Here we can all be heard for a little while. Part 2

Pyxis

Hi peoples.

I'm going to be out all day today and tomorrow at a very important AmDram thing!
Will probably be able to get online late tonight, but maybe not tomorrow.
Then Sunday, am flying to Venice for a week!
(I should have wifi in the hotel, though!)

Wellyboots6

Currently doing a Crystal Maze type challenge..

Escapette won't stop crying and I've tried everything, so going to take her a walk in the pram. It is raining, and I haven't got a clue how to attach the rain hood. If I get the rain hood on within two hours I get the crystal, right?

Pyxis

Didn't it come with any instructions?

If not, their website?

Wellyboots6

Instructions could have ended up anywhere, they are for whimps in this house. Googling is a good idea though!

Although she has just dozed off, so maybe I am saved for a little while...

Anyone got any ideas for a cheap easy Halloween costume?

whitewing

If I painted myself orange and wore a green hat, I could go as a pumpkin with no other effort.

I saw an idea yesterday for a cheap witch. It was basically a black long sleeved top, black leggings. A pillow case quickly cut into a tunic and decorated with black stars and cinched at the waist with a black hat. A witches hat. Then Escapette could be a cat. Or you could stick her in a cauldron as a boiled baby with toy frogs and spiders etc.

Failing that, go in your nightie, having been up all night with baby, and you may look like the living dead with no effort! (This is a joke about how you look; I am just thinking back to how I felt when I had a newborn).

Wellyboots6

Good ideas WW!

Escapette has a pumpkin costume, and MIL has knitted her a ghostbuster jumper too.

I do like the nightie idea, its how I feel at the moment

elsien

whitewing wrote: »

Have any of you on the thread had a genuinely happy, well-adjusted childhood and then developed mh issues later in life?

Just wanted to query what counts as a well adjusted childhood? In that I would definitely say my childhood was happy (until I hit my teens) - no bad family dynamics, abuse or anything else that a lot of other people have suffered.
I don't consider myself to have MH issues - I had a one off episode of reactive depression due to a specific set of circumstances, and that's it. Although it did lead to me losing my job and knocking my confidence for a long time afterwards.
Having said that I did get packed off to boarding school at age 11 due to family circumstances. I don't resent it, I understand why it happened, in some families that's quite a normal thing for kids to do and nothing out of the ordinary. But of course it had an impact, far more so than I realised at the time.
But looking at my depressive episode in retrospect, there are all sorts of factors around the coping mechanisms I developed, both positive and negative which I'd never previously given a thought to and which I needed someone else to point out to me.
I just think there are so many factors that can impact on mental health, and sometimes there are specific triggers and other times it's more of a "perfect storm" of random events coming together at the wrong time.
Memory is such a selective random thing at times - your memories and your parents may be equally valid but remembered differently. When I talk to my brothers about incidents, sometimes it seems as if we were at completely different
places our memories are so different. In part, what sticks is what is important to you, which other people may genuinely not remember because it just didn't strike them as relevant at the time.

dragonette

WW, I had a happy, balanced and loving childhood apart from the sexual abuse.

In my experience, parents tend to deny there was any problems as it means admitting they weren't good parents. Even the best parents can sometimes say or do things that are deeply hurtful and can be harmful.

If you feel the issues link back to childhood, then for you, they do. No matter what a Dr said at the time. Noone else can tell you how those things link up inside you, but neither is there a way to prove it to them. It simply is.

(((hugs))) I hope the disruption and upset settles soon

Waves_and_Smiles

Good morning all!

Peguin reply to whitewing-

If I was in your situation the one thing that would stand out to me would be the lack of validation. You KNOW how bad things were and how they were for you, your parents attitude and your medical notes are somewhat contradictory to that. Personally it would make me hurt and angry that things weren't acknowledged as they really were for me, and the manipulation comment would make me very upset indeed.

Looking at your medical notes is always a double edged sword unfortunately. I have never been brave enough to request mine because I don't really want to know what it is in there. My lovely doctor has at times shown me various assessments that I have had but always read through them with me so that he can explain what it means and reassure me, even he thinks it would be a bad idea for me to read them alone because there is a lot included that I still carry a lot of guilt about and a lot of the time I didn't realise how unwell I was.

Out of what we have gone through together the most disturbing thing I read was how close both my mother and I were to being forcefully admitted into long stay hospitals when I was 15. On the surface everyone was offering me support and telling me they would help me with daily life, behind the scenes I was inches away from a long term hospital stay and it was recognised that I was very disturbed and probably beyond living in the community (my diagnosis then was BPD, social anxiety and clinical depression). The case conference that took place at that time was to decide whether I should be admitted, no one ever told me that and very much played it down. Only my psychotherapist and my GP opposed it out of nine professionals and both agreed to hugely increase the support they offered me if it was taken off the table, which they subsequently did.

It really hurt me to know that because no one had ever told me that it was being considered or even hinted at how unwell they believed me to be. Ironically, I hated that conference back then and blamed my psychotherapist for holding it and saw her as attacking me, I had no idea that she was fighting to keep me out of hospital and representing my wishes more than anyone else. It was after that the help really kicked in, I was given antidepressants, had therapy three days a week, saw a psychiatrist once a month, saw my GP who was also a child psychiatrist for an hour a week and my teacher friend made himself available to me on the other weekday and every weekend, plus I was given regular respite in children's homes and with my form tutor in her home. It was reviewed six months later and agreed that as long as the support was continued until I was 18 that I wouldn't be hospitalised. I really didn't realise how serious my situation was seen as at the time, it felt quite chilling to see it in my notes and it really upset me as an adult. It also made me feel very humble that people had agreed to such a long term commitment to try to help me and I felt that I had let everyone down by not being fine now. I then decided I didn't want to see what else was written about me and I still don't.

A little like you, I found it hard to reconcile how I saw things to how the professionals did, plus there is the added point that everyone is human with their own views so will have slightly different opinions anyway. As objective as any professional tries to be their personal world view will slightly influence their diagnosis, we are subjective creatures. The same goes for families, my mother would have said that she gave me a good childhood and it was my dad that was problem, to acknowledge otherwise would be to admit her own failings. I think what is important is it was how those times felt and seemed for you. Your perception is what matters, it is you that has to live with what you went through day to day. Have a hug if that's ok, I understand.

End penguin

Have a wonderful time, Pyxis! I am so jealous of Venice!

Code, all I am saying is I take loads of opiates too and I am sending Wasp out for mints! Your others have lovely names! When I am doing ok the helper ones tends to go quiet and say I don't need them so they do their own thing. Then there is the ever present Lucee who isn't capable of leaving me alone for a day...

Glad to hear that you are feeling better Dragonette! Swap you one of your non-verbal others for Lucee who jabbers away constantly about everything! Not really, I love her even though she drives me mad.

Wellyboots6

Gave up on the rain cover and dodged the rain. She slept for the whole walk and is now awake again. Any suggestions for what could be causing her to cry or what I could try to calm her? So far the only thing working is having her look at my face while I talk to her. I've narrated the whole of Loose Women so far, but now I need to put her down to go for a wee!