Winter solstice

Yes I'm intrigued by Escher.

I've been following a couple of US ministers online for years and more recently subscribed to a local church's outreach. I was rejected by a couple of other local churches years ago and couldn't stomach the pentecostals around the corner. Google pushes me Vatican news. I guess I've cherrypicked. I found comfort in a pre-Christmas service last year, the first I'd attended in years.

I'm surprised you've had no minister - not even a visiting one? - but maintain institutions like a choir. Stalwart parishioners.

@Dimity

I am sorry you were rejected.

I had a rare incident where I flipped out "publicly" in the private choir space not the outside in the church at choir in a fancy city church. I was asked to leave, by an arrogant Anglican conductor, but it was a Catholic church. A high status soprano whom I had met at university was mean and rude to me. I wa blindsided and just couldnt stop spouting my hurt for about 15 minutes. It was a year after mother's death and brother 2 had just died, and I didnt realise she harboured such derision for me. They called the ambulance on me, but apparently I am never mad enough to lock up. After a quiet supportive hour with a paramedic I gradually stopped shaking and crying and babbling. She told me to take prn, but I had not ever been prescribed them before. proceeded to go any heavy meds. It was very early when I joined the forum. I have flipped out like that maybe 6-8 times in my life. I plan to do a journalling and analysis of them for my psychologist.

My good friend at that choir, also a music teacher kept contact and was sympathetic. I visited her in Aged care until she died during Covid. She was half Anglican and half Jewish.

We are all a mixed bag, and in the end, we have to find what resonates.

In my current church they pay casual rates for each service. They have put out a call for a minister, but its taking over a year, apparently the general uniting churches are short. I did praise the congregation for doing the work, and am tired of moving on. I have usually tended to settle, but I can see why you might need to cherry pick. I respect Pentecost but not big on Pentecostals, either. I chose the church I am in now, because it was local, modest, had history and earth science. I loved that local workers hewed out the bluestone from the volcanic plains, in the 1800s. Thats how nerdy I am. Lol. It is "liberal", also respected indigneous and the environment, and women in ministry and gay rights, however I am moving less left and over hipocrisy, so calling out all the plane trips people take while banging on about the environment. Maybe I will lose friends or respect, but I cant keep smooching every tom, rick or henrietta.

I was just researching a hymn we are doing, and learned about the Non-conformist Protestants. For a while I was sad about all the schisms and divisions in Christianity. I guess I was too naieve and idealistic. Now, I have understood some of the harms done, and why the fragmentations occur, I have more insight. Life is complicated for "society" and most people. Some ministers note the drawing together of some of the previously fighting denominations, eg Catholic and Anglican and, and ... in the agreements about the New Lectionary etc. The endless convolutions and reasoning about all allegiances and histories ... has me mostly slightly thoughtful and detached .... Meister Ekhart style.

I did have to put up with a woman who would say "Catholic" in a weird strained voice, so I started copying her and exaggerating it and making fun of it and she stopped, and eventually began respecting me. Sort of. I have been there for 5 years, and played the organ there for 4 years. I think the reason was that she was scared I would cut into her staus as organist. No way, did I want a weekly slot. Happy to share. At least I am starting to analyse social conditions and motivations. Trying not to internalise everything or take other people's issues personally.

Ah "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" ... ooops thats some other dude, not even a Quaker or a Shaker! lol

I bought some odd bunch cherries this week! They were yum.

@Appleblossom I think I recognise no one denomination or sect monopolises Truth. Something about my Father's house has many rooms but intolerance is hard to put up with. But the RC beginnings run deep.

The local church and pastor I'm drawn to at present are Uniting, which is new to me.

It's interesting you want to recall and analyse the times you flipped out. I've come to realise that my psychoses while having some classic themes at times, actually had more to do with past traumas and present uncertainties. And in the most recent episode (after a very long remission) I was also medically challenged.

Yes greenish groups all seem to have some blind spots or problematic policies or behaviours. In elections I've agonised over the rankings of preferences to boost the least worst. I'm not sure my vote makes as much difference as continuing engagement with representatives who do get in. Unfortunately things like cabinet solidarity can stymie personal conviction so I try to acknowledge that and respect they may be doing their best behind the scenes.

Good luck with the church @Dimity

I am not sure how you reflect on your experience of psychosis. I am having online discussions with a well educated lady atm about her psychoses, and they occur and show she is very clearly out of whack with reality, which she unpacks and describes, so I am not saying they do not exist. I feel for my parents they were related to PTSD trauma, pressures of too many children, unfinished business, and a disconnect of cultural understanding, than anything weirdly "genetic", which was the way it was sold for a long time.

