And in terms of kind of finances, do you see mental health

Yeah, It affects your finances. Something and, and I didn’t really get much support in terms of this. Because when I was on my high my spending habits were irregular. I’d buy irregular things and I’d financially I’d really suffer. I’d take out loans and get into a bit of debt. And there’s next to no support out there for, for that. There’s no safeguards. There’s no nothing. So when I was really on my high —I really struggled with that. It was really difficult for me to manage my finances. You know, when I wasn’t working ESA was a joke. They’d stop my benefits for ATOS assessments and they’d screw me over so I couldn’t pay rent and things like that. So my finances were in a huge mess when I was unwell. I wasn’t like 20K in debt or anything like that. It’s wasn’t ridiculous levels, but that can happen, very easily as well.

But actually what I started to do was as I became well and as I wasn’t as unwell, I started to manage my money a lot better. So I’ve gone on that journey and been really financially erratic to now I’m like, I’m managing my money better than other people and that’s uncomfortable for me. I’m not, this is odd. Why are things going so well. I’m from a working class background. I’ve grown up on a council estate with most times it’s been me mum bringing me up. So, I’m not exactly the most well off person in the world. But I manage things a lot better than I did. So, yeah there’s definitely—but you don’t, no-one really sort of does that. And it’s embarrassing to talk about it. No-one likes to admit that they’ve, that they’ve messed up money. And also, yeah, most young people mess up with money. You know, and you have to bear in mind that that actually that’s, it’s not a completely unique position to be in debt as a young person. So, yeah.

In terms of actual like finances and all of that, it took me a while to stop feeling sorry for myself. That was the biggest part, because I felt so sorry for myself that I was going through this that every time I had money, oh well, you’re like the most suffering person in the world, Dom. Go and treat yourself. I did that every week without fail. I felt so guilty about what I was going through that I would just buy myself things I didn’t need. Most of the time it was weed at the time. But these days it’s, it would be clothes or a game or something like productive I could get a benefit from, you know. But even those small decisions, the voices have an effect on even putting money in savings, my voices have an effect on.

Every time I get a money struggle, everything inside me wants me to go to my savings. Your dinner isn’st cooked by five o’clock Dom, it’s time to get £20 out for a pizza. No it isn’t is it. It’s just ridiculous. And they try and impact every decision I make, every financial decision, every step towards moving out everything. But the way I combat that is by gathering as much information as I can, knowing every answer to the things they’re gonna throw at me. So, I come to this place [local Mind centre]. And, I get housing advice. I get help. I’ve asked them so many questions they’ve been brilliant the whole time. And at home, it’s all written up, every answer to every question they may ask is there. So if I get confused, if they throw a curve ball at me, I know it’s there, so I just go and read it. Again, it’s, for me that evidence is the most powerful thing, because I can obsess about something that would never happen, but I can obsess about it to a point where I believe 100% that it will. And I have to go and- well, okay, let’s say that it was going to happen, you’ve got this much in savings. You’ve got this going on. You know you’re gonna get this help. So is that a possibility really’s and the severity of it drops. Maybe ever so slightly, but it drops. Every, every time that drops, I think, right, it can drop. The severity of the situation can be lessened. And I use that to okay, right, if I can lessen, if I can lessen the severity of this how else can I do that?’s More evidence. More, more planning, get more things in place. More money and savings. More this and then every eventuality is almost covered, you know. That’s how I deal with it. It’s a bit obsessive sometimes or I get what if that isn’t covered for’s, I find a balance in that, in my own way. But yeah, I, if I have all the information that I need and nothing can throw me off, nothing can give the voices an opportunity, because that’s what it’s all about, it’s about if they have an opportunity. If I feel an anxiety that I haven’t felt yet, they will blow it up. They will inflate that that anxiety to new heights. And I can’t prepare for every eventuality no.

I think with any kind of stress or pressure mental health being one of them. In life you have three resources – money, energy and time. You have to spend more of one if you spend less of the other two.

