Talking about anger turned inward, grief and voices

Those who have read some of my blog, will recognise I do carry a fair whack of anger about certain issues relevant to the mental health system as it currently is. I put all that aside, when I think about love, when I listen to another’s poetry, and, when I’m at work.

                There are definite systems that allow us to exist, while getting us to focus on building things like recovery, hope for the future, alternatives, as well as established, recognised workable therapies. My work place fits well with my ideology, my training as a Transpersonal Art Therapist and also makes my writing and editing diploma relevant. It also makes me think beyond the wrecking-ball, towards building. It is a workplace, that I’m very happy to be in. One of the few work places that see my lived-experience as a skill and insight, rather than a problem.

                I’m delivering a talk, with a colleague, on: Anger turned inward, grief and voices. This topic is something I’ve been working on since January, but have thought a lot about before.

A memoir of mine, Naked ladies, looks at how grief and anger denied and suppressed can lead to voices and unusual belief systems that end up with hospitalisations and psychiatric labels. It also shows how anger and grief can be intertwined. I have, developed my ideas a lot further, though, since writing this action based memoir. I also have a lot better coping strategies.

I’ll mostly be talking about established ways of coping and paradigms of thinking towards being all you're meant to be. There is a lot new material, but it’s not something I’ve done on my own, it’s something I’ve developed alongside many others who have similar experiences. This talk is relevant to health professionals, social workers, carers, as well as voice-hearers and those who want to understand unusual percipience, their own thoughts, theories of mind etc

Bookings are essential and can be made HERE on the Voices Vic website. The talk will be an all day session, held on Wednesday 24th of July 2013 at 211 Chapel Street, Prahran.

Negotiating the psych depot

If you are sectioned under the Mental Health Act, then you will be put on the depot injection, for refusing drug treatment, or complaining too much about the drug treatment, or generally seeming like you are not fully brainwashed into thinking you need the drugs to stay out of crisis. 

Contrary to what most people think, you don't just get sectioned just for harming yourself or threatening another, you can also be sectioned because you 'seem to be mentally ill' and therefore in the psychiatrist's mind are 'at risk of harm.'

The depot injection will damage the nerve endings over time, merely because of the needle jabbing action. The neuroleptic drugs? Well they cause your muscles to stiffen and feel restless and twitch, blur your sight so you can't read, shut down your neurotransmitters so you can learn much, or have much of a conversation with anyone etc... What are the drugs supposed to do? Make you manageable like you're some kind of cattle, or rather fruit-fly, that can't be talked to.

You can be forced to take the depot forever. It's horrible. That's when many suicide. They feel like they have no hope of escaping the pain of the psychiatric drugs and no support in the world for the person they want to be.

People are compliant with the long-acting fortnightly jab, because if they don't turn up to get it, they'll be hospitalised, put on higher doses and things will feel even worse.

The whole act looks benign, to many people. But they're not thinking of how this drug harms the person. Those who think it's benign are also not thinking of how the person is denied their opinion, as well as freedom from torturous acts, such as assault in the second degree.

People who pretends to be okay with the depot, are pretending to be okay with something very, very horrible, they really, really don't want happening. Think of the worst crimes committed on a person's body over a long period of time and the psychiatric depot inject is akin to that. Impossible, that feeling of impossible escape from a society that condemns you for thinking outside their range of understood sense, a society that picks on you when you grieve... then sends you to a psychiatrist... a society that should be better.

 

 

Negotiating the psych depot means you have to appear compliant, agree with the psychiatrist, but make well-informed queries into whether the dose could be lowered. Bring along documents that show how high doses can cause the horrible effects you feel. Cite references to psychiatrists who say that lower doses are best. But never, never quote psychiatrists that don't agree with forced drugging.

 

 

Negotiating your way out of the life-sentence depot does mean acting compliant. I've found myself somewhat brain-washed after that process, into thinking I do need to take the tablets to stay within consensual reality, believing that... Plus, last time that happened I also really felt door-matted and it's been a slow process to even get myself to not look like something people have an impulse to kick. I mean, I was thoroughly kicking myself, because I'd had that psychiatrist looking at me all year with a face of disgust, during the horrid 15 minutes I had to spend each fortnight with him. I perpetuated his prejudice of me. I'd had him telling me all the things that was wrong with me, disabling everything I did, belittling my existence, shaming me for speaking out against psychiatry in the past. I had to sit there with him and allow him to beat me up, before I took it in the arse. Anyway, over now. You can get off the depot. It just takes thinking and acting authentically enthused by the drugs ability to 'help' you, but recognition that some 'side-effects' of the neuroleptics mean the psychiatrist is legally mandated to change them or lower them, if you insist enough.

 



A gossiper diseased by psychiatry

I was sitting on the train

Listening to a gossiper,

 ‘You know our friend Ryan?

