Nelsy - Interview 21

Age at interview: 56

Age at diagnosis: 48

Brief Outline: Nelsy, 56, was born in Colombia and has been in the UK for 19 years. Nelsy experienced a nervous breakdown. She believes that illnesses are caused by accumulated anger and "fear of the social pressures for an impossible social equality".

Background: Former teacher, now describes herself as a "natural community builder", married with 1 adult and 1 teenage child. Ethnic background/nationality: Latin American (born in Colombia); in UK for 19 years.

More about me...

Nelsy helped to write her story.

Nelsy was a teacher for 20 years until she came to this country where she had to clean houses; later she taught Spanish and Latin American dance. Nelsy finished a foundation course in Counselling in 1996, and in 1998 she experienced a nervous breakdown. Terrified of her illness and the social stigma, Nelsy decided to research her mental health. She says that her illness was a result of her anger and fear towards her parents, historical events, God, men, authorities, herself and other individuals. She believes that mistakes she made in the past led to her nervous breakdown. 

Nelsy was also caring for her husband who was retired through ill health, when she describes feeling 'strange' and wanting to run away. Prior to her breakdown, Nelsy had lost some of her ability to concentrate, and wasn't eating or sleeping well. She went to the GP and was prescribed Valium but she was worried about becoming addicted or developing the desire to take stronger medication. The GP also referred her for 6 weeks of counselling, but this left her feeling suicidal. At the time, the only way she could cope with her feelings was by focusing on her responsibility to look after her young daughter. At one point when feeling suicidal, Nelsy went to her GP who called her husband to accompany her to the hospital. She says she was shocked when she found it was a psychiatric hospital and that she was terrified when she acknowledged that she was hearing voices. Nelsy began to look for anything that helped her and she gained confidence when she stopped hearing voices. She joined group therapy and she started working on her anger and fears. Nelsy says she is very pleased with her research but that she still gets anxious and nervous about new things and situations, and gets a nervous stomach, finds it difficult to eat, and picks the skin off her fingers without realising it.  Since her breakdown, Nelsy sometimes finds it difficult to remember things and to read.

For Nelsy, spirituality is about relaxation; she doesn't believe in God or follow a religion. 

Nelsy says no one looks after her, she looks after herself. Nelsy's research has been her own reflection on her life. She has gradually produced a diagram that shows all the things that have played a part in her experiences. Nelsy says she always tries to find something positive out of the negative or painful. For example, since her breakdown, her English has improved, partly as a result of going to group therapy. Before going to therapy Nelsy was not confident in her ability to speak English and had to rely on her English-speaking husband to talk with her GP and psychiatrist.

To keep herself healthy, Nelsy plans her time carefully, seeing different people and doing different things every day. Once a week she goes to a Latin American group; she finds talking to Spanish speaking people helpful. She also has a siesta everyday, eats well, and is learning to grow food on a shared allotment. Nelsy is currently training as a hairdresser. She doesn't want to work for payment, preferring to exchange her skills with other people because she believes that working for money contributes to illness in society. Nelsy considers herself a professional by experience and wants other people to know that there is a way out of mental health and there is help out there.

Nelsy feels she became unwell because it was "unnatural" to try to get richer and higher up in...

And to come into this country to clean houses earning '5 what people who go to school only can get, and I gradually built up what I can say my own business teaching Spanish and Latin American dance. And I was doing very well but to my shock I was doing so well that I fell down very badly. So I end up thinking that the problem is not just me, this, the problem is society. When I accept society I'm contributing to put myself in the wrong place because society is only the division of people by property so it is the poor, the bit richer, and richer and richer, and those who never was, who never had any material property. The opportunity to get it is through the system of education and the higher you study the higher in the tree you are. So to me the fact that society divides people, that is sick. The way I see my, my journey is having gone to the society in my country, trying to scale the tree, climb up the tree in this society, in this country, in this rich country. I was making an awful effort and to me there is the ground where the only place where people can be equal, climbing and climbing we are never equal, we have to get down to the ground and be equal. So to me, health, it only exist in the, in the Natural Community. To me, we are all mad, we are all wrong, all of us need therapy but it's not therapy to go back to the trees, it's therapy to stay on the ground because we, I believe that we are designed to be healthy in equality'

What I had done in my life, [laughs] because when I see my diagram I, I'm meant to be just a Natural Person but I did abuse myself going through this system of education as high as possible. For me that is abuse to a Natural Person that I'm meant to be Naturally.

