Suicide Attempt Epic Fail

*** STANDARD TRIGGER WARNING: POSSIBLY TRIGGERING MATERIAL IS UPCOMING; I HEREBY ADVISE YOU AGAINST READING IT IF YOU FEEL THAT IT MAY SET YOU OFF…BUT I KNOW YOU’RE GOING TO READ IT ANYWAY, SO THAT’S A BIT POINTLESS, BUT I PROBABLY LIKE YOU BECAUSE I LIKE EVERYONE THAT I KNOW READS THIS DRIVEL, SO PLEASE DON’T HURT YOURSELF.  NOT BECAUSE OF INADEQUATE LITTLE ME ANYWAY.  IF YOU DO SO I WILL HAVE TO COME ROUND TO YOUR HOUSE AND SHOUT AT YOU AND/OR KILL KITTENS AND/OR CLUB BABY SEALS AND/OR SLEEP WITH RICK MAYALL.  NOW YOU WOULDN’T WANT THAT WOULD YOU, SO EITHER DON’T READ THIS SHIT OR A LEAST MAKE SURE YOU ARE NOT COMPLETELY MENTAL AT THE TIME OF DOING SO.  OK?  OK.  THNXBAI. ***

I’m sure that most of you are familiar with what I did on Friday night(well, technically, Saturday morning) given my bizarre running commentary on same on Twitter.  Of course, not everyone who reads this blog uses Twitter, but nevertheless, you can derive the basics from the title of this post.

It wasn’t a “cry for help” or some sort of silly borderline strop.  It was an absolutely pathetic attempt, I will admit that, but it was a nonetheless serious attempt.  I genuinely wanted to die.  I did.  No bullshit, straight up – death, not attention, was what I sought.

Nothing especially bad had happened on Friday – I was just miserable for most of the day.  I met A for dinner and a few drinks, which was pleasant actually, and when we got home, we listened to some music and were generally rather contented.  But I kept thinking how much easier things would be if I wasn’t in existence.  Not just for me – although I admit that was a major motivating factor – but for everyone.  I add nothing to anyone’s life.  A million people could tell me otherwise, but I’d never believe them.  I am a worthless, useless slut of sheer, unadulterated and fetid disgustingness.  Or at least that’s what I thought then.

So when A went to bed, circa 1.15am, I laid into myself with the scalpel.  Few parts of my body are unaffected – self-harm is strongly in evidence on ankles, arms, abdomen (there words there, just slashes elsewhere), elbows – the works really.  As I was doing it, I thought that I might as well go one step further and slit my wrists, the hopeful and intended result being my bleeding to death.

Now, people could say, “but a serious suicide attempt requires planning, and this was an impulsive act.”  I do accept that, and can see why it looks like nothing more than a pathetic gesture.  All I can say to convince people otherwise is that it felt absolutely and completely genuine at the time.  I wanted to die.  I really did.  I always remember (or rather don’t) the nothing that I experienced under general anaesthesia when I had an operation a while back.  I longed so fervently for that nothing again – and for it to be a permanent state.

So, I took a few minutes to write a note to my mother and A, with acknowledgements of a few friends, then went in search of an analgesic spray that I keep for sprains and the like.  An attempted suicide is not like self-harm; it’s not performed in the pursuit of pain.  No, pain was not a commodity that I lacked, so I sought to minimise more of it.

I’ve read this on the suicide newsgroups, but I was nevertheless surprised (or at least I am retrospectively) by how calm and contented I felt having made the decision to kill myself.  It was reassuring and comforting to know that I would not have to continue with this sorry excuse for a life, that there would soon be nothing.  Nothing was all I wanted.

I cut my left wrist first.  I tried to cut deep, but my skin was ungraciously unco-operative, refusing to slit to any meaningful degree.  This irritated me considerably, but I let it pass and decided to return to it.  So off I moved to my right wrist, which curiously proved considerably easier.  I’m generally right handed, so wielding a scalpel with my left hand would not be the most obviously effective way to garner a major life-threatening wound.  But initially, I thought I’d spotted success.

I was captivated by the blood.  It was the most blood I have ever seen from a deliberate act of self-harm.  Dark, and think, and oozing, and beautiful.  It completely mesmerised me, and I could almost feel my life ebbing away with it.  That was an eminent comfort to me, and I felt moved and calmed, yet slightly euphoric.  God, what a beautiful and welcoming thing death seemed to be!

But wait.  The blood was oozing, not spurting.  That meant that I had failed to sever a major artery, and rationality came flooding back: if one is going to off themselves by cutting, they really should cut vertically on their arms, not horizontally as I had done.  Vein cuts generally won’t lead to a successful suicide, and indeed artery ones don’t always either. Plus such wounds can lead to nerve damage in one’s hands if they fail to bring about death.  This was the shittest suicide attempt in the world!

I was filled with self-disgust, but even more than that, irri-fucking-tation.  Not anger or fury, but irritation.  I was irritated that my peaceful comfort in an imminent death had been shattered.  For fuck’s sake, I can’t even kill myself with any fucking gusto!

I sought advice on Twitter (that well-known bastion of medical knowledge), still watching the blood ooze heavily from my wrist.  The consensus was that it wouldn’t off me, but that I should go to Accident and Emergency nevertheless and get the thing stitched.

I considered this.  The thing wasn’t going to kill me, self-evidently, but it may have led to nerve damage.  If I was, however unfortunately, going to remain alive, then I might as well do so with a functioning right hand.  I rang a taxi to take me to the hospital, which is less than five minutes’ drive away.

Whilst waiting for it, I cleaned both wounds up a bit (although superficial, the left one was bleeding satisfactorily) and bandaged the right one as best I could.  The bleeding was still very heavy though, and before the taxi even arrived, it needed changed.

I called up the stairs to A to tell him that I had been advised to go to Casualty.  He got up and told me that he was coming with me, a suggestion against which I protested, though admittedly rather mildly.

I don’t remember the taxi trip at all, and have only the vaguest recollection of checking in at the A and E reception.  I remember telling the woman that my suicide attempt was one of the most pathetic in history, and being surprised by how much data she was able to access on me from her computer (1984 is with us, readers).  I also recall that the waiting time was estimated at seven hours, but for some reason I allowed myself to believe that it would never come to that.  How absolutely and completely wrong this assumption proved to be.

To be fair to them, I was very quickly seen by a triage nurse, who opined that the slit on my right wrist probably needed stitches.  She put steri-strips on it to close it as much as possible until such times as I was seen by a doctor.  She was a young girl – I’d guess younger than I am – and was remarkably sympathetic.  I was bawling my eyes out like a bloody baby by this stage, but this girl did not try and rush me, nor patronise nor judge me.  She simply listened and tried her best to be supportive.  Alas, though, eventually I had to go back to the waiting room.

And so it began.  The mind-numbing, seemingly endless, hideously interminable wait.  It is, I imagine, exactly what the final wait on death row is like – though at least if you’re a suicidal, schizo bitch you can expect a satisfactory outcome at the end of that particular interim period.  I had no idea what to expect at the end of this one.

Wait.  Wait.  Wait.

Heat.  Heat.  Heat.

Atrophying mind.  Atrophying mind.  Atrophying mind.

If swear to God that if one wasn’t suicidal to begin with, it was enough to make them so.  I can’t describe why it was so bad, but it was.  It really was.  Thank God for Twitter (on which I will remark later) on my mobile, though of course the bloody thing’s battery packed in on me eventually, leaving me once more to the doom and nothingness that was Casualty.  Well, I know earlier I was extolling the virtues of nothingness, but that particular brand of nothingness has the decency to lack consciousness.  The A and E version does not demonstrate such wonder.

After the seven hour mark had passed, I went back to the desk and asked was I going to get seen.  By this point it was after 9am.  The woman consulted with a doctor and, interestingly, he almost immediately proceeded to take me through the double doors of doom.  I’ve said it before, but I’ve wondered are there gas chambers through there.  I felt like I was walking the plank.

I was led to a room that, aside from the lack of bars, did a wonderfully accurate impersonation of a prison cell.  It, like the waiting room, was painted (if you could call it that) in one of those bland non-colours that are designed to half-sedate people into compliance.  Just like they have in customs halls at airports.  I was utterly exhausted, mentally and physically, yet my agitation just increased more on arrival in this room.  I found myself barely able to even speak to the doctor, though he seemed like an amicable enough man.

Amicable…but competent?  I’m not sure.  He asked a few questions then went to call the liaison team from the bin, without examining my wrist.  I called him back and asked him did it not require stitches.  He looked at it, in a horribly cursory sort of way (without even removing the steri-strips), then declared that that with which it was already dressed was “quite adequate”.

Again, I’m not sure.  The cut was pretty deep and the resulting blood loss, whilst not life-threatening, had been relatively considerable.  It wasn’t as deep as the (accidental) cut to my finger a few months ago, but it wasn’t that far off it.  Lovely GP told me that I should have had that injury stitched, so I was surprised at this doctor’s belief that this one didn’t such treatment.  I was especially surprised that he didn’t remove the steri-strips to check.

Surprised, yes, but at the time I was so indescribably fed up and so unbearably consumed by exhaustion that I didn’t care.  I just wanted to go home (so any attempt to admit me to the bin would not have gone down well, not that I’m sure I’d have had the energy to fight the bastards).  I said so to the doctor, who said that he wanted the psychiatric liaison woman to see me.  I asked how soon that was anticipated.

“Oh, she’ll be over shortly,” he said nonchalantly but apparently genuinely.  Based on that premise, I agreed to stay and meet the woman in question.  I went to get A and brought him back to the cell, where at least he was able to sit in a slightly more comfortable chair.  I used much of the time between the departure of the doctor and the arrival of the mental woman to apologise to A.  I was horrified that I had put him through such trauma.  From my own perspective, I didn’t – and frankly don’t – give a toss about my suicide attempt, but I absolutely abhor myself for putting him through it.  I kept telling him that his life was better before he met me, which as far as I can tell it indubitably was.  He denied it, claiming that he had been lonely prior to the crossing of our paths.  But surely loneliness is preferable to having to tolerate a borderline freak with a scalpel fetish on a daily basis?

There was plenty of time for such apologies.  Plenty indeed.  The doctor left my cell about 9.15am, and the woman from psychiatry finally arrived just before 1pm, after three enquiries from A to staff about her whereabouts.  If anything this waiting was even worse than the seven hour one of earlier; perhaps it was because we were so completely brain-dead exhausted by then, or perhaps it was simply because the ‘examining’ physician had strongly suggested that the wait for this woman would be pretty short.  It must be that, in A and E, anything under three years is short.  Absolute fucking shit.

Anyway, eventually she did arrive, just as I had finally persuaded A to leave.  I figured there was no point in both of us losing even more of our wills to live (not that I had any in the first place, but you know what I mean), and in any case the poor cats needed fed.  So as I went to a “more private” room with the woman, off A went.

She was a nice woman, but perhaps unsurprisingly was about as useful as a rolled-up election manifesto being shoved up my arse.  We discussed what has stressed me of late (Christmas, C’s dickery, just general mentalism), self-harm in general, the history of my mentalism, my physical health, my weight (“it’s not uncommon in people who’ve been sexually abused to deliberately but unconsciously become overweight, so as they make themselves – in their eyes – less attractive to potential abusers”, apparently) and current eating habits (don’t eat – binge – throw up), and other related wank that I don’t really remember.  She did keep asking if I still wanted to die, and I kept being very careful with my response.  On the one hand, I didn’t want to lie to this woman who was being understanding and down-to-Earth with me, but on the other I didn’t want to say ‘yes’, and find myself sectioned.  I doubt that I would have been, given the low level of resources that this Trust seems to have devoted to mental health difficulties (this isn’t my usual Trust, for the record, as this all took place at A’s house and my normal Trust is based on my address at my mother’s house), but it was always a horrible possibility.  So I just said that I didn’t know.

I told her about C’s intention to cut my psychotherapy short and about VCB constantly fucking me about.  I also told her that I now have a new VCB, a woman who I am to meet for the first time on Wednesday.  The liaison woman reckoned she knows NewVCB, and says if it is indeed the same woman that she is “lovely – really bubbly and friendly.”  That’s better than her predecessor I agree, but ‘bubbly’?  How does a mental who’s just tried to catch the bus deal with someone chirping about and loving life?  Fuck.

The long and the short of it is that she is going to ring LGP, NewVCB and, crucially for me, C, tomorrow morning to report on Friday’s occurrences.  I say ‘crucially’ regarding C as I profoundly do not want him to know about this.  A and A’s best mate W (who A was keeping in touch with during this whole episode via text message) both place the blame for my suicide attempt solely at C’s door.  Naturally I have been trying to defend C.  I have my own psychological agency; he is not responsible for my actions.  A agrees, but still strongly believes that what he feels is C’s ineptitude has at least “precipitated” this.  I don’t know what I think.  I just don’t know how I am going to face the man after this.  I don’t see why I should be so mortified – after all, A, W, all my Twitter friends and now all my blog readers have been party to the most minor of details in relation to this, and C will know a mere few (unless I confide further in him, which as of this writing does not seem likely).  I suppose that I am worried that he too will think that I did what I did solely because of him, and I don’t want him thinking (knowing?) that he has that level of power over me.

Anyway, the woman told me that when I got home I was to give the scalpel and its associated blades to A.  I protested most vehemently against this.

“If I want to kill myself, I’ll find a way,” I said.  “Removing the scalpel will not prevent that, but it will prevent the only real outlet I have for calming my mentalism when it’s at its worst; non-suicidal self-harm.”

She said, “have you ever been referred to a self-harm team?”

I responded in the negative, and she said that she would, therefore, try and refer me to one.  It is difficult because I officially live with my mother, and therefore in a different Trust area – my Trust, surprise surprise, doesn’t have a self-harm team (one thing I ranted about in the advocacy letter, at C’s suggestion).  Nevertheless, she said, she will try.  So I suppose that was one positive to come out of the whole awful experience.  As I said to her, I actually don’t want to stop self-harming as things presently stand; it is the only way to cope sometimes.  What I do want, though, is to want to want to stop it.  I don’t put much faith in these self-harm team people really, but it is at least an avenue to explore.

