At one point when manic in a session with L, my lived experience worker, I said ‘this is a metanoia’. She replied that that was cool, because she has a tattoo of metanoia in the greek characters, due to having had her own metanoia.
I was definitely using such fancy speak because of being high as a kite, but I wasn’t wrong. “The term has been used in psychology since late 19th century, when the American philosopher and psychologist William James, often labelled as the “Father of American psychology” used it to refer to a fundamental and stable change in an individual’s life-orientation which is followed by a positive re-building” and that’s exactly what the past 2 years have been.
It was a process beginning in November 2020, when my then boyfriend told me he wasn’t sure if he’d believe his child if they disclosed abuse. That was the trigger for my eventual mental health crisis I believe, and it certainly made me re-examine a lot of things. At the time, I felt like my needs were ‘too much’ to merit consideration, because historically I’ve needed a lot more than most people and most partners haven’t comprehended why. So I didn’t handle the situation well, and became very mentally unstable.
It was after that though that I found Chime to Thrive, on the NSUN website in a list of places they had awarded grants to. I initiated contact with L in the hopes of her advocating around my trauma symptoms, but instead we identified that I had as yet unidentified neurodevelopmental differences. During my time working with her, I was becoming increasingly manic, and she was exceedingly patient with me and my difficult symptoms at the time. Looking back, it’s crazy how the mania led me to just simply trust in the process, that the increasing self-awareness was leading to significant changes and ‘positive re-building’.
Thankfully, given that I was unfortunately very unsafe at one stage in my manic episode prior to being hospitalised, that process really has given me the chance to work on positive re-building. I managed to self-advocate that I needed supported accommodation in my first ward, which lead to the rehab ward being the option chosen rather than temporary accommodation. When that failed, an occupational therapist on the ward conducted an activities of daily living assessment, which secured me the supported accommodation I needed.
Since living here, I’ve had a safe place to struggle with functional care tasks whilst I regain demand capacity. I’ve had the safe space to practice and learn strategies that help me manage demands. I’ve realised that I can handle working, so long as it feeds the PDA current do so. I’ve realised that my long term goals would be either to research PDA, from a lived experience perspective, or to work as lived experience peer support for neurodivergent adults. Towards that goal, last night I had a mentorship session with two ladies from the Survivor Researcher Network, in order to gain advice on how I might pursue that goal.
It’s been a long, difficult and at times scary process, but I’m glad that manic me was able to trust. It was worthwhile.
PDA fae 