A journey of finding peace in hospital.
Age: 23, Year: 2017
My level of consciousness slowly rises along with the sound of classical music coming from my phone. Pressing stop on the alarm, I immediately sit up in bed and stretch. The tone of light coming from under the blind tells me a new day is dawning. Time to make another day mine.
The routine I have managed to put in place here is getting easy now. First, I sit and shut my eyes while I listen to the two minute Daily Stoic book segment dedicated to today. With the intention of the day set, I pick up the pile of clothes I set out the night before and walk into my ensuite. After a cold shower, I take all the time I need to carefully clean my teeth and look after my hair. It's race day, which means I am more careful than usual and start to visualise my race as I braid my hair into race mode.
Next comes 30 minutes of foam rolling followed by 30 minutes of yoga. I get in touch with my breath and my body, feeling everything in the moment I am in. At 7:25am I head to the nurses station to have my blood pressure and temperature taken, and am given my supplements. No longer do I get one of the small cups filled with pills,, but rather a large cup of magnesium powder and a vitamin D spray on my tongue.
At 7:30 I am booked in for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. I sit in the chair for 35 minutes, chatting along with the TMS nurse about anything and everything while the machine ticks along on my head. I hardly notice the machine is there, the headaches and dizziness of the first few days of treatment a distant memory.
TMS completed I bounce out of the chair and go check in with my nurse. We sit and discuss how I will feel racing today, what ways they can support me when I return after a long and tiring day, and how I slept last night. I tell her I am nervous, but excited, and that having someone come check on me after dinner for a debrief will be much appreciated.
After a breakfast of oats, fruit and soy milk in the dining hall, I take a banana for the road and cycle on the stationary bike while I wait for mum to come get me. At 9am on the dot she arrives and we begin the long trek to Anglesea for today's cross country relay race with my athletics team. I have moments of doubt, feeling like for some reason they may be able to tell that I am living in hospital again just by looking at me, or that I might let the team down. But I use the tools I have recently learnt in therapy groups to watch these thoughts come and go, recognising that even if they are true it doesn't matter and therefore is nothing to worry about. I am where I need to be, looking after myself.
On the two hour drive we listen to my pump up music and I eat the peanut butter sandwich mum prepared for me. Arriving at the race hub in Anglesea I again have a moment of doubt, but am welcomed by my team and soon forget about the world of hospital for a while. I race my heart out, running my team into fourth position on the first relay leg which is right where we ended up finishing. It feels good to be out among the community again, though extremely tiring. I haven't spoken to many people in the last couple of weeks as I work my way through my internal journey.
The car trip back home is quiet, mum recognising my need to just be. It is strange to call it so, but the hospital truly does feel like a home at the moment in that it is safe, comfortable, and I am cared for there. We arrive back at 5pm, just in time for a quick shower then dinner. The boisterous chef greets me with a huge smile, declaring he has made me a special meal. I eat the delicious vegan curry and rice followed by fruit salad, enjoying every mouthful by tapping into a mindful presence.
Back in my room, I begin to struggle. I am tired, and the overwhelming nature of the day from being around so many people and so overstimulated is catching up to me. I try to sit with the feelings that come alone at first, but the feeling of dread and anxiety gets heavier and harder to bear the more I let myself feel the moment. I go and find my nurse, asking her to come and sit and talk. I am learning to reach out before I reach crisis mode now, and it makes a huge difference. Getting the help is why I am here after all.
We sit and process my thoughts. As we talk, the fear of the future and the heaviness I feel in my body bubbles over into tears. But these are not the desperate, painful tears of my past. These are deep, and come with a sense of release. With tears rolling down my cheek, I am given the space to air all my worries, to feel the sadness I have held for so long, and express these feelings openly. After a while, I am calmer and able to carry on the process alone so my nurse leaves.
Alone in my room, I look at my list of things to do each day. I tick off the things I have done, fill in my food diary, and decide study and my training diary can wait until tomorrow when I am not so tired. Curling up in bed, I am lonely, but that's okay. I am in the process of learning to feel safe in my own company; to love myself through all the struggles I have, and to not fight back against the waves of emotion that come and go. Yes I am living in a psychiatric hospital, but that is okay. I am where I need to be to feel safe enough to explore where I am at in life. I have the support and tools available to make the difficult task of completely opening myself up and facing my true self possible. I sit with my loneliness, recognising that what I am doing is hard, and that although the pattern I had gotten into of denying my feelings seemed easier in the short term, over time the denial will lead me away from who I am.
