The following is a forwarded message from another email list, which originated in yet another email list. This email is initiated with my reply to the original message being forwarded to me. I thought the members of the group might enjoy reading the original message (which follows mine) and/or my reply.

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I greatly enjoyed reading the other individual's experience with journalling her memories. I have found a similar cathartic release of intense emotions (anguish, panic, outrage, fear). When I initially started writing of my experiences, I had to remember the last (at that time) 7 years in order to file for disability (otherwise my personal input would have been a blank). I had no understanding of myself at the time, nor of what my difficulties were and how these difficulties were associated with my problems in functioning within the public/private domain. In other words, I was unable to explain why I was applying for disability and how I had come to such a predicament.

 

I used my resume and with a month's effort (day & night) managed to remember (painfully, while walking on the surreal plane), an example memory of what had occurred psychologically with each loss of employment/education. The following year I managed to obtain an archaic computer that was not supposed to be able to function on the internet (It still is - with heavy maintenance). I enrolled in support groups and accidentally struck-up a daily email exchange with a pen-pal. In these daily email efforts I didn't discuss myself (initially) so much as provide peer-support (empathy-streaming).

 

Empathy may be something one gives in support of others, but always one is unwittingly and indirectly accessing one's own pain. In doing so, I discovered memory without the volatility of abreactive flashbacks (extremely debilitating in every way conceivable). Although mildly dissociated when writing like this, I found I did not lose myself in the dissociative experience, but was somehow refreshed. To my knowledge there is only one website that offers pen-pals on the internet (Gift from Within). As I was/am on welfare, I was unable to get the necessary $5/one time U.S. together to join. I hope to do so this spring. How come public medical will fund drugs, but not such a cheap alternative to drugs. I have not, do not take drugs for my biopsychiatrically-labelled "mental 'illness'".

 

Being a caregiver has been my life! Being cut-off from this avenue of expression was a form of repression for me. I decided that I wanted to keep some of my emails as they 'expressed' myself. I began the construction of my website via yahoo freebie. The first page was my philosophy page. Until recently I would spend anywhere from 4 to 24 hours/day, frequently 7days/week working at these avenues of self-expression. I liken the whole experience to that of someone painting survivor art. I have gained back my memory of the last, now 9 years. I also have over 100 journal entries. I rarely recognize myself in what I write. There are rarely any details pertinent to me, but are more given to philosophical insight through a maturation process of understanding. As with my website what I write shows where my interests lie and what I am doing to self-educate in these areas.

 

I also completed a business plan. This too was cathartic (PARO - Nor' West Ontario, Women's Self-Employment Program), as I reviewed (without memory, other than my resume) what sorts of alternatives might have been helpful in the preceding 8 years. Ofcourse social services thought that I was doing this for reasons other than therapeutic. My resistance to satisfying their needs caused me to be in crisis (including suicidal) perhaps 50% of the time. My first couple of business plans, written while taking the training program were what I could have done a decade ago. Although the program lasted 3 months, I kept my biz plan going until recently when I finally focused it into a mold that I can visualize myself doing (p/t) in the near future. 

 

These alternatives have one thing in common and that is (like art) they create a public personna for that which is an internal and unreachable (accept in crisis) aspect of self. In doing so they create an emotional calm where there was unknown turmoil directly resulting in non-functionality. This catharsis is done in an 'indirect' manner where I am slightly removed from what would otherwise create extremes of conflicting emotion, dissociation, flashbacks, insomnia, food disorders, inability for stable, interpersonal communication, etcetera. It comes out of oneself - naturally - rather than imposed and geared to suit someone else's agenda. This 'intra-personal' communication is therefore a healing experience, rather than re-traumatizing and as such an enhancement of one's dysfunctionality due to an ingraining of the debilitation of severe emotional distress.

 

Lately I have begun to lose interest in the last decade, which I believe is a good signal. Like I am slowly turning my back on a personally, horrific experience spanning almost a decade, that has been 'grappled' with, understood and can be let go of. I feel the need to move on and to leave the past, as the past or to become active rather than reactive. My outrage, fear, anxiety, panic is no longer something that is an irratic, yet imminent expression of self that stems from personal pain and anguish. I feel an alienation from that part of self rather than owned by it. I am not so afraid to talk to someone (most of the time), out of fear for being triggered into an overwhelming, personally-felt, disgraceful state-of-being. I also recognize that my present welfare, disability exemption has provided me with a respite space to escape the psychological warzone that left me consistently being triggered into an ever reduced state of physiological and psychological debilitation, which continued to worsen with each year as my physical/cognitive

/emotional well-being became drained of its endurance. Such that I found myself 'becoming the personas' of flashback experiences, alienated from the person I am, my character no longer recognizeable to me.

 

I do feel intense bitterness towards a 'single' image of mental health as that dictated by a dominant (and dominating), academic, cultural system that denigrates the host of alternatives that people have found helpful (and say so) in favour of oppressing, repression of pharmaceuticals (public) and psychoanalysis (private), which many people do not find helpful (and say so): A system that denies the reality of our human need to feel our daily lives, the good and the bad, and our human capacity to absorb both as an integral part of self: A system that is so obviously enraptured within its academic elitism and cultural affiliations: A system that is so clearly alligned with social control in its upholding a vertical hierarchical system of 'isms' rather than undermining it: A system that redefines the norms of human behaviour as "mental 'illness'" and a product of faulty genetic make-up intrinsic to the individual and hence innate to their 'group' affiliation.

 

The following link for "A Doctor's Toxic Shock" by Nanette Gartrell

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/magazine/04LIVES.html is well worth reading. A "psychiatrist in practice for 27 years" failed to recognize herself having anxiety and depression (suffering from grief and loss for the death of loved ones and the fatal illness of a close friend). She immediately went for the pill bottle. She suffered adverse side-effects. She was undeterred and continued the drugs. Her 'learned' peer group were of no help. She researched in academic journals and the internet looking to see herself in their listings of adverse side-effects, but to no avail. She talked to another user of the drug who was able to recognize and acknowledge similar experiences with the drug ("His symptoms were similar to mine. He said it was like coming off a coke high, that he would choose grief any day over bupropion"). She found a journal entry that stated that some people's genetics can't cope with the drug. She tapered off the drug and hasn't been depressed since! So she thinks that she has learned her lesson: "After taking bupropion, I describe potential side effects to my patients in much greater detail...If a patient complains of symptoms similar to mine, I switch meds immediately. In the past, I would have encouraged the patient to stick it out, anticipating that most side effects would eventually pass." Truth is - she hasn't learned a damn thing and everything she says is proof of that. She (like her 'blind, deaf and dumb' learned peers) is as ignorant as she was prior to her experience.