Struggling to be

Hiya @PeppiPatty , thanks for your posts. You make me smile, and I hear your inherent gentleness shining through. (I must say, I've had more smiles off these forums than I've had in non-cyber life in many weeks!)

I've been delaying replying a bit because it seems like the thread is broken somehow (or maybe it's a bug with the forum in general? I don't know), because I get notifications of posts that then don't appear — very strange. Kinda throws me off my stride in any sense of having an active conversation, which is what I was truly hoping for from these threads. As you say, @PeppiPatty , it's safe here, and there are lots of shining souls to sit amongst.

I sometimes think of both gay people and MI people (I'm in both groups) as "gifted" — interesting word, with a couple of meanings. Alice Miller (the German psychoanalyst) used it to signify the consequences of childhood trauma (her book The Drama of the Gifted Child is a powerful read, when you're feeling strong) and the specific shaped perceptions of life such trauma imbues in the recipient, and I definitely echo her meaning in my thoughts; but I also think about Sophocles' claim that An unexamined life is not worth living. I think both gay people and MI people are ahead in some respects — there's got to be some kind of trade-off, right? — because, in the face of rejection and disdain, we've had to ask ourselves what our lives really mean and what our true value is. The Others live amidst pacifying assumptions, but often don't gain the insight that self-examination brings. (Yeah, but they're usually the ones with all the great toys! 😉 And sometimes I think ignorant self-comfort would be such a great thing to have ...)

(Before I forget, yeah, it was Scots Gaelic that I opened one of my earlier posts with. I speak it, sing in it, and used to teach it. I hoped people wouldn't find it alienating, or pretentious — it was just a bit of self-expression that made me feel less anxious.)

I haven't found anyone myself to play Scrabble with. Gosh, I wish I could! I seem to only encounter people who want one-way relationships — the kind who talk only about themselves, and then end the conversation, or invite me around only when they want company but don't otherwise return my calls or else tell me they're too busy spending time with "friends". (Oh really? So am I not one of those?!)

I get that my fear makes me vulnerable to exploitation, but I don't get why I attract so many life-suckers. And it's hard to become assertive just from recognising the need to be so. I've got too many years of experience and active training from my parents and siblings and the world at large that teach me to be acquiescent, fearful and submissive.

I've looked for active training in being assertive, but it seems to be out of fashion. None of the therapists I've seen have known how to teach or coach it, and the only psychologists I've been able to find on the web who even mention it turn out to be doing assertiveness training specifically for salespeople. (Not at all the same thing!)

But ... the search continues. Meantime, two books that I'm finding really helpful: The Highly Sensitive Person, by Elaine Aron, and an old classic, I'm Okay, You're Okay by Thomas Harris.

Hello Aonaran

We share the same diagnosis. Because of this I feel it's ok to talk to you about your experience.

It's not you. In your boat I'd be thinking the same thing as you. But it's not you. They royally screwed the pooch.

It's almost as though some of those people set out to work in an area where they can find an easy target.

From your description of the various phone calls all you wanted was more information to ease your heart and mind. When you did'nt fit into their tight little descriptors they became dismissive and petulant.

YOU did nothing wrong. THEY did nothing but wrong.

Please for your own sake keep that foremost in your mind. especially when that niggardly voice that sits behind your ear says YOU ARE WRONG!

We both know that these people are bogus, at best. You are no longer the child who can be dominated.

Resist. That's all you have to do. That voice is the long dead echo of the bad one. Resist.

It's for me to say. It's hard for me to do. I have that voice too. But I'm sure that if I told the same story you would try to remind me that I'm a good person. I'm not a burden or a villian, and I did'nt bring it on myself.

is that true, do you think?

I know the strength it takes to keep breathing with this illness. You are still breathing, ergo you are strong! To be able to live past the initial trauma you needed enormous strength. You are strong!

If I have presumed here, it is simply because your posts are very touching.

I believe even when I don't that

Hope endures

Rick

Hey @Rick ,

Thanks for the comforting hand on the shoulder, bud. I hear you.

Would love to have the conversation in a pub somewhere, but I'm grateful to be having it all.

Thanks, Rick. Deep thanks.

Hi Aonoran

There are some interesting studies about the link between MI (in my case schizophrenia) and intelligence, although gifted is a more appropriate word I think. I read some info also some time back, on the empathy with animals and people with schizophrenia as well.

Of course I know quite a few people with MI from my clinic, many of who are highly creative, some very gifted and excell in their chosen fields, although they have been soemwhat derailed by their illness.

With me I have just been led up a different path from what I could have done.

I think being gay and having an MI occuring concurrently makes for a very special person. At least I hope to think so. I live in a very gentle world touched by beautiful things without any malice from within. The only hurt in my world comes from other people. outside of my world.

I don't perceive my sexual preference as a deciding factor of who I am but I do consider it as one characteristic enhancing others to create the sensitive package of me, if you will.

I have always thought that people with MI are special and in many ways the issues they face mirror the struggle that gay people have had for acceptance, with prejudice and discrimination being rife.

There are some things about being gay that are similar to the vulnerability one experiences with MI. For me that lack of defences to the reality of the outside world which most people have, and which increase the possibility of hurt, is a reasonable trade off if it results in a almost innocent unsullied state.

Hi Aonaran,

Sometimes the accessing of mental health services is like getting a loan from the bank. To get the loan you have to prove you don't need it.

Or like milking a cow, there's a skill to it. Part of it is skill, and part of it is the cow deciding to cooperate.

