Author: Eilidh

Journalist, dreamer, author, psychology enthusiast and quasi-spectorial fantasist.

How masking my ADHD traits enabled my OCD

Disclaimer, I have no scientific proof of this… But I got your attention, didn’t I?

I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, something that I quite frankly knew very little about up until that point. What’s more, when I was a kid, most teachers and clinicians alike still thought that this was something that only affected boys, and I think that this deterred me from investigating further when I started noticing certain things about myself.

Today I find myself hurling towards the ‘wrong side of 40’ at warp speed whilst trying to come to terms with my diagnosis and realising how this condition explains so much about my past and how I have tackled certain things – some horribly and others exceptionally well.

As with every little thing that catches my interest, I got the sudden urge to learn everything I could about ADHD in the shortest amount of time possible, which has led me down a rabbit hole of research papers and ADHD podcasts. This curiosity and insatiable need to learn is something I have discovered can be quite common in people with ADHD. You can learn more about some of the strengths our neurodivergence may cause in this article from Catalyst Care Group.

Through my extensive research, I came across the topic of masking, which made me suspect there might be a correlation between trying to hide my ADHD traits and the emergence of my OCD. I can recommend ADHD Chatter and MissUnderstood: The ADHD in Women Channel if you want to learn more about ADHD in general. I should add that, even though there are many similarities between people with ADHD, every individual’s experience can be very different, so there’s no ‘one size fits all’ element here. There are also a few different sub-categories to ADHD that I will not go into, but there’s a spectrum.

Now, onto the birth of my monster – the OCD – and its suspected origins.

From a very young age, I have been made acutely aware that there is something wrong with me. I’m too much, too interested, too active, too clever, too me. One teacher even sent me to the principal’s office twice – for being possessed by the actual Devil. (No, Satanic Panic was not a thing where I grew up – but the punishment of atypical children was very much in vogue). I’ve recently learned this shepherd of the lord has passed on, presumably to join his mother in her fellating pursuits in another dimension and wish them all the best. I digress.

Needless to say, I had to learn how to hide the real me if I was going to have any chance of fitting in anywhere. Or, more importantly, making it easier for my parents to be perceived in the way that they wanted. Their having a ‘difficult’ child was getting in the way of that. So I learned how to become what every situation called for. A social chameleon, if you will.

This sort of behaviour makes it easy to navigate new social settings, but what that takes away from the individual is the ability to create and maintain meaningful, sustainable relationships. You need to have certain qualities for that to happen, and if you change your behaviour according to the situation you’re in or the people you interact with, you become very unpredictable to the people you meet more than once or twice. Getting to know you is almost impossible.

Thinking that if I only managed to become enough, ‘perfect’, I would at some point be accepted and acknowledged by my parents and I wouldn’t have to hide who I was anymore, so I didn’t factor in the consequence of that never coming to fruition.

The longer I carried on hiding the real me, the more she squirmed and screamed to come out on the inside, leading to frustration, depression, nervousness, anxiety and violent outbursts directed at myself. Realising that this was an indefinite situation made everything seem impossible to me and I lost all sense of control. I needed to regain it somehow, just so I could find a routine, some predictability, that I was in control of.

Then I turned 12 and the hormones came flooding in. Overnight, my juiced up brain had found a solution – magic.

As you can probably gather, with the emergence of hormones and teenage angst, all that nervous energy and tension I had worked so hard to suppress needed to come out. One way or another. I needed some soret of coping mechanism. So my brain channelled the agitation and restlessness into strict control patterns with very specific rules as to what was required to avoid horrible outcomes.

This was when my intrusive thoughts started. The stress resulting from my hopelessness made me feel like I was in a body that wasn’t mine, so my OCD “helped” me create an eating disorder so that I wouldn’t risk gaining weight. It “helped” me to sit still in class (trust me, you’re not going to move if you know that the consequence is that you’ll get HIV). It “helped” me to act in a way that was palatable to others.

Until it didn’t. The ADHD is strong in this one, and the fact remains that my brain is wired differently. Of course behaving in a way that was the opposite of what was natural for me was bound to be detrimental. And the OCD is selfish. It is a tool of self-harm. It has no respect or empathy for the individual, which makes the individual lose respect for themselves. OCD nurtured the masking, whereas the hyperfocussed me was trapped behind its riddles and punishments, only to be able to show itself in those milliseconds the OCD wasn’t paying attention.