I am here, on my own unique journey of learning to accept and love myself for everything I am and nothing I am not. I am not weak for needing help to do so, and using this safe place to my advantage is helping me become stronger and more capable than I ever have been.
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My daily checklist - very different to the one in the previous post on psychiatric hospital stays. -
My room, which I turned into my place of peace
Myth - Psychiatric hospitals/clinics are only for those on the brink of breakdown or the extremely ill.
Fact - Psychiatric hospitals/clinics can be amazing tools on the healing journey that provide safe places to learn new skills and improve daily life, even if daily life isn't as bad as it could be.
The terms 'psychiatric hospital' or 'psychiatric institution' still seem to carry with them a sense of fear and stigma based on both the way they were in the past and their continued sensationalization in media. In my experience, as soon as I ever mentioned I was in hospital, if the person I was talking to didn't have direct experience with them their entire behaviour changed. They became guarded, and the conversation seemed to become difficult. It was as if they were waiting for me to fly off the walls at any moment, or they were worried if they spent too much time with me I would be contagious.
The current reality is that these places, of which there are many, are filled with people that for the most part you wouldn't recognise as being any different if you met them on the street. The rooms of the private hospital system are comfortable and a lot closer to a cheap hotel than a medical hospital ward. There is usually a comfortable dining room, a laundry, somewhere nice to sit outside, space to exercise and many different therapy rooms. One of the most exciting rooms I have ever spent time in was in this hospital, and it was a large room filled to the brink with every art supply you could ever want access too and bright colours everywhere.
Yes, a lot of pain is endured within hospital walls. But a lot of progress and healing is made too. This admission I write about here was my most recent month long admission and is in stark contrast to the last one I wrote about (https://www.stillwerise.com.au/2019/07/a-day-in-life-at-a-private-psychiatric-hospital/). Here, I requested to be admitted well before I normally would. I was studying, running well, and for the most part coping well with life, but slowly things were getting harder again as it seemed the Magnetic Seizure Therapy from 10 months earlier was wearing off. I decided to try giving myself all the space and time I needed and ask for help before I normally would to try and ward off the oncoming relapse.
While there that month, I was allowed to come and go as I pleased. I ran daily, went to therapy groups and fully engaged when I did. I got myself into the morning routine I describe above. That routine continues to this day as part of my commitment to loving and caring for myself first and foremost, before then spreading as much love and care as I can to others. It was also during this month that that I transitioned off the last medication I was on, Cymbalta, and onto a fully plant-based wholefood diet. I was somewhat apprehensive at the time about the dietary change, but gave myself 30 days to give it a shot. I haven't looked back, and after all the benefits it has brought me for my overall health, never plan on doing so.
Since leaving the hospital after that month, I have not been admitted for more than three days at a time. In fact, as of today I haven't been admitted to hospital for exactly one year, after 5 years in the system. I have also stayed medication free. I did have maintenance TMS, an alternative treatment to medication, up until June 2018, but have also now had a year without that too. Looking back I think a lot of that is a result of learning the power of being proactive with my mental health and making changes or reaching out early. What used to stop me reaching out was the fear of not being taken seriously, or wasting peoples time because 'I wasn't that bad' or 'other people are worse right now'. But telling yourself your current struggles don't matter because someone else has it worse, is that same as saying your happiness is irrelevant because someone else has it better - it doesn't work that way.
I encourage everyone to become more open minded about all mental health services, and to reach out for whatever level of service will suit you best at your current stage of life. If that is hospital, that is more than okay. I hope over time we can break down the fears and misconceptions so that telling someone you are in psychiatric hospital is as normal of a conversation as telling someone else you are in medical hospital for a course of antibiotics, or better yet taken as a positive thing that can be explored more in conversation.
If someone opens up to you and says they are in fact in hospital, ask what it is like, how they are finding it, and what they may be learning. Keep the conversation going, and educate yourself through their experience. Healing journeys come in all shapes and sizes, don't be fooled by the past or the media, these places can be a hugely important and life saving part of that journey too.
For more information on TMS go to https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/transcranial-magnetic-stimulation/about/pac-20384625
Still We Rise.