She basically, she ran a group, started a group on a Wednesday evening up at the hospital.

You’ve been to it?

And I went to it a few times and there was like it was nice ’cause there was like people there my age. A little bit younger, couple of years younger than me and a little bit older than me and I talked to a few people and but it and I did a survey about she wanted me to do afterwards and what they could improve and that. Yeah, and it was really nice ’cause we weren’t sort of, it sort of mentioned about psychosis, but not all the time like we started like playing games and stuff and just sort of like we and everyone sort of, no-one was really like forced to talk about their own experiences or talk about it. It was like we played a game first and and then there was, she like they ordered pizza and it was just really nice. There was about nine I think of us.

Quite a big, yeah—

Seven to nine of us, which I was a bit worried about at first, but there was a couple of people that I knew from when I did rock climbing

And yeah and there was a couple of people I knew from when I did rock climbing and stuff. But I stopped doing that, because that was another support thing that I was going to with people with support workers and that, general- not assigned to me, but general ones from the team and but then that sort of got too big and I stopped going last year. And so, it started off with just me and the others and support workers and the instructors. And then, then it got like another person which I was okay with. And after a couple of weeks, I got friendly, talking to him. Then another, then I went away for a couple of weeks and I another new person came back. And it was just, every time I was going it was about three or four new people and I couldn’t deal with it at the time, ’cause I wasn’t on any anxiety medication or anything that worked. So I couldn’t deal with it and I’d just go home all the time. Which I sort of spoke to her on the last time I went before Christmas and sort of said, ”Look, I can’t come back any more until maybe in the New Year some time, because it’s just stressing me out too much and I’ve already got so much on my plate as it is. I don’t need all that.’ And she was fine with it and that and I stopped going. But, that’s the sort of support group and so I’ve not really found any others —

There is a big Instagram community you only have to search things like hash tag recovery or anything like that and people will come up. And on there you can have a private account you only let who you want to see, see. I mean, there are things to avoid on places like that. But if you’re focusing on the recovery community there’s a big community that are very helpful. Also groups on Facebook. I mean, I’m part of Mental Health Fighters, that’s the name if you search that it comes up and that’s really positive. And there’s a, a positive like Pen Pal so people with mental health is another group and people just write each other letters, send them positive encouragements with quotes or whatever you wanna send there aren’t like a, a list of addresses or anything on there. You put up a post and say, hi, I would love to send something positive or receive something positive. If you’re interested just send me a message and people do. Yeah, those are the main two groups that I use.

It was a girl who had basically had a series of really, really – almost spookily scary, spookily similar experiences to mine.

Yeah.

But I guess that’s – One thing I have considered is, maybe eventually you could categorise all types of mental illness, because maybe some people’s brains just – that particular chemical trips off that reaction in the same way.

Okay.

Or you could at least classify these bits. But it was – What basically, just yeah. Found

So, what’s similar about it? The actual images, or when it happened, or?

Yeah. The hallucinations. The background. The specific experiences. Even the specific – it was like someone who’d had an abusive family member who became one of their voices, who was the worst voice. And then they had another voice that sounded like them. And then one voice that helped them. And it was like – ironically, a more paranoid man than me would think someone had written this about me [laugh].

Ah, wow. So, just totally – yeah.

Yeah.

And what did that mean to you, when you – I mean, you said it kind of had a big – you know, really had a [inaudible]

It was basically someone who’s further along than I was. And had said, “This helped me.” And I thought ‘well, if all that’s the same, I might as well give that a go. And yeah, and it did work, so.

Tell me about the YouTube video, yeah.

Cool. Yeah, no, I’d just started making, it was just after the, the time it happened and I’d come back and I’d just finished telling everyone like the people who I trusted. And I’d got great, great feedback regarding that. And I felt comfortable again. But no, I just felt I felt like I didn’t, there was still something I needed to do. I felt still like I, I needed to speak about it even just to the air in front of me and then put it up. And I knew like looking it up, I knew that not a lot of people spoke about it. So I was just like, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna put on my camera [laughs] just rant about it. Just so if when I need to say that things like even if I felt bad like kind of like a confession for like if I felt bad for doing it like affecting people during that period, I’m just gonna say it. And then, just get it off and then just forget about it, kind of thing. Just move on. Because once you just get everything out, speak it all out, speak all your worries, you can just move on from things and like just not worry about it. You’ve addressed it. You’ve taken responsibility now I could just move on with my life, kind of thing.

One thing I’ll do is be kind of careful with social media. A couple of my family members are on like things like Facebook whom I’m friends with, but I’m always like more sort of – a little bit more vocal about mental health and my own mental health.

When it was – I don’st know if I can mention this, but the organisation ran a day where you are encouraged to talk about things, and that was just last week.