She once again asked if I had any thoughts of going home and trying again to kill myself, and once again I made some sort of ambiguous noise.  However, she took this as a ‘yes’, and to that end took me back to the doctors’ station to seek my discharge, which was instantly given without any further examination or questioning.  I left, and walked home alone.  I had been there 12 hours, and not a thing of any use – save for the possible self-harm team referral – had occurred.

When I got home I found evidence of what happened all over the living room floor.  Mercifully, there were no blood stains on the carpet, but there were maybe eight tissues that were absolutely saturated.  Blades lay scattered everywhere, though the scalpel itself was curiously absent and has remained elusive (A swears he didn’t find it).  I tidied the place up, grateful that A had been seemingly oblivious to it all.  He had had enough trauma.

I found him in bed listening to the radio.  I crawled in beside him and begged for his forgiveness, and I am very lucky to be able to report that it was granted, on the proviso that I don’t do this again.  I promised I wouldn’t, though A wonders if that is a promise that can be kept given how strong the compulsion to die can be at times.

All I can say is that I will try my best.  I really will try my best.  To look at it from a cynical perspective, I really don’t want to have to go through 12 hours of unmitigated hospital shite like that again.  The inadequacy and comical inefficiency of the NHS never ceases to amaze me.  I mean, OK – had there been some big emergency in, I could have understood the waiting there like complete numpties for 28 years – but there wasn’t.  There were a handful of other minor injuries, so it was just complete and utter shit.

How do I feel now, about 30 hours after getting home?  I feel remarkably not-too-shit, though there seems to be a permanent, cynical sneer across my face (though that was quite possibly there long before Friday night).  I still think the world is a shithole and that my life is a mess, but I am simultaneously touched by the generosity of some people, both out there in the ether and here, in ‘real life’.  See here and here for just some examples of individuals that prove that Twitter is very, very far from the facile, meaningless shite that many in the media present it as.  I fully believe that were it not for Twitter, I may well have successfully killed myself in the last nine months – not on Friday probably, admittedly, but at some juncture.  It is the best support group that I can imagine.

W and of course, in a beyond-words sort of way, A, also prove that maybe, in the midst of all the darkness, there are some people who make this existence less shit.  I am grateful that people care.  I hate my life, very profoundly do I hate it, but in terms of having people to give a shit, I am glad to declare myself a fortunate individual.

Vulnerability and Self-Disgust with C – Week 36

Thursday was the first day back to therapy after C’s Christmas break.  It was a successful session in a long-term sort of way, but was nevertheless very traumatic for me, tackling as it did a lot of hurt and vulnerabilities that I don’t want to face nor admit to.  There was nothing specific that was so stressful about it, but as I said to C towards the end, I felt very “battered and bruised”.

I was glad to see C again, having missed him and craved his protection over the three weeks since I last saw him.  However, he has committed a cardinal sin.  He has grown a beard.  Not like the goatee, Derren Brown-esque beard he had when we first met, but a full-on, proper beard.  I’ve nothing especially against beards, but honestly – he looks like something out of a children’s illustrated Bible.  When he came to the waiting room to get me, I was aghast to be greeted by Jesus (or Judas if you prefer, he could be either).  It took me a quite a while to stop fixating on this newly arrived hirsute feature.

As has been the case since C has been back in VCB’s stomping ground (as there is building work going on in his office), we opened by taking a few moments to compose ourselves.  The waiting room in the place is usually full of people, unlike that for C’s proper office which is always empty.  The people unsettle me, and C has realised now that he has to give me a few minutes for this anthropophobic anxiety to abate somewhat.

Of course, I had C anxiety as well.  I always feel nervous before I see him, and it was especially strong on Thursday given that I had not seen him for three weeks.  To that end, initially I was stubbornly refusing to speak in anything other than one word answers to questions.

Eventually, he asked me how Christmas had been.

“I’m not going to discuss that,” I brattishly declared.  I knew, of course, that he would follow that up with a question as to why I was not going to discuss that, so before he got the chance to do so, I changed the subject and told him about the latest troubles with the health service.

The first thing was the whole bullshit about the GP talking down to me, just after I’d last seen C.  I told him all about it, going so far as to re-enact some of the mannerisms that Dr Arsehole had employed during his irritable rant towards me.  This was before the reply to my complaint had arrived.

“How dare someone earning as much as a GP does behave in that fashion?” I raged.  “How dare the jumped-up twat speak to me like that?”

“How were you in the room with him?” asked C.

“Pathetic,” I admitted.  “I just sat there and took it.  I did try to argue with him at one point, but he just kept on and on, and I backed down.  As I was leaving, I even thanked him!  A reckons I need to discuss my remarkable ability to be so horribly passive with you.”

The second NHS issue, which I’ve only mentioned in passing here, is that apparently VCB is no longer my consultant psychiatrist.  When I last saw her in November, she said she’d see me again in a month, which she didn’t (surprise surprise).  Then, when I finally did get a letter inviting me for an appointment with Psychiatry, it merely said that I had an appointment on 20 January with Dr M, not VCB.  It made no reference as to the change of individual whatsoever.

C said, “as far as I know there’s been a shake-up in Psychiatry in terms of geographical location.  They’ve changed the boundaries that each consultant operates in.  Is that what happened?”

“No one told me anything, so I wouldn’t know,” I spat, disgusted.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” I continued, “I’m not VCB’s biggest fan.  But at least I had some sort of relationship with her – I knew her, and she was at least in some ways familiar with my case, so this is incredibly frustrating.  It strikes me that Psychiatry is possibly the worst branch of medicine in which such nonchalance and disruption should be in evidence, what with issues of trust and attachment being so much a part of certain illnesses.

“But what do I know,” I added bitterly.  “I’m just the mental that sits opposite you people.”

“Is that how you see yourself?” C jumped in.

The truthful answer to this is that I don’t know.  The comment had been intended as a slight on the Psychiatric “service” and indeed on mental health services on the NHS in general, but of course I exist in a perpetual state of self-loathing and self-disgust, whether im- or explicit, so yes, it probably is – to some extent – how I see myself.

I told him so, adding that I have no right to be mental because what has happened to me is so considerably less serious than that to which many others have been subjected.  This came up a couple of times in the session – basically I feel guilty for being a mental when other people who’ve endured worse aren’t or, if they are, then they have more right to be than I.

C mulled it over for a minute or two, then said, “one thing about you is that you’re defined by contradictions.  You mentioned earlier about being passive – there is that side, yet there’s another side that can be extremely assertive in the right circumstances.  It’s the same with your belief that you are somehow not entitled to be a mentalist [interesting use of that word, I thought].  You hate yourself for being this way, you think you have no right – yet you will fight to the death to get the treatment to which you feel you are entitled.”

“It’s hardly rocket science, though,” I responded.  “In some ways, whether or not I’m entitled to be mad is irrelevant; the fact is, I am.  Regardless of the reasons for that, I should be entitled to treatment, under the foundations on which this health service was based.  If I kicked that wall over there and broke my toe, the stupid manner in which I broke my toe would be irrelvant to those treating me; I would still be entitled to their medical attention.  I don’t see why it should be different for one’s mental health.”

“It shouldn’t,” he agreed.

Oh really?  OK then, why are you cutting short my fucking therapy?  Not that I brought up that issue specifically, because I didn’t want to engage in the pointless navel-gazing that had been the previous session.  If our time is limited, it must be used effectively.

Anyhow, I don’t remember how he phrased it, but basically he said that a person’s history and indeed how they respond to it is completely relative.  He said that we can only develop from our own experiences and, essentially, that I really shouldn’t beat myself up for being mental.  Later on in the session, he almost went so far as to say that I have every right to be, but I’ll come to that later.

Of course, I can rationally accept a lot of this, and indeed I know that certain mental illnesses with which I have been diagnosed are thought to exist in individuals who are biologically predisposed to having them, the symptoms manifesting after some sort of psychosocial trigger.  So of course I am not to be blamed for being mental…says Rational Me.  In-Control-Irrational-and-Ironically-Mental Me does not agree.

We also discussed how the anger I feel is sometimes misplaced.  I contend absolutely that my anger towards the health service is completely just, so that’s not one such example, but I will fly into a genuinely murderous rage at either myself or, say, my mother (particularly my mother) for something ridiculously stupid like dropping a pen – yet I am not angry at my uncle.  I am angry at my father, but that miserable sod had the audacity to die, so I’m hardly likely to be able to direct that towards him.

Of course, mention of my uncle in the context of anger was A Very Bad Move.  C said, “so, are you going to tell me what happened at Christmas?”

I glared at him.  “Did I not already say that I don’t want to talk about that?” I sneered, eventually.

“You did, yes.”  He looked at me enigmatically.

Oh, but you can read my mind, can’t you C?  Saying that I didn’t want to talk about it is some sort of conspiratorial Newspeak for, “I want to discuss that with you in intimate and excruciating detail”, isn’t it?!

“You don’t want to tell me about your Christmas, do you?  No – you don’t.  So why should I tell you about mine?” I challenged.

It was meant mainly as a sarcastic and rhetorical question, but he answered anyway.  “If we met in other circumstances, that’s probably exactly the conversation we’d be having,” he mused.  “But I know that you know that this circumstance has to be one-sided.”

As it happens, I do know, thanks very much – and I don’t like it and it isn’t fair.  And yet it protects me from the probable sheer ordinariness of this man that I so pathetically look up to.  But that’s another matter.  I told him, truthfully, that if we met socially, I would still not be telling him the specifics of what happened at Christmas.

Actually, if I’m 100% honest, of course I wanted to discuss it with him (in his capacity as my psychotherapist) – aspects of it anyway.  I was horribly mortified (as well as disturbed) by what ‘They’ wanted me to do on Christmas Night, and didn’t especially want to outline that in specific terms, but I did want to tell him of the fear and anguish that took me to that point.  Yet I felt absolutely unable to give myself permission to do so.

We sat in silence for a bit.  I knew he would break me sooner or later, but I decided to fight him anyway.  I was thinking about the psychoses, which led me to question how I had described them here on WordPress.  In doing so, I was reminded that I won an award for this blog on New Year’s Day from the fabulous Mental Nurse blog.

“My blog won an award,” I randomly blurted out at him, with thinly-disguised pride.

C seemed quite excited by this news and congratulated me, then paused.  “I really want to ask you more about this,” he began, “But I’m wondering if we shouldn’t leave it until later – I don’t want to avoid the issue of Christmas.”

I wanted to avoid the issue of Christmas.  It’s my fucking therapy, can’t I talk about what I like?

But I gave up the fight, and gave the man what he wanted.  “There were issues with the voices,” I admitted finally, tapping my head (as if he didn’t know what voices I damn well meant).

“OK,” he started.  “What sort of ‘issues’?”

“No, no, no, we’re not going down that road.  It’s enough that you know that the day was stressful and I went doolally in the evening, though mercifully not in front of the 3,820,691 people with whom I was forced to spend the whole sorry day.”

“But how could it not have been traumatic?” C asked.  “I really fail to see how it could not have been, what with you having to see and interact with your uncle.”

“You’ve built it to be all about him,” I replied.  “It’s not – not entirely.  To say my family is a freakshow is to insult freakshows.  I just cannot put into words how fucked up and weird they all are, and how much I have nothing in common with them.”

“I remember you saying before that their ‘weirdness’ was difficult to convey, but I do have some sense of that.”

“They’re worse in a collective,” I continued.  “As individuals – well, I can’t pretend I’m their biggest fans, but they’re more tolerable.  But their group dynamic is seriously – epically [not that that’s a word] – bizarre.”

Moving away from this slightly, C went back to the voices.  I told him that I had already said I was not going into that and requested that he left it be.

“I’m not really so concerned about what they actually said,” he told me.  “At present I’m more interested in why you don’t want to tell me about it.”

I should have been expecting such a question, but I hadn’t been.  I thought about it for a moment.

“I’m very aware that we’re sitting in Psychiatric Outpatients and that the bin’s over there,” I said, leaving him to infer the rest.  “I can’t get away quickly here.  At least in your normal office I have time to flee before you all catch me.”

I got the usual spiel of crap about how he would only call a psychiatrist or my GP if I was at a serious and imminent risk of harming myself.  Or others, he added, almost as an afterthought.  I laughed bitterly.

I don’t remember the exact discussion that followed, but he seemed to have established that on Christmas Night it was ‘others’ that ‘They’ were trying to get me to hurt.  He never said it straight out, and I never confirmed it, but there seemed to be a shared, implicit understanding that this was what had occurred.  He sought to reassure me in as strong terms as he’s allowed to that he would not call anyone to have me sectioned unless he thought that such harm was absolutely imminent.

“I don’t believe you,” I told him.

Ouch.  I think that one cut him a little (no pun intended, not that I’ve been too bad vis-a-vis self-harm of late).  He asked why I doubted him.

In part, it is because I feel that some of the trust has been broken between us, owing to the whole uncertainty over the continuation of treatment – though in fairness, he was good in this session and I feel it might have been built up a little again.  Other reasons are just how terrible the episode was – I mean, I was told to kill a fucking not-quite-two year old, how much worse does it get? – and the fact that I’m preposterously paranoid.  Probably the simplest reason is that I often genuinely feel that I should be fucking sectioned, though I really, really don’t want to be.

In any case, I do believe that C wouldn’t section me unless he felt it absolutely imperative, yet I don’t believe it at the same time.  I believe two absolutely polar opposite things simultaneously – not an unknown state for me.  I told him so, and he seemed to understand that.

For some reason, presumably relating to all the discussion about Paedo and the multitudinous weirdness of the McF dynasty, C and I ended up discussing how my mother didn’t believe me about the sexual abuse, and about how she seems to go out of her way sometimes to put me down, or to compare me (negatively) to others (particularly SL, who she seems to fucking idolise).

