Messages

 
Hi Hope, thanks for your message. I haven't been posting recently I'm just pottering along at the moment waiting until the NHS, Government and local Government admit that they have a responsibility to help me. This is taking ages because obviously they would rather say there is nothing wrong with me and they don't have to do anything. I'm in no rush so I'm just waiting around really. I'm avoiding society, staying in my room or going to a cafe where I usually feel safe so I'm not getting any better or worse. I hope you are ok, thanks for stopping by!

There's nothing like music to soothe your mind! I like to listen to new age music like Liquid Mind, Steven Halpern and Drifting In Silence.

Three Roses I've listened to some of all three of the above and they are all great! I especially like Drifting in Silence so thanks very much for the recommendation and I hope you are well!

  hi Three Roses,
Thanks for your message! As I say above, maybe not all, but "nearly every cloud has a silver lining"..
Last week while I was sat in my favourite local cafe, I was accompanied by two police officers, so it was apparent to everyone that there was an issue, although I guess nobody knew exactly what was going on.. I know all the staff in this cafe and a few of the regulars by name, and quite a few others I know their faces and say, " hello" to etc in passing..
So this week one of the regulars who I have never spoken with before asked me, "hello David, how are you? It is David isn't it?"
So of course I said, " I'm fine thanks" and we introduced ourselves..
It turns out that this gentleman runs a mental health support group every Thursday morning in the cafe, upstairs in their room which is available for private hire.
I had no idea that this group existed or held meetings there.
Furthermore, the guy has also been homeless, also has PTSD and when I mentioned OOTS he hadn't heard of it, so I was able to share that with him.
He has set up a Facebook group and although I no longer use fb I said I would check it out.
So there seems to be a very good opportunity for knowledge sharing, support, etc etc and next Thursday morning I will go along to my first meeting.
I doubt very much, had it not been for the presence of the police making my 'invisible' problem more 'visible' that any of that connection would have happened...
So this is just one of the positives which have come about this week, and there are others going on in terms of my future housing which I won't go into detail about now...
Riding out the storm and then getting back to 'working the problem' seems to be resulting in steady progress in the long term...
Thanks for the music tips! I admit I've never heard of those bands so I will check them out when I get the chance..👍
Best wishes to you and everyone and I hope you are all having a good weekend!

(for everyone that feels comfortable with them) 😊

This week I have been reviewing the circumstances of last week which caused me to end up spending the night in mental hospital, and putting in place new coping strategies to prevent it happening again.
There's no need for any specific details here suffice to say I felt threatened in the hostel where I live, my messages to staff for assistance/advice were unanswered, my GP practice told me to come back in 4 days for medication and the NHS crisis team refused to come and see me once I was in the safe custody of the police.
So this week I am staying in my room and not going into the communal areas at all for food etc.
I have a repeat prescription for my medication now, although when the crisis doctor did eventually see me following my release from hospital she told me my medication is available over the counter without prescription for £8 so I could have had that at any time.
Fundamentally that's it but it means I'm no longer on reliant on GP for medication and although I'm spending more money on my own food I've arranged with the local food bank to get food parcels if I run out of money.
So overall I'm more in control of my situation moving forward than I was previously.
And playing 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' by Simon and Garfunkel on repeat to soothe my mind! 😂

hi notalone
[/quote]
I also found Walker's book to be triggering. I put it away for awhile, and several months later went back to it. It was still triggering, but I took it more slowly.
[/quote]

That sounds like the way forward to me...
Thank you
😊👍

Hi Three Roses and Woodsnome 

Thanks very much for your book suggestions and your very interesting feedback. Three Roses I will definitely look up the books you suggest as I agree with you that all reading material around the subject is useful even if not 100% relevant to my situation.

And Woodsnome I can totally relate to your comment about "devouring and wringing every last morsel of knowledge" out of books when you finally come across an author who 'gets it', and virtually every one of the experiences they write about you say, "yep that's me!".

I think I will go back to Pete Walkers book at some point and maybe follow his suggestion of reading the most relevant sections for me before looking at all the rest.

This morning I've just been released from the secure unit of my local mental health hospital where I was detained for my own safety for the last 24hrs. I'm a bit tired and jaded as I didn't sleep much but otherwise ok to carry on 'upwards and onwards' one step at a time 😊

I hope everyone else has a peaceful day and I am going to rest, relax and recuperate now!

