Trig) Not doing as well as I thought

Fish, I think you're already on the right bus.

Sometimes I think that life is totally random. Sometimes I think there's a grand pattern which I'm a tiny bit actor in and which I'll never be able to see from where I stand. I never think there's a simple scheme that I can see and understand.

I don't know, hon. I just don't have an answer to that one.

I was on the right bus to begin with, just now I have a load of trauma to deal with too and it's holding me back.

Is there such a thing as psychotic PMS? Because if there is, I totally have it. I get ****ing paranoid and traumatised once a month, right before my period.

And thanks for talking to me like I'm not a nutter, costello. It means a lot.

I don't think the scheme is simple, but I do think I can understand it if I think hard enough. That's how my life has always worked. I can understand anything if I think about it. It's the only thing I have going for me. I'm not friendly or happy or balanced or pretty or talented, I just understand things.

Never. It would be like a grain of sand thinking it can understand the universe. Don't even waste your time. Just trust.

There isn't anything to trust. I got imprisoned without due process, injected with psychoactive substances, restrained in the same position for hours on end, raped, then released with a label that ensures nobody will ever accept that I'm in pain.

My son has a great deal of trauma too. It has to be processed. Talking about it may help. I really don't know.

They say that children who act out traumatic events in their play can heal and move past it. That has been applied to adults who have suffered great trauma. They're asked to retell the event(s) repeatedly in great detail. I imagine you'd want to work with an experienced therapist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolonged_exposure_therapy

It would be very difficult to trust after that. Maybe impossible.

Ron Bassmann has an interview with Will Hall on Madness Radio - http://www.madnessradio.net/madness-...ogist-survivor - in which he says that we think we have rights until we have our rights taken away, then we realize we only have privileges.

Personally I've had the luxury of not having had something like that happen to me. I imagine the world look very different afterward.

You're not a nutter.

I don't think the trauma will hold you back. Everything that's beautiful is in that trauma, everything that gives life any meaning. Compassion is there - and kindness. It's the compost that you'll grow the most beautiful parts of your life out of. You don't want to throw it away. You want to transform it.

They're making the next edition of the DSM even as we speak. Maybe you should write to them and suggest it.

I've tried that. I ended up quitting because I have a hard time working with therapists who will report to psychiatry. They seem to all be bound to do that by the professional organisation for therapists here.

My psychoanalyst fellow (technically he's not a therapist, he's a professor of psychology) tried to do it with me too, but it was too much. He said to try again after I pass the Bar, in case I get really agitated.

Yes, I said that in human rights law. People thought I was some kind of fascist or something. I'm the exact opposite, actually.

And I am listening to a whole bunch of Madness Radio right now. it makes me feel safe to know there are people fighting that ******** they pedal. I'm confused why every recording cuts out before it ends, though.

I know, but I get treated like one an awful lot.

There was a song I used to sing as a child, "I'm a little N-U-T, just as sweet as I can be. I can sing, I can dance, I have ruffles on my-----oops! Boys, take another guess! I have ruffles on my dress!"

Frankly, I want it to never have happened. I was perfectly OK with my completely mundane misery.

Er, no thanks.
I feel like this is a better scenario for a horror film with extra-tampax product placement than it is a psych diagnosis. Mind, everything is better than a psych diagnosis.

The worst thing about being a social worker would be the people whose lives were really not that bad who would come see me and beg to be called ill and be drugged. Lots of university students who wanted to be called anxious, lots of young professional women who wanted to be called depressed. Never men. I never understood why.

who would want to drugged with psych meds legitly?

what constitutes bad life or good anyway

Yeha I never figured tha out.

Ex-****ing-actly.

I think the ECT caused the blinding headaches I get. I also think it might have made me stupider. I don't know. Nobody will ever know, probably. I don't think doctors acknowledge that those are the side-effects and I doubt there's any test for it even if they would.

i was legit asking
cause you said not really bad.
i dont know what you meant
like what wasnt really bad

Oh like, no abuse in their background, no serious worries about money (ie. had enough to live decently, if not as much as they'd like), employed full-time or in school, decent family/relationships but were just . . . unhappy. Wanted to drug themselves because they thought that would make it better. I was always like, well they'd look down on somebody who drank a lot to numb the pain why are the psych drugs OK though? It's the same thing.

Oh, and they never really complained of anything in particular, just not being as happy or as successful as they wanted to be.

how many people have this in reality.
nonmetaphorically

Fishsandwich, you don't have to be ashamed of a mental health diagnosis. If someone was diagnosed with diabetes, would they be ashamed about their diagnosis? I am sorry that you were raped. I had an attempted rape on me years ago and it affected my ability to trust another human being. In fact before he did that to me, he pretended to be my friend and since I was 11 years old at the time, we would play together at the school nearby. Then after awhile, he tried to rape me. I won't go into more details here. I was also severely bullied in junior high school and high school. I went school to school during those years. One I got kicked out of because I had this terrible smell and a shaking leg that I couldn't control. It was disturbing the classroom. It was conversion disorder and severe anxiety. Another school was meant for mentally ill people. I had to go there because I ended up in the mental hospital for severe depression. A few years before that I was psychotic. That school was awful because they took the ability to make friends away. I had absolutely NO freedom there whatsoever. I couldn't invite friends over or anything. No hugs either even if they wanted it. Another school I went to I was so severely bullied I had to get out of that school. I feel for your trauma Fishsandwich. What kind of lawyer are you going to be? I am too disabled to work due to all my problems so I am on SSI. My brother is going on SSI as well.

I'm not ashamed, I'm angry. I'm not mentally ill, and I've never done anything for which I've deserved the treatment they've given me for the diagnosis they applied to me.

I hate this analogy. It's completely wrong. To start, diabetes is an illness with clearly defined causes and evidence-based treatments targeted at those known causes. No matter what medical doctors say, psychiatric categorisation and "treatment" have a long, long way to go before they meet that standard -- even if the current theories are correct, they remain wholly unproven.
And second, it's impossible to force somebody with diabetes into hospital for compulsory "treatment" (in quotes because it's not treatment so much as tranquillisation) if they refuse to take their treatments. Even if diabetes were a fabricated "disease" the same as mental illness, it still wouldn't be analogous because diabetics can't be forced to take treatment against their consent.

Im sorry you went through that.
Though for me, it doesn't make any sense to say I'm mentally ill because I have a bad reaction to several rapes and some serious, long-term abuse from psychiatric treatment.

I want to be an academic, but for a while I'm going to work in tax/trusts/asset management.
The doctors told me I am was too disabled to work and I'd be on benefits my entire life, but I'm going to prove them wrong about everything they ever said to me. It's almost the only reason I'm bothering.