He has lost his job,’

She says loudly into her

Mobile phone,

‘Yes, he’s always losing

His job or something.

He no longer has

A partner either.

Apparently he’s in a bad way,

Taking anti-depressants

Due to his life being unbalanced,

It’s caused a chemical imbalance

In his brain, apparently,

Yes, apparently that’s what’s

Happened and the medication

Is supposed to fix all that,

But it’s taking a while,

Or maybe he needs to try

Another brand that will work

Better with his problems,

Because all he does now

Is sit in a chair,

Watch TV and eats junk.

He used to go for jogs

And never wanted to eat

Unhealthy food and...

No wonder his girlfriend

Didn’t want him anymore!

Anyway I hope the drugs

Kick in and start working

Soon, because he’s saying

Things like he might kill

Himself and that taking

Too many SSRIs

Could kill him and stuff…

I guess we’ve just

Got to realise that

He has a disease

And that sometimes

People get better

And other times they don’t.

But it can take time.

Well, it’s none of my business

And he’s in the doctor’s

Capable hands so hopefully

The medicine will eventually work

And he’ll be happy again,
With a solid job and a nice

New lovely girlfriend,

Who won’t mind that

He cacks his pants occasionally

Because of the drug’s side-effects.

Yes, I know…

And, won’t mind him

Being a little bit impotent…

Because of the drug’s side-effects…

The doctor told me so.

Ryan needs someone who

Won’t mind and just love him anyway

And recognise that he has to take

The drugs to stop the disease

From depressing him so much

He takes an overdose of his medication…

It is the disease, the doctor said so,

Depression is a horrible disease,

There’s no cure, only management

Of the symptoms... ’

I was sitting on the train

Listening to all of this

And I thought, is she, is that woman

On her mobile, really a friend

Of the man called Ryan?

Or did he click on some Facebook stranger

Who gets all his updates

Then asks the web-doctor

What’s up with stuff?

I slip on an MP3 of PJ Harvey,

‘Heard it before, no more!’

It’s an old song, but it’s classic.

Chipmunka… publishing first-hand experiences

Chipmunka has just recently published a memoir of mine called, Naked ladies about two psychotic episodes following the death of my father. It’s in ebook at this stage, but will be in paperback in a few months’ time. http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2264

 

            So wonderful it is to find a publisher that wants first-hand experiences of people diagnosed with psychiatric conditions. In Australia, people have some fears regarding attempting to understand people who have delved into the symbolic world of waking-dreams. They seem to worry that it might somehow ‘get them’ too. That the schizophrenia ‘disease’ is contagious by hypnotic suggestions of art from these 'deranged' people.

I studied Professional Writing and Editing at Melbourne’s RMIT University. I got into this course on the strength of something I’d written when I was 22, before I’d experienced what psychosis meant. I knew somehow that what I was writing at age 32, wasn’t going to fit with consensual reality. And, it didn’t.

            I had burning things to say, but I had to think about how to say them, so that the public could be able to read them. Tutors and students really helped me get to this point. I really got a lot out of my time at RMIT.  I realised there is so much ignorance around what happens in psychiatric facilities. There was so much prejudice and that belief that there is no market for is regarded as a ‘dirty tissue.’

            In Naked ladies I was able to take raw material I wrote while in an episode and write it in a way that can be comprehended. This book allows people to understand how I was able to be lured into the fantasy world of waking-dreams that lead to waking-nightmares, not just once, but again, with the same science-fiction themes.

            If you want to understand what it is like to hear voices, or have other sensory ‘hallucinations’ and strange ‘delusional’ belief systems, this book takes you through my journey of this. It’s a fast-paced book. Lots of things happen all at once. Very much what psychiatrists would term, ‘mania’, ‘paranoia’, ‘conspiracy theories’, ‘florid psychosis’, and ‘positive symptoms of schizophrenia.’ There are also breaks in between the ‘psychotic episodes’, where I resume a ‘normal state of being.’

The book also includes illustrations and paintings I did at the time, but it is a decent sized book. I like books to be at least 70,000 words, when they’re not poetry books or novellas.

I hope Australia will start publishing more first-hand experiences about altered states of consciousness that get labelled ‘diseased’ by psychiatrists. There is a growing market for these books. It is peer support. And books like this help people realise that people with lived-experience are not ‘consumers’ and ‘useless eaters’, we are people who have had unusual experiences. These experiences are our coping mechanisms. Yes they are flawed, but how nightmarish they become has to do with how these symbolic manifestations are treated by society. Treat unusual experiences with fear and prejudice and psychiatric torture and what does society expect will happen? A cure? Apparently that is the current belief… But that is not the truth of what’s happening. The truth will be found in books by those who have experienced psychiatric conditions first-hand.

Chipmunka has just recently published a memoir of mine called, Naked ladies about two psychotic episodes following the death of my father. It’s in ebook at this stage, but will be in paperback in a few months’ time. http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2264