Tag: mental health

Observations from the road and why you should leave your phone at home

Can you imagine a world where strangers interact with one another in a calm, polite and even interested manner? Taking their time to look up and notice the world around them? Actually acting as if they’re not using their handheld devices as some sort of protective shield against human emotion? A commute without your in-ears so far into your skull that the filters have melted into your eardrums?

Utopia, surely. Or is it?

Here’s how a trip to the Lake District restored some of my ever diminishing belief in humanity.

As my train pulled up to Windermere station on a Monday morning, I began to notice how none of the other travellers seemed to be on their phone. Seeing as I had a 2 to 3 hour walk through unknown territory ahead of me, I had of course spent my train journey anxiously looking at my phone every few seconds just to make sure it was still charging – what would I do if my battery died and I’d be unable to rely on the magic of GPS?

What I had done, however, was put my headphones away to preserve what little juice remained in the battery, and for the first time in a long time I discovered that the noise around me didn’t bother me at all. Because, apart from the calming chug-chugs from the train itself, there was none. (To be fair, this was the 6am service from Birmingham via Oxenholme, so it wasn’t as if the carriage was full, but still).

Myself being very me, I had discovered a gem of a place in Windermere beautifully named Cockshot Point, which I’d included in my route despite the 4 mile detour. As I disembarked the train I started up the mapping app, but left my headphones in my massive rucksack and started making my way through the town centre.

Strangely enough, the distance down to the lakeshore seemed not so far now that I wasn’t telling the time by the duration of the songs in my playlist, so I walked around for a bit before starting on the last leg of the trek, the 6 mile hike to Ambleside – still forgoing the familiar soundscape and trusty companionship my Heaviness playlist has provided me with since the dawn of music streaming.

Again, it seemed as if time stood still, despite the traffic constantly going past as I walked. The sound of wind in the trees, bleating of sheep and the lake in the distance seemed to amplify everything around me. The green of the grass, the brown of the endless tree trunks seemed more vivid than I could remember. And as I was walking along the same road for most of it, I didn’t have to keep checking the app either.

I was sweating like a pig in a volcano, but not even that seemed to bother me. Also, if it got to a stage where seeing my sweaty person would traumatise other hikers, I could just throw myself into the lake.

Another plus of leaving the music behind was the fact that I could hear the cars coming long before I’d have to find somewhere safe on the narrow pavement. But enough of all this walking business – I’m sure you’ve got better things to do. The point is, it got me thinking about something I’ve thought about a lot in recent years; that we could all benefit from leaving our devices behind once in a while.

When was the last time you spent a night out (or day, for that matter) actually enjoying yourself, rather than trying to find the perfect photo-op for your Instagram, for instance? The Internet can wait – and by keeping certain things private, they might even become cherished memories that are just yours.

Anyway, I hit Google to find something to support my theory; is reducing screen time beneficial to my overall wellbeing?

The sciencey bit

A study published by the National Institutes of Health found that smartphone screen time reduction can be beneficial to your mental health. Click on the link for the full article. Not surprising, but interesting nonetheless.

Then, on Unplugged.rest, I discovered that a study finds that only 72 hours away from your phone is enough to “rewire your brain against phone addiction”.

I’ve also been reading about how ChatGPT – and AI in general – can be detrimental to mental health. In fact, it’s dubbed chatbot psychosis. Here’s an article from The Telegraph on the topic that we should all read.

The observation

I think that the above indicates that we should take a step back from relying too much on technology in our everyday lives. And I wish, now, that I’d asked to photograph the people in the situation I am about to use to illustrate my point. Alas, I didn’t have my phone to hand.

After 24 hours in lovely Ambleside, a pal and I set off on a 45 minute bus journey that would take us to our train to Edinburgh. Once we’d stopped uncontrollably perspiring due to the heat and lack of air conditioning, I noticed something so surreal that I had to grab my pal by the arm and go, ‘are you seeing what I’m seeing?’

Not a single person had their phone out, or any visible earphones or headphones, even though they seemed to all be solo travellers. Most of them we’re gazing out the window at the passing landscape, whereas others sat there, seemingly content. Even a young kid, about 15, sat there with no phone, and when an elderly gentleman with a dog got on, he even moved to give him his seat AND asked if he could say hi to the dog. And then… they had a full-on conversation. Strangers. This type of behaviour has been unheard of on any public transport I’ve been on in the past decade! And that’s when I noticed how content they all looked, some even happy. Relaxed, even though the bus was running about two minutes late.

And that’s when I decided, there’s hope.

