I am looking for Sam.
I met Sam during one of my spells in a psychiatric hospital in Sheffield. She was very funny, beautiful and kind. With lustrous blond hair, she was liked by everyone, including the nurses. We became friends at once. I always found it important to make friends if I was in a hospital (a few times). I never believed in solely individual resilience. One needs a strong community to survive the damage that can be inflicted in some (not all) psychiatric institutions.
We would exchange clothes and beauty products and just laugh at almost everything in the hospital. Like me, Sam was sectioned. And when you are sectioned in England, you can’t leave the hospital’s premises. You need permission for everything, including going to a grocery shop, which wouldn’t be a problem if NHS (medical system in the UK) wasn’t struggling with staff. They don’t have enough nurses and social workers to look after the patients.
And so I bonded with Sam. There was literally almost nothing for us to enjoy, any aspect of life. The hospital’s food was then amazing but there is a limit in terms of basing one’s happiness solely on nicely made salads. People need more, they need company, empathy and some sense of freedom. But there was none of that, and so we entertained each other.
I was discharged earlier than Sam, and she was transferred somewhere else, but we kept communicating on the phone. I resumed my work (teaching at universities), while Sam was eventually released into the community and asked me to go out with her several times. But I never did it. I don’t like going out to a party in any case, and at that time I was a single mum raising a boy of five. I had not much time to see my friends.
But a couple of years later, Sam messaged me again, saying that she was living in a supported house, in the north of Sheffield. I got into my pink Peugeot convertible and drove to see her.
Sam didn’t look good when I saw her. It was obvious that she was struggling. I felt stupid with my women’ magazines, books and chocolate I had brought to her, with my pink Peugeot. I had gotten the car very cheap, but no one knew it. From the exterior, I was an image of success. I was working, looking after my son and my cat, with many friends around me. Not many knew that I was on casual, zero-hour contracts at my jobs (I had several), counting every single penny, and struggling with doing many things in parallel. But I was doing it, and Sam wasn’t. She was on massive doses of anti-psychotics, while I was on none, only using Seroquel as a night sleep aid, taking 50-75 mg at night. Even on that dose I was still constantly tired, but there was nothing else available, as the mental health services would discharge me a month after the hospital, thinking that I was ‘recovered.’
Psychoses would return.
I lost touch with Sam when I moved to the Netherlands with my son and my cat, but can’t stop thinking about her. Where is she? What is she doing? Is she happy? The last time I saw her, in that supported house in Sheffield, Sam wasn’t happy.
Then there is also David that I miss. As with Sam, we met in a psychiatric hospital in Sheffield. It was several years after I had met Sam. I ended up with another psychosis, due to a car accident. Someone drove into my pink Peugeot and the car had to be written off. It turned out to be a major stress factor for me, and a week later I ended up in a psychosis. I always felt when it was coming and would contact emergency services myself. I think that I was still believing in the system then, that they would take care of me, and release me back into the community as soon as possible, as I had a module to teach in one the universities where I worked.
It didn’t go according to my plan and my wishes, unfortunately. I was sectioned and released only almost two months later. By the end of that ordeal, I couldn’t remember anymore why I was there in the first place. The consultant psychiatrist, whom I liked, tried three or four different medications before she was satisfied with the outcome. I was on 15 mg of aripiprazole when I finally breathed some air upon my release, happy to be finally out. But my joy from liberation was soon crashed. I lost the module I was teaching because it had started when I was still in the hospital, and on aripiprazole I stopped sleeping. I had to beg the psychiatrist who was assigned to me for a month or so to go back on Seroquel, so that I could sleep.
David had a similar experience to mine. Like me, he was held in the hospital unnecessarily long. He was also put on different meds, one after another, until it was deemed he could go back to his life. He wasn’t sure why he was in the hospital either. And I never asked him about his diagnosis, because I didn’t believe in them. He probably needed help, but he wasn’t getting kind help. Like me, he was simply tortured, unable to comprehend how it was possible that doctors treated us like shit. Due to shortage of staff, we were inside the premises of the hospital all the time, without much to do. As with Sam, David and I just bonded. Like me, David lost his job as a chef because no one could possibly guarantee a job when one is absent from it for two months in a row.
