Friday Night

I always have wanted to have a recording device with my clients and their families but I've never gone there. This is awesome.

I hold him close to my heart and send lots of love.  Definately agree the environmental affects were huge.  Youre doing great work Albert and are a real gem to be sure….xoxo

I remember a dialogue like that one time when I did some 'rooms. Interesting work.

There is a word for this..streaming,word salads…trying to remember the exact psychiatric term for it….knowing it will come at 2:00 a.m. this morning,and I'll bolt upright scream it out and say your name,much to the surprise of my husband.
I admire you for doing what you do,following through. Perhaps what it is a form of inspiration, a realization that when someone like yourself fits in to a place so few do it makes it human.
We see many psych patients,some easier to connect with than others,that is the treatment feels more therapeutic,minus the restraints and the Benadryl/haldol/ativan cocktail we sometimes inject when the situation has gotten so far out of hand and the real threat of violence,or injury is there. I never like these moments,never  feel very therapeutic,instead I feel as if I missed something…….just out of my reach,unable to grasp an episode and hold on so that we are all left feeling human.
Other times there are the interesting dialogues,glimpses into the interior and it actually makes sense where every few words or sentences are repeated,colored,connected by dots just right,and the salad turns into an understanding,funny,brilliant,so sad sometimes I want to bite myself and scream noooooo,and then human.
You are Albert a fine human being

Well I hope to meet you in person someday Albert…my mental trackings will give you a run for your money Im sure!  lol  nobody can figure me out!  ;-)

xoxo

oh albert…..   I was painfully rapt while reading……..

unfortunately— several years, maybe 6 or 7 years ago I think farland heard something strangely like this from my mouth as she drove me to the psychiatric ward in almost the westernest, west town in colorado.  I stayed for 2 days.  they gave me sleeping drugs and told me I needed to address the problems instead of just stuffing them back down when they surfaced.  I stuffed them back down and started a serious practice of yoga and meditation after 5 or 6 months of welbutrin and dating adam, my best husband you could ever imagine. 

yikes!   did I just type all that?! 

I've had an unbelieveable visceral memory thing, actually, so many more than one of them all at once, while reading this thing that you've put here on your blog……..

and I suspect it was cathartic– so please excuse any typos because I'm not taking the time to proofread or edit before clicking “add comment” because I'm scared that if I reread I won't post and I sense or think or something that I ought to…   did you read the father's day blog I posted?  I'm going to read it again now and ponder, but not link.

thank albert….  I think. 

xox
-d

so now I've reread the above comment and it's not entirely too late to delete it, but I think a more valuable thing to do might be to wonder if it was the wellbutrin, the tlc from my western medicine doc, the tlc and outdoor therapy and true friendship from farland fish, the tlc and quite approval rather than disapproval from adam, the sheer necessity to keep on keeping on for the sake of a certain young man that facilitated bringing me back into the world or somthing else entirely or a combination of all those things that brought me back to “reality”. ? 

I'll get back to you on that subject. 

xox again!
-d

i meant to blog about mowing the lawn with a gasless mower tonight.  I even took a photograph and uploaded it to the computer, but instead I've read a ton of blogs, commented and got lost in rufus wainwright songs on youtube and myspace.  now it's 11:30 and I have to get up at 4:30.  I'm wrung out. 

there are so many words and worlds. 

thanks for sharing yours.
-d

I must, MUST, go to bed now, but I want to share this with you.  night night, night.  night.  :-)

fathers do have strange codes sometimes….   do mothers too? 

worlds.  :-)

thank you.  I'm at work today, but just popping in here while my trainee has a reading assignment and we don't have many calls for service. 

