how do I forgive my father the abuser

Hi @Bunniekins @frog

@Bunniekins I hope that you got out for a walk this morning and will enjoy the evening doing the night shift. You could write a film script during those hours when all is quiet.

I havne't eaten any more green peas since the weekend but I have eaten chick peas. Being a LGBTI gal I feel this suits me......

That's great @Corny - brightened up my evening

Chick peas have taken on a whole new meaning for me.

@Corny Hey Corny if I was smart enough I could write. I wish I could. I feel gagged. Unable to express myself to the world.I plan to study again 2nd trimester so that will be a huge test. My mi has affected my mind it is confetti like. I think I have brain damage but I will try. I want this then mayge I will have the power to write something.Chickpeas are yummy!xxx

It would be wonderful to be able to write, I like to think we all have a novel in us somewhere

I think that you're amazing what you have coped with @Bunniekins , not only with your own suffering, but then having to watch your cubs suffer too. And because you have lived it from the inside, you know for certain how much they have suffered, you don't have to 'imagine', you actually know. I know that you don't feel it, but seriously, take it from other people with MI, you have been to hell and back, and to survive is amazing.

I can relate to feeling like you have brain damage. And it is very frustrating and saddening too, to have your head squeezed and stomped on with psychosis. It takes so long to recover, I wasn't prepared how long it would take.

But try and go gently on yourself, you do have a stress disorder. Our noodles don't process stress like healthy people's noodles, we don't have much resilience to it anymore and our wheels come off very easily.

People take working and the freedom to study what ever they wish completely for granted. But then again I suppose when you're healthy, you forget you have a body and you do take your health, and everything you can do for granted. But we are split peas, @Bunniekins.......but don't you worry, when the lights dim, and the disco ball drops and the music starts playing, we transform into saucy Sugar Snap Peas

It sucks being up the higher end of functional impairment, and its very difficult to accept some days. Is your course online or do you have to commute and participate in face to face learning?

@frog I am a lover of chickpeas, I even blend a whole lota girls together to make hummus.....I might make some today!

Hey Greenpea,

I hear you. Who wants to carry around something that can spiral you off into that?

I've put together a lot of resources to perhaps slowly make your way through. If you can only look at one, I'd go with the very first book (or his website).

In short, if you have space to explore the notion of forgiveness and the pressure to forgive, you might find you dont have to forgive him or go against yourself in any step of the way and stay true to the deepest and most loving part of yourself.

- The Tao of Fully Feeling: Harvesting Forgiveness Out of Blame by Pete Walker
(Really great one)

- Complex PTSD: from surviving to thriving by Pete Walker

Pete Walker has a lot of free resources to read or print off on his website

- Coming to Peace by Isa Gucciardi

- The Forgiveness To Come: the Holocaust and the Hyper-Ethical by Peter Banki

- Short piece of writing by Elizabeth Gilbert on FB if you Google "your anger is a sign that somebody has crossed a boundary. The anger will subside when the distance between the two of you is correct and appropriate again.
(Not about allocating fault to the child or adult)

- Complementary blog post from Elizabeth Gilbert website:
FORGIVENESS, continued… Dear Ones – Thank you so much for everything you’re…
by Elizabeth Gilbert | Dec 17, 2014

bell hooks is golden. There'll be something here for you for sure if you Google lionsroar and the best of bell hooks life writings quotes and books

Here are the descriptions to YouTube videos exploring forgiveness. All great:

- Kate Bornstein It Gets Better

- Forgiveness: What do you do to forgive someone? Archbishop Desmund Tutu

- Archbishop Desmund Tutu on Forgiveness

- Katie Byron I reviewed by Russel Brandt on "under the skin' (radical)

- Dylann Roof, “We forgive you”: The pressure to forgive... trigger warning... forgiveness of a jailed felon almost as a performance uploaded for Youtube. Can you forgive retrospectively or on behalf of someone

DADIRRI: Official Miriam Rose Ungunmerr: video :: 3 minute promo

- Miriam Rose Ungunmerr Bauman Eureka Street

Re-establishing inner peace and safe distance - Stephen Porges website then "articles"

Re-establishing inner peace and safe distance podcast - Krista Tippet interviews Bessel Van der kolk "How trauma lodges in the body" on the On Being Podcast

This may assert the pressure and primacy to forgive at all costs again but there are also some interesting ideas in YouTube video Tara Brach on the RAIN of forgiveness

- Finally, just an interesting talk with Gabor Mate & Russel Brandt on "Beneath the skin".

Best of luck

😉

@Corny Hey Corny you have made me giggle with all your references re peas :D. Thankfully I can do all of my course/units online including the exams. I need the flexibility of being able to study when am able not in fixed classes full of people. A big thank you for all your compliments re my handling of my mi and my kidults it means alot to be validated by other formites. We are a kind, caring group aren't we.:) Love to you my friend Corny. Love peaxx

OMG @Bunniekins I think you're a warrior women. Discrimination and stigma has not moved an inch for psychotic illnesses. Not an inch. Especially schizophrenia/schizoaffective brain disorders. When I was in hospital last year for 4 months you meet a lot of different people, and even some people with a mental illness or drug and alcohol addiction of their own,will look down their noses at people with schizophrenia/schizoaffective. It was like racism on the ward, and you see it out in the community too. Some doctors are just appalling, absolutely disgraceful and I hope that you haven't been subjected to their attitudes and sub standard care. When I would attend appointments with my mother, even as a young teen, the doctor would look and talk to me when my mother was sitting right there! And then to also have your adult children suffering and having to be a carer while also having your own mental illness, is not an easy task.

That's awesome that you can do your course online. Some education providers don't really offer that for many courses and it does disadvantage people with disabilities that find the environment and commuting very triggering of their medical condition.

