#MentalHealthAwarenessWeek

This week in the UK is #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek. 

I have been trying to think of how to write about my life with depression, anxiety and cptsd. 

In the end I decided to just type and see what came out, so what I post will be a collection of thoughts, perhaps without much coherence, perhaps not. 

Content Warning 🚩 I will be quite open about my paternal abuse and the mess that left me. 

✋disclaimer - the only person I hold responsible for the abuse is my father, my abuser, no-one else. Fellow survivors will understand. My mum and brother are amazing, brave, courageous people. 



My main cause of  mental ill health is being a survivor of paternal abuse. Whilst subconsciously I think I knew from a young age something was awry, through nightmares and the like that hindsight makes sense of, consciously I wasn't aware until my pre-teens and teens. Even then I thought it was me who was wrong, me who was the reason my father did the things he did, not just to me but to my mum and brother. 

Because we all lived in his reality, in his created world, best I can relate it to is in the Batman world and what the Scarecrow does to your mind. Totally warping reality into something both normal and nightmarish all at the same time. This meant that whatever he said reality was became reality in our lives. Unfortunately it meant he controlled the narrative about who was or wasn't believed. It is an ongoing form of mind rape, it warps your entire experience of life and how others see you. 

To this day there I do not know what mud he threw about me still sticks, I know some has but to what extent and to whom I have never been brave enough to ask. 

To know a truth but have everyone you know and love tell you that it is you who is wrong, that it is you who is the problem, that you must not fight back, you must not defend yourself, that you are wrong. That then becomes a core belief, mine was for many years that I was not good enough, that I was never good enough. 

I do not blame my family, for I too became and did some very toxic things whilst living in that poisonous reality. 

I am now 41 and it has been 16yrs since our father moved out of the family home. In that time I have more than entered recovery and live a full and overall healthful life. 

But the impact on living in that abuser reality on me, my brother my mum has been epic. We are the 3 of us very close, and all of us being survivors makes us even closer. But he did his best to tear holes in that closeness. To do so he often cast me in role of villain. I was a teenage girl who adored my dad (who I thought he was) but to him I was the person whose sense of justice for myself and others, (a sense of justice that makes me to this day fight for social justice), made it impossible for me not to question his injustices towards me, my mum and brother. I threatened his control and as such I had to be brought back under control. This meant making me unreliable to my mum and brother, it meant creating a narrative where I was unstable. 


One of his methods was age old used by controlling fathers and husbands, blaming my love of historical novels, particularly my love of historical romance novels. This one worked very well, I recall being told by my mum (who I know no longer holds this opinion as we all learnt more about how abuse works, so no responsibility lies with her, it is all on that toxic leech my father) more than once that the reason I "created arguments" with my father was because "you want to create the drama from your books". To this day I am utterly embarrassed by my love of these books and will more often than not read them on my e-reader as it's easier to hide them on there from others. I am getting better at this, though mostly around my brother whom I live with, as we know the best and worst of each other. 

This narrative came very close to getting me committed, or at least to his making that attempt. An attempt that had it not been for my brother would likely have been successful.  But I'll expand on that later. What did begin happening was any book of mine that wasn't under my bed would find it's way to the trash and on at least one occasion to a charity shop. That last one hurt a great deal as I lost one book that meant a lot to me, I was able to buy some back but only about half. I remember very clearly walking up to the shop thinking "oh there's a bargain book table" Then thinking "oh that's odd they're all books I have" I looked inside the cover of one and saw a mark that was in mine. That is when I knew they were mine. That is when I learnt without question that nothing of mine had any value to anyone else and I had no right to my things. To this day I find it hard to treasure things and half expect to find my things gone. It hurts deeply, another reason I like e-books. It is harder to throw them away as they remain in your main library. 

I left at one point, I was part way through re-doing my 1st yr of 6th form, I was supposed to be doing a gnvq 3. Which I did, and did well at but I was falling apart and need to run. So I ran off to Wales, travelled around the alternative new agey sites for a bit. But during a phone call with my brother found out our father had turned his attention to Thom, he was getting double the abuse. I mistakenly thought if I moved back I could help protect him and take some of the abuse back onto me. I was 17-18yrs old. 
It got worse. It was after this that efforts to have me committed, arrested or something equally as sinister occurred. 


