Ending Therapy: How To (Mostly But Not Entirely) Do It Properly – Paul: Week 25, Part II

 Nexus, Paul, Psychotherapy, Recovery, Sexual Abuse, Traumatic Stuff  3 Responses »
Oct 282011
 

This post is continued from here. What follows will not make a great deal of sense unless you’ve read that first; however, it mostly likely won’t make a great deal of sense if you have. I disclaim any culpability for the boredom, confusion and irritation at the mammoth self-indulgence that you will find in the forthcoming. If you want to ruin 20 minutes of your day by continuing to tolerate this complete and utter nonsense, then you do so at YOUR OWN RISK. Now, rather than bother with this bullshit, why don’t you have yourself a nice pint instead?

—

After a contemplative silence, Paul moved back to discussing my writing projects; he wanted to know what they were about. I was forced to admit that everything I have been doing in this sphere has been about mentalism. Even my proposed novel is going to be about mental health issues.

I defended the piece for Rethink on the grounds that it is about my recovery from borderline personality disorder. As I stated to Paul, there is a false perception that BPD is incurable and that, furthermore, there are a billion myths out there about how people with the disorder can’t have loving relationships, or that they’re abusive, etc etc, ad infinitum (Zarathustra noted that I’d debunked some of this bullwank in my writing of this blog, which I hope is true). In that way, I think that article was a very important one to write, because these fallacies need to be corrected, and people afflicted with BPD deserve to have some genuine hope of recovery.

However, as I’m sure many of you will agree, living a life narrative entirely dictated by one’s mental illness is a potentially dangerous idea. I should, at least sometimes, write about normal stuff (insofar as anything is ‘normal’). I told him that I was considering resurrecting the Not as Smart as Pandora Braithwaite blog, which had once been my haven to bang on about telly, the arseholery of Facebook, gaming – normal things in which I take an interest, rather than being devoted to the exclusive domain of mental health or the lack thereof.

Indeed, at about the time of this session, when I was feeling so much better, my prolific posting here on Confessions went notably down. This was because I was living in that fabled place called real life and, y’know…doing stuff.

“Well,” he said, looking piercingly over his glasses at me, “I take what you’re saying, and mostly agree. But you don’t want to be too sane in your writing. That would see you suppressing that pained part of yourself yet again.”

Ha. Would it really. I don’t often use this blog to ‘let loose’ with feeling and emotion, and I am certainly not going to do that with any published pieces. That is just not me.

Rather than labour the point, though, I returned to my old favourite Freudian dictum about the transition from “hysteria” to “ordinary unhappiness.”

To my considerable consternation, Paul started quoting that arsehole R.D. Laing whose tolchock, were he still alive, I would take pleasure in punching. Paul claims that, as per Laing’s advice, he suspends his concept of normality when working with clients. At some point or another, he also alluded to Adam Philips and his book Going Sane. In short, he was blathering about how we are all mad in our own way. Laing-hatred notwithstanding, I did have to concede that point to him.

“The problem I face,” I sighed, “is that I have been out of work for so long now that all I know is mentalness and the pertinent issues surrounding it. It has entirely become my life, yet people in the real world don’t care. They don’t spend their days talking about psychosis or manic depression or borderline personality disorder. They talk about the weather, last night’s shit TV, politics and salary cuts. They don’t care.” I briefly (and anonymously) alluded to a post that Seaneen had written on this subject (a second excellent article she wrote on the issue for One in Four can be found here).

Seaneen is still highly involved with organisations like Rethink, but her own mental health is not the sole kaleidoscope through which she sees life these days; her life is about her boyfriend, her family and friends, and her mental health nursing course, which is an amazing thing, and something to which to aspire. Could it ever be that way for me, though? I have no idea, but one thing I do know is that I have a right gob on me, and whether normals care or not, I will end up talking about mentalism. I mean, I just won’t walk into a room and go, “hi, my name’s Pandora. Yours? … Nice name, I like that. Anyway, I’m mental. … No, I mean really mental. I had borderline personality disorder and still have manic depression and complex PTSD with psychotic and dissociative features. … Hey! Where are you going? … What did I say?!” No, obviously not like that. But if someone says, “where did you get that scar from?” or “so, what were you doing before I met you?” I am going to tell them the truth (see my posts on speaking up here and here).

Having babbled all that out, I concluded my monologue to Paul by saying that although I’m not sure about the accuracy of the perennial ‘one in four’ statistic, that at least it serves as a sort of motif to highlight the prevalence of mental health difficulties in society. “So why not speak up?” I pondered. “Fuck stigma. Fighting it is my cause célèbre.”

He said, “I work five days a week, and I’m off for two – so I get a break from the intensity that inevitably comes with my job. You, however, never get a break from your mind.”

I nodded pointlessly.

He went on, “so wouldn’t it be nice if you could not be mental for, say, two days a week?”

I nodded pointlessly again.

“So…could you take a break from your cause célèbre for a couple of days a week?”

Of course I can. I already do. I don’t spend every single sodding day trying to play some sort of omnipotent mental health warrior advocate. However, that does not mean that I can somehow turn off my mind during those non-advocacy periods, as his penultimate comment had insinuated. If it were that simple, I would have no mental health problems at all, would I?!

Nevertheless, he asked me in what activities I could engage that did not pertain to madness. I monotoned out the usual list you might expect to see on the ‘what are your interests’ section of a social network or dating profile. For some reason, that led to a short discussion around my frequent disconnections from the world at large – how I push this laptop away, religiously ignore my phone, and hide alone in my living room, pretending that no one else exists.

I shrugged. “That’s not healthy, is it?”

“There’s a fine line there,” Paul replied, cocking his head in muse. “Overall I think that whether or not it’s healthy, it’s more normal than not – but I suppose it depends on the extent of it.”

“You see, I struggle with this a lot,” I complained. “If you will permit my use of psychiatric parlance for once, where does pathology end and idiosyncrasy begin? Or, indeed, vice versa.”

As you know, most darling readers, I’ve been grateful for my diagnoses, and have found having a name for the various aspects of my insanity to be helpful in several ways. However, I still think this issue is a very valid criticism of the practice and more general discipline of psychiatry. I suppose the line is where the ‘idiosyncrasy’ becomes distressing to the ‘idiosyncrasist’ (indeed, for this reason, there is an ongoing debate about the validity of schizoid personality disorder as a discrete condition), but even that line can be blurred.

“My wife has a great-uncle that the family frequently describe as ‘eccentric’,” Paul told me. “When they mentioned it in front of me, I responded by saying that that simply meant that he was mad, but with money.”

I laughed. A fair enough assessment – most people I’ve heard described as ‘eccentric’ would broadly fit within that bracket.

Anyway, he had reminded me of a conversation I’d once had with Mike, my erstwhile teacher. For some reason Mike and I had been talking about how well (or indeed badly) we fitted in with social norms, and I characterised myself as, indeed, “eccentric.”

“No, Pandora,” he’d responded. “Not ‘eccentric’. You’re individual.”

Paul liked this little anecdote. Apparently Mike’s “eloquent” distinction had touched upon Paul’s perceived truth that psychiatry involves a certain amount of repression of one’s individuality. He banged on that sanity and insanity are concepts created by times and places.

He’s right – to a point. Psychiatry is an imperfect science, if indeed it can be said to be a science at all, and if we consider the inclusion of homosexuality as a mental illness as recently as the DSM-III, I can agree that some supposed diagnoses are societally constructed. Despite my general support for this field, I do accept those criticisms of it, and have never denied them. But, as I said, there’s a point, surely, when that can no longer be true. I’m told, reliably so, that hallucinating gnomes and being so severely depressed that all you can think about is killing yourself on a chronic basis are not normal states in which to exist…and I would believe that that, at least, transcends times and places.

Not that I had the balls to say any of that to Paul. I sat there, nodding pathetically compliantly. What the fuck, Pandora? Am I afraid of him unwitting me or something? Of looking less intelligent than him (which, frankly, I probably am)? Why can I debate my points intelligently and coherently online or even in the fucking pub, but not do it with Paul? What a stupid bitch.

As I allowed his anti-psychiatry rhetoric to progress, I found myself becoming vaguely irritated with him again. Not because of his opposition to that field per se, but because of how he related it back to me. One thing that had apparently been “big” in his engagement with me had been “peeling back the layers” that were “enforced upon” me: diagnoses, medical examinations, medication.

“It’s like it’s been forgotten,” he intoned with an infuriating earnestness, “that somewhere in there is an abused little girl.” [Emphasis mine. I am SO unutterably fucking sick of that fucking fucking fucking term. Jesus hot jumping Christ sliding down a shit-stick. Just. Fucking. Stop. Fucking. Calling. Her. Fucking. That. GAH!]

(Hypocritical) Ranting about terminology aside, this assessment of my situation was not fair. NewVCB has been really good about the abuse bullshit; she usually asks me at some point during each appointment how things are in my head in relation to that subject. She doesn’t just wank endlessly on about my current symptoms, blindly throwing medication at me as a result. OK, so she doesn’t go into intimate, cringe-worthy detail about the whole sordid mess when I’m with her – but guess what, Paul? She isn’t fucking meant to. That’s your job. You’re the therapist, she’s the the psychiatrist. Simple.

More irritably than I’d intended, I retorted that I had not been a “nice little girl,” as he appeared to opine. As I said, “I was precocious, and because of that I was haughty and arrogant at times. In that way my current predilections toward so-called intellectualising are entirely in keeping with my child self.” My point in saying so had been to infer to him that this constant bollocking on about me v my repressed self was not as clear-cut as he might like to think.

He hammered on for a bit with a story he’d told me before. Little boy falls in the playground, maintains a stiff upper lip all day long, eventually sees his mother and then bursts into tears. Containment, blah de blah, yadda yadda.

“It’s a harsh judgement to describe yourself as precocious. You had to be precocious to survive,” he declared.

Oh really? I mean, seriously?

  1. This particular elucidation implicitly suggests that being precocious is an inherently bad thing. Why the fuck should that be the case? Surely being an intelligent child is something to be welcomed, something that both that child and those around it should find gratifying?
  2. I can’t prove anything, but I’d be stunned if precociousness and abuse are directly correlated. I’m all but certain that not every smart child has been/is being abused, and I’m equally sure that not every abused child is demonstrably highly intelligent.
  3. On a related note, why does everything have to come back to abuse and spurious psychodynamic interpretation? Can’t some things just fucking be?

Palpably uncomfortable with the direction in which this conversation was headed, I tried to shift the subject – but I did it subtly, so that it was still ostensibly related to what he’d said. I said that, in a non-literal sense, from what I could remember I had been a Jekyll and Hyde type of kid. The weird, insular one that despite her then-popularity couldn’t relate to her peers – and then the ordinary, outgoing person that most of the world saw.

“I don’t recall having any distressing examples of mental illness until at least my late childhood,” I told him, though now that I think about it, that can’t be true. I tried to strangle myself when I was nine, and I had that constant, horrid somatic feature of itchy feet with such sickening frequency – so evidently some shit was definitely hitting some fans there. But then, I have so many anamnestic gaps when it comes to my brathood that I can’t easily tell you what the conditions generally were.

“In retrospect,” I continued, “obviously I was a bit barmy – I mean, I lived nightly with pseudo-hallucinations and a delusion that a terrorist was right outside my door, every single night. But I don’t recall being chronically unhappy.”

Paul jumped on the terrorist comment with a force that could turn this metaphor literal. He said, “‘terrorised’ is a pretty good word to describe what you must have felt about the abuse, isn’t it?”

It depends whether you subscribe to the etymological or legal definition of the word ‘terrorism’, I suppose. Me, I tend to view terrorism as a macro phenomenon, ostensibly carried out for political or religious reasons (but really carried out simply because you’re a fucking cunt). It’s all very well for Paul to draw parallels between Paedo and my horrified dread each night that I was about to be murdered, but perhaps he forgets my age and my origin. I grew up in Northern Ireland in the ’80s and early ’90s. Terrorism was a very real issue here and then. Could there not be some connection to that, rather than everything always being about being a paedophile’s plaything?

“I’m reminded of a client I used to work with,” he said, as I sat there wondering silently when he might realise that not everything should be narrowed down to Freudian analysis. “When he first properly started communicating with me, he said, ‘I’ve put a bomb under your car’.”

I regarded Paul with an expression of complete revulsion. What a vile thing to say – especially to someone who’s meant to be helping you!

“It was his way of saying, ‘how would you feel if your life were threatened?’” Paul explained. “He had to find some way of expressing how his deepest fears affected him, and that was it.”

Maybe so; I can understand the context of the remark, I suppose, but it feels re-abusive to me – and much as I sympathise and empathise with any abuse victim, re-enacting what happened to you by abusing another is not on in my book (there’s a lot I could say on that, but this post ((and its predecessor)) is ((are)) already stupidly long and way too introspective vis a vis what it’s ((they’re)) meant to actually be discussing).

