Any positive event or feeling or thought is a cause for celebration.
To attain more than this seemed since forever impossible, and not worth reaching for. Besides it goes against the plan. That nasty plan.
I have posted it elsewhere on the forum in it's incomplete form.
I have a story with a an observational foreword which is getting a lot of reads right now.
Ok, Here it is. This is simply an account of a new wellness. It has opened more questions and issues than expected but it's still bloody good................
THE FINAL SCRAPE CAN BE THE FINEST SCRAPE.
Foreword-
Is it possible to achieve a clinical recovery directed by a personal recovery?
Below is a lyrical description of a person's experience of a new psychological and personal paradigm. The question is simple. Can a person engaged in a personal recovery be lead, with a minimal clinical intervention, to a clinical recovery? This person has been under treatment for fourteen years. Has trialled every type of anti-depressant, anti-psychotic and anti-convulasant. He has trialled ECT over many courses and has applied every kind of cognitive therapy all to no positive effect. This person speaks of scraping the bottom of the medication barrel. A clinical risk was taken, a necessary risk since the person was compulsively and actively suicidal. So dex-amphetamine was trialled. Before this could take place multiple health concerns needed to be addressed. This was perhaps the first step into recovery. This person had allowed serious cardiac and pulmonary illnesses to go untreated in an attempt to "encourage entropy". So basically a passive suicidality. At the same time this person had completed several courses of study including a diploma in mental health. He had been applying for support roles with no success but had been offered some temporary work with the training organisation, filling several roles. So essentially he was progressing in his personal recovery, and due to necessity was challenging his most profound thought disorders by having to address his health concerns.
When the medication was finally prescribed the initial response was very limited. The dose was adjusted and then adjusted again not only in it's volume but also it frequency. Very soon positive effects were noticeable. Not only by the person themselves but also by people who knew him.
So after fourteen years of trial and failure and somehow surviving the process we now see a person who is experiencing an improved quality of life. The improvement has been holistic. For the first time in the person’s memory, there is no compulsion either active or passive to suicide. In fact the person has begun to address issues as they arise in a manner heretofore unknown to him.
I believe that this person illustrates the potential of an holistic approach to personal and clinical recovery that can bring about changes in the life and personality of the person that had been considered after much time and effort almost untreatable.
The other lesson here is most profound because of it's innate simplicity. Perseverance, patience and resilience in the person, clinician and supports can lead to significant improvement of clinical outcomes and an holistic personal recovery.
Well, just when you think you've nailed it down. That you know exactly where you are going. You know that whilst the rest of the world would see that path and revile it for it's extreme negativity and innate morbidity. You know you will find relief and release in that deadly coil and as the coil embraces you and you embrace it, you look to the failed efforts and justify to yourself, as for one last time you reach down, fingers scraping the very bottom of that barrel of treatment options and what happens?
The sun rises. Monochromatic vision suddenly flares into colour. There is a sense of, what is it, beauty, vitality? What the hell is this stuff? What do I do with these alien feelings and thoughts of possibility? Of potentiality?
Somehow after 14 horrific years of striving for the Grail of healing, suddenly, there it is. Heavy and warm in the hand, and disturbingly right.
I experienced 14 years of complex trauma growing and developing wrongly. My entire development from toddler to young man destroyed and mutated to the point of impossibility. Like badly designed hardware you run your programs, your software, and no matter how often you code new and better patches for that software the hardware delivers a malformed and malignant solution. People harp at you about neural plasticity, but there has been no evidence that the growing of new cells and creating new but miniscule pathways actually trump the complex interactions of malformed structure. And then.....
That last scrape found a magic pill. It's not really magic but the longer you take it the more miraculous the seeming effect. And the payoff? Well imagine being limited to a range of; let's say just for argument, 6 states of emotional being, all below the dysthymic line. Then suddenly, that plexi-glass ceiling has enormous cracks appearing. A flood of emotions, ones never felt before, let alone integrated, dazzle your perceptions and a strange feeling, that after consulting wiser heads than your own, as you discover a thing of golden light. It has a name. It even has a name. You are told it's name is HOPE.
Hope??!! It's a beautiful name and one has witnessed its beauty from outside, has seen it's reflection in the hearts and minds and actions of others. Something that until this moment was it’s own form of torture. Now? It lives within your own breast. So alien at first that one must try and get rid of it. Surely this is a phantasm. A delusion. But this thing, Hope, does not crush. Though your arms are of the strength whispered of in ancient myth, you cannot hurl it from you. And it hurts. But only a little.
It won't be destroyed by your hand so what option remains? Acceptance. An embrace. While you do not understand and you hate it's unproven promise all that is left for action, is embrace. I am now feeling things that are beautiful. But have no yardstick against which to measure it. I am perplexed because this HOPE demands a pathway. The very same pathway you have walked since the days of short pants. It's locomotion over this path, so different. It's destination unknown, as opposed to the former experience where the end was worked for and inevitably final.
What happens now?
A new decompartmentalisation. A necessity to take positive action against the entropy that you had worked so hard to hurry along.
I work now. I am able to serve my fellow man and be useful because of that last scrape of the barrel. To work ethically and morally and without hypocrisy one must challenge those lethal thoughts and actions and inactions. Those thought disorders.
Why? Well, if I am to be of use, then I must consider that usefulness and longevity are partners. So challenge after internal challenge stand in line, waiting to be addressed and shifted. I am doing it. I am very confused. I am embarrassed by my backflip. I am overwhelmed by unfamiliar emotional states and their range.
But now, quite suddenly I want to.
I want to live. To LIVE.
My first thoughts of terminal relief began at age 5. I am now 46. 41 years of morbidity lies at my feet. But it's at my feet, not coiled around me.
There is a possibility that a personal recovery in the right circumstance may lead to a clinical recovery.
And it is all HOPE
That is all...............................................
Emergency, police & ambulance (24 Hrs)
Connect with a lifeline crisis supporter (24 Hrs)
Suicide callback service (24 Hrs)
Kids helpline (24 Hrs)
13 YARN
