Are the voices in my head too loud for you?

Another Step Forward For Janekind

After all my catastrophising last night and this morning (in bed) - the get together this afternoon with the person I haven't seen since I have become ill - actually went very well and was extremely helpful.  I felt so respected and valued; affirmed and appreciated.  It gave me confidence that maybe I don't need to protect people from seeing me at my worst.  Bring it on.  They can not only reassure me, but support me. 

I confess I was tired after about three quarters of an hour and disappeared off to the car - but I did it and I trust absolutely this person's insight and wisdom - so it was a big help really.  He is easy company and doesn't attempt to make things better or find a quick fix.  Well worth the effort of taking the risk and going - even though ten minutes before we left the house I was still sure I wasn't going to make it!

So much to celebrate.  The small victories over anxiety I feel I deserve an Olympic Gold Medal for but I guess that is a little OT.  I thought about cream cakes on the way home - but that is another form of self sabotage I need to avoid - comfort eating for being a good girl.  I even remembered to practice some of my relaxation and stopping the physical agitation strategies during the get together.  Result.  I also came up with a corker strategy of my own.  In the minutes leading to the last moments before we had to leave I used that old management technique of getting on with a task that I would hate/be more anxious about than meeting up - so I phoned up another person I need to meet with but don't know (scary) and, as I knew I would have to say a bit about myself, it felt like a huge task to undertake.  I thought if I did this before leaving- going out would seem like a doddle.  I faffed it a bit on the phone when I was asked what I had done in the past etc... but we set up the meet.

By the time I had done this I felt going out to see someone who has known us as a family for a good long while and has been a wise and informed counsellor was Snowdonia after Everest if you see what I mean - but I got to the meet and I acheived all I needed to and the person we were meeting wanted us to do.  He made it very much easier once we arrived and were settled.  I could have hugged him just for his gentleness and awareness of what we are going through and facing.  I am still in awe of others' kindness and consideration.  A wonderful antidote to bouts of inadequacy and paranoia.

Bit restless this evening and not really wanting to settle to painting although I am torn; I am thoroughly enjoying this particular composition and want to get on.  Trouble is hand-shake just now and the canvas I am working on at this time is detailed so chances are anything I do I'll only have to over-paint tomorrow.  I think I probably need to treadmill.

I suspect whatever - it will be an early night - I've used a lot of emotional energy today.  Nothing formally in the diary for tomorrow so I will paint I expect. 

My partner met with someone from a local charity offering respite for carers and we are hopeful that he will get some and so have some personal space. One Wallman woman ill can have a smidgeon of purgatory about it, but two Wallman women ill - must be hell.

I know I am still very ill in many ways - but I am beginning to be able to hear and better implement treatment.  A fair way to go though and that does feel like scary biscuits, but I know we will all be healthier as a family and I will be more fulfilled and fully myself once this next period of metamorphosis is completed.  The butterfly is a long way off - I feel I am still shoring up the protection for the chrysalis so that real transformation can begin - but as and when.  The serious process of changing behaviour patterns requires time to take.

Slowly does it...

Time To Slow The Action Down

Good day so far.  Went to pieces after finishing last night's blog.  Had a strange sensation of having revealed some deep wounds in yesterday's blog and moved into semi panic mode.  My partner could now get a job as a terrorist negotiator.  He did a great job of talking me down - slowly but firmly - to earth, walk away from the door with your hands up in emotional terms.  I am in awe sometimes of his patience and diligent concern. 

Of course I feel foolish and vulnerable even talking about these 'attacks' but I am learning strategies for managing and re-zoning so that I don't get stuck - even if I have initially been caught.  Today, more work on relaxation - wonderful - and a strategy for controlling my physical signs of agitation. Practice.  Practice.  I was thinking of taking up the drums, but this approach is a lot easier.

There's more good news.  I have heard that there is a fortnightly writing group starting up I can join and it should be local for most of the course based in Inverness.  I can't believe it.  That should put a bullet up the bottom of the self-saboteur who stops when she's successful.  I am awed.  It's given me a great buzz and the first sense of excitement in months.  This is wonderful - the return - even if it turns out to be temporary - of a wider range of emotions. I can hear some old familiar voices inside today - although it's rather like tuning a radio manually - they come in snatches and don't stay long.  Good to know they are still in there somewhere though.

I have attempted to complete one set of hospital homework - phoned and have arranged to meet. I have another homework to complete - I may share that when it's done - but I would need my therapist's permission - not to mention mine!  It may be it is for our eyes only.

