How PFG Helps Me

Hello everyone my name is Glyn. 

I'm really in a good place right now with my mental health and while in a good place I would like to share with you how my mental illness effects me, my symptoms experiences, hopefully to help you to relate to what I'm saying, see the signs in yourself, and be brave enough to speak out loud. This Is Me!

I have Emotional Unstable Personal Disorder, I have Anxiety and Depression, I have been diagnosed with High Functioning Autism and Addictive Personality Disorders. None of these Labels really matter to me. They don't describe, who I am: my skills, my gifts, my passions, my intelligence, my likes or dislikes, the things I love or the things that anger me. I am more than my mental illness.

Mental Illness, is a strange paradox or term to me. I don't believe my mental illness is a mental illness, I choose to see it as a gift, it enables me to see the world differently, problem solve differently. I have a different consciousness that opens me up to new possibilities, new ways to dream, new ways to overcome the same problems other people experience.

I don't want my mental gift taken away from me or to recover from it, it makes me who I am, I'm happy with who I am, life is exciting for me because I'm able to think more creatively and out of the box. My mental gift allows me to question things and come at problems with a different perspective and create solutions, not more problems.

I spent over 25 years wasting my time seeing it as an illness, I was lost, lonely, stuck, negative, angry, my life changed when I come to PFG and experienced Peer Support.

My mental gift enables me to see myself as I really am, odd, eccentric, strange, intense, different, obbessive, I love it. I don't want to be the same as everyone else, I don't want to follow the crowd, I want to put my head above the parapet, I what to challenge the status quo and say why, why, why. 

I want to be the irritant that keeps challenging and won't except second best for you, me and my family. Being me makes me feel alive, like a thousand lightening bolts running though my veins. This is what it feels like to be alive, why would I want to recover from that?

I don't make any excuses for who I am. I'm like marmite, you either love me or hate me. It doesn't change the fact I will continue to do the right thing everyday, why because its the right thing to do.

Do I make mistakes yes, do I get ill yes, do I have bad days, yes. Do I not want to face the world somedays, yes. But doesn't every other human being with or without a mental illness or a mental gift.

Myth Buster, people with mental illness haven't cornered the market on having bad days. Everyone has bad days it's part of being human.

Being mental well to me is about being free to express ourselves in all forms. Being who were are without having to make excuses for it. Being around people who except your quirky personality, idiosyncrasies, strange thought processes. You not hurting anyone, your just not agreeing with everyone either. Thats when you know you have made it, thats when you know your at home, thats when you know your with your kind of people. Thats why im at PFG, I can be me, with Kelly Hicks, Wendy Robinson, Karen Imogen Senior, Graham Keeton, Michéle Beck, Jacqui Thompson, Stuart Marshall, Megan Cook, Stuart Marshall. To me thats what mental wellbeing is. They know my signs and symptoms and they protect me from me.

When I'm not at my best, I bite my second finger on my right hand.

I lose all color in my face, I go white.

I wont make eye contact with you and I only give you one word answers.

I avoid verbal conversations because listening to voices in my head and I'm talking to them, I cannot have conversations at once.

I lose my sense of humour and I become defensive.

I become extremely parinod thinking the government, mental health services, witch's and wizzards are trying to steal my soul and they want me to kill myself.

My suicidal thoughts go from level 1 to level 3 very quickly. Especially around Halloween and Christmas.

I withdraw from people, dont answer emails, phone calls, door at my home.
My delusional thoughts intense and I think I am reciever and transceiver of information and I become overloaded and I cannot switch off.

I post 40 to 50 posts on Facebook one after another.

My taste buds change, I become stranger with food, I cannot deal with certain colors and textures in my mouth, they send me out of control. Unbearable.

I'm unable to filter what I say, and I can offend people where if you know me, that's definitely not me.

There are lots more changes that happen to me when I'm not at my best. But hopefully that gives you a flavour of what happens to me.

Despite all these things. I chair meetings, I'm a peer supporter, I write poetry, I'm a Father, I'm a brother, I'm a son, I'm an Activist, I deliver training, I give presentations. I am an entrepreneur and a pioneer. 

I'm More Then My Mental Illness.

Glyn Butcher