Differing opinions on mental health and work

 

I had mental health problems from being young, was depressed and saying I hated life when I was about 8 and had an eating disorder by 12. I'm not saying this for sympathy but understanding. I could have used my mental health as an excuse to not go to school or work etc. ( some people can't go to school or work but some do also opt out early on..we all have different barriers...this is just about me.) But I was driven to try to achieve, socially I always felt I didn't fit in, I couldn't control how people who bullied me treat me, I couldn't make people be my friend but I could work hard. From being about 12 I wanted to be a nurse so I joined st John's ambulance cadets and volunteered on first aid duties most weekends from the age of 12 to 18, I was also in the church choir and sang at weddings from the age of 9 to 18 or 19 when I went to uni and I horse rode and looking  forward to riding my favourite horses once a week throughout school got me through how depressed I felt. 

When i left school I had no confidence after being bullied at school and I always felt not good enough, despite working hard I didn't get good grades, I have since found out I am dyslexic and dyspraxic but only found that out when I was doing an access to nursing course so my 2nd time at university 10 years ago. So I decided I wanted to work with horses as it was horses had helped me get through my days at school and so I wanted to rescue and rehabilitate horses. So I did first and national diplomas in animal care and then did a higher national diploma in horse studies at university. I also did factory work in an evening 5 evenings a week whilst I was at college and worked at the riding school on my days off from college, when I went to uni I lived in halls and we did yard duties so I worked in the holidays in factories and at the riding school, I was struggling with depression and an eating disorder the whole time often getting by on a bread bun and hot chocolate and diet coke, nd often would end up crying at work but I was a worker, I wanted to work.

After uni I got my dream job in Lancashire at a horse charity I told myself I had to eat to be able to look after the horses well and I don't know if I over ate or ate normal but I put on weight  to 12 stone and am 5 ft 8 so was a healthy  weight as I was active by mucking out stables and riding so obviously had muscles. One day the manager told me I was too heavy to ride a horse he had told me to get on which I wasn't as it wasn't a small horse but it made me feel so bad I told myself I would have to go back to barely eating again so I wouldn't eat all day but then would be starving by the time I went home so I would end up buying lots of food and bingeing on it and would make myself sick because of the guilt of eating and it became a daily cycle. I continued working in that job for 6 months but I was living miles away from family and friends, didn't make any new friends, lived in a shared house with leaky walls and travelled about on a moped and I was so unhappy and depressed I moved back home.

I didn't work for a few weeks then did some work at the riding school and went back doing agency factory work by then I had told myself I wasn't good enough to do anything else and needed to work, I was reliable and often did overtime despite struggling alot with eating usually making myself drink sugary drinks or toast when I felt ill. I worked at that riding school regularly from the age of 17 until about 28...to start with I didn't have confidence to teach but the owner of the riding school built my confidence which I was grateful for, I started teaching little kids on the shetland pony and taught some learning disabled adults and then taught quite alot and loved it but it was only part time so I always had other jobs too. To start with factory  work then by teaching I got the confidence to do care work which I did for about 10 years from 2004 to 2014 so I worked from 17 until 34 despite having hospital admissions for physical and mental health problems I even did agency care shifts whilst a patient in an eating disorder clinic for 8 weeks whilst on home leave, by then I owned Warwick my horse who I bought myself with a loan which I paid off by working hard. I often did 60 hour weeks and definitely worked more than socialised it was a good way to hide from my social anxiety. 

I struggled to get therapy for my eating disorder ( even in the eating disorder clinic I got no actual psychological therapy as was told to get therapy in my local area...I went to Leeds as my local area couldn't or wouldn't help me as I didn't meet their criteria...sometimes classed as too high functioning for help as I worked and other times classed as too complex because of self harm...surely complex should have meant needed more help not left with none). In 2010 I was in an eating disorder clinic from February until April and got discharged to no support for my mental health as my care co ordinator had been on long term sick so no one chased up any therapy for me. I told myself if I focused on trying to be a nurse and ignored my mental health problems it would help. I did an access to nursing course and my level 2 maths and got through an interview for mental health nursing and was offered a place to start in September 2011. But I got bullied on the access to nursing course by someone who is now a mental health nurse, my sister found some of our birth family which stirred up emotions around being adopted and feeling  guilty my birth mum died from septicaemia after I was born which I blamed myself for and I still didn't feel good enough so then thoughts of I deserved to be dead and life was never going to get better came and I got suicidal and between 2012 and 2014 I took alot of overdoses I would get sent home from the hospital after medical treatment but got no more mental health therapy and continued  to do agency and bank shifts so on my good weeks mentally I worked alot of hours and on a bad week was being treated for overdoses. It got where I was working as a mental health support worker looking after people who were less of a risk then myself and it was getting where I couldn't hide my mental health at work I was normally good at hiding it, wearing long sleeves and bandages to cover self harm and often would spend my time at home bingeing and purging food then go to work jolly with a smile then make a suicide attempt after work. Obviously over the years there were always some signs like self harm scars or fluctuating weight loss where I was thinner so people I worked with did know. So I was open about having mental health problems but some staff were really supportive saying I was good at my job and I had a manager who I loved working for said what she liked was I knew when I was fit for work and when I wasnt and I always said when I couldn't leave my problems at the door and let it affect my work I would have to stop working. Some staff had the attitude if you had the problems I had you shouldn't be working in the job but like I said I didn't work when I wasnt fit for work but I always felt I had to be extra good and reliable at my work to prove I could work but then being over tired and stressed affected my own mental health and was a trigger for the bad times with my bulimia and self harm which obviously was at home not at work so it was how work affected me and made me more ill that led to me stopping work in 2014. By the end of 2014 I also had heart failure and chronic kidney disease from all the overdoses and mentally had given up on life.

