So here I am again, playing the waiting game. Waiting for help with my mental health. A few months ago now I contracted my local mental health service, who were absolutely USELESS! Such a contrast to last time. I know that they are completely run off their feet at the moment, but they haven’t treat me well at all this time. They assessed me, which all felt very rushed. The person I was speaking to seemed more concerned about her script of what she had to say, rather than giving me the time I needed to talk and explain what was happening properly. She said that she would phone me back a week later to discuss my treatment options, and she never did. I had to phone them up to find out what was going on. They said that they didn’t know, but she was offline, so they were going to email her for me. Very helpful when she is offline! Thanks for that. As a procaution she also said that she would email me some crisis phone numbers. And she never did. Luckily I wasn’t relying on these and am no where near that point.

The day after, she phoned me up and explained that she had been working from home and that her internet had been down. I do understand why this could be a big problem. Her entire workload could be online. Her diary and contact details of all of her appointments. So I do understand how this could hold things up. But I really don’t understand why she couldn’t phone up the office and ask them to cancel her appointments and let everybody know.

She said that they could offer me treatment for depression, but because I think there is a condition that needs looking into, I may be better speaking to my GP about it. She was saying that if I get a proper diagnosis for whatever condition this is, then they may be able to offer me more suitable help. She said that she would give me some time to have a think and decide what I wanted to do and that she would phone me back a week later. We are three weeks on now and I still haven’t heard from her. Luckily I have decided to go down the GP route, so at the moment I don’t really need anything from them.

I managed to get an appointment with my GP last week and she has referred me to a psychiatrist. Wow… that word sounds scary, and serious. But there’s something going on and whatever it is, it’s getting worse. The majority of my adult life has been consumed by mental health problems, first depression, then PTSD and now this. I do think that whatever this is, that I have had it for quite a few years already and that it has got confused with my PTSD symptoms. But I’m sure now that there is something that has been running alongside my PTSD that has been causing my crazy and intense moods. I think now is the time to get to the bottom of everything that’s going on inside my head. I think that if I was to just go for more thereapy now, it would be like papering over the cracks. Eventually it is going to come to a point where I will have no choice but to do this. I think that not doing this now, would just be delaying the inevitable. I also think that now, with the pandemic situation I have the time and space to deal with all of this. In years time I could get to a point again where I should do this, but I may be really busy with other things that feel more of a priority. At the moment I don’t really have any other plans or commitments that stop me from doing this. So if there was ever a good time to take on a journey like this, it is now. My GP said that I should hear from them within two to three weeks.

The words psychiatric and psychiatrist do sound really dautning though. It sounds really serious. For a while now I have been wondering what the difference is between psychiatry and psychology. One of my friends who used to work in this area explained it to me. If I have understood this right, psychology is when you still have some control over how you are feeling, thinking and behaving and talking therapies are often used to help with any problems. Psychiatry is when you don’t have that control and medication is needed as well as other therapies to help get some of that control back. I have been wondering that for years, I don’t know why I didn’t think to ask before now.

I have been told that this is a long process and it is already doing my head in. I desperately need to know what is going on so that i can try and understand and learn how to live with it in the best way I can. And so that I can start to feel moe stable. There’s also that little part of me that doesn’t want to know, because then it will be real. That part of me is getting smaller though. I think that when I know what it is, a lot of things might fall into place and make more sense. I hate not knowing. And I think that I have got months of not knowing ahead of me.

xx ❤ xx