I would start getting vocal tics in public, that I hadn’t experienced – and long suppressed the memory of – since childhood. I would cut off every spot that dared show itself on my face with toenail scissors. I missed the bus to school on so many occasions due to climbing the stairs ‘incorrectly’ and having to redo them and my emotional dysregulation gave me terrible guilt for being so bloody useless. This, in turn, exacerbated my OCD.

At some point, I lost track of who I was and how I needed to cope in order to really live. At the same time, I was able to hide my ADHD traits well enough so that no one would notice or make sure I sought help. And when I finally did, as a fully grown, completely dysfunctional adult, I kept on masking because I didn’t realise how that could have helped me from the start. I mean, I wanted them to help me, I didn’t want them, too, to think I was too much.

By some miracle, I met an expert that recognised it despite my beautifully appointed mask and to them I am eternally grateful.

But that didn’t happen until I was at least 18 months into my so-called recovery journey, with countless failed treatments behind me.

Therefore, I would advise all mental health professionals to look up from their pad once in a while, because maybe then you will notice the fidgeting, the nervousness, the intense stare we get when we are interested, that can make a lot of people get the wrong idea about our intentions. This can make you realise that the OCD is a comorbidity to ADHD and not just an add-on to CPTSD.

See ya next week! In the meantime, you can read a book or, maybe listen to a podcast. Be good to yourself.

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Is system failure causing human rights violation?

I was listening to a podcast episode on psychodynamic understanding (link to the episode at the bottom of this post), where one of the problems with the Norwegian mental healthcare system is addressed by one of the speakers; the fact that you, as a patient, need to be awarded the ‘right to treatment’ (by some overworked soul at your local District psychiatric centre, who hardly looks at you when you’re filling out the many, often poorly translated, forms they need to be able to pigeonhole you, I might add).

Then, if they deem you deserving of treatment (i.e., if you’ve ticked enough boxes), you will be allowed 12 short, yet excruciating, weeks of treatment before you are either referred to the next level or chucked out on your arse with more questions than answers and expected to be all better so that they can award the next person in the queue some added trauma by giving them the same treatment. This 12 week period, I might add, will only be sufficient time for some diagnostics and very little actual treatment. Effectively, we are left activated yet untreated – worse off than when we came in.

And now we have to explain everything, again, to someone new.

Before I go on, I must state that I do recognise that there are exceptions within the mental health care system – there are some extraordinary mental health professionals out there, and they will do their absolute best to see to it that you get proper treatment and that it lasts as long as possible. They will look you in the eye, engage you in conversation and show some of their own personality in the process. The are not so interested in dehumanising themselves or the situation – they genuinely want to help and find their work both fascinating and rewarding. They show you that you have value.

The only problem is that you will rarely meet such an individual during the initial stages of your treatment, as they are often specialists. What’s more, they have to fight the system in order to succeed. Regardless, I applaud these people – GPs and specialists alike – and wish there were more of them, so that they wouldn’t have to work so hard to fix things that should have been handled by someone else at an earlier stage in the process.

Now, back to the rant.

For many of us, our trauma or emotional wounds are embedded in our unconscious and deeply rooted in something we experienced in childhood, and to treat that, you will need a lot of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to create new neural pathways and change your perspective and life for the better. More often than not, you just need the opportunity to talk about your past and discuss your diagnosis and the way forward with an expert. Talk therapy isn’t even on the table in Norway – seemingly, they only want to make you fit into one of their perfect little boxes to see which prize you get in the diagnostics lottery and send you on your way whilst patting themselves on the back for a job well done. The fact that we, as patients, are traumatised and, for those of us with a neurological disorder, have been trying to fit in by masking our symptoms for our entire lives, are ignored by the people that are responsible for referring us to the next treatment facility (if they decide to do so).

We do not want to be ill, we are not used to asking for help, we are ashamed of ourselves and our inability to be normal, we don’t feel as if we are even worthy of help, yet you expect us to honestly and accurately score ourselves using a scale that ultimately shows us how useless we are and, indeed, how unworthy.