I am not really sure what constitutes psychosis for me. I suspect I have not really had it. I was just forewarned too young about all the dreadful schizophrenia symptoms, and took it all seriously and did all the research, and tried to be careful about my beliefs and opinions to the point, I barely could express an opinion or a like. I would accept that the "flipping out" incidents could be called a psychotic break. I have usually called them "upwelling events", which could also be like kundalini rising ?? After the first one when I was 17. and was taken to an ED, an uncle who had a psychology degree told me it was a psychotic break. The actual doctors I saw in outpatients did not use any labels, and just told me to seek help when I needed it, which I did. It started with mother going on about religion. So I researched. That might be my OCD. lol.

All the later events, also had the added issue of chronic severe neck pain. There were different triggers.

I am so nerdy, I check etymology on psychosis, and find it pretty inadequate. I do not believe in a narrow biomedical model. I believe in biology, and medicine as separate disciplines. Too much conflating ideas produces very shoddy thinking. Doctors are getting paid too much to get away with that. "Nerdy" is more permissable as a descriptor than "psychotic". Note, the first person I met who was a nerd and also had psychosis. I did the mad thing and married him and had kids. So, I agree to being mad.

@Appleblossom

Madness is a social construct. Laing for all his faults (and I don't know much detail) was probably right on that.

...Deep breath...

I posit that it's necessary to distinguish the external features and presentations contributing to a diagnosis of psychosis from the inner life experienced by someone experiencing paranoia, delusional content and hallucinatory visual auditory or other sensory inputs.

In my experience people who've experienced psychosis and are in recovery tend to recollect and have some awareness of the unreality of their break.

Your experiences seem different and to me sound more aligned with being emotionally overwrought, overstimulated, and having a meltdown. The duration may be important. You will have internalised not only what you remember of your family but also the reports (again I stress the distinction between presentation and inner life, and throw in my personal observation that sleep deprivation caused by being woken hourly for welfare checks and the heavy meds further duscombobulate you) and add to that your extensive reading. All assimilated and providing lenses for the interpretation of very distressing experiences when difficult people and circumstances have seemed simply too much for you to be able to maintain equanimity. My two bobs worth is it doesn't sound like psychosis requiring detention and treatment. Nor have you had that.

Your assessment of the role of PTSD and external stressors versus genetic causation (as distinct from susceptibility) aligns with my impression of the prevalence of cptsd especially CSA among folks developing psychotic disorders as adolescents and young adults.

I remember in the 1980s Expressed Emotion was touted as a hallmark of families caring for - perhaps I should amend that to living with - someone with schizophrenia. EE included verbal and physical aggression by the wider family. It was thought to be a response to the stress of caring for said schizophrenic and their difficult behaviours. It wasn't just an on/off relationship. People quantified it and thought degree of EE correlated with severity of illness. But correlation does not equate with causation and maybe a lot of schizophrenics were unfortunate enough to be born into dysfunctional and abusive families, increasing probability of illness and exacerbating its effects, and were then scapegoated for their illness. The truth is possibly somewhere in between. The concept of EE seemed to lose currency around the time of deinstitutionalisation and introduction of atypical antipsychotics... and the demise of the organisations running educational courses on it for carers.

I guess that particular rabbithole could be summarised by saying yes I think trauma is definitely implicated.

hello @Dimity

You have given this all so much thought and you have really considered a lot of theory in the information you have provided. It is so important that this space supports peers/members in learning more about what fits for them and perhaps asking existing in person supports and making their own decisions.

I wonder if those who read this information will need some time to process how it applies to them and aligns with their experiences. Trauma and responses to those experiences are deeply personal and unpacking them takes time.

Thankyou for being so considered in your responses and for supporting other members with such deep research and compassion.

take care

Mindee

Thanks Mindee.

Actually in saying what I did about trauma I realise I may have triggered anyone reading by casting aspersions on families. It's all very tricky.

I remember my parents surprising me by telling me they were attending one of the series of sessions for carers - the focus was on parents - and saying "but I wasn't like that". I don't know what they meant by it except that I was unlike the stereotypical schizophrenic. I was again living independently anyway, after having being dragooned upon hospitalisation.

Much love to you @Appleblossom . A lot to digest.

It occurs to me there's a third strand to add the genetics and the trauma background. That's learned and acquired communication styles. I definitely have trouble with mine.

@Dimity

Being dragooned and hospitalised would be hard. Did your parents try to understand you? How did you leave home? What were you doing?

I had never heard that concept Expressed Emotion before. Thanks. I did not take it personally. It does not sound as if it took into consideration the psychosocial situation of the family and survival issues. There was also the Refrigerator mother theory. My mother's mother was not in that category. I did not sense coldness. She struggled herself with the 9 kids, which was a bit of a handful. I did sense that they were all trying at survival.

