Anyone?

[manuel_moe_g]

Glad you found something that works for you, Namu. All the best, keep us informed on your progress.

[rivergirl]

Hey Namu,

So good to see you here on the forum again. I'm sorry you've had such frustrating experiences finding resources that meet your needs where you live, but glad that you have some hope for this new technique to be helpful.

I agree with Manny_Moe, would love to hear about your progress.

There isn't much traffic on the forum these days, but I'm still here.

rivergirl

[Namu]

Hey-ya, rivergirl. Thx to you and MMG for your encouragement.

I'm glad to see you too! It has obviously been quite a while since I spent much time here. I go through periods where I get too confused and frustrated by some of the coping mechanisms -- particularly the narratives of the just-keep-swimming, I'm-in-a-happy-moment-therefore-healing-is-possible-for-everyone sort. I vary in my level of desperation, and therefore in my vulnerability to assurances of ability and potential that don't really bear up under scrutiny, and that get blown away by (my) real experience. I sometimes feel betrayed-by-self, when I've run smack into a wall of recall, reminded that someone else's saying something doesn't equal its being true, or, at least, true for me. At such times I need to retreat, lick my wounds, and try to rebuild a more reliable perspective.

Also, I don't like being the Eeyore in the room, which I don't seem to be able to avoid! I don't want to insert gloom where people are managing to keep their chins up. It's difficult, you know, to figure out how to be among people ...

Update on me: I finally figured out last year that the therapist I'd been seeing for almost 10 years was being more harmful than helpful. I stopped seeing her, and began grieving/recovering from that, and trying to find other help. Meanwhile, given that no proper meds had ever helped me despite decades of trying, I was attempting, for the first time in my life, to grow a plant that a friend had told me might help. Previous encounters with this sort of plant had made me paranoid, but this friend said that there were lots of new strains, and that this particular one of his was very good for concentration and motivation. This plant was not (yet) legal in my area, and I was leery of buying from a "drug dealer." I imagined that my geographical isolation, plus the extremely small scale on which I would be operating, would protect me from consequences of trying to grow it.

I was wrong. I was arrested and jailed. The following week was fantastically worse than anything I'd ever experienced before. The months since then, though less concentrated in their horror, have done more to add to the initial trauma than to allow any recovery from it. Privately hired legal counsel has proven (mostly through negligence, and through relentless deception and obfuscation that are driven, I believe, not by ill will but by a powerful drive to not exert himself) nearly as destructive to my safety and interests as the actively malicious agents of my arrest and incarceration.

I am changed by that episode, which isn't over yet. I am on probation, and there are other loose ends that have dragged on ridiculously beyond what I could have imagined (thx mostly to my lawyer's lies and ineptitude).

After repeated false starts, I'm seeing a new therapist, and so far -- we've met three or four times -- it seems possible that I can do good work with her. It feels like terribly slow going, but there's quite a lot to unpack. With such a pile-up to sort through, an hour a week sometimes feels like an IV drip, when what I need is a transfusion. Still, a drip is better than nothing, if the stuff being supplied is actually restorative.

I didn't intend to say all that, but there it is. Device battery near dead, so I must close. thx again for waving hello, rivergirl.

Namu

[manuel_moe_g]

Oh Namu, I am so sorry to hear about your troubles with the law. It is so unfair, what a terrible burden on you!

But congratulations on the new therapist! I am sending you {{{hugs}}} and warm wishes about the progress you will make with this new therapist!

All the best, take care!

[Namu]

Thanks, mmg. I still feel shame and embarassment about the ordeal; before that very poor choice, I had never really done anything "wrong" (anything nontrivially illegal, or anything similarly unsafe or covert), and the seemingly catastrophic consequences have thrown me into what feels like a different universe. It's an unfamiliar experience, telling people about it, and it helps a lot to be met with compassion.

: *j

Namu

[rivergirl]

Oh my God, Namu, I'm so very sorry to hear this happened to you. You didn't deserve such dire consequences for what is partly just an accident of geography. I feel nothing but compassion for you and regret that the laws are so inconsistent across the states, and that they were applied harshly in your case.

I do understand about the limits of an online forum, in person support, particular therapies, etc., when each person's needs and resources vary so much. At times I feel helpless in trying to seek or offer any help or comfort when it comes to mental health issues, and in an online forum our ability to connect is especially limited.

I hope you continue to find your work with your new therapist to be helpful, and wish you moments of peace and healing from your past, including these recent traumatic events.

rg

[Namu]

Thanks, rg. Again, it's uplifting to get reassurance and kindness around this stuff.

I am currently listening to Just Mercy, by Bryan Stephenson, a civil rights lawyer devoted to helping people currently suffering much, much worse than I have. I knew that extreme and incoherent injustice was/is endemic to our courts and penal systems, but/and I was trying not to learn too much about the situation until I could get more stable myself, and maybe not even until I became able to contribute to the work being done to improve the way things are done. I can't unsee what I've seen since my arrest, though, and reading JM is one way for me to begin turning to look (though not yet at my own experience, at least at experiences of others in the same universe, the universe where the US is not by any measure a safe or sane society), instead of running like hell not to remember.

