It’s World Mental Health Day. I wanted to mark it by sharing personal insights. Forgive me for writing something somewhat disjointed.
Yet the images that come back over and over again … I’m not ready to share. It was scary.
Instead I want to share a post I wrote over a year ago though I’m still not ready to tell you how I was self-harming. Maybe I will never be ready. Reading this post, I feel again the shiver of cold that ran over me when I looked at the handout on ways to self-harm.
I’m so ashamed. I felt so out of control. I still can’t believe some of the things I did. How relieved I am that it didn’t affect my children. (At least it’s not obvious if it did). At times I want to weep for the woman I was, the woman I became. It felt like I was in some state of madness.
Yet weeping now isn’t going to help. Though it did help me to grieve. During my recovery, I joined an online self-help group. After a few months, I left and moved on. Although I felt fully recovered, I felt that staying in the group full of drowning women was just too hard for me. I feel kind of bad that I didn’t stay longer and try to help. However sometimes you have to look after no 1 first.
It’s easy to recognise now that I was going through burnout because of mental health issues. It’s easy for me to recognise now that my difficulties were because I’d had a tough time as a teenager (which I share in my book). It’s not easy at that age going through bereavement and divorce. I feel today like the mother tiger. I am fiercely aggressive about wanting to protect my daughters’ mental health. I know, in hindsight, how vulnerable teenagers can be.
40 years ago and I still feel tears for that teenager. Tears of shame? Tears of grief? Tears of pity? No. Not pity. I don’t feel sorry for myself. It is what it is.
Because I know what it feels like to be in the very darkest of places, I promote awareness of mental health and will always happily talk about my own mental health issues. I am fully recovered and have been for a long time. I love my life. I love my family. I love my work. But it’s not always been that way. I used to be that woman on the brink.
If that’s who you feel or fear you might be right now, I encourage you to ask for help. Seek support. Tell somebody. Speak to someone who’s been there and come out the other side. It’s not you going mad. It’s not that you’re not a good mum. It’s not that you don’t have the maternal gene. It’s an illness. With the right support, you can get better.
If you are worried that you are starting to see the signs of burnout … in yourself or somebody you know, read more about the scary signs here.
What can you do today on World Mental Health Day
Share this blog post. Let’s break the stigma. Let’s talk about mental health and how many people are affected.
Useful resources
Read my #PND Story with a recommended list of resources specific to perinatal mental health.
Sign up to NCT’s Hidden Half Campaign to help new mothers get better mental health support.
Check out the Mental Health Foundation’s World Mental Health Day website.
Have a look at these statistics on mental health published in The Telegraph today.
Listen to the Mad World podcast broadcast by Bryony Gordon.
#madworld #worldmentalhealthyday #breakthestigma #hiddenhalf #beyondbabyblues
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Self-harming is very common when you don't have a voice. One of my daughters is very vulnerable, and she scratches herself as a form of "releasing" her frustration. I recognised it because I did it when I was her age. We're working on it. Starting with letting go and relaxing properly. I can be a bad example here as I love work, so I work. But slowly she's starting to see me unwind, and I've shown her hypnotherapy that I listen to in order to de-stress. Will we get older and have better mental health? Who knows? But we need to have some coping mechanisms in place until we're strong enough to deal.
Thank you for sharing Sarah. I hope that your daughter finds a less harmful way of releasing her frustration. I feel very responsible for my daughters’ mental health. Actually it’s not responsibility, it’s perhaps more an acute awareness. However they both seem to be growing up as strong confident individuals.
It’s tough isn’t looking back and seeing how we have abused ourselves. Trying to remember and then not. Piecing together the fragments and then not wanting to feel back into them.
I joined a group for people who were living with narcissists and had to leave because I too felt swamped. It was harrowing to see some of the things I’d been through being replayed time and time again for others. I felt impotent.
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I think those support groups have great value however as we recover, it may well be time to move on.
Self-harming, such a powerful post Sherry; it really opened my heart up. As a teenager I used to over-eat chocolate which was largely hiding my feelings of self-loathing and shame about how I felt about myself. It is at least now part of the conversation, and it becoming a much more open and honest one, which is progress. Still, a lot of progress needed. Having overcome my self-loathing and shame and actually fully loving and accepting myself, I like you am acutely aware of mental health issue of teenagers and indeed the whole of society. It is important to keep like you suggest raising awareness of these issues and keep the conversation going.
Thank you Carrie for sharing your story too.
It’s amazing how we punish ourselves when we feel bad. There are things that we can try and make sense of but maybe never will in the conscious mind. The biggest rise in my practice in the past year has been teenage girls. We are complex, tough and vulnerable all at once. The way forward is for ore people to share their stories. Remove stigmas, seek help, have help available. Just like physical issues. Thanks for being a mental health ambassador.
I feel so strongly protective of my own daughters’ mental health. Given the statistics, sadly they both have friends who have faced mental health struggles. It’s not getting any easier for teenagers.