Yes, acquired communication styles is an important aspect.

My parents styles were really different from each other. After our last post, I recalled that I first heard the word "schism" from dad. He was an open minded thinker, (was a proof reader with Herald and The Age) and seemed to be interested in providing a rounded experience for me.

Mother seemed very rigid. She was struggling with another language and had no education beyond piano playing, however she was not cautious or apologetic about it. She thought she had a direct line to God, and maybe substituted control for love, and a way of covering up her fear from growing up in the war. Mother had derision for my father, but it didn't quite make sense to me. he was trying to love her. Her family said she was a problem.

My father did not earn as much as an uncle who became a top exec. There was rivalry and arguments going on. My father's trauma was from being in orphanges from 6 weeks til teens and joining Navy for WWII. I just try remember his jobs that he did have, rather than just being the Schizophrenic. He tried to seek out positive interaction in the Navy and at his old places of work and at Heidelberg Repat. He had no family, but knew some indigenous people from the orphanages. They are just my little girl memories. He died in psych ward, when I was 11, of too much smoking and meds - officially - prneumonia.

My mother lived long, to 82, but never had good proper conversations about life, the things that happened, like us being in orphanages, or the deaths. I left home early at 16 to forge my own way, because she was too demanding, of me earning money, caring for younger sibs, and had no sense of caring for any of my struggles or challenges, including 2 incidents of sex abuse of me. She said you cant get blood from a stone. I always accepted she was at her limit. I kept going back and trying to do the right thing by the 3 younger ones left in her care.

I was possibly delusional in that I hoped love would be enough and our family would heal. There are aspects of love within both my biological children, but not between them, which is very sad.

Today, I did a comedy workshop, in trying to work on my communication skills. The facilitator was good, and I found it valuable, though I am not claiming to be a great comedian. Just a person who is trying to balance the hard things with a bit of lightness and laughter.

Wow doing a comedy workshop is brave @Appleblossom .

It's good to hear of your father's work roles. I'm not sure I like the term high functioning but he sounds intelligent and capable. You've mentioned things may have imploded after the plane crash.

My parents were driven by their own interests and emotionally unavailable. There'd been the expectation of staying at home while studying (we'd moved from the country for that reason) but I moved out at 21 because of lack of personal space and no boundaries in an overcrowded house, and dinners kept warm for hours while I had a long commute home from work. At 26 I crashed and was committed to a psych hospital whereupon my parents closed my flat without consulting me. The year back with the family when I was unwell was very difficult. As soon as I found work again - another long commute - I moved out again. My mother was very controlling.

I had no meaningful conversations with anyone in my family except my grandmother. Soon after she passed I had ECT for SI and depression.

My mother may well have been at her limit too, especially when the 6 were young. We were fed, clothed (often less than adequately), and ferried between the family homes with no time for social interaction outside the family and - for me - none within it. A teacher told me we were gypsies and banned me from wearing a cut down dress of my mother's. My grandmother cut up my grandfather's winter coat and some curtains to make me a bed quilt after my blankets went to my younger sister when she was transferred from the cot to her own bed.

I don't think anyone ever tried to understand me. I usually had good grades - apart from a second year subject which probably held forebodings of later problems. I was desperately lonely at university and never connected. I did a weird combination of subjects noone else did, and was expected to be home after lectures and labs. I didn't drive. I worked occasionally during vacations to afford textbooks. I was socially incompetent and immature for my years, and younger than my academic peers anyway. I regret not having been aware of my responsibilities to my younger siblings, but they bonded with each other. My older sibling always bullied or ignored me, with the one exception of helping with school maths problems.

I didn't deserve to be loved. Ever. In comparatively recent years my father and my younger brother told me I didn't deserve an inheritance. My father because I was childless. Yet I'd tried to look after my parents when my mother was in her final illness although I was physically and mentally unwell, and I tried to care for my father afterwards, and he said he couldn't have stayed in his own home without the help. I always felt deficient. Still do.

My father said everyone has to work. I had several opportunities to go on DSP on the advice of doctors but always clawed my way back to work at least part-time, until I ran out of steam at 60.

I'm in financial and emotional bondage to the few family I'm on occasional speaking terms with, in a messed up housing situation i can't talk about for anonymity, and trying as always to get on track.

My grandmother told me at 4 I was predestined for hell (my remembered CSA was at 3 1/2).

I'm profoundly sorry for your history and current legal woes. I'm very sorry my judgement is impaired, I'm sure I must have triggered you many times.

Ohhh @Dimity ! 💔