I Hate my Colleagues II & Occupational Health Shenanigans II

This week has sucked, and I am glad it is nearing its completion.  I’m actually in a fairly good mood now as I write this, but it’s the first day that I have actually felt that right from getting up.

As you will know from Monday’s post, I’d been in bad form regarding the fucked-up status of my relationship with the psychiatrist.  However, no sooner had I published that post than an email arrived from the Horse that put me in an even worse mood.  My first reaction was of panic, but it was shortly replaced by anger.

Prior to Monday, the latest in the work saga had been that Horse had asked me to yet again outline any “aggravating factors” that had occurred in the workplace prior to my absence.  I had already done this back in March, and received a reply that was nothing but an unconstructive and condescending refutation of my comments.  So, when this second request came, I had simply outlined a few management issues that needed to be addressed.

They have agreed to increased supervision in the immediate aftermath of any return to work, as well as a phased returned facilitated by payment commensurate with hours of work rather than by use of annual leave to cover the out of office hours.  Yet again, though, everything else was refuted.  Frankly, it seems to me that the Horse is actually too braindead to even understand what I was saying.  I would have given my boss, with whom the Horse seems to be working closely, more credit, but I think that this is her first experience of managing an absence of this length and as such she seems to be delegating most of the responsibility to Personnel.

Work have picked the wrong person to fuck with.  A’s job is writing employment law.  His brother, DI, is an CAB advisor.  His best friend, W, is involved at a senior level with a charity law unit in a well-regarded university (my employers are a charity).  My mother is a former Personnel Officer.  My best friend, D, is a Personnel journalist.  One of my Twitter friends and regular commentators here, bourach, is a union rep.  I know where the fuck I stand, and if I don’t, I can soon fucking find out.

In exploring the relevant legislation, A has commented that I would probably need to put up more of a fight in regards to what would be considered reasonable by the ‘reasonable man on the street’, especially under the Disability Discrimination Act, if I were seriously to take them on.  Initially, I had not wanted to fuck the office over so hadn’t bothered to argue with them.  However, the more I hear from the Horse, and the more my boss doesn’t bother to stand up for me, the less I care.  I know things are over now.  I will almost certainly not be returning.  It’s illegal for them to give me a shit reference on the grounds of my disability, and I will be seeking assurances from the fuckstains that this does not happen.  The point I’m making is that I no longer feel I have much to lose by fucking back with them.

To demonstrate that she speaks in Fuckwit rather than English, I am including a few excerpts from her email.  Except for my [] points, these extracts are exactly as they appeared in the email, though I have bolded the especially hilarious bits.  Sigh.  I thought they still taught grammar in schools?

SI, as explained in previous correspondence, a priority system would be introduced so that [managers] and [others]  to adhered too (however there may be exceptions to this)

As you can understand that we wish to cause least distribution to the team, we would appreciate if GP appointments were made at the start of the day as I am lead to believe that your GP is based in [some distance away].

[Re:my request that work was clearly delineated between my assistant an me] Unfortunately we can not adhered too at all time.

Well, no, you can’t ‘adhered to’, you stupid bitch.  Your contention that the organisation wishes to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to accommodate my illness is frankly amusing given your continuous refutations of my comments.

Her constant use of my name at the beginning of sentences (if you could even call them that) is infuriating.  How dare she patronise me in this fashion?  How dare she?  I can almost guarantee that my intellect is about double hers.  I am also willing to bet substantially that my qualifications are more significant than hers.  Even if not, I think the pathetic construction of her correspondence just proves that she is a dumb, fuckwitted moron.  I would have thought that it was key in a Personnel job to be able to communicate effectively.  Apparently not in my organisation.  It doesn’t matter that my dismissal is imminent anymore, as I was wasted on the cockheads anyway, it seems.

She also demanded written evidence regarding Dr C.  She failed to specify the nature of the written evidence she requires.  I am now of the belief that they don’t believe I have seen her or that I have been diagnosed as I have.  A says this is paranoia and that it is standard practice to ask for written evidence for everything.  Maybe so, but they have not asked for anything of this nature previously.  In A’s view, this exemplifies the incompetence of the Personnel function in the organisation.  Which is probably fair in relation to some of its members, most notably the Horse.

Anyway, this email arrived on Monday, which was 20th July.  As per the Horse’s previous email a few weeks ago, I understood that I was due to attend Occupational Health the following day, ie. Tuesday 21st.  The Horse then said in the email referenced above that the appointment was on Thursday 23rd.  Great work, Horse.  You’re obviously competent enough to keep track of your own emails.  It turned out it was Tuesday, but I had to call OHS themselves to determine this.

I emailed her back and was frankly just on the borderline of civil.  Well, that’s not true; I am always very careful in my correspondence with them not to be a cunt, as they would indubitably use it against me, so it was still polite and professional.  However, there was a sneering, cynical tone to it that adequately if subtlety conveyed just how fucked off I am with the whole bloody thing.  AC told me it was a bit “cheeky” (but justifiably so); Mum and A said it wasn’t cheeky exactly, but it did make clear that I was sick of the way they were treating me.  Good.  That is what was intended.

It is the tip of the iceberg, anyway.  A and I are going to work on an email to the Horse outlining exactly why her shite contentions fail, and why what she perceives as “reasonable” is in actual fact not at all reasonable.  We are going to do this before she contacts me again to eliminate the risk of a knee-jerk emotional response to her inevitable imbecility, and it’s going to be fucking brilliant.

Anyhow, despite my anger, Monday evening / night was relatively OK.  Without the sleeping pill (it was my week off them until last night), I didn’t sleep, as ever, but I didn’t go mental either.

This was not the case on Tuesday afternoon.  I worked myself into a major panic regarding the impending OHS appointment, which culminated in some fun with a knife.  There are at least 10 random slashes across my arms, legs, breasts and stomach, not to mention the delightful words of “vile”, “fail” and “die” across my lower abdomen.  In keeping with previous incidences of self-harm, I then calmed down.  For a while anyway.

I was laughably early for the appointment, so sat in my car playing games on my phone for a while.  I was fine until I actually got into the building and then I just lost it.  I took a Valium, but to be honest by the time it started having any effect, I was out of there – not that one Valium tends to make any difference anyway.

I was, fairly quickly, approached by a tall, fairly good-looking middle-aged bloke with grey hair.  This exacerbated my panic as I was expecting the woman that I’d seen the last time I was at occupational health; at least I was familiar with her.

He introduced himself as the doctor I was to be seeing.  I could barely speak and when he held out his hand I could barely shake it.  I was shaking, stuttering, rocking back and forth and generally behaving like a loon.  I even burst into tears at one point, for which I then found myself apologising.

It was telling that the only notes the bloke actually took were regarding my current medications.  He literally wrote nothing else, as I recall – why would he bother?  It was self-evident that I am mad, why bother noting that information?  I don’t really remember a great deal of the conversation, but I do recall telling him that work didn’t believe me about the BPD / bipolar diagnosis and that they were out to get me.  I also recall him asking if I had been to university, and my telling him that I ended up having to leave my Masters degree with a post-graduate diploma because I had a previous breakdown at that point.  He said quietly, and with evident sincerity, that he was “sorry to hear that”.  In fact, he seemed so genuine and sympathetic in saying so, that I thought he was going to come around the desk and put his arms around me.  I also admitted to the self-harm, some of which I even showed him,and the recent hilarious mini-suicide attempt. I told him about the trouble with the shrinks that is causing such extreme fuckuppery at present.

I have to say he was lovely.  I felt that not only did he understand the nature of the diagnoses and the symptoms thereof, he actually seemed genuinely sorry that I was experiencing them and, reading between the lines (although he didn’t actually say so), I did get the impression that he wasn’t overly impressed with the behaviour office.

Although he was nice, the meeting was essentially a waste of my petrol.  I was there less than 10 minutes, with his view being very clear; there is no way I am well enough to return at the minute.  He didn’t put a timeframe on it the way his colleague had done the last time I was there, but did say he would probably see me again.

It’ll be interesting to see what Horse and friends make of what he says.

I was fine on Tuesday evening, but after going to bed I became progressively mental.  Well, I say ‘mental’, but that’s probably not true; it was more real, hard-core depression (is it the same thing?).

I admitted defeat.  Work had won.  GA had won.  V had won.  MMcF’s husband had won.  The school bullies had won.  My ex had won.  I had failed, epically.

I ceased to care.  Let C section me.  Let him not section me.  Let the shrinks abandon me.  Let them not abandon me.  Let me die, let me live, I don’t care.  I just didn’t care.  Whatever became of me, I didn’t give a fuck.  My life is over; all I can look forward to is existence.  If that’s my future, then it doesn’t matter what form it specifically takes.

A started babbling at me in his sleep, which is not something he can help, but it annoyed me and I started crying and came downstairs.  I lay on the sofa and curled up with the cats, rocking back and forth, and remaining there, awake, for the rest of the night.  I thought about adding to the body art, but to be honest I simply didn’t have the energy or motivation.  Interestingly, I have read in several places that depressed people are at the most risk of suicide and/or self-harm when they start to make small improvements, for instance when anti-depressants or psychotherapy first start to be successful; when they are in the depths of despair, they simply cannot get motivated to undertake the acts, but when they are still depressed, just a little less so, they begin to get back enough energy to go ahead and do it.

Wednesday was alright, if boring.  However, after I went to bed on Wednesday night, A found some of the cuts from Tuesday afternoon and was upset by them (I had been successful in hiding them until then).  I freaked out at him at one point then started crying and apologising to him.  I kept wailing that he was angry with me, and he would either not answer or he would say that he was not angry with “my rational mind”, which means he is angry with me because my irrational mind is in control of me so much of the time.

But he ended up being nice to me and so I got over it and, although I was fairly depressed yesterday during the day, I improved last night have been in fairly good form since.  Strange how the moods swing.

So, this is kind of a pointless post, but then they all are, except for my own reference, and of course that is the main point of this blog.  So I suppose in that sense it does have some point.

I Hate Psychiatrists

So, after my grovelling apology and new-found respect for Dr C back in June, the current behaviour of her and her team has reinforced to me why I thought they were shit in the first place.

I was supposed to be seeing Dr C next Tuesday, so as she could review how the change to Venlafaxine was affecting me.  Regular readers will know that I’ve gone completely fucking mental since I changed to them, as demonstrated in just about all my posts in the last few weeks, but especially here and here.  Dr C, or perhaps more accurately her bint secretary, had already changed my appointment time several times.  This was irritating, but meh; as long as they were to see me, I could live with it.

Well, a letter arrived on Friday from their office stating that whilst they “apologised for the inconvenience”, the outpatient clinic had been cancelled and that an appointment had been rearranged for 8 September.  September.  What the fucking fuck?

I went to ring them but instead of being able to type their number into my phone I just ended up panicking and ultimately throwing it across the room.  Eventually I got my mother to phone the bint secretary for me.

The bint told her that the clinic wouldn’t have even been with Dr C in the first place.  My mother didn’t get the name, but it sounded like it was Dr N, the SHO I met the first time I went to psychiatric outpatients.  That wouldn’t have been ideal, but I could have lived with it.  But anyway, Dr N has cancelled her clinic.  Just like that, apparently, and no more reason was given.

Alright, my ma went on.  But SI is climbing the walls and would really need to speak to Dr C.

But that isn’t possible, apparently, since Dr C is on holiday.  For “quite a while”.

And in the meantime?

September is literally the first appointment available, so that’s too bad really, oh how regrettable, but that’s the way it is.  If there are any cancellations, they’ll apparently phone me.  Yeah, right.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

Go fuck yourselves, one and all in psychiatry on the NHS.  Fucking bastarding cuntflapped bollockheads.

No wonder I don’t want to be hospitalised, if this is the standard of care one can expect.  Mental health professionals don’t care about mentals, clearly.

I got off the phone with my ma and threw my head at the wall with such force that I literally fell backwards, and very nearly knocked myself out.  I sat down again, got back up, sat down, got up, paced, sat down, paced some more and eventually ended up in the kitchen looking for the knife.  I then went and re-carved the word ‘HATE’ across my tummy, about which I wrote here.

That action having been completed, I sat on the sofa with the knife for a while wailing and sobbing in utter desolation.  (For what it’s worth, after a fairly short while I felt a lot better, proving that self-harm does indeed work).

It’s like the conversation I had with C on Thursday.  I don’t think I’m being taken seriously by the NHS.  I really don’t.  I would love to have the nerve to make a suicidal gesture and that would fucking show them.  Even better, I’d love to actually be successful in catching the bus and then the cunts would face a potential lawsuit and be forced to apologise to my family and friends and shit.  But as of right now, obviously, I don’t have the nerve.

Everyone is commenting that these tablets don’t seem to be good for me.  As I detailed here, if they are creating mixed episodes (which they are), then the apparent way of treating this is to add mood stabilisers to the medication cocktail.

How the fuck am I meant to get these if the psychiatrist refuses to fucking see me for months?  My GP can, theoretically, prescribe them, but of course he’s not the expert that Dr C supposedly is.  She would know if the mixed episodes are caused directly by the Venlafaxine, or whether it’s something else.  She would know whether she should change me to another anti-depressant, or whether adding mood stabilisers on top of Venlafaxine would be the best answer.  I am not sure that Lovely GP has this in-depth knowledge.  As CVM (a registered nurse) said to me, he went to university for five years and then trained as a GP thereafter, so he damn well should be able to know – but, simply, he doesn’t have the same knowledge and specialist experience than Dr C and her ilk are reputed to have.  Still, I may go and see him anyway.

I am convinced that C could get them to take notice (it turned out that it was him rather than Lovely GP that did in the first place), but of course there is no C this week 😦  I will have to rant about it to him next week before he then goes away for two weeks 😦 😦

Additional worries:

• GA is on this landmass.  In fact, she is – until her departure next week – never more than about 40 miles away.  I feel violated.  I wonder, despite my request for her not to, how much back-chat she has engaged in about me?
• Fucking occupational health tomorrow 😦  Panic panic panic panic panic panic
• Because of the shrinks wanking about, it is almost certain that I will lose my job now.  If they’d see me as planned next week then I might have been able to get a solution to my present situation fairly quickly.  Given that I am now likely to continue feeling this fucked up until at least September, about the time work are expecting me back, I really cannot see how the situation can be resolved.  I didn’t realistically think it could have been anyway, but it was possible, and now the chances of not getting dismissed are low to infinitesimal.
• The effects of my mentalism on poor A (I went mental again on Saturday, though it was remarkably less severe than the previous couple of weeks).
• The fact that some people are still unwilling to try and understand that this is not something that I can help, that I could end being mental by “changing my thoughts” (ha!), and decide to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do about it and how I should count my blessings.  Never thought of that or anything, thanks.

I’m not totally losing it today, but things do seem pointless and bleak.  Nevertheless, that’s a fairly default position for me, so I suppose it’s progress from going totally off my head.

Well, I will report back on the occupational health tomorrow.  Can’t wait…!

Not Getting Sectioned Just Yet – C: Week 19

I told him everything. Everything I could think of. I told him about the hanging attempt, and the self-harm of the same weekend. I told him about the carving of ‘HATE’ onto my stomach. I told him about the delusions I’ve experienced lately. I told him how I almost obsessively read pro-suicide newsgroups on the internet which provide advice on how to do yourself in in the most fool-proof manners possible.

It was about as easy to talk about as discovering that the person you love used to fuck baby seals during hate-filled orgies would be to experience, but I did it.

After apologising to him for wasting his time last week, and the usual grilling that induced (“why do you feel you wasted my time? What was it you should have said or done that you didn’t? Why did you feel unable to express that?” blah blah), I told him that if I was honest and open with this stuff that he would section me.

“To clarify,” C began, “I can’t myself section you.”

Oh, really? I do know nothing about the Mental Health Act, after all. I haven’t clearly researched it or anything, C. I had no idea!

“I know, I know,” I interjected. “But as a mental health professional you can easily find two doctors that will do it for you.”

“If I believed that you were in imminent danger of harming or killing yourself, or others, I’d have to contact either your GP or psychiatrist, yes.”

I fidgeted relentlessly, eventually stating that whilst I would not say any danger was imminent, I could not guarantee that it wasn’t.

I don’t remember what he must have said, but I just went ahead and just told him the bloody lot. Not all at once, but one way or another, I did.

There isn’t a great deal of point in detailing the bits where I told him what happened, as it would be repeating a lot of the material about which I’ve already written and to which I have linked above. The only thing I think I haven’t expressly detailed here is my perusal of the pro-suicide newsgroups, but there’s not much to say on that. I read them. It’s interesting. I know how to kill myself should I want to. I find morbid fascination in the pursuit. The end.

He did ask what I felt the causes of the mentalisms were. I blamed Venlafaxine, stating that I understood that if it was taken in many people experiencing any bipolar symptoms, it could increase mixed episodes, and that although my main diagnosis is BPD, Dr C does believe I have bipolar II as well.

C asked me when I was seeing her again and advised that I would have to tell her about all of this (no shit, Sherlock), but said that that wasn’t really what he was getting at. Apparently he wanted to know were there any emotionally stressful events that brought the madness on.

Aside from my belief that I had bollocked A’s computer on Monday – after which I carved the ‘HATE’ into myself – there was none. I just went mad. I apologised to C for this.

