Questions

Recently I received an email from a blog friend expressing concern that I had been absent from blog land and wondering if I was okay. I assured her I was but that life had thrown some questions at me that I was yet to come to terms with hence my silence. I said that once I’d come to grips with these questions I’d write again. I haven’t got any answers yet but I decided to write this post anyway with the hope that perhaps some clarity will arrive. Self-indulgent I know but then one of the things I love about blogs is the sharing of personal journeys that often touch others in unexpected ways. So…

Late last year I resigned myself to the fact that in order to move from a house that was crumbling around us and in order to keep my son at the school most beneficial to him for the next two years as he finishes his high school experience I was going to have to go back to nursing. I knew I couldn’t work anymore in the psychiatric system. It may as well be called the pharmacological system now as this is the only approach it uses. I wouldn’t mind if this approach worked…if it healed…but it doesn’t. It simply drugs.

So I’ve taken a job in aged care. At the interview I expressed my desire to only work in an ethical manner and that if this was not the practice of this facility then please don’t hire me because I would just be a pain in the you-know-what. They hired me. And they do work ethically putting the needs, the rights and the dignity of our one hundred and fifty residents before any other consideration. So that’s good. And the money is good. My son can be at ease that mum can pay the bill for his school for the next two years and we’ve moved house. Son and I are healthy, we get along pretty well and we live in Australia which in comparison to so many other countries is a bloody lucky place to be.

And yet personally…

As my son grows older (he turned 16 on Xmas eve) he grows further away and though I know this is as it should be I can’t help the heaviness in my heart. I rejoice that I was able to give him a joyful, loving, secure childhood where laughter and “I love you” were constants for us both. But I hate the way hormones suck away that joy…I hate that now he’s looking out at the world his natural happiness is being eroded by the stark reality of the seemingly overwhelming ‘issues’ our global community creates then suffers from and I hate that a cuddle and tickle attack no longer bring comfort. All normal I know but I hate it nevertheless.

And in complete selfishness I am so sad that his childhood is over. Each day of it brought me such immense joy…I wonder if I’ll ever feel that good again. Selfish I know, but true nevertheless.

And despite the ethical practice of the aged facility I work at I am constantly struck dumb by this reality we will all travel. Frankly old age sucks! So we are living longer these days. We have copious medicines that ensure your heart and brain keep going so statistically it looks good. Yet when I look at the reality of this extended life…well I sure don’t want it. As one of my resi’s said yesterday “old age stinks”.  All I could do was sigh in agreement and give her a long hug after I’d finished treating her wounds from her fall and reminding her again not to try to walk without our help.

Pain. So many are in so much pain. Pain of the body, pain of the heart. Yesterday I went from Bill whose morphine dose just keeps going up but his cancer is so much stronger…to Elaine whose children never visit so each day her heart cries …to Ethel whose daily ulcer dressings force tears despite her need to be stoic …to Stan whose awareness that he is dementing is horrendous to witness…

And I watch them all take their meds several times a day. I watch this seemingly instinctual clutching to life and I wonder what I am missing that makes me wonder why they hang on so tight. And the ethics of medicine…of quantity of years irregardless of quality…

Well as I said I have lots of questions right now. Hopefully I’ll find some answers.Actually let me re-word that. I will find answers.  As I wrote under the title of my blog I do question the way we are because life does matter. Some that I’ve written about is clearly me adjusting to that constant called ‘change’.  It’s great when change occurs if things are crappy but when things are good…well I guess I’ve a tendency to cling. But when it comes to our getting old and the way we manage…well…I’ll keep a pondering.

I’m Just Saying

  Last week I learnt that the American government asked our government to agree to have more American military folk and ‘stuff’ here in Australia. And we agreed.

According to those in the know this relates to America wanting to beef  up its arsenal in case discussions go badly with China. China of course have their own preparations going on.  Both countries are doing this because…

 Apparently it’s quite okay to threaten the other persons life…oh sorry…threaten the lives of their countries people, you know us…if they can’t agree over stuff.

 The other thing I learnt last week was that our Prime Minister moved to overturn the policy not to sell uranium to India  (because they refuse to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). Now we’re going to sell it to them. We are doing this because…

 Apparently adding uranium to the India/Pakistan/Afghanistan area is a good idea.

 Bloody-hell.

