Gratitude Journal
Submitted by tessa D on Wed, 03/18/2009 - 4:01pmI have tried reading books about my illness and anti psychiatry (i find it very hard to read on drugs) , i have also tried audio tapes and relaxation tapes and techniques. meditation, a meditation course, breathing exercises, massage, many self affirmations (on laminated cue cards so i remember) and now group therapy as well as occupational therapy and so on.
I realize it could be true that i am trying to express a kind of perfectionism which is unnecessary for my development and recovery. However i am not sure that is really the case.
I also keep a gratitude journal which i have only started writing recently. Believe it or not its working! I feel like i am better off for doing it. I am looking for things to be grateful for and finding a positive side to life. Really its true.
To prove it- I was recently in a car accident (not my fault) and now the other driver says its my fault so i have to go to court. I went to the police yesterday after taking anxiety medication and they couldnt help, it was too late. so i am going to court and normally this would really screw me up. However i am deciding to be grateful and turning it into a positive thing. It was only my journal that reminded me to do so and now i feel less daunted and screwed up. I might not even need my anti anxiety medication, although i do throw up when i am anxious.
I'll write later how it goes.
celebration
i have been celebrating. yipeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
it turns out the girl who crashed into my car who gave a false account of the accident is in the shit. yipeeeeee. i have been through hell for 5 weeks because of her irresponsible driving. i wasnt injured but i was traumatized.
this is what happened...
I turned right at an intersection. a car was driving very slowly in the bike/bus lane ahead of me at night. I had easily enough room to drive past. so i slowly passed. as i was driving in a straight line past her she suddenly turned on her indicator and turned into me pushing me into the other lane.
her insurance company said i could be at fault so asked for my account of the accident, photos, a report and a diagram.
so i did all that and then it was damaged in a flood. so i did it again and sent it off a few days ago.
today i got a call from her insurance company saying..."good news, weve looked at your report and our client is at fault. great photos and diagram (she had the wrong street haha)"
and that was that. they are sending me a cheque for the damages to my car. so i didnt have to go to court. yipeeeeeeee. and i dont have to pay $3,000 for my car and damages to her car and extra. they are paying for mine.
it hasnt quite sunk in because i have been so distressed about it but i rang my key worker today to tell her. she was the one who was going to be there for me in court and she had gone to the police station with me because i am quite scared of police men since they falsely arrested me a few years ago and searched my house and said with mental health workers i had potential weapons. like a spade, hammer for fucks sake. all that was for some prank calls i made to mental health and for graffitiing the mental health centre. they arrested me and said i made a death threat (so far from the truth i didnt see it coming) and locked me away in high security for months. they forced alot more medication on me too. it was hell.
there is a long story behind why i prank called and graffitied. I had felt like my doc was flirting with me for a couple of years and i had fallen in love with him. i had a boyfriend for a while and i was fine. he was great. he lived up the road, a turkish/greek ex commander from the army in turkey. now he is a "cutter". he cuts fabric to be sewn into clothes. oneday i was sitting on my steps in kingsland (i had shaven my head because of an incident of my old nurse shoving me on purpose, it really bothered me so i walked all the way to my families house and asked my brother to shave my hair off in tears) and then this thin tall friendly man said "hi, i'm adam, if you need anything at all just ask me i work down the road and live a few houses up". he ended up singing to me "you sang to me" from his favorite album. we started dating. he always worried about me. i had no washing machine so i washed everything by hand and hosed it down on the line. it worked fine. i hand washed everything for half a year. i also had one of those old lawn mowers without an engine, just blades and i didnt have a car at the time. i just walked everywhere. so he broke up with me because oneday i rang him while he was out with his friends and i wanted to know if he was coming over, he just said later he wasnt interested, didnt know what he wanted and then it was over. it was because i was hormonally imbalanced and experiencing sexual dysfunction that i thought i loved my old doc. oneday i just snapped out of it like i had been brainwashed and demanded them to read me my human rights. they wouldnt. then i asked for my psychiatric notes, they wouldnt give them to me. so i oneday (just living a few minutes up the road from the centre) took my dinner in a pot down the road then threw it on the steps. thats how it started. then i was out of control and from this i lost my mind. i threw my belongings out onto the sidewalk and road. i woke up the next day unwell then there was a knock on my door from the centre. they knew it was me but they also thought i was threatening to kill. it was creepy. to this day they wont listen to me when i say the opposite was true i couldnt hurt a hair on the head of this doc, i actually felt love at the time and had NOT one THOUGHT OF HURTING HIM. still.....sigh, they dont care and it has been a couple of hard years for me since it happened. i really think it has ruined me completely but i try so hard to let go. i try doubly as hard to stop getting depressed. i take 4 omega 3 tablets a day, haha. i go to group. i try to stop talking to myself esp about the past. its just that i think i have a police record now. i had a court hearing and the judge ruled me guilty!!! they just dont fucking care how they have ruined my life. i cant believe i have been through this. being put in a psychiatric prison with dangerous people. its my story though. its just so hard because even some of my family have never even bothered to ask me if its true. they just say nothing. its unbearable to live with. i am innocent. i know it, why wont anyone trust me or believe me. i cant face life sometimes. its just too hard.
