My Crazy Place

******************* UPDATE My review of O2 went live last Saturday. On Sunday I had made further contact with O2 and they agreed to provide me with a refurbished phone. I have now received my refurbished Samsung Note 10 and replacement sim. Unfortunately, this is not a fully happy ending because I feel that the only reason I got the replacement phone is that I told them the following; 1) They can remove the data package as I would not be using it and therefore will not pay for DATA 2) They can cancel the insurance 3) they can write off the device cost as I refuse to pay for a device that I do not have. I know I lost the phone but how many of you would pay £360 (in device charges) for a device you did not have, especially as replacing the device for new would cost you more than that. Whilst I am glad they rectified the awfulness that they put me through, however, I still say if you are disabled look at them more cautiously. I do not know if I will stay with O2 at the end of my contract,

Dear Courtney, Matt, David, Jennifer, Mathew and Lisa. You probably wont get to read this, although I will tag you in the hopes that you do. I wanted to let you know how much you all meant to me growing up. I was undiagnosed autistic and was only diagnosed at 31. I have also had a hard life. Friends was the only thing that showed me friendship and love and adoration. When I was not able to make friends, and didnt have that support network like was on the show I would watch and feel so happy. Later on in life, especially when I was diagnosed with depression and later PTSD, Friends always helps bring me out of my sadness. Infact when I was first diagnosed, I didnt know how I would survive a life of depression I would watch Friends and I realised that I had something to keep me going in the dark days. Friends saves me every time. Without friends I would struggle when I had depressive episodes. With my autism diagn

Before I went to bed tonight, I was watching some of your videos. Because of this, I knew I had to write this. When something gets into my head, I can’t do anything else until I get it out. I know you will probably never read this and even if you do, you probably get 1,000,000 or more letters like this, so a response is negligible. So, I am under no illusion that I will get a response which is also why I am writing it on my blog. For me, your videos have been a lifesaver. To use your words “you see”. I grew up in a family where abuse ran wild. Some people call how I feel “Middle Child Syndrome”, I call it surviving abuse. My family’s mantra was “don’t trust what she says” or “what can we blame her for”. So, I didn’t have the best family life, and still don’t. Between the abuse I suffered and the undiagnosed autism I found myself in situations as an adult that I was ill-equipped to handle. This further put a wrench in any relationship with my family. I was told in my late 20s my

Yesterday I wrote about the conditions and experiences that I had in the first 20 years of my life. That was the dyslexia, autism, and the abuse I suffered. It has not been easy for me. In 2007 I was diagnosed with depression. I do not want to go into the details around it but let's just say that it was as a result of work. I was in a bad way. I took a penknife to my hand. That is how low that I got. Depression has been an ongoing battle since then however, I am now more in control of it. With depression I want to say, you can master it. You may never be completely free of it; however, you can conquer it. I am able to spot triggers within my own body and try and take corrective steps to avoid a full-blown depressive episode. I am not able to always beat it, but it is something that I would be able to have a fighting chance. June 2017 the Grenfell Tower Fire happened. I spent some time helping out at the pop-up centers. There were kids on the estate I lived on so I talked to t

This is part of my story. After an amazing blog I read from my colleague about her struggles I feel inspired to write this. Warning this post is going to cover some topics, which may be a trigger to some people. I have had a very hard life. I have been a victim of sexual abuse, physical, mental and psychological abuse. I had undiagnosed dyslexia and autism. Earliest diagnosis aged 16 and the latest diagnosis of the two aged 31. I have been a victim of attempted rape and diagnosed with PTSD, Depression and developed spinal problems. I am 34 years old. I have a love-hate relationship with money and society. I guess the money issue comes from my dad. He did not care about saving money. If he had it and saw something he liked he would buy it. I never really found a great way to learn. When you are undiagnosed autistic and this is what you see all the time then you think this is “normal”. I can not count the number of times I got myself into debt. As a child, I was subjected to sexual

  So, I want to tell you a funny thing that happened today. I was on the phone with someone and we were talking about my blog and my goals in life. I said to him “when I started becoming really disabled” and he laughed at how I put it. Not a mean laugh but a laugh to say it was funny. He didn’t know why that statement was funny he just found it funny. I had to laugh, still don’t know why it was funny though. I am sure this will be picked up next week.   I had been explaining to him that before “I started getting really disabled” I had these dreams and ambitions that never seemed to come to fruition. When my disability labels came in thick and fast, I was low for a while. It was at that point that I made the decision that ok, I wasn’t going to run a marathon, or be a famous actress, I am not going to write a multi-million-dollar book series or set a world record and that was ok. So, I sat down and decided what was important to me. My decision was that my life goal would be “to leave