“In the same way, your most buried terror was expressed – perfectly appropriately – as fear of a terrorist,” Paul was continuing. “Do you remember when we first commenced this therapy that I told you that all clients are geniuses? Well, there’s a perfect example of it. That was a genius thing to do.”

Whilst there can be no doubt that the human mind is capable of great things, I’ve always been slightly uncomfortable with the assertion that it simply doing its unconscious job is something worthy of being considered ‘genius’. Surely genius involves intellect, which involves thinking, which surely involves conscious consideration? Still, I’m not a psychologist. A widely-read layperson, maybe, but by no means an expert.

“I firmly believe,” Paul continued, “that all delusional stuff is based in reason.”

I can see what he’s saying, to be fair, and I acknowledged that. The connection he was making in my case is at least arguable. However, what about the cases where a person believes that he or she is Jesus Christ or something? That’s not me rejecting Paul’s claims outright, by the way. It’s a genuine query; in all seriousness, where does that come from, and in what way would it be functional?

In any case, I went on to tell him that I’d gone through very little psychotic experiences in the couple of months that had led up to this session – a few whispers from fringe facets of the odious ‘They‘, but nothing more than that. Rather than simply be glad of it, though, he irked me a little by stating that he was sure that NewVCB would “chalk that up to the wonders of Seroquel.”

Again, this was unfair. As she had openly stated to me once, she only cares about ‘what works’ – and for me, that seems to have been a combination of therapy and psychopharmacology. Moreover, I would chalk my lack of psychosis up to Seroquel myself in many ways – but I’m willing to acknowledge that therapy has also played its part. What’s so terrible about a dual approach?!

He ranted a bit about how Seroquel in particular was being “handed out like sweeties” these days (first I’ve heard of it), but when I actually went to defend both it and psychiatric diagnoses – as useful adjuncts and guidance in the treatment of mentalness respectively – he curiously backed down.

And this is why he’s not a dick. We may disagree, and I may rant here about issues over which there could have been minor conflicts, but he’s not a dick. Ultimately, despite some of his more sarky reactions to my defence of psychiatry in the past, he is willing to respect me as an individual, with individual views. And while, in another time and place, the disagreements we have may have merited longer discussion, that was not possible here, and it was of the upmost importance to him – and me – that we parted on a convivial note.

And suddenly, that note of departure was finally realised. Paul said, his voice deep with regret,”we’ve come to the end.”

As I stood, he told me that it had “really been a pleasure” working with me, and that he would “truly miss” our sessions. I advised him that the feeling was entirely mutual, and went on to tell him that I intended to re-refer myself to the organisation come September or October (as I now have done). I asked if that was too soon, but he said that it wasn’t – as long as I was comfortable with that timeframe, then he was too.

“I look forward to working with you again,” he assured me, as he opened and held the door for me for the final time.

The last bits of these things are always the most awkward. How do you say ‘goodbye’ in a professional but affectionate manner? Rarely have I felt so horribly exposed as the socially awkward knob that I am. After handing him his pound of flesh, I suddenly grabbed his hand, shook it and said that it had “been a pleasure” working with him. Almost before he could respond, I smiled idiotically at him and told him to take care.

“You too,” he said unsurely, but with palpable warmth.

We said our goodbyes, and I left hurriedly. My car was close, and as I had done when things ended with C, I sat in the driver’s seat for quite a while ruminating on the ramifications of the (thankfully temporary) cessation of the relationship. Rather than bawl my eyes out though, I allowed myself to shed one single tear of mourning, then wiped my eyes, shot myself a reassuring grin in the rear-view mirror, and drove away.

Ending Therapy: How To (Mostly) Do It Properly – Paul: Week 25, Part I

 Nexus, Paul, Psychotherapy, Recovery, Sexual Abuse, Traumatic Stuff  1 Response »
Oct 282011
 

“So this is it,” he declared, his tone swathed in unwitting drama.

“Yes,” I pointlessly confirmed.

Paul and I looked at each other – what does one say when one comes to the end of a relationship? If the relationship is romantic, although the words are difficult, they’re clear (mostly). If you’re ending a friendship, you generally let it peter out without any particular show-down. But when you’re ending a relationship whose very point is its ending – so as you can live a better life without it – what do you say?

I never did write in detail about my final session with C in August 2010. In short, I sat there defiantly, refusing to tell him my future plans. He whinged a bit about not knowing what would happen to me (something that NewVCB, much to my chagrin, revealed to him – bloody bitch!), and I took satisfaction in his ignorance. When it was over, instead of the normal, “we’ll have to leave it there for today,” he said, “we’ll have to leave it all there.” I stood up, with dignity I think, reluctantly shook his outstretched hand, bade him goodbye, and walked down the corridor with my head held high.

When I got into my car, however, I sat and cried for 20 minutes before finally driving away, but – unless he’s been reading this bilge, which (given the Mind Award nomination and a piece I had in a national publication that I know he reads a few months ago) is actually not impossible – he doesn’t know that.

Anyway, the End of Times with Paul was much more amiable and respectful (as if you couldn’t have guessed that!), excepting a few niggles that I’ll play up later for the purposes of rant material (I’ve noted from my archives that my bitching about C was far more entertaining than my appreciation of Paul, so…). I didn’t piss about trying to keep my future plans secret; Paul made it very clear that he had found working with me to be a challenging but fascinating (!) and enriching (!!) experience; I concluded that ultimately, psychotherapy with him had been greatly beneficial to me. 25 weeks with him compared to 63 with C, the latter having left me in a worst psychological position than when I’d first met him (though the extent to which C is to blame for that is, of course, debatable).

I hope you don’t think I’m employing some sort of apotheosis in the regard I hold for Paul. As the last session (and, to an extent, this one) demonstrate(d), he is not perfect for me; but our differences and any potential conflict points are minor enough that they can be mostly overlooked, and although I still view the concept of therapeutic transference as a beneficial phenomenon in terms of long-term therapy, in terms of a short-term interaction, I think that I shared a healthier relationship with Paul than I did with C. Time has numbed the agony of the bitter wounds I felt so profoundly regarding the latter, to the extent where I feel a bit bad saying that, but overall I can only speak my truth, and that’s it.

Anyhow, in an entirely predictable twist of fate, Paul finally asked me how I felt about the end of the process. “And how well have we done?” he added.

“Fairly well,” I concluded. “I mean, I don’t think 25 weeks is an adequate timeframe for any psychological therapy, but that said, within the weeks that we’ve had, I think a lot of progress has been made – at the very least, we’ve made a good start.”

I also observed that the fact that I was able to return to Nexus in future was a reassurance and, further, that perhaps a break was actually a good thing, given how intense the process had at times been.

He reported (and I concurred) that in his view we had had a “really healthy” relationship, and he stated how much he’d enjoyed working with me. The experience was “very powerful”, apparently. An intriguing comment, I felt; what is even remotely ‘powerful’ about talking to an intellectual snob that loathes the child she used to be and is ambivalent towards the person that abused that child? I personally think it’s fucked up, but who am I to question the judgement of others?

Paul broke into this internal train of rumination. “It’s always great when you’re able to strip away layers, and meet the real person,” he was saying. “And when you get there, you see that there’s a really nice person sitting there.”

I winced at this, and it must have been visible to him, because he laughed at the implied self-invective inherent in my expression.

“You know I have an aversion to compliments,” I hissed, almost spitting the final word out of my mouth.

He laughed again and said, “yes, that’s why I said it!”

Cheeky sod. I am so not ‘really nice’. I mean, even if I were likable – and I don’t necessarily believe that I am – ‘nice’ is such a pathetic word. Paul meant well in his employment of it, I know, but seriously. Before I met A, I went on a few dates that would never have led anywhere. Through same, I met one bloke in particular who seemed genuinely interested in me: the reason that it would never have worked, though, was because he was just so nice. There was no passion, no fire. Just…niceness. I wouldn’t even describe my best mates as ‘nice’. My best friends are smart, funny, witty, irreverent, yadda yadda. They’re not nice. ‘Nice’ is not a ‘nice’ word (as a general rule. There are exceptions – how else would you prove the rule?).

Anyway, that was a pointlessly stupid tangent. I eventually responded to Paul by saying that I had been at a stage in my life for a wee bit where I could accept compliments by saying “thank you,” as opposed to my previous automatic responses of, “oh, you can’t be serious – have you not seen how ugly/fat/boring/stupid/inept at cutting hedges/unable to operate a unicycle using only my tongue/whatever I am?!” Nevertheless, despite my newly found skills in using the words ‘thank you’, being complimented still leaves me squirming.

I exemplified by talking about a mate of ours, who has made no particular secret of the fact that he has something of a crush on me (something I don’t get in itself, mais oui). After imbibing a few too many on-offer pints in his company one evening, I made a thinly veiled reference to the sexual abuse to him. He started wanking on and on and on about how ‘brave’ and ‘courageous’ and ‘intelligent’ and ‘charismatic’ etc I supposedly am. Despite the lowering of inhibitions contingent upon the consumption of alcohol, I still felt horrified by all his gushing. Yeah, there was a part of me that was intimidated by the fact that he has an attraction to me – but it was more than that. It was the praise itself that perturbed me; had it come from someone without an ostensible ‘thing’ for me, I’d have felt the same.

Paul – for the second time, I think – alluded to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo novels. Apparently, the protagonist interprets all support as having an ulterior motive or as being a trick. This led to her being viewed by others as paranoid, but Paul contended that she was responding contextually appropriately in light of her previous relationships, which had been used to manipulate and deceive her.

I empathised entirely with this position; as I told him, one of the rules I’ve lived by for pretty much as long as I can remember is that “everyone is a {insert expletive noun of your choice here} until they prove otherwise.”

“Is that as bad as it was?” he asked.

“No,” I replied – and I am surprised by how genuinely I felt (and, I think, feel) that. “And things in general aren’t as bad as they were.” I told him about the non-Confessions writing projects I’d taken on. An article for Rethink’s Your Voice magazine, for example (not sure when that’s being published, but as and when I know, I’ll advise any readers that care). Latterly some articles for Mind’s blog. Being able to do these things was testament to my improved psychological condition.

“But I think the best measurement of my recovery is exemplified by A’s experience of things,” I mused. “I can’t externally assess my condition, whereas he can. We went from my intention to poison myself with helium to going out geocaching, writing articles and even considering voluntary work.”

As I told Paul, A had also considered my ability to drive in Fuerteventura as an almost perfect metaphor of how far I had come.

[Incidentally, in an entirely predictable reversal of fortune, it's a measure of relapse that I haven't been geocaching for months, have only done a little writing and have not applied for the proposed voluntary position. But at the time of this session - June - I was feeling positive and was looking forward.]

There was a silence for a minute or two, then Paul asked what I was doing for me. Apparently that which I had detailed previously, with the exception of geocaching, was about stuff I was doing for others.

“There’s a certain amount of self-interest in the writing,” I admitted. “It all builds into a portfolio, whether it’s under my real name or my pseudonym, and as I’ve been told I have some talent [!], that might be useful in terms of securing some ‘proper’, paid writing jobs. I’m not delusional about it – I’m never going to make a fortune out of the pursuit, nor do I think it’s a viable full-time job – but you never know; it could be a potential supplementary income.”

“Beyond that? Any other things you’re doing for you?” he queried. Humph. I was ever so slightly miffed – I had that thought the whole writing thing was really rather good!

When I didn’t immediately answer he spoke for me, saying, “well, at least you’re not self-harming. That’s a good thing not to be doing for yourself.”

I shrugged non-committally. I wasn’t self-harming at the time, but even now I just can’t view it with the same horror that he seems to.

He decided to pursue a different vein. “Have we got the balance right? You know, discussing your abusive experiences but also including the whole mental health and psychosis stuff.”

I responded, truthfully, in the affirmative. “I see why we need to focus on the former at times, obviously,” I opined, “but the two aren’t mutually exclusive, are they? My mental health issues have more origins than just those of the abuse, and I think it’s helpful to examine those as well. In terms specifically of psychotic presentations, well – those can’t go unaddressed, can they? So yeah, the balance is good.”

Paul nodded, but went on to say that “when we’re touching on the abuse and feelings related to that, there’s lots of you ‘keeping a lid’ on everything. You have a lot of uncapped pain there, that we’ve only really started to get close to.”

He mentioned the concept of ego-splitting again (ie. the more functional me versus the pained, dissociated mess that Aurora is and that I, myself, often am too), and stated that when dealing with the dissociated part, we had had to tread very carefully during our work together. He seemed to be wondering if he’d pushed too hard at times, or if he hadn’t pushed enough at others. Personally, I think he judged each incidence of this really very well.

