work – phonakins

Friday Foodbank Musings

Happy Liptember! The month where I actually wear lipstick and raise funds for women’s mental health projects.

Had a few good conversations this morning about *waves hands around* all of this. Cost of living, Centrelink, gatekeeping and waste from charities, attitudes towards addicts and more. A couple were in the line for the Ozharvest bag, where the inaccessible nature of the whole process came up because they make us wait outside the gate until 9am, and getting down the driveway or foot or in wheelchairs is hairy at best and they just don’t seem willing to make exceptions. I mean, they don’t even have a designated disabled park on site, and the other parks are up a slope from the doors.

Spams and other tinned meats — Apparently the woolies beef is only 20c cheaper than retail…

I exchanged pleasantries with the volunteers, asking if it was fine to take a fruit and veg bag as well as the pies this week, and yeah there was plenty this week, but I remarked that I didn’t want to get in trouble because if I take one and get told no that was wrong it feels like I’m being told off, and sometimes I think I actually am. Like the time I asked “Hey is it okay is I take a bag of pies” and Sandra was “Please?” ugh. Yes ma’am please mam, I was being pleasant til you got school principal on me. Apparently she also put a guy’s daughter through questioning, which he felt was because “she’s an addict and looks like an addict” and left her feeling like never coming back. He and I talked about playing the meek and grateful role when it’s for ourselves but sometimes getting more than a little protective and defensive of others.

Bread was also in abundance today, which is good because I wound up buying the $8 fancy eggs from Woolies after Aldi was out and Woolies only had the Lake Macquarie local ones left. Good thing it’s pension day!

Two point something percent indexation in not next fortnight’s but the fortnight after. Plus that 10% rent assistance cash splash that Albo was touting that will do SFA, but seems to appease some of the numbers guys. I’ll be on a whole $1061.60 a fortnight from October 4. I’ll be getting paid for my 3 hours a week work too, let’s see how that affects things!

Appreciate this post? Support me.

Hitting Spring Running

Well, I mourned winter, but feel like I’m emerging into Spring with a new lease on life (cough be damned). It’s still with me when I transition between scenes, like moving to the kitchen, or getting up in the morning. But it passes, and it’s not infectious at least, so it just sucks for ME and that’s fine, hey?

I do feel a sense of mental clarity though, which is great timing, having just become the first employee of the unemployed workers union and having to be able to switch on in a professional sense for at least three hours a week. Nothing too out of my comfort zone, not that anyway, it’s all social media and PR, things I’ve been doing since I started online journaling on diaryland in 2000, or livejournal and blogs from 2001.

I’m putting together my intro on what my work is, personally, and with the Antipoverty Centre ahead of the panel Monday, which I’m not freaking out about but I haven’t done one before in any capacity. But she’ll be right, so long as my cough holds off and doesn’t want to kick in because I’ve talked too much as it did this morning in group.

Thankyou all for coming along for this ride, and happy wear it purple day!

Drafting Blog Posting in my Dreams

I had a wonderful blog post drafted in my dreams, or maybe it was between dreams, last night. Ticking all the boxes, remembering to cover the angles of the topic I was talking about, and not just rushing to a finish and realising after I hit publish that I meant to write all this other stuff too, or I never made my point and which makes me realise my arguments about my point are completely off the wall and probably invalid.

Like reading about the school shortage stats and getting to reprocess my feelings about not working, about not “being a speech pathologist” any more, about whether or not I want to try to get back into it, re-entry can be done up to 15 years, I’m around 8 years since I worked. Lamenting not keeping registration/membership. Wishing thinking, overthinking. Not really wanting to be working like that any more, but then when jobs come around like “Do telehealth with remote autistic teenagers” I go oooh I wish I could give that a try.

I pushed myself too hard this week or so. School holidays, helping out with my niece and nephews, engaging in politics, with planning and organising, actually seeing people in person, attending meetings online. Made it to group this morning and felt like bolting so I decided to ask for help, ask mum to take on the babysitting I’d offered to do so I could come home and zone out.

Self care or something.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) Awareness Week 2022 – See the person

Hey, it me!

Let me preface this post with I’m not an expert on anything other than myself and I’m still learning bout her too. This is not medical advice and I’m sure you can argue against any of my points, but this is how I currently see the fun world that is having Borderline Personality Disorder and it will likely change again over time, come back to this post for next year’s BPD awareness week and shudder at my naivety!