We met several times after the hospital. Last time I saw him, he was happy and looking forward to his future. He stopped his meds, and contemplated moving to France, to work and live there.
I don’t know whether he succeeded with that plan.
It isn’t only Sam and David that I miss. I miss many others. It’s like a community of like-minded people; we should stick together. But life can be unpredictable and contacts can be lost. Maybe, hopefully, I will find my hospital friends.
A move to the Netherlands turned out to be good for me. It is a bit different here. They don’t section you, and keep you only for a few days in the hospital. I know that I simply got lucky. I found a psychiatrist who genuinely cares about his patients. While I ended up on high doses of an anti-psychotic again, it was gradually reduced due to my continuous complaints to my doctor. I wouldn’t leave him alone. I would write to him almost every day, begging to reduce my meds. I never stopped working, but I stopped enjoying life.
After a couple of psychoses I realized that I had to stay on meds for the foreseeable future and maybe forever, only not on the doses prescribed by the mainstream psychiatry. Both me and my psychiatrist learned a lot from each other. I taught him to have an individual approach to every patient, while he learned that patients can also have a voice. I knew by then what could work or what couldn’t, and I wanted a good life. I am now on meds that have no side-effects for me, working full time, and trying to enjoy my life. It isn’t easy but it is still rewarding. I am lucky.
But many patients who have experienced psychosis aren’t as lucky. Most of them are on high doses of anti-psychotics that, due the side effects, make the person disabled. It isn’t possible to contemplate any work when you are unable to open your eyes in the morning, totally zombified on high doses of meds. Medication maybe keeps you from a psychosis, but it can also debilitate you. How can you recover and live life fully when you have no energy or desire to live?
I am looking for Sam. I want to help her. I thought that I couldn’t but I can. Peer support is crucial in mental health system. I can’t give a medical opinion but I can teach her how to navigate the psychiatric domain, how to liberate oneself in the environment where we are just numbers, to be fed by what was found based on some statistics. We are all separate human beings. Each individual is unique. No one has the same ‘bipolar disorder.’ Schizophrenia is experienced differently by every patient struggling with it. There are those who don’t struggle with it, but enjoy it. There are those who, despite the challenges of such a diagnosis, recover, and study to become a doctor. It is never too late to change one’s life. But one needs to know and one needs support. Individual resilience isn’t enough; we are all in this together.
I am looking for David. I miss our friendship. I want to find all my other friends I made in different hospitals. I just enjoy their company more, because they don’t judge, they don’t stigmatize and they aren’t jealous about someone’s else success. We all just want a place on this earth, to live, to love, and contribute to a better society…somehow.
Beautifully said. When we bond with someone, it feels like we exchange pieces of ourselves with them, a shared lived experience of exploration and growth. Especially in situations of mutual support under shared bad conditions. Real bonding there.
Those who we bond with shape who we are, just as we shape them. Losing someone who carries a part of you can be deeply painful, leaving you with their imprint—a part of them within you—that amplifies wanting to be with them. I’m glad Sam and David were there to bond with and I hope you find them.
Report comment
Thank you so much for your comment, Dan.
Yes, I agree with you, people we meet form part of our identity. And I believe that we attract those who are close to us in spirit, and it’s important to recognize it and bond with people. Being alone is sad.
Report comment
Oh God, British mental health wards are like prisons: completely incapable of helping in any way besides keeping you biologically alive. at least most of the time, and even to feel safe in such a place is not something you can count on. And the world outside of these hospitals is also one grim prison and a madhouse, and honestly, I would say that social destruction is about the only meaningful social enterprise left, although it should be us destroying society rather then vampires and tyrants for whom are like butchers in a piggy playground. So what to do? You tell me. Stock up on alcohol is what I say.
Report comment
I am not sure what happened. When I first arrived to the UK, it was amazing. Staff was available to look after the patients, take them on a walk, etc. Food was amazing. Lots of therapy such as music, art, and even visits from Labradors to give us a hug.
And then suddenly, it all changed. Nurses, instead of looking after patients, ended up with constant administration, doctors not having time anymore to talk to the patients more than once a week, or even longer. Art therapy no longer there. Food stayed good, but I haven’t been in a British hospital for years, and don’t know what it the current situation.