He went on to say that he’d experienced the full force of repressed rage projected onto him by other clients – never me – and that it was “pretty horrendous” (though ultimately beneficial). He wondered aloud why I’d never done that; was it to protect myself – or was it to protect others?

The latter is, by and large, the reality. Now, this is an odd one. I have a bolshy, extremely stubborn streak in me when I’m being treated unreasonably, viz the Health Trust saga – but by and large, anger and I are not intimate acquaintances. It lies dormant within me, I know, but it’s only rarely expressed in its rawest form. I will almost never get properly angry without an obvious, here-and-now reason, such as how the Trust failed me, or being falsely charged for something, whatever. Of course, Paul would argue that I have every right to be angry in terms of that to which Paedo subjected me. Rationally, of course, this is a perfectly reasonable position to hold, but I can’t seem to agree. That was 20 fucking years ago, you know? I am calm and collected and calculated. I am zen. *practices mindfulness*

…..

Nah, you guessed it – mindfulness is one thing that could actually wake that hibernating anger, so it can get away to fuck. Anyway, yeah; I rarely feel that visceral sort of fury, and even when I do, I actively attempt to suppress it for, in the main, the sake of those around me. I pointed out to Paul that the (very few) people with whom I deal in everyday life have nothing to do with Paedo’s sexual fascination with little people – so why on Earth would I want to subject them to anything even vaguely relating to it? Besides. I simply don’t feel anything other than a sneering disdain for the man. Bizarre and substantially fucked up? Probably. But true, despite it all. In my conscious mind at least, it just isn’t there.

What I did admit to, though, was my penchant for being very easily irritated. For instance, I drop a pen. I yell expletives at the poor inanimate thing, then kick it across the room in a fit of pathetically infantile pique (oh and then I feel guilty for being so irrationally nasty, catalysing me into – yeah, wait for this one, folks – apologising to the pen. Sane? No. I shouldn’t imagine so).

“Perhaps,” I psycho-babbly posited, “what should come out as a kind of righteous anger towards my uncle instead reveals itself as acute but in-the-moment strong annoyance at very silly little things. I mean, I’d never thought of that potential connection before, but I can see that in context it might be some sort of projection of more profound issues.”

I paused, then decreed that my previous assertions had been “nothing more than pseudo-psychological straw-clutching” because “everyone gets outrageously pissed off when they drop a pen, don’t they?” Well, readers – don’t they? You know it’s true. You know!

—

This post has (unsurprisingly) got out of hand. It shall ergo contineth on the morrow (or rather, later on, given that this is after midnight, but let’s not quibble over niceties). Nighty night, loveliest people! x

—

Continued here.

Semantics, Psychosis and Severance – Paul: Week 24

 Nexus, Paul, Psychotherapy, Sexual Abuse  7 Responses »
Oct 202011
 

As any of you who have followed my accounts of my sessions with Paul will know, I have a lot of time for the man. I both like and respect him. However, there are a few criticisms that could be justifiably levied in his direction:

  • He almost always reads something into everything. I appreciate Dr Freud’s input into therapeutic theory and practice, but some stuff – just some – is just that: stuff.
  • He is a vehement opponent of the medical model of mental illness (presumably the term ‘mental illness’ would in itself offend him. I’d actually prepared a post ages ago, in which I confoundedly asked why this description is so offensive to some people – I just don’t get it. But I’ve gone and lost my bloody notebook, so that’ll have to wait. Well done, Pan!).
  • He keeps blaming people around me for not ‘noticing’ my abuse. Yeah, because it’s fucking standard for each family in the entire universe to be intimately acquainted with the warning signs, isn’t it?
  • His constant use of the phrase, that little girl. So saying that I have a mental illness offends Paul? Well, saying that I have a ‘little girl’ inside me offends me.

I think the palpable irritation of the foregoing probably sets the tone of this session quite well. Indeed, it makes me think that perhaps I was being slightly disingenuous in recently so vocally applauding Paul in comparison to C (though, that said, I stand by my assertion that the former has been more help to me than the latter – I spent many sessions in C’s company wanting to punch him, and only a few such occasions arose with Paul). At any rate, from the offset in this appointment, he irritated the hell out of me. Also, although towards the end there was finally some useful work being done, I felt a bit out of it for most of the session (I had been up to 3am the previous night trying to stop a good friend of mine from killing herself, and had not slept for ages after retiring either) and the whole thing felt a bit disjointed. So, I’m going to go through it in bullet points. Of course, my version of bullet points is everyone else’s version of a protracted essay with a few random, indented dots thrown in for no clear reason, but what else would you have come to expect? Beware of triggers for self-harm and child sex abuse, though the latter is not especially graphic.

  • We discussed our relationship briefly at the start of the session. He proffered the view that one thing that had not really occurred during our time together was any trace of him trying to “rescue me”. Apparently, he’d seen some “scary stuff”, mainly in relation to my erstwhile tendencies towards self-harm (‘normal’ cutting did not, I think, faze him especially. However, my particular modus operandi was often to carve words into my flesh or, latterly, to stab myself with a scalpel. I’m actually shrugging as I type this – such actions really are no big deal to me. They must be to him, though). I opined that his reactions were “refreshing”: C, for example, would often have seemed perplexed by and disdainful of my self-injurious behaviour; A would groan every day it happened; Mum was abjectly horrified. Paul’s dislike of the activity was certainly evident, to be fair, but he never tried to actively stop me from engaging in it, knowing that destructive as it was, it was an important coping mechanism for me at the time. Anyhow, as I noted to him on this occasion, I hadn’t self-harmed for ages. Medication was partly to blame – not that I dared to tell him that – but, to his credit, so I think was therapy.
  • You may recall that around the time of our holiday, A and I had been invited to ScumFan McFaul’s 21st birthday bash. I’d had this out with Paul before – A and I were making excuses to avoid the event, whereas Paul’s stroke-of-genius solution was to say, “well, I don’t want to go because [Paedo] used to rape me all the time.” He reiterated this point in this meeting, which annoyed me intensely. The McFauls, for the most part, and my mother, definitely, do not deserve to have their lives ruined by this information. Does no one give a shit about altruistic utilitarianism any more?!
  • I added, in relation to same, that even if I did confess, that no one would believe me anyway (which is probably true). They’d probably think I was making it all up for attention or something, but the most flattering scenario would be if they held the view that my beliefs and recollections pertaining to Paedo were psychotically inspired. “In other words,” as I said to Paul, “they’d think the mental illness causes the idea of abuse rather than the abuse causing [in part, I'd stress, not in its entirety - not that Paul would agree with that] the mental illness.”
  • He said that in his view I didn’t have mental health problems. Apparently, insanity is where nothing makes sense. He claims that everything I experience and do makes complete sense when considered in context. That’s all very well – I do concur to a large degree – but Paul is a trained psychotherapist, and I am a mentalist that has become very well informed about all the issues surrounding my conditions. The McFauls are laypersons; they aren’t going to know any of the psychosocial connections at play here. If someone tried to explain it to most of them (Suzanne and StudentMcF possibly excepted), it would rush right over their heads and vanish like Willow the Wisp. In any case, “coping mechanisms” versus “mental health problems” is a purely semantic debate, to my mind. You could call it Bouncy Fluffy Bunniness and the nett effects would be identical, so why do the fucking words matter so much to him?
  • Paul wondered why I’d never demonstrated any overt psychosis in session with him (query: why is it OK to use the word ‘psychosis’, but both ‘mental health problems’ and ‘mental illness’ are teh sux0rz?). He was distinctly unimpressed when I made a reference to Seroquel, which further irritated me. Regardless of what he thinks, I think Seroquel has helped me immensely – and surely, when it comes to one’s health concerns, one’s own observations are of pivotal importance? Anyway, he instead ventured that perhaps that particular brand of mentalism hadn’t been “needed” in the room with him. Was it that I was safe there, he mused? I was willing to entertain that notion, but added that although I felt safe with him, that I didn’t necessarily feel ‘safe’ psychologically. A lot of the work had been challenging and extremely intense. He agreed, then said that, based on my previous experiences, that perhaps I unconsciously feared that I would be judged.
  • This led to a conversation around my mother and her refusal to believe my claims about Paedo, when I tried to bring them up at the ages of 14 and 17 (or thereabouts). I defended her, however, on the grounds that she was engaging in “a quintessential pattern of psychological avoidance.” Paul sighed, and asked me for the non-intellectualised version, and I (rather reluctantly, because I felt my first answer had been fine) declared that I was perhaps insulted. My mother had, on the second occasion I think, accused me of making up my allegations of rape because I didn’t want to go to Hotel California. (Of course I didn’t want to go to Hotel California – rape was why!). I was insulted because I find women who make up stories of rape and/or domestic violence to be abhorrent individuals; not only do they dilute the genuine pain and trustworthiness of actual victims, they also make (generally) men look worse than the poor sods really are. I don’t want to be seen by anyone, least of all my fucking mother, as such a person.
  • Apparently Paul detected anger in my voice, which surprised me as I had deliberately feigned nonchalance. The problem is that if I express – or even if I just am – anger/angry with my mother, then she will die and it will be my fault. I said so to him, then launched an invective against myself for thinking and feeling something so patently fantastical. He leapt to my defence, saying that this was another thing that made sense in context – apparently, because I became the vehicle for so many heinous things, I (to my subconscious self) became a walking nuclear reactor, capable of bringing great evil and destruction to all. A reasonably fair assessment, to give him his dues.
  • At one point, for some reason (I think I must have been defending my mother again), there arose a comparison between my father, V, and Paedo. V was a complete twat, and everyone knows/knew it (apart from Aunt of Evil and her cunts). Paedo, ostensibly, is a nice enough old bloke (though in my view he’s a supremely boring imbecile, but when I have said similar to my mother she accuses me of intellectual snobbery, which I suppose is a reasonably fair charge). I exemplified the surface differences by stating that Paedo had never knocked seven bells out of Maisie. Then, to my eternal disgust, I muttered, “though I don’t know how he hasn’t, I’d have gone for her countless times.” Unsurprisingly this led to more self-castigation. Naturally, he defended me again, asking why every caustic comment I made had to be retracted. I responded by saying that I had just condoned domestic violence, which was repulsive. Apparently not, though – the issue of my taking the remark back was “much more complex” and I was using a reference to domestic violence as “an excuse” to “withdraw at the first sign of feeling”. “So,” I mocked gaudily, “I’m brimming over with resentment about Maisie’s failure to protect me and that comes out in throwaway bitchy comments?” His response? “Yes. Exactly.” Whatever. What-the-fuck-ever, Paul.
  • He monologued about how bad the abuse had been and how Maisie had “stood by [Paedo]“, not exercising a due duty of care towards me (and, he through in as an addendum, neither had she acted out of the unconditional love she is for some reason meant to have felt for me). As I witheringly picked my nails, bored of this endless psychobabble, he asked me to see it from that [fucking fucking fucking] little girl‘s point of view. Children don’t analyse and rationalise, apparently (wrong. I may not have a clear, linear recollection of my childhood, but I do remember doing just that), so my reaction to the family’s non-reaction was purely visceral. For instance, “I’m in pain, waaah waaah waaah, please help me, waaah waaah waaah…oh, look you’re not helping me, waaah waaah waaah waaah waaah.”
  • The conversation meandered towards an incident in Fuerteventura. A and I had been sitting at this lovely beach bar, looking out over the bay and enjoying a cool beer. All these little kids were running around mad, splashing in the water or jumping about in that pointless, irritating way that only children do. Aloud, I randomly mused, “I wish I’d had a happy childhood.” After a second or two, I was completely aghast at this out-of-the-blue, out-of-character remark. A seemed – I don’t know, moved? – by it, and when it was duly relayed to Paul, he in turn pronounced it “very poignant”. I was reminded of another occasion in Fuerteventura when yet more children were running around on the beach. Some of them were naked. I am not joking, readers, but this horrified me. Part of me was so disturbed that she could barely look away, thus cementing my belief in that old theory of the compelling car crash; part of me then forced myself to look away, because I felt like a paedophilic voyeur even noticing these youngsters. He said, “most people have a happy ignorance about child sexuality, and therefore have no issues with child nakedness. Unfortunately, you’re not one of them.”
  • He said that I have a lot to grieve vis a vis my childhood and that in conducting my mourning, I turned everything upon myself. I was told that when cutting is not enough, I “degrade” myself. In response, I rearranged my features to reflect bewilderment. Degrade? “Yes,” said Paul. “You sometimes write words when you cut, degrading words like ‘whore’, ‘slut’, ‘bitch’ and so on. None of which you are.” I shrugged, reluctantly but truthfully stating that “they’re not normal terms applied to a child.”
  • Paul raised the subject of the photo of the baby. He proclaimed my reaction to it to be a “wonderful moment”, it having been a single image that cut through all my defence mechanisms and psychological barriers and yadda, blah, and meh. “I saw real sadness in you that day,” he said, “and moreover, you didn’t push it away. It’s hard to pin all that hate and blame on a baby, isn’t it?”
  • This was true. However, as I pointed out, pictures of myself as a five or six year old don’t only not have this effect, they have the opposite. Young Me leaves me nauseous.
  • Blah blah blah, twaddle and waffle for a bit.
  • Eventually he came back to the subject of words like ‘slut’ or ‘bitch’ and remarked that those were Paedo’s words. Although as I said I don’t remember Paedo saying anything much at the time, I reflected that he wouldn’t have had to. Paul agreed, stating that his actions and attitudes spoke louder and intimated the same.
  • Ever defiant, I insisted that I still didn’t like the child, regardless of who actually proscribed her a whore. “Not liking her doesn’t mean I can’t absolve her of blame, though,” I added thoughtfully. And I don’t think it does either. He replied by stating that that was a good start, and that eventually, as he helped me build bridges between her (Aurora, let’s just say again) and me, I would “grow to” like her. (This is complete bollocks. I really, really don’t like children and, in fact, am generally rather scared of them. Of course, he thinks I don’t like children because I specifically hate Aurora and the legacy of madness she’s left me. I do not concur. I think that I don’t like children because I fucking don’t like children).
  • I disputed his assertion that I would like her, but not on the aforementioned grounds, valid as they are in my view. What I told him instead was that (as noted elsewhere) I don’t have a linear path of memories of my childhood. So, if I cannot access Aurora’s personality in the form of her thoughts, feelings, ideas, experiences and so on, how can I ever get to know her? Without those she is, in effect, dead (occasions of which she tries to invade my mind notwithstanding). I am not her, even though I occupy a body into which she grew.
  • For what I’m pretty sure was the first time, Paul deflected the point away (C did this infuriatingly frequently, but familiarity breeds contempt, as the old adage goes: Paul doing it once irritated the shit out of me). Rather than respond specifically, he said that in demonising Aurora, I was “shooting the messenger”.
  • For some reason, the conversation turned to a very brief article I had published some months ago in a national periodical, in which I whined about how terrible NHS provision for psychotherapy can be. I happen to know that C reads said publication. That’s not why I published it, but I did take some satisfaction in knowing that he may well have read it. “It was basically ‘fuck you’ in 150 words,” I told Paul. “Isn’t that really bitchy?” He laughed, and said that “bitchy is good sometimes.” I went on to add that occasionally I allow myself some slack for bitchiness in this area – I mean, the NHS therapy thing was a ridiculous debacle for which I was not responsible. Paul nodded his agreement, but added that all too often I “take the slack back.” True enough.
  • He alluded to the fact that, as well as not showing psychosis in session (mentioned 23 miles back up the page), I also rarely demonstrated anger. This is curious in a way, because I frequently ranted and raved at C, which was sort of a back-handed compliment to him; it denoted total ease in his company. In that way, not being angry with Paul (or, at least, not demonstrating anger) could be construed as vaguely insulting. Not that I said any of that to him, of course, but in any case he wondered if I felt that he would not “accept” my anger. I don’t know; I have never got beyond irritated with him (as I did in this session at points), so it’s hard to say. But why can’t (or won’t) I express that irritability, then? I have simply never felt comfortable doing so, yet I otherwise feel contented in his presence and, as this blog has amply testified, feel that he has helped me a great deal. Anyhow, I made some comment about “being very well aware that I’m my father’s daughter” – by this I meant that I felt that I had to be careful with anger, just in case I ever went into a dangerously blind rage (though, I should note, this was and is not my expressed reasoning for not exhibiting anger in front of Paul). I exemplified by telling him about the events that precipitated this post, though I’m still not going to say what they were here. Paul examined the incident in question against some of my father’s behaviour, and all but dismissed my concerns. I am most assuredly not like my father in any way, in his stated view.
  • As the end of the session approached, he noted that the one following it would be our last together. He lamented that fact because he felt that whilst we had achieved quite a bit in six-ish months, that realistically we had only begun to start scratching the surface of the tiresome iceberg that is my so-called trauma. “In the last few sessions especially,” he said, “we’ve covered a lot of very deep stuff. It’s frustrating to have to end it here.” I agreed that the timing was unfortunate, but brought up a point that NewVCB had made – that a break isn’t always a bad idea. Paul actually agreed with this, which is probably the first and last time that his opinion and that of a consultant psychiatrist will ever meet (and hark! The Earth wasn’t subsumed by the sun, and the galaxy wasn’t pulled into a super-massive black hole by this unlikely confluence, once-every-parsec of events!). Nevertheless, despite my insistence on the issue in the previous session, he asked me if I felt “abandoned.” I said ‘no’, citing the upfront-ness of Nexus on how short-term their therapy had to be. With the NHS, there had been – as far as I was concerned – an implicit understanding that my therapy would be relatively ongoing, at least until such times as I was socially functional. It was only after an attachment had been allowed to be formed that I was advised that that would not be the case. So, I told Paul, in comparison – and given the charity’s very reasonable issues of resource limitations – I felt quite OK about the ending. The fact that I could eventually go back gave me a further buoyancy about the whole thing. “I know we can’t start exactly as we’ll have left off,” I continued, “but at least we can dispense with the whole ‘getting to know each other’ formalities, and just get to work.” He agreed: he remarked that the time between the stints of therapy would be useful for me to consolidate the work we’d already done, and that I’d come back to the process with an increased understanding of myself, Aurora and ‘our’ situation.