Best wishes and  to all 😊👍

Hi Hope, thanks for stopping by! 
At the moment I am trying to put in place strategies and coping mechanisms for when I return to work in the future.
The feelings that come up for me when I think about some of the situations that I might be faced with in a workplace environment are quite powerful; for example not being valued or validated amongst others.
I am trying a softly, softly approach to them.. building resiliency bit by bit, not being hard on myself when things gets difficult, and instead backing off and being kind to myself instead. It's a work in progress!

I started to read the Pete Walker book a few weeks ago 'cover to cover' instead of just dipping in and out as I had been doing.
The stories he described about his experiences and those of people he met sent me so far back into my own memories and so often that I gave up! For every few sentences forward I was spending half an hour or more in my past!!
I might go back to it some other time as I find it very interesting...but for now it's in the draw of my bedside table 😊

I'm thinking more about the future as my past isn't too intrusive on my present day activities unless I dwell on it.

So for now I'm  just gently moving forward... stop, rest and re-group.. then gently moving forward again...

It's nice to hear from you Hope and I'm sending supportive hugs back to you..

David
😊

 
Hi Three Roses, I'm pleased that you are feeling stronger after your break 👍
I think that for me I am beginning to reap the benefits of DBT therapy combined with anti anxiety medication, as well as client centred counselling. This combination seems to suit me better than the anti depressants which I tried.
I don't feel in quite such a rush to do things as I did before, whether that's posting here or solving problems, resolving situations etc.
Just feeling like I have a little more time, composure, mindfulness of my actions is a nice change for me to notice.

I hope that things continue to go well for you and your renewed strength helps you on your journey..
😊🙏

Hi Chris,
I'm new here too and I was also worried about breaking the rules when posting as I've never been part of any online forum before!
But there are lots of experienced members here who are happy to give advice and encouragement and not judgement which I have found very useful in only a short amount of time.
The only advice I can give is start slowly and pick things up as you go along 😊
A lot of the other points you make also resonate with me...you are not alone in feeling the way you do..

I hope you find OOTS as useful and supportive as I am and I wish you well on your journey..

David

🙏

 
Hi Sanmagic, thanks for your message! It's definitely a journey of self discovery for me... A combination of trying to understand how I work, and how everything around me works...then trying to find a way of living within that system that gives me balance between changing some things and living in harmony with others.
I find as the years go on that I'm trying more and more to 'fine tune' my life rather than use big broad brush strokes to make changes. I tinker with things a little bit then wait for results, then maybe make some small adjustments..

When I was younger I was lurching back and forth between being very positive and then becoming exhausted and being negative... Now I am trying to 'potter along' at a steady pace..

I think my posting and journaling will reflect that more as I move forward...

Bless you for your support!

🙏 😊

 
Hey Hope,
Nice to hear from you! After my initial feeling when I joined OOTS of a real need to 'get a lot of stuff out' , and this journal is a great vehicle for doing that, I'm feeling more relaxed and not posting quite so much!
I don't know if you or others had similar experiences when you first joined the community?
Now I think I will probably post stuff that I think is more 'significant' to my journey as opposed to everything!!
It's always interesting / useful for me to notice how things like the podcasts affect me or cause avoidance. I'm learning to be a bit kinder to myself and not be too harshly critical when I get feelings like avoidance. Instead I'm trying to approach them more gently a bit at a time, as little or as much as I feel I'm able to cope with...
This is a reflection of my day to day life at the moment where I am trying to be more kind and gentle towards myself, buying flowers and moisturisers etc which is very alien to me! I'm having to teach myself to be kind to myself!!
It's all part of my overall healing process which I am very thankful is going well atm.
Hopefully by January / February time next year I will be in a position to move into my own council accommodation. This is a big milestone for me, even my Job Coach in the Job Centre was in tears with me when I said that it seems I have turned a corner in my life!!

So I am very grateful for your support, as well as everyone else's, and I am most thankful for 'hugs' which I am learning to accept again, now that I am taking down a few barriers to friendships!
And sending them back to you with best wishes and support for you in your journey too!

