Welcome to My Mental Life
Hello and welcome to my blog on mental health and mental illness. My name is Phoebe, and I am here to share my journey with you. I am 24 years old, and I have struggled with Anorexia Nervosa, Borderline Personality Disorder, Depression and Anxiety. These are just a few of the many mental health conditions that affect people worldwide. Mental health is a complex and often misunderstood topic, and it is time that we start talking about it openly and honestly about it. In this blog, I will share my experiences with mental illness, offer insights into different conditions, provide tips for self-care and management, and explore the broader issues surrounding mental health. My hope is that through this blog, we can start a conversation, reduce stigma, and support each other in our journeys towards mental wellness.
To start off, I wanted to share a brief history of my experience with mental illness.
When I was 13 years old I was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa and Clinical Depression. At the time of my diagnosis I didn’t even know what an eating disorder really was and believed that this was something that only affected me and no one else in the world could possibly understand. After many months of starvation, rapid weight loss, self harm and depression I was hospitalized at The Priory Roehampton in the adolescent eating disorder ward. It was only once I was there that I began to really realize that this wasn't just something wrong with me, but rather an actual illness that many people suffered from. However, writing that now doesn’t seem entirely accurate as in my anorexic mind I was convinced there was actually nothing wrong with me, I just simply didn’t need food to survive. I stayed at the Priory for a couple months but never accepted nor wanted to recover. This would be the start of a 10 year battle with Anorexia involving many faint attempts at ‘recovery’ and many intense and damaging relapses.
In 2020, age 21, I would return to the Priory Roehampton on a crisis admission, this time in the Adult Mental Health Ward. I had come back to London from University for an appointment with a new psychiatrist after a very strange and unsettling six months. The day after this appointment the psychiatrist called me to say that upon reflection on our meeting she felt that I was at extreme risk to myself and waiting to go into hospital was not a good idea. I had an immediate crisis admission for a month.
The year prior to my hospitalisation was eventful to say the least. In the early summer months of 2019 my ex-boyfriend and I broke up, and although this should have been an extremely devastating and difficult thing to process, my mind simply told me to forget about it. That relationship was over and I would not waste any more time on it. The rest of the summer I was sailing on one of the biggest highs of my life. I was going on holiday left right and center, being social everyday and genuinely felt like all my problems had ended with the relationship. That however, was clearly not the case. When I returned to uni, the high didn’t completely go away, but was shared with massive lows, psychotic episodes, extreme self harm, an inability to form proper emotional attachments in relationships, extreme depressive episodes, obsessive exercise, using drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism, feeling dissociated the whole time and just generally being extremely volatile and unstable. It was a very scary time as I just had no idea what was really wrong with me.
Anyway, I was hospitalised, diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and told I would stay for a month. I took this stay in hospital as a break from life. It felt like a gift to be able to hide away in hospital with no need to see or talk to anyone. I enjoyed being shut off from the world and I felt safe there. I still had extreme emotions but they weren’t as bad. However, I didn’t take advantage of the group therapy, partly because I felt extremely uncomfortable sharing my thoughts, emotions and experiences, partly because I just wanted to be alone and partly because I was starting a new medication called quetiapine which acts as a sedative and my dosage was being increased every couple of days. I honestly don’t remember too much of this month so unfortunately I can’t describe things in detail for you.
When I left the hospital the UK went straight into lockdown. I was thankful for this at the start as it meant I didn’t have to socialize, something which had really scared me. However, my ex got back in touch and pretty soon I started going out and partying, drinking to excess, doing drugs and spending all my time with people who were not safe or healthy for me to be around. I was in no way helping myself or my mental health and was in fact damaging myself more and more everyday.
It was no surprise that in 2021, almost exactly a year after my previous hospitalization, I was once again back in the Priory. This time for Cocaine Addiction. Now this stint in hospital really was the only one that I believe made any difference. I was on a very strict group and individual therapy regime, I had a new psychiatrist who switched up my medications, and for once in my life I truly had every intention to get better. It was nearly 10 years since my first hospitalization and I was going to make damn sure it was my last.
Following on from this, I started to really get better, both in terms of my eating disorder and BPD, as well as staying clean.
Fast forward to March 2022 and my Dad got diagnosed with Cancer. I don’t even really know how to write about this as after all I had been through in the past 10 years, the following couple of months would be the most painful thing I had ever experienced. On May 25th 2022 my Dad passed away and my heart completely broke.
It is now April 2023, almost a year on, and it still hurts just as much. I have recently quit my job and gone back to therapy to begin to deal with the grief and loss as well as everything else that resurfaced over the past year. To say this has been difficult would be a massive understatement. Most of the time I feel so overwhelmed that I am worried my brain will explode. The extreme instability returned along with; the panic surrounding my body image and weight, relationship anxiety, intense fear of being abandoned and the indescribable pain of loss.
Whilst I am on a mission to regain control over my brain and my life, I wanted to create this blog to share my experiences, both past and present, and allow for a true and unfiltered insight into mental illness. Recovery and positive progress is always possible, no matter what life might throw at you.
Stay tuned :)