C laughed, but in a nice way, and said that it was OK; I didn’t need to have a reason. He had just been keen to know if there was one.

He probed me on how I felt there and then as I sat in his office about the various episodes, and how I’d felt in their aftermaths. I thought carefully about this, then responded that in a way I was regretful of them, because A had to bear witness to them, or at least live in knowledge of them, and that I was unhappy about that.

“OK,” he said, “but how do you feel about it yourself?”

I responded that I was mostly indifferent because I deserve it all.

“You deserve it?!” he exclaimed. “Why?”

“What’s my point in this world? Whose lives do I enrich? What do I do? Everything I touch, everything with which I come into contact, turns to shit.”

“Do you think I’ve turned to shit?” he asked.

“Do you think I have contaminated your mind with mine?” I queried.

“Do you think I cannot cope with you?” he returned.

It was like a game of verbal tennis, and I don’t remember who the game-set-match went to. Probably him, to be honest. But it doesn’t matter because at this point some fuckwit knocked on his door. C apologised and got up to answer it.

Fuck. I was furious with him, briefly. I don’t care if your fucking children (if he has any) have had their throats slit and their eyes gouged out and shoved up their arses, C, this is my time with you. Anyhow, to be fair to him he tried to fob the person off, was apparently unsuccessful, and turned back to me saying he’d be back momentarily.

During his absence, which seemed like 10 minutes but was probably about 30 seconds in reality, I imagined all the bile-filled rants I was going to post about him both here and on Twitter. However, when he returned he explained that it was some old broad who got lost looking for the hearing clinic down the corridor, and needed help to locate it. C did her the courtesy of showing her to the place so, even though the interruption was annoying, I did think it was nice of him to help the old woman. So I softened and forgave him.

He returned to the verbal tennis subject, but I don’t really remember any more about it to be honest.

My next recollection is that he asked me what was so terrifying about the possibility of being sectioned.

“Oh God,” I cried, “that means you’re going to do it! You’re going to phone them! I won’t do it again, I promise!”

“I just want to know what you fear about it, that’s all,” he replied calmly. It was an interesting answer; he wasn’t saying that he was or he wasn’t going to do it (though he was evidently trying to infer the latter) – it was presumably deliberately ambiguous as some sort of get-out clause if he later did feel sectioning me was necessary.

In any event, I was reluctant to tell him that the reason I don’t want to be sectioned is because I would miss him. That’s about the only secret I kept from him today, because that’s just too pathetic to even articulate verbally. Instead, I told him that I knew the kind of shite that went on in psychiatric institutions and that I didn’t “fancy it.”

This is true. A and I ran into G, our intellectual philosophising friend about whom I wrote here (interestingly, my most popular post to date) the other day, and he was telling us that his ex, a bipolar sufferer, spent a while in a psychiatric unit and that if she was fucked up already, she left in a worse condition. Apparently they all but force you to engage in group therapy, and the differing types of transference bouncing about the room turn the whole thing into a complete fucking nightmare. This correlates with stuff I’ve read and accounts I’ve heard elsewhere. I could perhaps cope with hospitalisation if I didn’t have to engage in this way with the other mentals, I think, but if I did have to do any of this arse, I am convinced I would be even more fucking crazy than when I was admitted.

The crux of this discussion was that whilst he accepts that I am largely terrified of being sectioned, he thinks a part of me would actually welcome a recommendation of hospitalisation, because that would be a recognition of just how indescribably fucking awful I am feeling at times. This was interesting, as it basically echoes a view that A holds. He continued that whilst I obviously didn’t want him to instigate any Mental Health Act shite, and would be very angry with him if he did, part of me would also feel that he cared about me if he did so. He then went on to say that perhaps in some ways the self-harm is about proving how terrible I feel, regardless of how much I try and hide it, as I don’t have adequate words for a description of the mentalism. He said that he believed that part of me didn’t feel the enormity of my psychological condition was being taken seriously.

It’s all true. It’s all fucking true. How does he know? How? How?! He fucking is Derren Brown, even if he looks less like him since shaving off his goatee beard (I’m sure at this juncture someone may think, “ah yes – Derren Brown. He’s a mentalist in the true sense of the word and you’re not, SI.” Well – I know this. But nevertheless, I think ‘mentalism’ works for us nutjobs too. So fuck that shit.).

Anyway, there is more to self-harming than just what he said, but it’s probably part of it. The rest of it is absolutely spot-on. I don’t like admitting it, but it’s true.

How. Does. He. Know.

He’d picked up on the fact that I’d said, “I won’t do it again,” which was apparently just said in panic and didn’t come across as remotely sincere. He postulated the position that part of me saw him as some sort of authority figure; in fact, he said, it was as if I was a child trying to satisfy her parent(s).

This resonated with me. I concluded towards the end of this post, reluctantly, that perhaps I do parentify C. I asked him if he felt that I did that.

He sort of shook his head, then told me that the therapeutic dynamic can be reflective of many of my outside relationships, not just those with parents. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but essentially the idea was that my transference towards him reflects, or at least can reflect, all my interpersonal relationships, whether current or past. He did, however, state something to the effect that perhaps my childhood had a stronger bearing on the transference than the here and now does, though again I don’t remember how it was phrased exactly.

He asked how I felt about people in general. I said I wished that they’d all go away and leave me alone. C nodded, though I saw his eyebrow quiver slightly cynically. I added, “but of course I don’t want them to leave me alone.”

He laughed slightly, and nodded more convincingly this time. “You hate the world but you fear it, in your words, abandoning you,” he said. Basically, yes.

I believe it was at this point that the silence returned. I turned round and looked at the clock and saw, to my surprise, that 10 minutes remained of the session. Once more I apologised for wasting his time and said that I hated sitting in silence, as it was a waste of his time and not helpful to me either. C went to challenge this, I think, but then I butted in and said, “where do we go from here?”

He asked what I meant, and I explained that I was aware that our contracted sessions were due to end. What happened next, therefore?

“How do you feel…?” he began

“No,” I said. “I’m going to bat that back at you.”

“How so?”

“How do you feel about it?”

To my amazement, he actually answered the question; in fact, he monologued for some time in response. The essence of what he was saying is that any termination of therapy has to be conducted over time and be mutually agreed; it will never just come to an end some week. Was that OK with me?

“Of course,” I said flatly. “But I am ever conscious of you telling me once that as this therapy is on the NHS, it will be finite. Just how finite is finite?”

He laughed. “It’s a good question,” he said.

I pointed out that I was aware that a borderline personality can be difficult and time-consuming to treat, but I accepted that what was right for Person A was not necessarily right for Person B.

“Exactly,” he said. “It’s difficult to say, I’m afraid – I’m sorry I can’t be more definite than that.” He said that we will discuss in the next session the exact time-frame for which we want the next contract to last, though the next contract isn’t necessarily the last anyway, presumably. Or at least hopefully.

“OK,” I responded.

“But how do you feel about that?” he pressed. He should get that printed on his fucking business cards.

It was at this point that I turned into a gibbering wreck, and I fought against it…but he knew. Eventually I gave in and just blubbed like a fucking baby in front of him.

Through my tears I explained that I was, naturally, reassured by the fact that the therapy was to continue, as I was perpetually terrified of him abandoning me. He nodded in acceptance, but recognised there was some sort of ‘but’ coming. The ‘but’ is that I am simultaneously frightened of the therapy continuing.

“Frightened?” he remarked, surprised.

“Yes,” I wailed. “This is so hard. So hard. I always expected I’d have to get worse before I got better, cos I have to confront stuff I’ve been repressing for years, but I didn’t expect that it would be this difficult. It’s so intense.”

He paused for a minute or two, then asked if I had gotten worse since I met him. I tried to bullshit about the medication having an adverse effect on me and not him, but the reality is that yes, my condition has been aggravated quite demonstrably by psychotherapy. I think I apologised to him and said that it was not him – it was nothing personal – it was me and my reaction and repression and defences.

When I finally raised my head I could see that he was upset. He wasn’t crying or anything, but there was something about his facial expression that was horribly sad and dismayed. I don’t think he felt that I was insulting him or anything; I think he was just kind of taken aback by my unusual candour and concerned that I felt everything was so utterly bleak at present that part of me didn’t want to see a future for myself, either in or outside therapy.

He said, “I want this to be a safe place for you to talk about everything. I don’t want you to feel you have to repress anything because you think I am going to panic and get straight on the phone to your GP…” At this point, he acted out making a phone call to LGP, and I accused him of over-dramatising.

“OK, I am a bit,” he admitted, apologetically. “But I don’t want you to think I’m going to panic and do that, I’m not…”

“Thank you,” I interrupted in a pathetically grateful whisper.

“…however,” he continued, “I don’t want you to think I don’t care. If you are feeling suicidal, please phone your GP at once.”

“What if it happens at night?” I asked. “My GP is married with three young children.”

“Then you take yourself to casualty.”

“But what if I don’t have the mental faculties to be able to do that?”

“That’s my advice to you,” he said authoritatively. “Take. Yourself. To. Casualty. OK?”

“OK,” I agreed.

And then, once again, it was over.

It is two weeks until I see him again; after that next session, he will then be on leave for a fortnight. Part of me welcomes the break, for the process is exhausting, demanding, hurtful and intense as fuck. But overall I am dreading it. I rely on him so much. He is the only person I can begin to openly talk to, and I mean that in no offensive way to anyone. It just is.

I had asked him before about what would happen if I go mental whilst he is off, and he said we could discuss that. I’ll be sure to bring it up in a fortnight’s time, because nothing is surer to cause me to go batshit mad again than being parted from him for three weeks.

It’s feeble and lamentable beyond measure that he and his imminent absences elicit this reaction in me, but I will try and end on a more positive note by remembering that this is temporary in nature. So is the therapy itself, but it is in no imminent danger of drawing to a close, and I still find myself a free, non-sectioned woman tonight, and this morning I really wondered if that would be the case. Ho hum.

Self-Harm

WARNING: SOME OF THIS MATERIAL MAY BE TRIGGERING.  PLEASE DON’T READ ON IF YOU THINK THAT MAY APPLY TO YOU: I DON’T WANT TO CAUSE ANYONE ANY HARM OR PAIN.

I’ve written about my self-harm before but I engaged in an especially…er…interesting version of it this week.  I’ll come back to that shortly.  One thing I’ve been thinking about recently is that there was a gap of something like eight or nine years between my most prolific cutting phase and my more recent return forays into cutting, head-banging etc.

I didn’t harm myself at all in these intervening years.  Or did I?

I’ve been doing tiny little things to myself for so long I would never ever have regarded them as self-harm, but some material I’ve read recently led me to believe that, unconsciously, maybe they have been.

I compulsively pick scabs.  I pick the cuticles and skin around my nails.  I am obsessive about squeezing spots and go out of my way to find new ones to burst.  I pull hairs out of my head or my eyebrows.  Picking the eczema induced dead skin out of my ears is an uncontrollable compulsion.  Indeed, I peel dead skin off other parts of my body.  I scratch at myself when I am not itchy, pinch myself for no reason and gawk in delight at blood when I accidentally cut myself.  Indeed, I am notoriously clumsy and careless.  Even drinking is considered a form of deliberate self-injury.  I rarely drink during the week, but I suppose I would be a heavy drinker at weekends or on holidays (my hilarious bruises from this weekend show how dangerous that can be!  This one, one of many incurred over the last few days, is on my right thigh).  I’m sure I could think of more of these ‘little things’ if I bothered to probe my mind in detail.

None of this shit seems like a big deal in and of itself, and as I say, I would never for a second have considered it anything approaching self-harm.  But apparently it can be; that’s what some of the so-called experts think at times, anyway.

Of late, all of these behaviours have continued, but additional ones have surfaced (and the hair-pulling has become more severe; it’s not just a hair or two here and there, but entire tufts at times)  Some of them, such as cutting, are simply a renewal of old behaviours, but others are new – the head-banging for instance.  Actually, that’s not entirely true, now that I think about it.  I have been known to head-bang when extremely agitated or, particularly, whilst in great physical pain (eg. migraines, which is kind of stupidly ironic) for basically as long as I can remember, but it would have been very intermittent, whereas in the last few months it’s almost become the norm when the madness comes (though less so for physical ailments).

One thing I did quite a bit as a teenager than I no longer do is burn myself.  The main reason I’m not doing that now is because I no longer smoke.  If I did, however, I’m sure I’d be sticking fag ends into myself as well as the rest.  On one mental health related website I’ve read, they actually advise you to smoke as a distraction from self-harm.  I found this amusing when I read it, as it would only encourage it in me.

People wonder why my more serious self-harming behaviour have been anewed in the recent past.  It would be easy to blame C, which I have been doing and which I think A does.  After all, it all started again since meeting him and certainly, I think an already dodgy situation has been exacerbated by therapy, because it forces me to confront shit I really do not want to confront.

But I am fairly sure I have no recollection of C asking had I considered self-harming recently, because it was such a fabulous solution to all life’s problems.  This bullshit was all bubbling under the surface, and if therapy has brought it out, then it has – but it was merely uncovering it, not creating it.  Indeed, C’s attempt at employment of DBT was deliberately to give me another focus when I feel these urges.

And that’s what they are: urges.  People who don’t do it don’t seem to understand that – why should they I suppose?  But it’s compulsive.  It’s like an instinct that becomes progressively overwhelming if you don’t act upon it.  It’s all-consuming, visceral, a caveman-esque reaction.  For me, unlike some others, it’s selective in when it comes.  It don’t feel the urge every time I am mental, depressed or otherwise not in what most people would describe as a normal mood.  But when it does come, it is profoundly intense and driven.  It feels as natural to act upon it as it does to breathe.

I had been having some self-harm ideation prior to actually going mental this night, but hadn’t actually done it.  However, as I stated later in this post, seeing a knife that night was like an epiphany.  Using it to slash my body seemed like the perfect solution to the mentalism I was experiencing.  The thing is, for the most part, it worked.

My memory is slightly skewed, but I do remember that the frenzy of racing thoughts largely desisted.  Instead a calm thoughtfulness and, dare I say, fascination, descended upon me.  The pain of the cuts refocused me and the slow oozing and flow of the blood captivated my psyche.  I’m sorry if this upsets anyone, but it was beautiful.

I didn’t entirely agree with that assessment the next day, but it’s funny how it grasps you again at a later stage.

The truth is I’ve been making small cuts more often than I’ve detailed here since the above incident, and there’s been quite a lot of head-banging too.  I think I only talked about them again here, but it’s been happening more often than that.  Not with tremendous frequency, though, and essentially most of the self-inflicted injuries have been superficial.

On Monday I decided to be more elaborate.  I mentioned on the last link that I’d been toying for some time with the idea of carving the word ‘hate’ into my abdomen.

On Monday, I did it.

Monday was a public holiday in Northern Ireland, thanks to the annual 12th July celebrations (held on Monday 13th, because it would apparently be a sin to have it on Sunday).  I’m indifferent to the politics of the situation, but since A and I live almost exactly on a marching route I usually go and watch the parades.  My mother and A’s family were all about too.

The morning was great fun as it happens.  Everyone was in good form and there was no political or sectarian bullshit, just a kind of carnival atmosphere, something both the Orange Order and the various Northern Irish councils had been hoping to create.  So I was in a pretty good mood, but – mainly but not entirely at the will of the in-laws – we went to the pub afterwards.  My mood just changed.  I was exhausted and just felt really depressed and not at all part of the group-belonging feeling that seemed to permeate the pub.  My mother and I decided to go home after only one drink, and A joined us.

I can’t have been just exhausted and depressed, and I don’t know why my mood took a nosedive.  Sometimes it just does; that’s the nature of some of the illnesses with which I am afflicted, I suppose, and it happens to everyone from time to time anyway.

When we got back to the house, we discovered that one of the PCs was mostly fucked, and I became convinced that it was my fault, and my already-poor mood became worse.  I wouldn’t say I was overly agitated, but I was upset and full of self-disgust.

When my mother went upstairs to the toilet, and A was focused on working at the computer, I went into the kitchen and quite deliberately picked up a knife.  I successfully carved the ‘H’ into my stomach, facing upwards so I could read it, and felt an instant release.  However, it was not enough.  I had to do more.  I had to complete the word.  As I said above, it was visceral, a complete compulsion.  But I heard my mother coming down the stairs at that point so I hid the knife and to cut a long story short smuggled it to the bathroom, under the pretence that I was going to the toilet.  I carved the rest of the word, then sat on the toilet and looked at it.

I must have been in some sort of trance.  I kept muttering to myself, “it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful,” as I watched the gorgeous blood flow from the wounds.  The words just sort of ‘came out’ of me.

Two things are worthy of note.  Firstly, I didn’t really feel particular pain in slicing my stomach.  According to I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me – an outdated but by far the best-selling book on borderline – endorphins rush to the cut site to act as one’s body’s natural painkillers.  In fact, the book argues, one can become hooked on the endorphin rush.  It also says that for many of those afflicted by BPD self-harm becomes a ritual.  Now I’m no expert, but I would imagine that carving ‘HATE’ into your abdomen then staring at it in a child-like wonder could, just perhaps, be classified as ritualistic.  It certainly wasn’t just random slashing.