Exhausted again now - but I have not retreated to bed but got up by 10am - dressed, washed and all appropriate ablutions completed.  Without the Diaz I think a little bit more clearly but I still struggle with concentration, anxiety and finding the right words.  I think I sound like my batteries need changing.

I reckon the other medication will be reviewed at the end of the month - and I am hoping I may have a chance to hit something that whacks the anxiety rather than the depression by then.  I am still very ill - not well enough to explore therapeutically the past yet.  That was awfully hard to hear.  Every cell in me is willing me better; longing to escape from the humiliating reality that I still can't see friends, or go to places, or open the mail.  I want to just be able to whistle a happy tune and get back to my version of life.  It was a timely reminder that much of this treatment involves small steps forward and a lot of giant steps back.  It will start to feel better when the steps back are within a more predictable emotional and physical range.

Sadly, it's not a steady linear progression.

Continued painting today.  As the composition has emerged my partner suggested the title:  Wicked.

I thought it was inspired.

It is a complex piece and I am taking my time, slowing my process and technique down.  This in itself is an interesting way of attempting to control the physical symptoms just now.  I concentrate hard on the composition; the techniques I want to use.  My mind is mostly otherwise blank when I paint.  Maybe focused would be kinder.

I have two canvases ready for framing -  the Christa and an abstract.  I am busting to pick up the four that are with the framer.

Truthfully not a lot seems to be running through my head.  Don't read.  Like sitting and I tend to do my 'homework' quickly - not quite to get it out of the way but to reduce potential angst.  Today's work, I have to give time and gentle consideration and reflection to - so no rushed quick fixes.

Big day tomorrow, it will be my first meeting with someone who has known me well; fiercely well, a protective mother, trail-blazing and railing against the authorities as well as despairing and upset on behalf of others.  My partner and I are going together - I am not sure I will make it out of the car - but past experience tells me he will probably come and get in the car if I don't! 

I am feeling the size of a fly with the confidence of a field mouse.  I know how skilled and perceptive he is and he knows us all well.  Worst of all we have and do trust him absolutely.  What he says will probably be right.  He has listened, supported and offered inspired counsel when we have been at the end of our tether - so I am relievedly petrified to be seeing him.

   

Human Cannonball

I am more up beat today which has emphasized for me how valuable the sessions are and the 'space' going to the hospital gives me.  I went back this afternoon and had some time in the computer room.  It is a space to think without any respnsibility or concerns. 

I found a wonderful website which fed my soul; full of Scottish artists.  I fell in love with about six paintings and one sculpture.  It was great for me because I could get close to the images, something that tends to set off alarms in galleries and cause concern in a commercial gallery - especially if a guide dog is about and there are installations or floor based sculpture!!!  Rainbow eats tea-lights at worship services if they are on the floor - you see the difficulty.  Taize is accompanied by munching.

I've been given a lot to think about and consider.  This feels just about the right time in the programme of treatment for me to shed a few more self-limiting assumptions and explore who I am now and what action I can and should decide to take.  Time to be challenged.

The experiences of my life, and perhaps most particularly the accompanying trauma that some violent and abusive events have had on my psyche have given me at best some uniqueness of understanding, empathy and the odd bit of intuition, but at worst, an extraordinary sense of feeling different.  Differentiated in some sense; dislocated and disinterested in many of the preoccupations which seem to make most people's lives go smoothly and relatively uneventfully round. 

Hence I have sometimes wondered if I suffer from Asperger's.  Recent insights have felt like I have an opportunity to remove another few items of this particular Emperess's new clothes and continue in a different manner my exploration of what human authenticity - living my life truly vocationally - means after this illness.

Today I have realised that there are other folk around who know the sort of differences I am talking about even if their actual life experience has been different.

Tonight I am knackered but I feel I am slowly owning the depths of myself whilst relying on others, for the most part, to remind me of the heights. 

Today I think I made some important connections regarding why I self-sabotage.  Ironically, compared with many people, my SS moments happen when I encounter success or the sniff of serious success in the air - not when I am feeling I am failing.  Weird. 

Maybe coming from a family of theatre folk and growing up seeing the impact fame has on people, has left its mark.  I can remember a couple of very well known,  in their time, comedians - and not just in the pathos sense of the true clown but because their shyness and lack of an independent emotional self - which resulted in their sense of isolation.  Hancock was before my time, but a classic example, I'd guess.  Kenneth Williams' diaries reveal similar traits.