See the person is the theme for this year’s BPD Awareness Week here in Australia.

People living with borderline personality disorder (BPD) often find that their diagnosis is the first and only thing other people see. The 2022 BPD Awareness Week campaign encourages everyone to see the person alongside their BPD diagnosis, symptoms and survival actions. We’re all complete and unique individuals, each with our own strengths and challenges.

The growing body of mental health knowledge recognises the diversity of life experiences: the role genetics can play, experiences of gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodiversity or trauma can all contribute to our well-being. It’s a universal experience to be assigned various labels throughout our lifetime – and many people living with a BPD diagnosis experience stigma. We all share the fundamental need to be treated with respect and dignity, free from stigma and discrimination.

This year’s message reminds us to look at the person alongside the labels, ask what their experiences are and how they continue to make sense of the world. For carers, family, friends, supporters and clinicians it’s a reminder that underneath negative or harmful coping behaviours a person can often be struggling. Let’s celebrate the person they are alongside their diagnosis, acknowledging their strengths, resilience and courage in order to SEE THE PERSON !

This campaign is informative and educational, having been co-designed and co-produced by the strong voices of people with lived experience to promote recovery, positivity and hope.

So, what is Borderline Personality Disorder?

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a complex mental disorder that is often misunderstood. People with this disorder are frequently discriminated against and stigmatised.Symptoms for people with this disorder may include emotional distress, self-harm, difficulty relating to others and the world around them. This can be very distressing for the person and for people close to them.Currently between 2% and 5% of Australians are affected by BPD at some stage in their lives. The symptoms of the disorder usually first appear in mid to late teens or in early adulthood, with women three times more likely to be diagnosed with BPD than men.The causes of BPD are not fully understood. They are likely to involve biological, social and/or environmental factors. For some people these factors may relate to childhood experiences of trauma or neglect.Contrary to common belief, people with BPD can recover! With early diagnosis, appropriate treatment and support the prognosis for people with BPD is positive.Having BPD is not deliberate; it is a disorder people do not choose to have. People can recover!”

Well, you can get a diagnosis of BPD when you meet 5 of the 9 diagnostic criteria.

frantic efforts to avoid real or imaginary abandonment
consistently intense and unstable relationships with other people, alternating between idealising them and devaluing them
persistently distorted self-image or sense of self
at least 2 impulsive behaviours that are potentially self-damaging
ongoing self-harming behaviour, suicidal behaviour or threats
intense feelings lasting hours to days
long-term, chronic feelings of emptiness
difficulty controlling intense and inappropriate anger
feeling disconnected from reality, or having paranoid thoughts

It doesn’t matter which ones, and the ones you meet can change over time, and you can have only 4 and technically not “have BPD” but still be suffering. You can go back to meeting the criteria after “Remission”, because while therapy and medication have their place, BPD is not a simple “chemical imbalance” you can fix with the the right medication regime, and DBT and other therapies can have a huge impact on your life, but again it’s not a one-size-fits all thing, as you can imagine being such a variable diagnosis. Since you only need 5/9 to meet it, it’s possible me and my friend with BPD only share one of the criteria, and so present extremely differently.

Why people come to be diagnosed with BPD is also such a varied path. This might seem a little reductive, but I’m starting to notice to main streams in the people I’ve met with BPD, which overlap many times. There’s the group that have experienced clear, pin-pointable trauma and those who struggled to regulate their emotions and interactions with the world for as long as they can remember and then they get to teenagers or adulthood and can’t hide it any more and it gets messy. Of course they overlap, with the second group unfortunately finding themselves vulnerable to mistreatment and abuse that leads to trauma, but they seem to be the two main “paths to BPD”. Many of the second group look back into their childhoods and realise that they may have been living with Autism or ADHD but not had it recognised as they weren’t classically Autistic, which led to them developing the coping strategies that are BPD in order to attempt to function in this world. Others are the Queer Kids, not fitting in gender or sexuality wise and tried to fit in so badly that they came to grief. BOD seems to come from trying to fit into the world when you’re not the right fit, trying so hard, but just not getting it right.

