This post discusses intrusive thoughts, anxiety, hospital, mental illness, disability and trauma.

I spent the night in A&E on Wednesday.

Not exactly how I had planned to spend my evening, but hey ho.

They thought I had a bowel obstruction but turns out it was just a tummy infection that my CP-riddled body was struggling to fight and, eventually, I ended up in hospital.

The staff were lovely. Genuinely. I don’t have a horror story about being ignored or mistreated or anything.

And yet, it still felt incredibly dysregulating because, apparently, when my body is already having a difficult enough time, my brain likes to look at the situation and go, excellent. How can I make this situation even more unbearable for him?

My intrusive thoughts started doing what intrusive thoughts do; they weren’t particularly interested in reality. They were, however, interested in finding the worst possible thing that could happen and convincing me it was about to. At one point, my brain was trying to convince me I was going to be drugged and murdered by the hospital staff.

I knew it wasn’t true. I knew the staff were there to help me. I knew, logically, that there was no evidence that anyone was planning to hurt me. But knowing something rationally and feeling it are two very different things. You can know a thought is irrational and still be paralysed with fear because of it.

You find yourself thinking; I know this isn’t true, but why does it feel so fucking real? And, suddenly, you find yourself in this horrible battle between your rational brain and your nervous system. One is saying you’re safe, while the other is screaming, but are you? And when you’re already physically unwell, dehydrated, exhausted, uncomfortable and surrounded by unfamiliar people, that second voice can become extremely loud.

It’s also a uniquely vulnerable position to be in hospital when you’re a full-time wheelchair user. I’m used to being dependent on other people for things, that is just part of my life. But I feel there is a difference between choosing to accept help from someone and being in a situation where you are forced to place a huge amount of trust in people you have never met before.

People who are going to examine you, give you medication. People who need to know what is happening to your body. People who have to lift you, turn you over, people who are essentially in control of every breath you take and every move you make (oooo, that’s a song!)

And again, they were lovely. That’s important for me to say because this post isn’t about how the people looking after me were dangerous, because they weren’t. The problem wasn’t necessarily the people; the problem was what my brain did with the vulnerability because being physically vulnerable can make psychological vulnerability feel enormous.

I’m laying there in a hospital bed, unable to move at all because the paramedics transferred me onto a stretcher in the ambulance and left my wheelchair at home because it was too big for the ambulance. I’m not able to walk at all, I can barely sit up on my own, right? So, there I am, having to put my mobility in the hands of complete strangers. I’m feeling ill and trying to understand what is going to happen next. And then my brain goes you don’t know these people. You can’t trust them. What if something goes wrong? What if they hurt you? What if you need to make a run for it but, oh wait, you physically can’t because you haven’t got your wheelchair – your fucking freedom. You’re trapped.

And it doesn’t matter how many times someone tells you that you’re safe when your nervous system hasn’t got the memo.

There’s something else I have been thinking about, too: mental illness doesn’t take a night off because you’re physically ill. You don’t alternate between the two. If anything, being physically unwell can make everything else louder. The anxiety is still there. The hypervigilance is still there. The intrusive thoughts are still there. The need to feel safe is still there and so is the difficulty trusting people. Except now, you’re tired, uncomfortable and dealing with a body that isn’t behaving itself even more than usual.

It’s a pretty shit combination.

I think there is a tendency to separate physical health and mental health as though they are two completely separate things, as though you can put one in one box and the other in another, but that isn’t how being a human works. My body lives in my brain and my brain lives in my body – when one is struggling, the other notices.

And I have felt so lonely because explaining this experience to other people afterwards is so fucking hard. Because, technically, nothing bad happened: the staff were kind, I was cared for, I was safely transferred from A to B by the staff and returned safely to my wheelchair at the end of the ordeal, I got through the night, I came home. So, I don’t tell anyone because I know they’ll be like what’s the problem?

The problem is that something that is objectively safe can feel subjectively terrifying at the same time.

I can be grateful for the care I received and still admit that I found the experience incredibly difficult. I can know that the doctors and nurses were doing their jobs and still have struggled trusting them. I can understand that my intrusive thoughts weren’t telling the truth and still be fucking petrified of them. And I don’t think acknowledging that makes me ungrateful? I’m just being honest.

I am so exhausted from constantly reality-checking my own brain.

Is this actually happening or is it an intrusive thought?

Do I genuinely feel unsafe, or does my nervous system just believe I am?

Is there evidence for this thought?

What would I tell someone else who was experiencing/thinking this?

Honestly, managing my brain feels like having a full-time job sometimes. And doing that while being physically disabled and ill? Yeah. Not ideal. Definitely wouldn’t recommend.

I don’t think I took away a profound lesson on resilience from that night. But what I did learn was much simpler: being safe doesn’t always feel it. But sometimes, not feeling safe and staying is the bravest thing you can do. It is letting someone help you when every alarm bell in your head is telling you not to. It’s saying, I don’t think this thought is true, but I am still scared. It is allowing yourself to be vulnerable and realising how much strength lies in that.

I don’t need to pretend it was easy or turn it into an inspirational story. It was scary, exhausting and extremely dysregulating. But I got through it. Not because my brain suddenly became quiet and started behaving. Not because I stopped being anxious or magically learned how to trust. I got through it while all of those things were still happening.

And now it’s over.