When I experience genuine success - publication; a painting I am proud of; a poem or meditation that has written itself but has been created by me and just feels as though it has leapt onto the page - I withdraw.  Partially in disbelief; dislocation - "It can't be as good as I think it is".  "You are just a fantasist".  That sort of rubbish.  (Mean voice still seems pretty non-plussed by recent insights.  Good.)

Emptiness at least provides plenty of space.  I am not thinking too hard, but day-dreaming different realities for now.  Vocationally so much is already in place and evolving with the setting up of a religious and lay foundation - and the vision and realisation of The Sanctuary - but I am going to be of most use when I am most fulfilled and that's why I have worked hard and discovered.  I hate the sense of torment and the darkness - but I do believe the journey is about making me more fully who I truly am.  It often feels like two rounds and a knock out, but I will get more experienced in the strategies that overcome the sticking points and blocks - the rest is believing that the treatment works and does help.

I self-sabotage by:

i)  Living vicariously and not giving enough creative and emotional energy to my own creative channels.  I live 'professionally' and am accountable with checks and balances in my professional work - when I am working - but they are about spiritual in-fill and being held accountable through oversight and supervision.  I haven't given enough time to my own creative needs and certainly not taken into consideration seriously my aspirations or talents.  They come after everyone else is comfy or working on their own stuff or I've finished being a partner, mother and daughter, or a cook and worship facilitator - or earned a crust.

ii)  I am frightened of success.  I become really distressed about anyone knowing what I have in print, or have broadcast and always use other names.  It sounds affected as I read this back; rather precious.  I have always argued it is a craving for independence and privacy in my creative work.   I worry as opportunities increase with my creative writing that I just won't have the stomach for all that goes with it.  Maybe it all sounds a bit over the top - "You should be so lucky".  Well, the reality is I seem, after a lot of hard work to begin to be getting some serious interest in my work and as I do that - so I self-sabotage. 

The card by my desk which says:"What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?"  should be reading in my current life scenario - "You're setting yourself up for a severe fall - don't bother - you're so not that good.  Give it a miss.  You're no Lucy Hawking, Maya Angelou or Jane Austen - put another duvet on the sofa and log on the fire old girl and curl up - you're much better at that".

iii)  Acute fear of criticism from people I do not respect and trust.  Funnily enough the ones I respect and trust I learn from their criticism because I know at the deepest level we are neither competitive nor are we seeking anything other than a mutual understanding or evaluation.  So I can hear praise and criticism from a spiritual or academic mentor.  Likewise from a colleague who I know holds a similar integrity and commitment to authenticity.  The sense that with success often comes less control over your life - not more - is a worry, combined with a fear that I may actually be a one novel wonder.

iv)  Fear of the additional expectations and responsibilities that the respect of others and being taken seriously brings.

The question over the months ahead will be: have I the balls to free fall and take the reality which was once a dream even further, or will I play it safe?  I've never thought of myself as a human cannonball (no comments thank you) but essentially that's what I am asking of myself.  This time I must learn the lesson FINALLY that I thought I had grasped years ago - no wearing my knickers outside my tights - super heros are not my thing.  Save the world - important - but watch out that I don't sacrfice myself in the advocacy. 

Fly.  Free fall.  Go and be what I have now discovered I might like to become.  Suggestions on a postcard please.

Long journey - but I need to see whether this is all just words and pretty turns of phrases or whether it really does sink into my psyche and marrow.

Whether it takes is the main thing.  Much more to work out concerning strategies for the future and lots of advice and support needed.  But on hospital days I almost always feel a lift; listened to; encouraged and sometimes pushed to make a bit more effort and trust I can.  Mean voice has decided this is an appropriate moment to remind me that I am essentially a lazy slob.  Yes, a bit of me is.  But most of me although still feeling pretty ill - recognises I am making a kind of progress - no quick fixes - but solid re-laying foundations stuff.

I Told You I Was Morose...

Morose day.  It's almost like a jinx.  As soon as I say I'm feeling remotely on top of things (no over excitement please - these periods last approximately twenty minutes and to an observer I look as though I have the DTs!)  My typing speed could be matched by a seven year old I reckon!!!

Empty.  Mean voice is as non-plussed it seems for once as the rest of me.  A lot happened when I was not blogging and I went deep and became quite scared actually.  I also felt threatened and vulnerable.  Out of that period has come some more work to done (sadly not basket weaving or pottery) and I am feeling numb and speechless.  I am about to move into some new work areas and for professional confidentiality (the practitioner) and my own, I feel it is wholly inappropriate at this point to speculate either about what I feel is happening just now or talk too much about the psychiatric interventions being mooted.  I only have the rest of this month formally as a patient and then will be reviewed - so I may well be able to say a lot more then.  For now I am truthfully not adding drama, attempting manipulation or avoiding an authentic interaction with you - I am exercising choice and placing a boundary in place until what is going to happen and why is fuller, firmer and formed.