I’m just saying!

self harm

I have learnt that when life is tough we have a choice. We can decide to suffer or we can decide to learn. I have written before of how at nine I was placed in an orphanage (see http://leesis.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/theres-no-such-thing-as-beyond-repair/. I cannot deny that this was a painful event yet I was to understand that there was learning that would come in handy many years later and for this I am deeply grateful.

 I walked around the corner of the locked acute psychiatric ward. There sat sixteen year old Karen. her back against the wall with a glazed look in her eyes, her arm sliced open…about six inches from just above her wrist vein, nearly to her elbow, the flaps of skin hanging on both sides, blood everywhere. I was at the end of my second year of Psychiatric Nursing training. I knew her diagnosis and I knew the ‘recommended’ nursing interventions. Diagnosis; borderline personality disorder, intervention; attend to the physical requirements but give no attention otherwise. But I was me and I saw her and I responded.

 Here was a young girl who was in such pain that she needed to rip a part of the toilet role holder off the wall and slit her arm open. I pressed my buzzer so staff would come, knelt down beside her and with one hand pressed above the wound to decrease the blood flow put my other arm around her shoulders clutching her to me in a hug.

“Oh honey what have you done?”

Her eyes lost their glaze and she looked at me.

“What do you mean?”

“Karen what do you mean what do I mean? Babe you’ve just cut your whole arm open. You must be in so much pain.” She looked down at her arm.

“It doesn’t hurt at all”

“No I don’t mean your arm I mean your heart”

She looked at me wonderingly.

“I didn’t think anyone here gave a stuff. Every other time I’ve hurt myself I’ve just been stitched up and ignored.”

The other nurses turned up at this time and being senior took over. I went off on a break to ponder what Karen had said.

After my break I went back to Karen who had been put in the high dependency section after having her arm stitched up and bandaged. She gave me a challenging stare having returned to her rather confrontative self.

“’Spose you think I’m just seeking attention too”

“Actually Karen I wasn’t thinking about you as much as I was thinking about Janet”

“Whose Janet?”

So I told Karen about Janet. I met Janet in the orphanage. She too was nine. Where I was mostly silent she was a ball of rage but on one particular day I saw the pain under that rage. We were in class when one of the other kids screamed and pointed at her. Janet was sticking drawing pins into her knee…right in. When I looked she already had about five in, blood trickling down under each pin, and was slowly placing more and more in. The nun yelled at her and then rushed out of the room only to return seconds later with another nun.

“Janet would you stop trying to get attention” one of them yelled. Janet just kept putting more pins in. The nuns yelled some more about how bad she was. I walked up to the nun in charge.

“She’s not being naughty. She’s just hurting. Can’t you help her?”

I stopped the story there and looked at Karen. Tears were pouring down her face.

Karen and I worked together until she was discharged. I was to learn like most people with self-harming behaviour she had a horrendous upbringing. Borderline personality disorder is one of the many ways we can maladjust because of such experiences. Now I look back I don’t know if I really helped. I was too inexperienced. Yet I know I helped her to know that at least one person wasn’t labelling her, wasn’t judging her but was simply there for her when she was feeling crappy.

To the average Joe I guess people self harming seems outrageous. The ‘system’ mostly calls it attention seeking behaviour. But as I once pointed out to a condescending psychiatrist; yes, it is attention seeking…it is a person saying help…I’m in so much pain…won’t someone please help me.

I ended up working specifically with folks experiencing such pain and the more I learnt the better I got. But one thing never changed. An unconditional loving response may not heal but it’s the only place to start and anything less will definitely hurt.

Leesa

Madness that wouldn’t heal

Dear reader

people experiencing mental illness suffer as much…sometimes more…from the harshness and rejection of their fellow beings. In writing these particular posts I hope to open people’s hearts a little more thereby maybe encouraging a kinder response. For me uppermost in my mind has always been the thought ‘what if this were me’. Please ponder…what if this was you. 

with love…Leesa

Marg was fairly short in stature. She was neither fat nor thin, had short slightly curly hair and an everyday face. She looked like a regular Aussie woman; to me anyway. But she looked anything but regular to herself.

 One day, long before I met her, she looked in the mirror and saw herself shrinking. Distressed, as any of us would be should we find this happening to ourselves, she reached out for help. But no one could stop her shrinking for there was no evidence that she was. But this she could not believe and instead she continued to beg for help…loudly and persistently. Eventually they had to lock her up, medicate her, tell her that her belief she was shrinking was in fact a delusion and, when her distress became overwhelming, give her as much medication as the law would allow.

