SELF COMPASSION TOWARDS MY YOUNGER SELF
Self compassion can take the form of acceptance of who you are. To be at peace in the present, we must first make peace with the past. Having flashbacks to the past, as in post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), can lead to comfort spending. Blocking the feelings, or unwanted memories that are triggered using a process of avoidance makes things worse. I recite the serenity prayer : God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change – the past, courage to change the things I can – acceptance, and the wisdom to now the difference. In this way I can relive the past in a therapeutic context. To be at peace in the moment I need to be less reactive. To be at peace with the past I need unhook my self from a traumatic memory and to refocus on being in the present. I can rephrase the serenity prayer to read : God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change – situations or memories, courage to change the things I can – reactivity and refocusing, and the wisdom to know the difference. As well as reactivity, you can ask the serenity prayer for the courage to change resistance. I aim for the grace to not offer resistance, to quote Nisargadatta Maharaj “pain is physical; suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is now suffering. Pain is essential for the survival of body, but non compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.” As well as going with the flow, the serenity prayer helps me to act or respond in accordance with principles instead of just likes, dislikes or prejudices etc. You cannot access causality except in accordance with principles or values. I have been saved by grace in the form of a recovery, I have been saved by grace, by grace I live, and by grace I give. Having the grace to give comes from gratitude, gratitude for the person I have been, and the person I an now. For refocusing I use mindfulness in computers, meditation, music, books and films to bring my thoughts back to the present when distracted by thoughts of self or problematic behaviours. An example of this is if I am listening to music, if I find my mind wandering, I bring my awareness back to the lyrics or melodies in the music. I owe it my younger inner self to be grateful to myself as all my experiences, actions and decisions have brought me to this pivotal moment in the now. An attitude of gratitude can be the product of being more focused. Throughout my recovery, wherever possible I have embraced change to be a safer and more productive person.
As the serenity prayer talks of acceptance, I will give a brief history of a journey of mine towards acceptance with languages. While I was at infant school a teacher told my parents that I spoke 'double Dutch'. It was from my mothers language Greek as she had come into this country from Cyprus. It was decided that I should drop speaking Greek and speak English in the home and at school. This sudden about turn led to a cognitive inflexibility with languages. At grammar school I was at the bottom of the class in French and German and failed English language and English literature 'O' levels the first time I sat them. This case is an instance of early impressions in developmental years which influenced my behaviour and outlook setting a pattern for later life where I became unadventurous with language and travel, preferring science, maths and computers etc. I even was told at school by someone that science was illiterate without languages. Now accepting that I can only read English translations of Satre's crime of passion for example, or Camus' the outsider, and not in French, does not thwart my endeavours of reading or disappoint me. I have made peace with past and if I need to learn more Greek or travel to Germany or France, I can always learn at my own pace rather than in an environment of competition.
Sadness is remembering the good times in misery. Sometimes the wounds are not remembering the growing pains in youth but the end result of an over confident youth in which the beauty and experiences are eclipsed by frustrated ambitions and disappointments further down the line. The good times of my younger self are a contrast and a reminder of my legacy of mental illness. Acceptance for me is to create a space in my mind for the positive, relatively care free memories of my youth to comfort me, and offer hope and inspiration. I have embraced my younger self taking the good lessons on board, having an attitude of gratitude and grace, and not berating myself for the later mistakes of an inelegant, cognitively inflexible, clumsy spreading of wings.
Wednesday 11 July 2018
Wednesday 27 June 2018
Confessing a character defect vs self-compassion
The present moment leaves me trying to resolve a dilemma. A twelve step program has steps four and five which are taking a fearless moral inventory and then admitting to God or a higher power, then ourselves and lastly another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs. The latter step I have been considering as confessing my character defects which I usually use to confess my undesirable traits to my psychiatrist. An analogy I have thought of is as follows, a ship can have barnacles on its hull below the water line. These barnacles stand proud of the surface of the ship's hull and create friction or drag impeding the progress of the boat. Similarly, character defects act like the barnacles creating friction between myself and other members of the population. The friction can lead to confrontation or dissent often leading to hyper vigilance or feelings of indignation to name a few. The indignation or holier than though attitude can be obstructive preventing growth and distancing myself from other people. The resulting grandiosity in setting myself above others does not go down well with other people as everyone has their story to tell, no matter how humble.
A character defect of impulsiveness can lead to someone leaping before they look. Confessing the defect and humbly asking my higher power to take this undesirable trait from me should remove the risk. You cannot fight a character defect as you would be struggling with yourself, but you can substitute it for a more desirable one.
The second part of the dilemma is that my therapist considers that my undesirable traits are not character defects but normal emotions produced by my experiences and I should not be ashamed of them. The experiences leave an affective inheritance which I interpret as a disposition or an attitude towards your environment, and your beliefs concerning it. Rather than throwing my personality out of the window by listing character defects, or throwing the baby out with the bath water, my personality traits should possibly be seen as part of a learning curve and natural, intrinsic to my being. Of course, I thought, this is behavioural cognitive therapy, my therapist believes in behaviourism that we are a genetic potential with predispositions interacting with the environment, in other words we are a product of our genes and surroundings. Cues or triggers in the environment can lead to habitual responses or habits or certain types of behaviour. Hence the environment can influence our behaviour, and our traits are normal and nothing to be shunned, in fact they can be seen as a part of a learning curve.
The twelve step program I believe is a process of ego reduction. If I am unmanageable in some part of my life, I learn to use my higher power's will instead of my own self will. If I keep falling into a pit on a particular route, handing the problem over to a higher power will obviate the obstacle, or an alternative could be a suggestion, or a spiritual insight to choose a different route or course of action. This is divine providence or foresight from God. Instead of the ego tackling a problem unaided, ego reduction or a higher power, or making something or somebody else the centre of attention can provide the inspiration needed to overcome obstacles to progress. Ego can step in to justify excesses. Ego reduction or confessing certain defects of character can realign yourself with people and the environment. There is a bit of another dilemma here, the part of the mind that admonishes the ego is the ego itself. So, do we acknowledge a problem or an unmanageable issue and just carry on ?
Ego reduction, or removing character defects may break the patterns that one established in earlier life that led to a confrontation, or stress or an illness etc, but do we need to punish ourselves or should we adopt a stance of self – compassion even though it could bolster our ego and feelings of self – importance. Perhaps I should reach a compromise where a healthy ego or consciousness is better than being ego less and having consciousness flooded by a plethora of images I cant block out or control.
Rather than listing undesirable traits as character defects, perhaps it would be better to list them as helpful behaviours and unhelpful behaviours. This would be more compassionate to myself than saying there is something innately wrong with me. An insight which helped me recently was a mindfulness meditation which stated that life is not the absence of conflict, it is how you deal with it. Rather than be arrogant and fight with resistances in my life, I should think that where there is resistance there is information and opportunity for growth and new experiences.
A character defect of impulsiveness can lead to someone leaping before they look. Confessing the defect and humbly asking my higher power to take this undesirable trait from me should remove the risk. You cannot fight a character defect as you would be struggling with yourself, but you can substitute it for a more desirable one.
