B is for…

‘Bad Stuff’

The stuff that happened to me. We all have our own brand, thanks to the creativity of the human mind, which is capable of both inventing ever more devious and evil things to do to one another, and feeling responsible and deserving of it when it comes our way (as eloquently described by Paul Gilbert). My stuff follows me around and pops up to flavour the oddest moments, like a particularly throat-catching curry repeating on me. I can’t trump many people with how bad my stuff was, but I’ve cleverly been able to spin it into an amazingly complex and seemingly undetanglable mess. Go me.

 

Bin

The charming name given to the old Victorian asylums (see ‘A is for..’) where the loonies were thrown, to dispose of them. A bit like a black hole, they absorbed everything and records of things coming back out are sparse. I worked in one of these structures in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, which, though it was crumbling and somewhat faded, its former glory was apparent in the remnants of its own farm and bakery, where the residents used to work. Their segregation from the rest of society seemed reminiscent of the leper colonies – designed to keep society safe from the ‘afflicted’ when actually its those experiencing the pain that are at more risk from a brutal and punitive ‘community’. However people living and loving together must be the way forward, otherwise overcoming ignorance and feeling accepted would be impossible, wouldn’t it?

Bleuler, Eugene (1857-1939)

Responsible for the term ‘schizophrenia’ (splitting of mind). Boo. It’s amazing how many people still take that ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ model as the literal essence of the problems people all too commonly face. However, Bleuler’s mention of the relevance of the difficulties he saw people facing on individuals’ thoughts, emotions and behaviour may be a precocious hint at applying CBT to psychosis, impudently about 50 years before CBT was invented! (Detail taken from here). I am not particularly organised by labelling people but I sort of see my main problem as a fusion rather than a split – between what is in my ‘conscious’ and my ‘unconscious’ and between what I fear that is real and what is real that I fear. It’ll never catch on.

 

Brain

Big, foldy, grey porridge-cloud like thing in my head. Not the cause of my problems just the seat of them. Blaming my brain for all my ills is like blaming my first car for the accident I was in where I wrote it off. If traffic (society doing its thing all around me) and my driving (the way I learned to navigate and operate the controls, skewed by a lecherous instructor as it goes) were as they ought to have been, the ‘collision’ may not have impacted.

 

A is for…

Actually…no

An oft encountered response to the ‘do you wanna..[insert suggestion of something to do / somewhere to go with a potential new human contact where they may be seen / have to risk being alone with you]?’ question. The frequency with which this occurs may lead to the anticipation of it undermining the confidence with which the question is asked. And so another flight of self-defeating thoughts creeps insidiously into being.

 

Adult

Someone I’ll be, some time, any day now. Till then I’ll bumble on pretending I know what everything means because I don’t have the individuality to ask for the appropriate explanation. And I’ll keep acting out the roles I am playing at this stage in my life. Coasting, trying to simultaneously let go of a gargantuan but futile need for control, for my own good – in the face of the world around me having suggestions and expectations for how I might do absolutely everything. Having it my way whilst keeping up with the Joneses.

 

Anomalous Experiences

A deliberately ’empathically’ unemotional yet strangely invalidating therapy term for the Bad Stuff you REALLY notice that people close to you are generally weirdly unmoved, unimpressed or unconvinced by. The fact that this term may not be shared when on the receiving end of the therapeutic encounter does not really make it much warmer or more fuzzy. Realising the role of thinking about Bad Stuff in keeping the self fulfilling vicious cycles going may be interesting and helpful. Admiration for withstanding / attracting the Bad Stuff in the first place might have helped me stabilise my self concept at a manageable level. Oh well. Poor me.

 

Anxiety

The annoyingly addictive ability to overthink everything of any importance (its not important otherwise, right?). So whilst with some people I can actually be funny, genuine and insightful, with people who can’t actually get over my mental history (because I can’t tell them) I look, usually, like a complete d*ck. Regurgitating the same stories or attempting to relate new ones I’ve over practised in my head is a sign. Memory loss, clumsiness, high voice pitch and talking too fast whilst forgetting to breathe are my personal symptoms.  You’d think I could heal myself, being a psychologist…well here goes, my quest to reach self understanding by noticing the reflection I get from another, esteemed higher power (t’internet). Online therapy 101.

 

Asylum

Archaic doublespeak for somewhere eye-poppingly bendy headed people are chucked to contort with and amuse each other. And a safe, calm and secure sanctuary people are entitled by their very humanity to claim to escape unspeakable cruelty. (?).

 

Atypicals

A class of medications people hate, developed to treat psychosis. Their unique selling point is that they have a different set of horrible side effects to the ones that had been hated for generations beforehand. Cosmic.

 

A to Z of MY head – introductions (mememememe)

This is going to be a load of wordage that has been swilling around my mind for some time, I thought I’d indulge in some key-to-pixel therapy (thanks R for the ‘pen-to-paper’ therapy this concept emerged from). I am a fruitloop / nutter / psycho / few sandwiches short of a picnic. And proud of it (Go Mad Pride). I am also a clinical psychologist – repressed, stressed, disillusioned and straining to move away from the sheep-like mould I find myself in.

I started out post psychosis as politically driven, outspoken(ish) and indignant – so much so I pretty quickly ‘defected’ and went into clinical psychology  training. The idea was to change things from within. In the long game. Not that I’d had too bad an experience of UK services (I was quite astonishingly lucky). The problem with mental ill health (for so we NHS minions describe ‘it’) is, for me, located largely within Society. Soooo I made an error and opted to try and influence those naiive to the normalness of madness by acquiring a position of professional power, authority and – cringe – visibility. However, psychologists (or just this one?) don’t really attain the above within ‘the system’ without attributes I don’t have (a memory, self assurance, Y chromosomes or child free spare time).

Now, doubly embittered, I am not quite accepted by any of the groups I have camped within (mad people, supposedly non mad people or people working to influence any of the above). To understand why (‘cos its just gotta be hilarious) here goes –  rifling my brain to identify terms that stick and to unpack why. It may or may not make sense to anyone else but then it’s introspection and doesn’t have to. I’m not trying to poke holes in the NHS or fun at people who graze / crash into it.   And I’m not knowingly glorifying the NHS or romanticising metaphysical pain. Any resemblance to any actual entity is entirely coincidental. As my first mental derailment concluded.