Struggling to be

[PeppiPatty]

I've missed you Ms @Appleblossom
Yes I've had oh ..... Very open communication with my youngest brother ........ It's been both about the most upsetting conversations I've had which I'm trying to process ...... And complete joy
On your brother : the reason why I've written this is often you write making me feel ..... You love him and ...... You felt helpless as well. Like it was too hard sometimes because you had to deal with your own life ...... He reminds me a very little of this poor 15 yr old in Sysney who's Been very negatively influenced ..... Someone who hasn't been given positive feedback

[Roo]

Hi Aonaran

I hear you, I have been on medication since I can remember for a number of things and doctors/professionals are not gods and then you get let down and you get back up and do it again and again, and again and then start doubting yourself and then who do you trust!!! Fear sets in and then isolation and before you know it you are deep in a pit!  That is me with all my shoulds.

I have got off my medication a number of times hoping that I was strong enough to carry through and be as normal ordinary as I can be like the others around me, I have build up supports but they move on or something happens that makes life difficult to keep in contact.  I have recently tried another medication after 15 years that didn't work for me and it puts such a hold on life that you don't know if you can be normal again. Its torture!! 

This is also my first time blogging too,  I have never done it before.  

I hope that when my medication kicks in that it is what I am waiting for so as not to be disappointed so as I can move forward and stop setting myself up for failure.  I am not used to waiting around but thats how I am dealing with it this time around.  I ask everyone, is this ok?  what should I be doing? I don't want to be in this state another 5 weeks and having to pick up the pieces again. 

I hear you Aonaran...

Roo 

[CherryBomb]

Hi @Aonaran,

It's nice to hear from you. I've been thinking about you. I'm so sorry to hear that you're unwell. What a bugger.  It sounds like it has had ramifications on so many other areas of your life. Can I ask what/if something can be done to get the illness under control? 

Thanks for bringing up how I referred to you as "my friend". When I read your post yesterday, it was like seeing myself through a mirror where I had to question why I decided to remove it. I guess I was worried about sounding too presumptious thinking that others on here would consider me as friend. I wasn't sure if I was going to be out of line by doing. Perhaps I should have asked first. 

Anyhoo @Aonaran, my friend, I'm glad you're back and wanting to reconnect. I've missed our chats, though I also want you to know that I understand that sometimes life throughs stuff in our way, and we can't come on here and chat. 

CherryBomb

[Roo]

Silly me I didn't think when I replied to this post that it was from a year ago... Thanks Appleblossum for liking it 🙂 

Roo

[Aonaran]

Greetings Anne @PeppiPatty,

Ahh, thank you for your posts, and for being you.  It lifts my spirirts like Patty's balloon to hear from you.  You may not consider yourself an intellectual -- which, oftentimes, seems to me to be just another maze to run around -- but you're certainly an intellect of your own nature.  It's one of the aspects of Jung I am personally drawn to, that each of us (in my words) is really our own ecosystem, with our own climate and landscape, and there's simply no way to say one is of more worth than another.

I don't personally relate to Freud at all, though I do understand the idea that aspects of our existence, and even specific items, can come to symbolise attitudes or even whole domains of our existence.  And that our development can be fixated in this way.  That's present in Jung (and Assagioli) as well, but my own feeling is that Freud simply asks the wrong questions.  Freud asks, "What's wrong with you?", which focusses on the fracture;  Jung asks, "Who are you really?", which I think focusses on the healing and the growth.

(It's what Jung called "self-actualization" -- becoming who you are.  I also like what Assagioli had to say, which was that you're either expanding or you're contracting;  there's no such thing as standing still.)

I agree that the healing can be implicit in a focus on the fracture, but frankly I don't hear much of that in Freud's writings, whatever his intent.  And, more to the point, I've never met a therapist who was able to embody that worldview in his or her work.  I know it's what I've been searching for myself, for what feels like such a long time ... but, of course, that's a Tar Baby all its own, because focussing on healing keeps your world fixated on the fracture as well.

(I personally have a very hard time around this Mental Health Week, because I feel in my water that so much of what's said by "experts" is just so much codswallop.  And if healing and compassion are so crucial, why have I never been able to find any from these damned "professionals", who were so flippin' happy to be paid to play their creepy ego-driven power games at my expense?!)

It's even harder for me at the moment, because I've just been fired by another therapist, who was happy to eat up all my sessions from the Victims Services program and then dump me, with no sign of any concern for the effect that the excuses she gave might have on me.  These people aren't therapists; they're like cheap sex-workers of the mind.  Except they ain't cheap.

--> Ptui!!! <--

Hey, @PeppiPatty, what's a "Community Guide" ?  Do you get a uniform? 😉

(Makes me think of something out of James Fenimore Cooper, all buckskin and creeping silently through the American woods.)

Happy trekking,

Aonaran.

[PeppiPatty]

Dear @Aoneran

Now your going to giggle....I asked not to be a communnity guide when asked because I have had some very sad family stuff to deal with and....

but, im addictively online discovering more about my unconcious......Im very grateful.

And, its all just very hard then one of my Gps keeps on changing my medication......but...as usual....@CherryBomb and @NikNik made the right decision.

The uniform is the usual thing.....Overalls for me with a apricot coloured t_shirt found in the bin. I think that theres a lady who lives in my complex who likes changing her clothes a lot and keeps on chucking beautiful clothes and my neighbour and I go and rescue them. What a giggle!!

 I was....sort of am a die hard Freud fan.

The paternalistic silly billy.

I like the Oedipal complex. I find it.....readable.

Totem and Taboo, without all the racism..I like how he emulates the thought of males and ............rites of passage

I like of the writings of the aggression of society. 

