Lisa

And I sort of stayed in this little bedsit for about three months and I think my mind just went. I don't know what happened. I sort of started doing really bizarre things, like I would binge and make myself sick and then like later become desperate for food and I would have no choice but to like eat something from like my bin, even though like it wasn't soiled or anything but I'd constantly have this thought of like, 'Well, what am I doing?'

And, gradually I just lost more and more weight and then I started to have really bad OCD tendencies and that escalated into just really strange, bizarre behaviours. And, I just remember sitting in this bedsit, like on this crappy couch, like naked and skinny and just emaciated and I was like paranoid that if I washed my hair... no, if I didn't wash my hair then the drought in Australia would break or something and it was like just really bizarre things like that. How things that I was doing to myself would somehow effect the world in these fantastical ways. And so I just, yeah, developed really weird bizarre things. And then, I guess, I didn't necessarily start hearing voices but I became increasingly paranoid and ended up staying in this flat where I taped up the windows and just spent so much time by myself and just really lacked any contact with the outside world.

And I don't know how I managed to get out of that but eventually I decided to go back to London and I stayed for a few more months and eventually came home.

Could I ask what other changes you have made that you feel has helped?

I think it's kind of taking quite a natural course but also, I think having worked in, when I was at university, when I first started I was studying law, God knows why. And after I went back after being released from hospital I changed my major to behavioural science, psychology. So, and I don't know, I think at that point I was looking for answers and it didn't provide me with anything. But, it certainly provided me with a basis for greater understanding of I think of the mental health professions as a whole. And it's partially why I've chosen to work in this field. I guess one of the main requirements of being in a role like mine is that you have a lived experience of a mental illness.

Can I ask, when you say that the behaviours were unusual but were like normal young adult behaviour, can you give some examples?

I suppose like just like drugs, drinking, like promiscuity, like and you know, excessive spending in a, like you've bought this and it's normal. It's normal nowadays. Like that's what people do. So it was over the summer and I noticed... Actually this happened again like when summer came around, not recently but a couple of years ago. That people who have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder tend to have manic or have a manic episode in a sort of a seasonal kind of way.

So, I remember this one year I, it was fun when I was in it but just like the aftermath was horrific. Like I was broke, I had like no money to feed myself. I was like basically smoking two packs of cigarettes a day and I remember like crying in a gutter to a friend about how I couldn't afford to eat but then there's me, like smoking cigarettes.

I'm like, I can afford to buy cigarettes but I can't afford to feed myself. And I went and got three tattoos in one day. So like just bizarre things. I jumped off the roof of my house and there was this party that I held and I remember like lying in the middle of the road and not really caring like, yeah whatever, you can run me over.

That wasn't properly explained in the context of me having an eating disorder as well. It's kind of like well, this is going to help you with that part but you're also going to put on like 30 kilos and you know, that's probably going to stress you out and that might you know exacerbate some of the way, your coping mechanisms. I don't think that really factored into anything. For me there wasn't a definitive point, where I was like, 'Okay, no more, no more medications from today onwards'. It was more like a slow trickle out effect of like these aren't working for me. Like you know, I've talked to my doctors and shrinks about this and they're not working and you know what, I just don't want to try anymore because. And it's worked fine so far.

I empathise with people who are, I guess, at the height of their mental illness and they're being told to take all these medications and they just take it because some guy in a white coat tells you to and you just do because it's going to help you in some way. I don't feel like any of them in particular alleviated any symptoms. Like the mood stabilisers, I'm like, what does that even mean? Like how do you stabilise mood? And, when you're bipolar, you know, you experience those dizzying highs and those lows but I don't know - like they didn't make me feel any better and I suppose that's part of my own ignorance at that age, not being educated enough to realise that that's not what medication does [laughs]. They're not magic quick fixes for anything.

I guess my psychiatrist kind of helped me monitor my medications and things like that. I found that they weren't working for me. I kind of developed a bit of taste for my sedatives and just took them too often and too much of them. I didn't really feel like the mood stabilisers were working and (...) in terms of the antipsychotics and the sedatives - the antipsychotics had a sedative effect as well as the sedative, and so I took those a lot and then when I sort of stopped taking my medications regularly I would kind of take the antipsychotics and sedatives on a need-to basis because - even though I know that's not how medications work but I was like craving that effect of like, 'Yeah well I can't deal with this shit so I'm just going to take myself...' and also my psychiatrist has never prescribed me VALIUM (diazepam) because he doesn't believe that it would help me. (...) So yeah - also because I didn't know what to expect from the medication. And if someone had explained to me how mood stabilisers work maybe I would have been more compliant with them. But, I was kind of like, 'Well, screw this, it's not working for me. Like how is this stabilising my mood? Like I'm still crazy kind of thing'.

I am unmedicated at the moment which surprises people. It doesn't surprise me though because I've always been non-complaint with medication. So I don't-I don't take anything at the moment. I prefer to deal with things as they come but I don't, I don't necessarily experience anything - I don't know, I feel like I'm - I'm sort of out of the woods in a way. I have found better ways of coping with things and I have better coping mechanisms now. I feel like at this stage of my life I am far more aware of supports that are there and that may be needed and yet, I don't need them in a kind of strange way.

