[31F] Severe burnout, failed by NHS mental health triage, and I am terrified of my own mind right now. What do I do?
I am a 31-year-old single mum to a 3-year-old boy, and my nervous system has completely collapsed. For two years, I have been in constant survival mode—fighting my housing association, dealing with financial stress, and just trying to keep my head above water.
Recently, my body just completely shut down. I have severe physical symptoms: falling asleep sitting up, a crushed feeling in my chest, terrible time blindness, and a total inability to function. My GP saw the cracks, signed me off work, and referred me for a mental health assessment. I was told to go in person.
Because my throat literally locks up and I freeze when I try to talk about my feelings, I spent hours writing a deeply honest letter to hand to the doctor. My best friend also wrote a clinical, detailed email explaining my history, my intense fear of judgment, and how stopping my weight-loss medication recently has made the body dysmorphia and "food noise" absolutely deafening. I was fully prepared to hand over this paperwork and finally get a safety net.
Instead, when the time came on Monday, it was just a phone call from a triage worker. I couldn’t show him the letters. I tried to explain that I was terrified of losing control and acting on dangerous impulses, and he literally told me that my condition "isn't disabling," that I was "overthinking," and that I just "need to relax and not worry about people judging me."
I feel completely gaslit and abandoned by the system.
The administrative paralysis is destroying me. I have a deadline for my PIP tribunal on May 14th. I have all the evidence, but just the thought of finding a printer feels like climbing Mount Everest barefoot. I haven't sent it in, and I hate myself for it.
Instead of resting, I heavily masked today and took my son to Sea Life for his birthday because I am desperately trying to be a good mum. But inside, I am entirely hollow.
It is now the middle of the night. My brain is playing a constant, loud white noise. I am completely numb, I feel like a "nobody," and I am genuinely scared of my own mind. I know I need a proper clinical psychiatrist, not a phone script-reader, but I am so exhausted I don't know how to fight the NHS bureaucracy anymore.
Has anyone else experienced this kind of triage failure? How do I bypass them to get a face-to-face psychiatric assessment before I completely break?