Rings around the moon.

Tool have provided the soundtrack for this ordeal of betrayal. Maynard's lyrics have been a golden thread to follow through the labyrinth, in particular other work by Maynard (Puscifer 'The Undertaker', A Perfect circle 'Gravity', 'counting Bodies to the Beat' and 'The Package'.) Yesterday's track Intolerance and today's 'Swamp Song' both come from Undertow (Tool album). I bought it ages ago but I didn't really listen. I was too lost trying to 'spiral out' as I sang Latralus to head off panic attacks. Swamp song says it all.  Because where I've been is so sad, so raw, agony.  It is time to throw it back. Time to be angry. Because I wasn't the one attacking, or criticizing, I was a punch bag for his inarticulate rage, impotance and despair, he was unable to be open and vulnerable. He was unable to deal with his inner voice of criticism, making me carry that too. Perhaps if I hadn't spent three years in increasi...

  Intolerance by Tool. Other tracks - for this blog is full of them - had their place. To express feelings of anger and powerlessness, to say what I feel. But this song is the cherry on the cake.  Intolerance, it took me three months to get to it. Which quite frankly seems fast. For a 180 degree shift Taking the dive into pure, uncompromising anger, has to be done. Probably best it be done quickly. Probably better if I had been placed in a padded cell with no internet access. You know what I needed to think to get myself to anger.  All here in this blog. That last lie took me there. It dropped me directly into the heart of my disgust and revulsion. Yesterday my son looked down his nose at me as I loaded up the car (in a rage) to dump another boot load of husband's belongings, my son feels that I'm being 'passive aggressive'. I said "You know I have never cut anyone out of my life before. No one, because no one ever actually lied to me, or spoke to me like I was a d...

When I first felt this song matching and snapping into place, resonating with something I was feeling...I tried to ignore it. A song that says openly and clearly "It's not me it's you" was unacceptable to the person I wanted myself to be.  The good and worthy, lovable me. The me whose radiant goodness would win out. I wanted to be a person who didn't think or say those things... Well, you know how that worked out! This morning an invoice addressed to him came in the post. He hasn't specified anyway to get important mail, and he would say if I asked him what could happen with such post - I'm pretty damn sure he would say - "there's nothing I can suggest that wont upset you". Untrue Burning is number one - burn anything that is or has ever been connected to him - a very joyful solution. Next comes ignoring - I do a lot of that one. But ignoring stuff isn't me. What I have done before is: take the letters plus a heap of his stuff round to hi...

Why should I be surprised? A detail came out of my conversation with 'the terrible husband' (the 'other woman's' partner).  I phoned my husband and asked him a question about it and. He just lies... Still lying.

The Alien level. Otherwise known as "Pass me my Quake 3 rocket launcher...oh...no....this is real life!"  The 'blast it out [of] the air-lock' BIO-TAL mode is activated by the appraisal of an 'intrusion' as an unprecedented threat that has the potential to overwhelm and assimilate. Other than the plain, unadulterated facts so far, this BIO-TAL was upgraded to immediate action required [IAR] by a statement captured on a recording, that indicated something else had happened before...The statement was a sentence he began to say more about - whilst emotionally inflamed by irritation and anger - and then he stopped himself, just at the glittering edge of reality. Reality? We don't want to go there do we... To that end I put all his whiskey bottles, shirts and family (his parents and sister photos) into bags and left them in the porch at his dad's house. I did not send a text.  Perception management doesn't come naturally to me, but I have access to hi...

Well one day and one morning written off. Paralyzing despair. My friend, the one who knows how to torch cars (!) - amazing who you meet when training to be a counseller - called me. I listened to myself as I spoke to her and... Clearly no contact with him is better. A part of me is asking, what happened?  Why has all this come to me.  A hundred and one answers compete for my attention, and I'm not picking up. Because no matter why or what nothing changes. All I can do is manage it. At the moment I'm heading into a white hot, coruscating super nova of pure rage.  It's a good sign when Trent Rezner turns up. [Though this video isn't Rezner, it is a brilliant cover, well worth taking seriously.] Basically my credo is things can be repaired. This is how I got through Josh's psychosis, how I wrote my assignments with him interrupting me to tell me about the CIA or Satan every minute. I know that anything can attempted with love and intelligence, joy and daring. I feel ab...

We sat in a restaurant talking about tattoos. I realised that I'd really like a solar eclipse tattoo. I see lots of moon tattoos - a line of circles, each with the moon growing and shrinking...I've never seen anyone have a solar eclipse; a line of suns, the central one black, spiderweb lines of white, or just black, then the gold returns, increasing. Eclipsed...at that moment, as I said it, I felt it. The sun gone. My son gone. It was temporary.  Only just temporary. Death was that close, my stars fell, my heart stopped. No sun... No son. I was silent. A rush of noise, intrusive music that I didn't want to hear, too many people, too, too close. He stared ahead. He hears, he sees, he ignores. His silence is louder than the end of the world, louder than any scream or cry. I hear and feel every word that has stabbed through my heart since May. Here is where secondary fear lives. My reaction to that physical rush of adrenaline, the iron grip, constriction and...

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 take the same route into dysfunction as 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 le...

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...

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...

A system that steam rollers over the emotional truths of those it cares for is displaying cruelty... Discharge this day means Service User is going to the place he fears the most. I'm not with him because I'd fight. Literally. In Service User's reality he is bound for Hell Heading into to the heart of terror. Over forty years ago, psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers, in his  seminal work General Psychopathology pronounced that the content of  madness (in particular delusions) were ‘un-understandable’ and therefore  worthy of little consideration except as a sign of an underlying primary  disorder. At the start of the twenty-first century, this is still the majority opinion  in mainstream psychiatry. [Link] The dream-logic of his belief system is not chaotic or random Reality for him has become highly symbolic It is as if there is simply too much of a read-out... I vividly recall the case of a professor who had a sudden vision and  ...

Can't sleep. The evening visit was awful. His gums were bleeding [he has been hurting himself, and scratching his wounds]. He was shaking. His face went into spasms. His neck, too Because he had just been given 'more medication'.. Akathisia - is an effect of the drugs. Dopamine... There isn't anything, any aspect of this part of his journey now, that is OK. Medication follows a 'diabetes' model (the theory illness is due to a too much or too little of something) without any test to show if a person needs less dopamine in their system. The degree of powerlessness I feel is immeasurable, it is abysmal - as in the deepest, blackest depths. I was so angry as I sat calmly in the hospital by his side, crushed between his madness and  the madness of 'my culture' which is dissociated and split....and is inadvertently cruel, actually. Madness is the pus from a wound, being treated as if 'the pus' is the cause.. I'm witnessing the ef...

Riding back home... Possibly the worst day Since the other worst days Made so difficult by my daughter who splurged her view of our parenting skills all over the ward... This is the first post I've tagged with #anger She had wanted him sectioned immediately I think... And she wasn't here to see what that could actually mean. Our attitude To be pretty bomb proof To keep on with the talking through... To seek testing where possible. To be there Not to abandon no matter what.. And to refuse to act against a person's will... Based on DBT - dialectic behavioral therapy. My daughter prefers her mental health issues to be treated as a brain problem and happily takes drugs. I've no idea what she thinks therapy is, but what ever it is, there isn't one way fits all. Service User was convinced taking medication would kill him. It wasn't something he could be rational about. And the mental health team could only focus on drugs. Service User did no...