It helps to know there are people, like Stephenson, who want to fight for mercy and justice more than they want a conventional lifestyle and the usual entitlements that come with education and privilege. Still, the world seems to get darker and darker, the less I refuse to look at it.

Today/now is being particularly trauma-triggering in a couple of ways, so if I seem even bleaker than usual, it's 'cause I'm writing from a state of moderate panic. It might seem like a good idea to wait until the panic subsides, but if I put things off until panic subsides, that doesn't leave much time for actually doing anything else.

: -\

Take care.

[Namu]

From Just Mercy:

"America's prisons have become warehouses for the mentally ill. Mass incarceration has been largely fueled by misguided drug policy and excessive sentencing, but the internment of hundreds of thousands of poor and mentally ill people has been a driving force in achieving our record levels of imprisonment. It's created unprecedented problems. ...

"For over a century, institutional care for Americans suffering from serious mental illness shifted between prisons and hospitals set up to manage [note: "manage," not "care for"] people with mental illness. In the late 19th century, alarmed by the inhumane treatment of incarcerated people suffering from mental illness, Dorothea Dix and Reverend Loius [sp?) Dwight led a successful campaign to get the mentally ill out of prison. The numbers of incarcerated people with serious mental illness declined dramatically, while public and private mental health facilities emerged to provide care to the mentally distressed. State mental hospitals were soon everywhere. By the middle of the 20th century, abuses within mental institutions generated a lot of attention, and involuntary confinement of people became a significant problem. ... The introduction of antipsychotic medications like thorazine held great promise for many people suffering from some severe mental health disorders, but the drug was overused in many mental institutions, resulting in terrible side effects and abuses. Aggressive and violent treatment protocols at some facilities generated horror stories that fueled a new campaign, this time to get people out of institutional mental health settings. In the 1960s and 1970s, laws were enacted to make involuntary commitment much more difficult. Deinstitutionalization became the objective in many states. Mental health advocates and lawyers succeeded in winning a series of Supreme Court cases that forced states to transfer institutional residents to community programs. Legal rulings empowered people with developmental disabilities to refuse treatment, and created rights for the mentally disabled that made forced institutionalization much less common. By the 1990s, several states had a deinstitutionalization rate of over 95% ... . While these reforms were desperately needed, deinstitutionalization intersected with the spread of massive imprisonment policies, expanding criminal statutes and harsh sentencing, to disastrous effect. The 'free world' became perilous for deinstitutionalized poor people suffering from mental disabilities. The inability of many disabled, low-income people to receive treatment or necessary medication dramatically increased their likelihood of a police encounter that would result in jail or prison time. Jail and prison became the states' strategy for dealing with a health crisis created by drug use and dependency. A flood of mentally ill people headed to prison for minor offenses and drug crimes, or simply for behaviors their communities were unwilling to tolerate. Today, over 50% of prison and jail inmates in the United States have a diagnosed mental illness, a rate nearly five times greater than that of the general adult population. Nearly one in five prison and jail inmates has a serious mental illness. In fact, there are more than three times the number of seriously mentally ill individuals in jail or prison than in hospitals. In some states, that number is ten times. And prison is a terrible place for someone with mental illness, or a neurological disorder that prison guards are not trained to understand. ... The lack of treatment makes compliance with the myriad rules that define prison life impossible for many disabled people. ... Frustrated prison staff frequently subject them to abusive punishment, solitary confinement, or the most extreme forms of available detention. Many judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers do a poor job of recognizing the special needs of the mentally disabled, which leads to wrongful convictions, lengthier prison terms, and high rates of recidivism."

After well over a hundred years -- at least -- of serial campaigns to protect the mentally ill from systemic torture and abuse, which seems to be reinvented/revised as often as necessary to stay ahead of attempts to eradicate it, we are in a situation eerily similar to what Dix and Dwight set out to remedy in the late 1800s. I wonder what they would think and feel if they could see what has become of their "successful campaign." This society's behavior toward the mentally ill seems to have changed only in the specific avenues by which the persecution is perpetrated, and the means by which it is made ignorable by society.

ouch

[brownblob]

Sorry to hear about your legal problems Namu.

[rivergirl]

Hi Namu,

I'm sorry to hear that you were re-experiencing trauma on the day that you wrote. I relate to what you said about acting through panic.

Thank you for sharing the excerpt from Just Mercy. I was aware of the book, but not the extent of the issues that it covers. You've inspired me to do a bit more research on this subject.

Anything you feel like sharing is welcome. And if you don't feel like sharing, know that for what it's worth, I'm sending many good thoughts your way.

rg