As you know, I am in fact going back soon. I really don’t know to what extent I have reflected on everything we did before – not in a discretely contained gap-in-therapy sort of way, at any rate. But I know that I have a much greater awareness and understanding of myself through the therapy as a whole, and I’m still hopeful that I can build on that in the weeks and months yet to come.

Body Memories and the Power of Silence – Paul: Week 23, Part I

 Nexus, Paul, Psychotherapy, Sexual Abuse  2 Responses »
Sep 302011
 

I’m going back to Nexus, my previous centre for psychotherapy, as demanded by NewVCB, Christine, A and seemingly everyone else across the space-time continuum right from the beginning of the universe all the way to its infinite ends (don’t you just love the paradoxes of physics?).

Please forgive my customary flippancy. It is probably a good thing to be returning, especially since Nice Lady That Works for Nexus has responded to my email saying she’d stick me back on the waiting list to see Paul. I mean, I knew he’d pick it up when he saw my name on the system, but Nice Lady has already made sure he won’t somehow miss it amongst all the noise of all the other registered clients. Additionally, they’re also going to “call” me (groan) when someone has a cancellation, so that I can go in, pre-therapy, to “update [them] on [my] present circumstances.” That’s going to be a hugely insightful and interesting meeting. “Hello, Nexus Person. Me? Hmm. Still seeing psychiatrist. Still seeing CPN [when she bothers to turn up, which she didn't last time. I never did rant about that here - I shall rectify that in another post to be composed probably-not-anon]. Still writing that stupid blog, though thanks to anhedonia, avolition and other nefarious a words, not with the frequency or passion that I once did. Still mad. Still depressed. Still unemployed. Still x, still y, still z. Isn’t that so obscenely fascinating that you might have a passion-fuelled heart attack and die right now? No? No, I didn’t think so. It isn’t for me either.”

Anyhow, as any of you who regularly follow this nonsense will know, I’ve been horribly remiss in recording my last few sessions of my last round of therapy with Paul (as I was in the final weeks with C before him, but that was more about my avoiding having to think about the trauma it would have evoked, rather than being merely attributable to an apathetic lethargy caused, at least in part, by the rut of mentalism). I mean, I last saw him in June, for God’s sake, and now it’s the end of September (though quite how that came to be the case is quite beyond me. My life is passing me by…). So. I’m going to bang out this session today (and continue it tomorrow/Sunday), and the two that followed it WITHIN THE NEXT FORTNIGHT AT MOST. Should I fail to achieve this, you are not just permitted to bollock me: you are actively required to do so. OK? OK. Here we go.

—

This session was on 16 May, just before we went to Fuerteventura. It’s kind of fucked to start writing a review of it over four months later, but I have my notes, and they catalyse certain memories of it, so sod the dispassion and let’s get to it. It will not surprise you to learn that of course things opened with silence. I didn’t know what to say – who’d have guessed it? – and Paul refused to let me off the hook. In a fit of pique, I refused to break a stare with him. Why let him off the hook if he won’t afford me the same courtesy?

But I’m a weakling of a human being, and after several minutes had elapsed, I gave in and told him I couldn’t stare him out any longer. He advised that he had “not considered it a competition.” Whatever. Do you just stare intensely at people for what seems like ages for fun, mate?

In any effort just to say something, I ended up telling him about my neo-psychotic encounter with a Monty Python keyring. When I’d concluded the story, at first he didn’t laugh, which left me feeling utterly mortified. I was disgusted that I had dared find my little anecdote mildly amusing when it apparently wasn’t – but just as I was about to start verbalising my self-castigations, he sort of bowed his head and started howling with laughter. So, ever the psychological splitter, I then began to regard him with a measured incredulity – I mean, it wasn’t that funny!

Composing himself, Paul said, “how appropriate that Monty Python were involved. They seem psychotic at the best of times.”

I concurred, and voiced the view that the whole episode had itself been worthy of a Python sketch.

He used the opportunity to ask me about my friends (spot the heavy irony), the hallucinatory voices. “They seem to have been quiet of late,” he commented. “Why is that?”

I boldly stated that 600 daily milligrams of Seroquel was a forced to be reckoned with.

He smiled appeasingly at me for a welcome but frustratingly brief second. “Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true?” he said, his grin shifting to something slightly more sceptical.

When I elected not to respond to this remark, he continued by saying that maybe it had more to do with the fact that, as we had discussed to some extent the previous week, I was allowed to ‘hurt’ in therapy without that pain’s typical accompaniment of panic. As well you know, dearest readers, I don’t agree with Paul’s views on medication and the medical model at large – however, what I do think is that drugs only help to a point. It is only through therapy that anything approximating proper, long-lasting recovery can be achieved. I thus declared that I agreed with him on that point, adding that in that room with him I could speak with impunity about anything and everything, without facing any value judgements whatsoever (at which point he quipped that whilst that was mostly true, he had to condemn my taste in keyrings. I appreciated that amusing aside).

“You know, it’s odd,” I mused. “I spent a year and a half in NHS therapy, and yet it was only in the last few weeks of it that I felt able to share anything more than the least worse bits of this whole sorry saga with the psychologist. I know Nexus is here to counsel people with experience of sexual abuse specifically, and my previous psychotherapy wasn’t, but it’s still a really positive thing for me that I was able to walk straight in here and start talking about it to you.”

[At this point my mobile started vibrating in my bag, interrupting the flow of conversation. I was absolutely affronted, and when I brought it out of my bag to shut it up, I noted that it was my old friend Brian calling. It is not to my credit that in those few seconds I fantasised about rearranging the face of one of my closest friends for unwittingly intruding upon my therapy session, but that's the strength of feeling that in my experience so frequently bounces around the room on these occasions.]

“It’s not just about being able to speak,” Paul told me. “It’s also about being able to be silent.”

Ha! I think I call bullshit on that, Paul. As I said to him, “I always feel shit about there being so much silence in session. Which I suppose is odd as I do a lot of it, but you know what I mean.” Don the metaphorical mortar board and amend the uncertain tone of voice. ”Of course, intellectually I appreciate that of course there is therapeutic value to be gleaned from silence; you can derive psychological detail from same, and in doing so, afford benefits back to me. Nonetheless, it feels like time-wasting.”

He had been shaking his head, ready to softly scold me for treading into academic territory yet again. With the last sentence uttered, however, he was sated, and proffered the opinion that perhaps, then, it was somehow therapeutic to be allowed to be a ‘time-waster’. “You don’t have to be the ‘good’ client or the ‘good’ child,” he said. “Not in here.”

Not content with my earlier foray into pseudo-scholarly speculation, I hit back with, “I’m not saying this is the case, but if I were to offer a hypothesis [he rolled his eyes, a gesture that I chose to ignore], I might suggest that if I had silence enforced upon me as a child, that it makes sense to re-enact it now, in these circumstances, as an adult.”

Paul looked at me with vague curiosity. I think I’ve said it before, but sometimes you can almost see the cogs turning in his head. In this case, I’m fairly sure that he was trying to develop a response to my continued intellectualising, or perhaps he was mentally querying why I kept insisting on taking the sessions down that route (avoidance, I should imagine). Either way, I know – I knew with C, and I knew with Paul – that I’m not supposed to wank endlessly on about the subconscious thinking behind my feelings and actions. That’s his fucking job.