Additionally, we have already had enough people telling us that we are ‘too much’, and very often feel so bad for the therapist – knowing that they will have to carry with them the information you give them – that we simply hold back and try to act as if it’s not as bad as it might seem. When, in fact, it is almost always far worse.

A professional with a manageable workload would probably be able to see through such self-effacing behaviour, alas, this is not the case in public healthcare.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from being in the system since I was about 16, mental health issues need a hell of a lot more than a meagre 12 weeks of yourself filling out forms and never touching on the issues at hand to be worked out. What’s more, due to the heavy workload, there is a lot of illness in the public sector, so in a lot of cases there’s inconsistencies and halts in treatment, not to mention office hours and holiday closures. Weirdly enough, mental illness doesn’t operate after any office calendar, and the patient is left feeling that they made their therapist so ill that they needed a break from them or that they don’t matter enough to get the number to an emergency service or similar. You see, someone that’s entirely broken down mentally and emotionally, wouldn’t do themselves the favour of asking for said number.

To most patients with severe trauma, their illness is all-encompassing – it affects nearly every aspect of your life. To the individual, it is like a cancer of the brain that is shutting down your body bit by bit whilst hacking away at your will to live. So, whoever decided that we are expected to fix ourselves in 12 weeks time and not want to kill ourselves after – because now we feel more alone, dirty, useless and more of a burden than ever – can take a long walk off a short pier. In my humble opinion.

Furthermore, a lot of us patients have trust issues. Also, who do you know, that would happily just start talking about traumatic events they’ve experienced throughout their lifetime to a complete stranger, unless they’re a complete narcissist? Establishing trust takes time – the fact that you are a licensed professional means very little to the person sat across from you, that has yet to meet anyone who hasn’t betrayed their trust at some point. Why should you be any different? People break their confidentiality all the time.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) states the following: “Every human being has the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health“. Promoting “good health and well-being” is the third of the UN’s 17 sustainability goals. The very first article in the UN’s declaration of human rights states:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights (UN,n.d).

I would argue that failing to treat mental illness in the same way other chronic illness is treated is a violation of our human right to equality in dignity, because we certainly are not dignified enough as human beings to deserve anything other than pity from the Norwegian healthcare system. We hear you loud and clear. You mean to say that we are a pest and a burden and should therefore be treated as such, so that we will understand that our place in society is beneath everyone else.

Well, the joke is on you – we already felt that way anyway.

Now, one can also argue that mental health issues is a pandemic, yet unlike the corona virus, it they are not being treated as such, even though a mental health patient is much more likely to have an unwanted effect on those aroung them, or even society as a whole, (financially or worse) if left untreated, as opposed to someone that suffers from covid.

Take, for example, the children of a parent that suffers from an untreated mental illness, that might become victims of emotional incest or parentification. Their emotional wounds alone would need treatment, not to mention how the hereditary nature of most mental health illnesses could mean they are undiagnosed as well. With a parent that isn’t paying enough attention to them, they will likely not seek help themselves until it is far too late. It is a vicious cycle.

In fact, since mental health sufferers often don’t get the help they require, they are spreading the disease to those close to them due to its toxic nature. Surely, that’s something we want to avoid, yeah?

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I could write books on this topic, it is that close to my heart. Oh, wait, I have done just that! Well, one, anyway. If you’re interested in reading it, you can go to the Buy the Book section of this site and do just that. A follow-up is currently in the works.

See you next week for another reflection.

If you want to (and is a Norwegian speaker), you can listen to the Psykiateren-podcast episode by clicking on the Spotify icon below.

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What is love?

To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t know love if it shat me in the face. Pretty sure love wouldn’t do that, though, if I’ve understood it correctly. Unless that’s something you would ask for specifically. I’m not here to judge, but maybe consider the risk of e. coli or pink eye before you do that without a mask on? I mean, they certainly don’t do that in any romantic comedies I’ve seen. Probably more of a Jane Austen thing, perhaps? I digress.

You might be thinking by this point, ‘why on earth would she write about a topic she knows nothing about’? Well, regardless of the obvious fact that I know very little about it, love has always fascinated me. It’s one of those things you’re conditioned into thinking that by some miracle you will one day find. “The one” and all that shit.

