Fragile

Oh @tyme thank you for the care and the humour. I did not go to church yesterday, tho briefly ran into a lady from my church in the city. I had 2 big emotional days in the city doing workshops. In a way I was in safe spaces; places I had done many activities in over the years. Its my city and I love Melbourne. I am deeply grounded there. Worked in many fields in the CBS, hospitality, public service and the arts. I am doing creative arts in a mental health organisation. I am loving the atmosphere, the work and the people. Though this group is new to me. Its empowering NOT to have to compartmentalise, and be fully me with any aspects that may have been shameful, dysfunctional. It all came out and was held with respect, and we moved through creatively.

@Dimityhugs bella. Thought I'd answer Aunt Glows question over here.

@AlwaysMyself @Shaz51

@AuntGlow the comedy is surprising me. But I am committing to it, and its helping me move from unhelpful rumination, to having a job to do, some techniques. I am even a little bit on fire with it. Who would have thought. I have usually been so serious. It feels good for me and is the right thing at the moment. I have managed to mention SOUL and redemption in my piece. I guess I still want it to have meaning and a message, but there is a lot of irony and puns, but not cyncism. I got some good feedback. Work in progress. I am networking and meeting new people.

I can cancel a few things with badly behaved shrink group, and say I have a couple of other gigs, and give everyone space.

❤️ @Appleblossom good to hear you're developing your funny bone. And strategising with the badly behaved psychiatrist (distancing yourself sometimes) rather than just reacting.

If it's not a rude question, does she single you out (perhaps sensing your vulnerabilities) or is she also unpleasant to others? It would be good if you could ascribe her beastliness to flawed character and not take it personally. I think you've been working towards that.

@Dimity Oh she was not popular but smooching other pooches, She singled me out bluntly and aggressively, over tuning. She wanted all the solos. She can have them. Trying to shrink the shrink in my thoughts. She doesnt deserve too much space, but it was really driving me crazy with the injustice of what some are permitted to do socially while my family was, and is being punished.. Am I her nemesis? Is it my role, to stand firm and not cave. Is that my learning in this situation? A daughter of loonies who is functional. She took advantage of my soft sensitive musical collaborative open and trusting side. We were supposed to be honing the sound in our part close together. Usually my pattern is to withdraw, but standing more firm than ever before, but with respect for people around. If I leave, We had 2 years of working together competing in competition.Interesting I know longer believe I need to be diplomatic with her. Yay! Cured unconscious people pleasing. I am being more direct more often generally in life. My son thinks I should leave the whole group, but then that is many other connections lost, and we are still in a wider community. Will see.

She sounds a right cow @Appleblossom . I'm sorry she's gotten away with it, that noone has spoken up in your defence.

I glad you can be more direct and more assertive, but I expect there's still a lot of hurt.

Balancing your priorities and enduring for the sake of the music and other connections is a hard row to hoe. I trust your comedy training hones your repartee.

Hmm. Your comment re being the sane offspring of loonies A very particular form of selfstigma. I guess I'm the loony offspring and sibling of people I regard as misfits. My parents were I guess high achieving creatives in their way but... but.

Oh @Dimity I have not felt sane, with all that I have lived through. Its all been too unusual and I have been marginalised. My aloneness without adult guidance or protection was profound. Also having to be adult well before my time. Being able to get decent actual friends was not easy and taken a LIFE time. I kept trying to approach mental health of the period, but usually pushed away. In many ways it also felt like rejection. Not worthy of help or support. Its just the irony and the dualities. Sorry if I upset you. None of it really makes sense. I am also upset that they wont lock me up (or give me respite or a holiday however it is worded, most recently 8 years ago at PARC) but they want to lock up my son. So now I dont trust the services. Where I did for decades. I see them as very manipulative in their decision making. Also, Ejecting people when it was wrong, as in my brother. Yet I only felt normal sharing or interacting with those who did have psych ward experience. ?!?

No, I have not been able to have pride in being so called sane, as I have had too much work to do, whether as a small child, teen or young or old mother. I also had the clouds of madness looming large over myself from childhood. How on earth would I know what was normal. I probably sabotage myself any which way. Everyone else had more stuff, and spare energy for voicing opinions, or having fun times, with food or music.Mostly I had to shutup. Expressing myself on the forum was a long awaited blessing. Not to be taken for granted.

