Why I'm a mental health bore

I’m dusting off my keyboard and posting for the first time in ages about mental health, but given it was Time to Talk day this week, it's time to start talking, or typing, again.

The thing is I’ve never stopped.

In the last seven years I’ve spoken more about my own mental health then I have in the almost 34 I’ve been alive. Sadly in those seven years the situation we find ourselves in has got worse and worse. Not a day goes by it seems without a worrying statistic coming out highlighting a rise in suicides, eating disorders, self harm or too-long waits for care. But not a day goes by without me trying to start a conversation about mental health either.  

Loosing my shit with anorexia in 2011 scared me enough to finally get help and speak what was on my mind and it did help. I decided to openly write and share my recovery too. But since then, I've That realised the positive benefits of saying out loud what's going on in my brain, for protecting my own sanity, and for normalising what millions of people worrying about confessing everyday.

Some may call me a 'mental health bore', I do talk about it a lot, I pull people up on things I don’t think are appropriate, I tell people when I think the stigmatising mental health and I definitely share my experience wherever I can. 

It's not easy on the old grey mass though, talking openly about my anxieties and obsessions still feels like a drain on others, it makes me feel that everybody judges me or moans about the fact that I talk about mental health or tell people diets are dangerous or correct people's reporting on mental illness. I really do feel like a bore. But today I’m going to put it out there, I don’t give a fuck.

You know what I do give a fuck about though? It is the number of people have died from mental health issues, either through suicide or the physical impact of their mental illness, since I was first diagnosed with one. In 1992. To help, let's say when it hit crisis in 2011. Around 6000 people a year take their own lives, so 42,000 dead from suicide alone, three quarters of those men. 

Research last year suggested the number of referrals to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) in England has gone up by by 26 percent over the past five years. One in 10 children are now thought to have a diagnosable disorder. That's about 3 per class. More and more children are waking up wishing they didn't.  As I write this, I've just heard on the BBC News channel there's a wait even if you're a suicidal kid. More are starving themselves in the search for something better. That's more under 18s self-harming or purging every year. That's what I give a fuck about. In 2017-18 more than a quarter of a million children were refereed to services. They are the lucky ones put on a waiting list or shipped hundreds of miles from home for care. Lucky, huh? 

So, let's take it back a step. How about the number of people have been too scared to ask for help or amount of people that have tried to open up and faced resistance from a society that didn’t want to hear them. Or the number of people that have heard, 'we understand' but then are isolated from friendship groups for being 'the crazy one'. Or those who've been able to open up only to be told there is a six month waiting list to see a shrink. They are the people I will keep talking for.  The NHS can't do everything, the Government can't just throw money at services overnight, so in the mean time let's keep talking.

It's not all bad though, in the past seven years I have had so many positive conversations. Come across people who've never opened up about their past, or current, battles with anorexia, met people just like me who've been suffering with panic attacks since childhood. I've found out people's sisters, daughters, sons and mothers are battling right now. I have also laughed about some of the obsessive habits I still have.

In mental health training at work I spoke up (even though I was terrified) to share my experience to help colleagues understand. I met my OH and on the first date 'confessed' my mental illness(es) and continued to talk to him about them, and he still loves me. I've supported my best friend, who helped save my life, through her own battle with depression and recruited her to the 'bore club' too.  I've opened up to the amazing women at my yoga studio, my reflexologist and the gorgeous Emma, who 'sugars' my bikini line. while she was sugaring. And they're in too. 

I don't know for sure how many people are alive today because someone asked them more than once if they were 'really' okay. We don't keep statistics on the children who've realised they're not alone feeling worthless and asked for help. I am unsure of the percentage of people now getting help because me or other mental health bores have campaigned in the past, but that doesn't really matter.

I will keep being open, disclosing my mental health issues to anyone who'll listen, talking about recovery and relapse and I will keep being a mental health bore. Please join me, people's lives depend on it. 