Mental illness is so stigmatised.

Cards and parcels - e-cards that make me feel for a moment like a person again have been wonderful.  The feedback comments help me tremendously.  Their immediacy help me feel I am being heard as well as trying to hold to my promise of keeping some sort of record to read back and reflect upon when I am well.

Mean voice hasn't really been replaced with anything and that has resulted in an intense listlessness and moroseness - nothing to fight?  Grief?  Don't know for sure yet.  I know I am still very angry with myself and everything is my fault - but mean voice only starts up when there's a window of opportunity and I start to get into something for one of these short, concentrated efforts.  Today I was supposed to have done twenty minutes on the treadmill - may yet - to help me sleep because I'm in this weird place; start the laundry ( I peeked at it in the basket and went back to bed); paint - couldn't be faffed.  Haven't even wanted to watch West Wing.  I nearly know the scripts by heart. 

When I wasn't asleep or wanting my partner there with me (not too happy alone today) not because of suicidal thoughts or anxiety per se - just for comfort and familiarity in the emptiness.  For once he was higher up the pack order than Mungo!!!  He feels pretty pooped too.  He is making his own journey alongside all this as well as caring for two Wallman women - notoriously stubborn and tenacious - who make his own male line look relatively humph free.  This is of course the drugs talking - and I did say relatively.

Too much time asleep.  No great thoughts.  Lots of staring into the air and fidgeting.  Very much as though I am waiting for something to happen.  Felt for much of the weekend that the medication I am on isn't working at all.  Growing feeling all week.  I seem to have one good afternoon or following day after therapy/consultation and then slip back down and into this tiny world.  I do wonder at the part my visual impairment plays in all this.

I do want to finish the painting I have just started.  It is the last composition I have set myself as a therapeutic exercise since the hospital stopped using it as a device to explore 'where I am'.  It will be a satirical piece and that makes it hard in a sense becaue my Be Perfect voice pops up and reduces my work to the daubs of a child at nursery.  I also have the shakes so badly for so much of the time that detail work is sometimes impossible.  There is a tiny, damaged voice that feels discriminated against and dismissed by the Church which is encouraging me on and has told me just how she wants the composition to be.  If I can listen to her, I may continue to make progress.

We are all so well intentioned in the Church; be nice to one another seems to be our overriding motto - and a bit about Jesus - that I do wonder if we have even the first idea how unaccountable and discriminatory we are.  The pain we cause when we patronise, exclude or dismiss.  The sheer frustration of those who are marginalised at the apparently impenetrable barriers that deny and undermine giftedness - unless - of course you play the game and keep in with the club.  The painting will be an important one.  An anger management vehicle.

I told you I was morose.  That would be almost as good on a gravestone as Spike Milligan's "I told you I was ill".  No hidden messages - my head is empty - not planning the perfect painless suicide - and I wish I could get rid of the shakes and tension/anxiety.  I think the meds are past their sell by in terms of effective intervention. 

I told you I was...

Session tomorrow.  Scared, but looking forward to meeting a person who I have seen has lovely shoes and is taking me on.  Nearly as nice as my psychiatrist's shoes.  Eye contact out of the question when we first met.  Other agenda was uppermost and I was embarrassed and ashamed to bring up some topics - and so became caught up in my own stuff and fear of how the staff would react.

I told you...

Back Blogging - Jane Is Back

Loads to tell you but I am now back writing my own blogs again.  A huge debt of gratitude to my partner for continuing the string and exploring the experience from his own insights and experiences.  It's moments like this I remember exactly why I married him - his gentle acceptance, and inner willingness to go on exploring, reflecting and growing alongside and alone; listening to others and by gently processing a rich inner life of his own.

I am hopeful that I may have turned abother corner - and unlike a dead end in a maze - this one will have valuable consequences.  Discerning the extent to which I am capable of self-sabotaging behaviours when I am moving into another depressive episode may seem obvious to others - but I hadn't recognised and owned for myself the extent to which accepting second best for myself whilst elevating others and supporting their dreams and aspirations was, really, just a subtle form of persistent self-destruction.