Wow.

So if I am feeling crappy and don’t have the energy to make lunch in the morning, I either have to – Well, I’ll have to buy lunch at work. Which costs money. But if I spend time and energy making food, I won’t have to spend as much money. It’s about balancing those three. Which I’m trying to get better at [laugh].

Mmm. Sounds amazing [laugh].

[sigh] Christ [laugh]. No [laugh]. NHS doesn’t pay as well as you’sd like.

Yeah.

[sigh] But yeah, I’ve been trying to – Basically I’m trying to save up to do a Masters in theatre. Which will be a long way off.

Okay.

Because, yeah. It’s another reason why I’m trying to look for a better job, because I need money [sigh]. It’s also. Yeah. I think with any kind of pressure you have, it will increase the burden or the load on energy or time.

I applied for Personal Independence Payment a while ago, but. That was – that’s known colloquially as the thing you have to apply to three times, to get.

Really?

Because I didn’t think I was eligible for support as you know, I’m in full time employment, I have enough money to get by and stuff like that. And my carer said, “Actually, the reason this exists is to – you know – you might run into additional expenses that other people might not. You, you might need extra therapy that’s private.” And suddenly I thought ‘ah, nice – yeah, yeah I suppose that would be, that’s a nice, that’s a nice benefit, and it’s something that would help me, and I am eligible for it, because I think that’s what it exists for, so I’ll apply. Didn’t get it. And I then – never applied again since.

It was just – You know, some of the questions they ask, ‘Can you cook a meal?’ I said, “Yeah, I cook.” I replied “I can do quite a nice Thai green curry, actually.”

But, yeah. I don’t think they appreciate jokes in the application. But nevertheless.

And sort of finances, I remember you were talking about the sort of trying to get benefits.

Mmm like, cos, it’s like I don’t really know what to do about that. I don’t wanna be on benefits like for rest of my life. But I don’t really want know what to do about it. When I get a job like do I mention it or ’cause they go through and look through your background and stuff. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to mention it. But then if I do are they gonna, are they gonna judge me and I don’t really know how to go about it. So

Stigma around it.

Yeah. So and I’ve sort of spoke to a CPN worker about it and that and she said, you know, ”Try and sort of get some sort of income like ESA or PIP which I’m trying to do. But, just they don’t especially with PIP they don’t wanna give it away very easily like I understand that. But also, they don’t sort of see like the [camera pans out] like they don’t see that it like that it is technically an illness. They don’t see that. They just see it because they caught me on a day twice that on the interview that I was fine and I was still telling them everything. My support worker was telling them everything. First time they copied all the wrong information, wrote all the wrong information down. So, second time, they still rejected it. And I haven’t even read it to be honest. I just read the rejection bit. I haven’t even read like their report or anything, because I don’t even know if they got like got the letter that my CPN worker sent. For all I know they couldn’t. So I’ve just gotta take it to her sort of when I see her before I go away and just sort of say, get her to read it and sort of see what’s going on. But, you know —

So do you think their assessment method isn’t very accurate?

No, because it’s only like unless they like, you’ve like got like your leg falling off or got like one arm or something. They, they or like a vision impairment like a really bad one. Like they don’t, they don’t see it. It’s like it doesn’t enter their head. And the amount of times I’ve said it’s intermittent. It can, I can have good days and bad days and really bad days, you know. And today might be a good day that you’ve caught me on, you know? But [laughs] that’s as good as talking to a window, you know. ‘Cause they don’t, they don’t like I say, they don’t hear the word intermittent. They just go, right, okay. They don’t, they don’t write it down. I know they don’t, because it would come up on the report. They don’t write it down. And it’s just like, it’s just irritating. And so, we’ve tried filling out that form and sending that off to ESA before Christmas. No idea if they have anything. Have I got it back or not. So, my CPN worker’s gotta ring them up and sort of see what’s going on. But only it’s the irritating thing is, they won’t talk to her until I give them permission. Until I say or they want to talk to her. If she rings ’em up on behalf of me, they just won’t talk to her. That’s how it is with the benefits.