 Days passed, weeks passed, months and years passed. She stayed locked up. She stayed medicated, she was given electroconvulsive therapy, she was talked to, talked at, sometimes yelled at. She was held down, distracted, hugged, analysed. The only thing that changed was that she didn’t need to look in the mirror anymore. She just knew…knew with all certainty that she was shrinking.

 Marg was in her earlier forties when I first met her. I was a second year psychiatric nursing student. By this time Marg had become a walking text-book of the side effects of psychiatric medication, of madness, of what we couldn’t do.

 Of course Marg wasn’t shrinking. As I once said to her (in a moment of naivety) if she had been shrinking all this time she would have disappeared altogether. Yes I was trying to use reason. I was young.

 Marg taught me so much. You see Marg never accepted that we couldn’t help her. She never gave up. So day and night she would grab whoever passed her, pulling at our arms our hands our clothes. Crying, begging, often screaming for us to help her, to stop her shrinking. But we couldn’t help her. Psychotherapy, pharmacology nothing would touch this horrendous delusion/hallucination she suffered twenty-four seven.

 Thirteen hour shifts, walking into the door of the locked ward and there she was, yelling, crying, grabbing. All the staff that dealt with Marg had to in some way deal with the emotions she evoked. The psychiatrists would duck and weave using back doors whenever they could. Avoiding her became their main goal on any given day. If they couldn’t avoid her completely they would insist we take her away from them. What they couldn’t fix they wanted no part of. Nurses on the other hand worked for thirteen hours straight on the ward and avoidance was impossible. We students were usually allocated Marg. The fact of the matter was nobody wanted her as a patient so we got her.

 Despite our enthusiasm, our naivety, our sincere care, our greatest effort and striving nothing changed for Marg. For Marg saw and felt herself shrinking. She took the maximum dosages of several medications in any one day and then some (rarely by choice) and the most they ever did was make her sleep for an hour or so before she would wake and stumble out in distress grabbing at whoever was close and begging for help.

 There is no happy ending to this true story. Ten years later when I left that hospital they were talking of giving Marg a partial lobotomy…something that had been ceased decades earlier. I suppose that sounds horrific to people who never met Marg. Personally I didn’t know. I only knew that nothing had changed for her and that her distress was as great, as constant and as overwhelming as the first day I had met her. I knew the medication was causing copious and horrible side effects and I knew that everything under the sun had been tried and nothing had helped. I still don’t know.

 Marg you taught me patience, you taught me my own limitations and how to handle them in an emotionally mature manner. You taught some what it was to give into their worst impulses and it seemed to me your journey was the worst I had, and have, ever seen. Hopefully one day you will understand it was not for the lack of trying that we couldn’t help you. I think you thought we didn’t care. But we did. We were simply powerless in our caring. In this you were our greatest teacher.

The Illusion of Independence

 My friend Pat has written for some time now about her journey of grief following the death of her life partner. Her latest post on this topic; http://ptbertram.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/grief-is-not-self-indulgent/ talks again of how non-grievers react to grievers.

Please pop over there and read her post as it will provide the context for my post. Go on…do it now…I’ll wait .

I have followed Pats blog for a while to both offer support in a world that I know is not supportive of folks grieving and because I admire her willingness to write about this process and her inherent bravery in facing the agony that we like to pretend doesn’t exist.

Just like we pretend that we are not completely dependent on each other. Yes I know, we like to think we are independent. But we are not. And this illusion is causing us untold harm.

Independent; “not dependent on, influenced or controlled by others” says my dictionary. Not possible say I.

The reality is, as I said to Pat, we are a completely dependant species what ever else we like to pretend. Our physical health is completely dependant upon this earth we were born on and our emotional health is completely dependant upon our relationships with each other. And perhaps, if we could be brave enough to face our complete vulnerability we may work a bit harder at ensuring we appreciate and positively contribute to both the health of our relationships and the health of the earth.

My son is fifteen. In these years part of my role is to teach him how to do things for himself. Some say to teach independence but, clearly, I disagree. What I teach him is how to positively meet his needs. He is dependant on food. I teach him how to pick good food how to prepare it, the best to buy, even how to grow some. He is dependent on the planet. I teach him how to minimize his pollution, how to give back not just take.

