Struggling to be

[Alessandra1992]

That sucks if they are the only organisation..perhaps it is still worth writing to their CEO as maybe there can be a space for written dialogue like we have here.
Perhaps sometimes when communicating via the phone, many people misinterpret how words are spoken. When it is written, we can still misunderstand but we can ask for clarity, and request a written response..
It sounds as though the service in question has potentially misinterpreted your questions or comments.. Ask the service for their guidelines as surely if Sane Forums offer guidelines then surely a service specialising in adult survivors of abuse must have guidelines lusted in their website.
How the heck can you know if your questions or concerns are considered too challenging, off topic or whatever their problem may have been with you..
Hard to see how you can be responsible if they are not able to communicate their limitations of service respectfully..
Perhaps you can find another support re childhood trauma, depending on the type of help you are looking for..
The "it will be our word of entire professional team vs yours" makes my skin crawl..because why then can they not explain to you why they have a problem with you?
Can you use an advocate or a trusted person like your GP, Psychologist, consumer advocate or friend to get an alternative viewpoint? An advocate can ask the questions and see how the service responds..
Depending on where you live you may want to use an advocate through a peak consumer mental health body, or you may want to explore it via GP..
Get someone else to ring up and ask about the service and see what the response is..
What do other people think?

[Aonaran]

Hiya @PeppiPatty , thanks for your posts.  You make me smile, and I hear your inherent gentleness shining through.  (I must say, I've had more smiles off these forums than I've had in non-cyber life in many weeks!)

I've been delaying replying a bit because it seems like the thread is broken somehow (or maybe it's a bug with the forum in general?  I don't know), because I get notifications of posts that then don't appear — very strange.  Kinda throws me off my stride in any sense of having an active conversation, which is what I was truly hoping for from these threads.  As you say, @PeppiPatty , it's safe here, and there are lots of shining souls to sit amongst.

I sometimes think of both gay people and MI people (I'm in both groups) as "gifted" — interesting word, with a couple of meanings.  Alice Miller (the German psychoanalyst) used it to signify the consequences of childhood trauma (her book The Drama of the Gifted Child is a powerful read, when you're feeling strong) and the specific shaped perceptions of life such trauma imbues in the recipient, and I definitely echo her meaning in my thoughts;  but I also think about Sophocles' claim that An unexamined life is not worth living.  I think both gay people and MI people are ahead in some respects — there's got to be some kind of trade-off, right? — because, in the face of rejection and disdain, we've had to ask ourselves what our lives really mean and what our true value is.  The Others live amidst pacifying assumptions, but often don't gain the insight that self-examination brings.  (Yeah, but they're usually the ones with all the great toys! 😉  And sometimes I think ignorant self-comfort would be such a great thing to have ...)

(Before I forget, yeah, it was Scots Gaelic that I opened one of my earlier posts with.  I speak it, sing in it, and used to teach it.  I hoped people wouldn't find it alienating, or pretentious — it was just a bit of self-expression that made me feel less anxious.)

I haven't found anyone myself to play Scrabble with.  Gosh, I wish I could!  I seem to only encounter people who want one-way relationships — the kind who talk only about themselves, and then end the conversation, or invite me around only when they want company but don't otherwise return my calls or else tell me they're too busy spending time with "friends". (Oh really? So am I not one of those?!)

I get that my fear makes me vulnerable to exploitation, but I don't get why I attract so many life-suckers.  And it's hard to become assertive just from recognising the need to be so.  I've got too many years of experience and active training from my parents and siblings and the world at large that teach me to be acquiescent, fearful and submissive.

I've looked for active training in being assertive, but it seems to be out of fashion.  None of the therapists I've seen have known how to teach or coach it, and the only psychologists I've been able to find on the web who even mention it turn out to be doing assertiveness training specifically for salespeople.  (Not at all the same thing!)

But ... the search continues.  Meantime, two books that I'm finding really helpful:  The Highly Sensitive Person, by Elaine Aron, and an old classic, I'm Okay, You're Okay by Thomas Harris.

[Rick]

Hello Aonaran

We share the same diagnosis. Because of this I feel it's ok to talk to you about your experience.

It's not you. In your boat I'd be thinking the same thing as you. But it's not you. They royally screwed the pooch. 

It's almost as though some of those people  set out to work in an area where they can find an easy target.

From your description of the various phone calls all you wanted was more information to ease your heart and mind. When you did'nt fit into their tight little descriptors they became dismissive and petulant.

YOU did nothing wrong. THEY did nothing but wrong.

Please for your own sake keep that foremost in your mind. especially when that niggardly voice that sits behind your ear says YOU ARE WRONG! 

We both know that these people are bogus, at best. You are no longer the child who can be dominated.

Resist. That's all you have to do. That voice is the long dead echo of the bad one. Resist.

It's for me to say. It's hard for me to do. I have that voice too. But I'm sure that if I told the same story you would try to remind me that I'm a good person. I'm not a burden or a villian, and I did'nt bring it on myself.

is that true, do you think?

