Rings around the moon.

Three questions sent me up the road to enroll at college to begin training...All three have been answered. Gaining the information has been painful and probably, any fool could have told me the answers. But no, I don't believe so. My first was,  how do people ignore other people who are totally distraught, that is to say, so distraught that they may be compromising social rules? Years ago now, it was around 9 pm, a woman was walking up and down the street, sobbing. After I'd spoken to her and she had gone home, my neighbor ( a nurse) opened the window and asked me, what that was 'all about'? I felt really uncomfortable. I wanted to say, 'you heard her, but you did nothing?!' Hence my question Was it fear that meant my next door neighbor ignored her? Did my neighbor think that the woman would be embarrassed when she stopped crying, and would prefer to be ignored? Or was there something else going on? This question perplexed me because I don't ign...

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 ...

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...

My daughter asked the hospital to send her a 'welcome pack'. I haven't seen it yet, she explained what it contained over the phone. To be honest it didn't seem to say very much. And one particular word used in the pack caught my attention. Alliance... Alliance is a noble aspiration, and something a set of people dedicated to caring for others shouldn't have too much difficulty in creating. So what went wrong? First thing, the psychiatrist we saw when we attended via the A+E drop-in, looked like a man who had been outside standing in the rain without a hat or umbrella for too long. That is how I summed him up at the time. This was our first experience of 'how a psychiatrist talks' to a 'patient'. Perhaps I categorized him as bored, annoyed, had enough...because of the way he spoke? It must have contributed? Anyway, a psychiatrist asks a person about recent events. The psychiatrist is interested in factual content. He is open to you...

Everything has been made immeasurably more difficult... Unpack that... Keeping my emotional balance has been made immeasurably harder because I'm in replay. The only good thing to say about this is that I've had years of experience in dealing with my own stress levels, and have accumulated quite a lot of useful theory. Replay - from my point of view as a sufferer -  has to be considered as if it is a type of migraine. There will be mood disturbance Vision cannot be trusted And thinking about anything will hurt. Self medicate with meditation and visualizations that address the wound. So it goes... After what has happened I considered deleting Rings Around The Moon. After all... Why write. As I said - mood disturbance, vision and thinking are affected. But last night the mental health nurse sat well within our circle around Service User's hospital bed last night - usually they go out of the room or sit by the window... I was thinking, is this because of...

I need boundaries.. Because the fear and anxiety Service User is operating within, hijacks my thought processes. I find myself thinking about nothing else. Especially when he starts talking about how he wishes he could just end his life... More about that latter. So I will set a time limit of 25 minutes and use this blog as a place to help me to order my thoughts. Open ended rambling or rumination is pointless. So when he talks about suicide, what do I really think? He should be sectioned - This opens up more problems - he would need to section himself! It is a form of challenging behavior - though I'm good at letting it pass over me and through me (Dune reference) I'm getting hurt. He talks about it because the change he needs to make in himself is so great that it feels as if it requires death - death of the harming self.  It is the ultimate self-punishment, the logical conclusion. Ultimate self recrimination. He needs help..can a harming self be neutra...