ANGER

ANGER

One of the Christmas spoilers is that at this time every year, my section is renewed. One year it just goes ahead unless I appeal it, the other there is a tribunal that I reluctantly appear at and find incredibly distressing despite my kind words and grinning face. This year is one of the just roll it on years and I will not appeal.

It was only yesterday that I got my papers through for the renewal of my section, I posted them on twitter but to be honest I still haven’t read them. I got a call today to arrange an appointment to see my second opinion doctor next week who will help decide if I should continue to get the medication I say I wouldn’t take given the choice. I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to be bothered with any of it.

Many, many, people speak stridently about the oppression people like me experience daily and expect us to be angry and liberated by their words. Do they have a point? Maybe, but to be honest I couldn’t care less what they want on my behalf; this is my life and although everything is meant to be political I don’t like political and I don’t like theories and ideals and models and visions to make the world a wonderful place because it is more complex than that and to be honest, much more important was Wendy’s kiss as I came upstairs and the feel of the rain on my face as I walked to my car from the train after an emotional day at work. These are the important things to me just as my daily conversation with my mum was about the comfort of your own bed and getting the washing done and the Christmas cards put away.

I got a reply to my twitter post about my section and the restriction I will remain under, it said I was allowed to call that restriction ‘coercion.’

It made me pause and wonder at the motivations of the person who posted it. I chaired the coercive treatment work stream of the Scott Review of our legislation and in many ways was the person who gave the authority for us to describe forcible or compulsory treatment as coercive. After all you cannot describe treatment against your will which may be forcible as anything other than an act of coercion but coercion is not as we often think of, always something vicious and malicious. It can be done with the best of intentions; for instance to save life, to give a quality of life.

I do not know if the person’s comment was this but I think he meant I was being badly treated, oppressed, maybe even exploited and should have the courage to stand up and call it out as that.

I do not know. Life is very, very, complicated; without this treatment I would be dead or at least would not have the wonderful life I do have but like him I think I should not take my medication, mainly because I know that without my medication I try to kill myself and I still think that is the only just thing that should happen to someone like me.

I worry about anger and the need to blame others and communities of people for our pain; it does not fit easily with me despite sometimes having evidence to the contrary. I do not know if my aversion to anger about my treatment is a healthy aversion but I very rarely if ever, meet people who want to damage and hurt people like me as part of their jobs and careers. They may ultimately do that but that is not the intention. I am sure my mental health officer and my psychiatrist would say that I am a shining example of good practice, that without my section I would be abject and that with it I flourish; that what they do gives me a quality of life I would never ever have had without it. It is very rare that such things are so cut and dried.

I worry about demonising people. I just replied to post from a lovely person who was hugely upset that people like me and her are seen as murderers because of our diagnoses of schizophrenia, but I also messaged a professional, one of those some of us see as the enemy, about getting help for someone. She replied instantly and I remembered she has a family member who is schizophrenic like me, that she has just as much an investment in justice as me. Earlier, when I was speaking with trainee mental health officers; those that will section us, I met one who also has mental health problems and believes she is doing a good and valuable job.

I have met and been treated by professionals who have caused me incredible harm; once I would have and did say that our anger was necessary and righteous and that to curb it was an assault on our very selves but more and more often when I look at the motives of those I feel have harmed me, I have mainly realised they were doing what they thought was right and just and something that would ultimately help me.

This is a hard thing to accept. Out of tragedy we often need people to blame and hold to account and sometimes that is right and good but sometimes the people we blame and hate had no idea that they would be hated; they entered their professions often for very personal reasons, to help people like me and sometimes they get it very, very, wrong but equally it is very, very, rarely that I have met people who see us with hatred and anger in their hearts.

Often it is a mish mash of good intentions and not knowing quite how to do what they are doing and of course they don’t. When I have friends busily falling apart to the extent they might die I haven’t a clue what to do; most people don’t, even highly qualified professionals.

On the train today I read a book I will reread again and again. It is called ‘They Died Waiting’ and is written by Emma Corlett and Caroline Aldridge, whose own son died waiting. I am struck by the naked injustice in it and by the fact that some people would say ‘What else could we have done?’ I often hear of cases where the failure is even more naked and wrong and desperate than in this book but hold onto what I have read so far and the interpretation I put on it; mainly very well meaning people isolating, ignoring, dismissing and not believing their clients and not acting outside of their defined roles to the terrible consequence leading to the death of people who are loved treasured and deserving of everything everyone else deserves.

If I were a professional I would gasp in distress at my complicity but also despair of making a difference in my life time. It echoes of judgement, lack of value, lack of resources and lack of impetus to make a difference even though that difference is one of life or death and it echoes of a society, not just the policy makers and the helpers but our own families and our friends and our neighbours. We; you and me, are also a part of this.

I feel angry at that I must admit; I feel angry at those I have also known and who I think might have survived in a different more caring and loving world but can I point my finger and say you are bad and evil and need castigated and cast out of our world. No I cannot do that; even the managers we like to hate, so many of them also have mental health problems themselves, impossible jobs and natural if very unhelpful responses to criticism and so many of them are in their jobs to make the difference so many of us crave but some jobs are just plain old impossible.

I am unsure of my opinions and am aware that I have an almost pathological avoidance of anger and that when I feel it as we all feel it, I feel awful, but maybe that very malfunction is of value.

When people tell me I am evil, or oppressive of even just incompetent I react with sadness and sometimes anger and sometimes hate the people who say this. When they know I, in my tiny way, just like them, want to make a difference for my peers, my friends and family and that I might get it wrong but that is not my intention then it is so much easier to speak and travel a journey together where blame and anger are put aside and the need to say a profession or a person or a community are inherently flawed and bad become the silly thing we all knew it was and we can rise beyond, to the hugs and confidences of our shared humanity.

(Photos: the Clyde and the approacing storm, my CTO letter, They Died Waiting all January 2023)