C said, “it seems to me that your mother has been severely traumatised by her relationship with your father.”  Now, I genuinely don’t recall what he said next, but I think it was something along the lines that she therefore seeks solace in the McFs and, despite what she may say, finds it hard to believe that they are capable of fault – even when it’s rape of her daughter.  I don’t want to put words in C’s mouth, though, so don’t take that as gospel.  Of course, whilst I cannot disagree with the aforesaid conjecture, my own take on things is that she will always remember that I am my father’s daughter (she will even say it from time to time when she wants to hurt me).  In any case, I am certainly not the daughter that she would have wanted.

I agree with C that she is completely traumatised (not that she’d admit it herself), but was surprised by him coming out and telling me that was his view in such forthright terms.  In any event, this tangent didn’t especially add much to the session, except to exacerbate the rawness of the hurt I was already feeling.

So that was his next tactic – the perennial, “how are you feeling?”

I couldn’t verbalise it at first.  I just felt so something, so indefinably sad and upset and low.  He quietly encouraged me to try harder to express it more exactly.

Eventually, through gritted teeth, I seethed, “I feel hurt and sorry for myself and vulnerable, are you happy now?”

Unfortunately he thought this comment was sarcastic, intended as a snide take on what he wanted to hear.  Admittedly, the manner in which I had said it could easily have been taken that way, though it was meant to have come across as a dramatic, “there!  I’m finally admitting the truth!  I’m deflated but this is progress, isn’t that fantabulous?” kind of gesture (fail!).  I apologised, and advised him that the content of my comment was serious.

Yes, I admitted to being vulnerable.  What I didn’t admit, of course, is that I want C to protect me from all that which makes me vulnerable.  I want him to put his arms around me, stroke my hair, tell me in his gentle voice I will be OK, and protect me from all the bad that exists in the world.  Of course I didn’t tell him that, but admitting to this hideous vulnerability that I’ve been repressing for I don’t-know-how-long was a start.

“Unwillingness to feel or express feeling of these things is very common in people who’ve been brought up in abusive and traumatic backgrounds,” he told he, tilting his head to gauge my reaction.

“‘Abused’,” I repeated wistfully, looking away.  The branches of the trees outside were blowing back and forth in the wind, stripped bare of their leaves.  I felt as emotionally naked in front of C as they looked.

“You don’t think you’ve been abused?” he checked, apparently confused.

“No,” I replied quietly.

“You were sexually abused by your uncle!” C said, determinedly.

“And I responded to that and other things by dissociating and emotionally numbing myself.  Fat lot of good it’s done me.”

“It probably did at the time, though.  It was a means of self-preservation during those times.”

There was a pause, then I randomly spat out, “I disgust myself.  My vulnerability disgusts me.  I disgust me.  Fucking schizo bitch!”

“You’re one of the most self-critical people I’ve ever known,” C told me, taking a very slight tone of authority.  “My worry is that this is a major stumbling block.  I really think if we can develop some self-compassion in you, it will help a lot.”

“You said a moment ago that dissociation etc was a means of self-preservation.  It ties in with the psychology discussed in a book I’ve been reading.  It is, shock horror, a self-help book, one designed to teach you strategies to soothe yourself when you go mental.”

C was delighted by this.  He asked me if it was any good, my response being that a lot of it (as with any such text) was “wank”, but that despite this, there were some good, and vaguely intelligently written, parts to it.

The thing is, I’m not always as critical of myself as I seem to be in psychotherapy.  I can only surmise that that is when the truth really comes out.  The raw, visceral nature of everything that’s gone or is wrong with my life is so palpable and explicit in those 50 minutes, and the true depth of my self-hate is exposed.  Eugh.

He went on to say that it was not desirable to rid me of my “sarcasm and [my] wit” (he said I was witty!!!  Smiley me!), but that he thought aspects of that fed into my lack of self-compassion, and that we needed to strike a balance.

“And I’m encouraged by the fact that you’re trying,” he concluded.

I left feeling psychologically battered and bruised, even so much as allowing myself a tear as I drove home (how self-compassionate), but I was also quietly encouraged and reassured.

Victories and Failures: Updates on *Those* Letters

Let’s deal with these chronolgically and, coincidentally, in order of bad to good.

FAIL

On 17 December, I wrote to two mental health advocacy groups (Mindwise and the Northern Ireland Association for Mental Health) regarding the whole ‘you can only have 24 more sessions’ bullshit with C.  Both have now responded, and both have represented something of an epic fail.

Mindwise simply told me to discuss the matter with my consultant psychiatrist, as “they would be the ones making the decision”.  Well, I will, when I see my (new!) consultant on 20 January (over a month late, might I add).  However, as regular readers will know, Psychiatry have been one of the problems I’ve been having with the NHS during this most recent breakdown (though to be fair, this was not outlined in the letter).

Talk about passing the fucking buck.  It was simply a case of pushing responsibility onto someone else, and not wanting to tackle my case themselves.  Is it because I is borderline?  Everyone hates a borderline, innit.

Should the meeting with the psychiatrist not yield results, though, I am going to write pompously back to these tossers and demand their assistance.  Either that or the media will be learning of their incompetence and unwillingness to help a mentally ill individual, which is exactly what they exist for.

I heard from NIAMH yesterday.  Apparently, their advocacy service does not operate in my Trust area.

Forgive me, but is it not the NORTHERN FUCKING IRELAND Association for Mental Health?!  At no point does the name of the charity remotely infer that it is not operational across the entire country.  How, then, can they not operate in my Trust area?  Is it because I is borderline?  Everyone hates a borderline, innit.

In fairness, at least they did suggest some sort of action I could take.  They said I should try the Trust’s Patient Council service, who apparently deal with matters like this.

I will heed their advice, especially given that a Twitter friend had some results via the Patient Council in his area, but not until I have heard back from the Trust, who were copied in on the original letter.

POSSIBLE WIN

As you know, the advocacy letter was copied to the Chief Executive of the Trust.  Not wanting to be arsed himself, the individual in question passed my letter to the Director of Mental Health services.

This bloke wrote back to me a few weeks ago, telling me that he had requested more information and that he would be in touch once he had received same.  I have not heard more from him yet, but am hopeful that the mere act of kicking up a fuss like this and threatening to contact the politicians and the media might be enough to get some action from him.

I won’t hold my breath, of course, but I will cross my fingers.

WIN

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Asshole GP has backed down!

Apparently, Dr Bellend/Twatbag/Arsehole/whatever-else-I-called-him “would like to apologise” and accepts that his attitude fell short of “desirable [surely ‘necessary’?] professional standards”.  Ha!  Muah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

The letter went so far as to offer me the opportunity to meet the Practice Manager and Dr Knobjockey to further discuss the matter.  I will not accept the invitation, but I suppose it was good of them to offer it.

As I have generally been well supported by the practice (recently, at least), I won’t be a dick over this.  I’ll write back and accept Dr Fuckwit’s apology, and just hope that I won’t have to see him again.

MEH

And that, folks, is the latest news on that front.  I feel smugly satisfied about the GP letter result, but of course am rather disappointed that the advocacy charities are not actually doing anything that remotely resembles advocacy.  But we shall see how this continues to play out over the next few weeks.

Flogging a Dead Horse with C – Week 35

Christmas and the arrival of 2010 have seen some disruption to your usual service from SI. It seemed impossible to get a chance to write on the latest C session, given as these post seem to be the most ridiculously detailed.

This post shouldn’t be overly detailed, as a lot of it was repetitive bullshit regarding the annoyances of the previous week. Nevertheless, here we go.

Upon leaving C’s company the previous week, we had agreed that we would use week 35, the last week before a break of three weeks owing to Christmas, as a session to discuss how I would manage the so-called festive season.  In reality, that bit ended up taking approximately five minutes at the end, and although it was ever so slightly more helpful than some of the nonsense he’s come off with at other breaks (“breathe!”), it was still not entirely helpful.  But then again, he’s not my guardian, is he?  Much as I would like it that way.

I say we were flogging a dead horse because the majority of the discussion centred around the same crap we had discussed over the previous week (leave a comment or get in touch if you need the password) and the week before that, ie. my anger and distress about his decision to cut short my treatment, and my general disgust about the NHS’s abject failure to adequately treat me since I first sought help for my mental health problems.  I do understand that in some ways maybe C sees exploring my reactions to this as a form of projection or transference, and maybe in some ways it is: perhaps I feel so rejected and aggrieved because that’s how I was meant to feel about my father, uncle, ex, etc etc.

However, it endlessly frustrates me that I cannot just simply be angry because I have been so horribly fucked about by the health service.  Again, in this session, C reiterated that the 24 week limit (starting from tomorrow) was his decision; he said he was “not a robot” controlled by the NHS.

It completely contradicts all the stuff he says about my right to be annoyed and about how BPD should really be treated, and we went round and round in circles on how I could not reconcile his two contrasting views, and about how he either couldn’t or wouldn’t explain it properly.

I also, having decided as a result of the preceding week that he hated me, went to find out whether or not this was indeed the case.

I said, “if I ask you a question, will you promise not to answer with a question?”

He shifted uncomfortably, then admitted that he was unsure as to whether or not this was achievable.

I asked him anyway, on the proviso that if I thought he was “blagging” his way through his answer I would pull him up on it.

He did come off with the form bullshit such as, “why is it important for you to know that?” and whatnot, but I was pleased when he finally admitted that he too had found the preceding week “frustrating”.  So he is a human after all!

He said that I had been “very angry” with him, which I thought was unfair.  I told him that I genuinely hadn’t been angry with him, merely the system, until he confessed to having been the one that decided on the time limit.

“But you were angry with me then,” he pointed out.

“Yes,” I said.  “You had seemed so supportive of me prior to that; you agreed that my situation was wholly unfair.  Then you completely contradicted that by admitting to this arbitrary limit crap.”

And so back we went to flagellating that deceased equine.  More questioning demands from me, more bullet-dodging from him, no progress from either of us.

He had asked me in week 34 to seriously consider whether or not to continue with therapy, as I “had” to agree to the time limit as part of the contract (which strikes me as being quite unreasonable, as contracts are meant to be negotiated rather than forced in this type of setting).  Apparently if I don’t accept the limit, I cannot continue treatment.

“On that note,” I told him, “I am prepared to accept it, but only if you accept – because this works both ways – that I am going to fight it.”

He asked what I meant by ‘fighting’ it, prompting me to withdraw a copy of the letter to the advocacy groups out of my pocket.

“It’s only fair that you read that, given that you’re going to be involved,” I told him, handing the document over.  He took it and began reading.

I sat there and watched him reading it for a minute or two, then stood up and walked to the window, knowing perfectly well that he would almost certainly comment on this, as he had done two weeks previously.  Indeed, he didn’t disappoint.

“I’m wondering why you got up, SI…” he pondered, as he continued reading the letter.

“It’s not reflective of anything,” I spat cynically.  “I’m not denying my hurt or failing to face up to my problems.  I’m simply looking out the window whilst you are occupied with reading that.  Am I not allowed to get up, C?”

He shrugged and muttered something along the lines of that I was, in fact, allowed to get up, then continued reading in silence.

He eventually looked up and said, encouragingly, “it’s a good letter.  Who all are you going to send it to?”

I told him about the advocacy groups, Mindwise and the NI Association for Mental Health.

I was astonished – and delighted – when he then proceeded to actively encourage me to also send it to both the Chief Executive of my Trust, and the head of the mental health directorate of same.  In the end, he forgot to give me the person’s name, but as it turns out it’s been passed to him anyway (more details on how the letter has progressed in a future post).

C said, “you’ve also made reference there to people I think are in England – perhaps it would also be worth adding information about provision for personality disorders in other Northern Ireland Trusts.”

I asked him what such provision existed, knowing that people with the most serious PDs are in fact sent to specialist units in England as there are no facilities to treat them here at all.

C said a self-harm team exists in one of the other Trusts here.  “Although not everyone who self-harms has BPD, and not everyone with BPD self-harms, they would probably see a disproportionately high rate of people with your diagnosis,” he said.  “No such team exists in this Trust at the minute.  There’s discussion ongoing about making the existing team a regional, cross-Trust one, but it hasn’t yet come to anything.”

He talked on for a few minutes about plans our Trust has for action on personality disorders, and how they don’t seem to much be coming to fruition.  But the best part of the session was when he asked me if he could have a copy of the letter.

“I think it would be good for my line managers to know how you feel about all this,” he said.  He went on to say something (I don’t recall what) indicating that there might be some benefit to me in this, but was very quick to point out that it was my choice as to whether or not he did take a copy for them.  I readily agreed, of course, delighting in his apparent desire to act as my advocate to the bureaucrats above him.

Now, of course, I am convinced that he took the letter so he and his twatfaced bosses of evil can formulate some plan of self-defence in advance of hearing from the advocacy groups.  It was not in my interest at all – merely their own.  No doubt over the next few weeks we’ll see which way it actually is.

Eventually – I don’t remember how – I said that he must get sick of his job, what with all the whinging he would have to listen to.  “I accused you of being a sadist a few weeks back,” I said.  “Now I think you’re a mashochist.”

He accused me (sympathetically, to be fair to him) of splitting, which on reflection makes me slightly irritated, but at the time I agreed and called myself all the names of the day for employing this “silly psychological process.”

C leapt to my defence.  He said he knew that I had long since known I was guilty of splitting, but that it’s now “emotional for [me]”, not just something I recognise intellectually.  And it is OK, I do not need to berate myself for it, because I have suffered serious traumas, apparently, that have caused this defence mechanism (which is not silly, he contends) to develop.

On that note, as I recall it anyhow, we moved on to the discussion about the dreaded Christmas.

C’s advice was basically to get the fuck out if I felt anxious or overwhelmed.  I said that was easy to say, but he didn’t have to listen to my mother’s wrath if I did so.