A is terrified that I will enter the ritualistic stage of self-harm as a more permanent state.  I did the above whilst 100% sober, in a relatively stable state of mind (very, very down – but not going totally mental), and it was more elaborate than recent cuts have tended to be (though it still doesn’t rival some of my teenage creations).  Perhaps I have already reached the stage.

The second issue is that it almost instantly improved my mood.  I met A on the stairs afterwards and he asked me if was OK, because it had been evident earlier to him that I was not.  I said, truthfully and cheerfully, that I was, and he was convinced – indeed, suspicious – enough to actually ask had I taken Valium (which I hadn’t).  The point is, for me, cutting works.  It improves my mood.  I can’t say I always feel happy or contented afterwards like I did on Monday, but there is always some mood improvement.

So, I was in fairly good form for the rest of the day.  We went back out, saw the return leg of the parade, went for a lovely dinner and for a few quiet drinks, came home and went to bed.  Apart from my mother unwittingly causing a delusion in me (which she then ever-so-helpfully pronounced ‘silly’ on my part), I was in good humour up until and including going to bed on Monday night.

I know I shouldn’t do it, and part of me regretted it on Tuesday (when I was essentially depressed all day, though this was mainly due to sheer exhaustion and the bullshit with GA).  It was what I was referring to in yesterday’s post when I said I wasn’t at liberty to discuss something.  The reason for that is that I had successfully managed to hide it from A, and he reads this blog.

Mostly I am happy for him, and indeed for a few select others that I know in ‘real life’, to do so, as I articulate myself, in general, better here than I do in person.  If I want them to know what my madness is like or how I am feeling, the best way to do so is to direct them here.  Words will never entirely grasp it, I don’t think, but a written analysis over which I can take my time and plan is always likely to be more descriptive and accurate than any shite I can ever tell people verbally.  Witnessing the mentalism, as poor A often does, can certainly show someone how mad one can be; however, almost by definition, I am unable in that state to articulate how it feels for me, or what goes through my mind.  Hence allowing him and others access to this, which is otherwise anonymous.

But I didn’t want A to know about this incident as he is disturbed enough by my madness and especially issues of self-harm as it is.  It is one thing for him to learn of random slashing, but to actually plan then execute the act in this rational, calculated manner is probably quite another.

He did work out after reading yesterday’s post that the missing information must have been related to cutting.  He is going to see the wounds sooner or later I suppose – I mean, we do live together – so I thought I would just go ahead and write about it.  But I do fear for his poor sanity too.  I am causing everyone in my life so much pain, and I (quite appropriately) hate myself for it.

I am also scared to tell C in the morning.  Between this and the hanging incident, I am convinced he is going to do something I don’t want him to do.  I guess I’ll just play it by ear.  The funny thing is, at present I actually trust Dr C more than C, even though I feel much closer to and understood by the latter, in general.  Perhaps that is because I feel betrayed by his fucking about last week, but perhaps it is because I have some sort of perception that C does actually care about me and will section me if he feels it is in my best interests.  Dr C is so much more formal – which is good in its own way I think – that I kind of feel she sees me as just another patient.  This is probably irrational thinking; I am probably that to C too, but he (generally) doesn’t make me feel that way.

A thinks there is no point in going to psychotherapy if I am not entirely honest with C.  He is obviously right, objectively speaking.  But it’s just so fucking hard.  Part of me is actually seriously considering just telling C that we should stick it.  Our most recent contracted sessions are due to end either tomorrow or the next week I see him.  I am finding talking to him hard and at times futile.

But then, aside from the logistical issue of having to wait for months to get therapy again if I later decided it would be in my best interests to have it, I would miss him and grieve for my loss of him.  I do rely on him and am horribly attached, regardless of whether my transference becomes negative at times or whether therapy seems pointless.  In short, I’m not sure I want to continue, but at this stage I really think I need to.  In some way, part of me does want to continue as well.  I don’t know.  It’s hard to explain.  I’ll talk to him about the future; we have to tomorrow anyway as, as I say, the contracted sessions are due to finish shortly (which is actually frightening to think about, thus apparently proving I do not want to be parted from C).

Anyway, for those interested, a link to a picture of the body-art can be viewed at the end of this post.  Please don’t click it if you think it would disturb or trigger you.

-> Click Here <-

The Familial Idiocy Saga Continues

It’s been an odd few days in the world of SI (as if it ever isn’t).  There is stuff I probably should write about, but as of yet I do not feel that I am at liberty to do so.  Suffice to say for now, I’ve been experiencing a lot of mixed episodes, which are fucking completely with my head.  Looking at my iPhone mood chart, there has been a lot more mania (along with depression) since my change in medication, and as such I feel that it seems likely that Venlafaxine is to blame.  Apparently this is common in people with bipolar who take anti-depressants intended for very severe depression.  The problem is that of course BPD is felt by Dr C, my psychiatrist, as being the more dominant disorder in me.

A cursory search online suggests that the “solution” to this, if that is even close to the right term, is not to discontinue the use of the anti-depressants, but to add mood stabilisers to the medication mix.  w00t.  NICE advise against this in the use of BPD, but since I also have bipolar II, it might have to be an option.  I am seeing Dr C again on 27 July, so it’ll be fun to see what she makes of it all then…

Anyhow, my mother confessed to me the other day that she has told Aunt of Evil, GA*, that I am “away” during GA’s visit to Northern Ireland.  This will be the first time I’ve been “away” whilst still at home.  In other words, my ma lied to her sister. (* See contextual posts here ((latter portion)), here ((latter portion)) and here).

In fairness, I appreciate that if I want to explain my reasoning for not seeing GA then it is only fair that it is me that does so.  The problem is between GA and me, and has nothing to do with my mother.  It was simply easier for her to make this bullshit up to GA.

Apparently, though, GA worked it out.  My mother forwarded me this paragraph from an email exchange between the two of them:

I’m sorry that we’ll not see SI, but I’m not surprised that she doesn’t care about seeing us.  The last time she saw us was a very hurtful time for her [around V’s death and its aftermath] and she wouldn’t want to be reminded of that.  We can just hope and pray that by the next time she sees us, she will be able to understand that we didn’t intend hurt to her – in fact, just the reverse.  It’s extremely difficult for us to be in this in-between situation, not intending hurt to anyone but causing it nevertheless.

Part of me thinks this is reasonable enough, but part of it continues to annoy me, as yet again she bleats on and on about how hard things are for them.  Maybe so, but what is the relevance of that statement?  Having this knowledge does not benefit my mother nor I in any way.

Additionally, she still believes my disdain for her and her family relates directly to V’s will.  Certainly, I think they behaved appallingly in that regard, but it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.

Furthermore, I have no belief that they intended to hurt me.  I just think they behaved like fuckwits.

I finally decided that it was time for me to wade into the discussion.  It was partly to prevent my mother having to explain the situation; it was also partly because I know my mother will fuck up the story.  Anyway, this is what I sent GA.

Dear GA

I have been advised that you have been informed that I will be “away” during your time in Northern Ireland.  Please be aware that this is not the case.

I do understand, however, that you have mostly worked this out.  I should like to clarify a few matters that you appear to have misunderstood.  You clearly opine that my lack of interest in meeting you whilst you are in this country is predicated entirely around the death and will of VA [ie. V].  This is not the case.

The reality is that unfortunately we have absolutely nothing in common except the luck of a genetic draw.  We share no beliefs, thoughts or outlooks whatsoever.  My view is that your family’s behaviour surrounding V’s will was simply a further illustration of something that has always been the case (ie. our wholly divergent outlook on life).  It is not a reason for my unwillingness to meet you in and of itself.

I would also like to add that any speculation or discussion on my ongoing mental health issues is not an appropriate conversation for any of my family to engage in without my express permission, especially in my absence or via means that do not include me.  I thank you in advance for respecting my wishes on this matter.  If it is of comfort for you to be aware of these illnesses, then be advised that as well as depression and anxiety, I am diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and bipolar II disorder.  There are a significant variety of contributory factors to these.

I do not wish to cause familial problems; however, I feel that more problems would be caused than solved by a meeting between us.

I wish you a pleasant trip.  Please do not reply to this email.

Yours sincerely

SI

I went ahead and sent it, after brief consultation with A.  Now I feel guilty and even sorry for her, even though I hate her.  Rationally, I think meeting her would be problematic. Rationally, I think the matter did need to be brought into the open. Rationally, I think my email is fairly reasonable, if rather cold and unfeeling.  But my irrational mind’s endless desire to feel sorry for people and things that have no reason to be pitied has once again rared its pathetic head.

Well, too late to do anything about it now anyway.  The email has been dispatched and I am sure I will receive a running commentary on the matter from Mum when GA arrives.

I Hate my Therapist – C: Week 18

My life revolves around being mental. Go mad. See GP. See psychologist. Go mad. See psychologist again. Go mad. See occupational health. Go mad. See psychiatrist. Go mad. See psychologist again. Go mad. Etc etc etc ad infinitum.

I saw Lovely GP yesterday and begged him for more Diazepam. He made me promise I would not overdose on them, which I did. I told him that I’d overdosed severely (on paracetamol) when I was 16, and that if I wanted to kill myself I wouldn’t be using tablets again as they tend not to work (I’m still alive, as are many people about whom I have read who employed this method of suicide-attempt) but can fuck up your body. I was really ill at the time to which I’m referring and don’t fancy a repeat.

I think Lovely GP thought I was joking about having any suicidal intent, which I wasn’t, but it doesn’t matter because he agreed to give me the Diazepam. Were he not married with three children, were I not happily settled in my own relationship and (at the risk of sounding hairist) were he not ginger (apologies to those of you that are), I would have forced him on a plane to Las Vegas and made him marry me with Elvis or Mother Teresa or Michael Jackson or Princess Di officiating. You can do that in Vegas, right? Marriage without consent is still marriage? I mean, you can do anything in Vegas, yes?

Anyway, the wonderful man gave me the wonderful tablets, along with my other anti-madness drugs, anti-insomnia drugs and anti-histamine drugs. Even though I said above that ODs rarely work, I left the practice with so many drugs that in fact I suspect they could have killed me had I taken them altogether.

Lovely GP thinks my weekend mentalism (not that I mentioned the specifics of it) is caused by the change in medication. He told me to take the Valium when necessary in future (at no more than 15mg – yeah right, LGP, that’s my minimum dose, mate), and told me – in hilariously but unwittingly apt terms – to “hang on in there, SI”. I couldn’t help but smirk, which puzzled him a little.

He had a medical student of evil in with him, but she sat in the corner behind me so I was able to pretend that she wasn’t there and talk as frankly as ever to Lovely GP.

It occurred to me this afternoon that out of all the aforementioned health professionals – doctor, psychologist, psychiatrist, OH doctor – he is the only one I consistently like.

LGP is lovely. The OH doctor is nice enough but I so completely despise OH assessments that I cannot separate the personnel from the process. As you know, I no longer hate Dr C; I now have respect for her, but I don’t like her as such. She’s very officious or something, but as long as she doesn’t treat me like dirt and as long as she gives me drugs I don’t give a fuck. As far as the psychologist, C, goes, I swing between loving him, liking him, being fairly indifferent to him and fucking hating him (yes, I know this is about transference).

As I left him this morning, it was most definitely the latter.

The session was a complete waste of time, even more so than the last time I thought our meeting was useless. To be fair to him, that wasn’t really his fault. I wouldn’t talk to him. I just kept chewing my hair, my fingers, tapping on the chair and playing with my glasses.

The first thing I said to him was, “that’s a nice chair.” He had a new chair at his desk. Obviously this was a completely ridiculous comment and I’m not sure C knew how to respond. I wouldn’t have either.

Then I fell silent, apologised for being silent, got pulled up on apologising for being silent, apologised for apologising for being silent, then reverted to more silence.

C decided discussing logistics might kick-start me. Now he is planning to take leave in the first two weeks of August – or at least he is “90% sure” that he is doing so.

Fuck you, C. Tell your wife/husband/partner/parents/friends/whomsofuckingever it is to get their act together and decide when they are taking their leave so as I can have some fucking certainty about this, you stupid fucking twat. And get your own act together while you’re bloody well at it, fuckface.

Then he reminded me that his supervisor is coming in in a fortnight, bumping off our appointment. I waited for him to suggest an alternative date that week, as he fucking said he would last week, but he didn’t.

I sat in silence at first, but eventually blurted out that the medication change was fucking with my head and I couldn’t think straight, or at least so LGP had thought.

C quizzed me about the appointment with LGP. Why did LGP think that? Did I like him? How did I feel about the medical student being there? Why was I so thrilled to get the Valium?

I told him that I had been experiencing a number of mixed episodes of late, that I was attributing them to the Venlafaxine (or at least my transition to it), and that the Valium would hopefully help calm the agitated side of me whilst in them.

C asked how I felt during these episodes. Well, C, my dear friend, funnily enough I didn’t sit down with my cunting laptop and write a thesis on it at the time. I didn’t get a dictaphone to record all my mad ranting and actions. I DON’T FUCKING REMEMBER. I said, “it is possible that I was in some sort of weird fugue state.”

C told me that I was using a lot of psychiatric language. Ooh, shock fucking horror! Knowledgeable patient = bad patient! Take me to the gallows now! Bring out the straitjacket! He said that that would take away from what I actually felt.

I gritted my teeth and took a deep breath in case I lost my temper because, guess what C, as stated, I DON’T FUCKING REMEMBER HOW I FUCKING FELT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In slightly more diplomatic terms than above, I tried to repeat this information to him, but on and on he went, so eventually I tried to articulate the little I could remember. My mood was certainly low but I was simultaneously agitated, restless, blah blah. You’re a clinical psychologist, C. You’re bound to know what a mixed state is.

I deliberately refrained from mentioning the laughably shite suicide attempt and self-harm issues. I’ll come back to the reasons for that later.

I have no idea now how the subject changed but in any case it somehow came back to the issue of his leave. Basically he wanted to know how I felt about it.

“I don’t want to discuss that,” I stated emphatically.

“Why?” he probed. Sorry, but the very fact that you’re asking me that question shows me you’ve just fucking ignored my desire to overlook this issue, you twatting arsehole.

I don’t really remember much more of this conversation. Basically he wanked on and on about this, at one point saying he didn’t want to break my boundaries but he nevertheless felt that part of me did want to discuss the issue with him. To be fair, he was right I suppose. I think it was at this point I happened to tell him that my reluctance to discuss this was “not about me”.

It was about him, you see. In essence I do not want to C to go on holiday and have his break ruined by wondering if I am going mental or if I am dead, which at the minute is frankly not an impossible situation. I know psychotherapists are trained in such a way that they are supposed to leave their work at work, but never having been through that training, I don’t know to what extent it works. I assume that as one of many clients on C’s books, the likelihood of me even crossing his mind is not very high, but that’s my rational mind talking. It very rarely wins my constant psychic tug of war.

C went on and on so much that eventually I did confess the above to him. I am making it out as if he was harassing me, but he wasn’t, not really. I was just incredibly anxious about the whole thing and therefore hypersensitive to his insistence. He said at one point that he thought if he didn’t push this, that I’d think he didn’t care about me, but if he continued to push it, then I’d be angry because he was pushing boundaries. Which was probably fair. I laughed and said, “you poor sod. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, aren’t you?” He looked a bit like a helpless puppy or something, but maybe that’s my imagination over-compensating for my anger with him. Who knows.

Anyhow, the problem is that if I tried to hang myself the other night, what happens if I try something similar again? I can’t guarantee that I won’t. Even if C doesn’t give me a second thought whilst he’s off work, when he comes back in mid-August and his secretary tells him that I have topped myself, how will he feel? I would feel pretty fucking awful, and I’m a complete misanthrope who would welcome the death of about 75% of humanity. (Would I, though? Now I feel bad for saying that).

As I told him, I can only see things from my own perspective. If I were him, I would be worrying, regardless of whether or not I realised my patient was a serious risk to herself. He probably won’t and doesn’t, but I would, so whilst I can rationally appreciate that it’s probably a non-issue, I cannot really believe that. Does that make any sense at all?

It isn’t completely about protecting him though. (He recognised it as my protecting him, incidentally, and he is right; but it’s not just that). I am/was terrified that if I tell/told him about the hanging episode, he’ll have me sectioned when he is going off work because he will not believe I am safe in his absence (or perhaps at all). Any previous discussion of suicide has been either about ideation or, more rarely, the two overdoses that saw me hospitalised many, many years ago. He has no reason to believe that there is a genuine risk at present, because I have given absolutely no indication that there is.

A thinks I want to be sectioned (obviously that’s impossible as the very definition of sectioning is to be hospitalised against one’s will – but I’m sure you get the point). The reality is that it’s not being hospitalised per se that bothers me. I can see potential benefit in that. The reason I don’t want it, though, is because of C.

If I am hospitalised for an indeterminate amount of time, I am very unlikely to see C each week. I can’t imagine forming an attachment to another therapist at the moment, and frankly nor do I want to. If I were not so attached to C, then I wouldn’t really give a toss whether he recommended hospital admission or not. But I am, so I do.

So, back to the point, C proffered the view that part of me did want him to think about me whilst he was away as that would prove that he “gave a shit” about me.