Thus began the beating-myself-about-the-face for not conforming to what is expected of me in this inherently bizarre social setting. “Why the fuck didn’t I become a psychologist? I’m ridiculously well-versed in o’er pretentious but probably empirically flawed psychobabble shite, just like they are,” I declared.

A ghost of a smile crossed his lips at this, but instead of replying he asked if the silence in session was forced or chosen. To be honest, it’s neither – or not insofar as I had previously considered it anyway. It just is. I said so, but added that on reflection it was probably closer to the latter. I mean, he doesn’t sit there and scream at me every time I use my vocal chords, so he’s hardly coercing me into keeping my fat gob shut.

And guess what? That resulted in a silence as long as the name of a Welsh village. I remember sitting there wearing this ridiculous expression that I suppose was meant to convey some sort of “oh fuck!” embarrassment and discomfort at my entirely predictable but nevertheless irritating failure. Having learnt my lesson at the start of the appointment, I decided not to look at Paul. Instead, the ever-fascinating carpet was the object of my less-than-dignified gaze.

“So,” Paul said eventually. “Is this a comfortable or uncomfortable silence?”

If the question hadn’t been so completely ridiculous, I’d have laughed in his face. How could it be anything other than the latter?!

“I keep racking my brains in order to think of something to say to you.”

“Stop trying to think of intelligent things to say. What would you say then?”

An even more ludicrous remark, I thought – though as I acknowledged, I knew what I was meant to say (or, perhaps more accurately, I knew what clients who are less dickhead-ish than I would have said in similar circumstances. They would have got to the fucking point).

I cleared my throat. OK then, I thought. Let us talk about what he wants to talk about.

“Have you ever heard of the term ‘body memories’?” I asked. When he nodded, I continued by saying, “well, association is the oldest trick in the psychological book. When I come in here, associating what we do with the reason I came here in the first place, I sometimes experience such things.”

“Which is a horrible thing,” he speculated. “How do they manifest?”

I see from an archived post that I briefly alluded to this phenomenon with C – in fact, to my retrospective surprise, I see that I used the actual words when discussing it with him. Fortunately for my too-frequently-blushing cheeks, I managed to avoid such hideous terminology with Paul. “Sometimes I feel like I need to urinate [I somehow managed to resist my urge to play with him by using the word 'micturate'], even though I actually don’t. I remember this happening from waaaay back into my childhood. If someone was drunk on TV, say, I’d feel this weird sensation, and it often continues this day [something of an odd issue given that my adult self is not exactly a teetotaller]. I was always completely mystified by it, but now of course my supposition, although I have no conscious recollection of it, is that he must have been pissed on one of our…encounters.”

“And how is discussing that for you?”

Aha! The inevitable re-phrasing of that old therapeutic mantra, and how does that make you feel? For once, the question was aptly timed. Even mentioning this bizarre ‘body memory’ caused my head to do what I described as “that thing it does.” In other words, I felt myself trying to float away – to dissociate – but I fought it. I didn’t want Aurora (or anything/anyone else) taking control, little bloody brat that she is. And hark! I was the victor in this case. Mwhahaha! Screw you, Aurora! However, my internally-fought fight against feeling smug at beating her down was somewhat less successful.

Paul broke into my mental tug-of-war. “As well as dissociating, you often choke or stutter whilst trying to talk about these things,” he said. The dialogue presented in these blog posts completely belies the truth of this statement. I am an unmitigated mess of oratorical shite every time I see him.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m abusing you here,” he announced, completely to my surprise.

“That’s not how it feels to me…”

“Well. I try to bridge the gap between the dissociated and repressed to the conscious. It’s inevitably difficult for you, and at those times it’s like I’m coercing you into feeling that pain.”

I reiterated that, at least on a surface level, I didn’t feel that way about things. “I can see your point, though,” I admitted. “But I think reliving the trauma and pain is a necessary part of the process. Not pleasant at the time, but helpful in the long-term, I think.”

He nodded, then – in reference to body memories – brought up another client. “She dreams a lot, and wakes up brutally tender and sore. She’s also constantly bothered with urinary tract problems, despite no medical reason for them.”

I felt immediate empathy with this and said so. Not with dreams resulting in tenderness per se, but regarding random flare-ups of embarrassing down-there issues. I’m frequently afflicted with thrush, which has occasionally been resultant from my now-discovered allergy to penicillin, but which more often develops for no discernible reason at all. I get it in my throat too, so you can see the whole rape-analogy shebang…so I have conversion disorder on top of everything bloody else, how fantastic! Seriously though, in my case I suspect nothing more than coincidence to be at play, but it is interesting and potentially revealing to at least consider possible connections.

Anyhow, Paul had reminded me of something else in his allusion to this other woman. “I dream a lot these days,” I told him. “I’ve never had recurring dreams – other than the one probably everyone has where they’re falling through air – until relatively recently. Now there’s one with which I’m constantly plagued.”

Oh boy. This fairly opened up a set of gargantuan twatting floodgates…

—

OK, I’m going to leave this post here for now, and continue the session review in a second one. There’s still a myriad of crap to cover, but a month or so ago I decided I was going to try to start writing blog posts that weren’t of the preposterous length to which I seem addicted, at least not every time I put fingers to keys. Since this is already 2,600 words long I have clearly failed, but I wish to fail no more than I already have. So, then, dear readers: duh-duh-DUH! To be continued…

—

Continued here.

The Evolution of Goldfish – Paul: Week 22

 Nexus, Paul, Psychotherapy, Recovery, Sexual Abuse, Traumatic Stuff  9 Responses »
Sep 012011
 

Right. For absolute God’s sake, Pandora, just write this fucking post and stop finding procrastination-borne ways of avoiding it.

It’s not that there’s anything particularly traumatic about what I’m intending to write, but these session reviews are long and tiring in their composition, and moreover, because it’s from a couple of months ago, the feeling is not as ripe in my mind as I’d prefer it to be. That’s entirely my own fault, of course; I have had plenty of opportunity to finish writing about Paul well before now. Instead, I’ve chosen to dick about – oh look, *shiny thing*! Fuck’s sake. Anyhow, the notes do remind me of some of the nuances and subtleties of the sessions – the way he might peer over his glasses, the palpable expression of hurt or rage within the room, my constant hair-playing – but I’m not sure if I’ll ever nail them quite to the standard I would have had I written them up in the afternoons immediately following the appointments. But therapy is a draining pursuit, and so it’s hard to summon the internal mental energy necessary to engage in such writing; to that end, I’m not going to promise to hold to that ideal when I return to Nexus in the next couple of months. I’ll try, but for at least some of the time, I will fail.

Anyway, here we go…

—

Paul was met with my usual opening gambit of complete, hair-fiddling silence, though it was eventually me that broke it by castigating the living shit out of myself for my failure to speak. He responded with some remark about my feeling that I ‘have to’ speak, and about how that made me ‘trapped’. He went on in an entirely predictable fashion: I still frequently behave as if I’m helpless and have to do as I am told. I am reminded of how submissive I really am in ‘real life’. Everything – well, most things – are given deferential consideration before I dare to respond, and generally I will kowtow to the other party’s wishes in the end anyway, even if I loathe them for it. My last-but-one job, of which I’ve never really had reason to speak here, is a glaring example that still (four and a half years later) sends shudders through my body.

After a great deal of fairly repetitive discussion surrounding Hotel California and my aforementioned submissiveness, he eventually went on to say that my current methods of coping with things and defending myself were such that I was ‘trapped’ in this world, and that Aurora was ‘trapped’ in her world, which is full of pain. “To you,” he continued, “she’s just a nagging problem. She buggered up your life, so although you’re intellectually aware of all the facts – that she was abused and badly hurt – you can’t really empathise with her, can you?”

It depends when you ask me, actually, which in and of itself is progress to my mind. I said that I had written an awful lot on this blog (I can’t be bothered to look for the link((s)) right now, sorry) about how my position shifted about, on how I recognised that I didn’t deserve any of it at all, and, crucially, about how I really felt all of that, rather than just knowing it as an abstract sort of concept.

“But,” I said, inevitably, “then I think of my fat five-year-old face and I feel nothing but disgust. If you put my mere outline in place of that image, I can pity and empathise with and wish to protect her, but not if it’s actually the young me. And then, of course, that leads to tremendous guilt because regardless of what I was like, I should still feel that concern for my younger self.”

Paul asked me to put Paedo into this mental vision that I’d conjured up and which was fucking with my head. In that time-honoured fashion of therapists everywhere, he asked me, “how does that feel?” (At least the emphasis here was on something specific, rather than on some amorphous abstract as it so often was with C).

I closed my eyes and let the image consume me for a minute. It wasn’t at all pleasant, but I tried to walk him through it.

“I feel fear, I suppose. Not intense terror in that Lovecraftian horror sort of way [Jesus, how up my own hole am I?], but…well. It’s more like I’d respond to a hallucination. Trepidation, perhaps?” Self-created Paedo leered at me in my mind. Aurora took a step back. I – the envisioned adult me – looked at him with an examining and curious sort of contempt, but none of the three assembled psychic (non-)personnel spoke.

Paul went at me again for trying to over-analyse the scenario, though he did admit to my description being a realistic one (in the sense that, the first time or two, rapes that are the start of systematic abuse are met with overwhelming terror – but that gives way a resigned stoicism as the abuse continues). “What else?” he pressed. “What is she feeling?”

I ‘looked’ at her. She didn’t look petrified at all, but I felt a sense of dread emanating from her. I suddenly knew what she was feeling, even if there’s not a specific name for it.

“It’s a sense of ‘oh no, not again’,” I told him.

“Not the reaction of a blameful child,” he mused. “More like a helpless wee girl.”

(Completely off-topic, but does anyone else find it odd – not bad, just a bit weird-sounding – when someone who isn’t Scottish or Irish says the word ‘wee’? I remember reflecting on this that day: how interesting it was to hear a Brummie say ‘wee’ ((utterly disregarding the fact that Paul has lived here for years, of course)), yet I say it a hundred times a day. Funny the little things you pointlessly ruminate upon whilst in therapy).

“I agree with you,” I admitted, “it’s just…” …I started my usual carry-on of being unable to articulate the words I wanted to convey… “it’s just that I can’t…can’t throw off this…this persistent self-disgust. That picture of me when I was five that I mentioned…Jesus, it makes me cringe.” Pause. “But…being cringe-worthy does not equate to being at fault for being used as a sex toy.”

“Indeed,” he nodded, his head cocked, his eyes unblinkingly fixated upon me. I wondered what it was that he was so intently looking for. A manifestation of how I was feeling? A tell, as we call it in poker circles?

“Indeed,” he repeated. “You could have been the worst child on Earth and you still woundn’t have deserved a second of it.”

“Do you remember I told you about the picture of the baby?” I asked.

“Yes. That was hugely significant, I thought. You looked at that little baby and thought, ‘You’re just an innocent baby – yet you’ll have that taken away from you before long. I know your future’.”

“I still think there’s something terribly sad about that,” I confessed, fixating my own gaze upon Random Point A on the off-green, non-descript carpet. I could feel his eyes upon me, but I refused to look at him. A lot of stuff was circling in my whirlwind of a mind, and it was frankly quite horrible to think about the issues this conversation raised. I don’t know why. I don’t like babies any more or less than I like five year olds, so my reaction to this one seemed wholly out of character.

“There is something sad about it,” Paul replied, “tremendously so. I recall the sadness in the room when we talked about that before. In fact, when I was writing up my notes on that session, ‘sad’ is the word I used. I think…I think you have some sort of separation from the baby. You can’t remember yourself then, you can’t see any of the physical characteristics you now have [wanna bet, Paul? The baby is certainly fat, so we have that in common], so perhaps you don’t think of it being really yourself.”

He’s right. I don’t.

But the picture of the baby was only once facet of therapeutic discussion that I thought particularly relevant: the other was the session in which we pretty much ignored the sexual abuse and focused on my parents and their tumultuous relationship. In the aftermath of that, and in particular in my writing it up here, I was a complete heap of psychological spaghetti, and at one point, seeing me in a flood of proper tears, A opined that “the therapy [was] finally starting to work.”

“I am given to believe that crying is a more appropriate way of expressing distress than other ways I have I might have chosen,” I self-decried.

Paul cocked his head. “You still view crying with contempt, then.”

Um…yeah. Of course I do. As I said to him, people look strange when they’re crying, and I don’t want to look any stranger than I already do.

I laughed then. “That coming from the girl who dyes her hair pink, blue, green, purple, etc.”

“What’s that about?” he queried. “The hair dying.”