Time To Change. Yeah that’s okay to say that.

Yeah, Time To Talk day, yeah.

Yeah, Time To Talk day.

Yeah. Yeah they ran a Time To Talk day, which was last week. And I was careful not to post too much on Facebook where members of my family are on. And I was more sort of – because they were encouraging people to talk about, and have conversations, I had posted more on a different social media. So I was on Twitter.

Okay.

Posting where people from my family can’st see what I’sve posted, and where its people from the volunteering from Time To Change who can see it instead.

And how was that sort of, twittering about your experiences?

That felt okay, yeah. I didn’st put too much in there, but I was – It was kind of similar to doing the testimony training thing. Which is one of their training things, where you do like a 5-10 minute talk, intended for like schools or workplaces. Where you talk about – like give a timeline of how, of your mental health.

And that I always mentioned a lot more. I always felt better reading it out. I didn’st feel confident reading it out at the actual training session, but the woman – the person running it said, “If you want to, we can arrange a phone call and you can try and read it out to me over the phone.” Which I did, and I felt better for doing that. And that was kind of similar to going on Twitter and writing about it. Neither of them kind of mentioned psychosis, because I wanted to focus on more the depression and the anxiety side of things.

Yeah.

But I think there is still that kind of thing inside of me, stigma inside of me what kind of says depression and anxiety are okay-ish to talk about to people.

Okay. Yeah.

But maybe when it comes to talking about thoughts and when it gets on to things like paranoia and psychosis, kind of – I’m a bit more reluctant to mention them even to people in the mental health community. Because it’s maybe – I see it as something a bit more – like I don’st know, maybe it’s seen as something where you’sre more of a risk or something.

I also go to Mind, which really really helps. I mean the-, I go to a wellbeing group and it’s called, and it’s funded by the National Lottery and it’s a 12 week course where they cover just general wellbeing topics and at the start you set a goal and then they work with you on that goal towards the end of the 12 weeks they kind of review how that’s done. And, it’s a rolling programme, so anyone can start at any point. But I’ve now been going for a year [laughs] so the 12 weeks was a nice idea, but we’sve- me and my, I met a friend there, we didn’t know each other before. But we’re good friends now. And, we go together. —

What sorts of things. Can you just sort of mention the sorts of things that that’s helped with?

Well, it’s helped with being around people who although their experiences aren’t the same, they understand. They’re also, it’s run by support workers and for the last hour there’s sort of a general chat amongst everyone getting to know each other, talking about whatever you want. But there’s also the staff are there if you want a one to one chat. There’ve been lots of times where things have been difficult during the week. It’s somebody outside of services that doesn’t have the same perspective, but understands mental health that you can just let things out and talk about whatever and they never sort of go, oh my gosh, that’s so strange or like can’t believe you’re experiencing that. Yeah, they just understand. Also, so some of the goals I’ve set have been one of them was to be out of hospital as much as possible. I had, during that time we worked to put things in place and I think I only went to A&E four times whereas at some points it’s been like every other day. So, yeah, working on that was a big improvement

But they do so much for me. I mean, I can even, if I can’st go to a therapist, I can ring my [local] Mind worker and just rant at ’em. I can just, have you got half hour? Yeah. Right my day [laughs], has been right shit’s and they listen to it the whole time. They’re fantastic. They really are fantastic. And, I cannot thank them enough, cos a lot of my housing worries were ridiculous. They were ridiculous things. But they didn’t even make me feel ridiculous about them. Every one I felt ridiculous about they said, Why is that ridiculous? You’re worried about a real thing, why is that ridiculous? Why is that ridiculous?’s And even that recognition is big, it’s a big thing. And yeah, they’ve provided so much support for me. I mean, they’sre only supposed to be my housing, my housing support, but they’ve been a friend as well.

Because before that residential I had no friends. I was bullied regularly, and I’sd always think the worst of people. And think the worst of what people think of me. Soon after the residential I started talking to people in my youth group. And someone called A, was there for me. And I met a lot of my friends through that person.

Oh, brilliant.

And then I just made friends off friends. And because it weren’st until I was fourteen that I done the residential, I guess I grew up a little bit slower than people.

In the sense that when you’sre younger, you have a laugh, you muck about with your friends and so on and so forth. But it weren’st until come, come sixteen, seventeen, I’sve only just branched out, making friends. So I’sd, I’sd make friends, friends through one friend, and that’s how my social circle kind of kicked off for me. It was I had no friends transferred from school it was all from the youth club that I went to. I still attend one there, I do Duke of Edinburgh awards and that can be good. It gives you a reason to do things. So like you’sve got a physical, a skill, and volunteering section. So you can gain a lot from it. As well as getting your awards at the end.