No, not really, just for a little while. I've just finished exams and am currently struggling to wind up a work project that is already months overdue, hence the paucity of posts in recent weeks. I'm aiming to get the project done, or at least reduced to matters of post-production and fine-tuning, by the end of the month. So I'll be keeping a low profile until then.
I plan to make several significant alterations to the way I spend my time in coming weeks, which will have implications for this blog. Once the work project is complete, it's highly likely that my employment arrangements will change. I might work part-time, either here or elsewhere, or not work at all, but it seems clear that continuing in my current role under the current conditions is untenable. But while this means that there will be little or no money coming in (which won't be a problem - at least in the short-term!) it will give me the opportunity to take on extra subjects at school, and hopefully also to post here (as well as comment elsewhere) more often, and in a more thoughtful and systematic way, as well as follow up on contacts and catch up on existing correspondence that this blog has generated.
It's rather disconcerting to reflect upon that fact that, as recently as eighteen months ago, I rarely even thought about the kind of stuff I post about on here, let alone discussed it with anyone else. While I wouldn't say that I'd 'repressed' or 'forgotten' about it in any wholescale or all-encompassing way, now that I am thinking about it, the many minor memories that embroider the relevant experiences are resurfacing, a process which is sometimes painful, but more often than not, just vaguely vertiginous. Now, how the fuck did I manage to forget about that?
It's just that I have to wonder how and why, given that I had so successfully managed to excise this aspect of my past from my sense of self for so many years, it has reasserted itself so stridently - and resulted in this blog. And to wonder whether or not this is actually a good thing, from the point of view of my mental health. Will I drive myself mad thinking about how the mad-doctors and others have driven me mad? Oh, the convolutions...
But back to work for now.
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6 comments:
You finished by saying:
"It's just that I have to wonder how and why, given that I had so successfully managed to excise this aspect of my past from my sense of self for so many years, it has reasserted itself so stridently - and resulted in this blog. And to wonder whether or not this is actually a good thing, from the point of view of my mental health. Will I drive myself mad thinking about how the mad-doctors and others have driven me mad?"
I go round and round about this exact issue. Most of the time I figure it's all for the good, but sometimes I wonder if concentrating on this shit might not have a negative side as well.
Perhaps I have a post in the working here. (I've been brain dead lately--not writing at all)
Well, I hope it does do us all good and I look forward to you having more time to spend with us.
"I go round and round about this exact issue. Most of the time I figure it's all for the good, but sometimes I wonder if concentrating on this shit might not have a negative side as well."
I think it does have a negative side to some extent. There has to be a balance in examining and confronting these issues from the past, but it's easy to get sucked back there and stay there.
On the other hand, when it's not addressed at all, we tend to(less than fully consciously) re-create circumstances that will allow us to deal with the past. Unfortunately, that can become our entire lives, and we may not even know why it's happening.
It's difficult sometimes to let go an say, "It's over now", especially when these things have shaped our present lives to such an extent.I know for myself, it would be easier to move on if I were not entrenched up to my eyeballs in repairing the damage done to my health and my life, particularly by the mad doctors.
I didn't get heavy into looking at my past until I realized how I'd been drugged out of being able to claim it as part of my life. It is this withdrawal process that is forcing me to look at the past as emotions long forgotten resurface from the numbness that was my reality for so long. I think it's a process I have to go through. I guess the key is keeping some sort of perspective throughout the process. Key for me is that, contrary to what it might look like here in the blogosphere, I do have a life with lots of "normies" in it. Very importantly though, I really like connecting with people "like me" in this world (the blogosphere.) I can't see how validating each other's experiences can be bad as long as we have balance in our lives.
I suppose too that I hope I can bring hope to people stuck out there in the hell and lies of the system at some point in the future. Understanding my past will allow me to bring greater compassion than I was ever able to bring to the table in my past incarnation as a social worker. I was more sensitive than others in my position, but dissociated from my experience. How much more could I do once embracing my past experience and recognizing people who are troubled are truly my peers?
Not that I know what I want to do if I can ever work again, but I do know I want to advocate or work in some way, if not professionally, for those people still hurting at the hands of psychiatry. All this seems a way of networking in that direction.
blah, blah blah...I'm tired...going to bed now.
Hi Ruth,
That's the cool thing about blogs, your own terms all the way. No pressure, no deadlines, just going at your own stride and pace.
Hope to see you out and aboot, til then safe journey.
Well Ruth
A very interesting set of conversations..
If I have learned anything about edge treading the fires of internal hells it is that the fires are made of terrible feelings or bad and shocking emotional losses which have been denied by reflex or by dint of family and cultural practice ..
For generations my family brought up children to be beaten, abandoned and to deny pain (internally abandoned) and tears and deprivations ....
Yes, the past is valuable to rescue and re-rescue because it shows remarkable and destructive social and personal patterns inside people who if helped can reclaim some habitability inside themselves . And their tears and amazing tapestries of hurts are a door to compassion and more beyond ... But it is fire journey .. Flame miles and oceans . Its belongs to the world outside too .
But do people in services "love" the patient enough for that journey - is there enough resources for that ? Its a big question both personal and transcultural .. One laced with deep sadness I think .
If one is not shown "empathic reception" at the right time (as a child or adult) where one's feelings are validated and allowed to pour, then reflex repression is mostly the only option .
Yet like "thememoryartist" indicates internal Time and memory and internal relational themes reassume in an unconscious push for the voice of the past to be expressed ..Coupled in its strangled paradox of expression and denial. Neurosis ..
So what happened to us ?
The case is for some of us , that we were damaged and abused and lost even the very reflection of ourselves because no-one was there to see who we were ..We were not received..
Ruth is us. She is looking into the soul mirror - and so are we ..
Its worth re-mourning to re-establish the heart , the feeling person . Emotional intelligence ..
To be seen. What gold for a child and human , and in a rare seeing therapy perhaps helped maybe for the first time, and even to cry for the years that could not and so much wanted to
Some of us are terribly damaged though and the job of re-mourning and brokeness is what we are left with ....
It would be nice to see Mental Health services that would be more providing in that sense . They are often not and often they re-assume a cycle of more social denial of who we are ..
We are sometimes the broken tribes and peoples giving each other mirrors ..
And love sometimes . Acceptances. But its partly an existential desert .. That is life ..
.
But while this means that there will be little or no money coming in (which won't be a problem - at least in the short-term!) it will give me the opportunity to take on extra subjects at school, and hopefully also to post here (as well as comment elsewhere) more often, and in a more thoughtful and systematic way, as well as follow up on contacts and catch up on existing correspondence that this blog has generated.
Oh man, do I hear you on that one.
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