Thanks for supporting me regarding the current situation. Dimity

@AuntGlow @tyme

Sounds incredibly tough @Appleblossom . It's like some people just draw the short straw. I'm sorry to hear how hard things have been for you and your family. All those hurdles you've had to jump over, and continue to jump over.

We are sitting with you Apple. You are so brave, so resilient, and we are so glad to be able to connect with you.

@Appleblossom you've endured so much and so long. But I doubt the public system offers anyone holidays. Private hospitals might if you have a sympathetic psychiatrist. I wish you'd had friends or family to step in when things have been bad.

I like the image of the Holy Spirit as protective mother hen. (Hopkins The grandeur of God )

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Or the image evoked by John Tavener's The Protecting Veil, when a city prayed to the Virgin Mother who threw up a dust storm that hid the city from the invading army.

I wasn't distressed, just philosophical.

It's hard to know why the disparity in treatment. But you've obviously tried to shield your son, while very much in need of care yourself. And so often you help others heal here, despite your own wounds. I hope you realise how much others here care about you.

https://youtu.be/xT0MF4XNjkA?si=gQ-uum5ynfOAz8lv

Thanks @tyme I appreciate you and the community here on the forum a lot. Also the capacity to reach out.

@Dimity I am glad you were not upset.

Listening to the Tavener as I type. he did a choral work called "Lamb". We just rehearsed a piece called Who is the Lamb today. Fairly simple choral.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flCohKLeABA

My son had actually started talking about us going to do a proper choir again, which might be wonderful. I dont want to bind him to me socially, but his singing and musical side is not nurtured by his current social situation, though they are all people with some ethics. We have both discovered the hard way that, fine taste in music does not always make for good connections for us. Been badly burnt. So he moved away from that scene for 8 years. We will have to see how things unfold. He has a beautiful voice.

I am also very glad that we - you & I - can both be philosophical with each other. It has taken so long to find friends, and I do feel we resonate in many ways.

My father showed many little moments and guidances before he died, that probably sewed seeds for my philosophical side. Mum was dogmatic and self serving and controlling.

My brain is a jumbled raging rapping mess at the moment as I am trying to write with lots of puns in the comedy homework.

I actually felt a strange sense of a veil lifting in the last week, and huge energy being released. I felt a little like I have observed in my son, with the intensity when he has been manic. It is not my normal personality to throw energy about in social situations. It was with the mental health artistic workshops in a location I had 3 decades of experience doing gigs at, also a few 100 metres from memorials that matter to me. I am afraid I have thrown caution to the winds, but it is what it is, and I just have to follow things through.

Dont worry, I understand the public & private systems. I got my decent therpeutic ideas by doing trainings, rather than paying for actual therapy. It was my best bet with the funds & time available. I had kids. I have not had private health insurance, nor my family.

I am glad you had some decent therapy in or out of any hospital. You dont have to apologise for it being private.I am just glad we met. You are a bit unique.

Actually, I love the poem God's Grandeur.

I was shown it by a non believing uncle married to my mother's sister, when I was doing HSC English at Night School when I was 22. I felt welcome there for a few years. The level of English was better than mothers, or the swearing I had heard, but it was honestly sexually abusive and not GOOD.

Let it go Apple. Everything is such a mix up.

So, not enough conversations that I needed. Religious, philosophical or otherwise.

Not going to let it take my love of that poem. Thank you.

Its partly why I have been so analytical, as everything was so complicated. I had to unpack the diagnoses, the personalities, the geopolitics and relationships, and work, babysit, and study and survive.

I have just needed masses of sacred music to soothe my woundedness. It became too deep for words. I have been lucky to do many fine masses and more.

I am so behind and just catching up on your posts @Appleblossom 🤗.

That comedy MH group sounds really interesting.

Laughing at the silly or frustrating things in my life experience is how i cope. I find it helps me blow off steam to be able to express it to others in a way that is "not complaining" (because i'm giving them a laugh!) and its also not negative rumination because i am able to reframe it into the "craziness of this world" and be external to me. Or, sometimes it *is* me thats the weirdo, but i dont see that as a bad thing.

I said to friends yesterday that i feel like i could write a whole comedy just on how i see/interpret things around me. 😬😅. But i didnt see it until i realised it was *me* that was interpreting things differently, which is why its so funny now because i realise *its my brain wiring* and not neurotypical lol 😅. But it also highlights via my funny anecdotes how many things are *not* written for literal minds! 🤭🤭🤭

I totally agree with you @AlwaysMyself re comedy... sometimes, if I don't laugh, i cry....