He advised me to talk to her in advance, but I protested against this as well.  “When I told her about what happened with my uncle, she said I made it up to avoid going to his house,” I reminded C.  “So how can I justify my anxiety?”

“Blame your crowd phobia,” C said.  “She can’t be critical of that, can she?  There will be a crowd there, won’t there?

“Yes,” I replied.  “And they’re all part of the problem – it’s not all about my history with my uncle.  I have nothing in common with them and it’s a weird matriarchal set-up, where about 18 different generations all live under the same roof.  They’re freaks.”

He said, “are there children living there?”

I was horrified.  He was obviously wondering if anyone else is presently at risk from Paedo.

“Now you’re angry with me for putting the baby and all the other generations in danger.  I’m sorry,” I raced, in a bizarre panic.

C looked at me, his eyes wide-open.  “Where did that come from?” he enquired, surprised.

“Oh, you’re not angry with me?  Then I’m using you as a board for my anger at myself, am I?”

“OK, you’ve lost me,” he admitted.  “Just…just remember – get out.  Talk to your mother in advance, blame your crowd phobia if you have to, but if you feel yourself becoming tense, get out of there, even if only for a few minutes.  Allow yourself to be anxious about this.  How could you not be?”

And that, folks, was really that.  Of course, you know how ridiculously awful Christmas turned out to be, but I did remove myself from the others when I went so horribly mental, so I suppose I did at least follow the advice given.

As I was leaving, I wished him a Merry Christmas.  He said, admittedly cautiously, “you too,” causing me to laugh bitterly.  I think he knew that it was inevitable that the season would be utterly shite.

So, the three week gap is due to be over tomorrow.  Of course, I am convinced that C is dead again; either that or therapy will be cancelled due to the stupid, horrible, pointless fucking snow, and I need him so desperately at the minute.  Though I have not heard anything about a cancellation today, and I suppose I would have expected an advanced notification were the snow to fuck everything up on the monumental scale that it has in Britain.

The last time he was on holiday, in August, I didn’t miss him that much.  But this time I have, and I need him to help me pick up the pieces of the last few weeks.

The Latest NHS Complaint

The week before Christmas, I had to see a GP that I don’t normally attend, owing to the fact that LGP is so popular that I couldn’t get an appointment with him. The appointment was mainly to confirm the diagnosis of IBS, given as I had a number of blood tests to rule out other conditions. The below, addressed to the surgery’s Practice Manager, details what took place in the appointment.

—

Dear Sir or Madam

Re:​ Complaint

It is with regret that I am writing to you in order to make a complaint about an appointment that I had with Dr Arsehole on Friday 18 December 2009 at 8.40am. In particular, I wish to make my views known about Dr Twatbag’s dismissive and patronising approach in relation to my health issues.

The appointment was primarily scheduled to discuss a physical health problem. I had been told previously by a colleague of Dr Shithead’s that medication was available to assist in the management of this condition, a fact that Dr Wanker confirmed. However, he then refused to prescribe me anything to alleviate the severity of my symptoms, citing my age without providing any substantive reasoning. I am baffled as to the relevance of an individual’s age to their need or otherwise for medication, and was not offered an explanation. Furthermore, Dr Knobjockey chose to fixate on my weight at this juncture. I do recognise that I am overweight, but as intimated to the doctor, have recently been dieting and exercising, resulting in the loss of over three stones. Despite my attempts to make this clear, the physician continued to speak condescendingly to me about the strain on resources that the “obesity epidemic” is causing.

However, it was a discussion around my mental health that caused the most offence and which, in my view, demonstrated not only a lack of sympathy for mental illness, but in fact ignorance surrounding this group of health conditions. When I asked for medication to help combat insomnia and anxiety, Dr Bollockfist refused, in an irritable and frankly almost hostile fashion. In the past I have been refused these medications, and would certainly not issue a complaint on those grounds alone. However, I do not think it is unreasonable for me to have expected this request to have been denied respectfully and sympathetically, with an explanation of the reasoning.

Regarding my chronic sleep deprivation, Dr Cuntfeatures unhelpfully told me that a lack of sleep, no matter how long-term, “won’t kill [me]”, failing utterly to offer any practical help or advice on the matter. Perhaps this is, literally speaking, true, but this denies the extremely serious effects a lack of sleep can have on normal daily functioning. I am also fairly sure that this does not constitute professional advice nor assistance. I should not have to point out that forced sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture.

Dr Bastardface discussed insomnia that he had experienced following a personal bereavement; whilst obviously I have the greatest sympathy for his loss, I fail to see the relevance of the example, and indeed believe that the implied suggestion was that because my insomnia is not necessarily circumstantial that it is therefore somehow less real or less deserving of attention than a lack of sleep caused by a distinct traumatic event. He then, to my astonishment, point blank denied a connection between psychotic symptoms and insomnia. Might I be so bold as to suggest that Dr Dickhead researches this more fully; insomnia is, in fact, well known to cause or increase psychosis and the symptoms of psychiatric illness (source).

In discussion of the illnesses that (at least in part) contribute to the aforesaid, I was dismayed by the allegation that I was simply trying to “medicalise” my conditions. I do not believe this to be fair at all – I am presently undergoing intense psychotherapy and merely wish to try and manage my symptoms until it has reached a satisfactory conclusion (incidentally, please see the enclosed letter to Mindwise regarding the disturbing possibility of a premature cessation of this necessary process. If I cannot receive psychotherapy to sort through my illnesses psychologically, I fail to see what choice I have but to seek medical intervention). I would add, also, that even if I were ‘medicalising’ my illnesses that they are, indeed, at least partly biological. Borderline Personality Disorder is thought to exist in individuals with a biological predisposition (sources) and bipolar disorder is considered primarily a medical illness (sources). Both are, of course, considered serious mental illnesses, having disproportionate rates of psychosis, suicide and self-harm (sources).

Incidentally, I noted with interest that my file does not reflect these diagnoses, still stating that I suffer from depression and anxiety. Whilst these co-morbidities do exist, my primary diagnosis is BPD (with psychotic features) with a differential diagnosis of bipolar disorder, type II.

Overall, it was not so much what was said that upset me (though I felt that to be lacking too) as the manner and tone in which it was said. Although I felt Dr Bellend’s response to my physical complaint was inadequate, it was at least presented fairly amicably by him. His attitude to my mental illness was, however, dismissive, unsympathetic and thoroughly unhelpful – I would say it bordered on disdainful, indeed.

Whilst I appreciate the subjectivity of this judgement, I would hope that the fact I have never made a complaint about [the practice] in my life until now would indicate that I am not wont to take things out of context. Unfortunately I got the distinct impression that the physician was dubious as to the sincerity of my illnesses and that it was felt that I did not have ‘real problems’ (though should he require a list of traumatic events that have helped to contribute to my psychiatric illnesses, I should be happy to provide same). It is sad that such stigma is not only present in society, but apparently in the medical professional also. Dr Cockhead, like anyone, has a perfect entitlement to hold such a view privately, but given his chosen career should not allow it to impinge on his professional practice.

I would like to make clear that, in general, I have felt very much supported by the professionals at the practice – in particular, I would like to thank [LGP], [the Nurse Practitioner] and all the nursing staff for the support, respect and professionalism that they have shown me. I have also had the pleasure of having positive interactions with Dr Ballbag in the past, and would therefore hope that this incident merely represents a ‘blip’ in the professionalism of his practice. However, given the distress it caused me and the apparent lack of awareness that it represents, I felt that it was imperative to bring it to your attention.

Thank you for your time.

Best regards.

Yours etc.

Enc (of the letter to the advocacy service).

Shiny Award Thingy from Mental Nurse

I know some of you follow the insightful and informative Mental Nurse blog, written by…er…mental nurses. As regular readers of it will know, each Saturday (usually) they publish a review of that week’s musings in the mental health blogosphere, terming their summation ‘This Week in Mentalists’. I was featured once, with the child sex abuse post, catapulting it to the most read spot on my blog.

Anyway, at the end of the year Mental Nurse let their readership vote on the best blogs in given categories, and this year’s winners and runners-up have just been announced. No, yours truly has not won anything, as in I have not come first or owt like that…but this blog did come joint third in the Personality Disorder category.

😀 😀 😀

First place in the category went to the very worthy winner of Genius Gone Wrong, whose blog I follow and whose comments I have had the honour of having here. Second place was Becoming Hannah, and my fellow third-placed contender was Writing in the Margins of My Mind. I shall look forward to reading these blogs, plus other mental health blogs that were featured as winners.

Thank you to all who voted for this blog. It was an honour to even be mentioned as a possible contender, never mind to be actually placed. I really do feel very honoured.

Reflections on 2009

Wasn’t it 1992 that the Queen said was her annus horribilis?  Well, let’s fast forward 17 years to now, New Year’s Eve, 2009. This year has turned out to be the annus horribilis of your humble narrator – mostly. I’ve been on the brink of sectioning on a number of occasions, the brink of suicide on others, I’ve developed serious psychoses, I’ve been twatted by the system and I lost my job.  Yet, there are a few glimmers of non-shit somewhere in there.

To that end, here, for your dubious delectation, is the good, the bad and the ugly (well, the bad and good anyway) of the last 12 months in the world of this PsychoFreakBitch…

THE BAD

Being Mental

Perhaps rather obvious, but yeah, being mental hasn’t been a great deal of fun.  I know I’ve argued that if I could flick that figurative switch to the sanity setting I wouldn’t do so, and I still hold to that, but nevertheless, the panics, depressions, mixed states, psychoses and frantic states are not exactly things that I enjoy.

As you know, faithful, darling readers, I have been mental for many years – my first diagnosis was in 1998, but in reality I did have some manifestations of madness well before that juncture.  However, 2009 was by far the worst year for it, as I think most of those close to me would attest.  The dysphorias, the exceptional levels of anxiety and the psychoses, all having existed before, have been exacerbated so considerably during the last 12 months.  I’m not sure why; maybe it is the intensity of psychotherapy, maybe it’s medication, maybe it’s simply the ‘proper’ development of BPD and/or bipolar disorder, given as they tend to manifest most strongly in one’s 20s, maybe it’s another psychiatric illness altogether.  Maybe it’s nothing more than coincidence.  Either way, it is.

Specific Issues on Mentalism

–> Psychoses

Tom was alright, but ‘They’ have been a hideous bloody curse.  Even with the anti-psychotic, ‘They’ are almost ever-present, though their severity was mostly reduced with said medication.  The worst manifestations of ‘They’ were when they tried to get me to kill myself and, worse again, when they wanted me to kill MW on Christmas Day.

Of course, the psychotic symptoms were not limited to hearing voices.  The shapes continued amok throughout 2009, though in retrospect I think I can say that I maybe noticed some abatement of their severity when I started taking Olanzapine.  However, I also developed new hallucinations, such as music, knocking and whimpering.  And I hallucinated my erstwhile stalker once.  Fuckin’ A.

Oh, and let’s not forget the delusions – A was in collusion with GCHQ, the sun and signs were watching and/or communicating with me, ‘They’ steal the thoughts from my mind, my cousin ScumFan was a drug dealer, A was not A but A’s sister, yadda yadda.

–> Dissociation

This has been pretty fucking annoying and at times highly disturbing.  There have been a number of times that I have found myself in dissociative fugue states – being in random places some distance from home, having no idea how or why I got there.  I need not explain the potential implications of these (admittedly relatively minor) fugues to my readership.

Of course, it does not take a fugue to make a dissociative episode.  Despite my ability to write 3,000 or more words on my sessions with C, my psychotherapist, it is not infrequent for me to dissociate parts of these meetings, particularly (unsurprisingly) when we are tackling something difficult together.  Several of the fugues have been in the wake of sessions with C.

I’ve also found myself in amnesiac states during or after arguments or highly stressful events, and of course I have the standard BPD features of depersonalisation and derealisation – forms of dissociation, I believe – on a frequent basis.

Although I’ve experienced depersonalisation and derealisation for years, I’ve only knowingly experienced full dissociative episodes – ie. proper periods of amnesia, losing time – in the last year.  Well…maybe it began in 2008, but it would mostly have been in 2009.

However, I only remember the rape and other parts of the sexual abuse in flashbacks, for example, and in discussion with C we have found that I have many ‘symptoms’ characteristic of someone who dissociated something traumatic in childhood.  The suggestion has been that, given the strength and quantity of these symptoms, there may be more than I don’t consciously remember.  I hate the idea for its own sake, obviously, but I hate it even more by virtue of the fact that it is not recalled (if indeed it did happen); it leaves me with a distinct lack of control over how I now react to triggers.  Perhaps that can be addressed in therapy over time (if therapy even fucking continues over time).

–>  Self-Harm

Is self-harm even bad?  Sometimes I really do wonder.  As a way to cope, it works.  As a way to fascinate (by virtue of watching the beautiful krovvy), it works.  As a way to seek absolution, it works (albeit temporarily).

Still, it serves as a permanent record of a very horrible year of my life, and I suppose in that way it could be considered a bad thing.  It’s something that, as of this writing, I feel quite nonchalantly about, but who’s to say in 10 years or something, I won’t look at my scars and feel triggered back into mentalism from which I may have found some relief?

I’m classing this as a bad thing of this year because, prior to 2009, I hadn’t engaged in any serious self-harm for years.  2009 saw it return on a relatively frequent basis.

Losing My Job

In reality, I was nowhere near as upset about this as I should have been, but one thing I really do detest is being in the hateful position of being dependent on the state for my living.  I had always dreamed of a career (not just a job) and the opportunity to use my intellect in a meaningful fashion.  I did not want to end up being a dolescum, and this is still something that I am hoping to change in seeking treatment for my madness.

So I suppose that is the worst part of losing my job; I now am officially everything that I never wanted to be in my adult life.  It’s also awkward from the perspective of my developing my career; having to explain a gap in employment of whatever length and an incapability dismissal will not be a lot of fun.