Fucking psychology. Why does something always have to reflect something apparently deeper?! I drolly and cynically responded that presumably I was ‘seeking an identity’, and waited for him to lap the comment up in scrutiny.

Instead, for once he surprised me in dismissing the potential psychoanalytic ramifications of this most ordinary thing. He said, “maybe you just like dying your hair. My former mentor once told me that you don’t have to analyse everything: he said, ‘sometimes a fart is just a fart, Paul’.”

Whilst I laughed at the remark, I was ever so slightly pissed off that I looked like the one that was over-analysing. I mean, of course I do over-analyse, but oftentimes I am wont to dismiss psychobabble, and this was one such occasion. I’m not convinced he picked up on the derisive tone which nuanced my original comment.

As if to confirm this, he suddenly said, “sometimes it’s like you live your life in a goldfish bowl. Everything is there to be watched and examined, and there’s nowhere to hide.”

I snidely returned that if a goldfish was removed from its bowl then it would cease to have oxygen, wouldn’t be able to breathe, and would eventually die – thus, the goldfish bowl is a necessary place to be. Internally, I smiled at what I perceived as my clever comeback, and I looked at him with a smug and challenging expression adorning my facial features.

Right enough, he hadn’t planned for such a point, and was forced to concede it. It was desperately hard for me to hide my cocky satisfaction.

BUT! The man is too fucking quick for his own bloody good. After a few seconds, he ably destroyed my egotism by asking, “what about evolution, then? What if you don’t want to be a goldfish anymore?”

I resisted the urge to point out that merely wanting to evolve does not necessarily mean actually evolving, thinking I had already pushed my luck with my awkwardness. Instead, I went back to a more therapeutically pertinent form of dialogue. “This is the thing. If I didn’t want all this crap to stop, I wouldn’t be here – I would never have been here – in the first place. And I think things have changed a bit, or at least are doing so. Maybe I’m less of a goldfish than I once was.”

“It’s like there are two goldfish in two bowls,” he offered. “One gets its water regularly changed, and it’s well-fed. The other only receives the very minimum possible to keep it alive.”

“That’s self-inflicted,” I commented.

“Perhaps, but maybe when that fish was first hurt, it couldn’t deal with any more than that – it could only concentrate on its most basic needs of survival.”

“Yes, but it wants to deal with everything else now, and it’s brain won’t co-operate. That is so frustrating.”

“Interesting,” he said thoughtfully. “The fish still blames itself for everything. It forgets that it was hurt by abusers and is faultless in this regard.”

“I think its point is that other hurt goldfish progress to a level of not being hurt any more…Well, OK, not entirely – this kind of thing can never just go away. But said other fish somehow capably manage their lives, whereas this one does not.”

“Perhaps the best it can hope for is to move into a bigger, better tank with its healthier friend from the other tank, where that friend can take care of it. It won’t make previous events go away, but perhaps it could make them easier to deal with.”

This was striding into difficult territory for me, which I proceeded to explain to him. “This is a stupid thing to say, I know, but it’s so unfair. Surely people (or fish) who’ve been hurt the most deserve the most relief – and yet they’re usually the very ones that continue to experience the greatest pain.”

“It’s not stupid,” Paul replied reassuringly. “Of course the world doesn’t work like that, but it’s still unfair.

“One of the hardest things in this kind of arena is having to get clients to deal with the bereavement of it all. The pre-abuse person that they were – he or she is never coming back, and that results in a tremendous amount of grief.”

Something about the statement resonated deeply and painfully with me – probably particularly because I don’t really remember much from before it all started. I have no frame of reference of who I was, and who I ‘should’ have become. “Obviously I was always aware of that,” I told him, “but there’s something about hearing it here, in those terms, that’s really big.”

“Huge,” he nodded. “For some people, though, it gives them a reason not to bother with therapy. If I can’t give you your childhood back, what’s the point?”

An understandable but obviously fatalistic view. I said, “but recovery – insofar as that’s possible – is surely better than perpetual misery. Sure, tinges of regret that you can’t make it unhappen are inevitable, but…don’t you have to make the most of what you have?”

After a brief pause, I had to laugh at my own hypocritical optimism. I am the last person on Earth who believes in the ‘count your blessings’ response to depression and related difficulties. How crude of me to patronisingly bring it up in this context!

Paul didn’t respond directly, though. Instead he said that he felt that whilst we were still occupying the bowl of the healthy goldfish, we were at least looking over at the other one. I wasn’t, for once, trying to ignore it, and I could see through the stagnant water that permeated its enforced domicile.

It’s hard to articulate the kind of feelings that were bouncing around the room. As I told him, I was indubitably affected by the analogy and, presumably, aspects of transference and whatnot, but when he asked me to describe said effects, I found it exceedingly hard. I could hardly speak – not a first in therapy with Paul (so much not a first, in fact, that it could almost be described as entirely normal in that circumstance). After a lot of stuttering and idiotic gasping, I eventually concluded that I was sad. Perhaps grieving.

“I had DBT forced upon me once,” I complained. “One of the aspects of it is some old wank about knowing what you feel and accepting that. Accepting, I get – but knowing? There genuinely aren’t always adequate words to describe some of this stuff.”

He shrugged. “I don’t think we do always need to explain. ‘Sad’ is enough.”

After a few silent moments of apparent reflection, he added, “you know, ‘sad’ is big for you. It represents a transition from anger, which is incredibly noteworthy.”

I nodded, but felt no need to reply. We avoided each other’s gazes for another quiet few minutes, before Paul continued by stating that he felt that there was a “softness” to me in those moments.

Needless to say, whatever spell had been temporarily cast was suddenly broken. I was repulsed by the idea of appearing “soft”, and in horror begged him not to “say that”.

“No,” he protested. “It’s OK to be that here.” Pause. “Or is that a step too far for now?”

“No,” I robotically replied. “I’m being stupid.” Then: “I have this life narrative, I suppose. I’m a bit of a bitch, harder than a fucking coffin nail [anyone like Papa Roach? I think they're utter shit, but I do love that lyric]. You know. Misanthropic, a miserable sod. That’s me. A bitch.”

“I don’t see any bitch,” he responded. “Would it be easier if I did?”

There was a long pause before I randomly asserted that I was a child in a woman’s body. I told him that I took very little responsibility for myself, that standard practice in adult domestic living scared the living fuck out of me (example). I admitted to him about the dozens of cuddly toys I’ve ammassed over the last three or four years, despite having almost no interest in them as a child (save for Mr Friendly, of course). I confessed to the childish little ways I will sometimes privately talk to A (though mercifully I’m apparently not entirely alone in my experience of this phenomenon – Maybe Borderline reflects on her similar mannerisms with her husband here. Though I am nine years old than her…).

“Well,” Paul said, with a tone of exculpation. “You had to live as an adult when you were a child…”

“So am I trying to somehow vicariously relive my childhood?”

“Well, you’re trying to reclaim what was stolen from you.”

He brought up the concept of regression, which he says is sometimes used in trauma work. He said, “I wouldn’t ever do that here. You have to accept the loss, whereas reliving it in a therapeutic context only succeeds in avoiding the reality of the here and now. You are an adult – but you have an unheard child inside you, and the ongoing challenge is to allow her to speak.”

“I do think we’ve made some in-roads there,” I replied.

“Yes,” he agreed. “And the thing is, you’ve consistently turned up here each week. On time. That alone speaks volumes.”

“I must be getting something out of it, yes. I’m way too cynical to have kept at it if I wasn’t doing so, and I’m hardly engaging in the process because it’s fun.”

“Indeed. You do appear to be able to see the value in what we do, despite its inevitable difficulties. And that in itself is therapeutic.”

And, I think, so it is. I know I’ve had something of a relapse recently, but revisiting this session reminds me that progress has been made. I am intending to return to Nexus in the next few months to attempt to advance that further, and despite the current bleakness of my world, I am reminded, sometimes, that hope can and does exist.

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What Depression Feels Like

 Life, Moods, Traumatic Stuff, Triggers  9 Responses »
Aug 262011
 

Cue ornate, wanky, over-(and yet sub-)literary prose. I don’t know how to express this but in metaphor.

—

I’m standing in a dark room, surrounded utterly by blackness, inhaling nothing but a graveyard silence. The room is entirely devoid of nigh on anything to stir the senses – apart from two doors. In front of me, barely visible due to distance and darkness, is a light door. It seems impenetrable and unreachable. Behind me is a dark door. I cannot see it from my perspective, yet somehow I know it’s there – and I know it is far, far closer than its lighter, foreign counterpart.

I am alone. Or so I think, at first. But as my despair grows, It joins me. At first, Its creeping black tentacles stroke and caress my neck, as if luring me into acceptance. But as the grasp of Its tentacles grows, It begins to tighten Its now-malicious hold on me. I choke, without making a noise. I suffocate, drown, all but die in Its arms.

I am powerless to resist; Its despair intoxicates and fills me. Nothing else in the entire universe exists but me and It. It silently calls me, surreptitiously pulls me, towards the dark door.

It promises, silently still, that if I surrender and succumb to it completely, that my reward is Nothing. A release from my dark, tormented prison into Nothingness. Going towards the light door is not an option – but progression towards the dark carries with it this alluring vow of escape.

I let It take me. I am carried hopelessly, yet paradoxically hopefully, further into Its all-consuming and inevitable lair.

Yet somehow, I am falling now. The room has become horizontal, and I fall into an abyss that drags me further away from the light door. Please, I beg silently. Let me fall through the dark door now. I cannot endure this falling agony for another second.

It laughs – silently, but cruelly. Oh no, It tells me, Its delicious satisfaction palpable. Oh no. You shall fall forever, and experience every horrible, unbearable moment.

I want it – I will it – to be wrong. I have fallen before, I know, and I have been rescued, risen, from my unendurable pain. But I am utterly in Its thrall now. Rationality is irrational. Logic is illogical. I cannot rise this time, no matter what.

My only possible escape is the Nothing – but yet, I fall still, and the dark door is as unobtainable as the light door, as unobtainable as joy, success and hope. I hear the silent, scornful laugh again. Nothing, contentment – they are both inaccessible to you now, It goads.

So I am trapped. Eternally, perpetually, in this infernal, darkness of falling, sinking, drowning, suffocating. Forever. No hope, no joy, no release.

Only all-encompassing despair and misery, torment and grief, pain and horror, blackness and a dark, un-wadeable, treacled quicksand.

There is no chance of escape.

—

And yet, there is. For now, the sun shines. But the darkness creeps insidiously, and one can never allow oneself to be complacent.

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Anders Breivik: Mad or Bad?

 Off-Topic Non-Mentalist Ramblings, Psychiatry, Random Mental Health Related Philosophising  7 Responses »
Aug 082011
 

First rant of the week.

I’ve just watched a speculative documentary on the repugnant Anders Breivik, the man responsible for the horrific attacks on Oslo and Utøya Island last month. Before continuing, for the little it’s worth, I’d like to extend my sympathy and solidarity to anyone from Norway reading this. Living in Northern Ireland, I have not been a stranger to terrorism. It is a truly despicable thing, that someone could think politics (or more specifically, in the Norwegian case, reactionary extremist racism) could be worthy of ending even one – never mind multiple – human lives. One of the survivors of the shooting attack on the island, who was attending a summer camp on what the documentary described as “left-wing” politics, stated at the end of the programme that he was sure his ideals rather than Breivik’s would, in the end, be the political victors. It is my fervent hope and belief that this will indeed be the case.

I commend the survivors in the programme for their bravery and determination in the face of such horrible, senseless adversity; I hope that in time all of the survivors can heal from both their physical and psychological injuries; and I send sincere sympathies to the loved ones of those that died.

In the sense of the survivor and eye-witness accounts, the documentary was interesting, informative and very powerful and tragic. I am not the nicest person on this Earth, let’s face it, but even I will never, ever understand how someone can be filled with so much loathing for other cultures and different demographic groups that doing something like this would ever cross their minds.

And herein comes the rant. Inexplicably renowned criminologist David Wilson, a supercilious little man that I’ve come across dozens of times both in an academic context and in my more amateur investigations into criminality, was employed by the film-makers as an ‘expert’ witness on Breivik’s psychology. Can you guess where we’re going with this, readers?

According to Wilson (who, to the best of my knowledge, has no more insider knowledge of Breivik than you or I do), Breivik has a “classic cluster B personality disorder”; Wilson exemplifies this point by highlighting the sensationalism of the attacks, and of Breivik’s apparent at-easeness, even his thrills, with the media frenzy after his arrest. Wilson also contends that Breivik is a psychological splitter (ie. a black and white thinker), presuambly in reference to his “MUSLIMS BAD! LEFT WING BAD! KNIGHTS TEMPLAR GOOD!” kind of thinking. Also, he’s a classic narcissist – look at the “manifesto” and the ridiculous pictures the man posted of himself online the day before he embarked on his awful plan.