I still have violent and semi-lucid dreams which mean that I wake up and think I am still in the dream.  Kittens have appeared in so many of these dreams that I think I may yet wear my partner down and get some real ones in due course.  They've appeared so often that I suspect they represent for me a freedom to roam - our cats wander and although they are discouraged from bringing too many presents into the house - they often group with the rest of the dogs in our bedroom for most of the night - so there is a part of me that has perhaps picked up on their spontaneity and capacity to just set off whenever they choose, do what they like - and return to the comfort of a warm bed when the days patrols and hunts are done.

How do I feel?

Not much feeling back yet in the deepest sense, but I am into the last four weeks of intense treatment and I think that on a good day I can see real progress.  As though I have new roots and shoots sprouting - a little out of season - but what's new?  I always seem to be a little out of kilter with the mainstream!  (Scottish understatement).

I am not taunted today - although I have felt jittery and slept a lot.  I am no longer given paintings to do as homework from the hospital - but I think this is because at some level it is another subtle way of self-sabotaging.  While we are looking at the paintings or discussing things in the present and past, I am not facing the practicalities of of making the emotional leap of believing I can have choices over how I handle my negative emotions.  I have little time to learn and practice the strategies for seeking and maintaining good mental health in the future.

My homework after one session this week will make anyone who knows me well realise the depth of the illness.  I have been unable to use the phone or speak on the phone because of my anxiety levels - through the roof - or my silent periods when I have simply cocooned and gone inwards. I made a call.  I made an appointment to see someone.  I wrote a formal letter and I should have picked up one domestic activity - I have chosen washing and ironing because I can't find a thing when my partner puts my clothes away - and with a visual impairment it saves quite a lot of frustration if I do this process.  I haven't started this yet.  A bit like Pooh and Christopher Robin, I sense it will be a while with quite a lot of working up to this and distractive teas, coffees, hot choc', honey sandwiches and sleep in between.

I found it hard to believe and still do that even these small things do help me rebuild my life.  I am troubled by very dark patches during most days - the intensity seems constant but the duration less.  Exercise on my treadmill has helped - don't get too excited - I am so hyper unfit after the accident earlier in the year that we are talking feet and inches rather than miles and marathons - but not having to worry where I am going helps.  I can just exercise. 

One of the next targets is to build my confidence about being out and about both with my partner, with others or alone.  I am meeting with the Guide Dog Trainer to talk through options in a week or so.  As I broke my left wrist and metacarpal and messed my left shoulder and knee - my guide dog has had nothing like the reinforcement in his work that he needs and my routes are very limited.  So, maybe I will experience a little of the freedom my dream kittens and actual cats enjoy. (And actual kittens if I can keep the pressure up.  Manipulation often goes with depression.)

So, the next few weeks I prepare for review and then the whole staff decide whether I am ready for discharge.  The support won't end of course, but probably I will return to my medical practice CPN and out patients I suppose.  Then I have to think about what I am going to do with the next chapter in my life.  I am, even now, not the person I was a week ago, let alone six months ago.  The stripping of masks and outer skins has been rather more radical and intense than most people would naturally experience - or need to experience - but in some areas of living, I don't think we will be the same.  I think that is good - but I would have preferred a gentle massage and exfoliate psychologically instead.

A Steady Day

After a shaky start to the day, beginning a new 'therapeutic' painting seemed to settle Jane.  The steadiness continued through the day.

Various other good things: Jane has (a) written a letter and (b) responded to a phone call (concerning Guide Dogs); both were tasks or homework set by her therapist.  One other thing she is planning to do, perhaps tomorrow, if not then on Sunday, is the laundry.

Originally she thought she would do it today, and such was her anxiety that she woke at 5am, worrying about whether she would be able to manage to do it.  She had the greatest difficulty in refraining from waking me 'til 7.45 when she asked me about doing it.  The relief she felt when I said that I didn't think there was any was almost overwhelming.

The steps are there; they may appear small but to those around her they are huge and so good to see.

A Little Frivolity

This evening, after Jane had done her walk on the treadmill, we tried each of the four dogs on it, with varying degrees of success; each dog in turn was observed by the three others.

In the end I sat under the display (driving) end and encouraged the dog at its North end whilst Jane encouraged it from the South end and attempted to guide its rear quarters to remain on track.  The dogs didn't seem to fazed by the experience and we had a lot of laughs!  Mungo got the idea quite quickly, improving on it by putting his front paws on me and only walking with his back legs.