Trouble with the NHS

It all started with all the trouble with getting an appointment with, and then sustaining appointments with, the VCB.  Then C waded into the quagmire with his ‘I can only offer you 24 more sessions’ bullshit.  As you know, of course, I am fighting this.

Then there was Dr Arsehole just before Christmas (about whom I will write in the next ‘C’ installment), and the latest is that I have an appointment with Psychiatry on 20 January (more than a month after I was meant to have my most recent review appointment)…but not with VCB!  No, readers, apparently I am seeing ‘Dr M’.  What in the fuck..?  I might not like VCB, but at least I had got to know her to some extent.  But now they’re fucking me about again.  Arsecunt.

Christmas

It was fucking God-awful dreadful.  Enough said.

C

Not C himself; of course I don’t know the man in any realistic way, but my sense of him is positive.  OK, he does wind me up sometimes, and it is not at all unknown for him to actually anger me, but generally I am very fond of the man, regardless of whether or not that is simply a case of transference.  However, psychotherapy is not a fun process.  It’s not fun at all.  In fact, I believe firmly that it has made me more mental than I already was.

It therefore seems ridiculous to continue with it, but there’s method in the madness…

THE GOOD

C

‘Him again?  You just said he was a bad thing in this year!’

Yeah, I did, but he’s also been one of the most fabulous things.  Aside from my absolutely obsessive attachment to him, which I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have were I not very fond of him in a non-transferential sense, I believe the therapy is good for me, and is working.  Yes, it has made me more mental, but I believe this is a temporary state.

In being forced to (re)live some of the most horrible things about my past and, to a lesser extent, my present and potential future, it seems inevitable to me that my conditions would be exacerbated.  I had to get worse before I get better.  That was what I expected well before I commenced therapy with C, and that is still my belief.

Additionally, and this is probably related to the transference issues, C is the only person to whom I will talk completely openly.  For a long time, I would literally discuss many (not all) things with him, but it is only in the last couple of months that I really have stopped abstracting things.  I’ve now let my guard down and allow myself to be vulnerable around him, and I trust him.  That kind of relationship, however strangely asymmetrical, is a big achievement for me, and I think if it is allowed to continue as it should that it will pay dividends in terms of my mental health.

Diagnoses

Some people hate them.  There are a number of other mental health bloggers for whom I have the utmost respect that consider diagnoses ‘diagnonsense’.  I do get where they’re coming from, but I am grateful for mine.

It helps me to be able to attribute certain symptoms to an actual illness.  Now I’m not saying I use the conditions as excuses, but they do explain some erratic and bizarre behaviour, and I find that rather comforting.  Furthermore, in saying I have certain illnesses, it makes my range of symptoms part of something, rather than just a nebulous bunch of ‘things’; quantifying it in this way makes it seem more real, I am convinced, to others.  Just throwing the term ‘depression’ out makes it sound like a cop-out (NB. please note that this is not my view of real depression at all – I just think that some people, ignorant of mental health issues, view the word this way.  They believe that “I have depression” equals “I’m depressed,”, which of course those of us who have been there know to be a fallacy).

One further positive I’d add about the diagnoses is that they have enabled me to connect with others that have the same (or similar) disorders.  I will be eternally grateful for that, and for the support and kinship those individuals have given me (see more on this below).

Turkey

Our holiday to Turkey back in September was probably the happiest time of this year.  As I wrote at the time, I felt entirely contented throughout our stay, and indeed we enjoyed it so much that we are returning to a resort close to the one from 2009 again in May 2010.  I will never forget the crystal clear waters, the warmth of the locals and the sheer relaxation of lying about in secluded coves.  Whilst reading Social Factors in the Personality Disorders: A Biopsychosocial Approach to Etiology and Treatment, of course.  I mean, obviously!!!

This Blog

I will always be thankful that I started writing this blog, and indeed that I kept writing this blog.  My initial hope was that it might help me to identify triggers, but to be honest in that regard it hasn’t been as successful as I might have liked.  It has, however, given me a focus – writing is an activity that, despite the sometime difficulty of it, is something that I enjoy, and can direct my energy towards.  It also serves as a chronicle of what has been an extremely difficult period in my life, but one that is also likely to be a highly formative one too, if I don’t end up offing myself.  I’ve found it fascinating to rediscover diaries I kept in the past, and no doubt I shall find the same with this – though I hope that I will still be maintaining this journal well into the future.

I’ve been ever so grateful for the wonderful feedback I’ve been given on this blog too.  Some people find my writing style engaging, which is a huge compliment; others find solace in the fact that they are not alone, as what I’ve written correlates with their experiences and/or feelings; yet others seem to be grateful to learn directly what everyday life, therapy or whatever with my various diagnoses is like.

On a similar note, the blog has enabled me to meet so many people with whom I have found affinity.

Twitter

By far the best thing I have done this year was join Twitter (I’ve met many brilliant people through the account allied to this blog, but even more again through my ‘main’, slightly less anonymous, account).  I have met so many wonderful people – both mentals and non-mentals – through this service that I could not possibly thank them all here, much as I’d like to.  The support, friendship, empathy and, frankly, in some cases love that I have been shown has been a source of immeasurable help, more than the personnel concerned will ever know.

–>  Thank Yous – Twitter

CVM*
K*
@bourach
@woundedgenius / @behindthecouch
@notbovvered
@fromthesamesky
@error505
@an_other
@kimshannon
@helentaustin
@benpolar

* Both of whom I now consider ‘real life’ friends – I have met K and communicate with her most days; I haven’t met CVM, but again communicate with her most days and certainly will meet her when finances and circumstances allow the travel.  I love them both.

The above is far from an exhaustive list, but there are others that I cannot mention to protect either their or my anonymity.  Some to whom I am incredibly grateful are not even aware of the fact that I write this blog.  That does not mean I value them less, however.

–> Thank Yous – Blogging Buddies

Some of the above-named individuals of course keep blogs, but they are not people I met originally through this medium.  The following are.  Thank you to:

Alix Rites
Crazy Mermaid
Borderline Case
The Prozac Queen
Pumpkin
Vanessa
NiroZ (no longer blogging, alas)

Again this is not an exhaustive list.

It is my honestly held belief that were it not for the aforementioned individuals – both the Twitter friends and blogging mates – I would either have killed myself or been horribly sectioned this year.  So thank you to all of you listed, to many not listed, and extra special thanks to a select few – I hope you know who you are.

Friends

Of course, real life friends have been of immense value to me this year too.  I haven’t been fortunate enough to see my best friend D an awful lot, but we’ve have corresponded via email and communicated via the hated telephonic device, so of course I am very grateful for his support.  In spite of an acrimonious break-up of a serious relationship, not to mention other problems, D has still been there for me through all of this sorry year, and for that I am significantly in his debt.

B has also been very supportive.  It’s not that we tend to go into great detail about issues of concern, but he’s just there, and that means a lot.  In particular, like D, his ability to provide a metaphorical shoulder to cry on whilst dealing with significant difficulties in his own personal life is testament to his integrity and the strength of his friendship.

AC has also been great; as well as actually giving a shit and supporting me through mental illness, AC has also been there just for those ordinary, everyday things that friends do together – the theatre, lunch, whatever.  I also must hat-tip DL for this too.

Honourable mentions to A’s friends and family too.  Even though they’re (mostly) not conversant with the finer points of my mentalism, they nonetheless have been a source of fun and comfort.

And of course a re-acknowledgement of CVM and K 🙂

A

Saving the best for last.  He’s seen it all, and it all ain’t pretty.  Yet he is still there.  Still loving, still comforting, still supporting, still protecting, still fighting the corner, still providing, still entertaining, still staying sane.

There are no words.  ‘Thank you’ seems so woefully inadequate, but it is all I have.  I just want to make it publically known that I will always owe a debt of gratitude to A for everything he has put up with this year.

AND FINALLY…

This post might lead you to believe that there was more good than bad this year, and I suppose in the most objective of senses that may be true.  This is why something like CBT will never work therapy-wise for me; it doesn’t matter how much evidence there is or is not for a belief – the belief is still held.  The reasons for the belief need to be explored fully and processed.  But I digress.  My point: 2009 was an absolutely fucking shit year, and I will be glad to see the end of it.

But I have hope.  A small glimmer thereof, but a glimmer nonetheless.  Not of a miraculous cure, but of some stability maybe.  With the help of C (I hope) and the love and support of my fabulous friends, both those in the physical world and those online, there might just be a path to stability somewhere down the line.

Happy New Year folks.  If ‘happy’ is ambitious, then at least I wish you peace and something approaching sanity in 2010.

Yours ever

SI x

Christmas…Revisited

I feel I should say a few more words in addition to the last post.  Firstly, thank you all for your concern – to those that commented here, contacted me through Twitter or indeed those that contacted me directly.  I am OK, and all the better for your concern, for which I am extremely grateful.

Despite what I said on Boxing Night, I don’t think a hospital admission is necessary or desirable just at the minute (well, not that it would ever be desirable, but you know what I mean).  It is my belief that the delusions and the severity of the hallucinations the previous day were induced by severe stress, and are hopefully ‘just’ transient.  ‘They’ are usually there these days, even to the extent where they are stealing my thoughts (schizophrenic-esque thought-blocking?) but fortunately their desire to cause harm in the same way as the day they first arrived has not been present since I’ve been taking Olanzapine.

I was discussing with C at the last session (which I have yet to blog about – hopefully by early next week) about how I hadn’t been (consciously) bothered about my history with Paedo until fairly recently.  As this was towards the end of the session, we didn’t have time to explore the possible reasons for that, but no doubt it was lying in my unconscious, unprocessed, the whole time, subtly and insidiously contributing to my chronic depression and severe breakdowns.

Anyway, for whatever reason, it bothers me now, and the feeling of horror and dread about it and about him was very acute on Christmas Day.  The McFs were going out for Christmas Dinner (good, because it meant slightly less claustrophobia), but it started out badly when it was decided (after an unnecessarily protracted debate) that A and I would travel to the restaurant alone with Paedo and MMcF.  It was an utterly vile 20 minutes trying to make smalltalk with the two of them and when MMcF surreptitiously handed me £10 to buy A and myself a drink, she said, “I hope you have a very happy Christmas,” causing me to laugh incredulously in her face.

By the time we arrived at the restaurant I was highly agitated, and upon sitting down (trying and failing to not be close to Paedo) downed two Valium.  It was not just him.  It really was not just him.  There were about 16 or 17 people around the table, and I just cannot tolerate that.  Groups make me endlessly nervous, especially when they are all talking loudly and demandingly at once, and especially when (despite knowing them all my life) I am deeply nervous around and have nothing in common whatsoever with the personnel concerned.  My history with Paedo just exacerbated something that would have already been there.

The Valium helped, and I relaxed a bit, but it was still bloody awful.  The meal was nice enough, but I threw half of it up and my IBS was out of control.  A and I forced our way through it, but the worst was yet to come.  Rather than go back to MMcF’s house after dinner, it had been decided to go to SL’s.  I have nothing against SL and her husband, but for some reason the dynamic in their house is always different from elsewhere; everyone congregates in the same room on top of each other, whereas back at MMcF’s, at least people break into factions, making the group more manageable.

SL’s was tortuous.  The overbearing crowd, the inanity of the stilted conversation, the obsessive fixation with MW (whose nose will be put out of joint when his sibling is born in March), my mind recalling my history with Paedo and my Mum’s disbelief when I told her about it – it all got on top of me, and indeed of poor A.

‘They’ had been telling me all day what a horrid, fetid slag I am, but I’ve learnt to…not ignore them, and not push them to the back of my head, because that’s where they reside anyway.  I don’t know; I’ve learnt how to not respond to them, I suppose, when they are wittering on like this, which is a lot of the time.  However, it’s pretty much not possible to fight them when they turn into the all-powerful screaming cacophony that they were the first day I encountered them.

Well, didn’t they start it again, just as we had managed to escape the worst bit of sitting about in the living room, joining as we did ScumFan and DMcF, who were playing the X-Box in the kitchen.  ‘They’ started screaming at me that I was evil for keeping my mouth shut about the rape and the molestation, that I had put all the other generations at risk and that it would therefore be a mercy for me to “eliminate” MW, given that he could expect “nothing but” the same fate from his great-grandfather.  I tried to ignore them, really I tried, but the more I fought them, the more and more effort they put into their critical wailing.  I was ordered to go to where MW was sleeping and smother him.

Of course, the last thing in the world I want to do is kill someone, especially not an innocent kid, so by this point I was hiding behind A and covering my ears and muttering a poem (as well as some ‘shut ups’) in order to try and distract myself.  The next thing I remember was being in the utility room in tears banging my head against the washing machine (!).  I tried to get past A, who was standing their blocking my exit, but he wouldn’t let me past for fear that ‘They’ might have successfully compelled me to go to MW’s room.  I think I slid down the wall in defeated resignation then; I was convinced ‘They’ had finally taken complete control of my mind.  The fight was over.

Well, luckily ‘They’ hadn’t managed to take control, and the fight wasn’t over.  I honestly don’t recall how this all finished, but the next thing of which I do have a clear recollection was having a discussion about something or other with SL, MW’s mother, in a calm, almost seemingly jolly fashion.  Yet all the time I was thinking, “the voices in my head just now wanted me to murder your baby son, you know.”  Thank God people generally can’t read my mind.

When A and I went to bed, and I don’t remember saying any of this, apparently I was convinced that A was not A but in fact his sister.  I also apparently believed that ScumFan – surely the most innocent and naive of young men – was involved in a serious way with drugs.  Needless to say, these ridiculous delusions disturbed A considerably.  And then, thanks to Zopiclone…nothing.

Boxing Day was better than Christmas Day, but still awful.  In the morning, I completely defied ‘They’ by playing with MW as I normally would (obviously in others’ company).  ‘They’ mumbled and whined a little like they usually do, but mercifully it was nothing with which I could not deal, and at no point did they try to persuade me to harm the baby.  Shortly after midday, A and I headed off to his father’s house.

