Asking For Help

Something I am truly terrible at is asking for help. In terms of my mental health, I tend to bottle things up for weeks pretending everything is fine, even convincing myself that I am fine and ignoring all the warning signs that something is wrong, until I eventually snap and have some sort of episode (normally cutting, over dosing, splitting or similar).

For the past few weeks I have been very impulsive, which is a core trait of BPD that gets exacerbated when I am going through a bad patch. I've been spending money I shouldn't on multiple shopping sprees, binge drinking a lot, smoking alot, packing my social life to the brim which is exhausting in itself and having no down time as well as getting involved with/speaking to boys who are completely wrong and triggering for me. I tend to do this to silence the voices in my head, which tell me I have no self worth, to harm myself and suicidal thoughts too. Obviously this is a vicious cycle, and all of this behaviour ends up perpetuating and exacerbating everything!

I've ended up totally burnt out and coupled with being unable to sleep more than a few hours a night, I am at the point where I am no longer able to cope. I've been really good at doing my exercises and self care to stop self harming (by this point I would have been actively harming a few times a day) so in that way I have made progress. But I'm also getting flash backs to what happened in January and this time last year when things started to go down hill. I have a lot of painful memories of last year and conflicting emotions which I am trying to suppress - mainly because a year ago I was falling in love while trying to battle my anxiety, depression and undiagnosed BPD (which of course was massively triggered by a new relationship!)

I no longer have PMI due to switching jobs, and running out of sessions so even though I think the NHS is terrible with MH care I took myself to see my GP. My doctor has been amazing - he is so understanding, supportive and always helps me as much as he can. Unfortunately the same can't be said for the seriously under resourced services available. At the point you make a doctor's appointment, it signifies that you are close to breaking. So being told that there is a waiting list that lasts months, I can't get the prescription of medications I need and I can't get treatment outside of my tiny catchment area due to NHS rules is very frustrating (considering I work in London 5 days a week I need treatment that is accessible).

The outcome I have is an urgent referral to see an NHS psychiatrist to get my prescriptions, which I'm not holding out any hope for as last time I saw them a few years ago the report was awful and they didn't even listen to what I said. Then I will be on the waiting list of therapy but in the mean time I am going to have to some how find the money for private treatment as I cannot afford to wait any longer.