Past, present and future - From rock bottom to mental health nurse

  I find the use of analogies helpful because they allow me to make better sense of my thoughts, feelings and experiences.   Freeing myself from my internal prison perfectly sums up my anorexia recovery process. I was my own judge and jailer, sentencing myself to a life of pain and misery. My experience of anorexia was like being in a dictatorship. She would tell me what to do and I had to obey without negotiation. She was demanding, controlling, manipulative and ruthless, any defiance led to punishment. I was trapped and I felt helpless. There was an element of safety to my imprisonment though. I felt hidden and protected from the outside world in the confines of my toxic bubble.   This internal prison was shame. In my opinion, shame is potentially a hugely paralysing and damaging emotion to experience, especially when it is enduring. It can be overwhelmingly painful to feel. I felt shame because of who I was, and I was not safe to show that person to the world....

  If you know me in real life or follow my twitter account then you’ll know that I do have a tendency to veer towards negative thinking and as you can imagine, this has at times been significantly worse throughout stages of the current pandemic. Ruminating on and critiquing my past and overthinking current circumstances has completely overshadowed any ounce of goodness that I may be experiencing. It is as though I do not feel there should be anything to feel positive about and it would be wrong to allow myself to feel that way.   Being a student mental health nurse has posed a real challenge to me because of my vulnerability to negative thinking and my tendency to become an ‘emotional sponge’ (Somebody that takes on the emotions of those around them). Throughout the placement experiences I have had so far, I have worked with many people who have suffered immensely as a consequence of trauma (including iatrogenic trauma), their mental illness itself, social isolation, stigm...