I have come back to this blog bc this discussion has left me reflecting on so many things.
I am so moved by what Dawn said.so utterly filled with her honesty that i cried. Moved at how  some journeys take us so far inside ourselves that we leave places familiar and find alternetives to how we approach this life,our life.
Dawn I want you to know that along with Albert you make this experience here so rich.Gentle powerful reflective gifts I receive every time I read your words 

I feel like back pedaling and issuing a disclaimer that I didn't have the best reasons or the best issues to start with, that I just had a little break down….

last week I read something somewhere that said, “there's no such thing as a nervous breakdown.  nerves don't break down.  people choose to.”  I can see the validity of that statement in my case, sort of.  but I don't think it's fair to say this about all people all the time.  SOME people choose to break down and some don't have a choice I think.  sometimes the break down is a necessary step in the healing??  sometimes it might even be the thing that leads to an end of abuse or the end of a really bad situation.  so in that case maybe they chose, subconsciously, to break down in order to create change.  ??? 

maybe watching sad, sad movies or listening to the saddest music is another, less destructive way of forcing a minor breakdown?  I used to do that all the time– listen to the most painful music I could find– until I could cry and then I would feel better.  Lately I can't stand angry or depressing music but lately happy music can make me cry.  Lately I cry easily and often, but not for long and not violently.  I cried while watching firefighters and police and ambulance drivers and mountain rescue people go by at the 4th of july parade this year.  I didn't know why.  I think I was proud of them and glad that they were alive.  I cried when I saw a car hit a robin and the robin's wing was flapping a few more times and then when another robin came and stayed there with that dying robin until another car approached.  I knew why then.  I went into the road and took the dead robin and put him by a rock on the side of the road so that his/her? friend/mom/lover/brother/child? wouldn't get hit by another car while mourning.  and I really, really cried then.  and took a photo with my camera phone– that felt morbid.  I cry now while watching national geographic and discovery channel films about the ocean or the savannah or the polar bears. 

I think all this crying and laughing loudly that I do now, often, keeps me from having to break down ever.  I think it is the bottling up and trying to contain or hide intense emotions that does the most damage and once they are let out, let flow, they lose their destructive power. 

I have been trying to share with the newest dispatcher that it is ok to feel emotion when we take a scary or sad or ugly call.  I have been trying to tell them that even though we have to put our emotions away, maybe even until the end of the shift, that it is important to let them out again sometime in a safe place at an appropriate time.  when I cry now, if I don't know why, I say to myself, that's ok, you don't have to know why.  it might be any number of old things that have happened or it might be something you don't even know about yet, but it's ok.  and that makes it so much less dangerous.  it's when we tell ourselves or someone else (who we believe) tells us that it's not ok that leads to damage???? 

I think I cry about happy, touching things because of some sadness underneath that I don't have direct access to, and sometimes just the sadness of every beautiful thing being so temporary and fragile.

I had an unglued experience and I don't think any amount of crying and laughing would have kept it at bay.  I think sometimes the pieces of who we are don't fit anymore and we have to break them apart and reassemble them as something that's more true. I think breakdowns ought to be treated as sacred opportunities and not medicated and “fixed” quite so much.  When I read those words about it being chosen, it sounded blameful to me, like having a breakdown is a kind of self-indulgence, like buying too many shoes or overeating, but if it is chosen I think it's the braver, truer choice, the choice not to just give up and deaden down and decide not to try to become real but to trust that there's a truth at the core and that you can reassemble the pieces.

And I think adolescence is and should be a kind of prolonged breakdown, years of discovering what all the pieces are and how you might assemble them so that they don't pinch or confine or deny the reality of your life. And you're never going to get it all right that first time. Luckily, you have the option to “choose” to try again later…

Did you know that Wellbutrin is also sold under the name Zyban,and is used to help people quit smoking. Chosen too bc of a 'desirable' side effect of suppressing the appetite ;-)

Sadness feels so natural to me. A part of the process of being a human. Almost like sadness is the enemy,it's everywhere this idea of happiness,trying to guilt us into submission. When did it become so taboo to be sad. This frenzied movement of happiness at all costs . How is it possible to experience anything if there is not some underlying sadness (Jeannie you are brilliant btw).
A good messy cry yes! Puffy eyes,snotty red nose,hiccups,almost like popping a zit on the soul. When i was young (here she goes again) one of the amazing things about being a kid was you fell you cried you got up and continued….as simple as that…..adulthood I still haven't got  a real good take on it yet and I'm 44 for cripes sake. But the crying thing still hung over from childhood,crying helps. It's when I am unable to cry I start to worry. When the numbness sets in,when the sleep comes a calling.