I denied this, genuinely I think. I don’t want him to be miserable and wondering whether or not I’m dead. I want him to be happy and enjoy what, despite my whinging, is a well-deserved break. The more I thought about the risk I pose to myself, the more agitated I became because I wanted to tell him, because I wanted him to help me, but simultaneously I didn’t want to tell him, because of the aforementioned reasons.

Eventually, after his incredibly well-observed (!) that I was anxious and more silence and fidgety behaviour from me, I said, “perhaps by the time you’ve gone the things will have started working and none of this will be an issue.”

“What?” he asked, genuinely mystified by what I was saying. I actually think by the concerned tone of his voice that he was concerned that I’d been hallucinating again or hearing voices or something.

What I meant, of course, was that perhaps by the time he goes on leave the Venlafaxine will actually have started working, and therefore I will not present so much of a risk to myself anymore. I relayed a redacted version of this to him, but he was still confused. I apologised for making him confused, because he didn’t know the context (ie. all the weekend’s fuss).

“I think I can deal with ‘confused'”, he told me.

I threw back my head and laughed like some sort of maniac (well…like myself, I guess). “Lucky you,” I said, “cos I can’t.”

Then I apologised some more for not making any sense. He said it was OK not to make sense.

Sorry, mate, but fuck that shit. It is not OK when you’re me. Sense is a fucking requirement. (This post is an epic non-success, then).

He didn’t say this, but probably this goes back to all the stuff from last week about my intense fear of being scrutinised. I don’t want him to think negatively of me because I failed to articulate myself in ways he could understand. Or for any other reason, for that matter.

More silence ensued. Realistically, it was probably only for about five minutes, but it seemed more like 20. I intermittently apologised for wasting his time, then reverted back to silent fidgeting. I didn’t have my ring to fiddle with today as I left it at A’s house (I normally fiddle with it every week and I felt lost without it). I therefore picked at myself, took off, opened and shut my glasses, and chewed at my hair.

All the while I was thinking that I ought to tell him about the weekend, but the urge to not be hospitalised and consequently not see him regularly for however long was too strong, so I didn’t.

Eventually, to distract myself, I told him that the fucking Aunt of Evil, cunt-bastard-shithead-arsedface-Queen-Bitch of fucking hell, GA (see here and latter portion of here), will be arriving in Northern Ireland next week. I presented an interesting statistic to him. According to D, who has now known me for 13 years, I have not made a single positive statement about GA to him in the whole time I have known him. Not one.

C asked how that made me feel. On the one hand it’s a shocking thing to hate someone so much that for over half your life (and probably longer) you have been unable to find any redeeming feature(s) about them. On the other, I have hated her, or at least most aspects of her, for as long as I can remember, so there really is no reason to be surprised by D’s comment.

C asked why my dislike for her was so profound. If there is one thing I cannot abide, and have never been able to abide, it is being patronised. This is GA’s greatest skill. I remember her condescending tones and statements to me from when I was very tiny. As a precocious child, I couldn’t stand it, and when I expressed annoyance, I was of course branded a brat. She has never stopped it. I still can’t stand it. Thank Christ she lives on the other side of the pond, cos I swear to God I probably would have behaved violently to her if I saw her more often.

Then there’s her constant harping on my weight. So I’m fat. So what? What’s it to her? I only know her because we share genetics. I didn’t choose to have a relationship with her. Oh, and there’s her apparent expertise in my mental (ill) health, despite the fact she’s a trained physicist rather than psychologist or psychiatrist (not to mention the fact the old hag doesn’t really know me at all). Yet further is her proselytising. I am fortunate enough to have a couple of Christian readers of this blog, and I hope they will agree that I do not have a problem with their religion (or any others) in the least. Try and convert me, however, and I become progressively angry; this is a free country, and I will be an agnostic atheist if I wish. I have been a non-believer for years and have politely asked GA on many occasions to desist from trying to convert me, but she never learns.

Furthermore, she was (probably still is) pro-Bush and thought the Iraq war was brilliant (yeah, let’s kill thousands of people, including our own troops, how Christian of you, GA). I can accept – indeed, I can enjoy – well-reasoned arguments for political views that diverge from my own, but not bullshit like “it’s them or us” or “God needs to protect America”. If God does exist, surely He wants to protect all nations of His creation?

But now I am just ranting. The point, if you hadn’t gathered it (!), is that I hate her. The issue with V’s will was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. No more, no less.

I asked C should I meet her or not, outlining the views of my ma (yes), D (yes), and everyone else (emphatically no). He didn’t say anything at first, which led me to believe that he is not specifically allowed to give me advice on my private life (certainly, a counsellor I saw years ago wasn’t allowed to do so). I asked him this; he evaded the question, but did finally say (echoing something CVM had said) that he felt that I was in a vulnerable psychological position, and seeing her might be an incredibly stressful experience that may accentuate that vulnerability.

For what it’s worth, I agree. Sorry D, but I’m going to avoid her. I have informed my mother, who to my surprise accepted this with relative tolerance.

C ended things on this note. Before I left he reiterated that he would be there next week, but not the week after, due to his supervisor’s visit.

I reminded him that he had said last week that we would try rearranging that. He said, dismissively, “I’ll check my diary but I don’t think that’s going to be possible.” He didn’t apologise.

This, only this, is what made me angry, so very angry, with him. Doesn’t seem very serious, does it?

But really – how dare he promise me we’d rearrange it, then renege on that? How very dare he? How fucking very fucking dare he? Who does he think he is? God?

Well, for me he might as well be, I suppose; the reason I’m so upset and angry about this is that I can’t cope without the fucking bastard. He knows this! He knows! He knows I am desperately reliant on him! Fuck him! How dare he abandon me?! Especially after saying he wouldn’t abandon me?

It would fucking serve the underhand piece of shit right if I did top myself and blame him in my suicide note. (Addendum, added later – of course I don’t really mean this).

I left his room on the verge of tears, not that he noticed (to be fair because I didn’t allow him to). I went and sat in the car for a few minutes, ranting on Twitter as I did so about how much I hated him, and thought I might just sit there and cry for a bit. However, I was scared that for some reason C might leave his building and see me sitting in the car in such a state, and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he’d hurt me. I knew I wasn’t really in a fit state to drive home (even though it’s not really that far), but I decided to drive a bit and find a lay-by or something.

I had an epiphany just after leaving the hospital; there is a cemetery on my main route home, and where better to go and cry? It wouldn’t look as weird there as it would in some lay-by. So I went there. The cemetery in question is split by a main road – I turned into the left section. Oops. All the dead people in it have been dead for years, so it would have looked a bit odd crying over the grave of someone who died in 1904. Note to self: turn right next time. I walked around for a bit and eventually found a grave housing the body of a lady who died in 1994.

Of course this brings an entirely new set of emotions into the equation. Who was she? Might I have known her, or indeed do I know her descendents? Would she be horrified that I was ‘using’ her grave to disguise the real reason for my pathetic grief? How did she die? I saw from the gravestone that she was old, which is good (well, better than dying young) and hoped that her death was quick and peaceful.

I didn’t stay long. I stood at this poor woman’s grave for about 10 minutes and cried, then went back to the car, dried my eyes and drove home.

Now I am more rational and fully accept that I have totally overreacted. I am still annoyed with him, but the pure rage and rawness of my hurt has abated somewhat, and of course the title of this post is a misnomer – of course I do not hate C. The fact that I felt insta-hatred for him at the time is simply demonstrative of the fact I care enough to get so utterly frustrated and furious over something so simple.

Truly, it is pathetic. When there are real problems in the world, when people are dying or living in terror, how dare I fly into a dysphoric madness over my shrink making a minor administrative error? I really ought to get a life. But where is one obtained?

Weekend Batshit Craziness

What a strange few days it has been, mainly due to the fact that I’m a fucking mental crackpot twatfaced prick who can’t behave sensibly for more than a few hours.

It all started on Friday night.  A and I had been out for a few quiet drinks and a nice meal.  We then came home and watched some DVDs.  Nothing abnormal.

I don’t remember why I lost it, but I did.  I found myself banging my head with some considerable force off the bench in the kitchen.  Totally normal behaviour.

A must have encouraged me to come to bed, because the next thing I remember was being on the stairs.  I was lamenting to A that our banister is pretty pathetic in terms of strength and that I therefore wouldn’t be able to hang myself from it.  Nevertheless, when he was taking a piss, I thought I’d give it a go.  A’s ties were hanging over the aforementioned banister, so I tied one in a knot and formed a noose.  I put it round my neck and let it choke me.

A came out of the bathroom, saw what was happening, and pulled my hair in order to reach me with as much speed as possible.  He later apologised for this, but I don’t think he had any need to.  He was reacting instinctively and trying to protect me.

I think this behaviour is at least partly based on nightmares I had the night before.  Thursday night/Friday morning was my first night back on the sleeping pills after the weekly gap that Lovely GP inflicts on me to stop dependency on the things.  So I actually slept for once, but that sleep was plagued by vivid, haunting nightmares.  In one, I was raped (bizarrely by a bloke who lectured me at university with whom I had absolutely no inappropriate relationship whatsoever!), but in the others, I was – surprise surprise – trying to hang myself.

The dreams, as I say, were incredibly vivid, and evidently their imagery was living on in my mind.  It wasn’t even just the images, I suppose; it was the whole experience of the dreams – the physical sensations, the driven, visceral determination to die, the feelings, emotions and thoughts that brought that drive on.  These sensations/emotions/whatever were all fairly amorphous, and I know what a lesser writer I am by failing to convey them.  But they were strong and all-consuming, and were all permeated around the same simple premise:  I MUST DIE.  MAKE ME DIE.

Anyway, I am fairly convinced this (in part) led on to the hilariously feeble suicide attempt.  I was telling bourach, who comments here a lot, about it the next day on Twitter.  She said that the use of a tie (a flimsy object, obviously) suggested to her that the attempt was half-hearted, and I think she was right.  It was partly predicated on the dreams, I think, but as I said to A later, it was also just about making whatever mentalism was going through my head stop.  Anything to make it stop.  That’s what the constant head-banging is about too.

A said that if I tried to do anything of the like again, he would burn the tie.  I then felt sorry for the tie which will certainly stop me from using it as a self-murder object in future.  Indeed, CVM later commented that why would I waste a good tie, which certainly made me smile.  You have to laugh (incidentally, other than A, she and bourach are the only ones that know about this to date, so I haven’t been going around bragging about it or something).

Naturally I spent Saturday morning apologising left, right and centre to A.  But the rest of the day was basically fine (I did swing from manic to depressed in terms of mood, but didn’t go totally nuts either); we went for coffee, endured a few brief shops, went home and got ready to go out.  It was the birthday party of two of our friends.

I didn’t want to go, because I am so shite socially, and this was a fairly large group.  They are nice people, but they’re so typically Irish in terms of their ability to consume booze, so one always ends up wasted.  I do recognise excessive alcohol consumption as a trigger in me.  The thing is, once before I drank tea and water in their company pretty much all night and was treated essentially as an object of vilification.  So that doesn’t feel like an option in their company.  I make them sound like cunts, but they’re not.  They’re just a bit (non-mental) mad.

Anyway, off we went, and the meal and the subsequent drinks were fine.  I always exhibit the more bipolar aspects of my madness on these occasions.  Sometimes I’m wearing the mask, sometimes I genuinely am manic.  I don’t know which it was on Saturday.  Probably both at various points.

To my utter astonishment, when A and I finally left it was getting light outside.  I had no idea we’d stayed out so late.  Anyway, there was an odd ethereal beauty to the city at this time of the morning.  The lighting reflected over the moutain behind our house and there was a lovely fresh morning smell.

But rather than appreciate the beauty of nature, didn’t I just go mental again.  Why?  I don’t know.  But I did.  Maybe I just can’t cope with anything that causes me emotions, including natural beauty.  I know C thinks that this is the case.  I mean, I nearly collapsed in a gibbering mess the weekend A, W and I went to the North Coast.

I started the head-banging in the wee passage way opposite our house.  I don’t remember whether I was banging my head on a wall, a fence or a tree, but anyway, A went to stop me, and he accientally knocked me over (again, this was not his fault; his pulling me away resulted in my losing my balance).  This resulted in injury to my back, both legs, head and shoulders, because I fell with some force and in a weird angle.  I wasn’t seriously hurt, of course, but enough that I am still in pain in all these places now.

In falling, I broke one of two glasses I’d nicked from the restaurant that were in my handbag.  That serves me right for nicking them, of course, but as soon as we got back to the house I took one of the shards to, firstly, my arm, then to my abdomen.  The cuts aren’t especially deep but they’re yet more physical damage to myself that if I wasn’t mental I wouldn’t have.

I’ve been thinking for some time about carving the word ‘hate’ into my stomach, and that’s what I was trying to do on Sunday morning.  But I failed to accurately carve the ‘h’, so I ended up just randomly slashing in frustration at my inability to even fucking write properly.

I spent the rest of yesterday exhausted, in pain and depressed. I looked at my face in the mirror and it was cut from falling, the permanent dark circles under my eyes were just about as bad as they have ever been, and I was completely covered in red blotches that no doubt were related to over-drinking.  The mess of my face, the pain across my body – they were both good physical analogies for my mental grief.

I was horrified about how I had behaved – not because I give a toss about myself, because I deserve it all, but because A has to bear witness to all this.  He does not deserve it yet he always deals with it in a relative stride.  It affects him, certainly, but he hasn’t let it break him.

I keep telling him that I should move out or not see him until such times as my psychotherapy is actually yielding results, but he says that would only fuck up his life more, which is sweet and kind and loving.

I really hate myself.  My life really isn’t that bad, ostensibly.  Worse things have happened to other people yet I let some pathetic, measly, water-off-a-duck’s-back tiny negative events turn me into this, a hideous, angry, bubbling mess that seeks to destroy those she loves as well as herself.

On another note, I spoke to my best friend D after some time yesterday evening.  I had emailed D, as well as A, the bullshit from my Aunt of Evil, GA, that is detailed here.  Unfortunately, I’d sent the email to his home address as it wasn’t really safe for work – however, he really only ever uses his work email address and thus only got the email yesterday.

The long and the short of the conversation is that D disagrees with the consensus that I should demonstrate my annoyance with GA and her cunts by not being present at any point during their imminent visit to Norn Iron.  He thinks that will make me look bitter, twisted and unco-operative.

His view is that I should meet GA and cunts, but in my usual Machievellian way, I ought to engineer an argument, making it look like their fault.  As it happens, starting an argument is probably unnecessary, as one way or another GA will fuck me off.  She will either patronise me about being mental, proselytise at me or defend her cunt son’s behaviour over V’s will (which doesn’t have a defence; the fact that he got so worked up over what to do about the money shows he actually thought about it and still decided to fuck me over).

D suggests that as soon as she starts behaving in a wankerish fashion, I can then with apparent justification tell her that I have no time for her, do not want to see her again, and want her to desist from either contacting me or talking about me to anyone ever again.  At that point I can leave.

He said that had her visit to here not been imminent, it would have been reasonable to email this information, which would be a lot easier to do.  But he says I will come across as the bigger person if I do make the effort to see her, and that the aforementioned reaction will be justified.

GA won’t see it that way, and frankly given her defence of GA, I am not sure my mother would either.  Additionally, I am wondering can I react in this way.  I’ll either avoid any confrontation out of fear and nervousness, or I’ll go completely fucking mad and start screaming at her, which will surely give her ammunition.

I see D’s point, but I also see that of the others (A, W, AC etc).  I will have to consider my options in detail over the next week or so.

He May be Attacking but my Shrink is Not Resigning! C: Week 17

Or at least if he is, he did not tell me so, and he is still having supervision sessions with his boss so it doesn’t look like he’s going any time soon!  To be honest I didn’t mention my irrational fear to him about him leaving (that I expressed yesterday), but I am fairly sure now that if he were going he would have told me.  So I am sated…for now.  I wonder will his new job offer come in the next few weeks and then I will have to worry about this again?

We spent the first while talking about work..  I only mentioned briefly here on Friday that I had heard from the office, but basically it ran thus: I had not responded to the email about which this rant was…um…ranted, I have to attend another OH assessment (not panicking, not panicking…oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck…OK, am panicking), that they want a therapy progress report, that they wanted to know had I yet seen a “specialist” and basically what more “aggravating factors” there were in the workplace.  Since I had previously provided them with a comprehensive but diplomatic list of “aggravating factors” which they then completely refuted, this seem a stupid question to me, but hey, that’s management shit, right?  Also, given the previous OH report, they are hoping I will be back in September / October.  If not, or if they cannot make reasonable adjustments for my madness, they will have to enter the “incapacity process”.

I wrote back to Horse with a therapy progress report, telling her about Dr C and the diagnoses/tablet changes, agreeing to attend the stupid, hateful OH shite, and stating politely that since she had already merely refuted my discussion of “aggravating factors” that my going into further detail would be nonconstructive.  I simply detailed a few supervisory-esque matters that would need to be addressed in the relative short-term after a hopeful return to work.

Anyway, I gave C brief details then started ranting about work and how I think my colleagues are all “bastards”.  Then I castigated myself saying that they are not all bastards, but in my mind right now they are in fact all bastards, so let’s just go with the idea that they are all bastards even though in the real world only one or two of them are actually bastards.

