Often my thinking seems to be very chaotic. It is though all kinds of different pieces are firing at random and in all different directions. There is no order to the thing. Almost everything that other people do that is supposed to be "help" does nothing to help. It appears to me that that is because almost everyone is involved with their own ideas or problems and is not listening -- apparently cannot listen -- to me.

Just about the only thing that works for me when I am in this condition is to isolate myself as completely as possible from other people (even from Psych Central). Isolate myself even in my own mind. Stop thinking about what other people say. Given enough time -- sometimes hours, sometimes days -- I can begin to get more calm and my mind begins to get a bit more organized. I begin to think better and start to remember who I am.

When I am better organized, the effect of interacting with almost all other people, at least closely, is to start the process of disintegration again. There are a few people, or at least I have read about a few people, that I think would make my mental condition move towards a condition of stability, rather than make it move towards instability. These people, at least in my mind, listen, and sometimes probe, ask questions to gain information, and gently reassure me by their actions, not by their claims, that they know what they are doing to decrease my anxiety and mental disintegration.

I have training as a scientist, and have read some information on the stability and instability of dynamic systems. I take many things that are labelled as mental illness as being obvious examples of dynamic systems that are unbalanced and virtually out of control. For instance, bipolar or manic-depressive disorders I see as classic examples of systems that have been forced out of stability and oscillate back and forth trying to become stable again. But virtually no "mental health" practitioners seem to be aware of this at all. I have tried to interest some of them in these things, without any effect. The thing is, if you understand an unstable system you can get some good ideas on what things return them to stability. Unfortunately my instability is so great that it makes it virtually impossible for me to understand what these approaches might be.

There is an example of articles written by a mathematician (!) in the 1970s who worked with a British therapist who treated anorexics. The description of how the therapist worked made a lot of sense to me. But as far as I know his work never received much attention in wider circles, even though many of his patients said when interviewed that his treatment was the only one that had effected a complete cure. Yes, cure. His treatment method was an inpatient one, and consisted of a number of several-hour sessions over weeks. Weeks, not years or decades. Of course, the important thing was what he did in the sessions. And it was a gentle listening and probing and very gentle "pushing" in a healing direction. A kind of relieving of the patients' need for conforming to the demands of society, letting them know that they would be heard whatever they said, not interrupted and "corrected" by the therapist. A kind of gentle reassurance, which led during the treatment to increasing the patients' ability to reassure themselves -- and this was the way the treatment led to "cure" -- because the patients could then work successfully on themselves. And the mathematics helped guide or at least understand the therapy, because it predicted when rapid changes could be effected and why they took place.

Well, I see none of this in present so-called therapies. Therapists seem to think they have to "do" something to you. They don't listen. They don't listen. They don't listen. There is no time taken to listen. There is not adequate time taken to listen. Nothing ever improves. Things stay the same. They do not expect anything to really change. So they do not see that anything is wrong.

I have been in and out of therapies for decades. I am fed up. I don't have that much time left.