I had problems with my finances because of my student, I was receiving DLA Disability Living Allowance no longer exists it’s called, PIP. I was told I had it for life and it was then cancelled when I had psychotic episode and they wasn’t sorting it out. So I had several months of not receiving it and I wasn’t receiving other benefits I was entitled to.

That was just ’cause of the paperwork.

Yeah. And I wasn’t, and I was still spending money. So I was kind of, ’cause I actually had to eat and stuff. So it was quite difficult with it. That’s all sorted since then. But problems keep coming up like, you know, when I went back to university, I filled out the student finance application and they told me it was fine. And then I moved and then they got this letter telling me, because I’d taken a year’s GAP out of studying I had to fill out another form. And they said, I couldn’t get my student finances. I filled out this form and I was having a psychotic episode at the time and it was my mum getting all stressed, blaming me as well, saying it was my fault for filling out the wrong form. And I was like, well, they told me I filled out the right forms. I couldn’t fill out the form, because I had psychosis and very comp- yeah. Ups and downs in terms of that, yeah.

And has anyone given you support about filling out the forms then? Or was no-one around to?

Not at the time. No-one was. But, yeah, since then, yeah.

So who would do that sort of thing then?

It’s kinda no-one has a specific job description to do that. But I suppose people can like care coordinators can, if you get what I mean.

Is that who helped you then?

Yeah.

It was – It would have been worse for me, except that my parents have been able to support me. But I bought a house a year before I started experiencing psychosis, or a flat. And because of – Because I owned a flat, most kind of benefit options were kind of closed to me. Because if you’re in rented accommodation you can get housing association help. But if you’re in your own place, there’s very little help available. So if my parents hadn’t have been able to help me, I think I would have had to sell my flat. And then wouldn’t have got benefits because I’d have had too much money from the deposit that I’d paid, to actually receive anything. So I would have, you know, put all the years and years of work and a bit of inheritance that I’d put into my flat, would have just gone straight out into just living expenses.

So that would have been really difficult, except that my parents were able to help. But I found like the services designed to kind of teach you about benefits and things is not that great. So I went to No Limits, which is like a charity that helps people under 25 with issues. And I said to them, “I don’t know how I’m going to pay my mortgage next month, because I can’t work, my benefits haven’t started yet.” Or “I don’t know what to apply for.” And that kind of thing. And they gave me a leaflet on homelessness [laugh]. And I thought I still own a house, and you’re already saying ‘well, maybe you’ll become homeless, so here’s a leaflet about what to do if you do. And I thought surely there’s an intervention before that stage? Like you shouldn’t be encouraging just ending up on the streets when there must be another way? And about – I think it was six months after I was off work, my benefits went up by – went up from like £57 a week to £125 a week. So it’s kind of enough to live on now. But for those six months, they would have just – like I couldn’t have possibly lived on that amount.

And was that just about applying for the right thing in the right way, or?

I think it was to do with the – the rate of benefits just goes up once you’ve been off for a long time, I guess they think ‘okay, you’re a long term ill person, and we’ll give you some more. Which I assume is how it works, but. I didn’t kind of know that. So when I got a letter through saying ‘your benefits are now this much a month’, I was like ‘oh, that’s nice’ [laugh]. But like I had no idea. And I’d been like really panicking about how I was going to like live the rest of my life on £57 a week. You know, because maybe I’ll never be able to get back to work. But, yeah. A few months after, it went up and it was okay.