Then you have to milk a cow who doesn't know you. Or a goat. Or a camel.

In another thread about why GPs treat people with MI like naughty children, I've suggested the strategy of putting on a 'sane face' so that the doc might treat one like an adult.

Its not fair. Its lying to get what you want. But.

The book 'I'm OK, You're OK' was preceded by 'Games People Play' by Eric Berne. The books use 'Transactional Analysis'. 'Games...' was quite popular in the 60s as a kind of pop psychology book. 'I'm OK...' addressed the question of what to do once you find yourself in a game. And how to at least stop yourself playing or being played.

I get really tired with the Games. Catching myself playing, being played. Setting out to try to get around a game that someone has set up where I have to try to stop the both of us playing.

How much can a koala bear? (Austen Tayshus). Then its time for pearls. I take the grit that's gotten into my shell and cover it with nacre, over and over until its big and smooth enough to spit out. I have to spit them out or it'd get too crowded in here.

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@Alessandra1992 wrote:
What @Rick@ said, what @Kenny said..you are not the problem!

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Thanks for that, @Alessandra1992 (hmm, wanted to call you Sandy, but you don't get mentioned that way), I'm grateful for the affirmation. And thanks for coming to the cyberpub! 😉

The thing I can't get my head around is: what made the treatment I got okay? My history tells me that I'm someone who infuriates people, without meaning to and without ever understanding why. I'm not arguing for my own defects, but even if this woman somehow thought I had "asked for" a thorough telling-off, what was it that made her go into a spiteful, personal rage rather than remembering her professional or therapeutic responsibilities? Given that she was custodian of a schema that says recurring trauma shapes our perception and responses, how hypocritical was she to act out her anger as if whatever I'd done to get up her nose was wilfuul and malicious?

But all my life people have been flying into rages at me -- spiteful, destructive rages where they seek to cause childish hurt -- totally disproportionate to whatever has happened. (Sometimes, nothing that has involved me.) It's destroyed my life, and I've never understood it. (I wrote earier about the frequent physical damage my parents had caused me, but the Mods asked me to remove it.) So part of the downhill emotional slope I find myself on, where I tumble into thinking it's All My Fault, is that it's all so damned familiar. Lately, I usually go cold, and numb, and to bed for two or three days. It's the best I can do to cope, while my life just dribbles away.

Heya @PeppiPatty ,

I'm no kind of lady!

In fact, I'm a bloke. 195cm, bearded, big-handed, deep-voiced, 100+ Kg (most of it fitness, too much of it not!)

So did I come across as female to you?

Actually, I'm not all that surprised. Since we're talking books, I did read a fascinating book a while back called Brain Sex ("Sex" as in gender) by Anne Moir and David Jessel, about the differences in the way male and female brains are organised (particularly in reference to the structure of the corpus callosum, the pituitary and the hypothalamus, but also in how and where data is processed). The premise is that the gender of the brain is not necessarily the same as the primary gender of the body that houses it, and the theory is that it is signally determined by the timing and quantity of floods of developmental hormones from the mother while the baby is in utero -- actually, co-inciding with a prominent theory about the development of sexual identity, though in both cases it admittedly doesn't tell the whole story. Anyway, there's a test included in the book (indicative, not prescriptive), and my results came out as quite markedly female.

It shows up in lots of ways. It's why I prefer Jung, Reich and Assagioli to Freud; why I prefer the Moon to the Sun and night hours to day; why I cheer for Neanderthals over Cro-Magnon (and am a huge fan of Stan Gooch's writings); why I prefer theatre to film and perception to action. I think it's also why I "smell wrong" to a lot of people, why I get brutalised often, and why I'm gay.

You are right about being ignorant. but, people with MI sometimes forget how to feel kind to others because of the overwhelming feeling of stress not just from other people but....feeling like they don't fit.

Yes, I think that's true. But I also think the dialogue is almost always skewed in other people's response to MI people. To borrow a comment from a documentary I recently watched that concerned people with MI, once you let people know about your diagnosis, it's almost impossibl to be seen as a person ever again. In the terms of Transactional Analysis, The Others habitually adopt a Parent position and try to force us into the Child response. In my experience, they get quite indignant if you don't allow yourself to be Parented, and often that includes their trying to make decisions and evaluations on our behalf. It's the Dark Parent role that a lot of people assume, belittling and controlling the MI Child. But they tend to forget two things: firstly, that we need to feel present as real people, not just a demonstration of The Others' (ego-driven) Generosity and Tolerance; and secondly, that we ourselves are also making allowances for their foibles and stumbles on the path. I've encountered many people who behave as if they are totally without flaws when they forcibly assume the driver's seat in someone else's life, and seem to expect the person they're now "helping" to be contrite and completely "I-though-so-unworthy".

I had an utterly horrendous experience a few years back when my local Mental Health mob packed me off to a CBT course (without any say or consultation) that began with the leader actually saying "we're going to teach you techniques that, if you practise them very hard, will one day make you normal like me". And it went downhill from there. The only thing I found useful about the course was the experience of watching that sociopath in action, and the light-switching-on of realising how emblematic he was of so many people in the "helping" professions, who are either in denial or else totally non-cognizant of their own flaws, but actually get paid to flail around inflicting further damage on largely defenceless people who have come to them for aid and support. The fact that it's institutionaly demanded of us that we assume the energetic position of the prostrate supplicant before the conversation can even commence is totally outrageous, and I would even say pathological. To me, it's the canker in the fragrant rose of the helping industry.

Haha! I'm all cranky-pants now! 😉