And most of all he is dependent upon other human beings for his emotional needs. So I teach him about human nature. About knowing and respecting himself, about treating others with integrity, about owning his own faults and about not owning other people’s faults. I teach him how others can be damaged and how to support them if he can and so desires but how to not let them damage him and how not to add to the damage done to them.

I teach him to value relationships…from the stranger who checks out his groceries, to his friends, his girlfriend, the crappy people who teach him how not to behave and his family. And I teach him, as best as I can how to deal with hurt that probably will come. Of the extremes in how some behave from the ‘I can’t live without you’ to the ‘I don’t need anyone’ reactions. Of why these reactions can occur and why they are false.

You see I want my son to be happy and I know his happiness depends both on his relationship with himself and on his relationships with others. We are not independent, we are very very dependent and this must be acknowledged, respected and treasured.

So remember to tell those in your life how very precious they are. And if you know someone who’s grieving please be there for them…however long it takes.

Now I must drive my son with his girl to tenpin bowling. He tells me he can’t wait to be driving so he’s independent. Sigh!!!

With love…Leesa

Medicating Emotions; avoiding pain to our detriment

I wrote recently about drugging our lives and continuing in that vein I first must say;

 There are absolutely times whereby medication is required. There are some psychiatric illnesses where medication is as essential as insulin is to the person with Type One Diabetes. But note that word illness. Schizophrenia, Bipolar, Uni-polar. Without medication people with these illnesses experience acute psychosis that can consequentially cause behaviour that is of great risk to their safety. And yes, there are crisis situations whereby short-term medication is therapeutically appropriate whilst a person undergoes intense psychotherapy. But again note the words; crisis and short-term.

 The problem is that at least eighty percent of medication taken for emotional/mood issues today are not for these above mentioned situations. They are used to suppress emotional pain directly due to life experiences and to moderate behaviour that is considered outside the spectrum of ‘normal’ and more and more ‘normal’ is based whether you can ‘function’…i.e. go to work/school and behave yourself.

 Of course from one view this can be seen as an extremely effective way to control human beings. Parents desperate for a solution to a non-compliant child are often greatly relieved (along with their schools) by a diagnosis that comes with meds to ‘settle’ little Timmy down. Adults traumatized by past and/or interpersonal drama are happy that a little pill can bring them a sense of ease. Governments and business support what they see as ‘quick fixes’ that are cost-effective and ensure a functioning workforce and psychiatry, now joined inextricably to the pharmacological empire, has never been so empowered.

  So you may wonder then what on earth the problem could be. Well the problems from this are several. But for me at least the most important issue is that medicating emotions means these emotions are pushed deeper and deeper into our psyche causing well proven physical/mental/emotional damage and worse using pills to suppress our pain and confusion rather than putting in the conscious work of healing means that we will never heal from wounds inflicted (medication suppresses, never heals) hence never discover the amazing uniqueness and depth of who we are and what we are capable of; never discover the true preciousness of this life we share.  

 Life Matters! Life is incredibly precious. It is not always happy or nice or fun…indeed sometimes it can be pure agony. Nevertheless it is deeply deeply precious. I am yet to completely understand why it is so but I do know for a fact that our emotional suffering can open doors of understanding and evolvement that enrich our lives a million fold and hence lead to enrichment for all around us. And equally I know with absolute certainty that medicating our emotions suppresses not only the pain but also the healing and growth that can occur.

 In order to truly experience the preciousness of life, to be in the now…which is indeed the only reality we have…we must know and always be in touch with and actively responsive to how our inner self is feeling. If we are on pills that adjust how we are feeling then we can never actually know how or indeed who we really are.

Yes taking a pill will give you a sense of artificial wellbeing. But then so will a frontal lobotomy. And yes, facing the pain, the rage, hurts like hell and takes a long time and hard work to integrate. Yes it is much easier to drug a child than be a constantly mindful, thoughtful, positively responsive parent. But what you sacrifice is experiencing the amazing depth of who you are and what you can be, who your children are and what they can be…of feeling deep joy and contentment, of connection with each other, of joy in the moment. Quite simply you are sacrificing what Abraham Maslow described as the final step in our psychological growth as humans….Self-actualization. And yes…all of this is possible. I know for I have seen and experienced it to be true.

 True emotional/mental health comes from the process of exploration and understanding…understanding yourself, understanding others around you, understanding life. Drugs…be they nicely presented and medically approved or from the end of a needle bring none of this.

