Rings around the moon.

My aim today is something I call process mapping. Anyone who knows the Bullet Journal method understands that keeping track of what you actually do, and noting down what you need to do, creates a framework which can be used to discover what gives your life meaning and purpose. Additionally, to know what you might do to change things in a great direction, it helps to have two more categories of information.  1. What will things be like when they are really good? 2. What needs to be done now so I can shift my life towards that? Process mapping is part one. The task is to describe and evaluate your actions during an hour, or a day, a week or a month, a year , a lifetime even. Bullet Journal folks, You've got this ok! Decide your time period. Next, log what you are doing. Check in every hour. ( If you are logging an hour, check in every 10 minutes).  Log your actions - a sentence or a single word to describe, but keep it simple. Next - rate  the energy the actions took, or ga...

I really, really did not want to come back to this blog.  It's almost 11am. Josh is in bed. Josh has slowly cut himself off from everyone. His feelings about his dad are a smouldering heap of jigsaw pieces. I don't know where his dad is, but I have his old phone number (I'm sure he will have changed it).  But he hit his son, is he even able to feel sorry? More to the point I doubt that he has a clue about what really happened to his sister. Josh hasn't anything to get up for. He hides from the hurt of seeing that friends have jobs, houses, partners, dogs, cats, babies. This is how an entrenched OCD process works, magnifying a person's sense of inadequacy and worthlessness - because it hurts to feel that way and entrenched OCD is all about getting that hit of despair. By thinking about it, never facing it. It overwhelms, it seems to all make sense, all about avoiding pain by maintaining it. The Idea that if you are safe and calm it will get better?  No. Last night, h...

When I look into the feeling of grief, I find an intense sensation of loneliness, of falling. The metaphor of a room a thousand years wide (SoundGarden) reminds me of when my husband came into my room (before he told me that he was in love with me) and put the headphones over my ears...and that song? Within the metaphor I recognised how lonely I'd felt - abandoned actually (because I was abandoned by my eldest son's dad) and it was beyond awful, but I hadn't felt as if the expanse was endless... Like father like son?  I think my son is there - in his father's room, the thousand years wide room.  When I think about it, the way my husband was - the fear, exhaustion, scared to leave the house. The flood of texts about wanting to be home, safe, with me (!) the 'love bombing' was all about anxiety I guess? His fundamental, autonomic nervous system settings - is one way to distance myself from the sense of powerlessness it evoked in me; I just thought it would pass. I...

  I don't have a date for this one. Sometime between May 2019 and May 2020 I remember it very well, and that's a good thing.  My son doesn't have any recordings and so he rants at me about his dad, and that has been dragging me, metaphorically, over and through broken glass. And about an hour ago I reached breaking point and let myself fall into it - into the howling pain of it.  So I needed to remember. To get myself back I've plugged in my headphones, dragging up old sound files to know what was said to me. When I remember how bad it was, then any sense of loss and grief is drowned out by the truth. In October 2019 I identified the prime emotion of this time - it was terror. May seem inexplicable, like how could I have felt that way, why wasn't it sadness or anger? I can't tell you. I don't know - but terror was the flavour of that year , something so terrible, erosive about the lying? Possible. Losing trust in myself was the most damaging part, the way he...

I believe that I have finally untangled the threads - that I’m well on my way to describing the forces that caused the pain in my therapy. In Hegelian terms, my therapy was a tragedy. Both parties - myself as the client, he as the therapist - both of us thought that we were right. Neither of us could see the other’s reasoning as legitimate. So the only possible ending is, according to Mr Hegel, ‘the hero dies at the end’. Now. Here I am. In the library with Tesco sandwiches, crisps and fruit juice, planning what comes next. Still alive! I have my university place in September, and so I’m beginning to focus in on the core problem that binds my traumatic experience of therapy and the catastrophic treatment of my son, by mental health services. OK, my conclusions - start at the top level. Start with the awareness that something is wrong and the obvious answer - make a complaint! There is a problem! The outcome of a complaint process is to decide who has the most legitimate argument. And t...

As I have explained, my son did indeed manage to  escape from psychiatric services . But the harm done to his sense of identity, to how he understands himself because mental health treatment conforms to a medical model, and because there is shame associated with ‘diagnosis’... The harm done, remains one more hurdle for him to jump. It doesn’t take much imagination to feel how difficult it would be to regain confidence and trust enough in oneself, even the most mentally healthy of us, after life events have shaken the very foundations of our lives. Now imagine - how much harder with a ‘diagnosis’ and the memories of being sectioned, of being  treated  without one’s consent; the sound of doors locking, the muffled screaming, the atmosphere of anxiety and violence, and the drooling shuffling zombie walk of new-to-Risperidone patients. There is more, there is worse. In truth, psychiatric services are probably more than happy to see ungrateful people go and I was so, so ungrat...