I chose welbutrin as the least of the evils.  and it did have a nice side effect— over the 5 or 6 months that I took it I did quit smoking and binge drinking (numbing myself).  it was a conscious decision that became easier while taking welbutrin. 

I think the welbutrin side effect is very, very interesting….   suppressing appetite as a way toward mental health.  a very buddhist drug.  :-)  

my life has become incredibly enriched not by suppressing myt appetites, but by refining them and choosing the ones that I truly want and by finally being able to let some of them go.

Let's hope Glaxo Smith doesn't read this and decide to put monks in it's ads ;-)
Awhile back i posted a comment on a blog,person later deleted account, so i cannot go link it.
The subject was about medications to treat ADHD and sorta morphed into drugs to treat depression etc….
My stance on this is that until they find a better alternative,or people find what works for them some medications are anchors helping people stay afloat in a sea of depression,bi polar disorder,schizophrenia….
It is all well to say exercises,eat well,smile(all important things in my book)are enough,but in some cases immediate intervention is necessary. We wait for more research wait for more information,wait for a time that these real things in real people can be treated in a matter that holds less side effects,less chance of bad reactions.
Also over prescription of medications lends itself to giving meds a bad name,fear too.I can give examples to back up any camp but still I side with the need to offer pharmaceutical choices to people bc until someone comes up with a better alternative than what we have now,all the finger pointing,and chanting,and guilting will not change the fact that these medications DO save lives.
Dawn you are an inspiration!

OMG I'm on a soapbox ;-)




    

I absolutely agree that there are people who count on the best we have to offer being good enough. But we're so terribly crude in our understanding of how to manipulate brain chemistry, and we dispense the stuff in such an incredibly cavalier way. I would say it's mind boggling except I'm afraid there might be a med for that.

It seems so strange though, that people easily believe that the chemicals in that little pill will change how they think and feel but don't even want to consider that the chemicals in the food they fuel their bodies with might be just as powerful. I don't understand taking Prosac and eating a “convenience food” diet. Obviously, Prosac doesn't cause people to come to their senses about that kind of thing.

Dawn, I second Bridget, you are very inspiring.
Albert, what a great thread this is!

I felt overwhelmed and helpless when I read this, Albert…..sitting in my comfortable well-padded therapy room secure from ten years working on a daily basis with the thin-end-wedge damaged folk as I once did…. I want to forget that sensitive intelligent people traumatised by the blind narcissistic tramplings of their caregivers continue to cry out in torment like hungry ghosts…..this gave me a painful and unwelcome though needed reminder of what it is to close down against my own burnout…to remain open to this kind of pain requires courage, resilience, selfcare and a rooting in the sacred….deep bows to you, friend….love, Jon xx

I love you ALL  and I love this thread.  and I love this gaia place.  that covers it for me too. 

oh albert– I'll be sending love to him from colorado. 

Albert thank you for letting us know this. I often wonder what happens to patients I meet,what came next,how are they,did they get the treatment thy needed,did it help.

OMG 4 months later,it's called Flight of ideas 

May the boy find peace 

Where I work we see many homeless people,often picked up by the police who bring them in,bc they are unconcious for x reasons. Last week they found a man frozen to death,each time I wait for a name,hold my breath , sometimes it makes the reality of it easier if I don’t recognize the name , the name of someone who froze to death all alone in a park somewhere. Other times my heart is heavy , so damn heavy