Dear Naomi
I have been trying to catch up with what I have missed since having a break over the summer - but lots have been going on and many new members have joined
So please forgive me if anything I say is inappropriate or has been said before
I wanted to say how much I know your story will help others and 'resonate' for both sufferers and survivors and could inform those who provide services for sufferers of PNI.
because you explain it so clearly and eloquently.
And so much of what you said resonated with me and I could relate to much of what has been said in this thread
but the bit I want to comment on here in this reply is in your first post and I expect I will gradually catch up with the rest of the thread over time
I relate so much to what you say about having delusions about the end of the world - as I did too.
I was never diagnosed with PP and I have been told by some here that if I was never diagnosed I could not have have had PP as it is impossible to get through PP without diagnosis, medication and hospitalization ?
So I have accepted that I did not have PP and worry if despite the lack of diagnosis I insist I did it will be again thought that somehow I am 'jumping on the bandwaggon'
- but whatever I did have looking back was very scary and my behavior and thoughts were very strange and I certainly relate to at least some of what you describe of your PP experience
I actually went to work at the time when my behavior was really erratic. I was still on extended maternity leave so not workign as much as normal when I had what I remember as psychotic symptoms .
I knew all was not 'right' and had told my work this so I was supposed to be easing myself back gradually to work by going to a few meetings and doing a piece of research work but with no actual contact with young people and really little contact with anyone for a few months except by letter and sometimes by phone.
This was as much of my research involved sending out postal questionnaires, putting it altogether and never talking with anyone face to face at work except briefly over a coffee break and at home their was no one but me and the baby as my husband was in the Falklands and I had few friends at the time locally.
So at times I put the reason why I never had a Psychosis diagnosis down to the fact that I was pretty much alone during the 3 or so months this happened to me, living up an unmade track on a smallholding, hardly seeing anyone when home and few when at work due to my main occupation at that time was to be shut in a small room by myself to compile questionnaires and write up the research
( as I said my husband was away at sea - he is a merchant seaman and was usually away for 3 to 4 months but at the time but this time his ship was supporting oil prospecting in the Falklands and as it is not worth putting a crew and ship so far away for only 4 months he was away for 6 - the worst time in my entire life)
Anyway to cut a long story short - whether I had PP or not I too thought the end of the world had come ( my obsession was with global warming and environmental disaster - which has now unfortunately turned out not to be such a baseless fear after all)
I was so scared from day one that I had brought my daughter into the world only for her to die horribly from living in a world that could no longer sustain human life!!
This eventually progressed so that I beleved it had happened or was happening and I felt that one way out would be to kill her humanly first so she would not suffer!
( these obsessions later changed into thoughts that I would lose it and kill her to protect her from me and also that I would 'go mad' and do it, this was during my PNI stage )
and at one point I thought that everyone else was dead and Caja - my baby - and me were the only ones left alive - at other times I thought that we were also dead too but we were all ghosts and no one except me knew we were dead .
I have written about this before but the amazing thing was in my case no one at all noticed!!
I even went to work to a meeting one day and when I got there I made some comment while we were chatting over coffee in a break in the meeting - my comment was something like ' when I was driving in I could see - or I thought - the end of the world had finally happened'
no one took any notice - maybe they thought I was making some inane comment about the weather which was very overcast that day....
I also talked - and I mean really talked to my animals.
I saw them as my true friends and they were still alive while all other humans were dead or ghosts and I confided in them - I had a smallholding with chickens, goats, ducks, horses and ponies, a couple of cows as well as several cats and two dogs.
I would walk the moors ( dangerously with no torch) all night with Caja in a front pack and think about jumping down a mine shaft - I threw all my knives down one of the shafts as I was scared I would kill Caja and myself with them so we did not even have a knife to butter our bread!!
I would dance for hours to loud music, shout and scream and indeed rave, but living up a lane on my own with a husband at sea - there was no one to hear
I have written about this time I went though before see:
veritee.proboards7.com/index.cgi?board=pp&action=display&n=1&thread=5116&page=1re reading it I can see that even when I wrote that which was not so long ago I was pretty confused about what had happened to me at that time
and I guess I still am
There is much more that I relate and want to comment on about what you have said including your latest 'blip' as I had these many times too
and I so relate to when you say that while the PP was awful in a way the PNI that followed was worse because it lasts so long
Yes thats how I feel - the psychotic episodes I describe were horrible and frightening but the depression and anxiety that followed were never ending and defeating
but I suppose both are equally awful in their own way. I just wish no one experienced either!
As I have a lot to catch up with I thought it best to start at the beginning and not try to cover everything at once.
I think your ability to describe your experiences so clearly will be very helpful to others
Thank you for coming here, every post any of us makes WILL help at least one other I am certain of that
Veritee