The Warrior Project: Portraits of Nicky, Psychosis

We have a brand new installment of my Warrior Project on the blog today, featuring the beautiful Nicky and a little about her journey through a recent diagnosis of Psychosis, a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality. Me and Nicky are friends online and when I saw her posting about her struggles shortly after the birth of her 2nd baby, I decided I wanted to spoil her a bit with some beautiful portraits and she was happy to share her experience in return.

“Hi, my name is Nicky, I’m 22 years old. I don't work at the moment due to the mental health issues I currently suffer with but I'm a stay at home Mum who loves spending time with my family and taking our little ones to the park and play centres.

My mental health journey began 13 years ago when I was taken into care after many years of abuse, both physical and mental. I still have all the scars because of this and from being neglected, it really affected me, I went through self harming, many counselling sessions and finally 13 years later I've been given the diagnosis of Psychosis related to my childhood trauma. It has taken a long long time but it feels amazing to finally have that diagnosis.

Day to day I can be absolutely fine one minute, but the next I can zone out and it's like I'm not in the room, I can cry randomly without even realising sometimes and I struggle being alone as it makes me feel much worse and I get a lot of voices in my head telling me I'm worth nothing.

The most difficult thing for me is people don't understand me, they think I'm just a bad tempered person who can't look after my children on my own. But I'm really a nice person who just requires a little more help sometimes and it scares me that people think like that. I've had a lot of problems because of this and it just makes me worse.

At first I was put on a medication called Quetiapine it’s made me extremely sleepy meaning I couldn’t look after my children and my partner Martyn and mother law Jackie gave me the most amazing support in looking after them while I started this. After 2 weeks I really couldn’t cope being on it any longer so I made the decision to cut it out and work with the mental health nurses fortnightly in order to control what I was going through without meds.

Within 2 months I was bouncing back due to the best support from everyone.

I had phone calls once a week and visits every 2 weeks from a great nurse. One thing I’d like to say is Thank you to the NHS and Barry (my MH nurse) in particular for everything he did for me, he really helped me to get to where I am today. Also to Martyn and Jackie (Mother in law) for helping me through such a hard time after having my 2nd baby Sammy. They’ve been the best support network I could ever ask for.

I'm hoping one day to be able to get out and go back to work as I'd love to be able to get to that point and be able to provide properly for my family. I have a lot of help and support especially from my partner Martyn and I feel like one day I can get to where I want to be.

If you are facing a similar journey to mine, my advice is to take all the help you're offered, that's one thing I struggled with at first and I refused a lot, however now looking back I really wish I'd gotten the help from day 1.

The shoot with Donna was so good, honestly I've never felt so comfortable in front of a camera, I don't have a lot of confidence especially with my mental health issues but I felt AMAZING during my shoot. My photographs make me feel worthy, special and beautiful and I've never felt anything like that about myself before.

If you are considering having a shoot with Donna, stop thinking and DO IT! You will 100% not regret it, Donna is an amazing woman and she will make you feel like a million dollars.

A huge thank you to Donna for making me feel how I did, you've really helped me out with my confidence.

Thank you so much to Nicky for sharing her story with me, and bringing her gorgeous little family to take part in her portrait shoot!!