Report comment
Dear Ekaterina, you don’t have to have been in an asylum to have a whole……. a whole population of people you miss. You just have to have been there and talk to, get to know, listen to, and have taken people into your lives that are so human they don’t fit into the machinery using them for a “society.” And yes, they so many get labeled as being mentally ill.
Just one person here: https://www.lifestorynet.com/obituaries/lisbeth-lilly-lipke.29513#memories She was a friend for years. I watched her get committed at the end, after we had had a conversation before this, where she very quietly explained her prior suicide attempts, and how depressed she would get after having been in the asylum. I don’t even know what kind of adjective or adverb to give the process of her being committed. Everyone lied, no one even followed real rules. She simply was acting out a bit, but I could get along with her. She had gone out with some “friends” the morning before, but ended up being with me on her front yard, where she was making up poetry, my long hair being similar, akin or as the vines growing on her side fence. Since I have one side of my backyard covered with grape vines, maybe that’s her. She was being playful, and had some M and M’s ( a candy ) that she had put into a container (a wine glass), calling them Jesus blood (or his body, I don’t remember, probably his body). Which is interesting to me because I had had a funny dream years ago where I traded with my [Dutch] cousins some M and M’s without peanuts for those with peanuts, like I was conning them into it because with peanuts seemed more illustrious or high class, but that all the M and M’s in the dream (which they CAN do in a dream) hatched into chickens I would have more. Years before this, I had been wanting to go to the beach, and thought about calling Lilly up, which was only thought, or actually more than the limitations that are supposed to exist and WAS thought. Lilly then called me up bringing up that we would go to the beach, although the limitations imposed on us would say that I would have had to physically bring this up. But no, they were my own thoughts, not something anybody else programmed me with that then could have come out of my mouth like a computer being used for whatever, no! they were my own thoughts, and she responded to them. Sadly, she responded rather tragically, because having been tortured and tortured, and intimidated, and abused, and insulted, and discriminated against in the mental health system this wouldn’t fit into their idea of normalcy, of statistical based norms of consensual reality deportment necessary for them to leave her alone as “sane.” Just because she was in reality where thought is real, despite it’s supposed to be something else, so limited it couldn’t exist. She “read” my mind, one would say, but that seems a bit bleak, as if it’s some test. I did ask Lilly, after her “suicide” what it was like in Heaven, and she said the good stuff remains, it’s not flushed down the whatever, but grows. That’s more real, I would believe, then anything we think is loss, be it physical or whatever. There had been a local medium that had seen a flyer regarding Lilly after her suicide, and the medium had written some message from Lilly on a piece of paper, this was given to another lady who I happened to be talking to on the phone (she was involved with being pastor to a church that actually kicked her out for not following their rigid rules), and this lady “happened” to put her hand on this piece of paper while talking, and read it to me. It basically said that no, committing suicide didn’t end Lilly’s depression, that it was what was described as a “deadset” state. I think that means that you fail to see everything in life that is there beyond what is making you feel it isn’t there. But it was later, when I asked her her what Heaven was like, and she told me that the good things remain and grow, that they aren’t loss. Because I was involved with someone who had a famous near death experience, so I decided to ask Lilly. It all was so much of a shock to me, when she had committed suicide, also given how I watched it happen, which I haven’t shared yet other than everyone lied, I notice. All she really did was not be intimidated by these “friends” who then wouldn’t leave us alone to simply be together, first invited me over with her for tea and some cake, not because they wanted to interact with us, they wanted to confront her, to coerce her into treatment. So, after lying to us, and we had gone across the street, I was asked to let them be with Lilly, and I said: “No, that’s funny, I’m not going to do that,” and left. Because I wasn’t going to condone their idea that she needed whatever they were trying to push on her. Didn’t take long and she came bounding across the street, scared out of her wits, because they had threatened her, she KNEW what happens in those places, she tried to get away on my bike which was locked and slammed down on a pedal that wouldn’t move so hard she broke her Achilles tendon. She then took flight, and a sort of chase scene ensued. The couldn’t find her, she had found another friend to help her