It’s not that I’m incapable of feeling things. I’m lucky enough to have nephews, and it is the unconditional love I have for them, something that manifested instantly and quite frankly knocked the breath out of me, that is the reason that I am starting to think that romantic love can manifest in the same way. Not since my grandad was still among us have I felt such compassion for another human being and not questioned whether or not it’s reciprocal, because it does. Not. Matter. You shouldn’t have to search for it or work on it – it just is.

Romantically, I’ve been in a couple of serious (for me maybe a little too serious) relationships, but they were all with the wrong person. Even though I care deeply about these people – not in a romantic way – to this day, we were never meant to be together like that. What’s more, I do not care for the thing I become once in a relationship; needy, jealous, anxious, I feel suffocated when they reciprocate and distraught to the point of desperation when they don’t. I also somehow try to become the person they want, so what I like or want no longer matters – including my friends. I can only have one person in my life at a time, ta very much.

I also think that someone with severe mental issues should be very careful when it comes to letting someone in. I’ve always felt as if entering into a relationship, especially when I know that my OCD is coming with me, would be very selfish. But I want to be proven wrong here. Maybe the right person will actually be able to handle me, even at my most me of times.

So, I found a book a while back. Turns out the brilliant Kerry Cohen, PSYD, LPC, has written a book called Crazy for You. Mesmerised by the title alone and thinking it was another autobiographical book like Loose Girl, I pressed the purchase button, only to find that it’s a psychoeducational guide for ‘breaking the spell of sex and love addiction’.

And so it remained at the top of my to read list until I felt like I was strong enough to look some of my harder truths in the eye. And here we are, I’ve brought Dr Cohen with me on my beach holiday, to find out how I am going to change my perspective a little bit. Not if, how.

It was a good thing I waited. Had you asked me to do something that would entail caring for my own wellbeing just a year ago, I would have told you to fuck off. Especially when it comes to this love thing, that’s haunted me for as long as I can remember.

I once received a chain letter (an actual pen and paper letter, real old school, folks) while I was still in school, that told me I was going to be unlucky in love for the rest of my life, lest I put this burden upon another unsuspecting victim. Filled with rage and hormones, I ripped the thing apart and dropped it to the floor, stomping on it as if it were on fire, before I ran to class Although, once I had sat down, my OCD started screaming at me, anxiety pulling me apart and telling me that I had to retrieve it and fulfil this prophecy before it was too late. Yet, when I got back outside, the letter had disintegrated in the rain and I thought I was doomed. FUCK CHAIN LETTERS.

Anyway. Doomed, blah-blah-blah, story of my life. Back to the book and one of the first things that really resonated with me:

Emotional wounds are the deep, stubborn beliefs we have about ourselves, which were needed inside us by our relationships with our parents or caregivers and by traumas we’ve experienced (Cohen, 2021, p. 34)

Now, any semblance of love I received as a child was conditional. I was a difficult child, they told me, so I had to change in order to be worthy of any special treatment, such as not being shouted at or pinched so hard I thought I was going to have to explain the bruse at school, or indeed receive any praise.

I can’t tell you how many times I have thought that I am simply unlovable. I mean, if your own parents have realised how shit you are… It turns out, shockingly, that only experiencing conditional love, as opposed to unconditional love, can make you think that you don’t deserve being loved just by being yourself. That you need to do something special in order to qualify for it.

So in a relationship – friendships as well, because of course I can’t be any old friend, I have to be the best – I go out of my way to give gifts, write lovely notes, cook a shit tonne of food and bake cakes no one ever wanted, hell, I’ll even put on a dress and wear high heels just so you won’t think I’m not doing everything in my power not to lose you.

Cohen goes on to explain how an understanding of what your emotional wounds are and where they are coming from is a useful tool in finding enough compassion for yourself to actually want to help yourself.

The book is filled with thorough explanations and reflection exercises for you to really get something out of the material. She writes with compassion and brevity, yet with enough detail so that you understand that there’s a spectrum and that you are not alone in being on it. You can’t help but feel that she cares. You even realise that maybe you’re not doomed after all.

Read the book if this applies to you, or share this post with a friend you think deserves a bit of unconditional love in their life. I will include the link to the book again below, right next to a link to a Type O Negative song that might resonate with us love junkies. See you next week!

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Is singledom the road to ruin?