Normally, it’s just A, his father, step-mother and me for Boxing Day, but on this occasion his aunt and her husband turned up.  I just wanted to sit and vegetate, as is the norm on our visits to A’s Dad’s, but the aunt would not shut up for more than three seconds.  Nice enough woman, but she began to grate on me not just through her constant demands for conversation, but also as she made underhand insults directed at A, inferring (and not at all subtly) that he was less intelligent than her children (which is not true, but since they have degrees from Oxford she feels that it is so, apparently).  A told me later that she had been intensely jealous of his parents when it was realised that he was a smart kid, and she always wanted to better them.  What a poor, sad cow.  How pathetic and meaningless must one’s life be to be so utterly fixated on bringing up intelligent children simply to compete with others?

One thing I’ll say in her defence was that despite her laughable level of inebriation she didn’t at any point attempt to embarrass me by quizzing me on the reasons for my present lack of employment, presumably having been warned in advance by A’s step-mother not to do so.  It’s not that I’m ashamed of being mental, but it’s hard to convince people of the sincerity of the conditions sometimes, especially (I’d imagine) when they’re as plastered as she was.

Eventually A and I escaped to his mother and step-father’s house, which is always fairly relaxed.  Upon getting in, knowing I wouldn’t have to drive again, I opened a bottle of red and downed it in literally about five minutes.

And now it is over.  It is over.  There surely is a God!  We are keeping out of everyone’s way on New Year’s Eve, having booked into a hotel for the night.  We’re not attending any function – we’re just going to sit in either a quiet corner of the bar, or in our room with a bottle of wine.  Alone.  All a-fucking-amazingly-lone.  Then, on Sunday 3 January, we’re going to another hotel, this time for two nights, thus using a Christmas present from A’s mother.  Both hotels are fairly plush, with pools, nice restaurants and bars, beautiful settings and privacy.  AI hope these will prove just what is needed as a tonic to the horrors of the past week.

I had strongly considered killing myself on Boxing Morning, but I need to remain alive for the duration of these sojourns, as I hope they will serve to relax me and hopefully mentally prepare me in some small way for the year ahead.

Christmas…

…has been fucking awful. I had a complete psychotic break on Christmas Night after the stress of engaging with the MMcFs (and in particular Paedo) all day and heard ‘They’ telling me to kill MW. Obvioulsly I didn’t. I also told A, apparently believing completely, that ScumFan was a drug-dealer (he’s not) and that A was actually his sister in disguise (!).

Boxing Day has been a fucking nightmare too, though on a lesser scale. But the psychoses of last night are what matters. It is time to be hospitalised.

‘They’ told me that smothering MW would be “a mercy”. Maybe or maybe not, the very thought of harming him is beyond contempt.

Enough is enough.

The Fantasy World

Tonight, as I was editing the ‘About‘ page briefly, I was reminded that I had mentioned my pathetic little fantasy world there, but that I’d never discussed it in detail elsewhere on the blog.

Well – I’m not about to.  I don’t think I’ll reveal the specifics of it to anyone, ever.  But I will say a few words.

I suppose the best way to put the fantasy world is that it is just like a grandiose delusion (or such is my supposition) – except that I don’t believe it is real.  There’s a fine line here between creativity and madness; if I had written down all this stuff and sent it to a publisher, it probably would have made quite a successful (if far-fetched) novel (or set of novels).  Alas, any such attempt now would make people aware of the specifics of the fantasy world, and I couldn’t cope with the shame of that.  Plus I wouldn’t have the motivation to write a fucking novel anyway.

The only people that I’ve spoken to about the fantasy world are A and C.  C didn’t seem especially concerned about its presence, though I was interested to note recently that, after the development of ‘They’, he asked if ‘They’ were connected to the fantasy world in any way.  It had always been my concern that my use of the fantasy world as escapism would actually develop into an actual escapism – a complete break from reality.  And cevidently that was on C’s mind at this later juncture too.  So far it hasn’t happened, but it is still a worry.  Having said that, frankly sometimes I wish I would just lose all contact with reality and stop teetering on the brink of it…but that’s a whole another post.

Anyway, both A and C, and in fact all of the most significant personnel in my actual life, figure to some degree or another in this fantasy life.  However, they are supplemented by an entire cast of fictional people, some reflective to some extent of real people, others purely borne entirely out of my imagination.  The fictional people are crafted down to their wrinkles, down to whether or not they like brussel sprouts.

The universe itself is similarly crafted.  My living and working environments are also detailed to the nth degree, and on a major scale.  The streets I walk, the strangers I meet, the pubs and cinemas I go to, the books on my shelves.  Everything is covered.  It really is like an entire other life, and I can slip into it at will.

I am completely unsure as to what this means psychologically, but let’s not overcomplicate matters, and take it broadly at face value.  In the fantasy, I have a wonderful job and am very much the confident(-seeming) person that I was as a child.  I am surrounded by people who, despite my idiosyncrasies, like and respect me.  I have a stable and loving private life.  I have money, though not riches and my own home, though not a mansion.  Basically, I have the perfect young professional’s life.

From that, it would be easy to say, “well, it’s merely reflective of a longing, perhaps of regret over missed opportunities.”  And maybe it is.  Except, it’s not that simple.  In the fantasy world, I am still mental.  Does this go back to all the wank I wrote a few months ago about not flicking the metaphorical switch to sanity if given the chance?  Maybe.

Maybe also it’s reflective of my feelings on the stigma of mental illness.  I want to have achieved all of these things despite being mental, thus proving that mental illness is not a barrier to success.  But I have to ask myself, if this is indeed the case, is it because of altruism, or is it another narcissistic desire for me to achieve something?  Probably the latter to be honest.  What a self-centred bitch.

When I told C about it – probably back in April or early May – I broke down and cried for ages because of the shame and self-disgust I felt about not being content with my real life.  It was the first time I’d wept like that, and as regular readers will know, it is not something that I have done with frequency since.  I derided myself to C as “completely fucked up.”

And I am.  I really am.

Christmas Mourning

I alluded briefly to the fact that I find Christmas a profoundly difficult time of year the other week.  I have hated the day and all its build-up since, I would guess, my early teens.

I still do, and I rationalise it on the grounds that it is a commercialised load of crap borne purely out of capitalist greed and people’s insatiable desire to get completely wasted with apparent impunity.  But as with seemingly everything in my existence, nothing is quite as simple as pure rationality.

I wouldn’t have seen a deeper side to my dislike of the festive season but for some weird behaviour that’s developed over the last couple of years, that I would say correlates roughly with the development of borderline tendencies in my psyche and behaviour.  I have found myself uncharacteristically emotional over ‘cute’ images or statues of Santas or snowmen, feeling sorry for them (?!) to the point of tears.  The odd sentimental Christmas song will do it too.  Anything, I suppose, that is a non-tacky or potentially ‘sweet’ way of communicating how supposedly special the occasion is meant to be can bring this ridiculous behaviour.

Last night I ended up in tears because I ‘felt sorry’ for Christmas because I had ‘rejected’ it for so many years*.  It was triggered by a cinnamon candle which smelt ‘Christmassy’.  What a complete and utter moron of complete imbecility I am.  Who does this?!

A discussion with A ensued when he enquired as to why I was upset about rejecting Christmas given that I hate Christmas.  I have developed two armchair psychological theories for both the hatred and the development of this over-emotional nonsense.

1. The most obvious theory is that I associate the entire season with the McFs and, specifically, the fact that I have to see PaedoMcF (as he shall, I think, henceforth be known on this blog).  I spent, as I recall, every Christmas with them until I was about 21, and once I’d reached adolescence, gone through the rape, grown increasingly contemptuous of my family, I began to dread and dislike the season more and more.  It’s not just about Paedo; MMcF is overbearing too, as is the entire group dynamic that permeates the culture in which they live.  One way or another, they are at least partly responsible for my dislike of December.
2. There is a deeper thread to this; it’s clearly about abandonment by both my father and then my subsequent surrogate father-figures.  Part of the sadness is pathetically (in the original sense) childlike – it’s like a little girl weeping because she knows she’ll yet again be rejected.  Thus, she has to reject all circumstances surrounding that rejection first.  Except that it’s not that simple, because it eventually comes back to haunt her.  Eugh.  Fuck you, V.

Yes.  Christmas is, in part at least, supposed to be about families – about parental love and a parent’s desire to see their child happy, the pleasure and joy the parent takes from seeing the child’s delight in receiving that for which she has so fervently longed all year.  I only ever had 50% of that.  My poor mother, dear love her, tried her best to make up the deficit, and I suppose on the face of things that seemed to be enough…but it wasn’t really, was it?

In the absence of my actual father, I built my grandfather into the supreme male figure in my life.  However, his senility began in my earlier teenage years, and he finally succumbed and died when I was 15.  None of that is his fault, of course (I mean, of course!!!), but it could still be considered abandonment by the deepest, undeveloped corners of my psyche, those dark recesses that have still failed to develop healthy object relations.

If I’m completed honest, I probably had allowed Paedo to be a semi-father figure too, but sadly he chose to violate the sanctity of that relationship.

When I was about eight, my mother met and fell in love with B.  Although B and I didn’t always get along perfectly (how dare he ingratiate himself into my life in the place of my father?), I got used to him being there and was stunned when he died very suddenly and unexpectedly just before my 11th birthday (which is not that terribly long before the accursed Christmas).

So yeah.  Christmas must remind me of childhood abandonment.  No waking up at 5am on Christmas morning and dragging Daddy out of bed to see the joy on his daughter’s face.  Only ever futile hope that maybe one day he might care enough to at least call me to say, “happy Christmas darling,” only ever futile hope that maybe one day he might care enough to even send a cheap card.  And now he is gone permanently, as to all intents and purposes are those that ‘replaced’ him, and that hope is lost and gone forever.

Anyway, I relayed this information to A last night, and then just sat and cried for a while.  My overwhelming feeling was of grief.  Grief.  This, and all these apparent projections, kind of affirm my belief from the other week that I am in mourning for the little girl that was in many ways denied her childhood.

A thinks the fact that I am feeling this and indeed even recognising it is progress, and I suppose in an objective sort of way it is, but the pain is raw and lately I feel horribly vulnerable and weepy all the time.  I am not looking forward to the next few weeks.

—

For the record, I still hold to the logical arguments against Christmas – the drunken revelry, the crowds and the commercialisation of a festival that, by rights, is applicable only to Christians (regardless of the fact that 25 December was originally a Pagan festival) does annoy me.  But I don’t think that is, in itself, enough to explain a feeling much stronger than ‘bah, humbug’.

—

* Although the smell of the candle was the main trigger, I was in something of a fragile mental state yesterday anyway; I’d had a minor car accident (my own stupid fault), I’d had a minor operation with LGP (a lump removal) and, most of all, I’d learnt something horrific from A.  On the night of the Sunday 22 November, a point at which I’d thought the psychoses had died down a little and that my moods had regulated somewhat thanks to the Olanzapine, apparently ‘They’ answered the phone when I tried to call the local Chinese take-away.  When A protested that ‘They’ weren’t there, apparently I went off my head at him, screaming and behaving like a wild woman.  I have absolutely no recollection of this whatsoever, though it must have been the night I made the ‘Bitch’ cut, because I discovered that on the Monday.  I was horrified because (a) it’s just plain nasty to A, (b) ‘They’ had always previously been in my head, not outside it – this is a bad ‘progression’ and (c) the amnesiac properties of this incident are frankly terrifying; who knows what could have happened that I wouldn’t later recall?

Admittedly, we had been drinking that night, but I remember very disctinctly phoning the Chinese the first time, then I recall nothing until later, when I was trying to get A to come to bed rather than sleep on the sofa.  Again, my recollection of this is distinct, so I don’t think the amnesia is alcohol-induced; it sounds like a dissociative episode to me.

On the plus side, when I saw Lovely GP yesterday I said that although I thought the Olanzapine had been,overall, a good thing, that the return to 75mg of Venlafaxine had hit me hard.  LGP told me to go ahead and start taking 150mg again.  He said that if VCB objects I am “to send her to [him] and [he] will take care of her.”  Love LGP.

I Ain’t Happy with the NHS…Again

This uncertainty with C is doing my head in. I spent this afternoon looking online and through Yellow Pages for private clinical psychologists in my area and found the sum total of two such half-decent practitioners, one of whom I’ve already seen (!). I then tried to work out if I could even afford weekly private therapy whilst unemployed – it can be done, in the most literal of senses, but it’ll take about half my monthly earnings to finance it.

Maybe I am overreacting and maybe C has no intention of ending this herapy in January, unless there is some miracle (and if there is some miracle then it is obviously fine to finish in January – but of course there will not be). But the mixed messages from him are sublimely frustrating – “don’t worry, we will never just suddenly end things” and “we will get there” versus “you know this is a finite process on the NHS,” yadda yadda yadda.

Partly the annoyance is with him and partly it is with this stupid bloody system. Sometimes I think we’d be better off with private healthcare after all.

On the one hand, C is the person that makes the immediate decisions on how long he sees his clients (as far as I can tell, anyway), so he could just say to me, “let’s keep on meeting for the next six months,” or whatever. He refuses to lay down any long term plans, ostensibly as he feels it is important to work to short-term-ish goals. I disagree, but at least he has a rationale, and in any event I am no psychologist. However, if therapy is coming to an end in about five weeks then what is the rationale for that when I am clearly still a nutjob?

On the other hand, C is constrained by all the financial bullshit of the NHS, not to mention the ludicrousness of the service’s inherent bureaucracy. No doubt he has targets and timeframes, must palm off the stupid mental within a few months cos the trust can’t (won’t) pay for the stupid mental any further than that and if he hasn’t cured the stupid mental in that time then he is an evident failure, don’t you know. Targets, man, targets!

The problem with this is that it will end up costing the health service much more in the long-run, and perhaps in more ways than one.

Let me break it down.