I don’t think fitness apps, calorie counters, games apps – all that shite – is doing us any favours. It certainly adds to the stress and anxiety in my own life, so I assume I am not alone in this. Some of these apps are designed to give you some sense of accountability, of course, but it’s just too much with the obsessive logging and the constant need to add one more thing to the list or log another activity – and what happens if you don’t make it to 300 kilometres of running this month?? ‘Heeeeeeeere’s DEPRESSION‘, as Johnny’s less homicidal brother would say.

So, do yourself a favour. Put your phone away and go for a fucking walk. Read a fucking book. Go see your fucking friend without posting about it on social media.

But, before you go, listen to this podcast episode about Hans the Hedgehod on Three Bean Salad (link below).

See ya next Tuesday.

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Invasion of the neuro-fluencers

Illustrates the interrupting noise of inaccurate podcasts

In our day and age, anyone can take to almost any media platform and build themselves a brand and dub themselves an expert – no qualifications needed, other than being able to use your own computer and having access to the Internet. To create your own podcast, the ability to speak comes in handy as well, and you might require a microphone or some sound editing software, should you happen to care about the listener’s wellbeing at all. It appears you can also decide how your pod is labelled. Herein lies the danger.

Today, there are a million different ADHD/mental health themed podcasts across the many streaming apps and podcast platforms, many of which I have found helpful myself. But the amount of self-proclaimed experts creating these self-help pods is shocking. Many of these podcasts are categorised as “educational”, and almost all of them have a star rating of 4 and over (out of 5). If you have recently been diagnosed and are desperately looking for tools to help you tackle your symptoms and how they impact your everyday life, this will be exactly what you’ll be looking for.

After a day of sifting through various “recommended” (by Spotify) podcasts, it became very clear to me that there are a lot of people out there with no medical background, other than their own diagnosis and the advice they got from their doctor, that are presenting their personal experience as ‘one size fits all’ facts.

They are doling out advice on anything lifestyle related, from weight loss and exercise to medication and how everyone is so different to you that you should only surround yourself with others with the same diagnosis, without even having the odd expert on as a guest once in a while to offer some balance.

Then, I came across some woman claiming you should drink 4 whole litres of water or more in a day, without mentioning the fact that gulping it all in one go isn’t particularly healthy and can lead to low blood sodium levels, among other things… Worst case scenario if you drink too much too quickly? Brain damage. You can read more about overhydration on Healthline.

Of course drinking enough water is extremely important, especially in hot summer weather – dehydration has its own challenges – but let’s have a look at what happens to the brain when it’s in danger of overhydration, shall we?

We learn from a 2024 research article published by Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet that “a healthy adult needs around two litres of water per day, or 30-34 millilitres per kilogram of body weight. That includes both the liquid from what we eat, which may be roughly one litre per day, and from what we drink” (Odlind, Karolinska Institutet, 2024). You can read the article in its entirety by clicking any word in this sentence. The general gist of it is that you should drink when you are thirsty, and not too much in one go.

The article goes on to explain how our kidneys may struggle to filter out excess water if we over-hydrate within a short space of time, and that we can experience swelling of the brain cells if our sodium levels become too low in relation to the water levels in the body.

Even though overhydration is rare, it does happen. After what I can gather, most cases are seen in athletes performing strenuous exercise, such as marathon running or similar. If one drinks too much before a race, instead of distributing one’s water intake over time by replenishing when thirsty or too hot, it can have a detrimental effect. We are not camels; trying to fill the tank before a race will not make us go for longer without water – according to the article, quite the opposite happens; it sends a signal to the body that we have more than enough water and should get rid of the excess.

In conclusion, the so-called advice from the podcaster is potentially quite dangerous. I will not mention any names here, as I don’t want to ruin anyone’s day, but I did give them a poor rating in hope that it might help others.

Needless to say, this was the last drop for me – I had had enough of soundwave cowboys.


The above example is quite extreme, of course, but let’s delve into some of the other dangers of globally broadcast misinformation. The fact that you have a diagnosis does not automatically make you an expert on that part of the medical field, in the same way that being able to use search engines efficiently does not make you a researcher. The fact that you can use Google does not make you a scientist.

Your diagnosis might (should, with proper psychoeducation) help you become an expert on yourself and help you in your day-to-day, but it ends there. Although there are many commonalities in sufferers of the same disorder (controversial word in some circles, I know), we are all different. Your experience with a certain type of medication is not universal.

In fact, your preferred type of medication can be harmful to others, who may have comorbidities different to yours. Factors such as body type, gender, hormone levels or hereditary conditions may also affect how they respond to treatment. Only the patient’s personal medical practitioner is qualified to advise that person. I am not saying that you’re not allowed to have an opinion, but you need to realise that there is no cure-all for everyone, and that what your doctor told you is very rarely applicable to everyone else.

