Wish me luck

I would like to thank everyone who left me comments on my posts about the ongoing saga with New Psychologist. Your comments are so helpful to me; I'm always interested to read what other people's views are and it's really reassuring when I read that other people would feel similarly to me.

I have been going over and over the dilemma in my head all week. It's really keeping me up at night. As soon as my head hits the pillow I start thinking over the whole messed up situation again, trying to figure out what NP's thinking is; asking myself if I'm being unreasonable; thinking over what I'm going to say to her; wondering how things are going to turn out... and so on. I'm going back to the doctor on Friday and I'll need to get more sleeping tablets. I seem to have completely lost the ability to get to sleep before 3am without them. I tried really hard not to take them often but I'm realising now that having so little sleep probably isn't helping my mood either.

Speaking of my mood, things have been a bit more settled over the last few days. They're definitely not good, but at least I have stopped having intrusive thoughts about hanging myself (now it's more of a general reflection about how life seems hopeless and I don't have any options). I also haven't self harmed since the incident last Friday and haven't made myself sick in over a week, which is great. So in terms of behaviours, things have improved. Unfortunately I am just really not in a great place still. I slept until 1pm today. Granted, I didn't get to sleep until 2.30am but I could have gotten up much earlier if I'd felt like I had wanted to. I kind of woke a few times and couldn't even face the thought of the day so just forced myself to go back to sleep and by 1pm I felt like I could stay in bed all day and not wake. Besides feeling down and hopeless, I've also been feeling irritable and angry a lot. It's not surprising really given what's happened with NP and my dad (which I haven't told you about yet but is as anger provoking as the NP fiasco) that I'm feeling pissed off and my patience for everything is short but it is hard going being angry with everything and as Adam tends to be the trigger (poor boy), I also end up feeling guilty too. My tolerance for anything is low. I think I'm also hormonal which really doesn't help! It's hard for me to know because I don't menstruate but if I feel permanently angry for a while, it's often a sign of hormones too.

I was at the hospital on Monday and had about 700ml of blood removed. This is the treatment for the genetic blood disorder and the nurse warned me I wouldn't feel great for a few days (although I actually haven't felt any worse than usual) but I'm hopeful that soon it will affect me for the better and I'll start feeling more well. I've put off starting my antidepressant for the same reason; I want to know if any improvement is due to the blood removal and if I've started an antidepressant this could interfere. My doctor isn't going to be happy about that though but I think my reasons are fair enough.

Today I went to the hairdressers as I had a voucher that needed using and I was SO nervous (don't like the hairdressers). Adam seemed to find my anxiety quite funny and said anyone would think I was about to go in for an exam because I was doing deep breathing exercises in the car and having a conversation with myself about if I could just run away and not go in. I survived it anyway and it's not the worst hair cut I've ever had although I think I look more 'cute' than 'cool', which isn't the look I was going for really. At least I don't look like a Lego man, which is what happened last time. Afterwards I talked Adam into going out on a date with me, so we stopped at Tescos and bought some cinema style popcorn, a bottle of Diet Pepsi, some Maltesers and Cadbury's Creme Eggs and then I smuggled them into the cinema and we saw a movie using an Orange Wednesday voucher. Movie and snacks for no more than a fiver each! I felt like a student again. I think it was really good to get out of the house and 'do' something (wouldn't the mental health people be pleased). I came home and painted my nails too so all in all I've done a few nice things for myself today. I feel a bit guilty about doing things like that for myself; I feel like I don't deserve them. I can't help thinking that NP will look at my hair and nails tomorrow and think: "Not too ill to pamper herself obviously." Well, you can't win with some people.

Anyway, I came on here to ask you to wish me luck for the session tomorrow. I'm going to confront NP directly about the things that have happened. The main things I want to ask her (maybe not in these exact words, but who knows) are:

1) Did you read the letter and email I sent you two weeks ago and why didn't you reply to it? Do you think it was reasonable that you didn't contact me at all after I specifically said in the email that I was worried about how the week would go with Adam being away? I also want to point out how difficult last week was for me and how her not replying to that email was very hard. I should also remind her that she gave me permission to email things to her.

2) I will explain what happened with the psychiatric assessment and what I heard the woman tell my GP about what she said to them (that I'm just trying to get more and more people involved in caring for me) and ask her if she did say that and why she has come to that conclusion. I want to know if that's what she truly believes or if it was a misunderstanding. If it was a misunderstanding, I want to know what she actually said and what she is going to do to put it right and if it wasn't then I am going to tell her that I don't think it is going to work out between us because how can I work with someone who believes I am a time waster and just looking for attention. I'm also going to tell her that I am thinking about putting in a complaint about the Unscheduled Care Team.

Incidentally, I still haven't heard ANYTHING from the Primary Care Team, even though it was now a week and a half ago that I was assessed by a psychiatrist who agreed with me that I should have some immediate short term support from the Unscheduled Care Team until I got up and running with the Primary Care Team.
Frankly, at this stage I'm thinking I'm probably better off on my own. The chances are, if I do see the PCT, they are going to treat me like a time waster because they obviously already have that view and even if they don't, they're probably just going to tell me things like 'get a better sleeping routine, eat healthily, do exercise and get out of the house'.