The second part of the dilemma is that my therapist considers that my undesirable traits are not character defects but normal emotions produced by my experiences and I should not be ashamed of them. The experiences leave an affective inheritance which I interpret as a disposition or an attitude towards your environment, and your beliefs concerning it. Rather than throwing my personality out of the window by listing character defects, or throwing the baby out with the bath water, my personality traits should possibly be seen as part of a learning curve and natural, intrinsic to my being. Of course, I thought, this is behavioural cognitive therapy, my therapist believes in behaviourism that we are a genetic potential with predispositions interacting with the environment, in other words we are a product of our genes and surroundings. Cues or triggers in the environment can lead to habitual responses or habits or certain types of behaviour. Hence the environment can influence our behaviour, and our traits are normal and nothing to be shunned, in fact they can be seen as a part of a learning curve.
The twelve step program I believe is a process of ego reduction. If I am unmanageable in some part of my life, I learn to use my higher power's will instead of my own self will. If I keep falling into a pit on a particular route, handing the problem over to a higher power will obviate the obstacle, or an alternative could be a suggestion, or a spiritual insight to choose a different route or course of action. This is divine providence or foresight from God. Instead of the ego tackling a problem unaided, ego reduction or a higher power, or making something or somebody else the centre of attention can provide the inspiration needed to overcome obstacles to progress. Ego can step in to justify excesses. Ego reduction or confessing certain defects of character can realign yourself with people and the environment. There is a bit of another dilemma here, the part of the mind that admonishes the ego is the ego itself. So, do we acknowledge a problem or an unmanageable issue and just carry on ?
Ego reduction, or removing character defects may break the patterns that one established in earlier life that led to a confrontation, or stress or an illness etc, but do we need to punish ourselves or should we adopt a stance of self – compassion even though it could bolster our ego and feelings of self – importance. Perhaps I should reach a compromise where a healthy ego or consciousness is better than being ego less and having consciousness flooded by a plethora of images I cant block out or control.
Rather than listing undesirable traits as character defects, perhaps it would be better to list them as helpful behaviours and unhelpful behaviours. This would be more compassionate to myself than saying there is something innately wrong with me. An insight which helped me recently was a mindfulness meditation which stated that life is not the absence of conflict, it is how you deal with it. Rather than be arrogant and fight with resistances in my life, I should think that where there is resistance there is information and opportunity for growth and new experiences.
Wednesday 30 May 2018
My second university
After my confrontation with the police I knew I was going to be banned from driving because of drink. In a hurry to get to Aston in Birmingham, I let a friend have the use of my Honda 400/4.
On the train from Bristol Temple Meads to Birmingham New street station I was feeling a bit shaken but very relieved to put Bristol behind me. I was looking forward to a new start. I should have guessed something was a bit wrong as an elderly person on the train had an attitude of indignation, scorn or disapproval. My arrival to the campus was met with staff providing tea and coffee for new comers.
On the way to my room, I met my neighbour in the corridor and he came out with the comment that his wife did not mind him sleeping with the student women on the campus. I felt slighted, and then he came out with the comment that something was better than the army trousers I was wearing. I liked them because they were loose fitting, durable, cheap and with lots of pockets.
While in my room I could here a couple of people larking around in the room above. All of a sudden there was a large bang as somebody dropped something heavy on the floor and I shouted 'oi'
at the top of my voice. That was the start of my feelings of being pinned down or a grudge match in the postgraduate building. While trying to study the person in the room next to me made his presence felt, or I would find that I was always picking up on strange noises from his room. One example was while I was sat at my desk and about to concentrate, the neighbour did what sounded like a kick to his bin which led me to think that what I was doing was invalid or rubbish. This left me with a feeling of impotent rage. On one occasion while I was still ranting, I suddenly heard what I took to believe was a clockwork toy. I assumed he had left his room and left me ranting at a toy behind the wall . He happened to be on the same course as me, an M.Sc. In Information technology. Another person on the same course was a female who I visited in her room near to the end of the day. We talked for a while and then she told me shed a had a disability before suddenly jumping up inside my space causing me to be startled and getting up quickly to leave the room with an intense fear reaction. Another evening an undergraduate invited me to his room for a smoke of cannabis. He had a bong which is a bottle without a bottom in a bucket with a plug of of cannabis at the to of the bottle. He also had a sachet of white powder which I thought was opium which he sprinkled over the cannabis and lit for me. I thought he was making Nepalese temple ball (opiated black). About thirty years later I guessed this powder might have heroin and to escape the feelings of guilt and stigma I rationalised that all the drugs I have taken were used for medicinal purposes at some time or other, even heroin was on prescription in the 1950's. I left the room and fell against the corridor wall, slid down it and blacked out before returning to my own room. From the same undergraduate I bought what I thought was speed (amphetamine) to engage my imagination and study, but on taking a line I found it it to be something else which made me feel numb and lifeless all over, for a moment I thought it had stopped my heart.
One daytime I kept hearing a door opening and closing and heels which sounded like high heeled shoes being dragged across the the floor. I went upstairs and spoke to the person in the adjacent room, somebody else who was on the same course as me. He told me he had not heard anything and I thought you have got to be lying, so I kicked him in the behind and marched him to see the accommodation officer who complained to the head of my course about me.
I got an appointment with the doctor on the campus and complained of feeling depressed. I pressed for medication and was prescribed Amitriptyline.
On one of my visits to Bristol to get away from the people on the course and to see my friends, one of my friends took me to casualty and fitted me in with a consultation with a psychiatrist in the Bristol Royal Infirmary. I was given the major tranquilliser Stelazine and started visits to Barrow Guerney hospital a few miles out of Bristol, an asylum for the mentally ill. Even though I was feeling distressed and under pressure, I was still almost pleasantly distracted by my surroundings. After Birmingham I would either walk or catch a bus out to Barrow hospital for a reprieve for well over a decade until the government closed it down, I imagine to convert it into something or sell off the houses / villas on the beautiful grounds. This was to be the Tory governments 'care in the community' in which some people were vulnerable and compromised and became run down developing a secondary, or opportunistic illness.
Even though I was unsettled and commuting between Birmingham and Bristol, and Birmingham and Devon, I still managed to get some work done and completed assignments such as equations using Boolean algebra to design circuits, and I also wrote an essay on the growth of IBM. I even heard after leaving Aston, a band of companies, or a syndicate, banded together to try and take the market away from IBM.
After one of my visits to Bristol, I returned to Birmingham with my Honda 400/4. One day I had enough of the campus and trying to live off my wits all of the time, so I went to get on my motorbike to leave the course behind and I found somebody had removed my ignition barrel. The next thing my bike was removed or stolen for which I claimed for theft from my insurance company.
After seeing another campus doctor at Aston university, he asked if I would see a psychiatrist. During my psychiatric consultation I told the doctor that I was feeling strangely altered by noises of dense objects being slid across the floor. I was not familiar with the word depersonalisation, and the way I spoke may have suggested that I thought someone was controlling my mind. The doctor asked me what I meant by dense, referring to the object being slid around on the floor above my room. I replied, ' a lot of weight in a small area'. I did not think to say density was mass divided by volume from my O level physics at school. I then stated that I was hearing voices, because as I was stressed in my room, I remember straining to try and hear something as I thought I could hear whispering. I wondered if it was the refrigeration motor in the nearby kitchen, or some similar mechanical noise. I opened my room window to strain and see if I could hear where the whispering came from, nothing. Closed the window and then I think I remember hearing it start again or I was vexed. The doctor told me I had schizophrenia and put me on Modicate injections which I believe to be modified snake venom. The medication coursed through my veins, I felt a bit like a wrinkled, deflated balloon being blown into and expanding to its full capacity. My consciousness or awareness expanded but then flattened out and stopped partly at the thought of the continuing saga with me sensing intent all the time from my neighbours room behind that stark wall. I had moved to another room on the other side of my neighbours room to escape from the noise above but even in this room it felt that the wall of silence continued and that there was a grudge match going on behind the wall and the room above.
At the start of my Easter vacation, I returned to Bristol to see friends on my way to Devon to revise for the summer term final exams. After a nights drinking with friends I suggested we take a trip to an inner city area to buy some cannabis for an evening smoke and some detachment. I handed twenty pounds out of the car and the youths came back with very small pieces of cannabis resin. I chased after them and all I remember was something behind me or to the side. I thought I saw what was possible plain clothes CID saying 'if you wanted a decent draw you should have come to see us.. The next thing I remember was waking up in casualty having my head X – rayed with my wallet and money for my keep at home missing. After, I vomited in a hospital bed because of concussion. Next I remember my father carrying me across the kitchen floor. I had no idea how I got to Devon from Bristol. Had I caught a train or had somebody, a friend, driven me home?
On returning to Aston for my finals I attended my exams and after the last one I left another blank paper and walked out of the exam room. I went to bed because of tiredness and concussion and medication. I awoke some hours later at night when it was dark. As I opened my eyes, I could hear phrases in my head like 'id, ego, beautiful ego, bleed for me, trick shoe, see the doctor, that cant be done' . I looked around and there was no one in the room but when I looked in the mirror I saw that my hair had been cut. As I left my room and looked at the name tag on my door, I started hallucinating and in my mind saw an image of the woman who had previously brought about a fear reaction. I went down the pub to forget about it. Some years later while I had anxiety, to the extent I felt fear my my safety and well being, I visited the casualty in the Bristol Royal Infirmary and told them I had been taken somewhere in my sleep. The reply from the doctor was 'hypnosis'. I appealed to the board of examiners saying I had concussion during my exams, and was granted deferred examinations. If the truth was known alcohol, drugs and disruptive behaviour from the other students was to blame as well. On returning to Bristol I started to visit my regular pub with my friends.
On the train from Bristol Temple Meads to Birmingham New street station I was feeling a bit shaken but very relieved to put Bristol behind me. I was looking forward to a new start. I should have guessed something was a bit wrong as an elderly person on the train had an attitude of indignation, scorn or disapproval. My arrival to the campus was met with staff providing tea and coffee for new comers.
On the way to my room, I met my neighbour in the corridor and he came out with the comment that his wife did not mind him sleeping with the student women on the campus. I felt slighted, and then he came out with the comment that something was better than the army trousers I was wearing. I liked them because they were loose fitting, durable, cheap and with lots of pockets.
While in my room I could here a couple of people larking around in the room above. All of a sudden there was a large bang as somebody dropped something heavy on the floor and I shouted 'oi'
at the top of my voice. That was the start of my feelings of being pinned down or a grudge match in the postgraduate building. While trying to study the person in the room next to me made his presence felt, or I would find that I was always picking up on strange noises from his room. One example was while I was sat at my desk and about to concentrate, the neighbour did what sounded like a kick to his bin which led me to think that what I was doing was invalid or rubbish. This left me with a feeling of impotent rage. On one occasion while I was still ranting, I suddenly heard what I took to believe was a clockwork toy. I assumed he had left his room and left me ranting at a toy behind the wall . He happened to be on the same course as me, an M.Sc. In Information technology. Another person on the same course was a female who I visited in her room near to the end of the day. We talked for a while and then she told me shed a had a disability before suddenly jumping up inside my space causing me to be startled and getting up quickly to leave the room with an intense fear reaction. Another evening an undergraduate invited me to his room for a smoke of cannabis. He had a bong which is a bottle without a bottom in a bucket with a plug of of cannabis at the to of the bottle. He also had a sachet of white powder which I thought was opium which he sprinkled over the cannabis and lit for me. I thought he was making Nepalese temple ball (opiated black). About thirty years later I guessed this powder might have heroin and to escape the feelings of guilt and stigma I rationalised that all the drugs I have taken were used for medicinal purposes at some time or other, even heroin was on prescription in the 1950's. I left the room and fell against the corridor wall, slid down it and blacked out before returning to my own room. From the same undergraduate I bought what I thought was speed (amphetamine) to engage my imagination and study, but on taking a line I found it it to be something else which made me feel numb and lifeless all over, for a moment I thought it had stopped my heart.
One daytime I kept hearing a door opening and closing and heels which sounded like high heeled shoes being dragged across the the floor. I went upstairs and spoke to the person in the adjacent room, somebody else who was on the same course as me. He told me he had not heard anything and I thought you have got to be lying, so I kicked him in the behind and marched him to see the accommodation officer who complained to the head of my course about me.
I got an appointment with the doctor on the campus and complained of feeling depressed. I pressed for medication and was prescribed Amitriptyline.
On one of my visits to Bristol to get away from the people on the course and to see my friends, one of my friends took me to casualty and fitted me in with a consultation with a psychiatrist in the Bristol Royal Infirmary. I was given the major tranquilliser Stelazine and started visits to Barrow Guerney hospital a few miles out of Bristol, an asylum for the mentally ill. Even though I was feeling distressed and under pressure, I was still almost pleasantly distracted by my surroundings. After Birmingham I would either walk or catch a bus out to Barrow hospital for a reprieve for well over a decade until the government closed it down, I imagine to convert it into something or sell off the houses / villas on the beautiful grounds. This was to be the Tory governments 'care in the community' in which some people were vulnerable and compromised and became run down developing a secondary, or opportunistic illness.
Even though I was unsettled and commuting between Birmingham and Bristol, and Birmingham and Devon, I still managed to get some work done and completed assignments such as equations using Boolean algebra to design circuits, and I also wrote an essay on the growth of IBM. I even heard after leaving Aston, a band of companies, or a syndicate, banded together to try and take the market away from IBM.
After one of my visits to Bristol, I returned to Birmingham with my Honda 400/4. One day I had enough of the campus and trying to live off my wits all of the time, so I went to get on my motorbike to leave the course behind and I found somebody had removed my ignition barrel. The next thing my bike was removed or stolen for which I claimed for theft from my insurance company.
After seeing another campus doctor at Aston university, he asked if I would see a psychiatrist. During my psychiatric consultation I told the doctor that I was feeling strangely altered by noises of dense objects being slid across the floor. I was not familiar with the word depersonalisation, and the way I spoke may have suggested that I thought someone was controlling my mind. The doctor asked me what I meant by dense, referring to the object being slid around on the floor above my room. I replied, ' a lot of weight in a small area'. I did not think to say density was mass divided by volume from my O level physics at school. I then stated that I was hearing voices, because as I was stressed in my room, I remember straining to try and hear something as I thought I could hear whispering. I wondered if it was the refrigeration motor in the nearby kitchen, or some similar mechanical noise. I opened my room window to strain and see if I could hear where the whispering came from, nothing. Closed the window and then I think I remember hearing it start again or I was vexed. The doctor told me I had schizophrenia and put me on Modicate injections which I believe to be modified snake venom. The medication coursed through my veins, I felt a bit like a wrinkled, deflated balloon being blown into and expanding to its full capacity. My consciousness or awareness expanded but then flattened out and stopped partly at the thought of the continuing saga with me sensing intent all the time from my neighbours room behind that stark wall. I had moved to another room on the other side of my neighbours room to escape from the noise above but even in this room it felt that the wall of silence continued and that there was a grudge match going on behind the wall and the room above.
At the start of my Easter vacation, I returned to Bristol to see friends on my way to Devon to revise for the summer term final exams. After a nights drinking with friends I suggested we take a trip to an inner city area to buy some cannabis for an evening smoke and some detachment. I handed twenty pounds out of the car and the youths came back with very small pieces of cannabis resin. I chased after them and all I remember was something behind me or to the side. I thought I saw what was possible plain clothes CID saying 'if you wanted a decent draw you should have come to see us.. The next thing I remember was waking up in casualty having my head X – rayed with my wallet and money for my keep at home missing. After, I vomited in a hospital bed because of concussion. Next I remember my father carrying me across the kitchen floor. I had no idea how I got to Devon from Bristol. Had I caught a train or had somebody, a friend, driven me home?
On returning to Aston for my finals I attended my exams and after the last one I left another blank paper and walked out of the exam room. I went to bed because of tiredness and concussion and medication. I awoke some hours later at night when it was dark. As I opened my eyes, I could hear phrases in my head like 'id, ego, beautiful ego, bleed for me, trick shoe, see the doctor, that cant be done' . I looked around and there was no one in the room but when I looked in the mirror I saw that my hair had been cut. As I left my room and looked at the name tag on my door, I started hallucinating and in my mind saw an image of the woman who had previously brought about a fear reaction. I went down the pub to forget about it. Some years later while I had anxiety, to the extent I felt fear my my safety and well being, I visited the casualty in the Bristol Royal Infirmary and told them I had been taken somewhere in my sleep. The reply from the doctor was 'hypnosis'. I appealed to the board of examiners saying I had concussion during my exams, and was granted deferred examinations. If the truth was known alcohol, drugs and disruptive behaviour from the other students was to blame as well. On returning to Bristol I started to visit my regular pub with my friends.
Wednesday 23 May 2018
Gap year
After my marks had been awarded for my B.Sc. I asked the head of the department if I could apply to do a Masters degree. Unfortunately failing my biochemistry in the second year meant that my class of degree was reduced from the 2(i) I obtained to a 2(ii). At this time I was told that a 2(i) was a minimum requirement to do an M.Sc. This resulted in me having to leave university life and enter into the wide world for the first time.
I was shortly afterwards awarded £8,700 for the road accident I had just before my final year at university started. I went to the benefits office who confirmed that I had too much money to be able to sign on and claim benefits. I appealed and went to a tribunal. At the tribunal I was not very articulate and tried to explain that if I lived off the compensation I would be no better off and it would not be compensation. Their reply was 'we just hope you can get a job'. The compensation included fitness being impaired from having my left leg reattached at the knee which meant that I would be excluded from applying to any of the services resulting in less opportunities for a career.
I went to the bank and told them that I had this money and asked them if I could get a mortgage. The banks reply was that I must have held down a job for a year to qualify for a mortgage and unfortunately I had just finished university.
I went out and bought a motorbike, a V reg Honda 400/4 for £550 and got a job dispatch riding.
To forget about my rejection and to avoid thinking about my bank balance decreasing I spent quite a bit of time going to friends places on my motorbike taking cannabis weed from an inner city area and on one occasion a bottle of Smirnoff blue label. The weed and blue label vodka I took to a friend who I knew from university and who was writing and installing databases for a political party to keep track of who to canvass at election times. We would drink and smoke until the early hours of the morning chatting and listening to BBC radio 2. I am still not sure but I think this activity and being aware this kind of information about a political party attracted some attention to what I was doing. I may have been considered to be snooping or stealing state secrets or possibly industrial espionage.
I had no place of my own as I had some of my bottle of whisky / bourbon stolen from a bedsit and so left making myself homeless. I think also after that I did not want to see my funds diminish by paying rent and so I lived on the road going from acquaintance to acquaintance and sleeping at night on a sofa or a floor. A few times I travelled to near Bridgewater in Somerset and after a few ciders at the local pub I would take my brother in law as a pillion passenger on my bike and would drive late at night to places like Taunton or Glastonbury to find cannabis. After that was a drive back followed by a smoke with my brother in law and sister in a country farmhouse. It was an innocent time but again attracted adverse attention for which I am still making amends to my family. Even now I still think driving at night on a motorbike with a companion down country roads and scoring seemed like a good form of detachment. About this time I had a girlfriend who always wanted to keep track of me and I think resented that I was not under her thumb. She even bought a small motorbike and took to driving to my friends' places to see where I was. I think she was of the great mother archetype and was always trying to get me to be something different which almost destroyed my personality. Auto suggestion was to try and escape while she wanted control which weighed against my defences resulting in anxiety. I met her by going to visit a house where some friends were still at university. I drove their hoping to provide a smoke and a catch up and met the girlfriend while she was talking to them. She then offered me a meal. Not being assertive and frightened to say no from fear of rejection, I got involved. All I can say is 'there is no thing such as a free lunch'. I started to drink more and take more drugs to escape the feeling of a sordid life in a little room on a back street in Bristol. I felt I had reached an all time low and to add to this inner city areas sold me things such as possibly oregano in a wrap to look like weed or possibly Harpic cleaner to pass as speed (amphetamine).
I decided to apply again to do a masters degree, this time in Information Technology at Aston university in Birmingham, they let me in with a 2(ii) degree. Little did I know I was going out of the frying pan into the fire.
While dispatch riding I was knocked off of my 400/4 and as I did not want to lose time in work I went out and bought a Honda CB750 which was the first super bike model in the country. Shortly after the gearbox broke. I got another lay shaft from a bike breakers and took my bike by train to Bridgewater where at my sister's and brother in law's residence I rebuilt the gearbox. Later I also put new tyres on it.
When I went to a friends place to do LSD and listen to choral music during the night, someone was waiting for me outside when I left. He asked if I would swap my bike for his. His bike was in a dreadful state with a dent in the tank, cheap tyres of which one was slashed and it was only a 550cc bike in a 500cc frame. As I was still coming down from the LSD and also because I lacked assertiveness, I agreed. Shortly after someone came by and took the air filters from the 550c bike. I was so disgusted with myself that I took the CB 400/4 I rebuilt after the dispatch riding accident and did a visit to the Bristol Royal Infirmary cocktail party for medics and nurses, and then went to a pub. As I left the pub I saw a police car and as I had been drinking I was over zealous in getting away and pulled a wheely closely followed by the police.
I resisted arrest and was later pulled out of the panda car at the police station. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I now had to lose my licence and I started my course in Birmingham in a few days.
I was shortly afterwards awarded £8,700 for the road accident I had just before my final year at university started. I went to the benefits office who confirmed that I had too much money to be able to sign on and claim benefits. I appealed and went to a tribunal. At the tribunal I was not very articulate and tried to explain that if I lived off the compensation I would be no better off and it would not be compensation. Their reply was 'we just hope you can get a job'. The compensation included fitness being impaired from having my left leg reattached at the knee which meant that I would be excluded from applying to any of the services resulting in less opportunities for a career.
I went to the bank and told them that I had this money and asked them if I could get a mortgage. The banks reply was that I must have held down a job for a year to qualify for a mortgage and unfortunately I had just finished university.
I went out and bought a motorbike, a V reg Honda 400/4 for £550 and got a job dispatch riding.
To forget about my rejection and to avoid thinking about my bank balance decreasing I spent quite a bit of time going to friends places on my motorbike taking cannabis weed from an inner city area and on one occasion a bottle of Smirnoff blue label. The weed and blue label vodka I took to a friend who I knew from university and who was writing and installing databases for a political party to keep track of who to canvass at election times. We would drink and smoke until the early hours of the morning chatting and listening to BBC radio 2. I am still not sure but I think this activity and being aware this kind of information about a political party attracted some attention to what I was doing. I may have been considered to be snooping or stealing state secrets or possibly industrial espionage.
I had no place of my own as I had some of my bottle of whisky / bourbon stolen from a bedsit and so left making myself homeless. I think also after that I did not want to see my funds diminish by paying rent and so I lived on the road going from acquaintance to acquaintance and sleeping at night on a sofa or a floor. A few times I travelled to near Bridgewater in Somerset and after a few ciders at the local pub I would take my brother in law as a pillion passenger on my bike and would drive late at night to places like Taunton or Glastonbury to find cannabis. After that was a drive back followed by a smoke with my brother in law and sister in a country farmhouse. It was an innocent time but again attracted adverse attention for which I am still making amends to my family. Even now I still think driving at night on a motorbike with a companion down country roads and scoring seemed like a good form of detachment. About this time I had a girlfriend who always wanted to keep track of me and I think resented that I was not under her thumb. She even bought a small motorbike and took to driving to my friends' places to see where I was. I think she was of the great mother archetype and was always trying to get me to be something different which almost destroyed my personality. Auto suggestion was to try and escape while she wanted control which weighed against my defences resulting in anxiety. I met her by going to visit a house where some friends were still at university. I drove their hoping to provide a smoke and a catch up and met the girlfriend while she was talking to them. She then offered me a meal. Not being assertive and frightened to say no from fear of rejection, I got involved. All I can say is 'there is no thing such as a free lunch'. I started to drink more and take more drugs to escape the feeling of a sordid life in a little room on a back street in Bristol. I felt I had reached an all time low and to add to this inner city areas sold me things such as possibly oregano in a wrap to look like weed or possibly Harpic cleaner to pass as speed (amphetamine).
I decided to apply again to do a masters degree, this time in Information Technology at Aston university in Birmingham, they let me in with a 2(ii) degree. Little did I know I was going out of the frying pan into the fire.
While dispatch riding I was knocked off of my 400/4 and as I did not want to lose time in work I went out and bought a Honda CB750 which was the first super bike model in the country. Shortly after the gearbox broke. I got another lay shaft from a bike breakers and took my bike by train to Bridgewater where at my sister's and brother in law's residence I rebuilt the gearbox. Later I also put new tyres on it.
When I went to a friends place to do LSD and listen to choral music during the night, someone was waiting for me outside when I left. He asked if I would swap my bike for his. His bike was in a dreadful state with a dent in the tank, cheap tyres of which one was slashed and it was only a 550cc bike in a 500cc frame. As I was still coming down from the LSD and also because I lacked assertiveness, I agreed. Shortly after someone came by and took the air filters from the 550c bike. I was so disgusted with myself that I took the CB 400/4 I rebuilt after the dispatch riding accident and did a visit to the Bristol Royal Infirmary cocktail party for medics and nurses, and then went to a pub. As I left the pub I saw a police car and as I had been drinking I was over zealous in getting away and pulled a wheely closely followed by the police.
I resisted arrest and was later pulled out of the panda car at the police station. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I now had to lose my licence and I started my course in Birmingham in a few days.
Saturday 7 April 2018
Self-compassion
A theme running through my self-compassion repertoire is being kind to myself. For example an impulsive reaction to stressful or negative thoughts and experiences might be attempting a difficult subject to study with its buzz words and technical terms boosting my ego. Such a subject in my history is picking biochemistry to study as a subsidiary subject choice in my B.Sc. in microbiology. I failed biochemistry which eventually reduced my class of degree by one point. The result is a feeling of failure and low self-esteem. Being mindful to myself would mean choosing tasks which are within my capabilities and sustainable and therefore I would stop giving myself a hard time for disappointing performances in tasks. Here I am breaking patterns of feelings of failure by realising my limitations and not overreaching myself. Having the insight to realise that a particular action may stem from impulsive behaviour, a symptom of schizophrenia, is mindful and allows me to break the pattern of impulsion, failure and low self esteem. Obsessing about failure and giving myself a hard time is less favourable than self-compassion and taking smaller risks. Continual striving to try more complicated and involved things gets heavier and heavier which, to stick to that path, would be idiocy. I would say in this instance that being a witty fool living within my abilities and aptitudes is better than being a foolish wit beset by difficulty and continual striving.
Some of my striving may be down to rejection at school leaving me with a complex and striving which could be a natural defence mechanism to remove myself from that situation. The fact is the more I am striving, the more I am empowering the people that brought about my plight. Mindfulness might suggest it is better to do things for myself which I feel a calling for rather than a competitive attitude to be better than my school peer group.
Breaking patterns is an exercise in itself. Self-compassion and mindful mediation to arrive at insight or spiritual insight could be thought of as shoring up or boosting the ego or self. The idea is to reduce the ego and replace self-will with God's will or wisdom from a higher power. If through self-will I end up in a difficult problem, prayer to God or a higher power will provide divine inspiration or foresight to obviate or avoid the problem. This process of handing the problem over to God or a higher power is self-compassion as it absolves me of the responsibility for actions. An example is I may be frightened to feel happy because it means I have to accept responsibility for my feelings which may include difficulties from the past. If I hand over my feelings I learn to forgive myself. I can only have a higher power's forgiveness if I learn to forgive myself first. If I feel guilty about some action or deed in the past, self-compassion comes into play when I make amends or provide restitution for hurt parties. This is emancipating as I do not have to carry guilt which schizophrenia with its paranoia and accusing sub-vocal rhetoric feeds off.
I think it is possible that the culture of self-importance or narcissism can be manifest in self-compassion (New Scientist 16 Sept 2017 page 47). Fuelling the ego and boosting somebody's instincts makes them want to be the centre of attention and encourage egocentricity. Prestige does not go down well even at the sowing circle, everyone however humble has their own story to tell. Also, if you find yourself in difficulty, de - centring and making somebody else the centre of attention is a way of self-forgetting and finding more resources.
Now self – compassion for me is not competing with other people and not being preoccupied with a self – image of how I see myself as seen by other people because I am empowering them with my life space and what I do. I get all my electricity and frack free gas from an ethical source. I am doing my part for global climate change and helping to guarantee a future for successive generations. I don't feel guilty and my self – compassion states that I can be kind to myself because I am doing the right thing with helping the planet. This also ties in with my newly discovered teachings of Taoism which believes in cooperating with nature. This helps me to de – centre and Taoism has taught me that cooperation is necessary for survival which gives me a new sense of purpose. In the bible it states that 'he who loses his life shall find it'. Not competing is being kind to myself as I am not trying to get somewhere to be better than other people but living in the moment for myself and doing the things I enjoy instead of out of necessity or ego.
The part of the mind that admonishes the ego and it's self – compassion is the ego itself, so all I can do is acknowledge that the ego is at fault and just carry on. Caution though as to say the ego is wrong is to let mindful meditation steal my mind. Thoughts about Ego are valid thoughts as well.
Some of my striving may be down to rejection at school leaving me with a complex and striving which could be a natural defence mechanism to remove myself from that situation. The fact is the more I am striving, the more I am empowering the people that brought about my plight. Mindfulness might suggest it is better to do things for myself which I feel a calling for rather than a competitive attitude to be better than my school peer group.
Breaking patterns is an exercise in itself. Self-compassion and mindful mediation to arrive at insight or spiritual insight could be thought of as shoring up or boosting the ego or self. The idea is to reduce the ego and replace self-will with God's will or wisdom from a higher power. If through self-will I end up in a difficult problem, prayer to God or a higher power will provide divine inspiration or foresight to obviate or avoid the problem. This process of handing the problem over to God or a higher power is self-compassion as it absolves me of the responsibility for actions. An example is I may be frightened to feel happy because it means I have to accept responsibility for my feelings which may include difficulties from the past. If I hand over my feelings I learn to forgive myself. I can only have a higher power's forgiveness if I learn to forgive myself first. If I feel guilty about some action or deed in the past, self-compassion comes into play when I make amends or provide restitution for hurt parties. This is emancipating as I do not have to carry guilt which schizophrenia with its paranoia and accusing sub-vocal rhetoric feeds off.
I think it is possible that the culture of self-importance or narcissism can be manifest in self-compassion (New Scientist 16 Sept 2017 page 47). Fuelling the ego and boosting somebody's instincts makes them want to be the centre of attention and encourage egocentricity. Prestige does not go down well even at the sowing circle, everyone however humble has their own story to tell. Also, if you find yourself in difficulty, de - centring and making somebody else the centre of attention is a way of self-forgetting and finding more resources.
Now self – compassion for me is not competing with other people and not being preoccupied with a self – image of how I see myself as seen by other people because I am empowering them with my life space and what I do. I get all my electricity and frack free gas from an ethical source. I am doing my part for global climate change and helping to guarantee a future for successive generations. I don't feel guilty and my self – compassion states that I can be kind to myself because I am doing the right thing with helping the planet. This also ties in with my newly discovered teachings of Taoism which believes in cooperating with nature. This helps me to de – centre and Taoism has taught me that cooperation is necessary for survival which gives me a new sense of purpose. In the bible it states that 'he who loses his life shall find it'. Not competing is being kind to myself as I am not trying to get somewhere to be better than other people but living in the moment for myself and doing the things I enjoy instead of out of necessity or ego.
The part of the mind that admonishes the ego and it's self – compassion is the ego itself, so all I can do is acknowledge that the ego is at fault and just carry on. Caution though as to say the ego is wrong is to let mindful meditation steal my mind. Thoughts about Ego are valid thoughts as well.
Monday 22 January 2018
My first university
My first year at Bristol university saw me residing in an all male hall of residence. I opted for a male hall of residence because I wanted a sheltered environment free from involvement from female peers, partly because I was single minded and did not want any distractions and also because I had a chip on my shoulder, or complex about women from some incident at school. As it was, my room mate started to talk about his exploits with an innocent woman and one night I got drunk on some cider that was an special offer at another hall. I went around to her room, burst through the door and criticised them abusively in an aggressive manner. I went back to my place of residence and had to be restrained and I threw a tantrum headbutting the floor. Luckily the house tutor was a doctor and he said he wished I would drink steadily instead of saving it all up for all at once.
This thought has remained repressed for a long time as I have felt ashamed over the way I behaved, acting in a foolish manner which has left me feeling embarassed each time I think of it. Eventually I moved into another room in the house annexe in the hall and my new room mate moved leaving me to study by myself. At the end of the year my exam results were C for cell biology, D for bacteriolgy and E for biochemistry. All passes and significantly better than the C, D, and an E grade I got for my A level subjects at school.
During my summer holiday after my first year at university I got a job painting a gasometer in a town near where the rest of my family lived. I had been obsessive about motorbikes and bought a small 100cc motorbike with the earnings. I think fate took a bad turn wth this and in the second year of university I was distracted from studying by looking for excuses to ride my bike and I became preoccupied with my sexuality wondering if I fell in line with some kind of self image. At school I took up weight training because of some rubuttal from a girl at school and now in my second year I was playing up to a masculine strongman identity.
I went around to another hall of residence to an aquantaince's room where there were people waiting for him. They invited me in. One person was a drug dealer who asked if I had any drugs. He was sitting next to my aquaintance's girlfriend who I assume was dating both of them. I did not reply to the question about drugs and the dealer and the girlfriend got up to leave and the dealer said I am very disappointed in Bristol university students' as they left. Shortly after my aquaintance returned saying he had met the dealer on the way back to his room and the dealer had been verbally abusive.
I was carrying a broken croquet mallet handle and my aquaintance and myself went to the girlfriends hall of residence where the dealer was trespassing in an all female hall of residence. On the second attempt I managed to kick her door in and my aquaintance and I ran off laughing. The dealer came out shouting threats after us so I threw the croquet mallet handle down and went back and punched him a few times and kicked him when he was on the ground. I had to see the university security after this and security chief said 'dont paint yourself all black'. When it went to court the police statemt read 'I knocked on the door and when the plaintif answered I proceeded to beat him around the head, face and neck with a baseball bat'. The police had earlier made me sign this statement or else there was the possibility of being thrown out of university. As I did not agree with the statement in court I pleaded not guilty. I was bound over to keep the peace for a year. I heve recently thought that if I did not have a suit and tie and was arrogant the judge may have been more strict.
So after motorbikes and violence my studying suffered. I got an E in microbiology, an E in Botany and an F in biochemistry. As a result of failing biochemistry when I passed my degree the university reduced my class of honours by one grade to penalise me. I really wished I had made more of an effort in biochemistry in a subject area such as enzyme kinetics which interested me with the use of differential equations which I learnt about in my maths A level. Maybe the words enzyme kinetics and differential equations are buzz words to bolster my deflated ego.
During my summer holiday after that a medical student friend who was also a drinking associate invited me to catch a bus across Europe with him to get to Cyprus and stay with my Cypriot relatives for the summer. With some of his money and some of mine we hired a fast motorbike to tour around. One day in my mother's home village I pulled a pulled a wheely to try and show off in front of some passers by and I dropped the motorbike and us. I had a grazed arm and I was almost tearful as I washed the gravel out of my wound. My friend also had a grazed arm. I still feel sorry for him to this day. Also wich fuels my sympathy is the fact that he did not take the advice to cover himself and protect himself from the heat of the sun while sitting on the beach. He actually developed blisters on his skin. My relatives drove him to the house of another medical student who lived in Cyprus and was an aquaintance of my friend in the same year at the university of Bristol medical school.
I decided to leave Cyprus quicker than I wanted to as I had to find lodgings for my final year at university as I had been thrown out of hall of residence for assaulting the drug dealer.
On our last night on our way back in Greece my friend went to a drinking festival, I think, with some people he had met. I stayed in my room and a read a book written by James Herriot which some of the series 'All creatures great and small' was based on.
The next day my friend seemed a bit put out saying there was only one seat on the bus back to Britain. He caught the bus leaving me in Greece. The next day I was having a breakfast of a kebab I think and I saw two people on a bench who had been in the same university hall of residence as me and in the same year. They too had gravel rash. They had hired a motorbike in Crete and had hit a tree and fallen off their bike. Could this be synchronicity?
As I was panicking over what time I had left before term started at university, I saw an aquaintance in the road with his motorbike. Apparently he had just failed his driving test that day and might have been in a bad mood. I still asked him for a lift to the accomodation office as I had been thrown out of hall and needed somehwhere to live. While I was on the back of the bike he started his engine up while he was still in gear. He pulled a wheely and my left knee hit a rack on another parked motorbike, the back of a car I think, and knocked a few stones out of a stone wall. The ligaments and tendons of my knee were severed and my lower left leg was hanging with a crushed kneecap. I would imagine that most surgeons would have put a pair of scissors through the knee and possibly remark 'you wont be needing that any more', but a brilliant surgeon sowed the upper and lower left leg together and repaired the kneecap.
The university accomodation office took pity on me with my broken leg and gave me a room in a university house.
The first term of my final year started by meeting my project supervisor who was supervising my research thesis entitled 'The differential inhibitory effects of Tetracycline on protein synthesis in Escherichia coli'. E. coli is a commensal organism which means it exists as part of the natural flora in the gut. It was exacting walking each day from my accomodation across part of the city to the university medical school to do my reasearch. Part of the research was to do enzyme assays. One batch of bacteria, the control, would not contain antibiotic, while other batches of bacteria would contain different doses of tetracycline. At each dose of the antibiotics an assay was used to see if enzyme activity had been affected. If protein synthesis was affected at different doses of Tetracycline then there would have been a decrease in enzyne activity. This was measured by adding supernatant containing the enzyme studied, from a centrifuge, to a vial containg the substrate of the enzyme. If there was enzyme acivity the substrate would have been converted to products making the solution in the vial more turbid or in other words cloudy. The amount of turbidity was detected by passing light through the vial in a sprectrophotometer.
I used the unversity computer room to use a graph plotter to plot graphs of enzyme activity against doses of antibiotic. This first use of computers was my introduction to information technology. My thesis supervisor said that my thesis was top heavy on protein synthesis. He is now I believe a doctor od science (D.Sc.) which is the highest accolade you gan get for science.
From time to time I have had moments of calm thinking about doing my research experiments in the quiet of the night with nobody else in the medical school. I would take a coffee break from preparing my experiments and I would be on my own in the medical school common room. It was peaceful. Here fate took a good hand showing me that I had nothing to prove and everything was ok, and I accept now that these moments could well have been a peak experience.
I was awarded a 2(ii) which is a lower second class honours degree.
This thought has remained repressed for a long time as I have felt ashamed over the way I behaved, acting in a foolish manner which has left me feeling embarassed each time I think of it. Eventually I moved into another room in the house annexe in the hall and my new room mate moved leaving me to study by myself. At the end of the year my exam results were C for cell biology, D for bacteriolgy and E for biochemistry. All passes and significantly better than the C, D, and an E grade I got for my A level subjects at school.
During my summer holiday after my first year at university I got a job painting a gasometer in a town near where the rest of my family lived. I had been obsessive about motorbikes and bought a small 100cc motorbike with the earnings. I think fate took a bad turn wth this and in the second year of university I was distracted from studying by looking for excuses to ride my bike and I became preoccupied with my sexuality wondering if I fell in line with some kind of self image. At school I took up weight training because of some rubuttal from a girl at school and now in my second year I was playing up to a masculine strongman identity.
I went around to another hall of residence to an aquantaince's room where there were people waiting for him. They invited me in. One person was a drug dealer who asked if I had any drugs. He was sitting next to my aquaintance's girlfriend who I assume was dating both of them. I did not reply to the question about drugs and the dealer and the girlfriend got up to leave and the dealer said I am very disappointed in Bristol university students' as they left. Shortly after my aquaintance returned saying he had met the dealer on the way back to his room and the dealer had been verbally abusive.
I was carrying a broken croquet mallet handle and my aquaintance and myself went to the girlfriends hall of residence where the dealer was trespassing in an all female hall of residence. On the second attempt I managed to kick her door in and my aquaintance and I ran off laughing. The dealer came out shouting threats after us so I threw the croquet mallet handle down and went back and punched him a few times and kicked him when he was on the ground. I had to see the university security after this and security chief said 'dont paint yourself all black'. When it went to court the police statemt read 'I knocked on the door and when the plaintif answered I proceeded to beat him around the head, face and neck with a baseball bat'. The police had earlier made me sign this statement or else there was the possibility of being thrown out of university. As I did not agree with the statement in court I pleaded not guilty. I was bound over to keep the peace for a year. I heve recently thought that if I did not have a suit and tie and was arrogant the judge may have been more strict.
So after motorbikes and violence my studying suffered. I got an E in microbiology, an E in Botany and an F in biochemistry. As a result of failing biochemistry when I passed my degree the university reduced my class of honours by one grade to penalise me. I really wished I had made more of an effort in biochemistry in a subject area such as enzyme kinetics which interested me with the use of differential equations which I learnt about in my maths A level. Maybe the words enzyme kinetics and differential equations are buzz words to bolster my deflated ego.
During my summer holiday after that a medical student friend who was also a drinking associate invited me to catch a bus across Europe with him to get to Cyprus and stay with my Cypriot relatives for the summer. With some of his money and some of mine we hired a fast motorbike to tour around. One day in my mother's home village I pulled a pulled a wheely to try and show off in front of some passers by and I dropped the motorbike and us. I had a grazed arm and I was almost tearful as I washed the gravel out of my wound. My friend also had a grazed arm. I still feel sorry for him to this day. Also wich fuels my sympathy is the fact that he did not take the advice to cover himself and protect himself from the heat of the sun while sitting on the beach. He actually developed blisters on his skin. My relatives drove him to the house of another medical student who lived in Cyprus and was an aquaintance of my friend in the same year at the university of Bristol medical school.
I decided to leave Cyprus quicker than I wanted to as I had to find lodgings for my final year at university as I had been thrown out of hall of residence for assaulting the drug dealer.
On our last night on our way back in Greece my friend went to a drinking festival, I think, with some people he had met. I stayed in my room and a read a book written by James Herriot which some of the series 'All creatures great and small' was based on.
The next day my friend seemed a bit put out saying there was only one seat on the bus back to Britain. He caught the bus leaving me in Greece. The next day I was having a breakfast of a kebab I think and I saw two people on a bench who had been in the same university hall of residence as me and in the same year. They too had gravel rash. They had hired a motorbike in Crete and had hit a tree and fallen off their bike. Could this be synchronicity?
As I was panicking over what time I had left before term started at university, I saw an aquaintance in the road with his motorbike. Apparently he had just failed his driving test that day and might have been in a bad mood. I still asked him for a lift to the accomodation office as I had been thrown out of hall and needed somehwhere to live. While I was on the back of the bike he started his engine up while he was still in gear. He pulled a wheely and my left knee hit a rack on another parked motorbike, the back of a car I think, and knocked a few stones out of a stone wall. The ligaments and tendons of my knee were severed and my lower left leg was hanging with a crushed kneecap. I would imagine that most surgeons would have put a pair of scissors through the knee and possibly remark 'you wont be needing that any more', but a brilliant surgeon sowed the upper and lower left leg together and repaired the kneecap.
The university accomodation office took pity on me with my broken leg and gave me a room in a university house.
The first term of my final year started by meeting my project supervisor who was supervising my research thesis entitled 'The differential inhibitory effects of Tetracycline on protein synthesis in Escherichia coli'. E. coli is a commensal organism which means it exists as part of the natural flora in the gut. It was exacting walking each day from my accomodation across part of the city to the university medical school to do my reasearch. Part of the research was to do enzyme assays. One batch of bacteria, the control, would not contain antibiotic, while other batches of bacteria would contain different doses of tetracycline. At each dose of the antibiotics an assay was used to see if enzyme activity had been affected. If protein synthesis was affected at different doses of Tetracycline then there would have been a decrease in enzyne activity. This was measured by adding supernatant containing the enzyme studied, from a centrifuge, to a vial containg the substrate of the enzyme. If there was enzyme acivity the substrate would have been converted to products making the solution in the vial more turbid or in other words cloudy. The amount of turbidity was detected by passing light through the vial in a sprectrophotometer.
I used the unversity computer room to use a graph plotter to plot graphs of enzyme activity against doses of antibiotic. This first use of computers was my introduction to information technology. My thesis supervisor said that my thesis was top heavy on protein synthesis. He is now I believe a doctor od science (D.Sc.) which is the highest accolade you gan get for science.
From time to time I have had moments of calm thinking about doing my research experiments in the quiet of the night with nobody else in the medical school. I would take a coffee break from preparing my experiments and I would be on my own in the medical school common room. It was peaceful. Here fate took a good hand showing me that I had nothing to prove and everything was ok, and I accept now that these moments could well have been a peak experience.
I was awarded a 2(ii) which is a lower second class honours degree.
Friday 15 December 2017
An essay on psychiatry inspired by CBT
This essay includes my opinions and understanding of psychiatry after
more than thirty years of being a psychiatric patient. Initially I was
stimulated by concepts imparted to me by consultants. Concepts included
blind emotion, breaking patterns, detachment and imposing patterns, also
the definition of cathexis meaning why money is more important than a
stone. These ideas occupied my mind and served to distract me from how I
was feeling. I would meditate on these thoughts hoping for insight into
what I was going through and a greater perspective
A weak point was that I had been stabbed in an assault and I was struggling with the psychological distress of such an incident rather than making progress with my illness of schizophrenia. This was only remedied about thirty two years later when cognitive behavioural therapy put forward a suggestion of post traumatic stress disorder to address the trauma resulting from such a wound before I could move on and address myself to the feelings and problems which precipitated my schizophrenia.
Walking miles from Bristol to the local asylum at Barrow Guerney and spending a day or a night out there in the countryside enabled me to feel more tranquil and allowed me to escape what I thought was curiosity from other people in the city. In the end just before I moved to rural Devon the government sold this asylum / psychiatric hospital and there was no escape from the city.
After some years I began to experience some frustration with psychiatry. I would give an account of some difficulty or problem or a new development and some of the time the conversation led to the comment from the consultant “Well lets see how the medication is doing”. I worked hard reflecting on my situation and tackling other activities and all that seemed to matter to the doctors was my dosage of medication. In my view this is a chemical straight jacket. It is more cost effective to prescribe a tablet that costs a penny such as Stelazine to keep you quiet than it is to be counselled for a hour by a doctor who's salary is probably more than sixty pounds an hour. Perhaps it would burden the health service too much to counsel everyone with a mental health problem. The bottom line is that the doctors were less interested in listening than in managing a chemical regime.
Perhaps delusion is too strong a word but I believe that a lot of doctors in their privileged position in life think that life is totally benign and nothing untoward or difficult ever happens. Again perhaps it is not their fault that something is not within the confines of their experience. Jeffrey Masson in his book called final analysis gives an account of being a psychoanalyst after having been psychoanalysed himself as part of his training. He said that when women told their analyst they had been raped , the analyst believed that the patient had fantasies about sex and when they felt guilty or ashamed they blamed somebody for rape so they did not have to accept responsibility for their feelings. Masson spoke out about this saying that these women had been raped. The response he had was to be sacked from the Anna Freud library and the psychoanalytical institutions he was a member of. The in crowd psychoanalysis circles considered him politically incorrect.
The end result after years of psychiatry has left me doubting myself and lacking in self belief. I even doubt my memories, memories which I use to keep the world in abeyance and to mitigate how I am feeling. So if I cannot depend on my memories then this means I get even more intrusive thoughts and I feel even more guilt and and shame as I lose my identity. I would go even further to say that as my grip on my memories weaken I also get false memory syndrome on occasions where I start to imagine or remember things that did not take place.
Helplessness also is learned by participating in psychiatry. You believe you are weak because you are having to see a doctor which affirms to you that you are ill. You can feel that you are more ill and paranoid than you really are. Plus one gets benefits and sickness benefits from being a psychiatric patient and this is a form of operant conditioning. The operant, that is money, is where you get benefits for being ill. It is teaching you to be dependant on the state.
Labelling is another aspect of being a mental health patient. When the doctor uses labels such as depression or schizophrenia, he could be over diagnosing and giving a label to a natural reaction to loss or stress or some other pressure of life.
As an after thought labelling means that they genaralise about you meaning it results in a loss of individuality where you are pigeon holed into a blanket term or illness. On the other side of the coin is the fact that you do need a label for appropriate treatment of some conditions.
A weak point was that I had been stabbed in an assault and I was struggling with the psychological distress of such an incident rather than making progress with my illness of schizophrenia. This was only remedied about thirty two years later when cognitive behavioural therapy put forward a suggestion of post traumatic stress disorder to address the trauma resulting from such a wound before I could move on and address myself to the feelings and problems which precipitated my schizophrenia.
Walking miles from Bristol to the local asylum at Barrow Guerney and spending a day or a night out there in the countryside enabled me to feel more tranquil and allowed me to escape what I thought was curiosity from other people in the city. In the end just before I moved to rural Devon the government sold this asylum / psychiatric hospital and there was no escape from the city.
After some years I began to experience some frustration with psychiatry. I would give an account of some difficulty or problem or a new development and some of the time the conversation led to the comment from the consultant “Well lets see how the medication is doing”. I worked hard reflecting on my situation and tackling other activities and all that seemed to matter to the doctors was my dosage of medication. In my view this is a chemical straight jacket. It is more cost effective to prescribe a tablet that costs a penny such as Stelazine to keep you quiet than it is to be counselled for a hour by a doctor who's salary is probably more than sixty pounds an hour. Perhaps it would burden the health service too much to counsel everyone with a mental health problem. The bottom line is that the doctors were less interested in listening than in managing a chemical regime.
Perhaps delusion is too strong a word but I believe that a lot of doctors in their privileged position in life think that life is totally benign and nothing untoward or difficult ever happens. Again perhaps it is not their fault that something is not within the confines of their experience. Jeffrey Masson in his book called final analysis gives an account of being a psychoanalyst after having been psychoanalysed himself as part of his training. He said that when women told their analyst they had been raped , the analyst believed that the patient had fantasies about sex and when they felt guilty or ashamed they blamed somebody for rape so they did not have to accept responsibility for their feelings. Masson spoke out about this saying that these women had been raped. The response he had was to be sacked from the Anna Freud library and the psychoanalytical institutions he was a member of. The in crowd psychoanalysis circles considered him politically incorrect.
The end result after years of psychiatry has left me doubting myself and lacking in self belief. I even doubt my memories, memories which I use to keep the world in abeyance and to mitigate how I am feeling. So if I cannot depend on my memories then this means I get even more intrusive thoughts and I feel even more guilt and and shame as I lose my identity. I would go even further to say that as my grip on my memories weaken I also get false memory syndrome on occasions where I start to imagine or remember things that did not take place.
Helplessness also is learned by participating in psychiatry. You believe you are weak because you are having to see a doctor which affirms to you that you are ill. You can feel that you are more ill and paranoid than you really are. Plus one gets benefits and sickness benefits from being a psychiatric patient and this is a form of operant conditioning. The operant, that is money, is where you get benefits for being ill. It is teaching you to be dependant on the state.
Labelling is another aspect of being a mental health patient. When the doctor uses labels such as depression or schizophrenia, he could be over diagnosing and giving a label to a natural reaction to loss or stress or some other pressure of life.
As an after thought labelling means that they genaralise about you meaning it results in a loss of individuality where you are pigeon holed into a blanket term or illness. On the other side of the coin is the fact that you do need a label for appropriate treatment of some conditions.
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