Life is a journey not a destination so .....my story isn't over yet;...me

 My blog is about mental health but joining choir has been a big part in helping me manage my mental health better in alot of ways. Choir has helped my confidence improve massively just by being around friendly supportive friends who believe in me and we support each other. Choir also gives me a purpose, a reason to not act on self destructive thoughts relating to my eating and personality disorders, i'm open in this blog so I admit those thoughts never go away but I can now have the thoughts and not act on them. I still have down days where I stay in bed or end up crying but I have been struggling with my physical health and fatigue since I had covid last year too. I still struggle with my eating disorder and am due to start therapy next year but I can manage it enough to make sure I eat regularly if I'm driving or anything like choir gigs or teaching horse riding, days I'm struggling eating I take soya milkshakes because I keep feeling faint which I never used to do. It...

 In 2015 I was sectioned in hospital for a year and before that had lived with my parents after a failed attempt of living on my own at 21 when my bulimia really took hold so my mental health made me lack confidence in my own ability to live alone. At the beginning of 2016 I was discharged to a mental health rehab where I had my own flat but with staff on site who gave me my meds and who ran activity groups etc. to help service users live more independently after being in hospital.  I lived at the rehab for a year then moved into a council flat but the tenancy was to the rehab rather than me directly for a year before it became my tenancy. I think I got Alfred for my birthday 2018 just before the tenancy became mine but my dad turned up with Alfred, I can remember I was really depressed and anxious at the time and Arthur the cat and Alfred came to live with me, I had wanted a guinea pig for ages and the rehab staff had kept trying to blackmail with if I went so long without se...

 I was reading a friends blog about how much she hates herself and feels she deserves to hurt herself because of her weight as she has a history of eating disorders, It makes me feel so sad to hear of others in the same cycle I was in until 3 years ago of feeling you deserve to die or hurt yourself because of not feeling good enough to be alive. I was always trying to find ways to justify being alive, I thought if I trained to be a nurse and was helping others I deserved to live but then I felt I wouldn't be good enough to do it and so I kept trying to kill myself. I was a good support worker in mental health and learning disabilities and was a good horse riding instructor but I always put myself down for everything I ever did wrong and I would self harm to punish myself every time I did something wrong, I hated myself for my weight always hating I was too fat but then hated everything else about me too, socially I always felt I wasn't good enough or academically but I have soc...

 I go to a group therapy for people with personality disorders and am waiting to start a group for eating disorders but I need to work on all the negative self doubting thoughts I have, not just about food but myself in general.  We had some teaching on mentalization based Therapy today, I couldn't tell you alot of what was taught as I was stuck in my own Negative thoughts crying but then there was something in the teaching that made me realise its my own thoughts that make me feel worthless and I beat myself up over every little mistake I make, I don't expect anyone else to be perfect but I expect myself to be then get annoyed at myself when I'm not. I've lived my whole life feeling inferior to everyone else, but I've had times in my life I have been able to challenge it more, I've been to uni, I got accepted to train as a nurse so I have had periods I have managed to push myself through my self doubt academically and at work. Socially I've always felt I wa...

 It's Saturday evening,  I'm home alone as too often usual, I'm bored and my parents are away for the weekend for my aunties birthday, im pleased they are enjoying a weekend away but I always worry about them when I don't talk to them which sounds stupid but it's my anxiety.  I've been feeling low for a few weeks, I mask it when I'm out and try put on a happy front and throw myself into positive things like choir and teaching horse riding trying to make myself feel useful and do enjoy it too, but about 5 weeks ago i got suspended from the group therapy I go to for some minor self harm ( there is a rule of suspension if you self harm there even if you dissociate and lose control at the time), as it was I had asked for some time off as I have been struggling alot with my physical health and feeling constantly tired which makes my mood low I had 2 restful weeks, then had a really good week teaching at the stables in half term then went back to the group therapy...

 I was waiting in a queue in a local shop today, next to the magazine aisle, the majority of the magazines had headlines on the front about diets, images of celebrities who had lost weight, headlines such as " how I lost 5 stone" etc. Its not surprising so many people have eating disorders, I have friends suffering from eating disorders, some have died, trying to achieve that perfect body image we are all made to feel we should have to be accepted,  to be healthy,  it's not healthy to die from an eating disorder though is it due to trying to find any way to achieve that perfect body and even if we lose weight by starving,  obsessive exercise,  being sick, laxatives we are praised by medical professionals and society, its only when someone is emaciated that alarm bells ring, yet you can have that eating disorder voice at any weight that torments you for eating, yet even the magazines tell us we should be obsessing over our weight. We're made to feel we have to ha...

 Another update, might as well keep updating on my recovery journey, barriers and hopefully getting some effective help. A couple of years ago the eating disorder service wouldn't see me saying I didn't have an eating disorder and it was all personality disorder,  invalidating any past assessments including I was in an eating disorder clinic in 2010, and had cbt for eating disorders in 2012. So I joined a therapy for personality disorders to deal with my other mental health problems in the hope I could then get help for my eating disorder.  For however long I can remember I've felt guilty Eating, bearing in mind I was never overweight until 6 years ago when mental health meds and other health problems caused me to gain alot of weight. In 2015 I was in a locked hospital with no access to food I was restricting some days having a jacket potato or slice of toast a day yet couldn't get below 15 stone, I definitely wasn't bingeing and if I ate more like brunch on a Satur...