Rings around the moon.

OK, so basically we are terrible parents and from now on we have to do better. I'm only half joking as I write that..half of me believes it to be true. The fact that both of us (husband and me) are now both of us angry, we need to get our act together and get ourselves sorted out. George Simon - I have his book - tells me that I need to set personal limits, and of course...I'm having difficulties in doing this since I'd prefer people to just get on with their lives and no personal limits at all...I don't suppose I really thought I had any until they were obviously broken - the result of course is anger! Older and wiser, I can see that I certainly do have limits; such as when Service User starts behavior that is unsettling, or when his self recriminations begin, hurting his wounds or giving off pure resentment and anger. Also I am not very good at noticing what is going well, I'm going to have to work on my positivity... In truth so much has gone well...

So this was the day my husband got the anger. Basically the feeling we get is - Something doesn't add up. Service User is angry, and we know this and he doesn't do passive aggressive in the ordinary way, so I was confused. A lot of his acting weird is about freaking people out, because he can turn it off in an instant... And his fear of being attacked by them is caused by the way he acts...I can't see where the balancing point is though, some of it is so unconscious that he may not have control - but most of it, he really does appear to be in control of... So how much of what's left is our fault? I'm not sure... We can't ignore him because he would then follow his aunt, who likewise gives me the impression of being poisonous with rage, which is why her dad just lets her sit in bed all day - because it is horrible to be with someone who hates you in a silent, two faced way....I can see why he feels the only way is to leave someone like that to molder a...

Honestly I have no idea! Anger is what I feel, that's no surprise, I mean I am sure in my heart that what we have here is too weird for words - the repeating his aunt's trajectory from college to stinking bed...so any behavior that furthers that, such as pacing, refusing to look for ways to reduce anxiety (addict behavior) along side feigned helplessness (saying 'I should have come home when my money ran out'....!!!!) makes me angry. My question is, do I express it as I feel it; with emotion. Or do I step it down into assertive sentences, without emotion... I began well - well means assertive without emotion. All my breakfast cereal has been eaten (plus my porridge oats) and Service User drinks milk all day, so milk is low already. Solution, we will go to the shop - that way I tell him, you can walk and get exercise, then rest for the rest of the day - and you can buy yourself some milk and your choice of cereals yourself. He went upstairs to get his ban...

I'm trying to evaluate shouting at Service User yesterday, telling him in no uncertain terms that he is damaging himself further. Conventional theory states that it could make him hate himself more because it is a horrible experience to be shouted at for doing something you can't help.  Or is it positive, demonstrating my belief that he can help himself, and that he should help himself, because he is precious and worth everything both to himself, and to us? I don't know. I think I'd have wanted my parents to get angry with me if I was hurting myself habitually, and mindlessly. Being fierce demonstrates that what is happening is serious, I think that I'm showing that I have confidence and trust in the person who is self harming, and I know that he is strong enough to cope with the anger his actions provoke. Basically that when people are angry the sky doesn't fall down and the sun go out! I'm not convinced though, everyone says stay calm.. I can...

So...I am very confused and don't know how to move forward. At times like these it is best to ask the question. What do I think is true? I think that a person who has frazzled his brain with class A drugs, and spent years in anxiety, and has inherited an 'anxious' personality learns that anxiety is self perpetuating and normal. The mechanism that turns terrifying and painful experiences into an addiction is the production of endorphins...in other words, a pathological chemical need for more anxiety. And this addiction works, hooks in because he is addicted to endogenously produced morphine. This appears as Service User spending all day pacing, continually walking up and down in his room despite the fracture in his pelvis. This theory means, paradoxically the hip pain is the reason he paces. Pain produces endorphines. He isn't thinking of answers as he paces, he is deepening his negative thinking, which in turn is creating psychological pain, adrenaline, end...

As we shall see in the next chapter, neuroleptic drugs dampen down all spontaneous thought and action and their effects are not restricted to psychotic phenomena. Therefore, if we abandon the assumption that neuroleptic drugs act in a disease-centred manner, their effects provide no support for the dopamine theory... Moncrieff. The Myth of the Chemical Cure : A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment (pp. 89-90). Palgrave Macmillan. Kindle Edition.  So overall... I personally have no regrets about 'the cold turkey' experience. It was terrifying, yes. Despite that, the sense of being out of control on so many levels was manageable because the 'cold turkey' had been planned. This whole psychosis 'trip' has been through Terra Incognita... If I'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't have worried, and I certainly would not have listened to those compelling voices - the psychiatrists - who meant well, but nevertheless...were doing harm by tran...

After yesterday...I'm really stressed out. Service User went to a friend's yesterday evening, and I just lay down for the couple of hours he was out, and let the stress run through me. It feels like biting metal, or hearing the whistle of a boiling kettle that I can't switch off. I think that I expect too much of him and I'm trying to go too fast. The amount of self control he has gained is amazing. The problem I keep running into is my reaction (subconscious) to the waves of malevolent self hatred he gives off. He has a particular facial expression which indicates this mood. And it gets to me, it really does. It isn't that I think he will hurt me or himself, it is that I feel that he will. I am sure that he has enough self control to sit with it, now. But it is there, and my unconscious self is telling me to keep well away. When I'm in a better state of mind, I can put up the necessary mental shield. But when I feel like I do today, I just can't d...

Exhausted. Almost impossible to write because details would be needed to make sense, and I'm not going to go into any... Just know, two major crashes this afternoon. Both times I suggested Service User wash his face in cold water (the day is very hot) and this helps bring him back. Both times his crash was about his feelings coming back, frustration and pain and self hatred. So, this cannot be. After I allowed myself a brief period of uncontrollable sobbing, we both sat at the table, my copy of Getting Things Done before me. I read from the opening lines, about how it is possible to clear your mind and allow yourself to feel spacious, rather than crushed! From GTD I quickly pulled out this exercise: I asked him: "Write down a problem you wish to make into a project". Next "write down what it would be like if this problem was solved" Next "Write down the first step in moving towards the outcome you have chosen". He wrote down: ...