Did he practice CBT or DBT with you?

CBT with me and I did DBT in hospital.

Okay. They were helpful?

Yeah [laughs]. In retrospect perhaps. Whilst I was doing DBT I was kind of like, 'What crap is this?' And again, I don't think that's explained very well.

Like, I felt a bit like group therapy in hospital was a bit like school, like you were just being told what to do, not like let's actively find ways to... But again, that's some hospitals are going to practice different you know, some hospitals do ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), it's going to be different everywhere. But, I felt a bit like, 'Oh you're going to sit here and you're going to have to do it, like you have to do this'. And I was not receptive to it when I did it but now I'm like, oh yeah, I've learnt some elements that have carried on.

I suppose it really only come to the fore maybe as I entered early adolescence, I suppose. And that's when, I mean the first I made myself throw up was pasta and that's what I sort of recall quite vividly and I don't know how that started. But from that point on I suppose making myself sick became a bit of a reset button if you will. And so I continued to do that probably up until my early twenties or so. I started seeing a psychologist maybe when I was about 14 and I think I was given perhaps maybe six sessions or something and it was actually done through my mother's work at the time and she was offered, I think it was part of some sort of employee package where you could get assistance for family members, whether that be medical help or psychologically help or counselling.

So I did that when I was about 14 and met with this woman in the city and I just remember I built no rapport with her whatsoever. So there's me, probably 13 or 14 years old, and I remember she asked me like how suicidal I felt on a scale of one to 10. And I just found it such a bizarre question because prior to that I guess I did have suicidal ideation but no real intent or plans towards it. I found it a bizarre question to have to rate my suicidality on a scale. It was very like concrete and so I didn't really understand that. And, I also felt that she probably wasn't the right person to be speaking to, I don't think.

I stopped seeing her. I can't actually remember how long it was until I was eventually referred to a psychiatrist through my GP.

Yeah, I felt quite supported in the hospital. They also had a lot of parental support groups so like parents of the people there or the inpatients could come in like once a week and they would chat to the psychotherapist and psychiatrist and stuff. And, kind of be kept up to date and my mum told me that all these other parents would kind of talk to her and say like, "I don't I don't understand why your daughter is sick, like she's really intelligent and you know, she's talented et cetera, blah, blah, blah, blah".

I don't particularly like that, my role actually in my role description, it said like, I guess one of the main requirements of being in a role like mine is that you have a lived experience of a mental illness. I sort of have an issue with it being a requirement of the job in a way. I think it goes back to what I was saying about being surrounded by other sick people. You know, for lack of a better term - sick people - but being constantly surrounded by, I guess, other mentally ill people sort of kept me ill for a longer period than I expected.

And, I socialised with a lot of those girls after I was released and it felt like the most bizarre thing. You know, you talk to these so called friends but what do you talk about? You talk about your medications and your illness and you talk about like the fun times we had in hospital and I'm like what fun times? You know, I mean, I think there's one woman now that I'm still very good friends with. But that's not the only thing we talk about, you know. So, yeah, this whole idea of like surrounding yourself with people who are also ill, kind of helped me shape my identity as some...

Like, I very strongly identified as someone who is mentally ill and that was like who I am at that stage in my life. If you identify as being ill then it keeps you ill in a way. And so I refuse, not refused to but I don't talk about that part of my life or those experiences very often. And I've found that when I do it's met with a range of different things. Sometimes it's quite patronising where it's like, "Oh, you've done very well for yourself in spite of that" and like well, "Yeah, why wouldn't I?" So yeah, like it's a strange thing.

And, you know, if I tell someone that I have bipolar disorder they're like, "Oh, but you don't seem crazy". So I feel some conflict with working for a mental health organisation because I don't know if my opinions or my experiences is valued or if it is at all and sometimes there's, I think, the idea of my role and the requirements surrounding it make me feel a bit funny about how I view myself and my identity as someone who has experienced a mental illness or is continuing to do so. Like I'm sort of in two minds about that.

I remember once telling someone that I lived with that... I was talking about, you know, my experiences of having an eating disorder and she was kind of like, "Which one did you have?" And I'm like, I was kind of like, 'Well, anorexia, bulimia, take your pick kind of thing'. And I said, "Well, bulimia primarily, but I went through long periods of starvation and could fit into children's' clothing when I was like 16. I could shop in the kids' sections of most clothing stores". And so I said something like, "Yeah, well you know, experienced bulimia and stuff".

And she was like, "Oh yeah, my God, like high five, me too". And it's just kind of like I don't understand where this whole bizarre camaraderie comes from. It's like, 'Oh yeah, cool you've experienced a horrible life threatening disorder as well?' 'Yeah, me too, were you hospitalised for it and did you have your heart checked every week and did you have like no enamel left in your teeth and holes in your knuckles from shoving your hand down your throat?' So I don't talk about my experiences very often because I find that it's not met with the best responses. And, you know, if I tell someone that I have bipolar disorder they're like, "Oh, but you don't seem crazy".