for awhile, they broke into her house called her case manager, after it was made clear Lilly didn’t want them in her house. I had called there telling them to get out of Lilly’s house or I’d called the police, from a lady who since has continued to be extremely nasty, I got a sarcastic reply of: “Oh.. would you,” where upon I knew they’d lay a whole schpiel on the police. And indeed, afterwards, after NOT calling the police, I passed by her house while the police were there, and her “friends” and they were in the process of committing her. As I came by she pointed me out to the police, and said I was really nice, then all I did was stop, and maybe didn’t even say anything, and a policeman told me to move on or I’d be arrested. I asked him for what I would be arrested, and he said for interfering with an investigation. I went home, and called police non emergency, told them how these “friends” had trespassed into her house, and the non emergency police actually told me stuff she supposedly had done that she hadn’t, as if that was reason to have her committed. I found this just about always happens, as well, things are exaggerated, and if that’s enough stuff is brought out that whoever thinks might have happened as if it did. When it hadn’t, wouldn’t, isn’t……. They said she had been taking her clothes off, which is the FIRST thing a “friend” said she was doing, when she had fled them, which she hadn’t done at all. Then they told the police something she hadn’t done, and then the police are reporting this from the non emergency number as if they are reading the tabloids. By now, in the intercourse or trying to remember and put into words on a screen everything, I end up being quite overloaded. I should ADD that after breaking her achilles tendon, the asylum never attended to a true physical condition. Her leg was swollen up to the knee, the tendon would have had to have been directly attended to, before it was too late, but no, all they did in a “medical establishment” was dope her up with disabling agents. He foot was ruined, she got out by, as she said, being able to make them think she was OK (I think one doesn’t want them to know if you aren’t, they only make things worse), and then she ended up being committed again, this time there were reactions to the drugs she was one that weren’t acknowledged, by then she had been raped, and instead a nun that was always there in that particular hospital as a representative of such a system accused her of being “too provocative” as well as denying the affect the drugs were having on her when because of them she couldn’t hold her urine. Then she got, and within a few months had committed suicide. I had warned all of her friends, and her mother, that I thought if they had her committed again they would lose her, and then despite my warning to most of her “friends” I remained the bad guy.
In the chase scene going on, where I was trying to find her when she had fled, I happened to slow down at one point, because I felt the need, I then ran into another friend out of nowhere, someone who since then I ALSO have lost thanks to you know what system, and while standing there talking to her, Djokovic happened to come by in a truck [I think] and being sensitive enough to have some notion of what was going on, and seeing me, pulled an expression on his face that I have only seen in two others, and called “THAT DISTURBED LOOK.” At first it was just a joke, the mental health system sure makes people look disturbed, but this regards just something someone might see who is sensitive. Who did I see have “that disturbed look?” Two others, who I think were responsible for creating Schumann’s Kreisleriana (One being Schumann the other Hoffman who wrote the story Kater Murr that the character Kreisler came from). And then Djokovic had the same look….. So again, it’s not really funny, although one can only try to engage with it using humour, everything has become so…… later, a week, maybe less, possibly more, he came by again in the same truck, and I stated, crying out, : “They’re trying to put Lilly in the asylum again,” and he says: “I’m in love……..” Since then, I also don’t know whether I have run into Lilly, after being pronounced dead, as an angel among us, albeit the whole scenario being akin to a dream state where things are symbolic or at least beyond the trapping of how things are labeled as being considered “objective” enough that such can happen,whether it’s just me seeing something more in what happened and it’s just an association (I’m told to make a quip about this being a “symptom” I suppose of “psychosis”), or she actually did materialize from the wave patterns of a dream in spirit, and thus could materialize into the physical from the wave patterns of physical matter, as one sees in the double slit experiment when the wave patterns are observed, with quantum physics, the uncertainty principle allowing for this. If we can dream and step into their world, perhaps they can dream and appear in ours. All of this BEYOND what most academic settings would say is possible, although someone like Tesla might completely disagree, and have example and technology that does say it is.
