Category: mental health

New Blog to Follow – erindavismft.com

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One great thing about blogging is you get to connect and support other bloggers, so today I wanted to encourage you to read and follow my friend, Erin Davis, who has started a new blog connecting motherhood and mental health.

 

Erin is a long time friend that I first met here in Abilene. She has always been a person I could be completely honest with and she has reciprocated that towards me in our friendship. She was my go-to person when looking for parenting advice after Calvin was born, she came over during one of my highest stress times as a new mother to just sit with me and offer encouragement.

She is also our favorite photographer and has captured many important moments for us!

Images taken by Erin Davis Photography

 

Erin has her degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and currently offers counseling here in Abilene. She has two sweet kiddos and does an amazing job trying to balance the tasks of motherhood and work and self-care! She has combined all this experience, honesty, and expertise wonderfully in her blog!

Here’s the link to her newest blog post, ” 6 Tips for Easing the Mental Stresses of New Motherhood”:

http://erindavismft.com/blog-2/

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A New Blog, A New Year – Continuing My Mental Health Journey

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One year ago today, on July 26, 2016, I was being admitted to the hospital for postpartum depression, and later what I personally consider to be postpartum psychosis. For me, this date will always hold a significant place and be a reminder of some really trying and hard times.

On the anniversary of this occasion, I thought it would be appropriate to start my new blog “Threads of Anxiety” – dedicated to be a place where I continue to write and share my mental health journey. I thought of the blog name because I feel like looking back, I can see this underlying presence of anxiety in my life, and at certain times it is very noticeable and other times it’s lying dormant under the surface. But it’s existence is there, like this thread being sewn into my life.

I started writing about my experience with postpartum depression and my stay in the hospital on another blog, but I never really finished the whole story. I had high hopes that today I would have been able to have written the rest out, but alas, it did not happen! However, I am making a commitment to keep writing my story and putting it out there – so hopefully in the next few weeks I will be able to do that.

If you didn’t previously get a chance to read my story, I have posted the first part from my other blog in three separate posts, in a series I’ve called, “My Psychotic Break.” I plan on adding to this story, although a year later my memory is bit fuzzier. It has been something that has been hard to write, yet also good and cathartic. Forgive me for taking so long, I have needed to be in the right frame of mind and it is challenging to think back to this time in my life.

Mental health issues affect so many people – it’s not something to be ashamed of or hide. I have recently noticed more people sharing their struggles with it, although maybe it’s because I am just more aware of it. Sharing my story has been so encouraging to me because it’s allowed me to connect with others who are dealing with similar issues, and it’s given me support from so many different people.

Thank you for reading and for your comments and love.

My Psychotic Break: The Next Day (Part 3)

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This is the next segment chronicling my time in the psych hospital – “Day 2.” 

*Names have been changed to protect patient’s identities

Wednesday, July 27

I got woken up in the middle of the night by a nurse I had never seen before, telling me I needed to move to another room. Um… what? Is it really that urgent at 2am for me to move to another room? Apparently it was – I was moved to another pod in the same unit, just on the opposite side of the central nurses’ desk. It wasn’t hard to move, all of my belongings were in a small laundry basket they provided to all the patients, so I picked it up and moved to my new room. It just so happened that this new room already had one occupant, but it ended up being *Lindsey so that wasn’t too bad, she was one of the friendliest people I had met there so far. I asked the nurse why they were moving me and she told me that Lindsey did not do well being alone in a room. I remember that sinking feeling of “this is not real, I’m in a dream,” coming back, but I tried to ignore it. It just didn’t make sense to me, and anytime I couldn’t make sense of something, I assumed it was because I was in a dream-like place and things didn’t always have to make sense. In dreams, anything can happen and you never question it, you just go along with it.

I guess I had slept for a few more hours when the same nurse came into the room again, I had no idea what time it was. The only clock in our entire unit was by the nurse’s desk and normally I would have just checked my phone to see what time it was, but obviously I couldn’t do that. The nurse told me she was just there to take my temperature and blood pressure, pretty standard procedure as I was to figure out. Why they have to take your vitals at 5 in the morning instead of 2 in the afternoon is beyond me, but that’s how it worked.

Every morning there was a 6:30am smoke break (I never went to those, too early) and then 7:00 was breakfast. Breakfast was usually pretty good – they always had cereal in case you didn’t like whatever else they were serving. After breakfast there was a little bit of time for people to take showers if they wanted to or do laundry if they needed to.

And then there was a lot of sitting around time. They had a schedule of the day posted by the nurse’s station. I knew around 10am or so there was supposed to be an activity of some sort. Some days it was just that, an activity, and other days it was a group therapy session. Patients were never required to go to any activities, but they were encouraged. I remember Lindsey telling me early on that you should go to all the meetings and activities because that helped you get out faster. “Getting out” was a big topic of discussion among the patients. It was always, “I think they’re gonna let me go home tomorrow” or “I can’t wait to get out of here, this place is driving me crazy!” It was a bit unnerving to not know exactly how long you were going to have to stay, and that decision seemed to be determined by the doctors and case workers. If they deemed that you were doing well and being social and “trying,” then it was likely that they would let you out sooner. If you stayed cooped up in your room and did nothing, it was likely they would make you stay longer. All the patients caught on pretty quick to this, and I realized that most of the patients were not in there voluntarily like I was. They had been admitted due to situations like attempted suicide or drug abuse.

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