People’s Journeys: Logical vs Reasonable – F.C.
I became very unwell over 20yrs ago and I was then told I would never get a job and be on benefits for the rest of my life. I felt hopeless and completely written off by their verdict and it stuck with me for a very long time.
Slowly, very slowly, attitudes around mental health began changing and things started to pick up for me. I started to get jobs but also losing them, which is now at the root of so much of my worries and anxiety. Do you know what it feels like when you’re stuck in a pattern that repeats itself and you can’t imagine there could be a different future for you?
I joined Arty-Folks online in 2022 when we were all still holed up at home and I learnt skills that I’m still using today. 2024 I joined the 3-week in-person course and one of the Creative Peer Support groups which helped me get through the worst of my self-doubts and I left to start a new job which seemed absolutely perfect. But I lost it again and it was really grim. History repeating itself again and again really got me down. Groundhog day felt like a logical and foregone conclusion.
I’ve just joined Arty-Folks again and it feels like I’ve never left. Staff still know me quite well and I don’t have to explain myself all over again. I’ve talked them through what’s been happening recently, like my dad passing and my mum struggling with alcohol but also that I have completed the 1st year at Coventry University studying Mental Health Nursing. We had a really nice catchup which ended in an interesting discussion about logical versus reasonable thinking.
I told them that I’ve struggled with Uni but loved the placement in a hospital that has treated me in the past and where I still go as an outpatient. I hated being in hospital as a patient because I was treated by staff who didn’t have a clue what it’s like to be stuck in a dark place. Now, as a member of staff myself I can help patients and make a real difference. I know what it feels like when you’re not allowed out, so much noise all around you, overwhelming and sometimes even unsafe. I know what is important to patients because I’ve actually been there myself.
I took last year out to support my dad until he passed and I just got myself a part-time job working at a specialist college for children 16-20yrs old with emotional and behavioural problems. It’s really challenging but I love it. There’s a lot of self-harm, suicidal ideation, drug use, and anti-social behaviour, and some are struggling with the same difficulties I used to have.
Rejection was my trigger point too, when people show you that they don’t want you anymore, they don’t need you around them, the umbilical cord has been cut for good. I remember feeling so intensely sad and angry and disappointed, like someone had stabbed me in the chest and rubbed salt in it. I see children acting outwards, destroying everything in their path, while I used to destroy inwards. Now I can stay calm for them and use my experiences to help them regulate even when those feelings are at their most intense.
I can hold it together for them but when I go home I fall apart. My anxiety hits the roof and I crave self-harming, it’s unbearable and takes me back into the past, makes me feel that nothing has changed. I’m still the same person who just can’t get well, a lost cause. It’s just logical I will lose this job too. It’s just a matter of time when they find out that I am too unwell, that I mess things up, that I get it wrong for my students, that I can’t do the job… My anxiety is still very high and makes me physically ill. Surely somebody will notice, it’s just a matter of time.
It was a really good catchup and I felt that Arty-Folks staff really listened and got me, but from a very different and more helpful perspective.
I said that I feel it’s just logical that it will all go belly up again. Staff replied that just because something can be explained logically step by step it doesn’t make it inevitable or true, that logic is linear and biased and only works because it excludes other possibilities.
Things may have happened in the past in a certain way repeatedly because conditions were the same, that seems logical. When conditions change it is also logical to expect a different outcome, one that you might not be able to predict as it’s a new place! To ignore everything that has changed in the past couple of years is un-reasonable and also illogical.
I hadn’t realised that I was disregarding my achievements like completing my 1st year at Uni, supporting my family through tough times, and holding myself together when students in my care are in crisis. A couple of years ago I would not have been able to do any of that! It helped me realise that I have changed and that staff might be right: I need to build trust and confidence in myself that I can handle situations now, and stop measuring myself through the lense of the past.
I’m really enjoying being back.
