A lot of people’s 20s can be a time of happiness, for enjoyment, finding out who you are in the world and your place in it, meeting friends, a life partner, learning to drive, forging a career path, going on holidays, parties, saving for a house.. a time where life is full, your energy is plentiful.
Mine was a succession of trauma, difficult times and hospitalisations that spanned out over a decade.
It is only now, in my 30s, that I have been living a life worth living. I feel like I am making up for lost time, there are many ways in which my life has expanded, i have happiness, laughter, connection, adventure, hobbies, prospects, friends, more mental clairity, I feel more a part of society. Where there was black, white and shades of grey, there are now a full spectrum of colours.
At one point, when I was 24, I genuinely did not want to get old because, my experience of being alive was terrible, my mental health was very poor, i felt that things could not get any worse – the thought of having mental decline was unbearable – it had already declined enough…. Looking back, I wish I had a crystal ball to see into the future, or someone (i.e. mental health professional) – to tell me that things would get better. Even family involvement would have made life more worth living. But I was on my own, with no crystal ball and no proof that this decline into craziness and lack of pleasure (anhedonhia) was just a passing experience. It seemed to stretch on forever.
I wish I had of had a crystal ball, because it would of seen :
Having a wonderful experience of being alive
No longer being broken
No longer going round in circles in a desperate bid to become well
Freedom from a state of being / mind that was always in turmoil and frazzled.
Loving myself and having more peace.
Full use of my cognitive faculties
Not returning to hospital, ever again.
Having feelings of wellbeing.
Having a change in consciousness.
Having some amazing `and magical experiences due to accepting spirit into my life.
Have a blossoming energy awareness that I can use to help others
Having an awareness of my chakras and knowing what I need to do – moment to moment to overcome negative energy state.
Hobbies (taking up baking was a game changer when in hospital, it kept me well, my energy was put into creating something, and it helped me to connect to other people).
Health – eating organic, cooking from scratch (I lived on takeaways, or buying processed ready to eat foods)
Friends
Going on adventures – The coast, Thailand, Music festivals, healing festivals, protests, healing workshops, charity shop crawls,
Going to open mic nights, sometimes performing.,
Having a healing business
Getting a degree in social psychology
Studying for an MA
Owning my own flat
Owning a narrowboat
Not having toxic people in my life
Looking after myself – doing self care
Having conversations and connections with people
Having a profound connection to nature
Becoming an auntie
Having a lovely ginger cat called angel.
life itself can indeed feel like an adventure.
Being well enough to return to the paid working world and being recognised for my skills in helping others.
That crystal ball would have come in very handy.
For over a decade – in my 20’s, following the death of my mother by suicide, things were very difficult for me. I entered a black hole that seemed to consume everything. They say that time is a healer, but as time passed, the psychotic / unusual experiences became worse and worse. Things were becoming more and more terrifying. You know the term ‘going through hell?’ Well, for me it was a bit more literal than the metaphor. For me, it involved seeing / hearing demons / the devil and even on one occasion, I thought id seen hell itself..
One particular experience of seeing a demon was when i was lying in bed on the cusp of sleep. A demon started crawling up my body. I was paralysed and tried pushing it down with my hands, but it would not stop . I felt pain down below as it sucked sexual energy out of me. Then it jumped into my chest. Years later, I would go onto study psychology as a degree and learned that this experience was known as a ‘hypnogogic hallucination’ and ‘sleep paralysis’ and that other people have this kind of thing happen to them as well. Being able to understand it as a psychological phenomenon helped me to become more detatched from the memory of it, and to normalise it – rather than think i was possessed by a demon.
On another occasion, I was walking down the street and I looked up at the sky, there was a demon / the devil laying on its side , as though it were laying on a cloud. Next to it was an eye made of golden light. The pupil was darting around looking at the people below. I looked at it for a few seconds, it looked at me and turned black. I then proceeded to walk down the hill and went home. The services knew that id stopped taking my medication. I believe they came to my flat the next day. Much of the decade of madness is a blur, and this is one of those times. .
Just before the big hospitalisation (that lasted 3 years), I felt like the devil was watching me and interfering with my thoughts. The thoughts would chop and change and alternate in my brain, flicking between God and the Devil. I had never been religious at any point in my life, yet some how these religious figures were prominent in my brain, in my thought processes, and it was both confusing, isolating and terrifying. I just wanted it to stop but I didn’t know how.. I was desperately trying to get help, I was phoning mental health services and my family multiple times per day and I tried to take myself to A and E 3 times in the space of a couple of weeks. This was the worst that things had ever been – much worse than other episodes and very scary because I had to deal with it myself.. I was told i could see a psychiatrist, and that I had to wait a month to see them, but i was struggling minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day and with nobody to speak on behalf of me, i could not communicate the full scope of the ordeal I was going through and how desperate I was becoming.
