go. I knew it was part of the bed, but as for what part I was completely flummoxed. So in my usual fashion I panicked and I stuffed it under the mattress and pretended it didn't exist, whilst reassuring myself that material doesn't make up the bed frame so the whole thing wasn't about to collapse under me. I have just remembered that it goes on the pillow, of course it does. I had better go and do that...

jobbingmusician

Gosh, that pillowcase story I can relate to, I can be a bit vague sometimes and slip into state where I look blankly at the pc in my hand.... And I don't have voices talking to me while I'm trying to concentrate, as you may.

Your partner sounds lovely, and I do wish you well with your MIL. Do you mean that you use her carers, while she borrows your OH to use at her carer? Because that's what seems fair to me. It is totally unfair if SS have simply said 'oh well, use your OH for his mum' and not replaced the caring hours of him that they are taking from you! Yes, of course they are happy to do this, it saves them money..........:mad: