Year: 2013
Dream
Posted on March 31, 2013 in Dreams
An alien made of mint jelly becomes my companion. I have it teach the Toastmasters to dance, then take it to the Opera House. I reach the top of the stairs. And either they won’t let me in or I decide that I didn’t want to go in after all. So I go down another set of stairs, but they get narrower and narrower as I go until I am standing on them with just my heels. A surge of fear wakes me.
Dream
Posted on March 21, 2013 in Dreams
A scandal erupts. During a Super Bowl, a fan sneaks onto the field wearing the uniform of his team and catches the ball for a winning touchdown. Now several weeks later, the opposing team wants the result repealed because the winners had an extra and illegal man on the field. The winners, of course, don’t want the final score changed and say that they can’t do anything if someone gets onto the field without their knowledge. They point out that he is now a member of the team despite the fact that he is short for a football player.
Shame and Sociopathy
Posted on March 7, 2013 in Attitudes Guilt Mental Illness Personality Disorders Responsibility Therapy
There exists a class of life coaches and therapists who urge us to get rid of our self-condemnations. The way to mental health, they insist, is to become a sociopath who feels no remorse for what he has done. In the course of my life, I have done wicked things. Much of it was done while in the thrall of my disorder. I have never physically hurt others since my early teenaged days, but I have put a serious fright into a few. I do not want to repeat these. My healthy shame is a signpost to the past: “Do not go back there.” And I heed it.
Dream
Posted on February 24, 2013 in Dreams
My mother demonstrates how to feed an angry cat a treat by stuffing it through the ear. I get on the phone to talk to an old friend and while he is going on and on, he lets it slip that my brother-in-law found him a job at Stanford. When I ask about this, there is only silence on the line and bright unfocused colors in the room.
Dream
Posted on February 24, 2013 in Dreams
I am walking next to a cemetery which once needed to be rearranged. Space was tight. The last time I was here, I met a man who had been in charge of the reorganizing and told him that I was the one who saw that the three graves needed to be moved. He thanked me for my contribution.
I go into an office building where I used to work. I walk the hallways – illegally because I don’t have clearance — looking for someone I knew from those days. I give up and go to sit in a big easy chair in the cafeteria. I fret that they will kick me out, but then I remember that this is not a restricted area.
The Dream of Surgical Killing Springs Eternal
Posted on February 10, 2013 in Terrorism War
Imagine if the death penalty were applied so that not only the criminal were killed, but also his family and friends.
Long Agendas
Posted on February 8, 2013 in Equality Hatred Liberals & Progressives Micro-blogging Peace War
I do not believe that criticizing any part of the country’s agenda makes me bound to reject the whole. This stretches to my support of President Obama….
Dream
Posted on February 7, 2013 in Dreams
My mother has fallen on bad times ((Shut up, Lynn.)) — she is very sick and leaves my brother and me to look after her business. When she comes back, she thanks us for getting most of it done, but there is still the matter of the electricity bills. She kneels on the floor and goes through them with a man from the utility, stacking them neatly in little piles on the floor.
Dreams
Posted on January 20, 2013 in Dreams
One theme that has appeared in my dreams lately is reconciliation. Specifically, people who have wronged me in the past — parents, bosses, etc. — come to me as I am sitting reading a large illuminated book and tell me that they are sorry for having underestimated me or for having bullied me.
Another dream: I realize that I have been skipping physical education and English. School officials take me to my Advanced Placement English class and tell me that I am being removed to a lower course with another fellow.
Gun Addiction
Posted on January 17, 2013 in Addictions Mania Violence
Alex Jones and others like him require some time in rehab.
Guns and Crazies
Posted on January 13, 2013 in Stigma Suicide Violence
The matter of the mentally ill is a bullet fired very close to home. The simple-minded think that marking us with our own special yellow stars solves the problem of Newtown.
Accountability and Loss of Memory
Posted on January 3, 2013 in Accountability Mania
I’ve seen many people in bipolar support groups counsel the newly diagnosed not to feel shame for things they did while they were in episode: it was the disease that did it, not them is the reasoning. This cleaving of the self, I think, does not help us get a handle on the illness and its effects on others in our life. In fact, it strikes me as downright irresponsible: you never have to make amends ((I have heard from some that making amends has nothing to do with apologizing. By some warped logic, it means for some trying to avoid the full impact of our illness nothing more than admitting to yourself what you did without making restitution or apology to those we harmed while addicted or in the throes of mental illness. I find this cheap recovery and I am suspicious of anyone who flaunts it.)) for anything you did.
Too often, I have seen people who say this to themselves relapse repeatedly. Perhaps it is due to the fact that they do not understand the seriousness of their disorder. Or maybe they desire license to act on impulses that they would reject on moral grounds if they were in their better minds ((Families might find it better for their sanity to forgive things done in episode for the sake of their sanity while expecting the patient who now knows better to take proper steps to minimize further recurrences.))
I take a different approach: I am responsible for my actions even when I do not remember them. Because of my denial of my illness, I harmed others. Therefore I either make peace with them or avoid them so they are not disturbed or shocked by my return to their lives.
But there is a bonus: because I am accountable, I get to own the good things I did with more resolve. I get to own the steps I have taken towards resilience ((I believe that one cannot recover from mental illness. What one can do is do a number of things such as taking one’s meds, exercise, cognitive reform, etc. to lessen the frequency of my episodes and decrease their intensity.)).
Here is the grim truth: if I do not take ownership of the bad things I did while in episode, I cannot own the good things I accomplished. To claim otherwise invokes a socipathy that case workers and other mental health practitioners best not encourage.