I’ve got a room, basically, in a house. And when I first started going into supported accommodation, it was strange, ‘cos you had people up there, there was an office, it wasn’t like a house. You had a bedroom, but you had the staff up in the office and you had one staff member sleeping in overnight and one that was awake. You know, they were always around like getting involved in what you were doing. They’d knock your door and they’d say, you know, come on you haven’t been out of bed today and things like that. So, I can see why it would benefit some people, but because I didn’t need help with things like cooking and cleaning, I could do all that, they couldn’t really help me. I needed the help with the emotional side, the mental health side of things whereas they weren’t trained in mental health, which was kind of weird, ‘cos it was a house for mentally ill people. But yeah, they didn’t really, they couldn’t help me and they just ended up getting frustrated with me and that’s how it started to go downhill. But I mean, I’m in supported accommodation again now and it’s a lot more relaxed where I am. You know, you’ve got staff there, but they sit in the living room and they are just always about and you can just chat to ’em and it’s not sort forced like, what are you doing? You haven’t done this. It’s just nice. You can just talk to them about anything.

How did that change happen? Is that just different types, just it so happens that this other supported housing place was more relaxed or—

Yeah, I mean, the one I was in before, they call it a residential home. So it was more structured and things like that. But the one I’m in now, it’s literally supported living, but you just rent a room. I mean, the council pay for it. It’s just like renting a room in someone else’s house, basically, but you’ve got the people there if you need ’em. They do your medication for you and come up, wake you up to do your meds and then they sort of leave you. But if they haven’t seen you for a few hours, they’ll come up and check on me. And it is, it’s quite, in a way it’s nice, ‘cos you’ve got like that little comfort blanket. You know they’re there. And, you know, sometimes they’ll come up and they’ll catch me self-harming and they’d confiscate the razor and they’ll try and talk to me about it. But they don’t push too much, as much as the other people. So I think they’ve learned, especially the place I’m in now, ‘cos the first time I self-harmed they wouldn’t leave me alone. And it caused me to get so worked up they had to phone an ambulance, ‘cos my voice has got really bad and but since then, they’ve learned that, you know, I’m not gonna be dangerous. I’ve been doing it a long time. I know what I’m doing. They just let me have my space and come to them if I need to. So it’s quite helpful, really.

So that was moving from what kind of housing to what kind of housing?

So that was, I was already in it’s housing association housing. But I was in a third floor flat moved to a ground floor flat. But when I moved, I wasn’t well enough to unpack. So a year on, there was still boxes everywhere, because I wasn’t in a position to unpack and I’d never let anybody in, nobody, absolutely nobody, because I couldn’t, I didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t unpack. And so eventually I let somebody in and we set that goal and we worked towards it and we achieved what I didn’t think would ever be possible and then the impact of that on my mental health was huge, really. ‘Cause not only did I now have a liveable space, I could have people come over if I wanted them or needed them to come over. But also, it’s a reminder that I can continually tell myself that if a little bit at a time, ’cause I can’t do stuff for very long, because of my physical health. But a little bit at a time does achieve an end goal. And so with recovery say, a little bit at a time, hopefully will get to where you want to be.

Yeah, it’s part of my plan. I mean I’sve had to tell so many people to go away, and that’s not the easiest thing to do. But then when all these people are your neighbours, it’s just like, you’sre just desperate to move. Because I’sll go to the shop and I’sll see like, Come for a can. And it’sll be like, Mate, it’s 8, it’s 8 in the morning. And then I’sll be like say, I’m not coming for a can. Oh, you think you’sre too good for us now, don’st you? It’s like, No, but I just ended up in the psychiatric hospital. Enough’s enough. Like, yeah, but.

So moving will be really good for you?

Yeah. And it’s, basically it’s still like [place name]. It’s quite near my mum’s house. Which is nice. I can get one bus into town, so it’s not too far out, but it’s basically in the countryside at the same time. And I’m just like, really love the idea of just walking around. And there’s some really beautiful walks round there.

So your mum and family will be nearby?

Yeah.

You’sll know, it’s not like you’sre in the middle of nowhere?

Nowhere, yeah. So I’sll know my way back into town and everything. I just need peace and quiet. I need peace and quiet like seriously.

Will you still be able to get to work and all your other..?

Yeah. Not as easily, but one bus. So it’s alright.