Several times a day, I am bombarded with emails promising discounts for all sorts of holiday activities and fantastic members only deals. Having little to no impulse control, I of course click my way through to the virtual promised land of an affordable lifestyle, only to be met by the unmistakable message that I, as a single, child-free adult, do not possess enough value as a human being to deserve such a luxury.

Instead of whisking myself away to faraway lands, I am faced spending another of so many Seasons in the Abyss.

Perhaps a home of my own will turn my existential grief into joy?

I try to apply for a loan to get myself onto the property ladder, since the cost of living and rent prices now far exceed that of the cost of mortgage payments and utilities in Norway, but am denied because the bank fails to see how I will be able to take care of my finances all on my own – despite the fact that I’ve never missed a payment in my life and have managed to save up and present the required equity capital. The property ultimately goes to a two person income couple, or someone whose parents are able to offer their own property as collateral for their offspring’s loan application, who ends up renting out the property to someone like myself to pay off their loan.

In the UK, you can apply for a council tax reduction, if you are the only adult living in a household. In Norway, a similar discount used to apply for single parents, however these funds have been reallocated to an increase in child benefits, as of 2023. What’s more, certain tax benefits are available to those who are married or legally registered cohabitants in Norway. There are no such tax breaks for the singleton.

What then, if you feel the need to escape reality for a bit? I might try to treat myself to a lovely, much needed, holiday, but am discouraged when faced with the fact that I will be forced to pay an extra 20 percent fee for beds not used (which is ridiculous in itself, unless you’ve requested twin beds). And, God forbid I try to book a cruise to Denmark without owning a car or having a partner to fill the other bunk in my cabin. I could have included the names of several package holiday providers here, but it was impossible to find any travel agents offering single person deals, so one can only assume that none of them do.

In short, anyone failing to settle for just any old romantic partner in this country, does not matter to the corporate world. Which in turn, surely, result in people entering into or staying in toxic or loveless relationships solely for economic reasons. Is this sustainable?

Included in the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals, we find that the need to eradicate hunger and poverty, improving health and well-being and reducing inequality are central to the social dimension of the development of society as a whole. Article 22 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights explicitly states:

“Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality”

(UN, n.d.)

It is our collective dignity, I fear, that is at stake here. With this ongoing single-shaming (a ridiculous fad in an increasingly overpopulated world, that those choosing not to contribute to said overpopulation are being punished), there are instances where I feel some acknowledgement of our existence might be in order.

In particular, every holiday newsletter or greeting card reads ‘to you and yours’, which, quite frankly, feels like a slap in the face. You can’t even be bothered to customise your greeting to spare us from feeling even more alone than we normally would during any holiday that’s even slightly family-centric. Especially since you’re now stuck sitting alone in your rented, insect infested, Fritzl-style basement flat – the only thing you can afford that has an actual bedroom – while everyone else has fucked off on the holiday that you had to forgo because you were unable to justify spending an additional 2000 NOK on the empty space that is to accompany you on your holiday.

How is this fair? In this economy, wouldn’t it make more sense to sell out the empty seats, rather than alienating the undesirables? Left feeling like a burden on society, it is far too easy to dig oneself into the endless hole of depression, which in turn will require some help from mental healthcare professionals, whose work is funded by taxpayers’ money.

Supermarket chains offer family discounts and the option to bulk-buy for cheap, but unless you have a freezer or the metabolism to burn through a gazillion calories a week, most food items would have expired long before a single-person household would be halfway through the doomsday provisions, leading to more food waste and lost funds for the singleton.

Perhaps, if we weren’t denied so many of the potential benefits that couples are seemingly entitled to, we would be less of an actual burden to society?

Or maybe companies could filter their mailing lists a little bit better, so that those of us not meeting their requirements could live in blessed ignorance of the existence of such special offers?

It is time for the corporate world to acknowledge single people as a consumer. Eradicate socioeconomic inequality.

Benefits for all, or no benefits at all.

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The Significance of Semantics

Another day, another podcast. Today, I was listening to an episode on the “crisis package”; a set of guidelines developed to better treat acute crisis in mental health patients, on Norwegian podcast Psykiateren (EN: The Psychiatrist), published on Spotify by the Norwegian Psychiatric Association.