Bless you 🙏

One Thing Leads To Another

It was very interesting for me.. (Continuing on from my previous journal entry regarding the Podcast I didn't want to listen to..) to notice the reasonably strong aversion I had to listening to the Podcast 'How to Fail' when Elizabeth Day interviewed  Mo Gawdat, a man who has according to him worked out the 'algorithm for happiness'.

Upon further reflection I realised that my fairly deep rooted resistance to listening to someone with a world view which I perceived as, "I'm a man, I'm in charge, I'm going to tell you how things work and what to do.." was me being judgemental in advance as a 'self protection' mechanism.
Two things were going on concurrently, first I was fairly sure that this guy's model of the world wouldn't fit with mine so I didn't really want to put an hour's worth of it into my brain...
Second I also realised that by using a total avoidance of it, I might be 'cutting off my nose to spite my face', as it was still possible I could learn something from the Podcast. And why should this be yet another 'no go' area which I have to 'skirt around' in order for me to retain my happiness/energy?

Maybe, if I can cultivate a little resilience first, there's something to be gained from sticking around and standing up to this.. 'The middle path..?'

So I downloaded the Podcast and began listening..

After only a few minutes of listening to generalisations and definitions of 'people are like this, people do that, and here's what we all need to do' etc I switched it off..
Already,  after only a few minutes of listening it was making me drained of energy and exhausted..

So I thought to myself, "do I stop here and 'claim victory' that I knew I wouldn't agree with his world view and therefore there was no point in my listening to him talk about it?"
I didn't feel like this was the answer for me, so instead I spent some time listening to some different music which I found 'uplifting', with my eyes shut, until I felt somewhat 're charged'.

Then I returned to the Podcast and began listening again...Mo went on to describe the tragic loss of his son at a young age, his grief and struggle to comprehend this, and his subsequent quest for answers to many of his big life questions... 
At this point I felt a huge outpouring of empathy and compassion for his suffering...
His approach to getting the answers was not the one I have or would have chosen but I totally understood his motivation...
So I realised that we do in fact share some common motivation at the values level..

To understand someone's values, one of the ways I have found useful is to ask questions such as, 'why is this important? Why are you doing this? What is this an example of?"
And the answers to these questions will usually give me answers which are more vague and non specific than those to questions such as "what are you doing? How are you doing it?" etc..

So if I wish to find some common ground, it's usually better for me to try and uncover some 'shared values' by asking 'why' questions...

For Mo the 'why' was pretty obvious, he wanted to try and come to terms with is grief..
The answer to, "why are you searching for the answers to finding happiness?" for Mo was so that he could heal himself sufficiently to carry on with his life...

And why am I doing the things I'm doing like writing this journal?
"So I can heal myself sufficiently to carry on with my life."

So at this level Mo and I are in agreement and 'on the same page'...

...thereafter I was able to listen to the rest of the Podcast without feeling the slightest bit judgemental towards him..

I wouldn't have sought out the solutions in the same way as him, but I understand his motives in seeking those answers..


Then as a direct result of listening to this first Podcast I noticed that there were three additional Episodes which I was interested in...
The guests were Tracey Thorn, Emile Sande and Andy McNab.

I downloaded the Andy McNab podcast.
In a similar way to my first feelings of aversion, when (having said previously he'd been clinically diagnosed as a Psychopath) Andy was asked by Elizabeth to give his definition of 'love', to which he replied, "a mutually beneficial transaction between two people."
This is a definition that obviously works well for Andy, having been happily married for 20yrs... but it doesn't fit with my world view.

So I questioned myself, "what is my definition of love?"

And the answer I came back with was, "A common appreciation for the things we find beautiful in this world, and the eagerness to share that feeling with a kindred spirit."

Or more simply, "we find the same things beautiful and want to share them with each other..."

And this was (my definition of love) something I had never tried to encapsulate in words before, and I was pretty happy with the way that I was able to put it into print...

So this morning I am sat back in the same cafe where the staff member suggested that I listened to the Podcast...
When I got to the counter and was served by the same staff member, instead of feeling as I had initially, resenting what I perceived as an attempt to try and convince me of a world view that wasn't the same as mine, I told him how pleased I was that I had listened to not only the Podcast which he had suggested, but two others so far..

We had a quick chat about the content of the Mo Podcast and his (Mo's) attempts to break down happiness into an equation which can be solved.
We also agreed that more generally it's useful to listen to other people's opinions in order to understand and make sense of our own...