There was one incident that to this day I begin shaking just thinking of it. I don't talk about this much at all. We had been sitting in the lounge, me, my brother and our father. I can't even remember now what he began the argument about - he used to start an argument in the middle so you were on the back foot and trying to placate and apologise and make the argument end. He was screaming, I remember sitting on the end seat on our leather chesterfield (battered 2nd hand sofa, I loved it) saying "lets sit down and talk about this like adults" at this point he launched across the room at me and shook and shook me screaming "stop it stop it you're getting like a monster. I don't recall much after that, my brother recalls father left first and I staggered up to my room. He recalls that later that day our mum asked him what had happened, and fortunately that helped. 

There was another time, this was after mum had finally escaped (he stalked her for weeks and luckily she was able to move with her then work away), which was a fairly major incident. Unfortunately, my brother was in the house and not with my father and I in the garden. We'd been gardening out back, burning some garden bits etc. It was dark twilight and we'd been tidying up and putting out the fire with water from the canal out back. I had been tipping gently a bucket of water over the fire to help it go out, as I stood up and turned around my father was holding a garden fork (just the metal bit, it was a broken one we'd been using for the fire) at my throat. I will never forget the look on his face with the light from the embers and the twilight. It was pure malevolence, his face said he had power over whether I lived or died and he didn't give a damn which. My life was in his hands, and thanks to previous incidents like the one above, he'd laid out his defence perfectly. We stood there for what felt like hours but was in reality no more than a few minutes. He lifted the fork and laughed, as if it was a great joke. 

That is just 2 of many, many incidents that he did to me. My brother and mum have many, many similar incidents that he did to them too. 

Luckily he moved far, far away in 2003 so we don't see him often. 


I was lucky to have access to a brilliant therapist through MIND and so started my first steps to recovery. Through the CBT aspect of the therapy I was able through alot of hard work to alter my core belief from "not good enough" to "sometimes I do things that are good enough". 

It was around this time I watched a film, a Jet Li film "Tai Chi Master". and loved the hints of Daoism/Taoism that it contained. I looked up Daoism online and found taoism.net/truetao.org run by someone who would go on to be a dear online friend Derek Lin (now an author and translator). Thus began my journey of a Dao Cultivator. I tend to think of Dao cultivation as a form of self gardening. It has been a very great help in navigating life and recovery. It has, to me, given me a resilience in life that I wouldn't have otherwise. There is much in daoism, that helps us to navigate the rougher roads in life and by doing so helps us to meet less harsh roads. 

I have since had a few tricky mental health moments, and have been on medication a fair few times. 

It has gotten harder and harder to access mental health support, this is due entirely to the wilful underfunding of the nhs and mental health services by the Tory and prior to the tory/libdem coalition govs. 

I guess if I have a message for anyone who has their own mental ill health journey's I'd say do not believe the depression. The reality depression tells us is it's own version of an abusers reality. It is warped and focuses on the negative. It isn't real, it feels real, but it isn't. You can learn to live around it and in recovery, there is help out there, even if it's online, medication has also evolved and is less invasive and can be a great part of recovery. 

It is possible to live a happy healthful life even with depression, anxiety and cptsd. 

All of us living with this win every single day we get up and live. 

Our past is part of us but it doesn't mean that is all we are. My surviorship is not something I am ashamed off, it is not something anyone should be ashamed of. 
Namcy V Raine wrote a book called "After the silence: Rape and my journey back" when we as survivors break our silence, when we speak our truth not the abusers truth, we take control away not just away from our abusers and rapists but all abusers and rapists. More than that we give power to all other survivors and victims of rape and abuse, whomever our rapists and abusers are. 

Same is the case for mental health, the more we talk about it, the more we normalise the language of mental health and the reality those of us who live with it face each and everyday, the more we are empowered and the mental ill health and those who would keep us there whether through stereotypes or lack of support are dis-empowered. 

#MentalHealthAwareness

If this blog has triggered anything for you please do seek help from the likes of 
MIND mind.org.uk
Samaritans samaritans.org.uk
Womens Aid womensaid.org.uk
sane.org.uk
thecalmzone.net
mensaid