I know that you found your own research to be extraordinarily helpful, and that you want this same revelation for others that may struggle in the same way. But without any qualifications, your experiences are just that; YOURS. And a lot of it is just opinion. YOUR opinion. Newly diagnosed individuals may have comorbidities that you don’t know about. They need to discuss their diagnosis with their clinical therapist, neurologist or psychiatrist. Being in a vulnerable state, they may take your advice for fact. This is a real danger, people!

Sharing is caring, as they say, but remember to back up what you share with scientific evidence if you are going to present your findings as something other than opinion.

No links to any ADHD podcasts this week, as most of them are shite and I have gone off listening to them. If you want something gloriously witty, interspersed with a huge dollop of charms and filth, however, I can recommend Three Bean Salad (links in the Spotify and Instagram icons below). Go on, you know you need a laugh after this rant.

See you next Tuesday!

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Statistics, diagnostics and the media – why certain news should only be distributed by experts

Sad person attacked by opinions

This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, we have the right to information that concerns us, yet on the other, the information gathered from these reports is often misinterpreted by uninformed journalists and thus miscommunicated through news outlets that fit their headers to accommodate the most clicks, instead of conveying what the researchers have found. (By uninformed, I mean that most desk journalists lacks the specific expertise to be able to understand properly the context and how scientific research is conducted, not that they are unintelligent.)

Uncritical A/B testing practices symbolises the death of integrity in modern media.

In short, psychological research should be published via professional channels and localised to the target audience, to prevent misunderstandings that can lead to the spreading of false information, or worse; greater socioeconomic inequality.

Because the fact remains, that mental health articles published by your bog standard online news outlet often refers to sufferers from mental (and physical) illness as a ‘them’; a third-person object.

I recently read somewhere, that ‘poor people have mental health issues and mental health issues lead to poverty’. That was the gist of it anyway. With that whole ‘third person’ mentality, one could assume that the tabloid readers and the more affluent members of society will take this to mean that the mentally ill are a burden on society. Maybe even the reason why the economy is in the shitter, so to speak. I am inclined to believe that news sites relying solely on A/B testing to increase their readership make matters far worse in those few instances they’ve got some actual news to report.

It’s the same with any articles on certain diagnoses; they are presented as a peculiar subject, something weird or bizarre, rather than something that affects a lot of people, both directly and indirectly. Of course, so-called reality shows such as The Undateables aren’t helping. And, no, I will not link to such horrific social pornography (for lack of a better term).

The solution to changing how mental illness is viewed is simple; psychoeducation. If the general public was to be presented with proper explanations and definitions by mental health experts, they, WE, would understand that everything is not as black and white as the media presents to us in its current uncaring and often ignorant state.

There are plenty of official networks and non-profit mental health organisations that publish research findings and psychology related news through easily digestible articles, but they are drowned out by the noise. Some of these, however, I will link to at the bottom of this post.

So, why should we care about psychoeducation, especially if we are not experiencing illness ourselves? I’m glad you asked. The World Health Organisation published numbers from 2019, indicating that as many as “1 in every 8 people worldwide are living with a mental disorder“. It would be fair to assume that more than one of ‘1 out of 8’ of us have carers, family or friends, or even colleagues, that are indirectly affected by our illness in some way. Not to mention that a lot of disorders can be hereditary. If we understood everything a little bit better, it might be easier to cope with certain things. Mass media are not the right communicators for this particular job.

Psychoeducation is important in a patient’s journey to recovery from or management of any mental illness, regardless of age. One can argue that it is essential – in order to understand yourself and your condition, you must first understand how it affects you. Science Direct has a more in-depth article on psychoeducation available on their site, if you want to learn more about what this entails.

Furthermore, psychoeducation can provide you with tools for when the mental health services close down after office hours or on bank holidays, which, for some, can be the most challenging parts of the year. As a bonus, proper psychoeducation can help everyone around you to understand things a little bit better as well. Wouldn’t it be nice if the nuanced field of psychology could be presented by someone with a passion for it, rather than someone that’s been told to ‘make the headline clickable’?

That’s probably more than enough for today – and I have some psychoeducation of my own to get back to. Thanks for reading!

See you next Tuesday.

Here’s a list of excellent outlets for those of us who want to learn more about ourselves and our loved ones:

Mental Health Mates UK

The ADHD Foundation

OCD UK

Depression UK

Anxiety UK

I would also like to recommend the following two podcasts, one of which tackles how mental health issues affect our daily lives in delightful, laidback, and sometimes emotional, human conversation, and the other an ADHD specific podcast, which offers interviews with leading experts on the field, as well as well-known guests.

The Life of Bryony

ADHD Chatter

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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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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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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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