Struggling to be

[CherryBomb]

That's a relief @PeppiPatty, I felt bad for potentially burdening you with unwanted responsibility.

@Aonaran, I'm sorry to chime in on the conversation (again), though you mentioned in your previous post that one of your posts was removed without explanation. This is very concerning.  I apologise for this. We will look into it to find out what happened. Would you like us to email you the details once we find out?

I'm just about to finish in 15 minutes, and won't be back on until Wednesday, but I will pass this on for @NikNik to follow up. 

[Appleblossom]

@Aonaran

The forums sometimes refresh ... I have lost a few posts but I dont think it is always the SANE program or the mods ... sometimes I can find it again under the autosave... its a time out thing ...

Health setbacks are tricky ...I guess you have to see the doc weekly or more for a while to stabilise the iron level.  I found facing my partly self-inflicted main health issue (neck) very difficult ... it took about a decade to settle down with all the agitation and blame-self/other etc ... what a bloody idiot to do that ... made it worse etc ... I did have to face it and accept it ... and adapt a life around it ... first a physio and then my osteopath was most helpful.... only found decent doc recently.

I did a bit of genetics in Biol when I was a kid and cos we were haunted by the dreaded "schizophrenia gene" ... I always stayed mindful of inheritance patterns etc ... there isnt one ... a single gene ... just predispositions and possible triggers

Dear @PeppiPatty often tangles up little stories ... like my brother ... this leads to that ... in her loverly cheery posts ... I dont know that she always gets it right ... but god I love her heart ... my backstory is complicated ... one brother died in 95 and one is dealing with cancer ... I might see him this weekend as he is in town. 

My family is and has been very fragmented for a long time ... atm it is just son and my globally pingponging brother ... he goes to Germany for alternative therapies.

You contributed to a thread about creating a meaningful life by @Chris that I read today ... you had 9 likes ... it was a good post ... there is value in your point of view ... and I am not alone in saying that.

Finding meaning is solved when one is a parent ... but as my baby is now 23 ... I have been trying to give him permission not to worry about me ... the world's your oyster ... go and make it etc ...cos look darling ...I have a life ... etc etc ... he has said he wont be going anywhere for a couple of years but some of my motivation for "getting a life" was to reassure him .. its great that it becomes part of his conversation ...

I was attracted to your posts cos my celtic side is dormant ... I have an Irish name but no heritage ... dad died young and had no family ....so am happy to hear your pearls of wisdom ...

I fight my bad genetics by developing identity ... or thats the theory anyway ... I just keep lasting ... the sun just keeps coming up ... even if I didnt notice the bloody thing for years at a time ...

   

A lot of the people on this site are doing mandalas ... I am lousy at art but maybe I can learn some knots ... not Borromean ones ... Lacan was obssessed with those ...

cheers

[Appleblossom]

Come on @PeppiPatty U R such a natural community guide ...

I would have been worried if I didnt see you in your new overalls.

[Aonaran]

Heya @CherryBomb,

Thanks for keeping a chair for me near the fire, while I've been off shuffling round the shelves in the musty library.  🙂

I can't imagine ever thinking of you as presumptuous;  to me your sense of the appropriate is very finely tuned.  So I wasn't upset about the vanishing "my friend", but I did want to acknowledge and say thanks that it was there in the first place.

I'm not really sure what to say to you right now, if I'm honest.  I'm conscious of disappointment that ou conversational momentum was disrupted, but I'm conscious also of feeling that making too big a fuss of that will stamp the ground fallow and stop any further shoots from breaking the soil.

I'm really wrestling with the angel this week over all the "Mental As ..." stuff that's around.  My gut feeling is that all this knowledge that's being spouted all over TV and radio (and I tend to be ABC-only these days, so I've no idea if other broadcasters have picked it up or not) may be all very well, and may be accurate, but it really doesn't take the place of lived experience.  People hear these talks, and think they know about Mental Illness, but they know anything that wouldn't be made immeasurably more worthwhile by talking to someone with MI of some kind and simply asking, "What's it like for you?"

