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Searching for Brighter Days

Searching for Brighter Days

Karen Manton

(2017)

Abstract

Growing up in a deprived area of North East England in the 1970’s, alcoholism and violence played a huge role in Karen’s everyday family life. But things were only to become more difficult when, at the age of seventeen, she began her battle with anxiety and depression, an illness nobody recognised.
At times feeling as though she was locked inside her own mind, Karen tried to make sense of her heightened and intense emotions. Her reality became a devastating, deteriorating state of existence, and no one seemed to understand what was happening to her.
A number of harrowing, recurrent and often bizarre episodes – including a phantom pregnancy, a nightclub assault, and an unhealthy obsession with a celebrity – eventually lead to Karen being sectioned under the mental health act and taken into hospital. It then took years and many more dramatic relapses before doctors would finally give her the correct diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
This is a no-holds-barred, inspirational true story of how, despite losses and difficulties along the way, Karen Manton learned to manage her illness, stay out of hospital, and find those ‘brighter days’.

Trigger
 are proud to announce Theinspirationalseries partner to their innovative Pullingthetriggerrange. Theinspirationalseries promotes the idea that mental illness should be talked about freely and without fear. Find out more at www.triggerpublishing.com

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
FRONTCOVER 1
COPYRIGHT 3
CHAPTER 1 It's Not Easy Being an Only Child 8
CHAPTER 2 My World in One Word: Grangetown 21
CHAPTER 3 No Longer Just a Child 27
CHAPTER 4 My First Love 34
CHAPTER 5 End of a Dream 41
CHAPTER 6 Spiralling 47
CHAPTER 7 Going Back to Go Forward 53
CHAPTER 8 Something Better Lies Ahead 62
CHAPTER 9 There's a First for Everything . . .And a Second 66
CHAPTER 10 Here We Go Again 74
CHAPTER 11 What Had I Done? 80
CHAPTER 12 Finding a Purpose 89
CHAPTER 13 It's Never as Easy as You Think 97
CHAPTER 14 A Premonition Comes True 105
CHAPTER 15 A Dream Turns into a Nightmare 112
CHAPTER 16 A Return 123
CHAPTER 17 Dad's Steady Decline 129
CHAPTER 18 The End Approaches 139
CHAPTER 19 The Nightmare Becomes a Dream 146
CHAPTER 20 We Spiral Once Again 152
CHAPTER 21 A Betrayal and a Breakdown 159
CHAPTER 22 At Last, a Real Diagnosis! 168
CHAPTER 23 Light at the End of the Tunnel 174
CHAPTER 24 My Lightbulb Moment 180
CHAPTER 25 How I Cope Now 184
CHAPTER 26 Searching for Brighter Days 192
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 194