Keto, Me & My O.C.D. – How Keto improved my mental health.
I have battled with poor mental health since my early teens. In my senior school years I had regular panic attacks, very low self-esteem, I self-harmed & my school attendance was very low, I was switched schools & eventually I was taken out of school and attended a centre for school drop outs called The Way Ahead Project. When all my friends were finishing their GCSE’s and applying to college I was at a community centre gaining ‘life skill’ certificates.
I was bright, I was friends with all the right girls, I was an achiever and had been predicted excellent marks for my GCSE’s. But I was very ill.
I’m now 30 and a mother of 3, looking back my heart goes out to my parents as they battled to know how to support me. I was clearly unhappy but I was equally rebellious with it. I openly smoked from a young age, skipped school for weeks on end, took drugs and would go out of my way to go clubbing and lie about where I was. So rightfully – They punished me.
My parents did pay for me to have private counselling but I didn’t engage with it properly as my mum was a counsellor herself so I felt like everyone knew my parents personally which left me feeling very vulnerable.
My struggles continued as I entered adult life, got married and had my own family. Throughout this time I had been to the doctors and had periods of medication and 1 session of CBT where I was told ‘I didn’t need CBT’.
By the time I was 27 I was still self-harming but now I had developed terrifying phobias. I had a period when I couldn’t go downstairs in my own house. My husband would come home from work to find me hiding in cupboards and I would go days without sleeping. It was safe to say it was time for me to go back to the doctors. I had 3 very young children at this time and I needed to get better more than ever.
I went to the doctors and the same day was started on a cocktail of medication that we would review every 2 weeks before increasing, changing, supplementing etc I was also put on a waiting list for psychiatric assessment.
A few months later I met with a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with O.C.D. and anxiety. This
