Joining See Change as an Ambassador

I feel gratitude for the last few days and that's a nice improvement. Depression robs gratitude when your head feels on fire, full of intrusive thoughts and negative loops. But I am starting to feel more solid ground underneath my soles.

I can tell this when I remember to spot the little things. Like the daffodils bursting into golden light in the park next door. Like the dark evenings loosing their icy grip on the light. Travelling to and from work each day in the bright is a simple pleasure. And when my motorbike accidentally drifts into a bus or cycle lane it shortens the journey. I suppose travelling lightly among rush hour traffic is symbolic of clearing your mind of negativity. And I will eat happily at that table.

I have so much to be grateful for. A wonderful wife and family, wise old friends, physical health, a job to go out to. Yes my illness acts like black sunglasses some days so the light struggles to get in. I do understand when those around us struggle to comprehend why on our dark days we seem unable to show or feel gratitude. I get it.

I do prefer though when it doesn't lead to you being told a story about something worse that has happened to someone in the 'real' world. It might be physical ill-health or financial worries. But I cannot feel any better because someone else is suffering. For me that is sadness and difficulty multiplying out to hurt more people. It's no consolation to any of us.

But as the topic suggests, my mood has been helped hugely by becoming involved as an ambassador with See Change. See Change is an alliance of organisations working together to bring about positive change in public attitudes and behaviour towards people with mental health problems. Stigma fighters. See www.seechange.ie

I feel priviliged to join their team to help out. It's going to take years to reduce the stigma out there. Did you know for example that 40% of Irish people question whether a person who has had a mental health illness is suitable to be a parent. I am a proud parent of two great people. And 50% wonder if we are capable of regular employment? I wonder are they the 50% who house some of the bullies and bluffers out there who think little of inflicting pain on others?

I wrote a song this week that captures my own belief about our health. When things are at their darkest always remember that the light must come again. So hang in. We all need to keep on keeping on.

https://soundcloud.com/macmurphy-1/keep-on-keeping-on …

Can I ever forgive the bastards?

I was struck like a bomb today when I read a blog piece by Sara Staggs called 'Should You Forgive Someone Who Harmed You?' It triggered an awareness and an anxiety that I carry like a huge bag of heavy explosives. She wrote:
    
"After interpersonal trauma, it is understandably very difficult to forgive the person who harmed you. This is especially true when the abuser never acknowledges what they did or faces consequences for the harm done. It can feel like the only thing tying them to the crime is the anger of their victim. The problem, of course, is that the survivor’s anger hurts the survivor far more than the abuser. Anger doesn’t hold the perpetrator accountable. It can’t make them sorry. It doesn’t make them pay. If it could, there would probably less repeat offenders.... Anger can, however, consume the person who is angry. It takes a great deal of energy to hold onto it, energy that the survivor is spending on their perpetrator instead of themselves. And you deserve better."

I recently got a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. My train journey has stopped over the years at destinations like addiction, OCD, severe depression, and then bipolar disorder. So keeping on the rails has been a major challenge in my adult life. I believe I was born with faulty internal wiring in my top floor.

Unfortunately over three years ago I suffered a major interpersonal trauma. From a very minor start, I was bullied mercilessly to the point where death would have seemed better than a tortured life. I had worked for 25 years in secure employment. It had given me some stabililty and self-respect. I felt no option but to report the initial bullying so there could be a neutral investigation to be fair to both sides.

From that moment on every procedure was broken to protect the bully. The bully was joined by HR and senior managers in a fight I couldn't win. They targetted my mental health and referred me for evaluation in the hope that could tarnish me. The independent medics supported me so the bullies subjected me to disciplinary procedures. When a group decide to target a victim it's called mobbing.

I will write some other time about mobbing tactics. Suffice to say it can ruin your health, finances and relationships. Particularly if you refuse to go under the steamroller. It breaks some people enough to kill them. I fought as hard as I could for my equal rights to not have my mental health targetted. The machine threatened to fire me so I took ill-health retirement. And in legal proceedings I probably got a very bloody draw. But the machine just moved on. None of the gang members lost any sleep. Mobbing demumanises the victim enough that punishments given are seen as part of the process.

I write this detail to get to the point of the article. I now have PTSD caused by my 'survivor's anger'. It eats away at me when awake, intrudes on my sleep and diminishes me as a human being.

So I would love to have the capacity to forgive. To cash in my 'survivor' chips and feel a bit human again. To walk the dogs around the park without angry and bitter memories competing for full control. To stop feeling haunted. To mentally sit still. Its hard enough to fight the rollercoaster of borderline without septic anger seeping through my synapses.