C pointed out that this was a very black and white generalisation.  Really, C?  I didn’t know that, thanks mate.  I was tempted to ask him if I was splitting, but after last week I was feeling submissive and didn’t want to antagonise by making it look like I know more than him, so I didn’t.

He did accept in fairness that I both believe they are all evil and don’t at the same time, and asked what it was that terrified me so utterly about returning to work (in light of the fact work are hoping to have me back by October).

I told him that A had suggested I just leave my present job (or at least let them to dismiss me, so as I can continue to claim whatever dolescum money I can) and take a very protracted period off work until I was confident enough to cope.  C tactfully disagreed, at least to an extent anyway, stating that the more one promised oneself to return to public life when one was more confident, the less likely they seemed to be able to do it.

I panicked and asked if that meant he thought I should just go back to work.  The answer was not right now, but yes, relatively soon,not after a very protracted period.  We obviously have to work on some confidence-building/fear-elimination, just not use it as an indefinite excuse for me to remain off.  However, he said, he did not necessarily think that ‘work’ had to be my present job.  That was reassuring, because starting a new job whilst terrifying is actually less so than returning to my present one.  The problem is that when I have been offered interviews in the past year or so I just go mental.

I said that I didn’t actually want to go back to work at all, but I did want to want to go back.  I said I didn’t fancy wallowing off social security for the rest of my life and letting my mind atrophy.

Apparently I said the words ‘social security’ with a certain tone.  C searched for the word, but I butted in and said, “contemptuous”.

“Yes,” he agreed.  “Contemptuous.  Why so?”

I offered the view that although there were certainly genuine claimants within the social security system, that I did not want to be associated with benefit fraudsters and layabouts.

“Hmm,” he said.  “Black and white thinking again.  There’s no middle ground in this for you.  It’s either/or.”

At this point as I recall it he moved the discussion back to my actual present job.  The change of direction seems confusing, but will makes sense as my little story progresses.  So, what was it then that worried me so much about my present job?

Essentially, I said, no one listens to legitimate concerns (true), nothing ever changes despite promises that it will (true), they are so pedantically anal that nothing is ever good enough (mostly true) and that basically they all know what’s wrong with me and despite the nature of their business (voluntary sector social care) that they don’t believe I am ill or at the very least they are stigmatically judging me for my mental fuckuppery (probably not true but still my perception).

(C found the term ‘fuckuppery’ amusing.  I was glad to give him a couple of opportunities to smirk in this session).

I told C that if I have to walk somewhere during office hours that would, if I was taking a straight route, take me past the office that I walked ridiculously convoluted routes to avoid it.  My best attempt at walking right past it was on the other side of the road with my face covered with a scarf, which still resulted in a panic.  In fact, when he asked me to relive that day, I refused as I began to become incredibly jumpy and agitated.  Thankfully C didn’t need to probe me any further as he could see how the fear of the office was manifested.

I said to C that even though I had reasons to be angry, or at least irritated, with work, that I couldn’t explain my abject terror about something as apparently inoffensive about simply walking past it.

C’s conclusion is that the fear is not about the fact that things never change in the place, or indeed any specific work related issue, but more about my perception of others’ perceptions of me.  He said that I fear scrutiny, feel that I need validation and am petrified of being judged in a negative way by almost anyone.  This ties in with my self-contempt at being part of the social security system.  Much to my regret, his analysis is correct.

He said this led on appropriately enough to how I’d reacted to my shouting at him last week and indeed how I had responded to our first in-depth discussion of this blog.  He suggested that I ended up apologetically submitting to him in both cases because I feared he was scrutinising me and coming to negative conclusions about me.

I felt this was a fair comment, and indeed timely given the similar patterns of behaviour with A, about which I then told him, discussing the incidents at the weekend in some detail (though I neglected to include the information that one of the arguments that I started was about him).

To my surprise he suggested drawing a diagram of my behaviour on his whiteboard.  “It’ll give us some visual reference for this,” he stated.  “You may feel that this is a bit caricatured at the moment, but over time we’ll make it more specific to you.”

When he had finished the chart I made the unusual request to take a photo of it (so I could remember it all).  He was slightly taken aback by this, but agreed.  In return for his kind acquiescence, I stated that I would not put the picture on the internet.  I didn’t, however, state that I wouldn’t describe it *evil grin* so here goes.

Self versus Other

Self feels attacked by Other, causes feelings of being threatened or afraid.  Self is attackee, Other is attacker.  To mitigate effects of perceived attack on Self, Self must defend Self.  In defending Self, attacking role is reversed.  Self attacks Other.  Other is attackee, Self is attacker.

Self also attacks Other to induce potential abandonment as at least control is then had over said abandonment, rather than abandonment being in the control of Other.  Self perceives attack from Other as being evidence that abandonment is imminent.  Self must attack so as to justify imminent abandonment, therefore making Other (not Self) being the abandoned one, at least by proxy.  Abandonment justified because Self wants to abandon Other rather than have Other abandon Self.

Self then reflects on being attacker/abandoner-by-proxy, causing Self feelings of guilt.  Self submits to Other, partly in an effort to avoid abandonment that was previously considered imminent (as abandonment by-proxy is not ideal for Self either), but also partly because Self feels that Other is damaged by Self and Self is sorry for that.

Etc.  I am having to explain it linguistically here, so it seems more complex than his little diagram with connecting arrows and lines actually did.

We both sat and looked at it for quite a while, before C turned the whiteboard round because he didn’t want either of us to overthink the material thereon.  He did, however, ask me what I thought of it.

It was like most of my interpersonal relationships, whether current, at some point in the past or in the projected future, being laid out before me.  I felt it was a very succinct way of putting it all.

He said that as well as submission then there was my tendency to self-castigate when I later believe that the perceived attack from ‘Other’ (that brings on the attack-defend-submit behaviour) was not worthy of response, or at least not worthy of getting riled at.  “For example,” he said, “you may believe now that my having emphasised last week that your blog should be anonymous was nothing more than my emphasising that fact.  At the time you believed that I was attacking both your intelligence and your continued writing of the blog.”  (As it happens I am not sure what I do think of that now, but in any case he was just exemplifying).

He continued by stating that regardless of what I think later, it is important to remember that my perception of attack at the time said perceived attack is taking place is very, very real.  As such, I should go easy on the subsequent self-flagellation.

“But I need to criticise myself,” I protested.  “If I don’t, I run the risk of believing all my warped perceptions are real, and then will fall into deep, permanent madness.”  This was a reference to believing that the sun could see me and wished death on me.

C reiterated that my ‘warped perceptions’ were fundamentally real at the time.

I screwed up my face a bit and became (even more) fidgety.  He asked what was wrong.  I said there was something I felt I ought to tell him, but I didn’t want to.

He asked what I felt was going to happen if I did tell him about whatever it was.  I said I feared that he would have me sectioned because I was presenting episodes of genuine psychosis.

He said the only circumstances under which he would start using the Mental Health Act were if he felt I was seriously about to kill myself (or, although he didn’t say this – presumably for fear of offending me – if I was seriously about to hurt someone else).  My response to that was that in that circumstance sectioning would certainly be preferable to him calling the stupid crisis response team, a response which probably didn’t go down too well, but I didn’t stop long enough to observe his reaction in detail.

I went ahead and told him about the sun, and about how A had tried to rationally convince me that my delusion was just that (ie. a delusion) but that I apparently argued that A could not know that the sun was not sentient and malevolent.

C listened intently, then said, “this will maybe sound like leap of logic, but if we can relate this back to your colleagues for a minute, would you accept that both feelings are related to being, in your eyes, overly scrutinised?”

I hadn’t thought of that, perhaps unsurprisingly, but it seemed to make sense in a warped sort of way.

He continued by opining that if I had enjoyed being out of the sun that we experienced this week (remember I described yesterday about how much happier I was in the dark, underground pub than out on the street?) that perhaps this delusion lasted longer than just the period for which I initially felt it.  Ultimately, he felt that the delusion came back to this idea of being scared of having my persona attacked.

Curiously, I felt, he then stated that another comparison, tenuous as it may have sounded, was that my perception over the previous two weeks had been that he was, at times, attacking me.

I frowned.  “Do you think I see you as a being of harm and malevolence?” I queried.  “For the record, I don’t.”

“No,” he ventured, “but I do think you have fleeting moments where you might think I want to hurt you or wish harm on you.  Thus you defend yourself.  So, what do you feel now that you have told me this?”

“That you hate me because I’m psychotic and that now you’re going to abandon me,” I sighed.  “You see, this is why I have to berate myself at every turn for my irrational perceptions and thoughts.  If I don’t I will end up completely believing that you despise me and that the sun is out to murder me.  I’m clinging to a few threads of sanity here.  To just let this wash over me would be to break them or to let go of them.”

C nodded understandingly and sympathetically, but then uttered the immortal words, “look, I’m sorry, but we’ll have to leave it there.”  He indicated interest in picking this theme up again next week.

Before I actually left, though, two things of interest occurred.  The first was that he reported that, as mentioned, he will soon have a supervision session – unfortunately this conflicts with my appointment with him in three weeks.  The last time such a conflict occurred, C simply allowed us to miss a session.  This time, he has suggested that we rearrange the appointment.  I am certainly glad of that, because I crack up when he’s not there, but it does seem to me that he thinks I’m really mental at preset, if he is going to have a change of heart like that.

The next thing was, as I was about to go out the door, he stopped me and asked when I was next due to see Dr C, the psychiatrist.  Perhaps, given the sun episode, this question was entirely unsurprising.  I told him I had an appointment for the end of July and laughed that I would be interested to see what she thought of this.

Then I left.  An intriguing session.  I am not entirely sure what to make of it at this point, but it was certainly interesting.

Attack, Defend, Submit – The Behaviour of a Lunatic

I have noticed a pattern of behaviour in myself of late that follows the rules of attacking someone (verbally), defending myself for said attack and/or against their perceived attack on me and then becoming submissive to said person in the form of apology or begging them not to desert me.  This was evident to some extent in my session last week with C, but it became increasingly evident over the weekend with A.

Indeed, although I would not have considered it especially indicative of my mentalism in the past, I do have a history of doing this with him.  Not with tremendous frequency, I hope, but probably enough to be unsettling.  Sometimes an argument is justified, but oftentimes I am just enacting my viciousness.

The weekend’s example of it was the first time that I’ve wondered was this a manifestation of being mad, because (a) it is consistent with my transferential behaviour last week towards C and (b) it seems to be quite typical stylistically of a borderline individual, which as you know was a recent diagnosis applied to me.

I’d be lying if I told you I could remember what happened.  The fight took place after a heavy night in the pub, so I’m hoping that’s the reason for my forgetting it, but the next morning when A told me what had happened I worked myself into a frenzied panic and really don’t remember that either, and that can’t have been alcohol induced.

So apparently, on Saturday night, I launched into a vituperation against A on the way back from the pub to our hotel (we were in Dublin for a gig on Sunday night) because it is my perception that he hates C.  I have tried to defend C to A in the past as A feels he has not done anything useful at all in four months of being my therapist.  I have tried to explain that in psychotherapeutic terms this really isn’t a long time, but A responds by saying that C doesn’t even really have a clear plan.  The thing is, I think in some ways C actually does (insofar as my rambling will let him implement it), but I think he won’t share it with me in case I try and analyse it, which is exactly what would happen.  This is just conjecture though; I may be completely wrong.

Whatever the case, the issues in my head are so long-term and deep-seated that I cannot imagine therapy in the short-term (which hitherto this is) would work.  C needs to dig deep, and has to fight my defences, because it’s not as simple as just telling your mind you need to start talking about a, b or c.  I don’t want to think about what he wants me to think about, so he will have to press me over time.

So anyway, I have tried to explain this to A, but he seems dubious.  This must’ve been in the back of my mind somewhere as it all came out in this rant.  A doesn’t remember the specifics either, but basically I started slagging him for his apparent misunderstanding of psychotherapy, then went on to bitterly defend both C and myself.  Apparently then I suggested going to the hotel bar but A had enough sense to make me go to bed.  Epic fail.

Sunday was a really weird day.  I woke up and joked to A about not being able to remember coming home.  He seemed slightly uncomfortable so I probed him on what had happened and he told me.  I don’t remember much about the next hour or so, but I did apologise over and over again, accuse myself of being a failure, I blubbed and blubbed and blubbed, apologised some more, wept some more, panicked, paced and had the usual breathing issues.  A kept telling me it was OK, that he accepted my apologies and that I should forget it (well, I had forgotten it – but you know what I mean).  He kept trying to hug me and tried to calm down but there was no consoling me.

The only thing of which I have a clear memory was eventually taking two Valium before leaving the hotel.  Walking down the road, I felt some of the really unpleasant and hardcore-extreme depersonalisation and derealisation that many people have reported with Valium, but which has never been the case for me when I have taken it in the past (my depersonalisation and derealisation are not caused by Valium ((I take it very rarely, yet they are fairly frequent)) and while certainly ‘unpleasant’ in their own way they are normally not of the malevolent nature that this was).  I felt so far out of my own body and out of this world that wasn’t in any control of my physical or mental self, and as such could quite easily have fallen under a tram or a car.  Frankly I would have welcomed that outcome at the time.

Anyhow, in this weird daze I still somehow managed to make it to the pub – yes, more booze, but in fairness it was a rock bar and we were going to a rock gig.  It’s dark and underground, and was fairly quiet at the time with good music by AC/DC (the band of that evening), and my mood instantly improved.  In fact, for the rest of the afternoon I would say I was in a state of mild mania.  At this point A banned me from using the word ‘fail’ for the rest of the day, as he believes my constant use of the word in relation to myself perpetuates my negative self-image.  I was surprised by how difficult this proved to be.  Even in a good mood, at every turn I wanted to self-deprecate, and that is my current term of choice to do so.  This proved his point, I think.

We then got the bus to the concert which was at a venue about 25 miles south of Dublin.  Initially the bus journey was fine, but it became increasingly evident that the vehicle was full of knobs.  Being a veteran of rock gigs in Dublin (and elsewhere), this came as a surprise to me.  You don’t normally get spidey types going to them, but there was a high proportion of them evidently going to this one.  This was annoying, but the expected journey time was only 45 minutes, so it could be lived with.

But then we hit traffic – a massive, impenetrable backlog, caused by the gig – and without bothering to get into unnecessarily details, after an hour we had maybe moved 40 feet or so.  Gradually, people got more and more concerned that we’d miss the gig and eventually there was a mass exodus of gig-goers from all the buses in front, so we too ended up following them on foot up the hard shoulder of the motorway, onto the relevant slip road, and onwards.  It was approximated by our bus driver that the journey would take about an hour (ha!).  Better than waiting on the bus, we thought.

At first there was a real air of camaraderie.  The spides were less evident and I was beginning to think that maybe our bus had just been anomalous in that regard.  People were all in good humour, and it was kind of infectious.  The sheer absurdity of the situation gave it a novel atmosphere.

After the first couple of miles, though, the comicality began to dwindle a little.  More drunken spides and millbags were beginning to surface, openly pissing on the streets but even worse than that throwing their litter (booze cans, mostly) into peoples’ gardens or into hedges.  Even worse again, from my selfish perspective, was that they were behind me, in front of me, and closing in on me – and making a fuck of a lot of noise.

I began to lose it after about an hour and a half, and the racing thoughts and disjointed comments of an agitated depression and panic set in.  I remember begging A to make the people go away or at least to protect me from them.  But there was nothing he could do, so on we struggled.

After about two hours of walking, it started to rain.  At that point, I was grateful for it, as I was so warm and dirty from the long walk.  Eventually we were picked up by another bus (our own never passed us, so must have still been well behind us) and got, eventually, to the venue, two and a half hours after leaving our bus and well over three since leaving Dublin.

But it was now very cold and very wet, and I was suicidally depressed.  I went to the first stall I saw selling water, bought some and downed another two Valium.  A insisted on finding the bar, though all I wanted to do was go home.  I’d have happily paid a fortune for a taxi, but I was conscious that A had spent a lot of money on taking me to the gig so I held back and went in search of the bar with him (he is partially sighted – completely blind in one eye, in fact – so wouldn’t have easily found it alone, and in any case I could not have been left alone or I would probably have either panicked or killed myself somehow).

Anyhow, the bar – fuck me.  I have never seen a crowd like it. I was hemmed in on all sides and movement was impossible.  It was horrible.  I turned round (insofar as was possible) and asked A if this was really necessary, but he didn’t hear me.  The odd thing was, though, I didn’t have a complete panic attack, I was “just” extremely disconcerted.  That might partly have been a (paradoxical) self-preservation thing, because if I’d panicked there and then I might well have died as there would have been no way for first aiders to even know what was going on, never mind get access to me.  But in reality, it was probably simply the lovely Valium, which in this case hadn’t caused any significant depersonalisation or derealisation.

To cut a long story short (or as short as my verbosity allows), we eventually got to the bar and after much trouble got a place to stand near a random steel wall which was used as a make-shift pisser by a row of men.  I observed the wall with interest (not in the pissing blokes, honest!), asking – aloud at one point – if I banged my head off it enough times, would I be able to kill myself.  A said that I probably would, but wouldn’t let me try.  Eventually I suggested we go and look at band T-shirts.  I was so wet and utterly fucking freezing that I could hardly hold anything, so I was hoping to buy something to warm myself up and protect my body from further rain and cold.