Nelsy says language and communication are crucial for therapy and at first lacked confidence in...

What I really want to say is that the language and communication are so crucial in therapy. And I was saying that talking with people is never the same as talking to people. But we normally say talking to, I'm talking to Maria, talking to Juan, John to whoever. That sounds patronising. If you talk with someone it is different because there is a relationship that comes and goes. So the way we use the language and the words that we use had a lot to do with mental health, a lot, because we just repeat and repeat everything. It's like the word 'mind'? What is 'mind'? I don't use the word mind because mind is so many things and at the same time it is nothing. So yeah it's questioning almost everything, everything that I was doing. And perhaps because I studied linguistics, the language became for me very crucial. Very and it helped me. So in the end it's a lot of circumstances in my life that together make me a different person that I am now. 

When I really became aware and conscious of everything, putting my own ideas and answers to my own questions, I came out as a totally different person which I am very pleased I am. And yeah I always wanted to be a calm person since I was working, there was a teacher who was so soft and so gentle, I wished I was like her, and now I can say I am [Laughs]. Having an easier life, my whole philosophy of life is totally different. It's a pleasure, life is a pleasure, it's not a rush, a pain any more. 

And so did you experience difficulties expressing yourself, for example in therapy or'? 

Oh yes, yes, I, the fact that I was not confident about English, about my English, put me off. Within this counselling course, it's when I came about how important it was for me to speak up. The first day it was about 50 people sitting in, in a room and, and I, in my own view they were all, all of them were English and because they spoke very well and easily. And it was nearly the end of the day and I hadn't said a word and my heart began to go [gestures], so it was following my feelings that I learnt to speak because I remember saying at the very last minute I want to say something, shaking and I said, 'I'm shaking.' And I explained that, 'I'm a foreigner, this is the first time I'm in a room with so many English people, English speakers that speak so fluently and so easily, but my heart is coming out.' So expressing exactly what I was feeling, that was all I needed. So that was another big, big lesson.
 

Nelsy had suicidal thoughts when her counselling sessions ended too soon.

And then came the counselling, six sessions of counselling where I began to talk about my anger with my parents and with many people, just mentioning it because six sessions were not enough. Actually the, the counsellor was very distant, she was, used to sit in a corner far away. And I remember telling her after the sessions, the six sessions, she said, 'I don't see you any more,' and I said this is like I want to say goodbye properly. And because the Latin American way is to give a hug, and to closeness but she just stretched her hands like that and just so I just felt it was a waste of time and then I became suicidal. In my head there was a picture of a baby, a baby, an unborn baby and I could see the umbilical cord and everything and I remember because she, she probably gave me another few session afterwards and she asked me what was the feeling and where does the cord link to, goes to? And I said, 'It ends in this room.' And since then, I became suicidal really. And I couldn't get rid of the thoughts and gradually working with my anger they went and I cut my medication off and so.

So you mentioned I think going to hospital'?

Yeah

When did that happen?

[Laughs] Yes that was, I suppose I was already feeling suicidal.

Was this around the same time then?

After the sessions with the counsellor, because, I took my daughter one day to school and I, and these thoughts of killing myself terrified me, I knew that my husband was not at home, he had gone to post office, somewhere nearby and I didn't want to go back to the house on my own. I went to the doctors which is just around the corner and I told one of the staff how I was feeling and they spoke with the doctor and the doctor said for me to stay, that they would keep phoning home until my husband was there so I could go. But I suppose they also saw the danger of me being on my own anywhere and they suggested for me to go to the hospital.

Nelsy didn't realise she was experiencing mental health problems and was shocked when she was...

I was relying so much on medical help that I didn't mind going to the doctors and having whatever they gave me. But never in my life I thought I was going to be mentally ill, or psychologically ill. 

Did you recognise what you were going through at the time as a mental health issue, when No?

No. Not until they took me to the psychiatric hospital then the, the shock came, and my awareness began. I began to change everything around me and looking for my own answers.

And what did you think when they gave you, well initially they gave you Valium and then they changed that, they gave you Prozac.

Prozac and something else.

So what did, what did you make of that, what did you think they were giving you that for, did you think at that point that you had a mental health problem or'? 

