Homework: Are Therapists Aliens? Discuss.

I haven't felt like doing much today if I'm honest.  A bit of an effort to get up and get to the centre, but I realise I have to, at some much deeper level, than I am at the moment allowing and recognise for now that however well-intentioned my own urging and that of friends to make a speedy recovery, it just ain't gonna happen.  I have to allow myself to go deeper.  I could murder my partner at times but his motto comes to mind - I have to trust the process.

The Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is now beginning to try and kick start me.  I've had a few dark days and I've needed extra appointments to pull me back on message as it were. The hardest thing is always to believe that I will actually get better, and that better doesn't have to automatically mean I am then living anxiously in preparation for the next depressive episode.  I am not frightened of being a depressive.  I am not frightened of the process I am going through although I genuinely fear what being known as flakey, a woman and a guide dog user is going to do to my longer term employment prospects.  If only I were lesbian and from a minority ethnic group too this would be less of a potential difficulty.

The last few days, words have been thin.  I am grieving for the dream of working for the Church again but using the skills and abilities I feel I can bring rather than fit into a 'let's be nice and affirming to each other all the time' and keep the negativity behind closed doors because that isn't very Christian.  That's how it feels, when I am ill at least, an attitude that besets the Church like an institutional sin.  We claim divine perfection; our need of nourishment, healing and forgiveness - but we brush reality under the carpet.  It reminds me a little of Chicken Run  - an inspired animation based on The Great Escape.

So for now I haven't replaced my motivator and light at the end of the tunnel - the job and community base - with anything else - but I know between those of us committed to community we will sort something out.

For now I am spending such a fortune on paint, canvas and framing - not to mention episodes of West Wing that we are officially bankrupt. I've thought about working the harbour quarter of an evening in stilettos and a cerise sequinned boob tube - but I haven't got the energy - and there might be something better on TV. 

I cannot and must not re-open The Sanctuary until I am fully well - and as I know I am slipping deeper into the parts of my psyche which need this space if genuine connection and healing is to take place, I now own I am officially really ill - and I can't kick start or bully myself out of it.  Bugger.

What I can do is find the things that will give me new life when the healing is underway - and I am well - enough to function without anxiety.

I know the vision of community is from God and is a vocation.  I have no idea as yet how it will come together - but those already interested will meet after Easter.  As many of you are based in England I am wondering about an East Anglian retreat.  You can e-mail me to let me know if that it doesn't feel much of a holiday /retreat etc...  Or we could use here and I book the cottage at Alturlie Point and we bunk up a bit - more about that later when I am functioning - but pitch your preferred options now as you will get everything you desire - I am back up on the Diazapam!

A quote from The Scotsman Magazine October 6 2007:

Elyn Saks, is an academic with scizophrenia she wrote a no holds barred account of her experiences:

I hardly ever missed sessions, except that time I thought my therapist had been taken over by aliens.

The Centre Cannot Hold: A Memoir of My Schizophrenia (2007) Little Brown £17.99

My response as a depressive:

12 step programme for depressives faced by Cognitive Behaviour Therapy:

1. Sleep a lot (this throws them off the scent of what you really like doing when you are well).

2. Cream cakes (comfort food is tolerated but there's the sense in the air  that if you are above a size 12, it may be obliterated from the get well plan).

3. If you are overly anxious and want to scream all the time.  Scream.  Ribena or honey and lemon are good when you feel hoarse.

4. You may think you are shuffling forward but sure as hell the second your energy starts to return something will off-balance you.  Work with the pain of that moment and try out the approaches to relaxation, acceptance and recovery you are being taught on that  present happening.  It will work - or does in my case for about a minute or two at a time - but that's a rest from the mean, beating up voice who usually rules my inner, depression roost.

5. When it gets really bad have someone sit with you and either read aloud or just sit. Do not stay alone for too long.  This is crucial.

6. When it gets really very bad.  Ask someone to look after all your drugs and celebrate this.  I am taking control and making a positive choice to choose to protect myself.

7. When things get really, really bad get emergency help.  It's there.  It's professional and they know you are ill even if you are fighting with yourself to get better quickly and paper over the cracks.

8. Accept you are ill and accept the guys who want you to do homework and talk about how you feel now - and who see you looking like death, in floods of tears, unable to sit still  or with a woolly hat pulled down over your eyes, they know  the territory and they can and DO help.

9. Hold on to anything that will get you out of bed in the morning.  Positives - no death threats or beatings up.  Sitting and painting helps for me.  Sometimes just sitting.

10. I am just starting making a list of my negative thoughts and trying to search for evidence that counters the tormented view of me. This is like looking for a needle in a haystack, but it is important if re-balance is to occur.

11. Go to all sessions for therapy.  Yes, therapists are aliens, but like angels they have a distinct and wholly-life-giving and enhancing purpose.  I wonder if the celestial choir is really made up of CPNs and therapists?

12. When you cannot believe it is worth let alone possible to get better - live an hour or even half an hour at a time.  It doesn't have to be doing, just being - but it does need to involve a bit of hand to hand combat when necessary with the dark side.  The pain; the torment; the sadness and anger are all mine - but they are not all that is me.

Comments

[Gwen]

The fact that you own your feelings and illness and can express them IS a positive step. Jane. Go with that! something exciting WILL develope from all this. Whether it helps or not, and at the moment I guess not, ALL your friends and those who love you ARE walking beside you. G

[carolynn]

With much love Carolynn
The thing i observe is that even if you do not feel it... it feels as a reader that you have made "progress" (what ever that is) from your first blogs, x number of weeks ago....you are up, washing!, going out,shopping at times, painting, blogging, reflecting a little.
Be gentle on yourself .....you are in a different place to a few weeks ago.
That is something we can be thankful for even if you cannot be for yourself.
You are the Jane we know and love even if you cannot see it as yet and that Jane is still there even if other selves appear upper most.

[Jane W-G]

There are good days and bad - bad few days just now again. Part of the professional advice is that I have rather been fighting owning how ill I actually am. I am now trying not to do this and I guess from their comments will descend further before surfacing. Still if that's what it takes to get better. I'll do my best. Bless you. Love to the family. J.

[Jane W-G]

Gwen,

If I have learnt one thing about being this vulnerable and open it is that most people have been supportive way beyond the call of duty. I guess you learn whose in the circle of common love and values and beliefs - and who isn't.

J.