more.... funny part of the terrible unending drama is i found this really cool guy who is in mental health. he treated me for a year until i couldnt stand him bringing up the subject of my old doc ( i hated him at that point after everything which didnt make me look convincingly innocent but this man, Tony believed me) and also i had uncomfortable voices in my head driving me crazy of a sexual nature about this man who i wasnt attracted to at all. Tony Coates is a grey older man. Hes into anthropology and is very alternative for a therapist. He said to me with a smile on his face (the funny thing) that i had ruffled the feathers of some "important" people in mental health and thats why they got me into so much trouble. he almost continued to commend me when i told him about the flirtatious nature of my past therapist.
They even made up that i threatened to kill my doc on the phone which i definitely wouldnt do and didnt do. What i did do (cheeky me) is make jokes and sing for ages (like i was doing a gig) while i was drunk (they didnt take this into consideration) and i thought the whole thing was a joke at the time (until they got the police to come and arrest me, sigh). i was crazy though....i remember clearly what incriminated me but what i will say is at the time i was full of love, overwhelmed infact for the first time in my life . it was so embarrassing to me that i didnt defend myself by telling the judge or my lawyer i was is love with this man at the time. i was just really embarrassed by my lack of control and what i had said to him (opened up) in my prank calls . what i wrote i wrote while i was completely insane and NOT dangerous.....shit here goes, its hard to explain what i mean by this but i will try. some people understand me so thats enough considering how crazy i was to get into that much trouble... i will tell you i did this in split seconds without knowing what i would write but only wanting to convey while i was full of love (funny enough) that this doc wouldnt do anything for anyone but he acts like he is the most generous person on earth because he is in mental health. what i wrote is " my doc would die for you" i should have wrote next to it " i am being sarcastic" because i was writing it with heavy sarcasm. shit i am a crazy chic. i didnt even think they would consider i was meaning it that way, dangerously. so when they came to my door i just turned them away then they got the police and the police arrested me and i had bruises from the cuffs. then they fucking searched my house and made all these fucking ludicrous allegations about me keeping potential weapons. are they fucking kidding? my spade which i use, my hammer which i use, my hot poker which i use FOR MY FIRE are my WEAPONS?!!!! &^%*!!!! this is seriously insane. i only found this out because by the time they finally gave me my psychiatric notes( and i found SO many mistakes and lies written about me, for eg: my boyfriend broke up with me so i went crazy. i TOLD them repeatedly that i broke up with my ex boyfriend and i thought he might stalk me. who is delusional me or these fucking crazy wankers?) i read that they thought i had potential weapons. so anyway Tony was great but when he kept bringing up Mark ( the name of my old doc) i couldnt take it anymore because as soon as i was hospitalized the first time i vowed to turn my back on that chapter of my life and never look back. so i didnt think about mark anymore until it all came flooding back last year and i had an episode. it was really out of this world too. just horrible. and the restlessness i felt from my meds ( i couldnt sit still ever or lie down) was the worst it has ever been. i also was being sexually abused by my delusions and voices. that was so bad i started pissing myself and pissed my bed (while i was awake, i was just so unable to control how harassed i felt by my voices). then the whole trauma of having been in hospital twice without privacy started coming back like it was happening now. i pissed in my bath water and bathed in piss every time, with disdain (futility) for my treatment and I couldnt stand being naked so i always bathed with clothes on. this is while i could clearly hear in my head disgusting seductive whisperings of mark. which shocked me so much i would throw up constantly outside my window every time i heard his voice. by half way through the year from throwing up so much there was a brown moist patch out the window on the lawn from where i had thrown up every day when i couldnt get to the toilet in time. it was also the time when i was suicidal.
i fucking hope i never go through that again....
oh and this is what i wrote at the end of my original blog......
i think i have something with this gratitude journal though. its helping me. hard to remember to do it but i am slowly getting the hang of it.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams - Yeats