This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Perspectives from the Mentalist's Partner

Pandora’s partner, A, discusses her psychotic and dissociative episodes, and how he has curiously found these instances less frustrating than her periods of depression. [...]

Just a quick post really (at least by my verbose standards). I’m not sure whether I’m actively seeking advice here or whether this will be rhetorical musing, but I’ll see where my fingers-to-the-keys take me. My mother rang me about 11am this morning, but I was suffering from a (fairly infrequent of late) Seroquel hangover, [...]

So, here I am playing catch-up with the C sessions here, thanks to my recent laziness and endless forays into procrastination.  Let me add an advisory preamble to this post: I’m afflicted right now with a terrible dose of Blog-and-life-inertia-itis, so don’t expect this to be remotely scintillating, like several of you curiously found Sunday’s [...]

I don’t really see a lot of point in going into great detail about last week’s (15 April) session with C, mainly as we spent almost the entire time together discussing my recent hallucinations which I have already detailed here and here. Furthermore, because I’ve been too lazy, too fuckwitted or too pre-occupied with other [...]

Despite the name of this blog, I don’t think I’ve ever written much about the subject of insomnia. Well, it’s about 2.35am and I am wide-awake, so let me address that issue right now. I know that I could be using this time to write something useful (insofar as the rubbish I write here can [...]

Over the weekend and today I’ve been cracking up completely (yeah, I know, <insert standard comment about it ‘being a bit late for that’ here>), and losing pieces of what fragile sanity I have left little by little.  I posted the other day about how ‘They’ were plaguing me with their bile mantras emphasising my [...]

I did a bit of acting as a child.  If I hadn’t gone doolally as a teenager, or come to weigh 10,000 stone in my adulthood, it would have been the ideal profession; I am very, very good at it, and employ it in nearly all aspects of my normal living. Yesterday, aside from my [...]

I saw my consultant psychiatrist, NewVCB, for the second time this morning, an appointment that I’d been dreading for days.  Even though my first encounter with her back in January had gone without any significant hitch, and even though I had established on that occasion that she was not as formidably intimidating as OldVCB, I [...]

Last year, the Beeb produced an appalling episode of its long-running Panorama show on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, strongly inferring that the only people who would genuinely be afflicted with the disorder were soldiers traumatised by battle.  As the title of the documentary – The Trauma Industry – suggested, the central tenet of the program was [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 Marcus. Obvioulsly I didn’t. I also told A, apparently believing completely, that ScumFan was a drug-dealer (he’s not) and that A [...]

The Questions I Never Wanted to Face - C: Week 30

I’ve been avoiding writing this entry, in part due to a continuing malaise with being arsed to do anything, never mind soul-searching and expunging myself across the internet. But it’s not just been that. There’s nothing that I am going to say that is unknown amongst the circles that read this blog, but talking about [...]

Remonstrations with C - Week 29

I was absolutely dreading seeing C last week, after the disaster of the previous week.  Although the rawness of my hurt and anger had abated somewhat, I still felt fucked over and undermined, and obviously had no idea what he was thinking.  In fact, I’d arrived at a position of relative indifference towards him, something [...]

Ouchies

Owing to the pain of this – - I’ve been somewhat in absentia from the blogosphere recently.  Was this gash – which is actually worse than the above suggests, being as it was nearly a removed-tip-of-finger – deliberate?  Was it fuck!  I even commented on the annoying irony of this on Twitter.  On Saturday the [...]

I Hate the Therapeutic Relationship - C: Week 25

I don’t hate this bizarre relationship because I hate C – quite the opposite today, as it happens, but I’ll get to that later.  What I hate is the power this one individual can have over me; he has the power to make me go about smiling, or, alternatively, to leave his office seriously contemplating [...]

Hearing The Voice (and Other Psychoses)

I’ve mentioned the voice quite a bit lately, but I haven’t really gone into any detail about it. Largely, that’s because there’s not really a great deal about him to discuss. Still, I thought I’d make my best effort, as quite clearly hearing voices represents psychosis (or at least something odd), which clearly does not [...]

What's Annoying Me Today, and Ruminations on Seeing the Psychiatrist

Well, fuck me, but didn’t the VCB actually manage to bother her arse seeing me today.  Will wonders ever cease?! I took my Mum with me to the horrible, dilapidated, thoroughly depressing place as I wanted VCB to see that I was nervous about seeing her.  And was I nervous, oh yes. I had had [...]

Things are, indeed, bad.  I seem to have got myself a stalker.  Did I write here that a few weeks ago whilst manic I went up to some bloke in the pub and started talking to him?  Well, if I didn’t chronicle it, then there you go. A was with me, and it was all [...]

Venlafaxine / Effexor - A Med of Dread?

The below is a list of symptoms that I have experienced since starting to take Venlafaxine (75mg) from 15 June.  It is redacted in places, for either personal reasons or to help the ‘flow’ of this post, but essentially this is from a list I have been maintaining with the intention of showing Dr C [...]

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

Or at least if he is, he did not tell me so, and he is still having supervision sessions with his boss so it doesn’t look like he’s going any time soon!  To be honest I didn’t mention my irrational fear to him about him leaving (that I expressed yesterday), but I am fairly sure [...]