Rings around the moon.

I will begin to write again. In pain drenched letters, with a heavy heart. Our family is whole, my husband, my children - no one died. But we are splintering and fractured and it is almost too much to bear. I've been looking at the work of Claire Weeks. An immensely sensible person who described the effects of prolonged stress, the 'sensitization' of nerves, and the way adrenaline and then endorphins - well no, Claire doesn't mention endorphins, but they are now understood as playing a part in the maintenance of severe anxiety - how adrenaline and then thinking about stressful things, and then reacting to the feeling of stress, and also having to go 'cold turkey' when stress is over and you no longer get that hit of endogenous morphine...can take even the sanest person down. So now its my turn. And this is just about the hardest and the worst period of my life right now... I need a hand to hold, and so I write.

As part of holding myself together I have counselling once a week. As lovely as that is...because the room is quiet, I get to talk a lot...and draw on the white board. As lovely as it is It misses the mark. Sure I have underlying stuff, but my main concern isn't entierly about needing someone to help me hold myself together. I need somewhere I can say all the things I can't say. Hence this blog. But I need more... To talk about the challenging behaviors I've dealt with this week. The poisonous thoughts I need to weep over. Last week as I left the room my counsellor said, this is the first week you haven't talked about your son... Because I've learnt not to. Inherent in most counselling traditions is the belief that the client is there to learn how to find their own resources, not to vent and not to say how bad things are. So it seems? But my problem is I need advice, to talk about the day to day and at the moment I'm feeling unheard! Thi...

Marduk made the world by wrestling with the dragon... Only by fighting to the bitter end... The piece of paper - the letter - that husband and I signed, saying: We give you 30 days notice.... I burnt it on the lawn, last night. This week has been truly awful So, what made me burn the letter? An article in the Guardian, actually. Written by a person suffering from Pure O... I'd never heard of it. The OCD society don't see why such a term is necessary... But I for one, am very grateful to the person who wrote that account, because it has radically changed our relationship with ex-Service User. Literally, it was as if someone broke down the roof cave-in, that had held us trapped in a dank and dark prison cell ever since we first brought ex-Service User home. I would never have got to  see that Service User is suffering from a form of OCD without the term Pure O. It explains why he wont go to see a psychotherapist, because the shame of seeing a therapist would ...