The rest of it is..... confusing for myself... I think I better get my notes out.

Im re reading "Object Relations,' by Lavinia Gomez.

I LOVE reading your emails. They are tops.

I LOVE reading Joseph Yalom. He is a Jewish Lecturer/Psychoanalyst. from Stanford University.

And I just gave away my very well read much used Nancy McWilliams book. to my friend who comes over to discuss his daily life....

my husband doesnt like him. He doesnt like Freud either.

My friend has always solved his prolems with violence........and I lend him and probably will not get back my freudian Nancy McWilliams book. My bible all these years I've had it. 

Many subjects in  one paragraph. It's true though, my husband doesnt like reading Freud and doesnt like my friend. I have often asked my friend to go away if I dont want to see him, once I did it for a whole year.

Freud.....Jung.......two significant persons damaged by wars and living in and working only in a certain wealth socio economic area.  happyiness is what you do for work and who you hang out with. Is that too limited?

 Yes, I agree with the mental health week. There is something that I want to write to you and have a think about.

What do you want from a therapist?

[Aonaran]

Hiya @Appleblossom,

Ahh, I chuckled ... it's been a long time indeed since I made someone's heart do a little skip! 😉  (Sigh ...)

Yeah, the iron thing ... It looms like a horrible dark shape for me, rising unawares out of the dimness ... I knew nothing about it, but it can't really be set right.  It's one of those things like haemophilia, where it's derived from inherited broken genes, where you have to win the Darkside Lottery of getting the relevant genes from both parents for it to manifest, and then you win a chicken that's already defrosted and already past its use-by date.  It means you can't regulate the iron levels accruing in your system, and they just build up past what's safe and permanently poison you.  Typically it attacks the muscle of your heart and causes cardiomyopathy (check) and the functions of your pancreas and causes diabetes (check) and the cells of your liver and causes fatal cirrhosis (currently being tested).  No-one knows why, but it usually doesn't become active until middle-adulthood, but damage can be prevented if detected early enough (yeah thanks, doc, for not doing your job!), except that there's no actual cure or resolution, and it can't be stopped.  It's genetic, so nothing can be done.  All they can do is draw large quantities of blood, initially twice a week, so that your body is forced to use up some of the stored iron, a tiny amount each time, in making new red blood cells.  And that's for the rest of your life.

It's actually a pretty heavy blow for someone who already feels purposeless, who has an unsullied empty column under the heading of "Everything to Live For".  I'm really struggling with it, @Appleblossom.

That's mostly why I haven't been around these forums for a wee while.  Well, I was disheartened initially when my last post in a conversation I was really enjoying with @NikNik was summarily deleted -- no idea who by, no mention of why or even letting me know that it had been done -- and I kinda felt my chin hitting the ground and just lay there for a while.  But then all this medical business, and my so-called "therapist" firing me, and I slunk into my cave, as the highest level of coping mechanism I could muster.  (Rather than a "therapist", I actually think of her as a Nice Chatter -- as in Mad Hatter -- because Nice Chats were all she seemed to want to have, and in truth all she seemed capable of.  Her sessions were valueless, to be blunt, but I was limited by the program I got the sessions under to only seeing people on their List.  I saw three of them, and let me tell you, not one of them was worth being paid as a therapist.  Judgemental that may sound, but that doesn't make it wrong.)

Ooh, I see you're a Community Guide as well.  I'm starting to feel left out!  All I've got is a tag on my name that essentially means "Talks a Lot". 😞

I'm sorry, I missed the details about your brother -- was that on another thread? -- so I don't know what to say about the situation.  I hope you don't think I'm gauche in mentioning it;  I just also didn't want to let it slide and seem like I didn't care.  My sincere wishes for something nourishing to come from it, whatever shape that takes.  As I wish for all we budding acorns.

Slàinte,

Aonaran

[PeppiPatty]

Dear @Roo

I hear you. My oldest son will not take medication but.....suprisingly, he's been listening to me and he replaces times of living in his bed and chain smoking with working.

This is a strange one....is this like......medication is good for me, there will be changes but if I keep on seeing my GP ....we can try and manage the sumptoms ?

But I have been like this as well.  just worked out the brilliance of supports. Actually, I have a good friend who is very similar to my husband and they have both been supporting me on recontacting a young family I know about. They have both said NO that I need to wait until they have gone through their difficult times. and if they come back I will choose whether to be there or not.

It feels like...not taking medication is something that a lot of people decide to do. Is it about self love?

[CherryBomb]

Hello both @PeppiPatty @Aonaran

Just thought I'd quickly chime in here re: community guides. I'm sorry @PeppiPatty.  Things were pretty hectic the week leading up to Mental Health week with getting community guides and the Forums sorted, and I vaguely remember having a conversation with you via email about you not wanting to be a guide but I think I forgot to pass this on.  So sorry @PeppiPatty!  Would you like me to see if I can change your profile so that you're not a community guide anymore? 

@Aonaran a community guide is kind of like 'local' of the Forums. They can show the newer members around and help them out with anything. We had call out on the Forums a few weeks back for people who were wanting to do it for mental health week. And then just last week I sent out a round of emails to confirm if people were still wanting to do it (and in the case of @PeppiPatty I forgot to remove her from the list).

Glad to see you both on here. 

CherryBomb

[PeppiPatty]

@CherryBombI LOVE being a community Guide!

I put on my overalls......borrow my husbands very attractive laptop and read.......O didnt think that I would be able to do it but thankyou,

Im a lot stronger from being so :0)

If you read my posts, Im writing the idea that people look at other people's comments etc. 

Also, looking at my old Jung notes, have been very good for me when writing with @Aoneron