After months and months of avoiding mental health services, and one GP appointment that I got too ill to follow up, I'm finally asking for help again.
It's been a mixture of reasons really. Fibromyalgia flare ups, helping my parents through various things, feeling I don't deserve help, and being too anxious to use the phone (you have to ring up and self refer to the Primary Care team).
It took a breakdown in front of my mum to push me to ask for help. It was mum who got in touch with the GP and then the mental health team to get me to stop avoiding this. I've been getting close to crisis point recently so of course it's important I get some sort of support. I've bottled up so much (and 'coping' by self harming) because I didn't want to worry my parents and I didn't want to bring any attention to myself. I knew it wasn't a healthy thing to do, but I felt that I had to do it.
After a very nervous wait, I had a callback from the Primary Care mental health team earlier today. I was shaking the whole time, but managed to give them the details they needed (contact details, diagnoses, previous therapies, demographic questions etc). They asked if I was suicidal/had plans too, and gave me some helpline numbers. I don't know if I'll manage to ring if I'm in crisis (it's scary enough even on good days!) but at least I know who to contact.
So, the next step is a phone assessment this Wednesday. It's been a while since I've had a mental health assessment, so I'm glad it'll happen even if I'm really nervous about it being over the phone. The person on the phone today was really friendly and patient with me though, and I hope the person I speak with next is the same.
My next post should be much sooner than usual, and a lot longer than this one! I'll be talking about the assessment and what the next step will be.