Rings around the moon.

I am at one of those, 'I don't know where to begin' moments. People are people and life brings up stuff, and stuff happens, but I didn't expect betrayal. I'm not going into details. Just know I experience it as waves of grief. What helps is naming the question when some kind of flash-back experience is playing, because somehow those moments when I see my life racing past my eyes and start to feel the black waters of oblivion drowning out my connection to the world...whilst I'm ostensibly looking for a bag of flour, or coffee, shopping in a supermarket..As I sink and the tears well up in my eyes I know there will be some kind of statement/question underneath it. If I can catch it and ask it, I will move forwards. Mostly it is details of the betrayal. I have the kind of mind that needs to know the truth. I am more able to put things to rest when I can orient myself to fact. It has been one month now, this is the fourth Friday since it happened, and this week ha...

I've not met the early intervention guy, I simply go away and pretend I'm not here when he arrives so Service User has all the attention. Sitting at my PC I can hear the tone of voice, but not the words coming up from the kitchen down stairs. EI man is 'dynamic' 'curious' and sounds very rational and positive. Meanwhile things are not so great here, a spiral of repetitive thinking is gaining momentum. Or rather it never went away, it was always just below the surface. The D2 receptors blocked by Resperidone disconnecting feeling from action...Now it's gaining enough energy to break out once more. I feel conflicted, a part of me thinks I should stop my course and focus on him. Surely I could make sure that he is getting more experiences that will 'bring him out of himself' and feel free here to add all the other cliches. But the truth is, even though I think I'm mad to continue my course, and though I don't feel that I've been present fo...

Today it seemed worse than any day since sectioning. My aim is to dissociate from the monologue; the endless because sentences that all speak of wasted time and hopelessness. Not necessarily because it's better for him. Because actually it's better for both of us. Though the morning started fine, by dinner time I was beginning to feel the pre-sectioning, skin crawling vibe. It is like having ants under my skin, except it is him not me, transmitted in the way he moves, body language, tone of voice. I could feel myself pulling the imaginary armor back on, alongside a desire to just run! and keep on running. So? So...lets's just hope it was a missed tablet.

One of the worst aspects of this year has been the sense of deja vu. Service user has been discharged before, and then about a week later, he tried to kill himself. Regardless of common sense or logic, the proximity of the memories to each other creates the illusion of connection. Sometimes it is as if everything is a replay, each place we visited with him on day trips is haunted by  ghost memories, shades and shadows of fear and struggling. I was fighting against myself, against my instincts almost all the time. I remember us walking along a narrow strip that led out to sea, the waves crashing against the walls, fierce and drowning and thinking - if he just jumps, I can't follow, I have to keep in mind where all the life rings are.... I know that memory is anchored to that wall and that sea...like the walks we took along a green and easy path, up a hill not far from here to sit among the trees. First time we went he was just out of hospital and limping, another time ...

Jaak describes seven innate systems or drives present in all of us: SEEKING (anticipation, desire) RAGE (frustration, indignation) FEAR (pain, threat, foreboding) PANIC/LOSS (separation distress, social loss, grief, loneliness) PLAY (carefree play, joy) MATING (sex—who and when) CARE (nurture) Though emotions are hardwired in the autonomic nervous system - see the work of Porges - these seven systems listed above (always written in capitals) describe more complexity. Panksepp describes SEEKING as the most important, the emotion that creates a sense of self, but anyway! The reason why all this intrigues me is the use of D2 blockers to block dopamine (at a set of receptors known as D2). Dopamine causes SEEKING, and SEEKING is all about interest, joy, finding, looking, engagement with the world. Too much of that, as in if you take various class one drugs....leads to psychosis in some people. So people with psychosis are proscribed dopamine blockers... Meanwhile, service ...

It is Sunday, 10:30. Even though the original visiting psychiatrist has left the team, and even though it's probably only a couple of mental health nurses....I'm not getting involved at all. For the benefit of my sanity. Even speaking to a member of their  team on the phone on Friday was more than enough. The downturn tone of sympathy, the misalliance begins again. Sympathy and an attitude of ' yes, there is something wrong....' Makes me .... Oh, just been interrupted by service user, ' can they have your phone number just in case you want to phone them' hang on, one they phoned me on Friday, two I need their number if I want to phone them? The logic isn't worth thinking about. I wrote my number and handed the scrap of paper to service user. You may take from my tone that I'm far from pleased to have the Home Visit Team back. Especially if service user gets the Mindfulness lady again. She was instrumental in creating panic in service user, using sectioni...

The 28 days were up. We collected Service User for two days leave. A bittersweet experience....On the morning of the return day, after an extremely minimal conversation with the psychiatrist by phone, during which I was just asked if things were ok, I was told that that was it. Service User is discharged. We went to the shops and bought biscuits and chocolate for the staff, and returned at our usual time. Service User picked up his Respiridone, and we left! Home visit team due on Sunday. I was reassured to hear that the doctor who had threatened service user with sectioning - Dr Cho -  and who I regard as a part of why service user attempted suicide, has left...I was never clear in my own mind if I should push my complaint forward. Perhaps I should have, but I didn't...still, I made it clear to everyone what happened, and I'd like to think it had an effect.