Oh where did they go?
Being in psychiatry isn't doing my mental health any favours. I can feel myself losing my grip on absolute space and it is really scaring me.
Currently I have a patient who is about the same age as me and has anorexia with binge-purge subtype. It's so weird. I feel like I should ask to be taken off her treatment team. It's having a weird affect on me. It makes me want to binge and binge and that scares me because I can't purge. It feels so strange because when I sit and listen to her explain her logic and the way she thinks, it's exactly the same way that I think.
In a way, I'm jealous that she's so skinny and so able to starve herself and binge and purge. I want to be her. But at the same time, she's so ill. She's got a NG tube. She's got the biggest team of doctors and psychologists and eating disorder specialists and key workers and occupational therapists and more looking after her. We have to book out the special big room to have her treatment meetings.
What's almost more frightening is how much everyone knows about the tips and tricks of ED. All the tips, everything I've ever read on how to fool people, how to hide things, every single thing and more has been mentioned. Things that I thought was secret to the pro ana community, they're not secret. Everyone knows about them, and in the inpatient centre here, they know how to spot them and stop them and punish them.
And it's not just her. There is a patient who cuts. And everyone gets so up in arms about it. But I look at them and I realise that I cut deeper, more frequently and for more years of my life than this person. I have no right to treat them or to tell them to stop. It's a bizarre feeling and it makes me wonder how sick I am and how deep it is in me.
I think working in psychiatry is making me more sick. It makes me see things that I do that I wasn't aware of before. And it has forced me to face the fact that I am sick. Because there are people less sick than me getting intensive treatment. The only difference is that I have learnt to hide it.
she looks delicious.
ReplyDeleteand that looks like a weird position to take a picture in.
senses. i don't think such a thing exists. <3 wow. i can't imagine having a patient with anorexia. go all like '...tell me more.'
oh my God. do they? that sounds...wow.
P notices i never wear anything that fits me. my sweaters are always huge.
i'm so sorry for how you must feel, Jude. if i was in your shoes...
i don't know what i'd do if i was there.
/: i want to work in psychiatry.
however. i don't want to at the same time. i've got a way with people...talking to them and all, but i don't KNOW. i want to be able to save someone from their personal demons, but how can i when i've got so much of my own? it's confusing to say the least. i can't imagine how you feel.
-Sam Lupin
I couldn't do it, it would break me. I admire the fact that you can talk to these people. It is hard enough to deal with your own problems but with the problems of other people on top of that? I don't think I could handle it.
ReplyDeletexx