And at that point, my mood suddenly changed from one of suicidal desolation to a return of the good humour, hypomanic state of earlier.  For no reason that I could discern.  None at all.  The most bizarre thing of all was that A’s pretty poor mood changed simultaneously with mine.

He blamed beer.  I blamed Diazepam.  Who cares?  Whatever it was, it meant we at least enjoyed it when AC/DC came on.

Back on the attack-defend-submit theme, on Thursday after C my ma made me visit Aunt of Boredom with her (MMcC, not GA ((Aunt of Evil)) or MMcF ((Aunt of Oppression))).  MMcC was oh-so reassuring and helpful about my being insane by openly asking me what traumatic events had occurred to make me the way I am?  How was I meant to reply to that?  “Well, aside from the fact that your brother-in-law raped me, which I’ve been trying to hide, there was the hardcore effects of how V treated your sister, the effects of which I’ve been trying to hide, but even though she’s sitting right here, that’s OK, I’ll just tell you.”

Needless to say, I eventually responded by saying, “I don’t feel at liberty to say.”  She then effectively denied the very existence of BPD and bipolar II.

Are all my extended family complete cunts?

Anyhow, that’s all an aside.  As we were driving home, the sun was shining in front of the car and I suddenly became convinced that it was watching me and wanting me to die and was out to get me.  Hmm.  Rational.  Not psychotic or anything, SI.

Anyhow, I was telling A about this over the weekend, and although at first he didn’t believe me, when he realised I was serious, he kept trying to rationalise the situation by explaining how this was scientifically impossible etc.  Yet again, I don’t remember arguing him with him over this, but apparently I did.  I argued that it was, in fact, entirely possible that the sun could see me and why couldn’t he just understand that?  Why not?!  It was a perfectly rational belief, so where did he get off trying to convince me otherwise?!  Attack-defend.

When he told me what I had said later, I did of course apologise and submit.

My latest irrational belief, less irrational than the sun thing admittedly but still not based on any evidence, is that C will tell me in the morning that he is resigning from his present position and will be leaving me in a few weeks.  If that proves to be the case no doubt I’ll attack him, defend myself for attacking him, then submit to him and beg him not to leave me.  If the irrational belief that C is leaving is in fact realised I will have to kill myself.  I cannot see any other viable another option of not collapsing into permanent madness.  I so hope I am wrong.

Have the threads of sanity to which I was so frailly but desperately clinging finally snapped?

Angry Therapy – C: Week 16

Yesterday was the first time I lost it with C.  I have been wry with him, played mindgames with him, slagged him off to others – but never yet have I actually exhibited annoyance directly at him.

Anger is the wrong word, really.  It wasn’t as strong as that, but it was certainly the first time I’ve raised my voice to him and openly displayed annoyance directly at him.

The session started in the usual stupid way of both of us sitting looking at each other.  I wish he would just take the lead sometimes, but he always wants to know where my mind’s at.  Eventually he gave up staring at me and asked how I was feeling.  I stated that I had felt better, but had felt worse.

“But how do you feel here, right now and in this moment?” he probed.

I didn’t want to convey how anxious I was about the meeting after last week’s disaster, but eventually I said, “I’m wondering what mental pain you’re going to put me through this week.”

C seemed a bit surprised by this statement, but maybe that’s my imagination.  I said that I sometimes found therapy very difficult.  (Yeah, cos it’s meant to be fucking easy, right?).

In this particular instance, given the timing, it would not take a genius to work out why therapy was hard, so he himself brought up last week’s altercation about this blog.  I admitted that I still thought he was angry with me and that he would abandon me and leave me in a (metaphorical) gutter (that’s a metaphor I’ve used too many times, but I can’t think of anything else).

For once there is not a lot to say about the session in terms of specifics, because basically the same thing was discussed throughout.  But there are a few moments worthy of mention.

I defiantly told him that I had blogged about last week’s session, to see how he would react.  He responded by asking me what I had written.

I said I had written, in part, an analysis of what he was doing by probing me about the blog.  Of course C wanted to know what form that analysis had taken.

I said, in a challenging fashion, “I believe that you were trying to explore the transference I experience in this room.  Would that be a fair comment?”

I felt quite smug in observing his reaction.  He screwed up his face in thought for a few moments and was, in my estimation anyway, taken aback by my candour.  Eventually he said, “yes, I suppose so.”

He reiterated that he didn’t have a problem with me blogging about our “work” but that he did want to reinforce the idea to me that “there had to be some boundaries.”  I asked him what boundaries, specifically, did he mean.  Was he simply referring to the fact that the blog had to be anonymous?

He said that he was and there were no additional boundaries.

“I’m not stupid!” I raged at him.  “How patronising!  Do you think I go and write, ‘hello, my name is <my full name here> and I am in psychotherapy with a clinical psychologist called Dr <his full name here> who is based at <name of hospital here>?’  Do you actually think I do that?!  Who does that?!!  I have an IQ of 148, what do you take me for?!”

It was a compulsive outburst, which was perhaps unsurprisingly then followed up by a, “that wasn’t fair.  I’m sorry,” at which point I bowed my head in submission.

Then I asked, more diplomatically this time, “why do you feel that you need to continually reiterate this position?  You know I know this, so what is your reasoning?”

He yet again screwed up his face in thought, but this time he appeared more uncomfortable.  I realised that I was reversing the roles a bit, and guess what?  I apologised yet again, hurray!  “I’m playing mindgames with you,” I admitted.  “I’m sorry.”

C said that after my previously feeling that he was seeking justification from me, that I was now seeking justification from him.  He didn’t say this exactly, but I felt his view was that after believing he was punishing me, I now wanted to punish him.  Of course this was followed up by more ‘sorry’s.

Although the ensuing discussion was wide-ranging in the sense that I discussed others with whom I experience outbursts, it all came back to the same thing.  I get angry (or at least irritated) then revert to submission (not with others in general, though I do tend to curb my rage with them much more than they realise, which in some ways amounts to the same thing).  It was exemplified a couple more times in the session, but I don’t remember exactly what I’d said that required apologies.  But apologise I did, and indeed at one point he pulled me up on it.

I apologised for apologising, then apologised for apologising for apologising, until C started trying (and failing) not to laugh.  I waved my hand about and said, “you know what I mean.”  I proceeded to enquire as to whether or not I spent half my time apologising to him.

“Well, not half the time,” he began, at which point I interjected with a mildly irritated, “that was a deliberate hyperbole.  You know what I mean.”

C half-smiled at this, then proffered the view that yes, I certainly spent “some time” apologising to him.

It all went back to the same thing.  Defiant and challenging and annoyed versus submissive and scared that he will abandon me and I will have to kill myself.  He wants to know from whence this dichotomous position comes, but feels it needs more exploration.  Then there was the usual bullshit about how much I protect him and that therefore, how much I avoid confronting stuff (not that I don’t have other ways and means of doing this, however).

We went on and on and on about these things, so again didn’t get talking much about DBT and the fact that I had sought extensive philosophical arguments for it.  At one point I did contend that my anger related to radical acceptance.

C asked why, and I opined that I still opined as exemplified by still becoming annoyed and that thus I hadn’t radically accepted anything and that I had therefore failed.

C laughed in my face (in a nice way) and said, “you have failed because you haven’t implemented the suggestions in one basic handout?!”

“Sorry,” I said.  What else?!

A lot of the session was also spent in silence.  We would look at each other for what seemed like ages without speaking, or we would just simply stare at the floor.  Guess how I reacted to this?  “I wasting your time by not speaking here.  I’m sorry.”  Bet you’d never have guessed that.

In any case, at this juncture there are no real answers.  I am scared to tell him that my rational, intellectual view is that my transference is about V.  I am not sure what I think ’emotionally’ anymore.  I don’t know if I do think emotionally.  I still abstract so much of myself even in front of him and I really do believe coming to grips with everything is going to take time.

In relation to that, he reminded me that our ten contracted sessions are due to come to an end in the next few weeks and we would need to discuss the way forward.  I do not recall how it was he phrased it, but after saying all the usual cack like he would need to seek my views, see how I dealt with our sessions when they were over blah blah blah, he did say something about seeing if we were going to continue our bizarre, asymmetric relationship in “the long-term”.  It wasn’t a promise, but whatever way it was phrased it did suggest to me that he was willing to do this.  This, obviously, is most reassuring because my fear of him rejecting me overwhelms me at times, which is why I think I spend so much of my time apologising to him.

We ended the session with a brief discussion about last week’s meeting with Dr C, my friendly neighbourhood psychiatrist.  Apparently C hasn’t heard from her (more NHS efficiency, then) so I was forced to tell him what my shiny new diagnoses are.  Bizarrely, I found it difficult to confess this information to C, despite the fact I’ve been almost bragging about it online and to (some of) my ‘real life’ acquaintances, family members, friends etc.  Perhaps it is because C as a psychological professional is bound be fully cognisant of the nature of BPD, and the fact that it is traditionally hard to keep clients in therapy.  I don’t want him to think I hate him but don’t want him to abandon me; I don’t hate him and dont want him to abandon me.

But anyway, I eventually managed to tell him about both the BPD and the bipolar II as diagnosed by Dr C, and about how she’d changed my medication and would be willing, if necessary, to add mood stabilisers to the equation.

C asked how I felt about having these ‘labels’.  I said, that as my own self-diagnosis had been largely correct, I partly felt vindicated and affirmed, though (to his surprise) I said that I sure had all the cluster B and C personality disorders (it was partly a joke, but as I said to him, I do have features of most of them).  Moreover, though, I said that I felt that being mental would at least be easier to confront in some ways now that I know the specific form of the mentalness.  It doesn’t make being mental any easier to cope with, but at least I know what I’m dealing with, and isn’t knowledge supposed to be power?  I concluded by saying that I thought my meeting with Dr C had been helpful, which as readers of this blog will know was indubitably the case.

So that was that, and next week it will all be back again for more fun and games.  I remember saying to bourach, who regularly comments here, that I wanted to start a fight with C, but she said quite rightly that I’d only feel bad.  I didn’t particularly start a fight, but I did expect to be annoyed with myself for even raising my voice to him at all.  The thing is, I’m amazed to report that I’m not especially.  Had it been right at the end of the discussion, or had we parted on bad terms, I certainly would have done and would probably have done something that the normals tend to call ‘stupid’.  However, I felt the discussion was useful – if a bit samey – and I think C is beginning to learn where he stands with me, as I hope I am with him.  We shall see.

I had much more to write about the rest of yesterday but I will have to leave it here for now.  I have to meet the fucking SSA medical people this afternoon to discuss my ESA – basically I need to prove to them that I am actually mental.  I am really worried because, for various reasons, I have to go alone.  Time for a little Valium, methinks.  I also heard yesterday from the office of significant evil and malevolence, but all this and more will have to wait for its write-up.  It’ll probably be Tuesday, because I am going to Dublin with A to see AC/DC this weekend.  A trip away will hopefully do me good, but unfortunately I don’t even like Dublin, because it’s so fucking busy all the time, which when you fear crowds is Not A Good Thing.  Still, a change of scenery and a good blasting of rock will hopefully cheer me up a little.

(Forgive any errors in this post but I really don’t have time to proof-read it.  I will do so later and make any necessary corrections).

To Hell With Today – and the Philosophy of DBT

Today sucks ram and ass bollocks.

My range of happy experiences since last night are the delightful following:

• The fabulous agitated depression *
• Severe depersonalisation
• Paranoia
• Anxiety (of course)
• Insomnia (what a surprise)
• Racing and disjointed thoughts (related to, or a symptom of, the agitated depression, naturally)
• Physical restlessness – rocking back and forth, desire to pace blah blah blah
• No particularly strong suicide ideation for a change, but certainly self-harm ideation

* I wrote about this state before, calling it “Simultaneous Mania and Depression“.  I didn’t know there was actually a psychiatric name for it – a Mixed State – but apparently there is.  In a sense this is reassuring as I was convinced this was an infinitesimally unlikely psychological place to exist and that ergo I must be the only person on Earth thus afflicted.  I am clearly not, however.

I am not anywhere near approaching the state I was in the night of my cousin’s birthday party, but what I described there is basically just a more extreme version of what’s been happening now.

I am trying to “mindfully breathe” (even the name pisses me off) and maybe I should find my stash of rubber bands or a fucking ice cube so I can feel lovely pain and maybe whilst I am at it I should paint on myself with red fucking dye or some such wank.  Heh, is it really bitchy that making snide remarks makes me feel marginally better?

This leads on quite adequately to a long discussion I had with A’s friend, G, on Saturday night.  As stated in the afore-referenced link, G has a degree in psychology and is incredibly clued-up on Eastern (as well as Western) philosophies.

Basically I complained that DBT and mindfulness were both a pile of patronising, meaningless fuck and that in particular even thinking about C’s particular choice of book on these matters made me angry.  I also told him of my recent diagnoses, making him one of only about five “real life” people that is aware of them (though having said that, I’m sure Mummy Dearest has told half the world by now.  On the other hand, maybe not, because perhaps now she knows it is not “just” depression, she is probably ashamed of me because I am certified by a consultant psychiatrist as being clinically insane.  Not a good conversation starter down the golf club, is it?).

My memory is absolutely awful since I lost my marbles, so I tried to take notes on stuff G said, which he found quite amusing (as I would have done had the situation been reversed).  The notes don’t grasp the conversation properly, but they do serve as something of a reminder that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

The essence of the conversation is that G thinks this stuff has benefit.  He is dubious about Linehan‘s development of the background issues in dialectics, and argued that although statistically DBT has been proven to alleviate some of the typical symptoms in borderline people, there is very little empirical research to back up the actual science behind it.  Nevertheless, he claimed, the actual concept of dialectic argument has a strong and ancient philosophical background.  The main philosophers practicing what Linehan tries to call radical acceptance were the Greek Stoics.  I believe the argument ran that philosophical stoicism allowed the Greeks engaging in it to reach ataraxia (though if I am mistaken in this, please, please point it out.  I was very brave and gave G the URL of this blog so he – or anyone else with knowledge of this – can correct me if I have remembered it incorrectly).

He also told me to look into the works of Max Stirner, his current favourite Western philosopher, and Georg Hegel, who also wrote extensively on the concept of dialectics.  I haven’t done any of this, but it is my project for today and tomorrow assuming I can overcome my mixed episode and all its little idiosyncrasies.

I told G that I would review online material of all the above but that in the meantime I was still dubious about the notion of radical acceptance or ataraxia or whatever the fuck you want to call it these days.  I contended, as I had done here, that to simply accept everything was to cease to have an opinion, and therefore was equal to losing a sense of self, which in my case is something with which I very strongly struggle anyway.  I even went on a similar rant about Hitler, Ahmadinejad etc as I had done here.

G took my point but the man is too clever for his own good and has an answer for everything.  DBT is to be taken in four stages, of which acceptance is one of the early ones.  Once one has made psychological progress and is able to cope and deal with the symptoms of their illness, opinion can be reintroduced to the person  By this stage you are able to see the issues with which you struggle in a more rational, less all-consuming light.

He provided some really good physical analogy for this, which annoyingly I don’t remember.  My very inferior, shite and frankly airy-fairy-cunty alternative analogy is something like you have to take your clothes off to have a shower to rid yourself of dirt, but once you are clean you can put them back on again.  How fucking arsey can you get?  I fail as ever.

G further stated, when I whined and whined about my failure to develop a career and even hold down a job because I am mental, that if anything the intellectuals amongst us are in many ways the more hoodwinked in the world.  He said, quite rightly I think, that those with lower IQs and others who happily work in what some might see as “lesser” jobs are in actual fact much more savvy than those of us that think we are entitled to glamourous careers due to having brains because – funnily enough – they simply accept their lot in life and as such are happier people.  I agreed with him that oftentimes ignorance is very much bliss.

I’m not eloquent at all in my description of this conversation and for that I would proffer my apologies to G.  The reality is that his knowledge and persuasiveness was as strong as ever, and he articulated himself verbally in a much superior way to the way in which I do so do via any medium.

In any case, the problem, for me, is in learning to deal with acceptance of this nature.  I have already alluded fairly extensively to the fact that I have real issues with that.  You can’t just click your fingers and suddenly find that everything is accepted and unjudged in your mind.  So, today, I will try and read about Hegel and Stirner’s philosophies on dialectics, and indeed on the Greek Stoics.  I might well end up completely mind-melted, but at least I am not likely to feel patronised in the way the tossy book from C makes me feel.

Again, a lot of my issues with DBT lie in the presentation of it.  Some of the ideas have merit – though I certainly don’t think they all do by any means – but condescending wank just makes me angry and homicidal, and I would really have expected C to have been aware of this after nearly four odd months of therapy.  But perhaps Messrs Hegal and Stirner can convince me, and in fact I think I am now feeling sufficiently improved from how I felt when I first started writing this entry to actually go and try and read stuff about them.  In some ways writing this blog is cathartic, but in an additional way writing it serves as a decent distraction from fuckuppery.  (Ha – C will be delighted, as writing the blog is one of the activities on my “distraction plan”.  But on the other hand no doubt he’ll be fucking annoyed because he features so strongly in it.  Can’t win.).

