Night Shift

Was there a public transport strike in Melbourne? Glad the lifts turned out okay and that you bumped into someone you knew and liked. Good to hear about things that fly in the face of stigma.

I used to do a lot of group meditation in my 20s and found it quite wonderful. This was with Siddha Yoga first of all, later Buddhism, some other spiritual groups in between. Once spent a month living in at a meditation training centre. It will be good to revisit the group meditation experience.

It was works on my line ... replaced by buses which are slow and timing utterly unpredictable.

I have valued meditation practise .. group and private ... I am pretty sure I would not have developed the capacity to self regulate my mind or indeed survived at all ...without it ... good on you

I also found hindu and buddhist traditions helpful ... and the people caring ... but I stayed on the edges of the meditation cultures in Melbourne ... I intended to go to a residential retreat nearly 2 years ago but cancelled as son had his psychotic episode ... not time for mum to have a holiday ...

However this year I have booked a week away at a music camp followed by a family holiday with all of us doing the opera week in Jan ... so hopefully it will work and he will have his girl as company ... we have been fine with 2-3 day holidays away ... so I am careful but not worried.

I have found some of the organisations are more aligned with western ways of thinking from looking online ... I am not into reincarnation ... and some of the esoteric ideas put me offf ... but as a tool ... meditation was a lot more helpful than any christian prayer approaches ... which I also found locked in outdated cultural viewpoints ....

Nice to have the music camp and family holiday to look forward to.

I too think that early experience of meditation has helped me in life, with physical and mental illness both. There was only one group I officially 'joined' for a few months (the one with the training retreat). I did try to devote myself to the religious side of it at the time but couldn't really relate to the guru idea. I also buckled under the discipline of the training centre and left the retreat early. Siddha and Buddhism I only joined in to the group meditations and avoided too much religious teaching. But I went to see the Dalai Lama when he was speaking in Melbourne. I tend not to believe in reincarnation. I look at the possibility of life after death as a great mystery that is impossible to answer simply because we can't know this.

Yes I agree about life after death being a mystery ... and I am happy to leave it there.

The best things about meditation for me was simply that it was not forcing belief or prescribing thoughts ... but a gentle way to be aware and encourage a positive mental frame of mind ... even if it is a mantra meditation ... it is soulful alignment with a sound and a concept and I can still get behind that.

Is the group you are planning to go to ... far from your flat?

Yes, I especially like breath-focussed meditation. I also like chanted meditations in groups. The meditation group is a few suburbs away but easily accessible in one bus ride. Even though that's not far, it's further than I've been going out most of the time so will be stretching my envelope just that little bit more with this.

The other thing on the agenda for this week is to get out to a real life mental health support group. That one is in my local area, a very short bus trip away. The peer mentor is not available that day of the week so I'll be doing that on my own.

Yes I like breath meditations and walking meditations which is why I did Tai Chi for a few years.

For it to work as an ongoing activity its best if it is not too hard ... good luck with it all.

The challenges for me this week has been asking for lifts ... accepting interdependence ... son's girls has offered to use our car to help ... and I have driven her around in past.

Then I had coffee and light lunch with a pommy couple ... and went to the book launch with them ... he had asked me to go to his workshop in the morning for moral support and a familiar face .... and agreed to take me ... he is in our writers group but also a professor of poetry ... very skilled yet shy ... I liked his wife ..

it was also a challenge to allow that a person I have had difficulty with arranged a lift for me today ... I didnt need it as was ok with bus taking its time to come home ... but it was good .. the lady who drove me home is a founding member of the writers group but quite conservative .. I have felt a little rejected by her in the past ... and might have escalated to confrontation because I also felt pushed out of a U3a group by her ...but trying to walk gently and today we had a lovely chat in the car ... she is still trying to test me out as my poetry is open about the suicides ... and I guess people are careful ....

I started with this writers group about 5 years ago and was frightened I was getting elbowed out ... a big sensitivity for me ... but today confirmed a sense of belonging and interconnectedness.

