About Me
Who Am I?
Hi folks!
My name is Bronwyn and I am recovering from the depths of psychosis. Right now, I’m as well as I’ve ever been. I have a stable and loving marriage, my career is starting to go places, and I’ve amassed an enormous collection of fancy pens. What else should you know about me?
I love creating, solving puzzles, and analysing data (yes… Nerd alert… I know…). Unless you count my husband, I have no kids, and I’m currently trying to convince said husband that we should get a dog. Life is – mostly – great.
My Problem
It hasn’t always been this way for me. I grew up in an alcoholic home, surrounded by chaos. Because of this, various traumas in childhood and adolescence, and (more often than not) my own stupid mistakes, I’ve struggled with my mental health since I can remember. I spent my teenage years in the fog of depression and, in 2014, my mental stability took a confusing and terrifying nose-dive when I started hearing voices.
Psychosis sucked me into its rabbit-hole several times over the next couple of years and can say it was the most painful and confusing experience of my life. I won’t go into too much detail on here – otherwise, you’d be on this page forever – but if you’ve never heard of psychosis before, you can find out more about it on Mind’s page here.
Why Am I Writing This Blog?
For the last few years, I’ve been doing everything I can to try and recover, move on, and succeed in spite of this ugly side of my brain. I’ve had some success and more failures than I care to admit. I’ve been in long-term therapy for the past few years and have reached a point where I think writing about my experiences could do a lot to help me. As well as this, my many slip-ups have given me knowledge that I think could be useful to other people. In short, I’m doing this to help myself and hopefully others at the same time.
I’ve split the scope of this blog into three main aims, which are closely aligned with my values (you can read more about how these came about on my Reboot post):
Educate – raising awareness of mental illness (focusing on psychosis) and the recovery journey.
There is so much shame and stigma attached to severe mental illness – even amongst the medical community that is supposed to help people get better. That is wrong. It has to stop. I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but there truly are lives at stake.
I hope my experiences can help a wider audience understand more about serious mental illness and encourage professionals and policy-makers to challenge the stigma and understand how their actions affect us.
I am also seeing more and more polarised views around mental illness, treatment, mental health, recovery… you name it… and a lot more mental health discussion in popular culture. So I want to look at some of this too.
Empower – sharing my experiences to help others lead more fulfilling lives.
Mental illness is hard. It sucks the life out of you. There is no way you can get through it alone. I want to use the experiences I’ve had to help other people. Nothing would make me happier than knowing I’ve helped someone feel – at least a little bit – better.
My background has left me confused and unable to trust my feelings. A lot of the time, I feel like my brain just doesn’t make sense.
I’m a big believer in introspection and finding meaning. I know that finding my “truth” has helped me understand myself and re-take control of my brain. It can help end the cycle of pain. I want to share what I’ve found helpful so that, hopefully, one less person will have to go through what I went through.
Evolve – learning and stretching myself by encouraging people to thrive and find their meaning.
I want to use my blog as an avenue to grow. I want to create an encouraging, vibrant community of people which supports each other, but I know I don’t yet have all the skills to do so.
So, I’ll be learning and developing as I continue with the blog. When I gain insight from this learning and development, I’ll be sharing that on the blog as well when it’s relevant.
What Can You Get From This Blog?
The scope of the blog will become clearer over time. For now though, I’ll start with the following topics/formats:
- Opinions on mental health in the news and pop culture;
- My experiences with various aspects of mental illness;
- Experiences of recovery, and what has helped me;
- Links to resources (i.e. documents, websites etc.) which I have or would find useful;
- Links to other helpful people in the online mental health community.
Ultimately, what you’ll get from me is authenticity. I’ll be real, open and honest about the nature of mental illness, and the ways in which I combat it.
What Won’t Be On This Blog?
No Professional Advice
Firstly, I should point out that this blog is not a substitute for professional help. I’m not a psychiatrist, psychologist, counsellor, or doctor. I’m not equipped to diagnose you or offer advice on medications or treatment. Don’t change your treatment based just on what I say on this blog – always speak to a professional first.
No Real Names
Secondly, I am likely going to write about some of the more stressful events from my childhood. Most of my childhood and adolescence was traumatic. Many of the people I was surrounded by were toxic and, sometimes, abusive.
When I write about these difficult times, names, and other details in the writing will be changed to protect the privacy of people involved. I’m not doing this blog to get revenge on anyone that wronged me. I’m doing this blog so that I can work through my feelings and – hopefully – continue getting better.
No Trigger Warnings – or Glorification
Lastly, I won’t post trigger warnings. I have no idea what topics are going to affect people – if any! I don’t know what is going to hit home. You are the best judge of what you can tolerate. Trigger warnings are never going to be sufficient for everyone, so this is your generic trigger warning:
I post about mental illness. A lot of this is ugly stuff – which is why people so rarely air it. If you want more info on what a post is about, check the tags. I will always give a post a few descriptive tags, so this will give you a good idea of the content. If you’re not in the right place to read it – that’s fine. Save it and come back when you feel you can.
Don’t worry; there will be no gore/glorification in the posts. For instance, if I’m talking about self-harm, I won’t put details of the method, materials or images of the act. I won’t sugarcoat shit, but I won’t make it worse either.
Thanks For Reading
Anyways, thank you for sticking with me to the end of this page (they won’t normally be this long!)
I really appreciate having you here and thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to join me. I hope you enjoy reading.
Until the next post!
Bronwyn @ LBT X