I can’t argue with any of that, but neither can I see how it took Wilson years of training and work experience to come to these frankly blindingly obvious conclusions. (Also, he contradicts himself on the histrionic thesis at a couple of points by then pointing out how much of a loner and how reclusive Breivik generally was before this all took place, though to be fair that doesn’t exactly mitigate the gruesome exhibitionism the man demonstrated when he enacted his plans). Given that Wilson fails to explain his hypothesis further (or at least that any further explanation was not shown in the programme), I also don’t get how exhibiting a few (admittedly extreme) traits of cluster B pathology makes the man a “classic” example of same. Yeah, he’s probably a narcissist – but being narcissistic does not necessarily mean having narcissistic personality disorder.

Breivik is certainly a classic example of a cunt, but that is far from always the same thing as being someone with a personality disorder. Look. Maybe he has a one, and maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he has some other form of mental illness (the whole Knights Templar thing sounds vaguely fantastical to me), and maybe he doesn’t. What I object to is the programme’s, and Wilson’s in particular, testimony to these possibilities without any qualification.

OK, so they shouldn’t have to point out that just because one exceptionally extreme (possible) example behaves in this heinous way that the overwhelming majority of people with allegedly similar disorders do not – but let’s be honest here; the public love the morbid sensationalism of reporting on supposed madness, and that – and personality disorders in particular, stigmatised as they often are – is (are) often the perfect scapegoat(s) for outrageous behaviour that decent people have difficulty understanding.

I think, as an unfortunate consequence of things like this, that each examination in the media of a criminal that may or does have a mental health problem should carry a clear disclaimer with it: that people with mental illness are generally no more violent than the general population, and are in fact much more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators of it (if memory serves me, schizophrenics in the community are about seven times more likely to be affected by violent offending than other members of the populace, but I could have the specifics of that wrong). It shouldn’t have to be that way, that we need to qualify every generality, but I’m a pragmatic person. I’d rather that than have everyone outside the mental health community demonising those within it, because the consequences of the latter are potentially devastating.

Anyhow, as far as I can see Breivik was mostly sane anyhow. Null made a very good point on TWIM the other day – no one with a serious and active mental health problem could honestly have spent so much time* meticulously researching and planning a major ‘event’ in the fashion that he apparently did (except, arguably, a sociopath, the more organised version of the psychopath ((depending on which textbook you read))). We just don’t have the concentration, the calculated calmness and, more practically, in all probability we don’t have the economic and physical resources to engage in anything so necessarily complex. That sounds like a cold statement, maybe, but the point is that mentally ill people who kill because of (as opposed to in spite of) their illness tend to do it on impulse (because of a false sense of feeling persecuted or threatened, perhaps) or because they genuinely have no rational conception of what they’re doing (eg. because hallucinations compel them towards the crime).

* Null’s comment suggests that Breivik was planning the operation for nine years, though the documentary claimed it was three. I’ve heard different reports from other sources too, so don’t know what to believe. Either way, it’s a long time and was, by all accounts, a complicated process.

Further, in September 2001, did we start hearing speculation on whether Marwan al-Shehhi, Mohamed Atta, Nawaf al-Hazmi, Ahmed al-Haznawi et al, and – presumably – Osama bin Laden himself, had cluster B personality disorders? Did we spend any significant amount of time discussing whether they had folie à x? No? Didn’t we just accept that they were representing a particularly extreme and reactionary version of Islam (which, I would add, in no way represents the vast majority of people that belong to that faith)?

It’s not an entirely fair comparison, granted, because as far as we know Breivik worked alone – whether or not the two supportive ‘cells’ to which he referred were somehow involved in the attacks is at present unknown, but either way the bomb and the shootings specifically were carried out by him alone. The 11th September attacks were organised by a huge, world-wide cult of extremists.

But therein lies the point. Breivik, by his own delighted admission, is a racist that loathes Islam and wants to wage a war to drive Muslims from (Western) Europe. He claims to be a “cultural Christian”, which I think in effect means that the man is not particularly religious, but supports whatever continuing influence Christianity has on an increasingly secular and culturally inclusive continent. But although Breivik is probably not a religious extremist, he is certainly a political one.

To further exemplify, when the Troubles here were ongoing, we didn’t try to examine whether or not Johnny Adair or Thomas Murphy were personality disordered. Do we debate the state of Nick Griffin’s mental health? Was that the first thing on people’s mind when London was attacked in July 2005? Indeed, is it the lead speculative headline as regards the current ongoing rioting in London?

No. Because we used to be able to, and still can on occasion, accept that some people are just twisted fucking dickheads. People have always committed unspeakable acts in the name of religion, politics or other fucked-up ideologies. Anders Breivik is one such example. He may be mad after a fashion, but he knew what he was doing. So, ultimately, he was just fucking bad. Very, very bad.

RIP to all those that were killed as a result of the attacks on Norway on 22 July 2011.

Disclaimer: author of the above is not a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, not a criminologist, not a political scientist, not a sociologist, doesn’t know Anders Breivik, doesn’t know David Wilson, doesn’t know anyone from the Discovery Channel, could be wrong on all counts, could be wrong on everything she’s ever written, it’s all merely alleged, she’s only speculating just like the programme was, is not a member of any organisation, believes in free speech. Author of the above is a provincial nobody who apparently can’t stop her vociferous gob (fingers) when presented with a topical story and a laptop. Author means no harm in voicing opinions, welcomes sensible and reasoned debate, wishes most people well, though doesn’t wish Anders Breivik well.

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Kid Fuckers Beware

 Blog News, Sexual Abuse, Triggers  25 Responses »
Jul 222011
 

One thing that I’ve always loved about blogging with WordPress is the statistics function. Despite my pathological aversion to mathematics in general, I’ve always been a bit of a stats nerd, though of course the facility provided here is simple enough that you don’t have to use SPSS to make sense of the data (which is simultaneously a relief and an intellectual misfortune).

My favourite part of this has always been the information provided about the keywords that are used to get here. Sometimes they make me glad that I’ve contributed something worthwhile and have been able to help people – for example…

  • DLA / ESA and mental health (plus more specific queries eg. ‘DLA and BPD’)
  • DLA changes
  • Does Venlafaxine 300mg work?
  • How does transference feel?
  • Fighting stigma
  • Other people with C-PTSD flashbacks
  • Ending psychotherapy
  • Complex PTSD vs BPD
  • I hate DBT / DBT is shit (yay!)
  • Missing a dose of Venlafaxine
  • Quetiapine and hypersomnia

…some bemuse me…

  • Arsecunt
  • Borderline bipolar historical women witches
  • What things are fluffy?
  • Imagine walking fown [sic] the wrong side of the road, you are stopped because it is considered J Walking
  • How to register kindel [sic] with bed serial
  • Cunts of joy
  • Nihilism as a disorder
  • Nail writer forum mentalism anthology
  • Going to confession[,] and narcissism

…some make me laugh out loud…

  • Fuck life, fuck career and fuck everything
  • Achievements in cunt
  • Talking settees and Quetiapine
  • Minor hallucinations of curtains

…I’m still, to my surprise, getting a hell of a lot of searches pertaining to Mental Nurse, even though I thought everyone realised that it (regrettably) died some months back…

…but, of late, and perhaps inevitably, some terms arriving here have disturbed me…

  • Jokes about the mentally ill
  • How to fuck kids / I want to fuck kids
  • Gape rape fun / I want to be gang raped
  • Confessions of sexual abuse wank
  • Fucking young girls
  • Kids wanking videos
  • Rape is innocuous
  • Suicide is funny
  • Children DO fuck[,] they want to
  • Teens fucking five year olds
  • How do you screw a kid?

Blah blah blah. You begin to get the idea. Most of the stuff about ‘fucking kids’ has come in light of my post, Why Do People Fuck Kids? I note with interest that none of our delightful web explorers arriving at said post via one of the above beautiful searches have deigned the title question worthy of an answer.

So. Did you arrive here wondering if it’s fun to mock the mentally ill, or under the belief that suicide is something that exists to entertain you and your mates down the pub on a Saturday evening? Do you believe that gang rape is only something that people fake for the sake of fetish-ish sexual gratification? Did you happen upon Confessions wondering how to go about raping your four year old cousin/neice/nephew/son/daughter/grandchild/neighbour/daughter or son’s friend/etc?

Perhaps you are unaware that mental illness is very, very real, and that it’s extremely debilitating – even life-threatening. Perhaps you are unaware that suicide is rarely a choice, but, rather, an all but inevitable consequence when a disturbed or ill person runs out of ways to cope with a pile of psychological spaghetti taking the place of their brain. Perhaps you don’t realise that real gang rapes do take place, all too frequently, and that they are extraordinarily traumatic and stark. Perhaps you don’t realise that no, children don’t want to fuck or be fucked – they might curiously experiment with their friends occasionally, but they are not physically or psychologically in any way ready to deal with the consequences of actual, real sexual activity. Perhaps you don’t know that children are legally (as well as ethically) incapable of consenting to sexual activity because their minds and bodies are not mature enough to understand such actions. Perhaps, therefore, you do not know that when you have sexual relations of any description with a child, you are committing an act of rape.

But I think, on all counts, you do realise what you’re searching for. I think that you just don’t care about the people on the other side of the coin. Do you?

Perhaps the least offensive of you are the ones that fantasise about gang rape. I say that because, yeah – some people have non-vanilla tastes in sex and sexual imagery, and that’s fine. But, what you really find fun is, and I repeat, a fantasy about gang rape. A real gang rape – one where the people force themselves upon you, distinctly against your will, despite your protestations for them to desist – is highly unlikely to match the heady heights of pleasure in a ‘set-up’ of several people ostensibly, but not really, ‘forcing’ themselves upon another. No, alas, far from it – no pleasure nor ecstasy comes from a real gang rape; just pain, degradation, shame and horror. So don’t let me inhibit your sexuality, by any means, but please do realise that the apparently blasé attitude you have exhibited in looking for this material has the power to offend and trigger.

To those of you that find mental illness and suicide funny – part of me wishes upon you a day of crippling, abyss-like depression…or perhaps some time with persecutory voices and visions, telling you to throw yourself off a cliff or kill your wife/husband and children. See how entertaining it is then, and how ‘cowardly’ suicide apparently is in those circumstances. Yet, on the other hand, having been at the brink like this, I’m not sure I’d wish such experiences on anyone. That you find this kind of thing amusing proves that even I’m a better person than you. Fuck you, you pathetic, bigoted pieces of fuckwittery.

As as for all you lot that want to know how to fuck kids, or what’s wrong with fucking kids, or whether kids enjoy being fucked, or who want to bring yourselves off over images of child pornography? Well, I think you padeophilic cuntfucks most of all know that you’re twisted little wankshafts who can’t get it up over someone your own fucking size, so ‘have’ to turn, in the most cowardly and offensive fashion imaginable, to the one of the most vulnerable demographics available, just to get your pathetic little rocks off. Well, be my guest and read this blog, and see what your delightful intentions feel like like from the other side.

But be careful, people thus searching. I’ve had a lot of real-life sticks and stones thrown at this blog over the last two-and-a-bit years, and have had to act accordingly. I almost never use the services that I engaged to fight said attacks, but for you, my paedophilic readers, I will make a happy and delighted exception.

I can trace the IP address of everyone that visits this blog, you see. As noted, I almost never, ever do – so normal visitors and searchers need not worry. The problem for you, paedophiles, is that IP addresses can be directly linked to search terms, rather than just hits. So I can single you out. What a shame that is!

And what a shame, too, that the data also tells me your rough location…and, crucially, your ISP. What a shame, all the more, that I have reported (and will continue to report) your nefarious online actions to your providing companies!

See how fun your paedophilic endeavours are when you have to answer for your actions in person. Enjoy :D

FUCK YOU ALL.

(I should add here that I haven’t reported all dubious searches; “fuck children” could, simply, mean something along the lines of “I hate children,” and that the searcher would like to find like-minded people. But some of these terms are completely unambiguous, and those are the ones that have been reported. Of course, I am aware that if a paedophile was being clever, there are ways to hide or fake IPs, but it seemed a sensible thing to report these instances nevertheless. Finally, I don’t check the IP address of anyone searching for something non-suspect, nor any normal visitor, so don’t panic; I’m really not spying on the overwhelming majority of you, most of whom I know and love. The software installed is a hangover from when I thought my family were reading this blog, and has only become useful again in tracking these worthless motherfuckers, not the rest of you).

