Rings around the moon.

I'm just reading Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman. And thinking about what happened to my son that inevitably led to something psychiatrists if the past would call hysteria.  And how it was that his hysteria became psychosis. And how it is that what was once called hysteria became shell shock, when it showed up in men. Finally now, understood as a post traumatic.... Disorder? Or Response? A response that leads to disordered behaviour. Apparently if a normal, well adjusted person is subjected to severe stress and threats, it takes just 200 to 260 days before their response becomes disordered. What on earth did they do to get this information!? But, for my son to get to psychosis I am almost 100% certain that it required SSRIs..and the ceremony of degradation that is the inadvertent outcome of mental health services. I have been watching a mental health nurse's posts on Instagram. They have no idea about the impact of their language and way of understanding. But it feels as ...

Post Psychosis  Diary. I'm beginning to see the aftermath. Running has protected me so far, but I can only run so far. My running was the good sort, the best sort. A run through years of training, of making connections. Getting me to where I am now. The knock at the door yesterday, the daughter of the lady who used to bring me tomatoes from her garden. As her daughter handed me the tomatoes that she grew, as her mother had grown. Handing me the bag and giving me a hug. And I suppose it all just stopped.  People see, people want to be kind because we all know how difficult things can be... I don't know what to do. This is the long and short of it.  I suspect a genetic link regarding my son's psychosis. But I'm not strong enough to face my son's father - ok, I need to ask myself what do I need to make a meeting possible...so I can cope? But.. Do I need to know the shape, dimensions of what caused a similar breakdown in my husband's sister? If I side with the old a...

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 ...

  Visualisation. Imagine a ladder... Your home is close by. You are going out with friends later. You look at your watch - you have three hours - then you can take a shower and get ready. And you are looking forward to later, the swirl of light, friendship, food... But. There is this hole. Today there is a ladder, no idea how far down the hole goes...Who put the ladder there? Are they still down there? You kick a pebble - it doesn't seem to land. You can't hear it land.  Oh my... Commentary. The ANS, or rather the autonomic states are complex.  The three main states are:  Safety - in this visualisation: lights, friendship, food, enjoyment. Danger - the ladder goes down a long way, it might wobble a bit, is it old, breaking, what's below? And it is getting dark Life threatening danger - The bottom of the hole.... There is a LOT more going on than this, but when introducing the theory the ladder metaphor as created by Deb Dana  is perfect! Mapping the states . ~Yo...

 One of my favourite words! OK, let's go. Where am I? I'm below ventral vagal and above sympathetic in the zone called 'challenged' which is a pretty good place actually. Let me explain - I read a post a while ago criticising Porges polyvagal theory and so I headed off to download papers, to read blogs, to get a handle (Gendlin!) on what this criticism of a theory that actually proved incredibly helpful to me, is all about. Oh! Nothing but a storm in a tea cup actually. Gets people excited. Upsets some therapists. But fundamentally, total waste of time - the criticisms I mean. Unless you are going to do more research? And if you are a therapist the answer is probably no - since research means cutting up animals. Between clients? Seriously! It doesn't change anything if you too find that reptiles have a ventral presenting vagus nerve. Simply means that they have a ventral branch too. Perhaps they can be more sociable than the people who cut up animals believed? I per...

Process mapping was useful. I will have more to say about it, a separate page for later. Right now? Triggered to hell. What I know is, I don't have any good associations with this stress state. This is the one in which the person feels as if they are crawling with ants, inside one's body, all across my skin. Ripples of anger that my husband simply jumped from one family to another in response to this, first time around. I don't care how bad things get, I would find the memory of just leaving my family because my son is suffering from psychosis hard to live with!  So, ok.  Here I still am. Accessing memories of playing Half Life and Doom 3. Knowing that in those chosen fear states the important thing is to have a protocol and save points.  I can understand my son's rage when I'm here, thinking of my husband and his lying. There is a magnification, intensification of pain with this stress state. Being acutely aware of other people's inability to see and to be dow...

After gathering information on what you do, and how the experience of doing, being, as you do it - gives or takes your energy and attention. The next dimension of the map is to notice which of the three autonomic nervous system states is managing, directing, your energy and attention. Ok, state one is a primal on off. This is where endogenous opiates come in. This is the place cult leaders send cult members by causing terror, paranoia and love bombing. Outcome? Disorganised attachment. Down here we have dissociation, being petrified, zoning out, bewilderment, confusion, word salad. There are a whole set of physiological effects too. Memories created under this state will not make sense. Reality is vanishing, strobing. Thinking produces weird effects. Overall there is paralysis. Curiously many people find a way to live here - this isn't good. The pathway out of state one leads through state 2. Fight, flight. A person between 1 and 2 may well use 'fawning' as an attempt to fe...

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...

This is how it was: [LINK] I think that what I wanted and needed most, when my son was panicking and hallucinating and the home visit team was sending him into a downward spiral, what I needed beyond all things - was to know that one day it would be OK. That one day he would be able to look back at the fear and pain and get some kind of overview, some distance from the power of it. Preferably without continuing with the Risperidone, Lorazepam, Zopiclone, Citalopram and Diazepam, Five years later and yes, it is OK. And no more R,L,Z,C and D.  How did that happen?  Well it happened despite my husband's best attempts to sabotage it - and the consequences of his attitude and actions remain as horrible, mouldering left overs. It happened because The Early Intervention team supported my son. There was no cajoling or threatening (Home visit Team - or rather the psychiatrist who literally led the home visit team specialised in bullying). They respected my son's wishes not to be medic...

OK, well, The Black Box blog   was a nice interlude! I'm being ironic .  I may have said this before - that I fell in love with my therapist?  And I tell the story of what happened here: LINK. Spoiler alert: Not a happy ending. But, it was an interesting experience, taught me lots. So, back home, back to the sense of my life as being me running rings around the moon, or ripples from a stone thrown into a pool, the image of the moon becomes rings that slowly, slowly calm back into a coherent picture. All in all it is OK, I've done good! I have done what I set out to do! In 2015 I picked up on an expression that passed over my son's face that gave me the heads-up that something was going very wrong, and I listened to that intuition. I followed the narrative to the coroners court and resolved to become the kind of therapist who isn't like 'your mom's friend'. I wanted to work with young men who are suicidal. I wanted to become someone who knows how to engage ...