"Crisis support"

I have been struggling recently and last weekend I ended up at the hospital.

Tonight I woke up after a distressing nightmare and found myself in the kitchen thinking about self harming. I have no recollection of how I got to the kitchen. I felt traumatised. Everything was so loud and bright and I could hear voices loudly telling me to hurt myself.

I managed to ring the crisis team and was very distressed and disorientated. A member of staff answered whom I don’t know and they asked me my name. I was shaking, crying and very upset and found it hard to talk. In times of flashbacks from trauma it is hard to access the thinking part of your brain as the body is just trying to survive.

I managed to say my first name and staff member said calm down and tell me your name and I just panicked and put the phone down.

I cried and managed to crawl under the kitchen table to find a safe space.

This kind of response is getting more common and I need to know that the people answering crisis calls will talk calmly to me and try to regulate my breathing and bring me back into the here and now before getting the full details of my name.

Do you really need to know my name at the start of the call when I am obviously very distressed and disorientated?

This then leaves me very risky and in a position where I am likely to hurt myself badly or to not be able to ground myself and reach a safer place for hours.

It is cold and I was wet and extremely upset. 

I hate having to complain but the support available over the last few weeks has left me very vulnerable and it is not good enough. I will put me off ringing for support which will mean that I go back to using poor coping strategies to get through that endanger my life.