At the very least, I can now go to C’s office on Thursday armed with loads of intellectual ammunition.  He’ll tell me that as ever I’m intellectualising matters, but at least he can’t accuse me of not making an effort to engage with this.

I Love Psychiatry!

A bit of a turn up for the books, this is.  After the misery of C yesterday, and my intense dislike for Dr C the last time I saw her, I am very happy with how this morning’s meeting with the latter went.

There is not a great deal of point in detailing the entire conversation I had with her, as a lot of it was her clarifying points I’d made previously and on matters she had discussed with C.  I would be repeating a lot of this if I went into details.  Suffice to say, I discussed the points she raised with me in detail, brought some of my own to her attention, and let her proceed.

I was interested by a number of things.  Firstly, it was just Dr C I saw today, thankfully.  Not that I have anything against Dr N, but having to speak to both of them felt like I was being interrogated by a panel of interviewers.  Secondly, Dr C did not seem to be nastily questioning me in the way she had been before; I did not get the impression this morning that she felt I was a bullshitter, yet I previously had done so.  I suppose she needs to take that stance to weed out those that are bullshitters.  Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, she spoke to me in absolutely non-patronising terms.  She assumed I had previous knowledge of most matters, she spoke in academic and erudite terms and she didn’t come off with off with any airy-fairy arse biscuits whatsoever.  It would be fair to say that I was impressed.  I was surprised that I was impressed, as – as you know, dearest readers – I had not liked her at all when I first met her.  But really, this was a positive change.

The crux of the meeting was that Dr C says my diagnosis is tricky.  She says that I do not clearly fit the diagnostic criteria for any one mental problem, but I do have strong elements of some.  Apparently it is not at all uncommon for crackpots like myself to not neatly fit into one diagnostic category.

The disorder that she feels is most strong in me is Borderline Personality Disorder.  Perhaps unsurprisingly given this, I feel completely vindicated by this assessment. In fact, she actually asked me how I felt about this diagnosis; I told her it was one of the conclusions I had come to myself in my endless foray into self-analysis.

She was glad that I was not distressed by this but nevertheless went on to say that it is not just BPD.  She said there are also clear signs of Bipolar II, a type of bipolar disorder in which the depressive elements are the prevailing symptom, but in which mania and hypomania are certainly present at times.

Of course, I still have clinical depression on top of all this.  As a friend on Twitter said, I should win a prize for multiple diagnoses.

Dr C said that she believes the BPD to be stronger than the the bipolar disorder.  She said the mainstay of treatment for BPD is psychotherapy combined with anti-depressants.  Obviously it’s clear that Citalopram are not working in the least and as such she has now prescribed me Venlafaxine.  According to her, NICE have recently issued guidelines advising strongly against the use of mood stabilisers and anti-psychotics in the treatment of BPD, apparently due to the fact that there is no evidence that such drugs help the illness.

Dr C had the decency to ask me what I thought of this.  I said that I was no expert, evidently, but that based on the little I do know of mood stabilisers, I thought that they could potentially be helpful in my case.  She considered this, and said that although she certainly thought they could have benefit in treating the bipolar elements of my mentalism,  that she thought the BPD was the stronger illness and as such she was reluctant to try the mood stabilisers for now.  To be fair, she says she is not at all ruling out prescribing them; if the Venlafaxine doesn’t work, or only works in some ways, she is willing to try other stuff.

She explained that as Venlafaxine is an SNRI rather than an SSRI, which is all I have taken hitherto, I may find it more useful than my previous medications.  I’m still relatively cynical about its potential for success I suppose, but it’s reassuring to know that she is not ruling out other options in future if they are needed.  As she said, we are both new to each other and it may or may not take some experimentation to get it all right.

All in all, I’m very pleased.  Someone finally has the decency to tell me what is going on.  I am grateful for all C does, of course, but it was important for me to get a name (or rather, names) for this fucking thing (or these fucking things), and now I have that (those).

I don’t think this is a solution – in fact, I know with absolute certainty that it isn’t.  Nothing ever will be, and psychotherapy is going to continue to be incredibly difficult, I fear.  Nonetheless, I am encouraged, and feel I it’s a step in the right direction.

Even though she almost certainly doesn’t know about, never mind read, this blog, I think I owe Dr C an apology for my previous rant against her.  So sorry, Dr C – and thank you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venlafaxine

I Hate Psychotherapy and I Hate Transference – C: Week 15

This morning’s psychotherapy session absolutely fucking sucked and I hated it.  What is the point of it?  What is its mandate?  If it is only going to upset me further, why do I bother?  Why does C bother?  Aside from a salary, what satisfaction can he possibly get from his job?

The one thing I’ll say in defence of today’s session was that at least there was absolutely no cunty DBT involved.  In fact, I was going to have out my issues with that with C, but we got so involved in other stuff that I neither got a chance to do that, nor to ask him what’s going to happen when he so selfishly takes leave in July.

I went in, greeted him and then just sat there like a complete gimp.  He just looked at me, waiting for me to commence.  I just looked back at him.  It was like a battle of fucking wills.  Eventually I cracked and said I never knew where to start.  He said that he got the impression I was quite anxious.

This was fair and accurate, as I had been catastrophising all week about how to present my anger and frustration about DBT to him without causing offence and curbing his enthusiasm regarding same.  It’s kind of ironic, therefore, that this anxiety will have to wait for at least another week as that issue was not discussed at all.

I started by telling C what had happened to CVM last Thursday night and about how worried I’d been, about how I’d worked myself into a frenzy of panic thinking that she would die, and how awful I felt that I had not responded to text messages that she’d sent before she lost consciousness.  I told him how worried I’d been that she would die thinking I didn’t care about her.

Then I launched into a tirade of self-abuse about how only a narcissistic fuck like me could turn someone else’s illness into a reflection of themselves.  I rambled on and on and on about what a self-obsessed tosser I am, how my problems are self-indulgent, how my madness is simply elaborate narcissism.  The hilarious irony of this is that the rant in itself was utterly self-indulgent.

C talked briefly about narcissism but was concerned that his use of the term would reinforce my pejorative use of it.  I stated that I was well aware that the word ‘narcissism’ had diagnostic elements as well as pejorative connotations and that he was unlikely to reinforce my self-disgust as it was already as reinforced as reinforced concrete.

This is going to be disjointed, I fear.  I don’t remember what he said next or how the discussion returned to CVM, but in any case, it did.  He asked me how I knew her, as she is not one of the friends to whom I have hitherto referred whilst in therapy.  This is because I ‘met’ her, relatively recently, on the internet.

C said that I seem to live a lot of my life online and that I seem to form relationships there.  I agreed.  In fact, to exemplify my agreement, I rather pretentiously quoted a paraphrased version of this most fabulous of quotes from H P Lovecraft:

Anything savouring of quiet and tameness is maddeningly abhorrent to me — not in actual life, for that I wish as placid as possible; but in thought, which is my more vivid life.

I said to C, “well, the internet is my more vivid life.”  Had Lovecraft been alive today, perhaps it would have been his too.

C continued to probe me on the friendships I develop online.  He wondered if, as they are not people I’ve met in ‘real life’, if I even saw them as real people.  Of course I do.  The beauty of the internet, and I told him this, is that here I can find people who truly can empathise with what I go through.  A, D, B, W, Mum etc can all sympathise but apart from AC I don’t know any other real crackpots, or at least not any with whom I’d be willing to discuss mental matters.  I have met people online that do truly understand and with whom I can openly discuss everything with almost complete impunity.  There is an element of anonymity, certainly, but that does not mean that I don’t see these good folks as real people.

“Fair enough,” C said, “but I’m wondering if your tendencies to personify inanimate objects and be more willing to form internet friendships rather than real life ones is linked.”  He suggested that part of me sees both my internet friends and random objects such as my car as ‘safe’ assignees for my ‘affections’ as I do not want to exhibit tactility, sweetness etc etc to those I know in ‘real life (he said I was “terrified” of this; I agreed but also said the idea of being like that “disgusted” me).  Furthermore, objects and online friends are less likely to let me down; an object can’t, emotionally anyway, let one down, and people you don’t know in person are less likely to fuck you over than those you do.

My instinctive reaction to the idea that this was a form of frightened or protective projection was that it was utter bollocks, but I sat and thought about it for a few minutes anyway.  He asked what was going through my head, and I explained that I was trying to work out why I personify objects, why I put such importance in online relationships.  I told him that I saw academic value in his theory, but that my visceral reaction was not one of agreement.  I concluded that I simply didn’t know.

“That’s OK,” said C, “I don’t know either.  I’m just theorising.”

I went on to discuss with him the blog posts in which I was debating the nature of sanity and whether I wanted to be part of its ranks (see here and here).  He was interested to hear that I really struggled with this.

The two of us agreed that obviously being mental is my comfort zone in some ways, and in fairness to him he did seem to understand my conflicts over this issue, in a way that most non-mentals don’t seem to.  Perhaps C has issues too?  Therapists are allowed to have their own mental health difficulties, aren’t they?  The lovely From the Same Sky is demonstrable proof of that.

But as usual maybe I am reading too much into this.  As a clinical psychologist, I would assume that the man is trained to understand mental fuck-ups and all their odd foibles.

Oh for cunt’s sake.  Why don’t I remember how this all went?  I think it’s because I am so consumed by what happened later in the session, the part that upset me, so I can’t remember what happened before.  But I want to.  I know my psychotherapy doesn’t matter to anyone else but it matters to me.  I want to remember it, every eye movement, every shake of the head, every sound and every thought and feeling.  I need to make sense of it for my own reasons.  I don’t know why.
What was I saying?  I think I was talking about being in my comfort zone of mentalism.  Another comfort zone is my constant intellectualising of matters.  It allows me to avoid dealing with emotional bullshit.  If I speak about an issue in abstract, vaguely academic and analytical terms, then I am less likely to collapse in a gibbering mess.

At one point today, C emphatically refused to answer a question I put to him.  In the past, he’s given annoyingly politician-esque evasive answers to questions to which he hasn’t wanted to respond, but today he point-blank refused to answer whatever it was at all, as he felt I was trying to take us off course and into scholarly territory.  This avoids the issues he’s trying to uncover, or so I imagine the case is.  Later on, when I started analysing something I’d said, he interrupted me and told me I was making an intellectual matter of it again.  Again, it’s the first time he’s done that.  He’ll often ponder what I’ve said and subsequently tell me I’m trying to turn it into a logical, intelligent analysis for reasons of avoidance, but he’s never actually stopped me mid-sentence before.

My mind wants to make something of this.  What does it mean?  Does it mean anything?  Am I just making dilemmas out of nothing?

I get the sense, rightly or wrongly, that C is beginning to realise only now the depths and deep-seatedness of my issues.  That isn’t his fault, because I am wont to discuss everything in unemotional, abstract terms and pretend that it doesn’t effect me.  Well, obviously, C is not stupid and would realise that I wouldn’t be in psychotherapy at all if it didn’t effect me, but you know what I mean.  I have become adept at masking my true “self” and even to C, the person in front of whom I should least wear a mask, it has been worn over and over again.  I take it off only occasionally and usually then only when under pressure.  He knows that I wear it, but he has to work hard to see under it.  The fact that he achieves it at all is testament to his abilities.

Perhaps I too am only realising the depths of my madness.  I’ve stated before that psychotherapy has been a rather negative journey of self-discovery for me (excuse the grotesque cliche) and I’m still feeling that.  I do not think about how malevolent and vile I am most of the time, or perhaps more accurately I didn’t, but every time I am with him my self-disgust and hatred is so palpable and strong that I could almost reach out and touch it and bounce it around the room.

I remember repeatedly using the word ‘fail’ in relation to myself.  That’s a habit I’ve picked up from Twitter I’ll admit (where the hashtag #fail is used to convey annoyance at any minor misdemeanor), but in one tiny word it quite perfectly sums up how I feel about my life.  The self-invective went something like this:

“Sleep?  Fail.  Sanity?  Fail.  Work?  Fail.  Academia?  Fail.  Socialisation?  Fail.  Life?  Fail”.  I counted the number of ‘fails’ out on my fingers, but evidently I am only paraphrasing it all here as I ran out of fingers whilst relaying the multitude of ‘fails’ to C.

I was waiting for some lovey-dovey-inner-rainbow nonsense like, “but think of what you have achieved in your life,” but to be fair he didn’t even try that one.  Instead, he asked me why I thought I had failed.

I replied, “because I am a nutjob.”

He said, “I’m not sure I know what you mean in your use of that term.”

Uh-oh.  My reply to this was rather thoughtless – literally.  I said it before I thought about it; it was an impulsive comment that ‘just came out’.  I said, “well, neither am I, because no one will fucking tell me anything.”

At the time, even viewing his reaction, I didn’t think much of it.  If anything, I almost found my cynicism mildly amusing.  C laughed, but it was a nervous laugh I think.  He sort of bowed his head and covered part of his face with his hand.  Was he embarrassed?  I had quite openly asked him in the past what, in his clinical opinion, he thought was wrong with me, and he refused to give me a straight answer.

Yet it wasn’t really meant as a jibe at him – not on a personal level, anyway.  It was more a mild criticism of the way the NHS has treated me for over a decade.  I hate it and resent it.  If it has failed me so miserably, how many other people has it failed?  How many people have ended up topping themselves because the NHS has failed them?  However, of course I rely on it too.  Another dichotomic dilemma.

As ever I am digressing.  My mind goes off on tangents and I look back after a few minutes and find that I have typed them all, largely without thinking.

I’m evidently not going to remember all that happened this morning so I’ll just get to the point that I’m leading up to anyway.  In our discussion of my life on the internet, C asked me if I wrote on this blog about my sessions with him.  I responded in the affirmative.

Maybe I was being paranoid (no change there then), but I wondered had his facial expression changed in some sort of negative way.  After a minute or two of silence, he asked, “how do you think I might feel about that?”

My heart stopped beating.  I was suddenly conscious that I had quite possibly done something that had such great capacity to offend and betray trust, as to all intents and purposes what goes on in his office between he and I should really stay in his office between he and I.

Rather than betray my concerns, I batted the question back to him.  “How do you feel about it?” I queried.

Once again he refused to answer.  He merely asked me to articulate how he might feel.

I began to panic, and felt a lump of sorrow swelling in my throat, as the fact that he was even asking this was, to me, compelling evidence for the fact that he was angry with me for writing reams of bullshit about him without even having bothered to consult him.  How much do I hate myself?  How much did I hate myself in that moment?  There are not enough perjorative terms in the English language to describe how appalled I was at my own behaviour.

I didn’t want to exhibit this in front of him, though to be frank it would have been obvious to a dead fly sliced in half by a sadistic child, crunched and suffocated in a bin lorry, ingested by someone and then shat out into the murky sewers that I was in a wee bit of a panic and was significantly distressed.

I said, choosing my words carefully, that I may have betrayed his trust and/or invaded his privacy by broadcasting our weekly conversations to the world on the internet.

C then asked how I would feel if he had gone and discussed our sessions with his colleagues or someone.  I took this as further evidence that he was angry with me and became more upset, but before I could answer he tried to do so for me.

He said, “perhaps you would feel that I’d betrayed your trust, but perhaps you would feel pleased, in a sense, because you would feel that I care about you enough to want to go and discuss you with others.”

I denied this, truthfully.  I said that I would take it as a betrayal of trust.  I said, “because I’ve betrayed your trust, now you think I’m a cunt and you’re going to abandon me.  I’m sorry.”

Clearly this was exactly what C had been waiting for, and he said so.  Not so much the specific comment that I was a cunt, obviously, but the more general negative opinion that I was now holding of myself, and, even more than that, what I felt the dynamic between he and I was and is.

I see what he was doing in asking these questions and making me feel uncomfortable.  This was about him investigating the transference I experience towards him – what is its nature, how strong is it, in what ways does it manifest blah blah blah.  This is the quintessence of psychodynamic psychotherapy, as I understand it anyway.  But even with this rational awareness, I was completely fixated with the idea that he was incensed with me and I told him so, apologising over and over again.  I told him I would stop writing about our sessions on this blog.

C said he was not angry and that he felt keeping a journal was in fact a potentially very useful outlet for me.  He said he did not think I was a cunt.  That provided some light relief – I’ve never heard him use that (supposedly) most dirty of words before, and I struggled not to laugh at his doing so despite my overwhelming distress.

I was still obsessed with the fact that I’d potentially hurt or betrayed him though, and said, “it’s all anonymous, you know, you can’t be identified.  It’s mostly abstract anyway [it’s not really, though, is it?] and you are discussed in positive terms, unlike my family about whom I go off on the most vicious of rants…”

I stopped myself at this point and looked at him.  “I’m trying to justify myself, aren’t I?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, and I think he was mildly amused by it.

“OK,” I said, “I’ll stop writing it.”

C said, “in academic psychology, if one is writing a case study of a patient [so it’s ‘patient’, not ‘service user’ – thank fuck for that], one has to ask the patient’s permission to use the material and it all has to be anonymised.  If I wrote a paper on you, I’d need your permission and would not be able to use your real name.”  (Oh really, C?  I had no idea, thanks for enlightening me).

“You see,” I laughed, “I’d get off on that kind of public discussion about my issues.  Just not you talking to your colleagues!  But I should have asked your permission to write the stuff.  I’m sorry.”  I continued to fight against tears, which would not, I am convinced, have been a couple of sobs, but an entire 28 year long weeping session.  C commented on the fact I was evidently dealing with a lot in my head at the time.  Well, you put it there, mate.  But of course it’s my fault not his because I shouldn’t write this.

