Sanctuary and asylum.

So, mental health triage  is a newish thing pioneered in the West Midlands. It is a team of three, the psychological assessment bit coming from an IAPT, which is - I think, don't quote me - a person with a psychology degree who has some counselling skills.

Therefore a triage team seems to me to be a really good idea when things are getting out of hand and others can't cope with an individual's chaotic behaviour. A police cell is no place for someone experiencing severe panic, rage.

Yet the single thing that has always been aspired to, and constantly missed, is asylum or sanctuary. A place of grounded sanity and safety.

Real asylum or sanctuary doesn't exist as a ' main stream' option. There is a Home Visit chemical mist delusion of asylum, which must be better than hospital - if ex service user's experience is anything to go by...or hospital plus the chemical haze, so called medication ( the chemical lobotomy)...

Real asylum would be a place that truly feels safe, with sane people. 

To find and create asylum for a person who is intent upon creating and actualizing his inner, hellish reality seems to call for a holodeck of Star Trek component. A safe way for a person in the full flood of panic-rage to enter into and dance with his personal demons. An immersive virtual experience that validates the emotions, whilst slowly changing the meaning of destructive aggression into a sense of safety, connection with others and sanctuary...

I don't honestly know, since I'm not psychotic. But meshing with the degree of self hatred and anger underlying ex service users rage, can pull me into my own panic, dissociation.

I always get the feeling he wants everyone to agree with his reality. Partitioning oneself to such a degree isn't easy...to avoid experiencing a similar degree of dissociation. Hence my feeling that the holodeck would be an interesting experiment.

Shame there isn't a holodeck, just to experiment with...

I know that ex service user isn't happier because of the police visit. Interacting with the ' offer'  of triage, leading to 'hospital' ,  'getting help' has acquired the aura of severe threat for ex service user...Severe threat is punitive....a last resort.

So I am really questioning the purpose of the police visit on Tuesday. 

There is no help for the people who deal with the chaotic outbreaks...this is always going to be at the heart of my contention. No sanctuary or asylum for us; I'm creating my own by having little caches of sanity for myself, a bag of precious perfumes, a pure silk duvet cover so bed is luxury! And my beast of a laptop. The shower too...Place and experience, sanctuary and asylum.