The dilemma
It’s the dilemma that many of us have faced – me included. The fluctuating nature of many mental health conditions means that when you’re at your lowest, it’s hard to perform even basic tasks, let alone face the outside world. To give an example: even leaving the house or communicating by telephone can be beyond the capabilities of someone who is undergoing a crisis. I’ve been there, sitting by the phone, looking at it in my hand, for hours, unable to press the buttons, or dialing and then feeling sick straight away, then waiting until it rings and hanging up. How can you even begin to help yourself when simply reaching out is so hard in the first place?
It might sound straightforward, then, to ride out the worst parts of a mental health crisis, then seek help when you’re feeling better. But it’s not that simple, for several reasons. You might not want to think about mental health, let alone talk about times when you’ve been at your worst, when things are finally coming together. You may hope that it was a temporary blip that has been overcome.
But it gets worse. Attempt to seek help for a long-term problem when you’re feeling well, and some people will tell you that they aren’t fully understood by health professionals, up to and including GPs and mental health professionals. If you’ve got back to the part where you’ve managed to leave the house, go to work and even book an appointment, everything’s all right again, isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
Well, no. It isn’t. But the irony is painful: you can only be in a place where you’re able to discuss your symptoms at the very point at which they are least visible and least present. To the outside world, you are presenting the face you would like them to see: they are not seeing you in a crisis because the person you are in a crisis is one who might hide away and not even be able to speak to them at all.