The journey so far...

Hi, I’m Jennie. Thanks for joining me on my mental health journey. As others who suffer from mental illness will know, this kind of journey is full of ups and downs, twists and turns – but things will always get better and we’ll see some light again, even if only in short spells.

Looking back, I now suspect that my mental health journey began when I was too young to even know what mental health problems were. But as a child, I just dealt with it, thinking this must be normal or that I should just ‘deal with it’.

I’ll not go into great detail now as more can be covered in my future blog posts, but basically I have been diagnosed with OCD and psychosis. I also suspect I have developed anxiety over the last year although this is not yet diagnosed.

My mental health problems first started becoming obvious when my life was taken over by constant prayer and my mind was consumed by thoughts of Christianity. I had been brought up going to Church, but my family did not let it take over their lives by any means. However my mind didn’t seem to know how to handle following a religion and living a functioning life at the same time.

After outpatient therapy at CAMHS I appeared to be much better by the age of 15 and got on with my life. That was until only about a year later when the religious thoughts came back with a vengeance – this time in the form of God having a special mission for me that would enlighten the world – you guessed it: full blown psychosis. This was a truly terrible time for me and my parents.

After being sectioned twice and spending months in a mental health unit for teenagers, I was doing the best I had in years and it was now also time to begin my adult life.

Skip forward a few years and I’d been the happiest I’d ever been, until my first summer off university when I started feeling not quite myself. I put this down to being out of a routine and thought things would get better once I started university again. Although things didn’t get better. They only got worse.

Skip forward again to today and my mental health is the worst it’s been since I was discharged from hospital. My OCD is a bigger part of my life than I had realised, my potential anxiety is ever present even though I haven’t been able to bring myself to go to the doctors yet. And best of all, my psychosis is rearing its ugly head again and I’m back to worrying that God is sending me messages and I’ll go to hell if I ignore them.

That is actually what has lead me to start this blog and my new Instagram page. I love writing so thought what better way to express my thoughts and feelings while connecting with others and hopefully supporting each other.

So here we are. There’s not always an end to mental health problems but there’s certainly ways to cope and enjoy this journey we call life.

I’d also like to mention how I’m a big believer in body positivity, self- love and acceptance of all. So those things will also feature on this blog, but to be honest all these topics are intertwined with an underlying theme of loving yourself and being a decent human being towards others. So if you’ve made it this far I’m sure we have some views and/or experiences in common.

I can’t wait to connect with you guys and support each other as we share our journeys!

Jennie xx