It actually makes me think of Peter Duesberg.  You probably haven't heard of him, but he's a medical biologist -- an epidemiologist, I think -- and he attracted enormous derision in the 90s by pointing out that there is no actual evidence that HIV causes AIDS.  In the late 80s, when the HIV retrovirus was discovered and an industry sprang up around discovering a treatment and hopefully a cure, it became established orthodoxy to say that HIV caused AIDS, because what was defined as AIDS required HIV to be present, and if you didn't accept that as a premise, then you simply didn't get funding.  It was self-fulfilling.  But Duesberg pointed out that no direct causal link has ever been demonstrated, and the mechanism for such a relatively simple retrovirus to cause the necessary cell changes and behaviour has never been enunciated.  Duesberg notes that in central and southern Africa, where AIDS is truly an epidemic, there are large swathes of people who have all the same opportunistic infections and suppressed immune response, but who have no detectable presence of HIV or its related antibodies.  Those with detectable HIV are diagnosed as having AIDS;  those without HIV are simply considerd as suffering from medical issues common in southern Africa, even though there's no functional difference between the two groups.  He worries that the presence or not of HIV is a false distinction that masks what's really causing the health issues for these people, and that our focus on HIV has stopped us looking for other causes.  (As I remember reading somewhere once, there's nothing more dangerous than an answer that is both persuasive and wrong.)

Anyway, my point is:  obviously I'm not pretending to be any Peter Duesberg, but I can't help feeling there's more to any mental illness I've personally experienced than the "experts" talk about.  It's a response to life, an attempt to right the balance of a tilted ship, and the focus on what's broken often masks what's keeping it afloat.  Maybe our own personal variant of the HIV spectre isn't where the real problem lies, and this drive to pathologize may make things seem manageable to the "experts" but I do wonder what it actually contributes to the people for whom this is their life.

I'm frightened of having yet another ppost summarily deleted if I say the wrong thing, so I'm cautious of saying any more.  And I confess that my thoughts are also coloured by anger at the people I've turned to for help who presumed to believe they knew better than I did what my life experience was, and what I "needed".  It's just so much flim-flam.

Acchh.

Aonaran

[CannonSalt]

"It's a response to life, an attempt to right the balance of a tilted ship, and the focus on what's broken often masks what's keeping it afloat."

The experts are coming around to this idea, slowly - their name for it is a 'strength-based approach'. 🙂 There are a few threads in the forums here and there about the subject.

[PeppiPatty]

very insightful about me @Appleblossom

thanks

[PeppiPatty]

Dear @CannonSalt

I could'nt have written it better myself.

Thank you.

Often I sit here with my darling husband who is clearly suffering more than me......

He is a truly beautiful wonderful man. 

Can I ask you of any messages you relate to on this site?

I just think @Aonaran is someone I think about and like very much reading him.

[PeppiPatty]

Dear @Appleblossom

Thinking about you 

Yes, you are right about me.....twisty emails that roam around 

What I love about you is you get me thinking. Being on Sane forums.....im too overwhelmed for much these days......

family issues

Driving my husband to chemist every day

I have lots of papers I want to write

One is my values

One is that Feminism paper

Re decorating my beautiful home....

 darling Arlo is ill......

I have a genuine fondness for you. I was listening to Glen Gould playing Bach on ABC am ....he truly is my favourite ....When at Univeristy, I did some artwork influenced on his Narrative records, I used to pay them for a whole year over and over!!!

As usual I was wishing I could have a cuppa with you this morning but couldnt get on the computer to write to you

[Appleblossom]

Sorry about Arlo

Sorry about the chemist trips

I have lost my writing mojo so maybe thats is why I am posting a lot.

Luv the idea of long distance cuppas doesnt have to be dandelion tea

[CannonSalt]

Even though Aonaran puts it so beautifully, it can be useful to know the 'official terms' when you're searching for answers. I'm still getting my feet wet on the site, and I am finding bits and pieces here and there that resonate. Mostly I'm just enjoying the warm, friendly atmosphere. 🙂