So in 2015 I was sectioned for a year as my self harm and suicide attempts had got to not even being safe in hospital every time I was left alone I was tying ligatures and getting found unconscious and was banging my head on walls which has affected my  memory ( you dissociate and can't control your behaviour when you get that bad) it took staff restraining me to stop me hurting myself but I was never a risk to others in fact I would still try help other patients in between my crazy times. At the end of 2015 I got meningococcal septicaemia and pneumonia and was in the high dependency unit and my kidneys failed and I got scared of dying and that was a turning point and I got where I was safer to get off my section and be discharged to an open rehab. To start with they tried to focus on me getting back to work but my eating and personality disorders and social anxiety which were the problem still hadnt had any therapy i would have been going back to work with the same problems that had stopped me working and i struggled with less support than the locked hospital and living with my parents before then ( in the open rehab it was a 1 bedroom flat with staff in an office who ran activities at certain times in the day and I relapsed taking overdoses but was supported by the open rehab for 2 years, the staff got to know me and understood my problems and I started going out with them as I had no friends I saw and was anxious going out on my own apart from to the stables so then I was discharged to my own flat with support workers daily to do my medication because of my overdose risk ( I took about 60 overdoses over a few years and it does scare me when I get the dark thoughts still which I hope I won't act on again)and I had support workers 2 hours day 5 days a week to help me with low mood from social isolation because of my social anxety and I became dependent on the support and feared being able to cope on my own with less support. It was 2017 I got my own flat, the staff at the open rehab helped me get funding to do my riding instructor training and exam at bishop burton and despite still struggling alot mentally and taking another overdose I did a 4 week evening course one evening a week and did the exam at the end of 2017 which I passed half of ( there are 4 lessons to teach and pass for the exam....a group jump and flat lesson, a lead rein lesson, a lunge lesson and a stable management lesson I passed the lead rein and stable management lessons in the first exam.i wasn't going to tell anyone I was doing the exam as I didn't know if I could still teach because I hadn't taught for a long time and because of my mental health but I didn't want to be judged on my mental health and disabilities I wanted to be judged in my training based on face value of my teaching.  I nearly had a couple of melt downs in the training practice lessons where I felt I wasn't good enough and nearly burst out crying but the instructor who taught us just told me to crack on with it which was a good approach and I did she said I was a good instructor and just needed to believe in myself.  After I failed part of the exam I asked at the riding school where I keep my horse if I could teach in return for training to pass the exam, which I did and enjoyed and did pass the exam and did some teaching but became unreliable because of my mental health which i still hadn't had therapy for.  My original plan was to do the training and exam at bishop burton then get therapy for my eating and personality disorders and have my riding instructor qualification under my belt for when I had my mental health stable enough to be consistently reliable to work. But then fell into teaching sooner thinking I could do it but was still struggling alot. I have now been going to a group mental health therapy and have been doing distance learning courses in child and adolescent mental health and understanding specific learning difficulties and am going to do my GCSE maths with the aim of getting back to work.  I would like to be a teaching assistant as I enjoy teaching children horse riding and stable management and also enjoyed supported people with learning disabilities and then could teach horse riding a couple of hours a week, as it is a physical job and my physical health isn't good I couldn't do it full time and my aim is to get back to work part time but I do want to feel useful again.

The problem I find I have is some people would judge me in certain jobs because of my self harm but then people judge me for not working and being on benefits because of my mental health, I go to therapy, I'm trying to work on emotional problems I have that lead to self harm and my eating disorder, I volunteer for a horse charity at their events when I can ( obviously there weren't any this year) but I regularly volunteered in 2018 and 2019 and I have grown more confident socially since joining a choir and regularly doing gigs. At the end of 2018 I took an overdose in 2019 I stopped myself acting on those thoughts by planning weekly reasons not to, choir gigs, volunteering for the horse charity and meeting my couple of close friends and since joining choir my social life revolves around that I love everyone at choir and how supportive everyone has been to me and I only use support workers now for meds calls and they help me clean my flat and do my food shop ( my eating disorder causes anxiety shopping and I get physically tired cleaning due to my heart condition...although in lockdown I have done it myself but takes about 3 hours to clean a 1 bedroom flat, people may judge me but I'm proud of how far I have come and I'm also proud of the many years I did work I didn't claim any benefits until 2009 when I got disability living allowance which meant I had money to cover my bad weeks when I couldn't work but it wasn't until 2014 I totally stopped working. I often feel guilty I don't work and haven't done for 7 years but I wouldn't feel guilty or be judged if I had a visable physical health problem. I never let my heart condition be a reason to not work and I didn't let my mental until it got so bad. I feel my 30s have been lost to mental illness but I want my 40s to be more positive....life begins at 40.....once I can I want to volunteer in a school and get some work experience and do courses to be a teaching assistant but that will be when caronavirus is under control. ...I have a year left of the therapy I go to 3 days a week then will go to therapy once a week for upto 2 years before being discharged from services hopefully well enough to have a more normal life. ....