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A Slice of my Life

26 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by A Journey With You in Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

7-eleven, accident, AIDS, car wreck, life, music, stress, The nineties, wreck

I got separated and divorced in the early nineties. I smoked a pack of Marlboro Lights every day in the early nineties. Even though I lived near Seattle, I had not yet tasted a Starbucks. I had a cellphone that was larger than a football that I carried for work that looked like a bread box with a strap. I was a social worker for the State of Washington.

Sinead O’ Conner, Madonna, and George Michael played on the radio. Songs from the eighties like I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For by U2 and Need You Tonight by INXS still got stuck in my head and I would crank them up when I heard them come on the air.

AIDS was an epidemic, and a week didn’t go by without a friend, or a friend of a friend or a relative of a friend dying by suicide or passing away from complications from a depleted immune system.

It was a Friday night. I drove a white Subaru hatchback. I had missed the ferry from Seattle and drove around through Tacoma and Gig Harbor. Once in Bremerton, and close to home, the stress of being at my brother’s house where death dark and stigmatized and like the plague was close to his partner, caught up with me.

In my car, I forgot how to drive. I forgot that I could pull the keys out of the ignition. I forgot that I could hit the brakes without hitting the clutch and the car would sputter and stop. I forgot there were brakes.

I lost the ability to think through any of my options. I turned toward the 7-Eleven, put my hand on the horn, jumped the curb and came to a stop with the nose of my Subaru inside the cereal aisle. The people who were in line at the store surrounded my car. The glass from the front of the 7-Eleven was scattered across the store, the hood of my car and the sidewalk.

Not knowing what else to do, but having regained my capacity to reason and deal with the mechanics of driving, I backed my car out of the store and off the sidewalk and into a parking space. The police had already arrived. The first officer was a jerk. He spoke to me in a harsh tone and asked if I was drinking or using drugs. I told him no and offered to take a test. After a few more questions, he turned the situation over to an officer in a second patrol car, and he drove away.

The second officer was funny, but I was still shaken up and scared. I asked if I would have to spend the night at the hospital getting drug tests and he said no. While he was filling out his report, he asked me where I worked. I told him I was the on-call worker for CPS (Child Protective Services) and he could not stop laughing while he was still chuckling a call came over his radio of a child endangerment case and the person on the line said they needed CPS. The officer picked up his radio and pretended to respond by saying, “Don’t worry, I have her in my car.”

Those were the early nineties, and somehow I got out alive.

New Post on Psych Central

23 Monday May 2016

Posted by A Journey With You in bipolar, caregivers, mental illness, schizophrenia, stigma, Uncategorized, writing

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advocacy, Advocate, artists, bipolar, Bob Dylan, discrimination, feminism, feminist, genius, mental health, mental illness, music, psychiatry, psychology, schizophrenia], stigma, writing

I have a new blog post up on Psych Central. It is about being an imperfect advocate. It mentions Bob Dylan, feminism, and stereotypes.

I hope you will pop over there and read it.

http://goo.gl/Ot4wtb

The Realities Of Paranoia And Internalized Stigma

29 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in mental illness, schizophrenia, stigma, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

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artists, bands, Blogging, blogs, essay, fear, internalized stigma, mental health, mental illness, mentally ill, music, musicians, paranoia, Psych Central, relationships, schizophrenia], stigma, writer

Today is one of the days that I blog for Psych Central. I try to blog for that site every Tuesday and Friday (occasionally I can’t make that schedule). Anyway, I woke up and wrote a blog about relationships that I thought was fantastic and then paranoia started to creep in. Thoughts like, “What if someone takes my advice and they die? What if the person reading my blog is in a violent relationship?”  So, I ended up too fearful to post my writing.

I sat at the computer with nothing. Nothing for this blog and nothing for my Psych Central blog. I did a few yoga stretches. I tried to clear my mind. I decided research was the way to go and I ended up writing this post for Psych Central. It is a blog about internalized stigma. 

If you are interested you can also read my blog post about bands and artists that I think stigmatize mental illness. It is a post I wrote over the weekend. Fans of the rock band, Disturbed disagree with my take on the video but every time you have an opinion people are going to disagree.  I don’t mind disagreement, it can lead to further understanding.

 

Artists Who Promote Stereotypes Of Mental Illness

13 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in mental illness, schizophrenia, stigma, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

album, artists, asylum, bipolar, depression, disturbed, mental illness, mentally ill, music, psych ward, schizophrenia, songs, stereotypes, stereotyping, suicide

I try to buy products that are handmade, recycled, upcycled, used, etc. I go to thrift stores, used book shops, and love the website, Etsy. The reason I do that is so that I can feel good about all of my purchases knowing I didn’t contribute to companies that harm their workers, use child labor, or pollute the environment. Of course I also support small businesses by shopping at Etsy and support many nonprofits by shopping in their thrift stores. It is a win-win situation all around.

