Waiting for rain...

We have a holiday booked.

I booked it in January - so it is for two people, to stay in a small house somewhere well off the beaten track.

This tiny holiday (tiny house, for three nights) has hung like a precious jewel, threatened by all sorts of mad twists in the events that followed.

 A beautiful tiny house, in a meadow, by a stream.

Hanging like a promise, hanging before me as a taunt - because how can we leave Service User...I mean he just went out and ran under a bus...what if he does it again!

Well a friend has stepped in and will be on hand to listen to, and be with Service User while we are away.

Also, this kind of thinking, the 'what if...and I'm responsible' attitude is my 'Royal road' to my own edition of anxiety and depression.

Three whole nights, I see myself lying flat on the ground in the pouring rain, just connecting to me and my experiences. Nothing mediated through endless 'what ifs'.
And far away from the gibbering.
Gibbering seems to have replaced pacing, I mean...is that good or bad?
You tell me!

I'm hoping it will turn into singing...

Philosophically speaking, George Simon (or is it Simon George?) has been good for us.
All of us...because Service User's self recrimination is a triggered response, rather than a search for new information (this is my criteria - if I feel he is genuinely looking for truth, I will listen, and use 'Solutions focused' counselling principles). Normally he uses it as 'disinformation' and as it is emotive, it gains in intensity until it becomes 'challenging behavior' and I feel threatened.

Regards adrenaline and hyper-vigilance, I asked him this morning how bad it was and he replied that he felt too weak to act on it. I said, 'that may be so, but it could well be that you don't feel it in your body because your unconscious mind is telling your body that there isn't any threat here at all'. I said, 'if suddenly a zenomorph (the thing in Alien) portaled into this kitchen, you would be out of the door before your conscious mind had seen it. Your unconscious mind is constantly looking for threat....and there really isn't any here, so of course you don't feel it in your body. Also, you are well fed and you have slept well. So what are the chances that you are too weak to run if a real threat was actually here?'

Meanwhile I feel threatened very easily (given my recent experiences - my hyper-vigilance is possibly now worse than his) and so that's something I've got to deal with. But the point is, from Simon George, to not let self recrimination start up.

Preventing it gaining momentum is a true art.

As to my catastrophic thinking - what if he goes mad and my friend can't cope - well my friend has the phone number for the emergency mental health team. I am pretty sure Service User does not want to go back to the psychiatric hospital. I  phoned them this morning to arrange to pick up some of his things that he left there. Service User was by my side as I spoke to them, and he practically had turned grey - just as a result of that much contact, so...

And also, I am 90% sure a mixture of Citalapram - taken randomly - plus alcohol has proven lethal for many others, and that can't happen since I pushed all the pills into a bit of clay and left them to rot in the garden.

My art therapy!

The bottom line is, it would be his choice. He has bravely chosen to regain self control, and a part of that goal is that we all accept risk, and the consequences of our actions.

Meanwhile, I want a badge, I want some kind of medal, a symbol, a recognition of myself as a person who has faced up to the reality of someone else's psychosis and coped.

So I'm designing it.

Here is the 'Solution's Focus' model.