This blog post should in no way be taken as criticism of the podcast nor the association – it is a brilliantly balanced and carefully edited podcast, and I applaud the fact that the Npf have made their scientific findings so easily accessible and digestible and cannot wait to get stuck in with more episodes. I highly recommend it to fellow Norwegian speakers with an interest in the workings of the human mind. Needless to say, this is a tremendously important and interesting subject, and although this particular podcast is largely curated for mental health professionals, I think many of us could benefit from having a listen – at least if you’re a Norwegian speaker.

Now, onto today’s rant.

What irked me – and essentially what made me feel inclined to hammer away at the keys – was a word the speakers continued to use in their conversation. The use of this particular word is something I have encountered in sessions with therapists, that many use the term ‘bad luck’ when expressing their concern for a person who has gone through some kind of trauma, such as abuse in childhood, rape or molestation. Which can be viewed by the patient as a suggestion that having ‘bad luck’ put them in that situation.

Listening to the abovementioned episode made me realise that their use of the word in professional conversations on the intrapersonal level might be the reason why it’s used with patients as well, which is what I would like to address below.

Firstly, it is not ‘bad luck’ that one person made a conscious decision to inflict violence or psychological terror on another. Emotional or physical abuse is often premeditated and has very little to do with luck. Life isn’t a scratch card.

Secondly, for many, luck is a concept based in supernatural beliefs, made to explain improbable events. In and of it self, luck cannot determine the outcome of someone’s life, but the choice to believe in it or not can affect real outcomes; i.e. it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy of extreme failure. There has been a lot of research on the matter, but you can read that in your own time, if you fancy. What is important here, is to see the difference is how you can interpret and use the word.

For most of us, we might use the word to lessen the blow for a child that’s just lost their first individual sports competition. We nonchalantly say it’s ‘unlucky’ so that they won’t give up when they realise it’s because they simply aren’t good enough to beat their opponents. We say it to make them feel better, so they’ll continue to strive for success so that they can get better and experience that important sense of accomplishment.

Yet, on the other hand, we don’t say it’s ‘lucky’ when they’ve won – a win would always be defined as accomplished by talent, even if the only reason they won the sprint was because the faster kid tripped on his own shoelaces and fell over (which would be an instance of real luck for the slower participant).

Nevertheless, it might be worth pointing out that this post isn’t about the word luck and its dictionary definition, but about how labelling someone with a personality disorder as ‘unlucky’ can be detrimental to a patient’s recovery. The word luck is just a word. A concept, really. And it doesn’t have much meaning, until it is preceded by the adjectives ‘bad’ or ‘good’.

For someone with a personality disorder, luck may have taken on a more definite meaning in your life, where you only see extremes or black and white. You only have the good or the bad kind of luck. If you’re stuck with the latter you are inherently unlucky, and nothing is ever going to get better anyway, right?

I’m quite sure that’s not what the professional is trying to do, but using that particular wording in an attempt to make light of a situation can make the patient feel like the severity of the impact their trauma has had on them is being undermined or trivialised. Put down to not having found enough four-leaf clovers in their life. Not to mention that it can downplay the importance of their own role in their recovery.

What’s more, quite a few people with OCD will at some point have encountered some form of ‘magical thinking’. For instance, ‘if I switch the lights on and off an odd number of times, I won’t become a paedophile’, or, ‘my blood test will come back positive, unless I walk up and down this staircase six times four times today’.

This sort of thinking might not make much sense to a lot of people, but I suspect magical thinking can make you feel as if you’re in control of something uncontrollable. Or, simply, that these situations are the only instances where you feel like you’ve any control at all.

Magical thinking can also be applied to the significance of numbers, or even colours. Which definitely brings us back to why ‘luck’ really shouldn’t be part of your vocabulary, and especially not ‘bad luck’.

You wouldn’t tell a patient that’s worked hard to get through their trauma so that they can start living their life without being afraid of flashbacks or intrusive thoughts that they can put the success of the treatment down to just ‘good luck’, would you? Was it just ‘good luck’ that got you your PhD?

For a person with a personality disorder, the word ‘luck’ can be very triggering, and in a worst case scenario may even exacerbate symptoms of OCD that in turn will worsen PTSD, making it even more complex and possibly more difficult to diagnose – complex matters can be difficult to compartmentalise.