I am not always successful at being a conscientious consumer though. There are times when I am in a hurry and buy products that I normally wouldn’t buy, or times, when I don’t do my research and find out later that I have supported a business, corporation, or in the case I am about to tell you about, some artists that I had no idea created stereotypical information about people with mental illnesses.

I saw this band, and a video they made, in my newsfeed on Facebook (the link I am sharing isn’t the same one I originally saw).   I listened to the song again and again because I loved their remake of the original (I like the original, too).

I posted the video to my Facebook page.

Yesterday, I decided to look up the band on YouTube and see if they had any more songs that I like. This is the first song I found (Trigger Warning – suicide).  Is it possible for the band, Disturbed, to be any more stereotypical about mental illness than they are in that video?  The part that really bothers me is that the video has well over ten million views.

I do not want to support a band that makes videos like that. I guess they think that mental illness and psych wards make you edgy, dangerous, different, and cool. It is easy to see why so many teenagers write poetry about mental illness and inaccurately think they are “crazy.” When the bands you listen to and look up to are making videos that you watch over and over again and those videos are about stereotypes of mental illness – when was the last time you wore a uniform in the psych ward? That isn’t of course the worst of it – the message of the video is that the “keepers” of the psych ward are “jailers” and they are out to punish, change, hurt, and subdue, and even kill you.

I find that people who fall back on stereotypes to sell their art are not very creative. They certainly aren’t edgy, different, or cool. To be truly cool and edgy you have to put a new message out there. This one is as old as lobotomies, and I give this band a thumb down. No, worse than that, I give them an F at social messaging that impacts others. They reached millions of people with images that harm millions of Americans. I wish the media would pick up on this type of “stereotyping” and call artists out and hold them accountable. It is a shame that they can make money by making our lives worse – we have to live with the stereotypes they promote. This band reminds me that we have such a long way to go in seeing mental illness as the disease that it is, and we can’t even count on artists to take us the next mile or so – we have to move ourselves forward and it feels like we have to do that by crawling on our hands and knees.

 

Psychosis? Pink Floyd and Alice in Wonderland

01 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in mental illness, schizophrenia, writing

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

alice in wonderland, mad hatter, mental health, mental illness, music, pink floyd, poetry, psychiatry, psychology, psychosis, schizophrenia, syd barrett, the tea party, writing

Last night my husband and I went to a dance show. It was a ballet of Alice in Wonderland. Some of the music was by Pink Floyd, but played by an orchestra. It reminded me of this mash up piece I wrote in graduate school when I was trying to show some of the nonsensical nature of schizophrenia.

Syd Barrett was one of the original members of the band Pink Floyd, when it was called “The Pink Floyd.”  Early in his career, he developed schizophrenia (at least that is what most people believe his diagnosis was) but he continued to write songs. This is a mash up of one of his songs and the tea party from Alice and Wonderland.

Syd Barrett Has Tea with Alice

Have some wine, Syd, said March Hare.

Syd replied :

Trip to heave and ho

Up to and fro.

Come, we shall have some fun now, said Alice.

Syd replied:

So trip to heave and ho

Up down to and fro

You have no word

Exactly so, said Alice.

Close our eyes to the Octopus ride, said a voice in Syd’s head.

I do, said Alice.

Syd thought:

Isn’t it good to be lost in the wood?

Isn’t it bad so quiet there in the wood?

Hatter said, Not the same thing a bit!

Syd replied:

Meant even less to me than I thought;

With a honey plough of yellow prickly seeds,

Clover honey pots and mystic shining feed.

Well the madcap laughed.

Hatter asked, It is the same thing with you?

Close our eyes to the Octopus ride, said the voice in Syd’s head.

The madcap laughed.

Syd started a poem:

The winds ain’t blew and the leaves in white

They’ll never put me in their bag

The seas will reed you’ll always see

So high you go so low you creep

Have you guessed the riddle yet? said the Hatter.

Alice asked, Is that the way you manage?

Close our eyes to the Octopus ride, said the voice.

It’s always tea-time, said Hatter.

Alice asked, But what happens when you come to the beginning again?

At any rate I’ll never go there again…

And they all replied:

Trip to heave and ho

Up down to and fro

Close our eyes to the Octopus ride. 

 

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