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Shiny Things

 Blog News  7 Responses »
Jul 192011
 

Not to blow my own trumpet, because the relative popularity of Confessions continues to mystify and astonish me, but I’ve picked up a couple of awards since I started writing the bilge a few years ago. Sometimes I mention them, more often I don’t – but if you really care, if you’re fixated with the idea of self-flagellation by means of Pandorian self-aggrandising and narcissism, then be my guest and take a look at them.

Initially, pleased as I was when the lovely Little Miss Sunshine afforded me a ‘Liebster Blog Award‘, I wasn’t going to go with the meme and write this post – but then I thought, ‘what the hell?’

Liebster Blog Award

Liebster Blog Award

Firstly, thanks very much to Little Miss Sunshine for bestowing this upon me. As noted, I still find myself genuinely stunned that the crap I write is worthy of simply reading, never mind awarding – and since I really respect LMS’s writing, intelligence and determination, it’s really flattering coming from her. So this put a smile on my face. Thank you, lovely lady :)

Secondly, I have the pleasure of passing the award on to blogs that I enjoy. There are of course many such writings, but here are a few that stand out, for various reasons.

  • Conversations With My Head – bourach. Always bourach, one of my oldest online friends! Not because of some sort of Twitter-based nepotism, but because she is a great and evocative writer. Often, sadly, the reading is tragic and heart-wrenching – but it’s always intelligent, engaging, eloquent and even, when the tone is right, witty and entertaining. One of these days I’m going to Kent to meet her :) A year ago, we’d probably have been planning to head the White Cliffs for a wee bit of a fall together – now, hark! We are both moderately sane. I have to hand it to bourach – my relative recovery has been, at least in part, down to medication. Her’s has been down to the very opposite – coming off medication! Not to mention therapy and working fucking hard to free herself of mentalism.
  • Living with Bipolar Disorder, DID and the Consequences of Childhood Abuse – this blog is articulately authored by tai0316. I’ve only fairly recently discovered this journal (as in, this year), but I am sooooo glad I did. I can empathise with so much of what tai writes about, and find her style – although she also frequently discusses tragic and painful issues – to be strong and smart. There are times when I wish I could give her a big hug – but as I said, she’s strong, and there equally as many times when I find a smile creep across my lips in delighted congratulations of her determination to fight her demons. tai also posts quite a lot of artistic collages, which are as expressive as they are insightful. She’s a gentle, intelligent, remarkable lady, and I’ve been so glad to make her acquaintance.
  • Living Life on the Borderline – the online home of outwardlyintrovert. I don’t want to sound patronising here, but I suppose I probably will, so I’ll just get on with it. Outwardly is in her late teens, yet writes with a cleverness and insight not always seen in people three or four times her age. There’s a theme emerging here – there’s trauma in outwardly’s history too. I hate that any of that happened (as I obviously do for all concerned), but I’m glad that she writes. I know that mentalism is a fucking inconvenient thing to have when you’re trying to study, to make something of your life – it sort-of destroyed my attempt at a Masters degree – but as you’ll see from her blog, outwardly has an excellent intellect, and an important characteristic that I’ve always lacked: wisdom.
  • Whisper on the Wind – written by Me. Not me me, but Me. OK? OK. I’m new to this blog (the blog itself isn’t that old, though), but again I’m very glad I came across it. I always hesitate to use the word ‘beautiful’ when it comes to writing, as it’s so often little more than self-referential or arse-licking hyperbole. In this case though, the word is, I feel, quite accurate. Yes, Me rants and raves like the rest of us, and such posts are always excellently expressed, but there are times when she becomes more introspective and philosophical, and on these occasions her prose and poetry is beguiling.
  • At Least My Cat Loves Me – Autumn Delusions. Another young blogger, whose prose I often read thinking, “fuck me, I wish I could write like that.” Engaging, entertaining, smart and often funny; though I don’t think AD realises that she has the capacity to amuse, let me assure you that she does. Now, unlike some of the others mentioned here, AD has some…what’s the diplomatic term?…sod it, mentalist issues that I haven’t been through (others that I have), and of course can’t ‘get’ from an insider’s perspective. AD, however, has a great capacity to promote understanding, and whilst her posts are often long – though I think I’ll be keeping the crown for the bloody longest, thanks very much – they never meander, and always keep you interested.

As well as being fab in their own rights, all of the above have been enormously supportive of me over the months/years, and I’d like to publicly thank them for that. It’s not whyI picked their blogs for this award, but it is hugely important to me, so thank you all.

Right, enough of the love-in gushing. I’m going back to being a bitch now. To echo Charlie Brooker’s immortal Newswipe parting gambit, go away.

I do love you people though. Not just the five above, though of course that includes them, but all of you.

Right, really. Enough of that. GO AWAY!!!

Night x

(Can’t be arsed proof-reading this, but I hope you don’t care because this isn’t about me; rather, it’s about bourach, tai, outwardly, Me and AD. Yeah!).

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Day of Ridiculous Paranoia and Panic

 Moods, Traumatic Stuff, Triggers  14 Responses »
Jul 142011
 

OK. I privatised two posts, but am feeling a little calmer – and therefore less paranoid – so have decided to post them here in summary, and with a brief update.

Post One: Night Terror

Published c. 1.30pm. Hidden c. 2pm.

I’m going to publish this utter rubbish, but don’t be surprised if it quickly disappears or gains a password…

—

  • 11.30pm: Go to bed. After a number of nights of insomnia, for once can’t keep eyes open to concentrate on book. Sleep.
  • 4am: Waken. Completely. Dick around with phone for a minute or two. Become bored. Pick up Kindle and see that this morning’s Guardian has already been delivered. Read it.
  • 4.30am: In an effort not to wake A, keep trying not to laugh at Rupert Murdoch’s deserved and long-time-coming misfortune. Grauniad has devoted thousands of words and an entire section to this.
  • 4.35am: Complete Rupert Murdoch section of Grauniad. Go to next section. Do not pass ‘go’, do not collect £200.
  • 4.35am and 10 seconds: Freak out. Picture of GCHQ building in Cheltenham is staring back at me from Kindle screen.
  • 4.36am – c. 4.39am: Read GCHQ piece with growing trepidation. Article is actually about whether GCHQ, MIs 5 and 6 should face greater scrutiny from MPs and peers.
  • 4.39am and 30 seconds: Start having heart palpitations. GCHQ is complaining they do not have enough “internet specialists”. Try to rationalise that this means they’re not watching me; according to this article, they simply don’t have the manpower. Fail to thus rationalise. That this is in the media means they’ll soon have more relevant workers to spy on me.
  • 4.41am: Hide under bedclothes, convinced that the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee have kicked this story off as they’ve found out that GCHQ are after me and need more people to keep tabs on me. Further convince self that ISC has put out this story to lull me into a false sense of security.
  • 4.42am – c. 5.00am: Scour bedroom with eyes, trying to find evidence of government (or, indeed, any other) cameras. Do not find any.
  • 5am: Get up and go into bathroom to try to pull self together. Find disgusting and fairly unique-looking spider in the bath. Freak out even more. Scared of spiders anyway, but this is shaped oddly; it has a long, elongated body, rather than a round one. Could spider actually be a tiny hidden camera?
  • 5.01am: Spider doesn’t seem to be a camera because fucker is clearly alive. Surprise myself by having ability to stand there watching it slowly circle towards, and eventually into and down, the plughole – rather than the more common practice of screaming the house down.
  • 5.03am: Return to bed. Spend what must be nearly an hour arguing with myself about GCHQ. I say I’m paranoid and narcissistic. Story about GCHQ is just a normal politics scoop about the funding and accountability of government agencies. Someone, however, laughs scornfully, and tells me I’m doomed. Cannot work out whether this is ‘me’ being irrational and completely self-obsessed, or if it’s someone ‘else’. Not reminiscent of ‘They‘, Tom, peccaries, gnomes or Paedo. Is female. Probably just me countering myself. Not sure.
  • c. 6am: Suddenly don’t care whether GCHQ are watching or not. Stick two fingers up to room around me and without speaking advise GCHQ, if they’re there, that I am just going to go about daily life anyway. Pick up Kindle again, deliberately ignore rest of Grauniad, read book instead.
  • c. 7am: Suddenly pass out into deep sleep.
  • c. 8.20am: Re-awaken. Converse with A, only giving fleeting thought to cameras/GCHQ.
  • c. 8.30am to present: Get up, eat, do some stupid puzzles to wake mind up, wonder why I became so terrified during the night, accuse self of narcissism, don’t believe GCHQ have cameras watching me (at least not to crippling extent of the early hours). Debate whether or not to discuss this with Christine tomorrow. Do not want to change medication or end up in bin.

    Conclude incident in the night was mere paranoia without logical basis precipitated by FuckBitch Aunt of Evil’s presence, and my uncertainty about her intended movements. Decide this is some bizarre, psychotic form of transference. Am transferring AoE’s unpredictability and sheer fucking nosiness about me onto GCHQ, because I know GCHQ technically can (though probably don’t) read/listen to/see me/my stuff. Very unlikely that AoE has the requisite surveillance knowledge or equipment to do so.

    Decide, therefore, that episode was a one-off, mainly caused by AoE but also partly catalysed by sleep deprivation. My sleep patterns – or insomnia patterns – go in cycles. This is period of the latter. Am reminded that I named this blog what I did for a reason. Mood is still OK, so a brief bout of evil/insomnia-induced mentalness can’t be that bad…right?

    Given the above, decide to hide information from Christine. Don’t need bin nor stronger anti-psychotics. Need AoE to go away (which she will on Tuesday, yay!) and Zopiclone (of which I have plenty).

So. Yay. Good. All is fine. I only wrote this for posterity, not because I’m concerned. Sorry for the crap writing, but it’s partly due to (a) the stream of consciousness bullshit that I wrote ‘live’ on my phone as events progressed and (b) I can’t be arsed switching on the laptop or PC, so am still writing this from via the iOS WordPress application.

I’ll try and catch on more therapy reviews next week. For now, it seems this bollocks is my only blogging contribution this week. Probably a good thing if I’m being this narcissistic ;)

Post Two: I Am Actually Going Mad

Written c. 3.30pm. Not published.

This is new. I cannot recall paranoia on this level. I am absolutely petrified, to the point where I’m shaking, hiding in a corner and throwing up.

Worries:

  1. Mother is dead;
  2. Aunt of Evil is going to come here and confront me;
  3. GCHQ;
  4. Burglars, rapists, GBHers and murderers;
  5. Debt – creditors are going to put me in prison;
  6. A will also die on the way home from work;
  7. But I can’t go out in the car to collect him or see if mother is OK because I will have an accident;
  8. Stupid decision to publish last post because if the people discussed therein find it, then they will bin me;
  9. Christine tomorrow in case she bins me because all of a sudden I’m really, really not sane.

Tried trich to calm down. Didn’t work. I don’t want to cut but I’m scared, I need some sort of release. I am going to try Valium, but that won’t stop my current persecution complex; it’ll only numb my response to it. I thought that maybe splurging out shit here would be cathartic but it only fuels my perception that everyone is out to get me.

I keep hearing noises outside and am convinced that it’s someone coming to get me. It’s not. It’s people going about their bloody business. But is it though?

Oh God.

I’ve turned up the TV so as I don’t hear them but my concern there is that then they know that I’m in here and if I don’t let them in by legitimate means then they will get in by other methods.

What has happened? I was so fucking well for a while there and no one was out to get me. Now I’m not and they are (well, I retain some insight that says they’re not, but I can’t believe it). It feels like a psychotic mixed episode. I don’t want this. Why has it happened?

I hope my previous assertion that this has been induced by insomnia was correct but I don’t believe that right now.

My IBS is out of control today so I might not even be able to run away should I need to do so. Not that I do, I know. But yet I might. Fuck, I don’t know.

Don’t know what else to say. This is not good. I’m such a fucking idiot.

Now

  • Mother is not dead. I stupidly advised her that I was mental, but luckily she hasn’t shot over here to see if she can make me saner, because I assured her that A would be home soon.
  • No one has tried to force entry.
  • AoE is staying with my mother, and is therefore not (nor has been) here.
  • A could be dead, but I seriously doubt it.
  • GCHQ have no interest in me. Why do I keep thinking that they do? If they happen to come across any of this, I bet they’re laughing their bollocks off.
  • I am not particularly behind in paying my creditors. A little, but not enough to be of major concern yet. I’ve already considered bankruptcy if it comes to that.
  • I could be murdered, raped, GBHed or burgled, but hopefully the statistics are presently in my favour. I mean, two of those have happened several times already; could I really be that statistically unlucky?
  • There are no voices but my own.
  • IBS continues, but that’s a several-times-daily thing that I should not have taken out of context.
  • I am mortified about all of this but am going to publish this post as a warning to myself.
  • I am very grateful for the support afforded to me on Twitter today. Thank you.
  • I am fine now. Please don’t worry about me :)

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