The demonic hallucinations were not the only kinds of unusual experiences that happened to me, and are merely examples of some of the experiences that tormented me over the years, a snippet of a whole catalogue of suffering – for one small moment in time. The scary and confusing experiences lasted for over a decade.
During my descent into madness, I experienced the following things:
Being lost in a confusing world of hallucinations, jumbled thoughts and delusions.
Intrusive thoughts that were so unbearable that I could not tell anyone.
Believing other people could see / hear my intrusive thoughts.,
Visual hallucinations
Hearing voices commenting on my every thought – telling me bad things were happening and also telling me to do things. Over the years they got worse – more frequent.. until one day I could no longer ignore them- they told me to burn my clothes at the front of my house to stay grounded – so I did because I believed them.
Feeling like the universe didn’t want me in it because I was the most horrible person in existence – a sense of cosmic threat – that i had been banished from nature / the universe.
Hearing the birds talk about me – mocking me sarcastically (in real time)
Feeling that I was connected to the TV, that it was talking to me directly
Feeling I was responsible for world peace
Uncontrollable visions of bad things that were going to happen
Feeling others’ consciousnesses in my body, stopping me from speaking, tormenting me.
Thinking I was dying – sometimes not knowing if I was dead or not – because I ha d suicide attempt I kept having the experience that I was dead and as a punishment, I was being kept in a simulation of life, but knowing I was dead.
Feeling people could read my thoughts and that people on the street were talking my thoughts out loud.
Feeling people could watch me via my consciousness.
Extreme suffering/ anguish.
Being mute – unable to speak
Lots of coincidences.
Feeling something strange and terrifying was happening.
Believing a dark force was trying to kill me.
After experiencing the above things, which grew in intensity and frequency as time went by, , and not getting the right medication or the right intervention, I hit a crisis point that was by far the most terrifying, confusing and stressful thing i had ever experienced. The crises that occurred before this were very frightening but – the NHS jumped in to help me as soon as they were aware that i was unwell. This time, however, I had fallen through the cracks. It felt like they didn’t want to know. I was going crazy by myself and i could not see an end to my suffering. Not being cared for by anyone during those years didn’t exactly help.. I was left to look after myself, which, given the way I felt and my chaotic and extreme mental health condition, was almost impossible.
Things had been seriously rough for such a long time as i dipped in and out of madness. I had times where i was not sure that I would get my intelligence back, where every thought was unintelligible and the hallucinations were relentless. I felt like I was living in a snow blizzard or a swarm of wasps inside, instead of the snow or wasps there were voices and intrusive thoughts attacking me from the inside, and I could not escape them, I could not walk out of the room and shut the door, because they were inside of me. Due to all of the turmoil, and nobody by my side for the first 3 years of going through difficult things, I lost who I was… anything about me that made me me. It felt like I was consumed by my illness – all my likes, dislikes, my strengths, my skills, the way I used to dress, the music i listened to- I did not even have a memory of who I used to be.. (Thankfully I have built a new and better self after all of this – a breakdown really is a breakthrough)
As one can imagine, because of everything i was going through, services not giving me the right medication or help and feeling like my family and the mental health services had given up on me, I almost gave up on myself too.. My self care and self esteem became almost non-existent. Over a 6 month period, I washed 2 or 3 times. I did not brush my teeth or hair, it was like a birds nest . I wasn’t wearing any of my nice clothes, I wore tracksuit bottoms that were in tatters. I lost my self respect and was completely unaware of how i looked, and had no motivation to improve my hygiene, even the thought of having a shower was painful. People started to complain about how I smelled, and started gossiping about me, saying i had nothing about me.. even people who I had considered to be friends turned on me, thinking I was less than.. rather than reaching out to help, I was ridiculed and shunned.
Thankfully, my beloved Auntie Jackie reached out to me at this point, She recognised the distress and ordeal that I was going through and decided to help me through it. After 3 years and 2 breakdowns of going through it alone, finally someone was rooting for me. When I was on the 3 year hospital stay, she would visit me and try to make me laugh, and tried to understand what I was going through, and held hope for my recovery. From this point, she gave me her love and support, and for that I am very grateful. Sadly, in 2022 she passed away unexpectedly. Even though I know how proud she would have been that I am doing an MA and of everything I have achieved, I know she’s there in spirit with me, and always will be.