This is personal..I have no idea how things work for you, or what the truth is. What follows is my own view. A couple of years ago I was at an inquest for a young old man who had committed suicide. When his mother asked if the doctor (present)  thought that SSRIs had contributed to her son's death, I like the doctor and the magistrate thought that it was unreasonable to blame the SSRI. After all, the anti-depressant was just one more drug in his system, and he had clearly been in a psychotic state nine hours before his death. Sam had been drinking, smoking weed and taking 'legal highs' it had been his birthday so....it wasn't surprising he became disturbed. A part of me thought his mom was trying not too blame herself, and Prozac was an easy target. I wondered why his mom had not phoned anyone for help when she realised how bizarre and paranoid her son's thinking had become..Surely she must now be agonizing over why she didn't pick up the phone w...

It seems ages since I last wrote here. And I know that my memory will be faulty... Nevertheless, this is is a hazy account of how 'things have been'.. It appeared to me that the first day after Citalopram was gone (about 7 and a half days after taking the last dose) things grew much worse. A period of worsening happened with the end of Risperdone. When that left Service User's system he became frantic - is a better way to describe it... Possessed would be the medieval diagnosis. And, as with the end of Risperdone, each subsequent day gets better than the one before Extreme behavior grows less and becomes less intense And Service User regains self control, and a sense of humor. There were a few days between the end of R and then the end of C. So I found it difficult, six days later when Citalopram 'left the building' to witness the reversal and descent back down into the constant walking, walking, walking - agitation. On the first day of Citalopr...

The Citalopram was due to be gone yesterday... The effect (possibly..) Was pacing A little bit sick. All day trying to get a grip on the story... I drew a mind map to illustrate. Today, more cohenerent A bit of nausea. The Resperidone ending took three days to get through So I expect this phase to be a bit longer.. Mostly though...there has been sadness... As the cover stories in all their fantastic glory Of Satan. or brain tumors, or demons... Wear away. Leaving a broken heart. A mourning for real things.. Finally...

10 past 7 am. These past few days have been tough. As a guide, the time it takes for a drug to leave the body is 5x it's half-life. Resperidone has a half-life of 20 hours x 5 = 100 hours = 4 days. Citalapram 36 hrs x 5 = 7.5 days... That means the Citalapram is just about over...today. It is impossible to know what is the effect of any of it! Too many other factors. All I have are correlations... The end of Resperidone looked like this:. Day one: 7th July - day of episodic extreme self-recrimination and loss of self control. Day 2/ extreme self-recrimination and increasing self-control. Day 3/ more humor, increasing self control. Flashes of real emotion linking the past to the present and locating anger in a more appropriate target than the self. Today is the end of Citalapram. Last night continuous agitation, but this was tempered with self control.. And this morning? Agitation, a sense of humor... It is possible all this would have happened anyway....

My daughter asked the hospital to send her a 'welcome pack'. I haven't seen it yet, she explained what it contained over the phone. To be honest it didn't seem to say very much. And one particular word used in the pack caught my attention. Alliance... Alliance is a noble aspiration, and something a set of people dedicated to caring for others shouldn't have too much difficulty in creating. So what went wrong? First thing, the psychiatrist we saw when we attended via the A+E drop-in, looked like a man who had been outside standing in the rain without a hat or umbrella for too long. That is how I summed him up at the time. This was our first experience of 'how a psychiatrist talks' to a 'patient'. Perhaps I categorized him as bored, annoyed, had enough...because of the way he spoke? It must have contributed? Anyway, a psychiatrist asks a person about recent events. The psychiatrist is interested in factual content. He is open to you...

Thinking about the meeting... It was intimidating. I know no one there meant it to be But one way or another, with the holding pen just a few doors down the corridor away, and this being all about being kept in or allowed to go home.. Knowing that we don't know the rules of the game... It is even more intimidating now we know there isn't any help available - not because the hospital has withdrawn its help - it has not, and they want to help us, but the only help available is medication or the holding pen. And the consequence of phoning up to say this is too difficult would be that Service User has to return or...? Actually I don't know what would happen...no one has told us or Service User anything. And this is a big part of the problem, everything is hidden behind statements about ethos and ethics. In the meeting, the consultant explained to me about how they made every effort to work cooperatively with the family, and how the wishes of the Service User we...

We managed to get beyond the barriers and park the car, by phoning and getting someone to swipe the keypad and let us in. So I was apprehensive about how we would get out! We arrived in time, and got to sit for about 40 minutes...waiting. I realized i felt that watching the people in the outside area is the only safe way to look at the people locked up here.  Eye contact or any contact prevented by the doors and windows..I noticed how the back wall was covered in an out of focus image of a field of sunflowers.  Poor Van Gogh. Then suddenly we were called into the meeting. 5 people..a nurse, someone from the home visit team, a social worker, the psychiatrist and someone else.. The psychiatrist was definitely a character from a Tim Burton movie, exuberant and light on his feet... Nevertheless, this meeting was an ordeal. Service User proved that he has 'capacity' and we the parents made it clear that we felt betrayed by the hospital, and the psychiatrist who had seen him on the t...

That feeling, when something scuttles, the sensation of cold water down my spine. The feeling of nightmare. Nothing adds up. Subtle wrongness. But mostly spiders. Trying to navigate my way without setting off any traps. We are caught in a web, and it breaks my heart.