Ekaterina, it gets crazier, I had for quite awhile thought Lilly was Piccini, the composer. Opera. And I won’t say exactly which opera singer I ran into at church, because she was with a violin player I also won’t mention. I won’t mention it because they are famous enough one doesn’t, and it was their personal life. But this singer then is actually bringing to life characters, like the one Piccini [another branch of Lilly’s soul, possibly] put on paper to be brought to life……… And I ended up talking to this singer, having heard her singing just the night before online on youtube, and never had heard anything like this. I think she was in the hotel here, and we walked together that direction (towards the hotel) after standing outside the church with another person (that it seems Lilly knew), and she went to I think to the hotel, while I went to the museum. During this walk I acted out stuff also. This AGAIN is too much to get into, involving Antonio Stradivari and his son “Giovanni,” Giovanni being a character in another opera, and “Giovanni” perhaps having reincarnated to be Maxwell Clark who also found out stuff that Tesla, and the dream state would understand beyond mainstream indoctrination (academics). Giovanni actually around again, a new part of his soul, possibly, and I had made a story up about him being Stradivari’s son. Having hauled all of this out. Then. One day, a girl appeared out of nowhere as I was going into the library, stating she was the girl at church. I had a whole conversation with her. But, if I am “rational” about this, this is impossible, because they are different heights. And every time I consider it, the one is the height of Lilly, completely the same everything, just about, and the other is the height of the singer, which is about a foot or so less. Was Lilly transcending time and weaving a line in dreamtime that transcends loss, bringing in what a character that’s called fictional can be? SERIOUSLY! I have two memories, this singer, who is then fitting her height, talking with her a little, walking towards the museum with her, she, I think going to the hotel (and not wanting to go to the museum), and me going to the museum, after playing a jive with Giovanni that I won’t go into. And then there’s this girl appearing out of nowhere, completely looking like Lilly, having a whole conversation with her as “the girl at the church,” and then her apologizing that she didn’t go to the museum with me. This happens all the time in opera, by the way, a change of character to make the plot gel.
I could go on about it, people still in “the community” that would say they care about Lilly, but you can’t mention any of this really, or they might say, for example, as one said: “you wrote me off,” as if I’m was supposed to keep some investment in what wouldn’t, wasn’t, and isn’t helping, and thus, they feel they are doing their duty because all of what happened to show me about the Universe, and that I need to grow, they can dismiss, and get a “badge” for it…..
And now, having written all of above, I actually skipped something, something that would make me out to be completely crazy.
This friend of mine, the one that would have been Hoffman, of the disturbed look, and Kreisleriana, she had called me that Lilly had committed suicide. I responded with: “she’s not dead, she’s just out of the mental health system,” and then when the phone wasn’t in my ear anymore, having put it down (I didn’t even have a cell phone at that time yet), I took what I would call a magic wand I had made, waved it in the air, and then Lilly appeared in a holographic image. She asked me how I had done that, and I simply demurred with a dimple doing the speaking beyond words and that was that. She was happy, though. There is even a healer who would heal using a holographic image, a healer called the dream healer. Adam McCleod. I of course was playing around with Harry Potter “fiction.” I don’t then actually completely agree with Rowling though, what she calls a horcrux is a connection between people where healing can take place, it’s called forgiveness. What’s missing in the one the other might be able to give, and where it comes from, what’s given, there no loss to give from, no debt, no guilt, just what was there the whole time waiting beyond the world’s way of “fixing” things can emerge……
Actually Ekaterina, now I remember, it wasn’t the same person, and no, there wasn’t my friend that popped out of Heaven, so exactly. There were two visits to that church, two weeks in succession, and the first week was the opera singer, but then the next week was a different girl, only she was with the same guy I had stood outside the church and talked with the singer. I had somehow convoluted those two, and put my friend, who I’d lost, up to popping in from Heaven, involving her “prior” incarnation and standard opera devices of people going in disguise as each other. Since according to me she had written such, it seems. Such goes the mind thanks to you know what, and loss. There’s no loss though, in the end. It did take me quite a part of the day, which I before had actually figured out, but the story that came out of it, half fiction, just was too strong to dismiss. I think art actually is the strongest spiritual energy, beyond fundamental religion. So no, my friend didn’t pop in out of Heaven, unless it was via two other people, the one looking too much like her to dismiss as not being some sort of doppelganger, but a good one bringing the threads of a story together, so I don’t miss what would otherwise have been lost.
That’s just one person, actually, that I miss…..