GET HELP HERE:

Beat - Eating Disorders

Mind

C.A.L.M 

Samaritans 
Younger Minds 

MHAW '14 The Mental Health Awareness Podcast

As part of Mental Health Awareness Week Simon Nicks from Wire FM's Breakfast Show has put together a special stigma busting 90 minutes of conversation about mental health, with advice on how to help yourself and each other.

It covers everything from dealing with panic attacks and anxiety, to how to get help for eating disorders, schizoaffective disorder and what it's like to live with  bipolar disorder.

You'll hear about #FindingMike from Johnny Benjamin, after a stranger stopped him taking his life on a London bridge, I talk about pro-anorexia and the influence of the media on anorexia as well as Nicky and Lindsey Cree from Xtra Spirit talking about how to help yourself. 

GET HELP: 

Mind (The mental health charity) 

BEAT (Eating Disorders)

MGEDT (Men Get Eating Disorders Too)

Young Minds (for Young People)

Samaritans 

The Mental Health Foundation 

Time to Change for changing mental health stigma 

Rethink

Follow everyone on Twitter too:

@Sarah_Robbo 

@Nicksy 

@MrJohnnyBenjamin

@XtraSpirit 

and @WireFM too. 

MHAW '14 | "But no one likes being sick..."

...that's very true, it's not pleasant for anyone to get a stomach bug or feel a 'little dodgy' after a night of indulgence. Although, I'm not just talking about disliking throwing up here.

Emetophobia is an extreme fear of vomit, an anxiety disorder which is thought to affect around 3.5 million people in the UK alone. That's five percent of the population, most of which are women. I am one of them. 

It's a chronic, often life-long, disorder which can hugely impact sufferer's lives. It can dictate what they can eat, who they see, whether they leave the house, travel or even have children. According to OCD-UK it's the sixth most common phobia, despite this studies have found that almost a third of GPs have never heard it and it's highly undiagnosed. 

I've suffered with emetophobia since I was seven years old. It hugely affected my childhood, terrorised my teens and still impacts on my life as an adult. 

There have been times I would have rather died than thrown up. 

Studies have shown most sufferers develop the phobia as a child often after a trauma, with nine being the average age of on-set. However, I didn't know it even had a name until my teens. So trust me when I say I felt alone with the extreme panic attacks and obsessive, intrusive thoughts the disorder caused.

A page from my teenage journal

The way it can affect sufferer's lives varies massively. Some won't leave the house if sickness bugs are going round (Norovirus is the worst!), panic if someone says they feel sick and be unable to care for ill loved ones. It stops people taking medicines with a 'nausea' side effect. Emetophobia often puts some women off having children, because of sickness during pregnancy then the thought of caring for an ill child. Trust me, some of these also come with huge amount of guilt.

The extreme measures someone with emetophobia takes to avoid vomit are closely linked with other mental health disorders, such as OCD and eating disorders. Both of which I've been diagnosed (and incorrectly diagnosed) with in the past. This is usually down to the level of control sufferers seek over everything around them to avoid vomit. 

This can range massively between individuals, but almost all will have compulsive behaviours such as hand washing and avoidance of touching surfaces, checking use-by-dates, needing to be near toilets...and so on. Most sufferers could probably reel-off the times and dates of when they were last sick and what they ate prior to it. I certainly can. 

In terms of food, it can lead to a highly restrictive diet of 'trusted' or simple foods which is where ties with eating disorders come in. For some it means eating food cooked by friends or family or in restaurants a no-go area. In my case I have rules about the colours of foods I can eat and need to see how it's prepared. I also still struggle to eat the meals I directly associate with being ill in the past and street food is strictly off-limits. You can see how this gets tied up with anorexia, right? 

It can be treated, usually with cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness work,  in similar ways someone with OCD would. I'm still working on the lingering intrusive thoughts emetophobia brings at the same time as my recovery from anorexia nervosa. 

