Post Psychosis diary - Stasis.

Another mom I know went through something similar. 

Except she welcomed the moment her child got a diagnosis because the school counsellor - not qualified, not BACP registered - went with everything she was told by the child, and blamed the mother. Social services were involved, and despite the teenage child attacking their parents bedroom door with the hammer, and despite this child just running out of the house into the night. Repeatedly. Despite their psychotic delusions, the child was given accommodation away from the family.

When the child was found trying to sever their own hands... Things changed and the child was sectioned! So this mom was relieved, so relieved , feeling that finally she was being taken seriously -and that her child was a lot safer for the duration.

Years later her child like my son both are stuck in a loop of constant takeaways and dreams that crumble and burn. Except my son can't afford takeaways because he won't claim benefits - because he can't cope with the interviews, the sense of surveillance real and imagined, that comes with claiming.

Life, everything has been proven as too uncertain, too dangerous. And they know that they have been the danger.

And I remember another conversation with a mom ( who wouldn't recognise me, and I wouldn't recognise her...) a fleeting conversation that rapidly became incredibly honest. Her daughter likewise used the hammer to get into the locked drinks cabinet, to demand money from her parents. The mom was distant and broken as she described it. And I remembered being in a similar state when things were that bad in my home. How I longed to be able to lie in the grass and look up at the sky, to feel safe again, to have space...Her husband had an important job she said. He often had to work away. Hmm, like my husband had to stay late at work, too.

And you wouldn't know if any of this was happening in your street. Or, you could have made some assumptions based on other people's stories, based on crazy theories about repression or attachment styles. 

None of us know...we just try and get through.

Right now I'm feeling raw, in playback. Josh talks to me desperately wanting me to understand the same thing over and over again. I have written this 'same thing' on a bit of paper. It's stuck on the wall. If he is talking about it, I point to the paper and ask, 'is it that'?

But we were in the living room. And he desperately wants me to understand....

And perhaps this sounds harsh, but it feels like he is bullying me.  The process he uses on himself he of course uses on others. And this process paralyses him. A continual OCD paralysis. My response is automatic. Contraction of muscles, bracing, flooded with nightmare images. The panic of threat, again. So I name it straight and say, "it isn't that I don't understand. I do understand but my understanding doesn't stop what happened to you replying. And it doesn't make any difference that I know how much it hurts that your dad couldn't help you. All you can do is find something you love and go do it, because I'm now in playback triggered to hell so you won't get any sense out of me! Or bloody tell him instead of me what he did. Telling me just hurts me so stop it! "

I felt bad for saying that. But I think that there is a bullying component - that there always was...And the kids with the hammers. The whole 'if only you understood me 'thing. 

But what then? 

His churning through the wrongness of his situation speaks of fear. Fear because it all went so badly wrong. And he wanted it to be understood, instead of dealt with...

The key to sanity is.... wait for it... being able to ask yourself what you want instead, and looking for a way to change things for the better.

That is it. And that is all. So, my honesty has given me space. I'm listening to Aiden Baker, I'm writing this. The knots in my belly are relaxing and I'm almost, almost able to imagine being able to eat again...

Hope I still have some wine!

Mental health is surely using mental protocols to avoid shooting up more heroin like endorphin as an end in itself. Wading through bad memories will cause anxiety and pain. But if the information from this is used in your life, in the world to create change...it isn't about pain. It's about making things better.

To not do this is...mad.