I know the strength it takes to keep breathing with this illness. You are still breathing, ergo you are strong! To be able to live past the initial trauma you needed enormous strength. You are strong!

If I have presumed here, it is simply because your posts are very touching. 

I believe even when I don't that

Hope endures

Rick

[Aonaran]

Hey @Rick ,

Thanks for the comforting hand on the shoulder, bud.  I hear you.

Would love to have the conversation in a pub somewhere, but I'm grateful to be having it all.

Thanks, Rick.  Deep thanks.

[kenny66]

Hi Aonoran

There are some interesting studies about the link between MI (in my case schizophrenia) and intelligence, although gifted is a more appropriate word I think. I read some info also some time back, on the empathy with animals and people with schizophrenia as well.

Of course I know quite a few people with MI from my clinic, many of who are highly creative, some very gifted and excell in their chosen fields, although they have been soemwhat derailed by their illness.

With me I have just been led up a different path from what I could have done.

I think being gay and having an MI occuring concurrently makes for a very special person. At least I hope to think so. I live in a very gentle world touched by beautiful things without any malice from within. The only hurt in my world comes from other people. outside of my world.

I don't perceive my sexual preference as a deciding factor of who I am but I do consider it as one characteristic enhancing others to create the sensitive package of me, if you will.

I have always thought that people with MI are special and in many ways the issues they face mirror the struggle that gay people have had for acceptance, with prejudice and discrimination being rife.

There are some things about being gay that are similar to the vulnerability one experiences with MI. For me that lack of defences to the reality of the outside world which most people have, and which increase the possibility of hurt, is a reasonable trade off if it results in a almost innocent unsullied state.

[Rick]

Bear hugs, man
Bear hugs!

R

[Alessandra1992]

What @Rick said, what @Kenny said..you are not the problem!

[PeppiPatty]

Dear Aonaron,

Thankyou for your message. Yes, I've read Alice Miller, good reading.
You are a very clever lady and like what you write, especially about books and people.
After Christmas, I will look for those books, by Aron and Harris.

Do you mind if I write some words that you have sort have written .....You are right about being ignorant. but, people with MI sometimes forget how to feel kind to others because of the overwhelming feeling of stress not just from other people but....feeling like 'we,' 'they,' don't fit. I feel that this forum gets people in touch with nice feelings.....getting to know yourself in a kinder way........

Like very much what you write......

Thanks,
JA47yr

[BatGuano]

Hi Aonaran,

Sometimes the accessing of mental health services is like getting a loan from the bank.  To get the loan you have to prove you don't need it.

Or like milking a cow, there's a skill to it.  Part of it is skill, and part of it is the cow deciding to cooperate.

Then you have to milk a cow who doesn't know you.  Or a goat.  Or a camel.

In another thread about why GPs treat people with MI like naughty children, I've suggested the strategy of putting on a 'sane face' so that the doc might treat one like an adult.

Its not fair.  Its lying to get what you want.  But.

The book 'I'm OK, You're OK' was preceded by 'Games People Play' by Eric Berne.  The books use 'Transactional Analysis'.  'Games...' was quite popular in the 60s as a kind of pop psychology book.  'I'm OK...' addressed the question of what to do once you find yourself in a game.  And how to at least stop yourself playing or being played.

I get really tired with the Games.  Catching myself playing, being played.  Setting out to try to get around a game that someone has set up where I have to try to stop the both of us playing.

How much can a koala bear? (Austen Tayshus).  Then its time for pearls.  I take the grit that's gotten into my shell and cover it with nacre, over and over until its big and smooth enough to spit out.  I have to spit them out or it'd get too crowded in here.   

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[Aonaran]

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@Alessandra1992 wrote:
What @Rick@ said, what @Kenny said..you are not the problem!

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Thanks for that, @Alessandra1992  (hmm, wanted to call you Sandy, but you don't get mentioned that way), I'm grateful for the affirmation.  And thanks for coming to the cyberpub! 😉

The thing I can't get my head around is:  what made the treatment I got okay?  My history tells me that I'm someone who infuriates people, without meaning to and without ever understanding why.  I'm not arguing for my own defects, but even if this woman somehow thought I had "asked for" a thorough telling-off, what was it that made her go into a spiteful, personal rage rather than remembering her professional or therapeutic responsibilities?  Given that she was custodian of a schema that says recurring trauma shapes our perception and responses, how hypocritical was she to act out her anger as if whatever I'd done to get up her nose was wilfuul and malicious?

But all my life people have been flying into rages at me -- spiteful, destructive rages where they seek to cause childish hurt -- totally disproportionate to whatever has happened.  (Sometimes, nothing that has involved me.)  It's destroyed my life, and I've never understood it.  (I wrote earier about the frequent physical damage my parents had caused me, but the Mods asked me to remove it.)  So part of the downhill emotional slope I find myself on, where I tumble into thinking it's All My Fault, is that it's all so damned familiar.  Lately, I usually go cold, and numb, and to bed for two or three days.  It's the best I can do to cope, while my life just dribbles away.