There is a point to this.  We don't give them the exercise they deserve, for a variety of reasons, and if they will walk on the treadmil (and early indications are that at least two will fairly quickly), it will mean that they get at least some exercise - we now have to devise an incentive.  Suggestions, anyone?

Up and downy day

Jp again.

A day that started earlier than has become the norm.  Jane was anxious to continue with her painting, entitled Christa Crucifixion, which she has now completed.

She then had a chat which drained her to such an extent that she needed to go back to bed where she has stayed for most of the day, surfacing only to sit on the side of the bed and watch the Dog Whisperer.

She is anxious about going to Braeside tomorrow but I am pretty certain that she is determined to go, and so will.  As she said - she has only missed one appointment because she felt unable to make it.

A brief blog tonight.

A Better Day

Jp (apologies for the small type face - I wrote this in Wordpad then cut and pasted but it hasn't copied the formatting over. Typepad wouldn't accept .rtf, so it is in .txt, and Typepad appears to be in a huff that I didn't write it originally in Typepad and so won't allow me to change any formatting):

A very different day today. Jane woke me this morning at about 6.45, obviously quite agitated - she had had a dream. Having listened to her and being aware of the anxiety level and the various aspects of the dream, I suggested she should write it down. She said she didn't want to think more about it at that point.

I believe, from a workshop I did many years ago, that it is potentially quite an important dream but I do not want to put my interpretation on it. I am hoping that the person Jane is to see on Thursday will be able to form a view of its possible value and perhaps take her through it.

Later in the morning I asked again if she would consider writing it down; perhaps to please/appease me she said yes - if I did the writing. I did. This evening she asked me to include it in this blog: here it is.

Jane's Dream

I am attending a conference at a grand house in the country.

The entrance is up a flight of steps and through a revolving door into a large foyer. There is no access for Guide Dogs so I have to go up further external flights. At the top of the second and third flights there are windows but no door. The fourth flight has a door at the top with access for Rainbow [Jane's guide dog].

I am shown into a small poky bedroom.//

I didn't get the chance to get Rainbow's drinking bowl out, which is always the first thing I do.//

I've been given facile jobs to do which could be done by a 16 year old on work experience.//

The conference hall is packed with people and the keynote speaker is being introduced from the podium as the speaker and entourage enter at the rear of the hall.

I am sitting at the side of the stage at a table with bits of Sellotape.

I see a commotion caused by a dirty lame dog with open wounds, flat ears and tail, which had followed the speaker into the hall, pushing past the entourage.

I am absolutely appalled and shocked to remember that Rainbow had come to the conference with me some four days ago and I had completely forgotten and neglected him. Felt so guilty and very wretched.

Just as the speaker began to speak the dog jumped up onto the stage. I realised it was Rainbow. I pushed my table away, causing further distraction. Rainbow came to me reluctantly, as if I hadn't looked after him and I'd hurt him: I realised how badly hurt he was. I asked for a first aid kit - they hadn't got one.//

"If you don't find me one, I'm going to tear up a sheet" - they could only find cotton wool and Germolene.

I paid £2,000 for two towels to wrap him in; he didn't want me to touch him and he was bleeding. We get into a taxi to go to the vet.

The paintings were varnished this morning, we put them in the car and went to the framing shop. Jane came in and discussed frames with the proprietor and made choices. It was really very good to see.

We then continued to the art shop, had a moment's discussion and then we both went in: Jane chose the paints she wanted and the canvases, then retired to the car - allowing me to pay.

My feeling is that a lot of the anxiety was eased at the review by the reassurance we were given.

We await to see how tomorrow will turn out. . . .

Review Day

Jp again.

A very positive and enlightening review - not necessarily comfortable - we are having to recognise a number of things, not least that, since members of Jane's family (on both sides) suffered from depression, there is an inherited tendency for it to appear.  It is not something that can be 'cured', but there are ways of 'managing' the depression when it occurs.

With reference to yesterday's remarks concerning Jane's shreddedness, these were heard and addressed - immediately, and this has been a great reassurance.

With regard to the fear of "what happens when the allotted period expires", again, we were reassured that things don't work like that, and that Jane would receive appropriate support for as long as it was considered necessary.

Huge relief and gratitude all round.

The professional support is almost palpable, certainly it is immensely appreciated.  The same must also be said of the messages and thoughts of encouragement and support that we have received.

When we got home Jane watched an episode of West Wing before she had a snooze on the sofa: the atmosphere is considerably lighter.

Tomorrow the present intention is to varnish the paintings previously mentioned, take them for framing and collect some more supplies.  I feel that this will probably happen - report tomorrow.