At any rate, he said that although there had to be some boundaries as regards what I could and couldn’t discuss, that as long as I kept reference to him on this blog anonymous it was fine.  “No,” I argued, “you can say that, but you don’t think it, do you?”

“I do,” he persisted.  “Anonymity is fine, you probably even find it helpful.  Your reaction to this is that you think my reaction is punitive.  You’re castigating yourself.”

He paused, and then continued in defence of me.  I really don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of, “you’re a product of some awful experiences.  You can’t be blamed for any of that.  You shouldn’t feel guilty about reacting to it….” blah de blah blah blah de blah yada yada.

I laughed bitterly.  “Yes, I should,” I seethed (self-)contemptuously.  “I’m not the first abandoned child.  I’m not the first victim of sexual abuse.  I wasn’t the first person to be bullied at school.  I wasn’t, and won’t be, the last.  No, the problems are not the problems.  I am the problem.  My reactions to the supposed problems are self-indulgent wank and I self-perpetuate everything.  Put simply, it’s my fault.”

Of course by this time the 50 minutes had elapsed.  C concluded by saying, “look, we have a lot to deal with here, but it’ll have to be next week.”

Perhaps if I wasn’t such a useless cunt I could have allowed him to deal with it today.  As I left his office, he told me to take care, but I did the opposite of course.  I left the hospital in severe distress and experiencing some of the worst suicide and self-harm ideation I’ve had in years.  C was certainly aware that I was distressed, but I hid the extent of it very well, and he would have had no reason to have believed my self-harm thoughts were stronger than normal.

I drove home recklessly, taking longer than I needed for the journey, fantasising yet again about driving into a wall or another car or a roundabout or anything that could have caused me to die.  Of course I didn’t, but only because of concern for my car.  I still value it more than my life.

My levels of my transference are severe.  I am obsessed with C.  I hate it.  I really hate it.  I don’t want to live my life worrying about whether I have upset a man I don’t even know.  Yet such is the nature of this form of therapy.  Transference is almost a requirement; it allows the therapist to see what is deficient in one’s life.  A rudimentary analysis of my transference towards him suggests to me that I am clearly much more emotionally attached to people than I’d like to admit.  I seek – nay, I need – validation from others simply to exist.  I hate most people, yet worry and upset myself when I think I’ve offended them.  Most of all I’m terrified of being abandoned.

The more I think about it, intellectually rather than in a visceral sort of way, the more I am convinced this is about V.  The thing is, I don’t really feel that.  I just feel reliant on C and want him to be my friend, in some shape or form anyway.  But rationally speaking I can accept that it sounds like I am worried about offending and/or disobeying a parent, like I am seeking the validation a child needs from their parents.  How pathetic.

I feel bad even writing this entry given our discussion today, but he did give me permission as long as I keep it anonymous.  I feel a bit better now, although writing about the potential for C being upset made me tearful again.  Whatever the case, therapy sucks.  But life sucks even more without therapy, so I guess therapy still wins.

Reading over this again it sounds like a ridiculous over-reaction to a throw-away remark, but what would I be without histrionics, eh?

So I have to go and wade through yet another pile of psychological-exploration shit tomorrow with Dr C – hur-fucking-rah.  Perhaps it’s a good thing I don’t like her, as I am not as likely to develop a reliant transferential (if that’s even a word) relationship with her as I have done with C.  Nevertheless I still fear her abandoning me, so I guess it’s not out of the question.

Bah.  Ain’t life great?!

Work Jerks, Shrinks and Iffy Psychotherapy

One of Dr C‘s minions phoned yesterday to report that an appointment has been made for me this Friday at 9.30am.

Aside from being frightened of nasty Dr C and the possibility of yet another panel interview-esque meeting with her and Dr N, I am kind of angry.  I was referred to a psychiatrist in January and didn’t finally see one until the end of May, and of course regular readers will remember that they fucked up my entire referral until C got involved.  Why, then, do they think it’s reasonable for them to click their fingers and expect me to come running?

Meh.  I suppose I ought to be grateful that they are seeing me again relatively soon after the last appointment.  C stated to me last week that he thought that Dr C was going to experiment with new medications for me, so hopefully that will come on Friday.  The thing is, due to the set-up of the first meeting with Dr C and Dr N, I didn’t get to talk to either of them in the detail I’d have liked.  In fact, after 14 weeks of psychotherapy, I haven’t even discussed everything I’d like to have done with C.

Given that circumstance, I am not sure how Dr C can accurately diagnose my condition on Friday and as such I am not sure how she can adequately prescribe appropriate medication.  Perhaps she just wants to talk to me in more detail about my symptoms?  Or maybe she feels her conversation with C has been adequate.  I don’t know; I’ll try not to pre-empt it I suppose.  Regardless of the fact I don’t like the woman, she is the consultant psychiatrist and for now I’ll try and assume that as such she knows what she’s doing.  Like it’s that simple.

And of course this is Wednesday evening, meaning that it is C tomorrow morning.  I forgot to mention last week that at one point I broke down in tears in front of him as I thought I had offended him (it was paranoia – logically speaking I very much doubt I did offend him, but hey, logic loves to fail me).  I thought I’d offended him because of something very minor., so minor that I don’t even remember what it was  Now I have to go in tomorrow and tell him what a complete pile of bovine manure I believe this DBT nonsense to be.  It’s not completely invalid I guess, but most of it is.  My worry is that when he first introduced me to it, C was so enthusiastic about it.  I’m concerned about raining on his parade.  He is, after all, only trying to help.

Am I just a cynical wankstain who needs to get over herself?  I want to want to give this a try, but just reading the stuff makes me angry.  I want to go to Marsha Linehan‘s house and firebomb it (Disclaimer to the thought police / government: this is deliberate hyperbole again.  I am not actually desirious of firebombing Linehan’s house; if nothing else there is the logistical problem that she is based in, I think, Seattle and I am in Northern Ireland).

Seriously, I have no idea what to say to C.  I am paranoid about upsetting him and having him abandon me.  Then there is the issue of his leave in July – I wouldn’t possibly be panicking already about that, now would I?  Oh wait, affirmative to that, I am.  I am fucking shitting myself.

What has become of me?  Why am I so intensely reliant on one individual that I don’t even really know?  How have I become a dolescum and how have I let my mind atrophy for the best part of a year by sitting about the house all day wallowing in my self-indulgent and pointless despair?

Speaking of dolescum status, today I have written to the office of much evil and malevolence asking for a copy of my contract of employment.  I revisited the CAB last week after my success in my application for DLA and lamented the fact that I was probably about to be fired.  Now, I have two very close contacts that are intimately familiar with employment law (one writes the laws in question themselves, another writes about them), and it is agreed that eventually evil work will probably be well within their rights to dismiss me.  The woman at the CAB, however, stated that in “some” cases unless they have a clause about dismissal on the grounds of absence written into the contract, they cannot dismiss you.

I have therefore written to nice personnel woman, not Horse, to ask for said contract.  Of course, like everything in my life, this is not as simple as it sounds.  I was initially employed on a part-time basis in what is now my assistant’s role.  I signed a contract for this.  When I was successful in my application to the current position, I did not receive a new contract.  There is not likely to have been a great deal of differences in the two, I suppose, and in any case I am advised that a contract for the more recent job would have been implicit between the organisation and me given that I was, for some time, undertaking the duties of the post and that they were letting me.  Nevertheless, I do wonder if this leaves room for a loophole?

Anyhow, I’ve written to nice personnel woman asking for the document and being overly sweet and friendly to her.  The reason for my uncharacteristic charm is twofold: one, she is a genuinely lovely woman and deserves people to be nice to her and two, I am fairly certain the letter will be passed to Horsey anyway, who will notice the significant disparity between how I communicate with her and how I communicate with the nice woman.  I want her to know, without my being unprofessional, or overtly nasty, that I dislike her.  Is that really bitchy?  Well, of course I already know the answer – of course it is.  But that’s kind of the point 😉

After the Horse asking me to get straight back to her regarding the occupational health report, I note with interest that she is not getting straight back to me.  I made subtle (but obviously achingly polite) reference to this in the letter to nice woman.

A is of the view that I probably will lose my job and that thereafter I should remain off work for about a year.  He thinks that I should wait not just until I have made an adequate recovery from my current episode, but right until I am capable of completely coping with everything life throws at me.  The rationale is sound, but the problem is that, even with psychotherapy and medication, I am not sure his dream of me being able to completely cope with life will ever be entirely realised.

On another note, thank you all for the many responses to Monday’s post.  In two days it has become one of the most popular on this blog.  Perhaps I should be a full-time psycho-philosopher?  Is there a career ladder in that?!

Back tomorrow with C post-mortem.  I will force myself to do it tomorrow not next week this time!

A Consensus: Nobody Likes ‘Sane’! Do We Have ‘Mad Pride’?

I wrote the other day about my mental dichotomy as regards wanting to be able to manage my episodes of madness and not wanting to lose my mentalism altogether, mainly as it has such a large bearing on my sense of self.

I was surprised but pleased by the level of response from others with mental health difficulties that I received to this post.  Aside from the comments left on the page in question, I received a number of messages on Twitter and even a couple of emails.

I was further surprised that there was not a single person that disagreed with what I had said.  One individual even commented that after 30 years of pain they would not flick the metaphorical switch to which I referred and allow themselves to be rid entirely of their condition(s).

In fact, over the course of my life I’ve only met one other person that would choose to flick the switch (my cousin S, who has severe agoraphobia and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder).  Everyone else does not want to be rid of their problems, or at least not entirely.

So what is this all about?  Why do we not want to lead ‘normal’, happy and contented lives?

As I stated in the aforementioned post, and in the subsequent comments, if you are mental then that mentalism becomes an inherent, completely entrenched part of your personality.  As such, whether you like it or not, it has become you, or at the very least part of you.  To lose it, surely, would be to lose part of your personality and therefore part of yourself.

Then there’s the fear element.  If being mental is all you know (or at least all you’ve known for some time), how can you reconcile ‘moving on’ with where you are at present?  If being mentally ill is your reality, how can you even conceive of having another reality?  What will it be like, how will it feel, what way will you behave?  The idea of living in what is effectively another mental dimension is a petrifying prospect when you have little to no conception of what that alternative dimension is like.

Apparently it is not just us lot.  There has been an emergent trend in some quarters since, apparently, the ’60s, towards “Mad Pride“.  Factions of Mad Priders are people who want to actively embrace their mental illnesses, and throw away their medications and do not engage in traditional forms of psychotherapy as a consequence.  They want to encourage their mad episodes.  Others that come under this umbrella term seek to reclaim the supposedly offensive terms “mad” or “insane” and to educate the public on mental health matters.  Read an interview with an advocate of the throw-away-your-tablets side of the movement here.  Indeed, view the UK’s official Mad Pride website here.

So, what do we think of this, eh, folks?

It seems to me from the aforementioned articles/websites that “Mad Pride” means different things to different people or groups.  Some throw away their tablets and stick two fingers up to the psychiatric establishment.

I cannot and do not agree with this; in fact, I think it’s nearly as worthy of shitting on as DBT.  It’s one thing to be scared and contemptuous of normals and normality – whatever that actually is – but it’s another to stand up and say, “it’s fabulous that I am psychotic today.  Oh, the plant is talking to me!  Fucking great!  Bring it on!”

The reality, or at least for me, is that episodes of psychosis, panic and all sorts of mania are frightening whilst you’re in them.  They are not fucking pleasant.  They are not fucking fun. Why would you actively choose to invite this when you can minimise the frequency and duration of same?

The dichotomy lies in the innate effect these episodes have on one’s long term psyche.  How do my manias, panics, episodes of sheer madness effect me in the long-term?  Regardless of some sort of diagnostic answer to that question, the truth of the matter is that the incidents in question shape my personality along the way, and it is probably this most of all that I fear losing.  That does not mean I want to encourage the actual incidents when they come.  Their complete absence is not what I want, but it would be good to be able to manage them and live a functional life, something that at present I cannot do.

The advocate interviewed in one of the above links claims that without (traditional) psychotherapy and medication he is still able to live a functional lifestyle whilst still having schizophrenia.  I find this difficult to believe at all, but regardless of whether or not it is true, just because he can manage does not mean that the rest of us can.  My current medication is rubbish, but I know from experience that some types of it can help you manage a day-to-day lifestyle, without becoming a normal entirely.  At the very least, medication can “take the edge off” a rotten and chronic feeling of, in my case hitherto, depression.  As regular readers will know, I am also intensely reliant on psychotherapy and cannot imagine not engaging in it at present.

The result, for me, of abandoning these treatments, regardless of how frustrated they may make me at times, is simply not one I wish to contemplate.  I find it difficult enough to cope as it is, and can’t imagine the darkness of the alternatives.  That would be really rather unmanageable, and all I want is manageable, thank you very much.

In slagging off this “Mad Pride” stuff, though, I am conscious that there is another element to it – a side that is not ashamed of being insane, a side that wishes to educate the public in open and direct terms about the realities of life with mental illness.  A side that is not just not ashamed of being mentally fucked, but actually proud of it.

I can see more merit in and feel more empathy with this.  The public do need more education about mental illness, as despite many shifts in attitudes in the 20th and 21st centuries, there is still an incredible amount of discrimination and ignorance surrounding mental health issues.  People do not realise that being a crackpot is the mental equivalent of having a chronic physical illness.  This has always annoyed me – I do get not understanding the problem because you haven’t experienced it, but I do not get these cunts that are not even willing to acknowledge that their awareness is skewed.  They label us as psychos or freaks (not that I haven’t done so, I suppose) and think we’re all a fucking danger to society and should be locked away.  We become an easy target for their abuse.

Or then there are the twats that are not as hostile as this, but through ignorance or fear or whatever it is, simply try to turn a blind eye to the entire problem.

But I digress.  The point is, the public do need educated on mental health problems, and whilst there is certainly a movement towards that from many organisations (Mind, Rethink, Time to Change etc), there is still a lot of work to be done.  The other point made is that the Mad Pride people are not ashamed of being mental – indeed, they are proud

Am I ashamed, am I proud or am I neither?  How do I feel about this idea?

I don’t think there is a short answer to this.  As it happens, I am not ashamed, or at least not consciously.  I didn’t choose this in the first place and regardless of what some new-age fuckwank twats may tell you, I can’t help it.  Before someone argues, “yeah, but you don’t want rid of it bitchface, do you?” I would contend that not wanting rid of it and not being able to help it are distinct and are certainly not mutually exclusive.  So, if it’s not something I can change, why would I be ashamed?  Additionally, why would I be ashamed of something so seminal to my actual person?  Furthermore, madness makes me think.  Thinking makes me question.  Questioning encourages intellect.

And yet, there must be part of me that is shamed by it, because if not why do I not broadcast it to people?  Most people in my real life have only rudimentary awareness of how doolally I am and, although I’ll discuss it in some ways if asked, I don’t go around doing so just for the issue for the sake of it.  This blog, aside from a few selected personnel, is anonymous.  Why would this be the case if I were not ashamed?  On the other hand, is it shame or just tact?

I do argue that I anonmyise this and feed only parts of the story to people I know as I wish to protect them.  When I read back through this blog, or when I reflect on past experiences, I don’t find them especially disturbing.  However, I know non-mentals do, or at least could.  It’s like protecting C; why would I wish to contaminate their minds, unless they specifically want me to do so?  Even then I am not that comfortable with it.  Even then they are not that comfortable with it.

But I’m not sure it’s just about that, really.  Perhaps if society cleared up its act regarding mental illness and discrimination was reduced, I would feel more in favour of complete public forthrightness about my ailments.  I don’t think it’s necessarily about me feeling shame per se, but I do recognise that I could be intensely stigmatised if I were more open.

So are Mad Pride the right people to help reduce this stigma?  I appreciate what they’re trying to do, but until there is a more general shift in societal attitudes (which would be better brought about by the NHS and the aforementioned voluntary organisations) I think that they will just be dismissed as nutjobs or psychos, in the convenient way that many nutjobs or psychos are normally dismissed.

For my part, I think I’m actually opposed to them as an entity.  Not because I am ashamed and not because I disagree with the provision of mental health education, but because the more noise they make about being proud to be mental, the more they actually alienate us from the rest of society.  Paradoxically, although factions of them seek to change attitudes, in my view the more attention they draw to actually being mental, the more they distance themselves (and, by proxy, other crackpots) from the rest of society.  Education needs to be more subtle than the methods they advocate, especially when some of their own elements feel that abandoning treatment is a sensible and desirable course of action.

Yet, to complicate matters further, although we should be accepted by mainstream society insofar as that is possible (obviously I draw the line at people like Ian Brady or Peter Sutcliffe, both sufferers of mental illnesses), part of me does feel that we shouldn’t be ashamed of the fact that we are so clearly different from others in whatever nebulous way that may be.  If almost all people from my admittedly very anecdotal survey agree that they wouldn’t switch off their mental health problems, then surely there must be something in them that feels being crazy is something of which we should not be ashamed, and indeed that has something to add to our lives as well as much to take away?

Thoughts?