I have heard so many people out there who have either said "disabled people are a drain on our society" or from the disabled community in frustration to negative stereotypes just say "who the hell cares". We get lumped into this label of being disabled and people would like to forget that we exist without any further follow-up on what that label really means to the person who wears it. Do you wear your "disabled" label with Pride or Shame? I regularly end up wearing it with shame. When I get laughed at for answering a question literally. An example of this was when I had to appeal to my benefits. This is what happened: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judge: "What would you do if you needed to go out for milk?" Me: "I wouldn't go out" Judge: "Why?" Me: " Well because I don't drink milk so I wouldn't go out to buy it" Judge: (sniggers) "Miss Fricker, you kn

Many people ask me, "you did not serve in the forces how do you have PTSD?" The answer is simple. PTSD is not just a soldiers mental health problem. It can affect anyone who has witnessed or been part of a trauma.  So what is PTSD at its heart? To answer that you have to know how the brain works. Imagine this is your brain (the box in the middle) is a factory. Normal memories go into the factory, get processed and come out the other end and filed away. Your factory process it and it goes from being in the now and filed into the past. This is key in how PTSD happens. However, when you have a traumatic memory it looks more like this. Because of the trauma in the memory, it cant all fit through the factory door. This means, no matter how many times the factory tries to process it and when it cant it spits it back out. This is why when you have a triggering event it still feels like it is in the now. It makes you feel like it is happening all over again. The treatment that I have

 So this is me writing about something random.  As someone who was born in the wrong decade and got missed as a child for the autism diagnosis, I watched a lot of television. It informed me of how to behave in the real world... Sometimes I got it right, other times I got it incredibly wrong. But I have always wondered if the writers of these shows knew how much their shows help in today's world. Some times in the most bizarre ways. I have been undergoing CBT therapy for PTSD and we are at the stage where we update the memory. You bring things in that you know now, to bring down the emotional element of the memory. You can use anything that will help you the trick is that it has to mean something to you. For me, I used two things that I knew from TV that meant something to me. Anti-Possession Symbol For those of you who are Supernatural fans, you will know the symbol I mean. Dean and Sam have it tattoed on them. Always nice to see the symbol.  The symbol is to stop demons and angels

 I am tired. I am tired of being so jumpy when I hear a siren. I am tired of not being able to see anything about fire and freaking the hell out.  In short ladies and gents I am tired. PTSD takes it out of you. The trauma you try to deal with is like a vice that you just can quite pry off you. When you have a trigger the vice feels like it is going to rip you apart and leave nothing but a bowl of mush behind. It can leave you in flood of tears and you are a blubbering wreck. It is exhausting and it is painful and it makes you hate yourself because you are doing your best but it never seems like there is an end to it.  I am tired. I just want to be better. I want the brain to process the events of Grenfell Tower Fire so when I am triggered I do not feel like I am back in that june morning.  I want to be able to do training where fire is not warned about on the schedule of modules but you dont turn into a blubbering wreck when it comes up. I am tired, so very very tired.

Being a shielder on my own there have been many times I have let my own wellbeing falter. My personal care has gone out of the window and I am then worried about everything else that I have to deal with. There are so many elemants to wellbeing that if one falters then the rest are sure to tumble. Take for instance, mental well being. Some times this falters because I have had a particularly confusing day at work and I start feeling down on myself, or therapy has been traumatic and I can't bring myself back to an even keel. It could also be that I feel low about being a shielder on my own. These things can have a negative impact on you that sends the rest into a tail spin. If you think out it, when you are mentally struggling you do not want to do much and are much more likely to pay for stupid things that you are unable to afford and less likely to move about and do physical activities. When I am struggling physically for instance my back is causing me so much pain I do not

Some people in the medical community really frustrate me beyond belief. I am asthmatic, I am autistic, Dyslexic, with Depression, PTSD and spinal problem. I have been living with my conditions for a while now and the asthma my entire life and yet, there are some medical professionals who believe they know better then me about my body. So here is why it is annoying. In 2008 I had a massive cancer scare. I had a 14cm lump in my left breast. Luckily for me it was benign but it got so big because I brushed it off. It would appear and disappear when I was having my periods. At the time my periods were so erratic that I just thought it was a by product of hormones because crazy. Until the day it did not go away and got bigger. I had to go through tests, ultra sounds and even surgery. The healing process was terrible. I vowed never to be in that situation again. Now it gets really frustrating when you speak to a medical professional and then he ignores the fact that you know what your

Welcome to my world. It is a crazy place. It is a confusing place. I am a disabled adult who is Autistic, Dyslexic, with Asthma, Depression, PTSD and Spinal Problems. This is great for being only 34 years old. I had to start a new blog because I could no longer afford my blog on Wordpress which sucked but because of COVID-19 I had to cut back. Honestly I cant be too sad about it because I am doing my part. Due to my disabilities I have had to be shielding during this COVID-19 situation. In the beginning I was really struggling with being a shielder. I wanted to go out and help people and I was stuck inside. It made me feel so low you could not imagine. What I found out however, staying inside I was helping. I was keeping a high risk person off the streets which could potentially cause problems for the health system. That helped me hugely. What I also found was I could do things from my own home. Due to my autism I struggle with food so what I was doing, I would keep th