But, we need to talk about Emetophobia more often. Doctors need to understand how it differs from other disorders and like any other anxiety disorder through challenging it, sufferers can lead normal lives. 

So, If you really think about the spiralling impact of emetophobia and how it complicates life for sufferers, you can see why it's more than just not liking throwing up. 

***

DID YOU KNOW....?

I've talked about my personal experience of Emetophobia before. See it here

I've written about it on my recovery blog HERE

Another emetophobe, Jessica shared her experiences with Time to Change HERE

You can get more Emetophobia Help and Info HERE

There's an National Emetophobia Awareness Day (March 4th) each year. 

There is an International Emetophobia Society support forum 

Anxiety UK explain it here...

There are people tweeting about Emetophobia: 

+ThriveProgramme +Emetophobia Recovery @emetophobia 

MHAW '14 | The worst cure for anxiety, ever.

I’ve said it a hundred times, and I’ll probably say it a thousand more but not everyone who suffers with anorexia spent their formative years idolising super models in Vogue, counting calories in their packed lunch or weighing themselves and their Barbie in the bathroom.

Actually, I spent my childhood an anxious mess in the bathroom worrying about messing things up and counting ways not to get ill. And here lie the seeds of my eating disorder, rooted firmly in anxiety.

A study in 2004 found two thirds of people with an eating disorder also suffer with one or more lifelong anxiety disorder. In that group, around 42 percent developed their issues with anxiety, whether that be generalised, social, a phobia or OCD, in childhood, way before their eating disorder kicked in.

My life was hit by an anxiety disorder at the age of seven.

I developed emetophobia, a fear of vomit and illness after a traumatic incident at a local theatre. Living with this specific anxiety disorder resulted in a childhood splattered with panic attacks and obsessive rules. But I learnt how to get by. It was horrible to grow up feeling different to my friends, being a worrier, not really getting excited about things, instead dread them going wrong or being ruined by illness. I would go out of my way to avoid being sick. 

My head was always full of my little coping tactics or I’d be busy searching for new ways to stop the anxiety.

I just needed a focus. I needed to take the anxiety away for good. And while I am at it, I’d like to feel good enough, I want to fix my body as well as my mind, I want to feel in control of my life. And for me, that’s where anorexia nervosa started to creep in. (I will try to keep this simple, but there are other reasons behind my eating disorder.)

For a while, it felt like I had found a simple, one-track coping mechanism.

I could control food, which kept me safe from sickness. I could focus on calories, which stopped me focusing on being sick. I could control my weight, because I couldn’t control the panic attacks. I could measure my worth in kilos, because measuring it against my friends was making me feel crap.

This miracle cure for anxiety was anorexia. Finally, I’d solved it. I was fixed. Wrong.

There is a big fault here. I was like an addict; I got more obsessed with this new found control, hooked on the way it made me feel. It became my life; I never wanted to feel anxiety again. But to keep up the hits had to get strong and for longer. I’d have to run further, eat less and see lower numbers on the scale to hit that euphoria. It seems I'm not alone, as studies into anorexia playing this role have shown. 

Another fault in this 'fix' for anxiety is that anorexia is a serious mental illness. It brings its own anxieties and obsessions along for the ride, which get tangled with the underlying anxiety it was ‘meant’ to be solving.

I didn’t develop anorexia because I'd always been obsessed with being thin. One of the biggest reasons I, and many others, end up with an eating disorder is because we became obsessed with the distraction it gives us. The distraction from the anxiety which fills our minds, it gives us the order and structure we crave. Until, that is, it winds up being even more chaotic than the problems that came before it. 

This is just one reason we need to be ANXIETY AWARE. We need to alert people to the faulty ways of taking anxieties away, before they get tangled too. 

What's your experience with existential anxiety and an eating disorder? Please share.

Helpful Links: 

Emetophobia Help 

Anxiety UK

Anxiety in Children - Guide for Parents from Young Minds 

Beat - Eating Disorders