I know that if I forgive, I win. Not over the gang of six. I am roadkill to them. But forgiving could allow me to shut that door so I can rebuild and renew. I know from attending a 12 step group that you can 'fake it to make it'. That helped to kill King Addiction. I do not have to mean the forgiveness. Just do it and move on. It's beautifully simple.

But my mind makes me pick at and nurture the angry scars. To feel that losing the hurt would be another win for them. Some days I absolutely hate them all. Other days I see them a group that mean nothing for me. Robotic clones with nothing personal.

With some DBT and lots of work on myself I hope to reach the forgiveness stage and drop the distressing anger. I deserve that much. But part of me fears I will always carry scars that empty my soul.

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/after-trauma/2015/02/should-you-forgive-someone-who-harmed-you/

SweetSpot

This is a short story I wrote about 10 years ago. It was in a creative fiction class. I found it again recently. And I was amazed to see how it signposted much of my journey ahead. I hope you find it works as a story, but also like a memoir of living with mental illness.

It was a day like any other in Lipari. Except today it was different. ‘Bless me father for I have sinned, these are my sins’, spoke Emmet softly in the confession box. The dimly lit Cathedral of St Bartholomew sat at the top of the main hill in Lipari, a small island off the coast of Sicily.

Emmet had come to the church to see the remains of St Bartholomew, one of the 12 Apostles. Emmet's father had also been called Bartholomew, or Bertie to his friends. According to Catholic tradition the body of St Bartholomew had washed up in Lipari from Armenia. Tradition holds that the saint had been flayed and crucified with his head upside down. While still alive his skin was torn from his body. As a chronic sufferer of psoriasis, Emmet feld a morbid affinity between them both.

Emmet noted from his guide book that St Bartholomew was the patron saint of nervous disorders, butchers and bookbinders. The saint was also associated with gingerbread which was why Emmet had been able to buy some gingerbread apostle cookies at a stall in the church lobby. 

Emmet had sat down in what he thought was an empty confessional box to finish his apostle cookie in peace. He was startled when another voice in the box asked him to start his confession. It seemed Emmet was destined to have his confession heard through the little grille that divides the repentant sinner and the Lord's representative on earth. Under his tee-shirt, Emmet touched the miraculous medal his father had passed down to him on his communion day.

Emmet felt he had his own crosses to bear and shared them as part of his confession. At 48 years old, as well as psoriasis, he suffered acutely with an anxiety disorder. This made it difficult for him to truly give anything his full attention. He spent most of his days in internal monologues of worry and self-criticism. Emmet was a God-fearing man. His God traded in fire and brimstone.

Emmet had lived alone for almost two years since the death of his beloved mother after a long struggle with Alzheimers, that destroyer of the human memory. He lived in a small terraced house where he kept the grass short and the garden exceedingly tidy. Emmet took enormous pride in small details.

Emmet was tending now to his own broken heart after the sudden end to his 13 year long relationship with Nuala, a palliative care nurse. Every relationship hits turbulence. It is like a law of nature. Physics tells us that no two particles can move independently. Each one's motion depends very much on its neighbours. Turbulence can pluck down an airplane from the sky.

Nuala had wanted them to stop living atomised lives and fuse together in a single cell structure. When faced with possibility of major change, Emmet always retreated for cover. By the time he realised how much he loved Nuala it was too late. Her heart had been broken by his default position of detachment.

Emmet was always reading. His systematic mind enjoyed being fed with logic and reason. He didn't expect to figure out the meaning of life, but he sometimes enjoyed the almost obsessive search. Our capacity for thought is what distinguishes us from animals by giving us uniquely human characteristics such as self-consciousness, tool-making, imagination, planning, play, and a sense of humour.

The trip was Emmet's idea of a holiday. Nobody was asking for two fuzzy nipples or sex on the beach. Emmet worked as a system analyst in the IT section of the Department of Agriculture. His therapist had told him to try and stop thinking about himself so much but Emmet realised that he was the only thing he could ever think of.

As Emmet finished his confession he could hear the music of 'The Lord is my Shepherd' reverberating around the church. The choir were practising for the special festival mass being held that evening to celebrate the feast of St Bartholomew. It sounded to Emmet like a small piece of heaven on earth.

The choir were placed in the sweetspot of the church. The idea of a room having a sweetspot dates back to when monks where using tuning forks to tune church pillars 600 years ago. Emmet's heart soared momentarily and it felt good to be alive.

'Padre, I think I am afraid of dying', said Emmet in the dark.

'My son, you are only afraid of living', was the reply he heard.

It was at that point that Emmet realized he was alone in the confessional box.