Whilst all of this turmoil was happening over the years, and not really implementing the Energy Awareness Training, I always had the thought of doing the energy awareness training stuck in my head as a future thing that I needed to do. I’d attempted to do some of the energy exercises (weaves) initially many times but it seemed to take every ounce of energy i had and was quite painful to do, (maybe because the foreign energy that was in my energy body did not want to leave.) It became a source of mental pain, thinking that i should be doing it but not being able to work myself up to do them. Even as i hit my lowest points, I would think about how energy healing, cultivating my own energy via a healing routine was the only way that I would really get better and would carry my energy eggs everywhere with me. The thought of healing myself kept me holding on through the worst of times, times when I’d gone off the rails, when the only pleasure that I would get was from drinking or drugs and I had nothing in my life.
I’d had some sessions with Lynda and Stephen sporadically throughout this period of time, where they had been incredibly supportive at helping me with life decisions such as courses that would be good for my energy, and types of service that i should do, so when my brain could not tolerate Haliperidol ( which should be called Helloperidol as far as I am concerned), Stephen recommended supplements so that my brain could work better, so as soon as i had the session, I went to the nearest health food store and I bought the B vitamin supplements that they recommended.
My life was unmanageable whilst just using the NHS treatments, (they did not give me a life worth living), but I had sessions with Lynda and Stephen from the School of Energy Awareness to show me things to do to overcome the energy underlying my mental health issues. The NHS doctor did not like me doing anything energy therapy related, my auntie had to really persuade the doctor to allow me to have crystals. However, Stephen thankfully gave me things to do that the doctor could not stop me from doing, for example, holding my hands in certain mudras, and a walking meditation known as prana walking.
They say that a journey of 10,000 steps begins with the first step, and this phrase could not be more literal, as my first steps came about in 2014, when as a traumatised inpatient i began prana walking. This energy practice enabled me to let go of specific kinds of stress from the energy body which accumulated over time. The hand position (mudra) determines the kind of stress (fear, anger, past failures, sorrow etc) which leaves the energy body and as you walk the stress dissipates in a trail on the floor. Luckily for me, the hospital i was staying in had some lovely grounds and walks, which became the main feature of my day, and were a perfect place to practice the prana walking. I did not notice the difference straight away, as my energy field was overwhelmed with stress and foreign energy that clouded my vision, but with disciplined practice every day, over time, I became lighter and lighter.
When I began to feel well enough and not overwhelmed by the stress energy , I began doing the returning life sequence meditation (https://www.energizeyourlife.org/returning-life-dvd) every day. After all of those years where I struggled to do the meditation, I finally found myself in a position where I could do it every morning ( I believe because the prana walking had lowered my stress burden). After being overwhelmed with anxiety and having no energy for life, and after not smiling or laughing for years, i felt optimistic. I decided that i wanted to study English literature – it was my strongest subject at school and Stephen could see that it made my energy light up, but the only course I could find locally was an Access course in Humanities at Bradford College. With the energy and focus given to me from the returning life meditation, I decided to just jump in at the deep end and to go for it (a way of life that has proven to be very fruitful!).I smiled a genuine smile for the first time in years. As soon as i found ways to give me some control over my mind / energy and life, began feeling pleasure and found ways to navigate my chaotic and distressing inner world, i grabbed onto it with both hands and put everything that i could into my own healing. I felt like something was working – and it was ME that was doing it. I felt great :-).Ever since discovering how powerful energy healing methods are, I started doing as many as I could. I learned energy testing, other practical techniques which gave me more peace and inner strength, some that helped with intrusive thoughts, some that helped me to stop being overwhelmed..
there is literally a practical solution for any negative energy state. I also started taking supplements and incorporating life practices into my daily routine.
The great thing about energy development is that – it is empowering. You can physically do practical things that change your own consciousness – at the time when difficulties arise.. of your own accord- rather than only trying to cope until your next therapy appointment or until your next doctors appointment.. Having your own internal tools to deal with negative energy states, to transmute them into positive energy, is a game changer. I went around in circles of helplessness for years, chasing things that were outside of me – doctors, therapists. tablets, drugs, people… I created a relationship with my emotions and experiences that saw them as being harmful, but how can you run away from something that is inside of you? Now I have a whole toolkit of things i can do which changes the energy behind the problem and leads me to more positive states of being i.e. “transforming your karmas into higher awareness”. as Lynda from the School of Energy Awareness says.