[Sighs] The doctor gave me Valium and the day of the, when they took me to the emergency team was when I realised it was psychiatric unit. And then seeing the psychiatrist later on, changing my medication, by then I was aware of, that it was not a physical illness. So did you, when you first got the Valium from your GP did you, did you think it was a physical'?

No, no I didn't think that. I thought that maybe I think this, I was so na've, thinking that the nerves is something like a tummy, so a tablet for the aching of the nerves [laughs], something like that, well it wasn't like that but. It's a very na've way of seeing things, I suppose. Mmm'

Nelsy says her recovery was hard work but it was worth it.

And yeah when I see, I mean I was having my life and I was going up and up and up and there so were so many, from so many different points of view that, the way I call it, 'a break down' is of course, my life broke there, and I fell down, that's how I see it, that's how I show it in my picture. 

And it's not just a falling down, it's falling down on my own, in a, that's why it's black my line, because it's a dark tunnel, not knowing where I was going to end up. And the way I see it I ended up in a, like a vacuum on my own with many other people in the same situation, others looking after them but not knowing exactly where anyone is going. So I think that I look back and I say, 'I have dug out with my own hands, my own path, very painfully, for a long time, very hard, but in the end it's been worth it'. And the path is open for anyone who wants to follow it.

The presence of her white English husband meant staff treated her better.

When I look back I feel grateful for my husband to be there because I know and I've heard of other people who have been seen by these teams have been treated badly, ignored, horribly. But I think that, because there is racism, well it's everywhere, but the fact that my husband is white and blue eyes and tall, and strong man, well-spoken, well-educated, by me, being by me he gave a different impression, they listened to me. He also was with me in appointments and so to me the fact that he was white, English, made a difference to the treatment that I received because then when I was on my own then I knew what abuse was [Cries]. That is hard. Why do I have to have someone by my side to be respected? Ignored and humiliated, that's what I…

Nelsy wrote letters to members of her family to express her anger.

So I began to deal with my anger writing letters to my mum, nine letters altogether, telling, explaining her, 'look I'm angry with you because of this and that and that and that'. At the time I was in a therapy group, and I was telling the group what I was doing, and I began to realise how healthy I began to feel. So I began to think, 'well this is interesting, it's not matter of telling people about how my mum was, it's about telling her how angry I am with her.' 

So I did it and I knew that was going to be angry with me, she wouldn't like it but I risked it. And yes, she stopped talking to me for a while and later on she wrote to me. I tried to speak with her and, but she proved to be terribly ambitious and materialistic and, if I help her with money and things I was her daughter, if I joined her church I was her daughter, if not then I wasn't. So I decided, OK I don't have a mum and gradually over time I, I made my own decision to be my own mum. I think I was lucky to know what being a mum was because I already had my, my daughters when I had a nervous breakdown so I knew what it was being a mum. I didn't want to be like my mum, consciously, and so yeah I decided that I was, and I have been, I have been, and I am a different mother. So at the moment I'm mothering myself, and fathering as well because my dad died when I was fifteen so I have to mother myself, and I mother my two daughters which is very hard. But I, but if I do it that makes me a better person and a better mum that I want to be. So dealing with my anger I also dealt with my anger with my dad but because he was already dead I also wrote a letter to him but I share it in my group. For me the group represented my dad, the absent dad and it also helped me to release my anger and to calm down, calm my anxiety because that's what I was, I was too anxious, too nervous about everything [Sighs]. So I continued dealing with my anger.

Nelsy has trained to give massage and says giving and receiving massage is relaxing and helped...

So when I went to the counselling session with the, [name] he, through questions, he took me down, back in time to my childhood and I was crying like a two year old, angry and sad. And' there was a point when he came to me [horn beeps] and put his hand on my shoulder and suddenly it was like a, as the course is called a 'turning point' in me. I began to cry in a different way. This angry little toddler changed suddenly into a needy toddler because that little touch made me understand about my need of physical affection. My mum or my dad never would have, never showed any affection and to me it's just a human need. So my husband suggested for me afterwards to go for massage, body massage and that helped me so wonderful that I did the course and I give body massage. It is not just good for the person who's receiving the massage but also for me a time of relaxation, a time of  togetherness, a time of confidentiality, so all this apparently insignificant things are what really help to, helping me with my mental health.