1. I am 26. I have been utilising mental health services on the NHS since I was 13. Had I seen a proper therapist for a proper length of time then, how much money could they potentially have saved themselves? Instead, as this post attests, six different public sector salaries were funded, some of the resources of which were devoted to me. Epic fail. (Of course my own money was spent on three other therapists because of the NHS inadequacies. Epic fail again). The point is, one way or another, I will end up back at the GP’s or psychiatrist’s office begging for help yet again, and we’ll be back to square one. Why not just agree a sensible timeframe with someone I know and trust – and clear things up to whatever extent that is achievable – now?!
2. I am so mentally and – yes – emotionally fragile as things stand that if therapy ends in the near future I am convinced I will end up in the bin. One hour of C’s time per week versus 24 hour care by several RMNs, psychiatrists and auxiliaries. Which one sounds cheaper to you?
3. A third possibility, and this may be seen as a threat which it is not intended to be, is that I finally can’t cope and do myself in. When my mother and A instigate litigation against the NHS, as they inevitably would were this possibility realised, even if the NHS won hands down, they would be forking out a fortune to fund their fuckhead solicitors. I used to work for litigation solicitors specialising in the public sector. I know what they charge; even for minor cases that are easily contested and won, it is a bloody fortune. That’s not even including barristers’ fees if it came to court, or out-of-court settlements.

Other points to consider are the following:

1. Dr C is constantly reminding me that psychotherapy is the “mainstay” of my treatment (rather than medicine), yet it seems to be her intention to see me long-term, albeit hopefully only for monitoring purposes once a suitable cocktail of drugs is found. How can therapy be the mainstay of my treatment if I am only seeing her, who only deals with the medicinal and organic sides of things?
2. I know I’ve ranted about this before, but it so utterly and completely fills me with disgust and contempt that I have worked in both full- and part-time capacities since I was 14, and given 11% of my salary to the health service since I was 16. I had two major breakdowns, including this one, during that time – but it still amounts to, I think, eight years of work. When you think about it, is it really that different from US health insurance? Maybe the percentage figure is lower, but then my employers had to pay a percentage of my salary for my insurance also. So why would I get medium- long-term therapy in America, but I can’t here?
3. I am familiar with people in other NHS trusts that have been guaranteed therapy of at least a year and a half on the health service. Now, one person I can think of has a lot more issues than I do, and so that’s fair enough – however, that individual is one of five people I can think of off the top of my head. I would hasten an educated guess that I have much more psychological baggage than each of those other four, but if not, certainly two or three of them anyway. Why, then, is it OK to fuck me about? (Incidentally, I noticed none of them had any trouble seeing psychiatrists either, so maybe my trust is just shit. Now it sounds like I’m playing a teenage game of “but they’re allowed it, so why am I not” – but I hope I’m not. I’m just genuinely mystified as to why my case is different).
4. As stated yesterday, I have been mental for many years. I received my first diagnosis (clinical depression) 13 years ago or so, but as I have discussed here at other junctures, I was mental well before that. Normal children don’t try to amputate their limbs. Normal children don’t hallucinate. Normal children aren’t obsessively paranoid. Normal children don’t deliberately coop themselves up in the house, listen to Bach, read Grey’s Anatomy and seek out the company of the elderly for intellectual discourse. They go outside and play with their friends. So when I said ’13 years’ yesterday, I probably really meant 23, to be honest. Point being, how can two decades of madness be alleviated in less than a year? It’s fucking preposterous.
5. If I had a physical ailment, the NHS would treat me until it was cured, or, were it chronic, then indefinitely. I am not asking for indefinite treatment for my psychological difficulties, make no mistake. But the striking inequalities between the health service for physical health and the health service for mental health disgust me.

In any case, I cannot see why C has to keep reminding me that the psychotherapeutic process is finite. Of course it is fucking finite, I am not stupid – and I certainly don’t want to be in need of it indefinitely as I want to be able to manage my conditions by myself. However, for the NHS’ sake as well as my own, surely that finity (if that’s a word) ought to be directly correlated with the progress of the patient? Surely it is the height of irresponsibility to discharge someone that is clearly still fucked up and only going to, at best, waste more resources?

Fuck it all to hell. I feel like emigrating.

Be Angry With The Filthy Whore – C: Week 31

Thursday was fucking traumatic, a state of affairs of which you are probably aware given my citation of the disturbing imagery of Metallica’s Until It Sleeps that evening. You’ll have seen on that post that my iPod was reading my mind again in playing it – and other songs on similarly dark themes – but what is most interesting about this is that this strange form of electronic ESP took place as I was driving home from an utterly pointless dissociative trip to a coastal town about 20 miles from home.

My first proper awareness of going to said town was when I realised I was in the centre of it. I do have a very vague recollection of noticing my normal turn off and thinking that the traffic was heavy, but at no time did I think, “why the fuck are you not in that heavy traffic?” I don’t remember deciding to drive on, and I don’t remember the journey. Another small-scale fugue-like episode. Sweet.

I had been quite good on the self-harm front of late, but the good spell has been broken. ‘Bitch’ and ‘grief’ are the latest, though I don’t remember doing the former (it must have bled like fuck though as I had seemingly used a towel to stem the bloodflow). Grief. Am I grieving for myself, or for what I should have been? If so, is that good? Presumably one is meant to say, “well, the self-harm bit isn’t good,” but you know me folks – not really one to listen to that sort of argument. A is raging with C; in A’s eyes, it is C’s fault that I have taken to cutting myself again. But it isn’t. It really isn’t. All C has done is facilitate triggering discussions, and been someone to whom I am hopelessly attached, which is hardly his fault. We can’t avoid matters of this importance simply because there is a risk it may act as a trigger; the entire psychotherapeutic process would then be pointless, and I’d be left as mental as I ever was.

I’m unsure as to what exactly this entry will amount to, as I remember surprisingly little of the session – perhaps unsurprisingly. But let’s start at the very beginning and see what happens.

C pointed out that he’d been looking through his diary and saw that our current contract was due to end shortly (he thought there were two sessions remaining after Thursday; I thought one, but as it turns out it will not matter). This was something of which I was horribly well aware. Having only begun to open up to C properly in the last few weeks, I was convinced that he’d see me as a manipulative bitch – it looked, to my cynical mind, like I was trying to wrangle more time out of him by leaving the avalanche of confessions until this point. Given that my primary diagnosis is borderline personality disorder, it reasonably follows (in my eyes) that he could believe me to be manipulative, as the psychiatric establishment still seems to think that about those who have BPD more than any other psychiatric problem.

Of course, he didn’t like either the idea that he would find me manipulative, nor in particular that he would think this because I have BPD – that fixates on labels, don’t you know. Actually, it doesn’t, because it’s what I think he should think anyway – the fact that BPD is the only psychiatric diagnosis to still be treated with open contempt by mental health professionals just reinforces that point – though to be fair, I have not experienced that disdain personally, thank God.

I honestly don’t think I was being manipulative – not consciously, anyhow – but it did look like it, and that had been my worry all week. Of course, C refused to concede that this was the case in his eyes. Did he point blank deny it? I think he may well have done, but I don’t remember clearly enough to say for certain. What he was willing to admit to was that I may, consciously or otherwise, fear the end of the relationship, and act accordingly to preserve it. Which is apparently not manipulative. Hmm.

The issue of the end of therapy raised its ugly head a couple of times during the meeting. What he said at this juncture was that we should “…continue seeing each other until Christmas, at which point [he’ll] be off for a fortnight, and then we’ll review the situation in January.”

Review the situation in January. You can take a wild guess as to what I think about that. He is going to throw me out with the dirty water in cunting January. Just over a month away, after the most stressful time of the year for me (ah yes, I’m sure you’ll be treated to a delicious rant about fucking Christmas in the near future, dearest readers). A tells me that this is not what C meant; apparently, he literally meant that we shall review the situation, and if further therapy is required (as if it won’t be), then that is what the case shall be. Well, Ms Rationality of course says, “yeah, right” to that. He is going to abandon me.

I honesty don’t remember how I reacted in session to the comment about ‘reviewing things in January’. I think I simply agreed and didn’t voice the aforementioned rejection worries, but I wouldn’t swear to it. As I said, it did indeed come up again, but I don’t remember under what circumstances. I can and do appreciate that the relationship can’t be permanent – in the most rational of ways, I don’t want it to be. I want to live an independent life, free of a need for a surrogate daddy. But can C realistically expect to change 13+ years of misery and being fucked about by the NHS in seven-ish months, particularly when I have such a strong neurotic attachment to him? Trying to be objective about it, I cannot honestly fathom that as reasonable, except in especially productive scenarios (which are about as applicable to me as…um…er…something that is very un-applicable to me). This is a personality disorder. It is ingrained into every metaphorical fibre of my self, the conscious, the unconscious, whatever – and it is causing me to self-destruct. Can something of such enormity and longevity honestly be treated adequately in just over half a year?

In any case, eventually the discussion – predictably enough – returned to the eminently delightful subject matter of the preceeding week. Eugh. It was me that raised it, though not exactly through choice; we were talking about something else (no idea what now) which triggered some sort of memory – it’s a shame I’ve forgotten what that subject was, as it would be useful to know these triggers, especially in cases where there is no obvious correlation, as I think the case was in this instance.

I became rather agitated and told C that I wasn’t “going there”. I hid.

Despite my telling him to leave it, he continued to probe me – but gently and quite subtly, to be fair. I eventually admitted that I was thinking about the Pandora’s Box.

My memory is even more fragmented from here on in, though some things do stick out in my mind very clearly. I was very, very careful not to verbally articulate much at all; at one point I desperately begged, “look, don’t you see where I’m going with this?” But it appears that he believes that I need to say the words. I still have not used the word ‘rape’, and strictly speaking he could still be under the impression that it was something other than rape – but he’s not that stupid.

He must have asked what was so troubling about verbalising this material, because I remember then telling him that I am fairly tolerant of articulating the gruesome information on this blog.

“Which is odd,” I mused, “given that it is all the more real when it is written down, even more so than if I verbally discuss it. It’s there, on the blog, in black and white.” (See here, for example).

I went on to postulate the idea that perhaps it is easier to deal with in writing because I can rationalise everything; life events become something that is seen in the third person, by a narrator, an observer with at least a modicum of theoretical knowledge of that about which she writes. If I have to talk about it, I have to feel it. I am there, in the midst of it, with the rawness, the vileness, the trauma of it all.

He agreed. He didn’t say so, but a sense that he wants me to feel that repressed pain was very palpable. Maybe that is why he was such a cock when I put this, and other shit, in writing for him – in fact, I’m certain it is. What kind of profession capitalises on other people’s grief? If I asked him why he became a clinical psychologist, I’m sure he’d respond along the lines of that old cliché, “I want to help people.” What, by making them relive their darkest memories, by making them suffer through them all again? Does that not take a special kind of sadism?

I am, of course, being a little facetious; I don’t believe C to be a sadist in the least, and I do believe he is in his job for the right reasons. But the human mind, and the sciences that arise therefrom, are odd things indeed. It strikes me as strange that it is an apparent psychological necessity to directly face that which you most revile in your past, before you can heal from the wounds it inflicted.

But this is not a post about the curious concept of psychology as an academic discipline, nor is it a post about the mindsets of those practising this form of figurative alchemy; it is a post about a session I had with my therapist. So…was it at this point that I lost it? I’m not sure, but anyway, in my next clear memory, all I could see in my head was the INCIDENT, or more specifically, the moments during which I was pushed to the floor of the outhouse in which it took place and served up as tasty piece of young meat for the delectation of my uncle. I recall very strongly that (in C’s office, not in my mind) I had my head in my lap and was pelting my skull with both fists with as much strength as I could muster. I have never done anything of this ilk in C’s company before.

And so he too did something that he has never done before; he raised his voice to me. He didn’t shout, but he did raise his voice just enough to try and penetrate through the mentalism that had tenaciously gripped my mind.

“SI!” he called. Well, he didn’t of course – perhaps it will surprise some of you to learn that I have a name, a normal, very ordinary name, and he used that instead – but you know what I mean. One thing I’ll not forget about this session was that he actually used my name three times, and at one point I used his too – these things are unheard of in the whole time we’ve known each other. Does it mean something? Why do I attach such importance to something so apparently normal and trivial? Is it because using names is personal, and that I want to see him as a person, not a canvas? Who knows. I certainly don’t, but I do know that that memory sticks with me.

I think he must have somehow brought me back from this mental place, but I don’t remember the specifics. The next part of the conversation that I recall was when he asked me how I felt about myself and that I told him that I felt like a “dirty, fetid little slut.” I then rationalised things for a bit, proclaiming that I am in actuality not a slut. Unfortunately, I still felt (feel) like one.

Then I lost it again. “I’m a filthy whore,” I spat, hiding from him again with my hands.

I think he actually went as far as to tell me that I am not a whore, but that could be a phantom memory. I mean, how the fuck would he know? I could have sold sex in 28 European capitals for all he knows. One thing he definitely did do was try and help me regain my composure. I sat up and pretended to be fine, sticking out my hand to measure how much it was shaking. I have used an incident when I was about 15 as a yardstick to measure anxiety; the day after I found out about an incredibly twisted lie from my first real boyfriend (a long story that I will have to detail some day), I went into school and, in English, happened to notice how much my hand was shaking. That denotes severe anxiety and/or anger. If the shaking is less than that, things could be worse.

I told C about this. However, a brief reference to the lying cunt of an ex must have touched on the self-disgust I was already feeling over my own lying to C about the INCIDENT (when we first met I told him it was ‘mere’ touching, but that was only part of it, obviously. More on this shortly). I told him this – still without using that word – and went into a major self-invective of utter disgust and abhorrence. It was filled with ranting about how much of a shameful, lying, grotesque, hateful slag I am, lying to the one person that might be able to bring me back a little hope in this sorry mental battle, and about how guilty and sorry I am, blah blah de blah.

