Forgotten: I am different, Not less

By Terri Skye

Forgotten follows the journey of a young woman through the mental health system. The story begins when she was six years old and diagnosed with anxiety, OCD, depression and anorexia. She was one of the youngest on the ward. It shows the bitter truth behind being a patient at such a young age in a mental health institution.
She takes you through various stages of her life such as her school years where she struggled but didn’t understand why, she describes how frightened she was in such a catching way you can almost feel yourself in her little shoes.
She takes you through her life of adolescence where it becomes apparent that friends are important and she has a moment of clarity in her life. It takes a turn for the worst when she falls in love and is beaten up and hides it from her parents The most gripping chapter that will startle most readers and hopefully help anyone who is in a similar situation to realise that it isn’t ok to be treated in that way.
She was diagnosed with Asperger’s and bipolar at the age of 30 after over 20 years of fighting for help.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781665580618

Terri Skye

Terri Skye is an Oxford born writer and cognitive behavior therapist who studied psychology extensively with the sole purpose to dedicate her life to being the change she wishes to see in the world and to show that nothing can hold you back from achieving your dreams. She writes in a very witty and down to earth manner yet touches on some extremely sad and emotional roller coasters throughout her life. She is now a private therapist and works with youth offenders and wanted to be able to share her story in the hope that her experiences might be able to help someone else.

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© 2020 Terri Skye. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/29/2023

ISBN: 978-1-6655-8062-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-8061-8 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 The Beginning

Chapter 2 Starting primary school

Chapter 3 The Psychiatric Hospital

Chapter 4 Without the rain there would be no rainbows

Chapter 5 Wanderers

Chapter 6 Teen Years

Chapter 7 Love

Chapter 8 Rock Bottom

Chapter 9 I am different. Not less

CHAPTER 1

THE BEGINNING

‘Some are born mad,

Some achieve madness

And some have madness thrust

Upon ’em.’

- Emilie Autumn: The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

I have two theories for the way I am. I was either born this way or made to believe there was something mentally wrong with me from an early age.

I was born at 5.55 am. The number five signifies an independent soul with a free spirit. I know that person is inside me somewhere, because I’ve caught glimpses of her throughout my life – when I’ve not been entrapped by my mental health.

My mum didn’t know she was pregnant with me until she was four months gone, she had a relatively normal pregnancy, though I was born two weeks late. Mental health professionals have often asked my mum if there were any birth defects that could be the cause of my mental health problems, but we’ve never been able to identify any. Although, from the moment I was born I refused milk, rarely slept and showed signs of anxiety. My mum and dad recall being up most nights, driving the streets, because the motion of the car was the only thing that soothed me. Years later, as an adult, I would drive the streets myself in the early hours when I couldn’t sleep, too. My hospital notes suggest that my parents struggled to form an attachment to me, due to being unsure what to do as first-time parents – and that was the cause of my mental health issues. Surely, by that logic, all first-born people would be messed up – right?

Sigmund Freud believed that anxious personalities are shaped during childhood, while Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan believed it’s all in our genes. I believe it’s a mixture of the two. I’ve experienced a lot of things in my life that I shouldn’t have, but I believe that my disposition to anxiety and depression has affected the way I dealt with these experiences. My paternal grandmother suffered from mental health problems and spent time in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s. My knowledge of this is limited, partly because my dad and his siblings spent their childhood in a children’s home so do not have as many memories with their mother as they might have otherwise; I also think in the 60s and 70s, mental illness was often treated as a private matter due to the stigma of mental health conditions. When I voiced this opinion to my elderly friend Cath, she said, No, it wasn’t like that at all. We just didn’t make such a song and dance about everything like people do now!

My dad and his twin sisters recall their mother spending time in hospital when they were small. She was being treated for clinical depression, and a few years later for a nervous breakdown following the divorce of her husband. Recent research into my family history shows that there were several woman on my father’s side of the family with bipolar disorder. My dad’s aunt, for example, although lovely, had very erratic behaviour, I am told. There was also no grey area with my grandmother – she would either care about you so much she would give you the clothes off her back, or else she’d make you wish you’d never crossed her. She also used to take her own cup in her handbag with her everywhere she went, because she didn’t like the idea of using someone else’s! My aunts believe she was misdiagnosed and possibly medicated unnecessarily, which worsened her mental health. They recall her acting overly irrational at her worst: hiding in the wardrobe, giving away all her clothes, and attempting suicide. My aunts tell me that when they were reunited with their mother in their teens, she had remarried, was very happy and showed no signs of mental ill health. My dad remembers things differently – recalling that his mum always had mental health problems, especially after being remarried. He feels that his sisters were maybe too young to remember. My nan died of a brain hemorrhage in 1991, two years after I was born so I was never able to get to know her.

My dad has bittersweet memories of his childhood. He remembers the owners of the children’s home being kind, having good meals, being clothed well, and bathing regularly in the children’s home. However, he also recalls being forced to eat whatever food he was given, even if he didn’t like it; having a fear of adults due to his abandonment, and witnessing horrific experiences such as the suicide of a young child in the home.

A friend of mine, Claire, suggested that what our parents – or even grandparents – experience in their lives affects us in our own lives. This might be in our genes, I suppose. After researching this, I discovered that there is some basis to this.

Barry Dias and Kerry Ressler from Emory University School of Medicine exposed mice to fearful experiences –electric shocks– whilst smelling cherry blossom. The offspring of these mice and even the offspring’s offspring were fearful of the scent of cherry blossom, even though they had not smelt it before and had no reason to fear it. The brains of the parent mice were found to have been changed by their negative experiences, and their offspring also showed the same changes to their brains suggesting an epigenetic influence.

This is evidence that a parent’s experiences can be written into their genetic code and then passed on to their children and later generations. If an ancestor of yours had terrifying experience, you may fear the same thing happening to you, or inherit the same phobias – even if you have no reason to do so, from your own experience.

My mum’s sister recalls my own mum being anxious as a child and young adult, although my mum doesn’t remember this and believes she was fine, up until an incident that occurred when she was working as a receptionist at a psychiatric hospital. She was trapped in a room with a patient who was kicking off. This incident happened when I was very small, but I still remember the impact it had on her – and the subsequent panic attacks she suffered for many years afterwards. Some psychologists have suggested that I learnt my anxious behaviour from her.

I do believe that I am genetically predisposed to anxiety and depression as a result of my genes on both sides of my family. I think the experience my mum had, as well as many other incidents in my own life that I’ve witnessed first-hand, further justified (in my head) reasons to be anxious. During my own childhood, I witnessed things that I cannot mention in this book, because the individuals involved do not wish me to recount them here. These events included alcoholism, suicide, child abuse and poverty. These aspects of both nature and nurture