Another girl. Cheryl, when I was going to a Junior College, and she was in the choir with me, she used to call me up. She would tell me how her sister was in the French resistance, and was scared for her. I just listened. I don’t even remember whether I ever said this might be from a past lifetime, and then there’s the emotional side of it, what was she resisting ( the sister), if that what was going on. But yeah, she’d call me, and I’d just listen. She was OK, she took care of herself, basically, but then some “social workers” came along to check her out. For whatever reason her refrigerator wasn’t full, although she was taking care of herself, eating regularly, it just was her refrigerator was empty. There are enough people that perhaps are homeless, have no refrigerator, I don’t know what Cheryl’s financial situation was, whether she went to the local soup kitchen, instead, whether she was trying to lose weight, but……… Yes, as you already guessed, they committed her, I saw her once years, years ago on the bus, she looked all puffed up from the psychiatric drugs, her movements were like she was trying to get out of a big ball imploding around her preventing her from moving, something by then she was used to, since that’s the way it goes, I’m sure, her eyes also quite popping out of her head from it. She still had given up though, there was still a glint of being naughty or mischievousness or curiosity beyond the norm that she wasn’t going to dismiss in her eyes. I heard about the social workers from a friend of mine, who somehow had heard this, and there were many such stories, sadly this friend of mine sometimes going on the side of the mental health system, when it wasn’t helping her or the others.
Another lady, who thankfully escaped the system, despite the social workers, but was extremely abused. She came from Ukraine, this being years ago (a couple of decades) had been promised a job, papers should have been taken care of, none of that happened, and she was left having to deal with this and two children. As would be with many parents taking care of their children rather than whether their house fits a magazine layout of being well-kept, it was messy. Some social workers get involved, and suggest antidepressants, and this lady, having had a mother that was a nurse and new these drugs can have such an undesirable affect, she said no, and told the about what she knew. These social workers took away her children, exaggerated everything, I heard it was in the papers how messy her house was, hearing this from someone that REALLY should have known better to believe it. I talked with this woman numerous times on the bus, and everything was fine. She never showed any signs of being anything but a good mother. Eventually she found a man here she married, and then went back to Ukraine, although given recent trends had to leave there. I heard this from her husband, but haven’t seen him since, although he was on the bus often. I’ve encountered enough from these social workers to know how that all goes, which is too much to mention here. Excuse me let me write an encyclopedia about it, that might hold a fraction of what’s going on……
There was a guy that helped at a mission where they had a group for people to come together and share stuff they wrote. A writer’s circle. He, in high school, was the class president, and when he was to give a speech at graduation, he told them the truth regarding formal education. They then turned off the microphone WHILE he was talking. Apparently it was THAT dangerous for them would anyone start to question the veritable truth of what was brought forth in their noble institution. He became a really good writer, wrote for the local paper, had a book he was going to write, had a literary agent as well, and was working on that, but that fell through. He told me he was having problems with alcohol, and this editor had suggested something he didn’t like and he responded quite bluntly, perhaps with a swear word. Again, given anyone trying to dress up for commercial use and mainstream whatever he already had experienced, I can’t but see he was right, but they dropped him. I don’t know if I would know how to react or respond when an editor for a mainstream outlet would suggest something that to me to go along with so many of what I discover is offered at say Barnes and Noble as modern literature, and how paint by number it so often is. In the meantime, he had had a suicide attempt, actually told us he was really mad when he woke up and wasn’t dead. I’m sure this also was after having been committed, and experiencing the oppression there. Then I heard he also had committed suicide. Someone ran into him in the kind of state she called “psychotic” because she couldn’t relate to him, and then it was reported he had committed suicide.
I could go on about others, those stuck in the system, not being able to free themselves, or even being able to bypass the barb wired fence of fear keeping them imprisoned every time they try to engage with what would help them beyond what they are allowed to entertain. How is anyone to acquire the matrix of understanding to work with answers one isn’t allowed to even entertain?
Some do get out, like your friend Sam seems to have……….
Report comment
Oh my God,
such a sad story, Nijnsky, I was almost crying at the end.
There are indeed many, too many ‘patients’ that are abused and mistreated by the system. Sectioning someone is really inhuman, taking kids away from the mum just like that, is unforgivable. It is outrageous.
The whole system has to be reformed.
So many patients are also taken advantage of. One of my friends has a son diagnosed with schizophrenia and he lived for a long time at a special place where they were supposed looking after him, and the next thing my friend discovered was that they were stealing money from him all the time he was there, under their care, for many years. She had to take him to live back in her house, even if he does need constant supervision. He shouts a lot because of his voices, but instead of working with him and teaching him how to deal with voices, they just zombified him with huge doses of psychiatric drugs, where he still hears voices, while feeling like total shit.