And so I guess one thing leads to another....

While I don't consider myself to be a techno dinosaur I guess I still have one foot planted firmly back in 1986, the New Romantics, Pacman etc..
I was laughing with a friend the other day about the 'skill' required in the 'good old days' to press 'play and record' simultaneously during the Sunday evening Top 40 countdown on BBC Radio 1 in order to record your favourite pop hit without missing the first 5 seconds of the intro!
Now those were the kind of skills worth having!! 😂

So I have to admit that the concept of the Podcast has to date eluded me...
And when today I was visiting a local cafe and one of the staff members recommended that I download  the Podcast How to fail - Elizabeth Day S4E4 : Mo Gawchat, I wasn't really fully 'sold on the idea'.
Anyway, this evening I flexed my internet muscles and managed to locate, download and begin listening to the Podcast, rather more easily I have to say, than I used to be able to record 'Come on Eileen' by Dexy's Midnight Runners on a Sunday night in my youth!

But once I discovered that the broadcast was about the Algorithm for Happiness that this guy had created I admit that I didn't even get past the introduction!
Even if such a thing exists, and works, I don't think I want to use it..
I think I would rather struggle along looking for something more elegant or perhaps beautiful as a solution for my ongoing happiness than do some number crunching.
I understand that for some people maths and numbers are very beautiful but they aren't really that much for me.
Out of two people standing in front of a Ferrari motorcar, one might say, "wow I really want to build one of those!"
But I will always, I think, be the other one who says, "Build it??? I wanna drive it!!!"

So I'm back to reading my book on DBT therapy and looking for a pencil to help me wind back the cassette tape that just got mangled and stuck in the recorder!! 😂

  sanmagic7 and Bach, thanks very much for your comments it's very interesting and useful for me to read how other people like yourselves view things like labels.
I think when writing in a journal there will always be (for me at least) a process of simplification in order to describe events/feelings because words simply aren't enough to describe our experiences.
That being said, semantics are powerful and I am finding it useful to 'get stuff out' in order to help me give some order, sequence and priority to what are normally streams of various thoughts, emotions, memories etc.
Sometimes I find it difficult to know which thoughts/emotions are coming from past or present etc. as they all get thrown 'into the mix'.
I expect that as I continue to learn and grow, the way I perceive and 'label myself' will also change... And that idea of me being a 'work in progress' is in itself something to give me optimism for the future..

Please continue to comment or add any thoughts you feel are relevant.. That's the benefit to me of writing this here, having the chance to read things from the perspective of others such as yourselves..and hopefully vice versa.. 😊👍

Survivor of Trauma.. Not a Victim...

For myself, metaphorically speaking,  I 'fell off my life skills bike' at a certain age, let's say for sake of discussion aged 13yrs.
I was pretty badly shaken up and my leg was broken.. Consequently I missed a significant portion of my 'school of life' education while I was trying to recover.

Rather than seek out the 'careless driver or drivers' who caused me to swerve, hit the lamp post, fall off and injure myself.. And blame them, take them to court for millions in compensation etc. I have decided to adopt what some DBT therapists call 'radical acceptance'...
I call this "stuff happens, get over it!"
Because I believe that solving things for me in the future is going to benefit me more, right now, than looking for who to blame in the past.
This wasn't always the case for me, and I have spent time coming to terms with my past, but right now that's where I'm at...

Now many years have passed and  I find myself in certain situations where my brain says, "for this episode in your life you need to refer to the notes which you made during years 13 to 16 at the 'school of life'.
My response is that, "I was injured and I skipped those years so I have no notes to refer back to..?"
My brain replies, "well you're not going anywhere until you learn those lessons, and you're going to be continually 'back classed' until you've accomplished this part of your 'life training'.

So now, as a mature student, I am back at the 'school of life' taking all the classes I missed.
Ironically to me, my teacher is quite a lot younger than me, and undoubtedly doesn't have the depth of life experience which I have accumulated.
But rather like a young medical doctor, he does have in his bag, a far better 'toolkit for life' than I do.
So I am quite willing to take his classes and learn his techniques, which in addition to my life experience I hope will prove to be a formidable combination in the future.

It's all a question of how I perceive myself, my environment, and how I currently fit into it... And at the moment I feel more like a survivor than a victim...