Even though I am on an upward spiral, it does not mean that I do not still have challenges.. As with many healing techniques that I had learned with The School of Energy awareness, some of them take time and persistence. It’s not like a magic wand where you wave it once and then everything is instantly better.. There is a saying that a bucket full of water thrown over a stone makes no difference, but, one drop of water over the same stone over time erodes away at it. The same has been true for my own healing journey. It has taken showing up for myself every day, a change of attitude and sometimes acts of inner bravery.. As Lynda says – it is difficult to get rid of the foreign energy that has made its home inside of you. There is an energy related solution to every problem, some of these things take time and discipline – others are like magic, and the changes can be felt straight away.
An example of a technique that has taken a while is:
Dealing with intrusive thoughts.
I used to suffer with a never ending torrent of intrusive thoughts – they were so bad i had to stop in my tracks in the street and shake my hands. They were extremely horrible and destabilising. I began doing the gesture of resonance after each thought – over time, now i hardly have any. I have the odd one now and again but they are not the intensity that they were back then. This, alongside hypnotherapy from an energy ascending hypnotherapist helped me to overcome those horrible thoughts. I’m glad to say that they have now gone.
An example of a technique working instantly is:
Using an energy egg blowing sequence to displace relationship stress energy.
After not feeling myself for weeks, being out of sorts, feeling sad, disconnected, not my usual positive energy state and having had enough of it, I put my hand in my pocket (i had 3 energy eggs in there) and i ‘felt’ the solution to the problem… the chronic shock egg came to mind. So i got out the instructions and did the technique. – instantly the stress energy lifted. I felt like my usual self again for the first time in weeks. It was relationship stress that was the problem and the chronic shock egg sorted it out in an instant. It was a ‘thank goodness for that’ moment and reminded me how powerful these techniques are. It advised to do the technique on anyone that I’ve had a close relationship with.. so i did. For the first day in ages, I’m not carrying around ghosts of other people, they’re not nestled amongst my thoughts, leaving me wishing I could leave them behind.. Today I’m more myself than I have been in a while. .
Ever since the beginning of my healing journey in 2014, I have gone on to use their techniques to work on many aspects of myself and to welcome spirit into my life more and more. It still amazes me how profound these techniques are and how far I have come since the days when I was wondering the streets in my nightie, plagued by voices, setting fire to my clothes and in distress most days.
I do not feel grief or regret about not living my best life in my 20s, i do not feel bitter or resentful, or sad. I see that my life path has taken a different course to the average person, I see it as a journey that is unfolding, and always will be. For me it is about growth and expansion and personal spiritual development and using my experience and insight to help other people. There is a shared notion in our society that your youngest years are the best and that as you grow older, things go downhill, and that in your 60s your retire.. But im not trying to fit myself into that mould. I see my past experiences, not as something that i ought to be sad about because, it has made me who I am today.
I believe that when a person has gone through a prolonged period of darkness, the light shines brighter than it ever did before that darkness ever came. At university I came to know this as a phenomenon known as post traumatic growth or transformation through turmoil – states of profound transformation when one has gone through intense suffering. These transformative experiences of a persons consciousness were something that Steve Taylor, one of my tutors at Leeds Beckett talked about on the degree I studied for and on the MA that i am now part way through. He also talks about awakening experiences, becoming aware of the divine essence of life.. something I know very intimately and makes my life truly magical at times. I indeed have had and still have many awakening experiences, something I will go into detail about on another post.
It is my goal to help people to go from periods of darkness and suffering to a place of happiness with my research, experience and healing methods. I feel that the current mainstream treatment (NHS) leaves a lot to be desired. Experiencing this first hand has highlighted to me their incompetencies and failures. I feel it fails on many levels – long waiting lists, not being taken seriously, a legal stripping away of rights, forced medication that lowers the quality of life, being shut away from people, society and nature, their token economy which forces people to mask their experiences so that they can leave the ward, the infantilisation, lack of empathy, terrible nutrition.. no holistic care, lack of information, the list goes on.
Whilst their medications can be life saving, and hospitals are essential places of safety for people who are at risk, I feel that there are many improvements that need to be made. There has been research around since the 60’s that shows certain supplements are more effective at treating Schizophrenia than anti-psychotics.. that many people made a recovery on the supplements, but the majority just taking anti-psychotics were severe and enduring..Yet the NHS does not take on board any of this research, and I’m sure that if they did then big pharma would not exactly be happy.
There are so many aspects of my recovery journey that I would like to go into, and I am going to cover these in future posts. I will also be expanding on many of the subjects mentioned throughout this blog in future posts.
I hope you have enjoyed reading a brief outline of my journey – going through hell to being well.
Keep posted and I will keep posting!
Rose xxxx
.
.
.
.
.
.
From NHS to Naturally Healthier Solutions 