Posted by capricorn on November 22, 2006, at 14:51:28
In reply to Re: Scared - repost » capricorn, posted by Phillipa on November 22, 2006, at 11:58:42
Over here the government is big on pushing work as b all and end all of everything and making out the mentally ill are unworthy/lesser citizens if they do not. A lot of the movers and shakers in the mh field
have fallen head long for this right wing propganda.
One way is to gradually ease you in through voluntary work.
I think paid/voluntary work is great for those who feel able to and want to do it. However many of those experience problems because of fluctuating symptoms that affect their ability to work consitently and the problems that arise because of bumpy transitions between being in work and being on benefit.Also firms are not always accomodating to say the very list.What gets me is that now at nearly 50 they are thinking about that i should do voluntary work because they say i'm intelligent and yet from 18-48 there was f*** all support and understanding
just so called mh professionals treating me like i was awkward and demanding for asking for more/more appropriate help.
Now thanks to the previous pdoc i had it's been accepted that my treatment was a four letter beginning with S and ending with T and whereas they were prone to being curt and abusive they are now willing to be more caring.However actual practical help within that framework of behaving towards me in a more caring and less abusive way? Simple answer-N0!
I'm still wrestling with issues some of which stretch back to when i was a slightly spotty teenager and before.
Not once have i ever got any decent help for those problems.They want me to do voluntary work on their part because it fits in with governments social policy
and therefore their's.
I would haved loved to have been helped enough with the problems that impinge on my ability to work to be able to do so but it's never happened.It's not the lack of intelligence or good intelligence that hampers me but the social phobia/the general anxiety/the irrationality and paranoia and difficulting coping that happens when faced with emotionally stressful and threatening situations.
Get me on a good day 'you might think fairly average looking,overweight,articulate and intelligent but somewhat shy and awkward.
Don't think he's got any problems.'Get me on a day when i've just been emotionally stressed and worked up and words are spewing scrraming level angrily and irrationally and paranoiacally out of my mouth then you would see little of the articulate,intelligent person described above.
If i feel threatened,stressed or invalidated or sometimes frustrated (over something relatively minor to most other people)it's all too easy for me to get this way.
I am aware that if i agree and can't cope with the stress i will end up losing it. I am also aware
that if i do- compassion and support will be far out weighed by condemnation.I learnt that unwelcome lesson years ago during the second week of my first ever admission.
After a week of settling into the admission ward they told me i was to be send to OT to help make dolls houses.On being told this i went into a state of intense panic as i have always had major problems with things requiring manual dexterity and visuospatial skill eg carpentry/metal work/drawing/constructing things etc and on top of that i couldn't do the things i was usually good at because i felt so crap.
I was dragged from in front of the hospital bus and frog marched to see what looked like an eldely pdoc(might only have been 50 or so but 40 looks old when you are 18) with this disapproving look on his face. There were no questions as to why or any attempts to understand just being told
scathingly 'You're an awkward and troublesome teenager'.Although they are now after much overdue time better with me, the scars and the fears run deep on my part.
For every part hurt from past abuses there is fear of further rejection.
My care co ordinator says 'phone me if you need to ' and i think she means it'.However there is always the fear of being trivialised and invalidated and therein rejected and also years of shattered self esteem that holds me back because 'it's just me being silly' and that's not a reason to phone.
poster:capricorn
thread:706107
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20061106/msgs/706223.html