The problem of help

I'm struggling with the lack of support. One of the big pieces of work I took on during my admission was around help and care - accepting it, accepting that it's OK to need or want it, and eventually asking for it. Feeling as though I have to cope alone and should be able to is a big risk factor for me. Through months of hard work and training I got to the point where I could often keep myself safe by either using my own skills to manage or by recognising when it was too much to manage alone and using various means to obtain help in a constructive way. Some of these achievements only came during the last couple of weeks of my admission, and I (a marker of my progress!) asked more than one person what the point in having the help now was, when very shortly I wouldn't have any. I was encouraged to use all the help I could while it was available.

First let's be clear, I am not complaining about this advice. It allowed one very memorable time a week before my discharge, where I managed to text for help and was beautifully supported through my distress in a way that I wanted to pot and play in every training course for people working with people who have high levels of distress.

But I was also so scared for the future when I wouldn't have this available. There are people to support me now (and all of them have got me through very tough moments from near or far), but most of them can't be physically with me, and the ones who can haven't had much practice because I haven't let them into my distress before. My anxiety causes an increase in other people's anxiety, which isn't great for anybody!

Some of my flashcards to ask for support

I decided the best thing I could do was to pot the support as best I could. I wrote down exactly what this member of staff did and turned it into a stage by stage meltdown support plan in the hope that people around me are more likely to give the kind of support that helps, and more likely to be confident of their ability to help me. I also keep copies for myself, so I can coach myself through a meltdown. When distress comes, this has proved really useful, along with my memories of that and previous occasions. It's horrible, it feels lonely and helpless and hopeless but it has also allowed me to survive distress without using self-defeating behaviour. So I'm glad I followed the advice and asked for help while I had it.

But oh, the sadness and pain of once discovering you can have something - the care you have so desperately yearned for for such a long time, perfectly administered - only to have it snatched away right when you start letting yourself accept it.

I'm trying to use all the skills I've learnt to manage this sorrow. Welcome its visit and treat it kindly. It is here to tell you something. You long for care because you are human, not because you are greedy, an inconvenience, a problem, a difficulty. You have lost something so terribly fundamental and important to you. It is natural and correct to feel sadness and pain. The visit may be lengthy - the visitor will stay until your need is met in another way. Attend to it, listen to it, accept and care for it. Don't stop still and abandon your life, but show the visitor what else there is - there is also joy, peace, independence (you can manage on your own, and it can be OK - a mix of both is healthy and breeds support rather than dependence), and the excitement of newness and exploration. They aren't excluded by sadness, and neither do they exclude it. Loss and gain, loneliness and connection, can sit alongside each other bringing a deep richness to the experience of life.