One could of course discuss whether compartmentalisation is the best way forward, now that we know that people can have more than just the one diagnose, and that not all patients are dealing with a newly experienced trauma upon entry to the system. In fact, with rape, it can take years and years before the victim seeks help. Yet, the self-evaluating forms to be filled out by the patient during the screening process, especially with the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale, still focus on how you feel today vs before the incident, worded in a way that suggests that the trauma has been quite recent and in a set period of time (often within the past two weeks). Statements such as, ‘I’ve been feeling loved’ are to be measured on a scale from X to X. If you haven’t had the ability to experience this in the past 25 years, that’s not an easy question to answer correctly if you don’t want to wind up diagnosed with depression and depression only.

For many survivors, the WEMWBS simply doesn’t apply, because there hasn’t been that acute change in their day-to-day for some time, it has just gotten to a degree of ‘worse’ that is now forcing them to make a choice between treatment and self-inflicted death. Bad luck for them, eh?

In summation, it might not be in the best interest of mental health professionals to continue using the term ‘bad luck’ in conversations with a patient with a myriad of comorbid symptoms that is struggling with the aftermath of a traumatic event, that being PTSD or otherwise, so please consider the words you put out in the ether more carefully.

In short, it’s okay to say ‘I’m sorry that happened to you’, but maybe be a bit mindful and refrain from saying ‘I’m sorry you’ve had such bad luck‘.

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(un)happy Tuesday?

Tattooed woman with head down

The sun is shining, the temperatures are finally reaching or exceeding a bearable level, and all aroud us are shiny, happy people in brightly coloured spring or summer clothes. So, in the words of Sheryl Crow:

“Why the hell are you so sad?”

Sheryl Crow (1996), If it Makes You Happy, Universal Music Group

Well, you have probably already heard about Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Now, this is oftentimes referred to as ‘winter depression’, as it is most common to experience this during the winter months. However, a healthcare professional recently confirmed the validity of a theory of mine, that it’s actually possible to have a similar reaction to warmer, sunny weather, when I was airing to them my grievances around dreading spring because of the nagging feeling it brings with it, that you should be happy, just because everyone else seems to be – the latter often exacerbating the feeling of disconnectedness to society as a whole.

Wow, that was a long sentence.

This new information, of course, inspired me to investigate further, just in case I could find something that might help myself and others like me feel less like they don’t belong, so I will include some of my findings below.

Firstly, summer-pattern SAD is more common in people who are living with a mental disorder, such as bipolar disorder, ADHD or disordered eating; i.e., those of us who already feel as if we don’t belong.

Now, the American National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has published an educational fact sheet about SAD on their website, that highlights the difference in symptoms between winter-pattern SAD and summer-pattern SAD, and we can see that, in addition to experiencing more traditional symptoms of depression, those of us who are ‘summer sad’ can be subject to “insomnia, anxiety, aggression and restlessness”, to name a few.

Both types of SAD can affect the sleeping pattern, and most of us know what the lack of decent sleep hygiene over time can do to a person. So, is there a cure? A solution? Or should we just get over ourselves, even though we toss and turn all night, annoyed by the littlest creak from the bed? When the guided meditation podcast pisses you off to no end? When feeling like an outcast makes you hold your breath and raise your shoulders any time you have to go out into the real world? Absolutely not. There’s help to be found.

While the NIMH mentions psychotherapy and antidepressants as potential aids to lessen the symptoms of summer SAD, R. Morgan Griffin offers up some tips on how to cope on WebMD. So, regardless of if your condition is circumstantial and/or triggered by the uncertainties and expectations brought on by the occurence of summer holidays, change in office hours, et cetera, or if it’s biological, there are ways to make life a little easier when the black dog rears its ugly head at the most inopportune of times.

And finally, depression should not go untreated. You can read about how depression can change the brain on UCI Health. So, if you are experiencing detachment or a lack of ability to find enjoyment in or see the meaning of your own existence, do ask your GP to refer you to a therapist or social worker. They might be able to help lessen your load or just hear you out. If you are between GPs, or not in a place where you feel like you can trust anyone, you can check out Better Help, to see if online therapy is for you.

Most people would probably tell you to ‘just talk to a friend’, but there are a lot of us that either don’t have anyone to talk to, or we feel the need to spare our friends or colleagues from the ‘burden’.

