CDMT: The Therapy Of Cadburys’ Dairy Milk, Not Cognitive Behavioural Techniques

I have rediscovered Cadburys’ Whole Nut and it appears, along with 5mg tablets of diazepam to ease some of the stress I feel at the moment. I feel so restless inside, so much so that I can’t sit still for more than about 20 seconds and my Mum claims that me wandering aimlessly around is making her dizzy and given her a headache.

She dragged me out to the new Westfield shopping centre at Shepherd’s Bush earlier today. Usually I would jump at the chance of shopping, but I really couldn’t be bothered today. She got a nice shiny new red iPod Nano, of which I am sincerely jealous and I walked around slightly dosed up on co-codamol thanks to the pain in my arm not really looking at anything in particular, until I saw a pair of shoes which I happened to mention that I quite liked and the next thing I knew my Mum had bought them telling me the father could pay for them later.

I still feel suicidal. I rang the crisis team last night who suggested that I should clean the bathroom (with a right arm which I can barely lift anything with) to relieve some of the excess energy I have. I told them that I still have suicidal thoughts, feelings and plans in my head but I am scared. They asked if I was scared of dying, and I had to admit that it isn’t death that scares me, it’s the fact that if I try again and I fail then I will have failed spectacularly. I would have tried to kill myself 3 times in a fortnight and failed everytime. It would be fucking up on a magnificant scale, and I couldn’t cope with that sort of failure.

I feel enough like a failure in this world at the moment. I got good news yesterday in that the canacer hasn’t spread at all. Te tumour has actually shrunk slightly, not as much as they would have wanted it to but they think they can operate in the new year. It will be risky but they’re prepared to try it. Trouble is, I’m not sure if I’m prepared to struggle on with all the shit in my head for that long. My brain feels so messed up that it is almost like someone has attacked it with a food processor. I see Allison again on Friday and I am scared about her finding out about my revelations to the crisis team as I was trying to portray more of a ‘together’ picture on Monday.

Someone commented on my last post about the amount of help and services I have access to. The self-harm team is based at St. Mary’s in Paddington which although run by the same mental health trust and does assess people in the Chelsea & Westminster is mainly based in the Bayswater/Paddington area of the trust ad therefore I can’t be referred on a long time basis. The mental health nurse I saw in hospital after the second suicide attempt was in the Conquest Hospital in Hastings and was standard procedure for a discharge after a self-harm/parasuicide. Allison is my CPN and I have a psychiatrist whome I have seen twice since moving back to London and on the whole he is approachable and helpful. The crisis team are there as a phone number for out of hours support as I am on the Enhanced Care Plan Approach (CPA) and therefore have to have a box filled in on crisis services and out of hours provision on my CPA.

There are a lot of services and I know I am luckier than most. I hae a star of a CPN and the self-harm team when they come over to the C&W are fantastic and I hate the fact I live outside of the referral area for them as I think they could be of some use. Just I feel at the moment I have dug myself in too deeper hole to be rescued by any number of mental health professionals. Just keep clinging on though, eh? Like I always do.

Ruth

The wonders of modern technology

I can now be online. My lovely parents brought my laptop in about an hour ago and I am connecting via my mobile. ‘Twill cost a fair bit of money but I’m not spending it on a lot else at the moment.

They are thinking that I may not be BPD after all. I mentioned this to a friend earlier and he said that he had never assumed me to be BPD, bipolar yes, but not BPD. I have to admit I hate the BPD diagnosis, because of all the horrible images in conjures up, but I have for a long time thought that it was not wholly accurate. I have always thought I was more likely to be bipolar.

The only evidence for my being BPD are these diagnostic criteria (the one’s relating to me in bold):

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. [Not including suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5]
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving). [Again, not including suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5]
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-mutilating behavior.
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness, worthlessness.
8. Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

So yes, I have more than 5 criteria so bingo, I have BPD. But then a lot of those criteria can be covered by depression, and bipolar, and bulimia, and having an addictive personality.

I don’t know anymore. I am having my surgery on Tuesday so am spending Tuesday night in a medical ward (plastic surgery) and then back to the psych ward. They are talking about me being in here for at least another week, though I hope to be out by Christmas.

Ruth