The diagnostic label of Complex-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) is being used more widely in recent years, and often to do with that first group, the survivors of Childhood Sexual Assault or other traumas in their formative years. Organisations like The Australian BPD Foundation are even looking to make their names more inclusive of these extremely similar and even overlapping disorders than impact the lives of those living with them significantly.

If we didn’t have to have diagnostic labels to access supports, it really wouldn’t matter whether you considered yourself to be Autistic, Borderline, CPTSD, a survivor, ADHD, Queer or any other thing trying to fit into this world, but it does, from needing to meet the BOD criteria to access Dialectical Behavior Therapy programs, to knowing you have ADHD to get the right medications, to being “Autistic enough” to access the NDIS, or getting the right paperwork together to get DSP. The world needs us to have labels, and they really do help in gaining an understanding of yourself, and learning how you work and how to figure out how to function or even thrive in this world. Early diagnosis and understanding is such a preventative thing, and I’m glad that children get ADHD and Autism recoginsed younger and younger because it means we can help them and help them to help themselves at this early stage, while we’re able to coach and comfort them, because it “Gets messy” as it does for many in their teens.

I call myself Borderline and Autistic, I strongly saw myself in the BPD criteria the first time I read them a little over ten year ago. I worked in Autism organisations in my 20s and 30s and never ticked that the Fiona I grew up as could be considered Autistic, but getting to know more and more Autistic and ADHD and other neurodiverse adults I’m able to learn about the parts of Autism that I “have”, how the sensory world works for me, how I operate socially, how I communicate, how I need to time and space to regain my social and sensory spoons after doing the things I love and the things I want to do. How caffeine affects or doesn’t affect me and whether that points to ADHD lol. I remember being called out at work by managers about how I operated in meetings or interview and I can really see now how that might have seemed odd, but also if only I understood that I could be “on the spectrum” it would have made sense. I don’t have an Autism diagnosis, and I’m lucky enough to not have top seek one at this stage because it’s bloody expensive. So I just work on understanding and educating myself, and working with who I cam to be the Fiona I wanna be, BPD or no BPD.

Happy Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Week – This is me!

Smol World

Psychologists like to describe my world as becoming very small over the years, to the smallness it is now, where I go out for grocery shopping at the Friday I go to the hospital to pickup my Antabuse, pausing to only see family occasionally, and less and less with Covid conditions kicking in.

I feel small, sitting in my telehealth appointment bringing up how I’m overwhelmed by small things, seemingly small things, like planning and cooking dinner, doing the dishes and clothes washing. I reminded again that “should” isn’t really helping me here. I should be able to manage these things with ease, not feel overwhelmed with the tiniest thing in my routine. Should I be able to expand my world to include going out and about, socialising, working, studying, being the outgoing girl I have been? I’d like to do more, grow my small little world. But it’s scary and I feel small, shrinking away, and useless, so much useless.

I remembered why I felt sad over the weekend, remembering not living up to people’s expectations as a person, as a speech pathologist, as a disability support worker. Not living up to the me on paper, not being able to live up to what I’d set up for myself.

Managers “suggesting” things like eating lunch in the lunch room and being more of the team when I really and truly would not be able to function for the second half of the work day if I forced myself to do lunch rather than going out for a walk on my own. I didn’t do that in the workplace I felt most comfortable in, why would I be able to do that in the one where me and my world were falling apart around me?

Back in uni, in my first speech pathology placement in second year at the local Community Health Centre, I’d scurry up the hallway in the mornings without stopping for the customary good mornings and how are yous. My anxiety just squashing any part that thought that would be of benefit to me or others. That this routine was expected that I needed to take part in it.

I just want to feel on top of my little life, and then I want to branch out. I’m going to branch out – I plan to go to the Greens meeting next week, I have enrolled in a Japanese class thanks to the generosity of Twitter fam. I’ll see my sister and the kids on Friday while I’m out for my Friday stuff, getting an OzHarvest bag I hope, if they even have any given how sparse the supermarkets have been, will there be hand-me-downs available for us?

I have a lot of bad dreams, about school and uni and work. Always never fitting in, always out of place and struggling to fit in. I have so many memories about trying to do the right thing and just not getting it right. Who knew the rules were so simple and yet I could manage to get them wrong?

I’m pleased to have my Twitter family. My smol world is much bigger with you. x