I need to try and sleep ... tomorrow is early for me ... but I appreciate getting to know you @Mazarita

Sounds like an okay arrangement with your son's girl. Cool with the pommy couple. It's kind of nice to know a professor of poetry can be shy like that. Wonderful that you felt that sense of belonging. Enjoy peaceful rest, @Appleblossom. I'm glad to get to know you better as time goes by too.

This post was moderated so for those who get email notifications, sorry about receiving a revised version of this long message...

My head has hardly left the psychologist's room since I saw him on Friday. Annoyingly, the most haunting thoughts have me wondering if my psychologist even likes me and whether I like him. There may be as much as a 20 year age gap between us, he the younger. I feel like he may be trivialising my issues because I am an older woman.

At three sessions he seems to think he knows all about my life when he knows very little. In my view, especially in the last session, he seems to have been getting it wrong in significant ways. He seems to overrestimate my capabilities with daily living for a start, though I have been describing what goes on with me clearly I think. I don't doubt that there are good intentions on both sides. I'm just not feeling a real 'click' of understanding between us.

However, it's also possible that this personal issue I'm feeling is mainly related to the trouble I'm having giving up both types of smoking I've been doing. That's what I'm there for and it's proving to be a very difficult ride. Struggling inside myself with the smoking means that I am struggling with the therapy. So it may be that my personal discomfort with the psychologist is really an expression of my struggle with addiction.

I've been smoking pretty much daily since 1998 so I guess it should be no surprise that I'm having a hard time trying to give up. I'm seeing my GP tomorrow. She has offered some temporary pharmaceutical aid. Then 'partial' cold turkey from Tuesday. I smoke a lot less tobacco when I'm not smoking the other stuff so the approach at this point is to tackle the worst problem first and then look at what's left of the nicotine addiction after that.

Back to my discomfort with the psychologist, one of the most disconcerting aspects of the last session were the long silences that occurred throughout. We seemed to be just looking into each other's eyes for a lot more time than would be at all comfortable in a regular conversation. Often happened after I'd just said something that made me feel especially vulnerable. This seems to be either down to a very relaxed style of speaking on his part or is part of the therapy, ie. to get me to sit in silence and feel uncomfortable emotions. Probably the latter, I guess. It did make me sit with uncomfortable feelings but it's also left me feeling haunted by the time I spent there, bordering on paranoia.

Many years ago I saw a few psychologists for single sessions at crisis times. This was before the 'Mental Health Care Plan' was invented and I couldn't afford more than a single session here and there. I didn't feel very helped by those single sessions back then. By contrast I've had 25 years of psychiatric treatment that I know has helped reduce the level of my suffering, at the very least. I'm much more used to the medical/psychiatric approach to my mental health issues.

I will be persisting with this treatment. But I'm wondering if anyone has any advice about seeing psychologists, whether this kind of discomfort has been part of your experience. If so, how did you handle it? Bottom line is, has it worked out well for you with the issues you were seeing your psychologist about?

Hi @Mazarita...

Sorry to hear you haven't formed a therapuetic relationship with your psychologist yet... I have seen many psychologists & psychiatrists over 13 years... I find it much harder to have faith in psychiatrists - all they seem to want to do is prescribe more & more medication until you are a zombie (in my experience anyhow) or give you ECT. I had ECT in 2006 over 8 months & have had to refuse it 3 times since (the last two with force)... I have tried 3 psychologists this year & 4 if you include the relationship counsellor. My partner thinks the relationship counsellor at lifeline can help me individually. I'm not sure... He is a social worker. Before I moved here last year I saw a psychologist for 6.5 years - she mainly helped me by being a very warm, empathetic person who I could unload my worries to. I have told Partners in Recovery I would like help finding a psychologist. Specifically one who does CBT for Psychosis. Did you say the Partners in Recovery program had put you into contact with the peer worker? Maybe they could help you find a better fit with a psychologist. I do think that some of your frustrations could be because you are frustrated with your lack of progress. I do know the feeling of thinking people think you are maore capable than you are.... I'm not sure how to help sorry, but please be wary of medications to help quit smoking...