Corny

@Corny Hey Corny wow 4 months in hospital you are so tough. It would destroy me I think. I think you are a warrior my friend. We can be warrors together :)x.

You are right there is so much stigma re schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. I went in for a skin checkup at a dermatologist a couple of months ago and she was looking at my medical history from my gp which says I have schizophrenia. The dermatologist questioned me about it and I said I have schizoaffective disorder she said you shouldnt be on all these medications. You should be medication free. I remember sitting there thinking you are a dermatologist what would you know about my mind ..... anyway I said nothing and thanked her after the consulation. The thing is without my meds or if my meds are not balanced right I have very violent thoughts etc I do need my meds even though I hate taking them I do so that I can stay on a even keel and be a good mother to my kidults. It is an individuals right to decide whether or not they want to be on meds. Believe me if I could be meds free I would .....

I have alot of people around me that dont understand me and think I am dangerous because of my mi but that is simply not true because I take my meds and stay off alcohol etc. My mi has and is destroying my mind. I don't know where I will be in 5 to 10 years. Hopefully gainfully employed and happy whatever happy is.

I hope you are happy Corny and that people leave you in peace to live your life the way you want to.Love peaxxx

That is so unprofessional and ignorant @Bunniekins don't listen to that doctor and you were very polite and restrained to just be on your way. After-all, you are a GP yourself (greenpea) and she doesn't realise who she was speaking to. If that ever happens again say "excuse me, I am a GP, you don't know what you are talking about".

No one wants to be on medication. But your symptoms and medical condition gives you absolutely no choice in the matter. You lost the health lottery pea and I am sure that you have some really awful side effects from the meds. Anti-psychotics are prescribed for lots of conditions these days, to augment anti-d's with depression and for insomnia because habit forming medications are over prescribed, they are also used very heavily in nursing homes.

You're doing all you can, you're out on your morning walks and not drinking alcohol, but if you have a mental illness you can't tolerate a lot of alcohol anyways without the wheels coming off very fast. I can only handle having some drinks a few times a year on birthdays or at weddings but it just comes part and parcel with having a mental illness matey unfortunately. You are very restricted and you can't be spontaneous without dire consequences to your health that can set you back.

4 months on the ward was really hard. There were a few confronting incidents and it is heart breaking and distressing to be exposed to that much suffering.

I can understand your fears for the future. Mental health can change so suddenly and it is really scary. I try not to freak myself out but sometimes I do get scared of more deterioration or a new diagnosis. But even people that have been successful their whole lives and enjoyed good health can get the shock of their lives with MI. My sib was telling me someone she knows husband had his first psychotic episode at 60. He'd worked his whole life in a demanding job and had always had anxiety but nothing that impacted his working capacity until now. It's really scary.

When I was in hospital for all that time last year I would think, imagine being in Macquarie Hospital forever, which some people are. There are some patients that get zero therapeutic benefit from the meds. Nada. Nothing. Zero. I see homeless people on the streets in Sydney in psychosis and I wonder if they have treatment resilient mental illness, it is so so sad.

You need as little stress as possible. You will probably never be able to do a job that can be sustained long term that requires a lot of contact with others, cognition and concentration or commuting in busy places, and you will not be able to do jobs that are a true indication of your intellect and capabilities if you were healthy. Peeps like us need physical, manual jobs using our bodies. Our brains need movement. Jobs like construction hand, landscaping, mowing lawns, walking deliveries, green-keepers, removalists, something physical that wares you out, isn't in a confined space with nasty, politics and you once you're worn out from work, you can read & study topics of interest in your own private time. I will never work in an office ever again. I need something physical or working from home......how I am going to find that I don't know, but I need help from a disability employment agency. I haven't heard very good things about wise employment. Remember they get a percentage of your pay. But my sib was telling me through her connex that they place people with MI's in jobs that are really inappropriate and don't consider their health problems.

I really hope that you can get a little job peas. Start slow, but hopefully one will come your way. I don't know when I will work again, but I hope that it isn't too far away. I really want to work, I haven't had a working parent since I was 11 and not working destroys your confidence and self esteem and increases my social anxiety. I have seen with my own eyes what long term unemployment does to people. I could never be a kept women or a Stepford wife. People take it completely for granted that they can work, have colleagues and a social life, and the chance to feel useful. I hate not contributing and I want as much independence as my brain lets me. I hate being dependent, it just makes me sad and down.

Could your NDIS supporters maybe help you get one or 2 clients for dog walking? Maybe take some pups for a walk in the early hours of the morning for some working professionals in your area and have the furry friends back for breakfast cuddles.

Corny

@Corny Hey Corny lolz I will remember my nick GP next time I am preached to by someone who doesnt know what they are talking about :D. Yes the threat of going back to hospital keeps me on the straight and narrow particularly one in a suburb near me Starts with . .... (probably not allowed to say lol) I feel for you having to suffer through 4 months of that. I promised my son2 that i would never send him back (I dont care what happens) they are just terrible places imho terrible, terrible......

Thank you so much for the heads up re what our brains need to be able to function half ways decent again. I havent heard this from anyone before. All I have heard from people is to do colouring in and other passive past times .... I am not good with passive past time I am a action packed pea :D. Like you I really want to work and have been working since I was 16. So not to work now is really hard. I hear you though that we need as little stress as possible. Being in a busy office would do my head in but working from home is possible ..... anyways I have to get my degree first which will be an effort.

Love the idea of walking a dog or two. I will talk with my ndis workers and see how we can go about it as Would prefer someone known to the support worker they can help me ask around the office maybe.

Good talking with you Corny I really appreciate all your help particularly re our poor shattered minds. Love pea (GP)xx