Please consider…with love…Leesa

Just sad

Today I have read that “there is no greater evil”…than Australian law allowing me to marry another woman .

Today I read that those who oppose my sexuality are in fact fighting a “war for the future of the human race.”

Today I read a journalist linking the England riots to lesbian mothers.

And of course from the religious I read of the never-ending burning I shall endure.

I want to justify myself. 

I want to explain myself.

I want to list all the good in me…all the good I’ve tried to do.

Yet I find myself silent.

Overwhelmed by how much people seem to hate me due only to who I happen to fall in love with.

I remember this feeling. I felt it at twenty when I first told others I had fallen in love with a woman. When I was told that clearly I was just bad.

I’m forty-eight now…and tired of the hate

Left simply feeling deeply deeply sad.

Confessions of a Single Mother

My romantic dreams have gone from

Finding someone who takes as much joy in me as I in them

To wanting someone to turn to and say

‘Your turn now’

When Mr grumpy fifteen has pushed

Every button I possess.

And I am…

Drugging Our Lives

“10 year study of inpatient kids: 44% got antipsychotics. Is that a lot? Yes. It’s a lot.

And most of the time, not even for psychosis. 44% of the PTSD and ADHD kids got antipsychotics.

You can wrack your brain trying to figure this out or blame the usual suspects, but the answer is right there in the article:

Variables associated with antipsychotic use [included] male gender, age 12 years and under, being nonwhite, and a length of stay 13 days or longer.

You’ll observe that none of those words is “diagnosis” or “severity.”

The cause of these high levels of medications is so simple you’ll recoil from the truth of it, but pour yourself a drink and take it like a man: the kids showed up. That’s it. The kid is in front of you and you have to do something, now, that results in an acute change. Not better grades 4 years out, or less sadness over the teen years; change the sleep tonight, make the kid less hyper now, and when it “stops working” you can up the dose or change the med.

It doesn’t matter what the diagnosis is or what the symptoms are, really, whether he ate his dog or got a C on a test he’s going to be getting something at qd and hs because that’s what you get when you put psychiatry as the cornerstone of a Multidisciplinary Treatment Team.”

“When a kid is presented to a psychiatrist, the psychiatrist is pressured, obligated, to do something pharmacological. If a psychiatrist looked a single parent a joint away from a nap right in the eye and said, “nope, he’s acting out because of X, Y, Z, and medications aren’t going to fix this” that doctor will get his head handed to him by parent or by lawyer. Justice will be done, you negligent elitist.

And the simple reason why the kids showed up is that the parents and the schools and the cops and the courts were told that’s where you go when a kid punches another kid or becomes hispanic. That’s why outside the oakwood offices of the private docs the shingle says “Practice of Psychiatry” in Palatino Linotype, but get within fifty blocks of a black kid and the whole thing is labeled “Behavioral Health” in what I think is Erasermate.

Source : http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/06/are_antispychotics_overprescri.html

Yes it is entirely likely that eventually we will be able to medicate any bad feeling, any bad behaviour right out of your mind. Today we have a drug that can remove any traumatic memory from your mind if you see us straight away after its happened.

And we certainly can ensure well-behaved children so you won’t be so inconvenienced. Now all is settled so off to work with you. Ah money.

Oh and no Mrs. Green it doesn’t matter that you keep thumping your kid and screaming at them…medications will settle them down.

 My up coming posts will be specifically focused around these issues and will cover thoughts such as:

 *The medicating of emotions; avoiding pain to our detriment

 *When medications are and aren’t appropriate for emotional/behavioural issues

 *The reductionist view of the human being.

 *A paradigm of the human psyche

 * Parenting; the good the bad and the truly ugly

 I hope they will be interesting. I hope they will provoke some questioning. I hope you will share your thoughts. Please read my qualifications and about page if you wonder where I’m comming from on these matters.

 Cheers Leesa

Osama

I put on the news today and it’s still Osama. Or rather the media and politicians rejoicing that they shot him in the head.

 I don’t like rejoicing when someone dies, particularly when we (have to or not) kill him…or they kill themselves.

 This is not a political or ethical statement. I just feel sad.

Sad that we couldn’t work it out. Sad that the path our moccasins tread were so different we couldn’t communicate or that the damage was too deep to ever be undone.

 I can’t help but think we could be doing so much better than this.

Leesa