Although, to a real friend, you letting your friend know what’s really going on with you would probably not feel as burdensome as you might think. A healthy friendship is transactional, so if you’re stuck in a situation where you’re being treated as your friend’s wailing wall, and they never ask how you’re doing? It’ll be absolutely fine – and probably necessary – to cut them lose.

I must emphasise that I am in no way a mental health professional, and that the above has been written to raise awareness and perhaps provide some gentle guidance. My views of both treatment and friendship are my own and should be regarded as opinion. I do not in any way endorse self-medication or self-diagnosis. You can read about the dangers of self-diagnosing in this article published on The Guardian.

Cheers for reading, I guess I’ll see you next Tuesday.

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Apropos of The Big O

Tree stump resembling a dragon

Just a year ago now, I was in my 30th year of living (or slowly dying) with the most self-effacing, all-consuming, terrifying disease, that I’ve let dictate my life for as long as I remember; obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

There’s still, seemingly, a lot of confusion as to what OCD actually is – a lot of people seem to think that it’s synonymous with being a bit anal about tidiness and wanting things to be ‘just so’. Sorry to say, but you couldn’t be more wrong. You can’t be ‘a little bit OCD’. Unless you actually are the disorder, you cannot be it (let’s be honest, this is just a matter of good grammar), and I’d argue that you can’t really have ‘a little bit’ of it either, as this thing can take over your life completely. If you don’t understand it, I am so very happy for you, but if you do, or if someone close to you suffers from OCD, I think you might benefit from listening to one of my favourite pods, that tackles the things in our lives that can be particularly challenging.

So, a year ago, I had been accepted into an intensive treatment programme of said disease, known as the Bergen 4-Day Treatment, and I was a fortnight away from complete upheaval – a massive change – to life as I knew it. A year later, ‘the big O’ is still lurking in the nooks and crannies of my subconscious, like a barracuda in shallow water, but I now possess the techniques to keep it underwater most of the time. Which brings me to the reason why I am writing this post.

This morning, I was listening to Bryony Gordon chatting to Tuppence Middleton about her experience with OCD (link to the podcast episode in the icon below), and I wasn’t long into the episode before I realised I was crying. Tears of relief? Sure. Tears of joy from the fact that there are others like me? Definitely.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. It’s not that kind of ‘joy’. But stuff like this makes me feel like less of an outsider. So I hope that, by sharing this, someone else can find the same solace in knowing that you are not alone.

I cannot recommend this episode enough, if you want some insight into how the human brain can take over and make self-sabotage into something that, to the person, is perceived as a sort of coping mechanism. Which it oftentimes was, at least for me, in terms of my needing some sense of control in a life that had lost all its meaning and needed some structure.

The episode also tackles other important mental health stuff, so if that’s your cup of tea, you just might love this pod as much as I do.

Until next time – E xx

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A pod a day keeps the darkness at bay

Good morning! I was just enjoying listening to one of my favourite podcasts this morning as I was getting ready for work, and found this episode from December last year (I’m catching up) really resonated with me – as I think it will with others struggling with addiction or neurological disorders as well, so I feel inclined to share.

In her not only disarming but entirely welcoming way of speaking to the listener, often alongside a medical expert and always interesting guests, Bryony Gordon tackles often sensitive topics most of the general public tends to shy away from in a non-judgemental and well-educated manner. This time, it was overeating disorder. You can read more about the disorder following the link.

It was Bryony’s book The Wrong Knickers that opened my eyes to the fact that there are others like me in this world, so I can of course recommend that as well. Today, this wonderful human being has become so much more than just an advocate for mental health – she’s a true inspiration, completely unafraid to get down and dirty with the “messier bits of life”, and she does so with gusto, care and delightful humour.

I highly recommend you have a listen by clicking the Spotify icon below, or you can give Bryony a follow on Instagram. Have a wonderful day, wherever you are!

adhd AI anxiety capitalism depression health Kerry Cohen life mental-illness mental health ocd Podcast podcastrec psychology writing

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We’re live!

Hello! Just popping in to say hi on this day of the birth of this site… What can you expect from my content, other than information about my book?

Well, I will be posting about things related to mental health, maybe some music stuff, books I’ve read and loved and random things that occur in this journey called life.

We shall see – nothing is written in stone yet, so, stay tuned!

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