When I took a second to draw breath, he jumped in to try and (a) reassure me that I had nothing to feel guilty about and (b) establish exactly what it was that I felt I’d lied about.

I answered (b) first, at least to the best of my recollection. He’d specifically asked in our initial assessment sessions what form the sexual abuse took. As is my wont, I had avoided articulating myself properly, and instead managed to answer the question merely by his probing. I think, though I am not certain, that he asked if I was raped, and that I said ‘no’. I am sure that when he asked if it was inappropriate touching that I said ‘yes’, and that I led him to believe that that was all. In my defence – and I told him this in the session to which this post refers – I have dissociated a lot of the INCIDENT. I remember ghastly, loathsome pieces of it in fleeting glimpses, like looking at still pictures in an album or, sometimes, short video clips. I remember the sensations of pain and terror in these moments too. I am grateful that the memories are so brief, but also resentful of it too, as it feels like it removes my power to understand the INCIDENT and my reactions to it. Furthermore, obviously part of me does remember it, and that part is mentally fucked – perhaps it would be easier to address were it all consciously there at the front of my mind.

Anyhow, I then proceeded to respond C’s (a) point. “I lied to you,” I said simply. “Aren’t you angry with me?”

“No, of course I’m not angry with you.”

“Why not? You should be.”

He sort of laughed (he mustn’t have realised I was serious), but seeing the look on my face, he desisted from doing so abruptly.

“SI,” he said again, firmly, looking straight at me. “Do you seriously think that I should be angry with you?” His tone was a more compassionate version of ‘incredulous’.

“Yes,” I began, “fucking dirty, lying, grotesque little bitch, fucking…”

“One,” he interrupted, rather dramatically, leaning forward and counting on his fingers as he did. “We had only just met and you can’t honestly have expected yourself to deeply discuss such sensitive matters with someone you didn’t know. Two, you didn’t lie, you omitted some information…”

“But then that’s a lie of omission…” I began.

“Three!” he went on, raising his eyebrow in a surprisingly authoritative fashion, signaling that I was to let him finish, “three, this is hard for you to talk about, so it is not surprising you withheld it. What is there to be angry with?! I am not angry with you, and neither should I be.”

Well, that was me told, then. I was quite taken aback by the forcefulness of his tone. Actually, ‘forcefulness’ is a horrid word to use as it has negative connotations – let’s say ’emphatic’ instead. He was incredibly emphatic. I gaped at him in a sort of stupefied disorientation for a minute or two.

He sat back in his chair, recovered his blank canvas and either asked me how I felt, or signalled for me to speak.

“Um…” I muddled. “That’s reassuring. I do feel reassured. But it also confuses me; you have a completely different attitude to it from me.”

He seemed to understand that in fairness, which not an awful lot of people would. He was able to see the black-and-white chain of logic that I was following in believing that he ought to be angry, but luckily for C things in his world do not seem to be as black and white as they are in mine.

I don’t remember how things ended. I know that I was battered and bruised psychologically (and physically to boot what with punching my head). At no point had I been tearful, but one does not need to weep to mentally suffer. I went and sat in the car and phoned A for catharsis and reorientation purposes. Although the trauma of reliving the INCIDENT had been the most awful aspect of the session, the fact that I fixatedly whined to A that C ‘wants to abandon me’ before I even touched on the rest of things is very telling.

In later discussions A urged me to tell C about this abject fear. What’s the point? C already knows I’m terrified of him abandoning me. Perhaps the real question is ‘is my attachment to him healthy?’ There have been mixed views on this from the readership of this blog. cbtish, for example, thinks it puts me in an intolerable position (cbtish is a therapist). Vanessa from eTransference, a clinical psychologist in training who has a particular interest in the phenomenon of transference, thinks it ought to be encouraged in many ways. Others undergoing therapy – bourach and thesamesky (who’s also a counsellor) for example – have their own struggles with the therapeutic dyad (bourach in particular will understand why I thought C should be angry with me, given this post of her’s).

I don’t know what the answer is; just that the attachment is very real. Just that I feel guilty for withholding information and for lying (though he wants me to stop that – and I’ve just remembered that the session ended with him asking me, again, to try and not post-mortem things in therapy. Oops. He was also worried, after what happened with VCB’s SHO in September, that his actions or words could have a…er…detrimental effect on me. Double oops. All I can say is that I think our current dialogue is progress, regardless of any self-harm that follows). And at least I am far from alone in withholding, and even lying.

But it’s still all a bit of a quagmire, yes?

Until It Sleeps

The iPod has been acting as a mindreader again.

I’m not in the habit of doing this as this blog is mine; my life, in my words. However, sometimes others just say it (whatever ‘it’ is) better than me, and this is very much one such occasion.

So, ladies and gents, I give you the nature of my present sorry existence – as presented by Metallica.

Until It Sleeps

Where do I take this pain of mine
I run but it stays right by my side

So tear me open and pour me out
There’s things inside that scream and shout
And the pain still hates me
So hold me until it sleeps

Just like the curse, just like the stray
You feed it once and now it stays
Now it stays

So tear me open but beware
There’s things inside without a care
And the dirt still stains me
So wash me until I’m clean

It grips you so hold me
It stains you so hold me
It hates you so hold me
It holds you so hold me
Until it sleeps

So tell me why you’ve chosen me
Don’t want your grip, don’t want your greed
Don’t want it

I’ll tear me open make you gone
No more can you hurt anyone
And the fear still shakes me
So hold me, until it sleeps

It grips you so hold me
It stains you so hold me
It hates you so hold me
It holds you, holds you, holds you
Until it sleeps

I don’t want it, I don’t want it…

So tear me open but beware
There’s things inside without a care
And the dirt still stains me
So wash me ’till I’m clean

I’ll tear me open make you gone
No longer will you hurt anyone
And the hate still shames me
So hold me
Until it sleeps

(c) James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, Metallica (from the Load album, 1996).

I will write properly tomorrow, but in the meantime you can listen to and watch the video for the above here.

Mad versus Bad, Stockholm Syndrome and Defending HIM

The phenomenon of Stockholm Syndrome has been bandied about a lot in the media recently, in the wake of the Jaycee Lee Dugard abduction and, to a lesser extent, in discussion of the Fritzl case (though I am not sure to what extent Elisabeth Fritzl was affected by it).  There is a particularly good article, by trauma therapist Kathy Broady, on the condition here.

For those of you not familiar with the issue but who don’t have time to follow the links, Ms Broady puts Stockholm Syndrome thus:

It is when victims form positive, caring attachments with their violent perpetrators.  The more victims have to depend on their perpetrators for their very survival, the more likely the victim will form an attachment to their perpetrator…

[Victims] knew that their life and basic survival needs were completely dependent upon keeping the perpetrator happy.  They learned to base their own survival on effectively meeting the needs of the perpetrator, and the perpetrator had the power to decide if they would live or die.  To survive, they became loyal to the perpetrator.

Perpetrators purposefully create this kind of dependence in their victims.

As far as I am aware, and it fairly logically follows given the above set of circumstances, Stockholm Syndrome is most frequently seen in cases of long-term abuse (and is thus not particularly applicable to me).

During a recent documentary on the Dugard case, my mother sat aghast as the narrator described how Kaycee and her two daughters wept as their abuser (and father of the two younger girls) was arrested.  She admitted that, had they randomly told their story without proof, that she would have thought them to be either unforgivable liars or seriously afflicted by folie a trois.  How, she argued, could you care so deeply about a person who had so horribly and systematically abused you?

I spoke to her at length about Stockholm Syndrome, but to little avail.  She understood the concept in theory, I think, but was nevertheless unable to grasp how it could actually be.  The whole idea is so alien to her that she cannot conceive of it being a very real condition, borne – initially at least – out of necessity.

A similar, though distinct, query arose with her when the Fritzl story broke last year.  “But how is it possible for her father to have done this to his daughter?” she despaired.  As with the Dugard case, had the story not been there in black and white, I don’t think she would have believed it.

“He must be mad,” she concluded.

Quite possibly.  Indeed, quite probably.  But at what juncture do we allow abdication from Fritzl’s personal responsibility (not to mention his duty of care to his daughter, morally if not legally at her age), due to the fact he clearly had a twisted and sick brain?  When does bad become mad, and/or vice versa?

Anyway, the point of this post is not to write a psychocriminological masterpiece on Stockholm Syndrome.  I’m only here to say that, although I do not believe for one second that I have it or anything approaching it, I do understand it.

I suspect some of my readers – those few in my real life, in particular – will dislike the latter part of the title of this entry.  “Defending HIM” – ‘Him’ being MMcF’s husband, perhaps unsurprisingly.  I am going to defend him…but, and it is a very BIG ‘but’, that does not mean that I am defending his erstwhile actions towards me.

I mentioned in the last post that I’d explain why I had become less concerned for MW’s welfare so let me clarify that point.  I have been exposed to Paedo in large doses twice recently and have found myself to feel nothing other than overwhelming pity for the man.

In some ways, I have done for many years, but he was so much a shadow of his former self of late that the sense of sorriness felt all the more palpable.  I think I have alluded to the fact before that he is mental too, suffering from some unspecified psychotic disorder.  He, like me, takes Olanzapine to counteract it, and it has been effective in its indicated usage.  But he is now incredibly depressed regardless.

So what, SI?  (a) Doesn’t he deserve to be and (b) depression is treatable, so why are you decreasingly concerned for MW?

(a) Well, yes, maybe he deserves to be.  But the man has had no life.  His life, for as far back as I can remember, has been nothing more than a pathetic existence.  He was forced to marry MMcF when they were both very young, as she was up the stick (a reviled state of affairs in the ’50s), and he has been under her tenacious grip ever since.

As I have stated on the page about the people in my life, at face value MMcF is a lovely woman.  The reality, however, is that she is domineering, manipulative, cruel and overwhelmingly demanding.  I consider it no coincidence that the two of her children that still live with her – S and K – both have no lives.  In their 40s now, they will never leave that house.  I also consider it no coincidence that S had very severe social phobia and still has depression (she claims she has bipolar disorder, but none of us have ever witnessed anything approaching even hypomania, and she only takes Venlafaxine, no mood stabilisers.  But what do I know) and indeed that Paedo is severely delusional.  The two other sons eventually escaped, but are nevertheless intrinsically linked to every brick of the house’s build, as are their children.  S’s daughter seemingly escaped but her, her husband and little MW might as well move in because they are always there.

The hold is enforced by MMcF.  Frankly I am scared of her.

Now, re: Paedo.  Well, given his entrapment, I actually can understand a willingness on his part to stray.  Could he separate from her, divorce her?  He could – or could have, more accurately – but even if he had, she would have manipulated him back.  I guarantee it.

So, yes, I feel sorry for him, and long since have.  MMcF does nothing but criticise him, and yet he serves her and complies with her selfish desires without complaint, and endlessly worries about her health and welfare (neither of which are great).

It does not, however, condone child molestation, because quite clearly nothing does.  No matter how shite his life may be, may long since have been, I did not deserve to be raped by him (nor, of course, by anyone else).

All I am saying is that the person is distinct from the act, no matter how heinous or twisted that act is, so I have the ability to feel pity for this man, who did this most horrid of things to me.  I don’t like him, and I most certainly do not love him, but I feel regret that he’s had such a waste of a life, and if I can feel that, then I can completely understand how in more serious cases of abuse that that could progress to compliance, submission, friendship and even love.

(b) Yes, depression is treatable, and Paedo may well be able to be treated for same.  Still, it is very chronic, and with the aforementioned shitty life, will be all the more difficult to shift.  We have a saying in Ireland: if a person is perceived to be on their last legs or just otherwise haggard and decrepit, it is often said that they are “done”.  Well, Paedo is thoroughly and utterly done.  Quite honestly, death would be a mercy to the man.

So on the balance of probability now, I am fairly sure that he simply isn’t either physically or mentally capable of posing a threat to MW, MW’s impending sibling, or any other member of that (or any other) generation.  He is beyond it.

Of course, I am not, and cannot be, 100% certain of this – who is ever 100% of anything?  As such, I will remain vigilant and will tune my awareness to any changes in MW’s behaviour as finely as possible.  If I think for a second that the child is under threat, I will act.  I will break Paedo’s neck myself if needs be.  However, I do genuinely not perceive this as likely at the present time.

To address my mother’s points vis a vis the sad Dugard and Fritzl cases.

If you, mother, find it so hard to accept Kaycee and her children’s attachment to their abuser, consider proportionally the defence your daughter has just given of hers.  Does it seem so alien now?

Furthermore, as stated Stockholm Syndrome develops of necessity – in the case of most long-term trauma victims, because they cannot escape the situation, so it is better to ’embrace’ (for want of a better word) what the abuser wants, in order to make life somewhat more tolerable.  In my case, evidently a less serious one, I would also say that some of my reaction to Paedo has developed of necessity.

I have basically accepted him, and I have kept the story to myself, to save an entire extended family.  Others could have been abused, I know, and I will never stop wondering if I could have prevented that – but I would have had to go to the police, alone, as a traumatised child, and with a total lack of evidence, what would have happened anyway?  So, with the best will in the world, I could hardly have prevented harm to that generation, and so I did all I could in the circumstances – I tried to keep the family my mother loves together.  And now I am looking out for the next generation’s welfare, which is the best I can do now.  I cannot ruin a family over an incident 16 years ago for which I have no evidence.

So no, abused individuals do not automatically hate and reject their abusers, for a multitude of reasons.

Finally, why is it really so impossible to believe that close relatives can and do abuse those close to them?  Many readers will be aware that most acts of sexual violence are perpetrated by someone known to the victim.*  Well, I can’t say the rape and the overt sexual behaviour were particularly systematic in my case but still – he was my uncle, I was his niece, so there you go.

* Child Sexual Abuse Fact Sheet, National Child Traumatic Stress Network – http://www.nctsnet.org/nctsn_assets/pdfs/caring/ChildSexualAbuseFactSheet.pdf