Sad world we are living in right now.
Thanks Nijinsky for sharing such a profound story. And now, I am crying. There are too many, too many of them/us, denied of decent life.
Report comment
Dear Ekaterina, there are so many sad sad stories. And it’s society’s great loss not to listen. It would change all of society would society care about trauma, and how one transcends it. All the symptoms labeled as disease to me are something akin to telling someone when they have a limp that there is something genetically wrong with their leg, to prevent actually seeing that maybe they are overworked or so. And then the loss is the human condition, and all the creative, amazingly natural evolutionary responses to finding another way than forcing people to work till they have a limp. And it’s a loss to the people who manipulate the whole system to label a natural response thus, THEY have lost their humanity, and they won’t find it in whatever they think they’ve gained….. Eventually they will find themselves, but in the meantime it’s our task not to invest in using trauma as a means to punish people to control their behavior so that the system can control them.
I think you’ve encountered it yourself that as soon as you have been labeled as being mentally ill, you can’t do an array things that for others are normal without people suddenly being concerned, all because at one point you weren’t frightened into being controlled by statistical based norms, peer pressure, consensual reality deportment, the status quo , the fashion of whatever group everyone inside it has compromised themselves to… etc. etc. And so you are targeted that you might actually break free. Are showing signs of dissent, and the even worse fear that your dissent might be subconsciously expressed through sadness, your own inner world depicting the trauma that you might gain perspective and transcend it etc. that’s even worse because it might change your conscious thinking and you’ll be less programmable, less vulnerable to their brainwashing. You might actually gain access to a world that exists for you despite you’re not controlled by obeying said rules or you’ll be traumatized into it, and that world really…..it might show they’re not really, not really in such an amazing society as they think. They very stuff the oppress and are so paranoid about might actually not be what they think. And then comes all of the alarmist behavior, that their oppression is for your own good, and them they feel safe when they don’t look at what they are so alarmed about to see it’s really nothing, or might actually be a completely different understanding leading to perspective on what it is to be human rather than something programmed to follow said…..
It remains amazing to me how human being because they have cognitive faculties that you can tell them something that at a mental level has all the elements that it’s valid and true, but it’s only a facade. It’s only there to be repeated as excuse as to why said process is true and is working, and so no one looks anymore at the real result, or cherry picks, as it’s called, no insult to cherries, I just had something, they are amazing. But God forbid anyone will dissent from said indoctrination, or worse do something that deviates it from a way that when left alone might expose that perhaps it’s not what people have been brainwashed to believe it is despite all their efforts to enforce without looking at the result…… A Course in Miracles says that when someone is talking from their ego to not respond and argue with them, because then you are coming from your own….. Perhaps just peacefully doing your own thing shows there’s another way……
Report comment
Sorry, in my rather long post, what I basically was trying to say is that if society was truly interested in understanding trauma, and how it effects people, they would see the signs to stop so much that comes because of trauma. All of the crimes, the sociopaths, the wasting of nature, all of that, and with “mental illness” it’s just this zone where you either acknowledge it or not. Deny how trauma effects people, and a society doesn’t see how it would stop everything else, only tries to treat it with more trauma. And “mentally ill” people aren’t the ones causing all the wars, we’re not the criminals, we’re not the sociopaths running the banks and the militaries, the penal systems and even the churches and schools, no. We’re just these people that can’t fit into all of that and…… we might be trying to point something out to society that if they paid attention, just simply to understand trauma and how it affects people rather than thinking it’s a necessary form of “discipline”……
Report comment
I think that the whole system needs a major reform, where indeed, trauma would be acknowledged prior to zombifying the person with high doses of anti-psychotics or anti-depressants. Where everyone would be treated on an individual basis, not as a number in the statistics.
Report comment
Ekaterina,
I needed to read this today! Thank you so much for your story! I have the label schizophrenia and deal with attempting to balance my meds with as low a dose as possible. I believe your last two sentences and I adore my struggling friends the most!
Report comment
Dear Ginny,
we are in the same boat! And yes, friends made on one’s psychiatric journey are sacred. They get us, and we get them!
Report comment
Yes!
Report comment