Scattered pieces

Please note: This entry may trigger due to talk of sexual abuse.  When reading this, also consider that our point in the healing journey is still firmly in the intellectual, and it is one of our more unemotional ones writing this.

Reflecting upon my abuse, I can see how such an ‘‘unpopular topic’’ as child sex abuse can be influenced by the discourse of scholars and ‘‘experts’’ who attempt to categorize sexual abuse in terms of severity, based on levels of intrusion, duration, trauma, and the relationship between the victim and the offender (Kemp, 1984). From this ‘‘abuse degree perspective,’’ one can rationalize that my abuse wasn’t all that bad. After all, look at how horrible other people had it compared to you. In fact, you should be thankful, for the trauma could have been a great deal worse. In the words of Rambo-Ronai (1995), I begrudge this clinical analysis and, as many of my friends and acquaintances would attest, ‘‘resent the idea that my situation was in any way fortunate.’’ Indeed, the problem with this quantification of abuse is that it sounds strangely like my mother’s denial of these events. I wonder if any abuse-crisis counselor would rationalize physical abuse by stating ‘‘It’s really not all that bad, you can’t see the bruise, and you can still walk, and you didn’t get a broken neck. I wouldn’t worry about it. It will be gone in a week.’’

(Harvey Lemelin, 2006, pp. 342-343)

This quote  speaks volumes to me.  I’m so caught up in trying to learn the mental health system and how it operates that it’s easy to get lost in the labels, diagnoses, degrees of severity etc.  I know I do this to try and gain a sense of control over something that has a huge influence on my life.  Because of this desire for control (and therefore a layer of safety), I learn the language they use and what questions they ask in the assessments.  But what does this do apart from perpetuate the intellectualisation of my experiences?

I do find that some of the language has helped to describe my experiences and demystified many things that feel incredibly crazy.  But I also buy into that intellectualisation because of the barrier it provides to the horror it describes.  As an example, we regularly experience derealisation.  That sentence is easy for many mental health professionals to understand.  But it only touches the surface of that experience.  It is much harder to describe the feeling where your perception of the world shifts so that you are now looking at three movie screens; where the world suddenly appears brighter or more blurred; that feeling as if nothing is real or here and you are not part of anything.  We’ve spent over 5 minutes explaining our derealisation experiences to assessing psychiatrists, it’s much easier to just say that one line.  It makes it feel plausible, acceptable and real.

I constantly struggle with understanding our abuse.  We constantly play mind games with ourselves in an attempt to deny, minimise or prove that it didn’t occur.  Then we’re caught in a flashback or a memory “leaks” into our common awareness and we’re thrown into chaos.  We learned very early that emotions didn’t do you any favours – they were met with hostility, scorn or ignored.  Because of this, we’ve relied on the intellectual.  This is not to say that we’re incredibly intelligent, but rather there are very few of us who feel emotions.  We realise that we need to move beyond that façade of intellectualisation in order to be able to heal, but that also means moving into the abyss of emotions.

I’m not sure when we’ll be ready to take this step.  It will mean altering the way we look at the world and how we cope within it.  It will mean breaking down or modifying all of our coping mechanisms.  What is become obvious over the last few months is that we’re slowly starting to move back to the place we were about 6 years ago – incredibly high-functioning, high achieving and in the depths of denial.  We’re torn between wanting to find a therapist who can help us heal, and continuing down the road of denial and suppression.  While the mother was here she mentioned that we’re very withdrawn from everything, it’s a very easy and comfortable place to be in.  Realistically, I’m not sure we can stay there for long.

Reference:

Harvey Lemelin, R. (2006). Running to stand still: The story of a victim, a survivor, a wounded healer, a narrative of male sexual abuse from the inside. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 11(4), 337-350. Retrieved June 9, 2009, doi:10.1080/15325020600663128

Unfortunately, the article is only available through subscription or purchase.

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Now playing: Lost and running by Powderfinger
via FoxyTunes

Please note: This entry may trigger due to talk of sexual abuse.  When reading this, also consider that our point in the healing journey is still firmly in the intellectual, and it is one of our more unemotional ones writing this.

About a year ago, Matthew (our American friend) asked us if we considered that it was different for males to be sexually abused.  My immediate reaction was to say “of course”.  I said this purely from what male survivors have told me about the reactions of those they have made disclosures to.  The ex-husband was told that he should count himself lucky that he learned about it early, or that he was lucky he “got some” regularly.  To put this into context, he was sexually abused by his sister and her friend from the ages of 7-13.  Matthew has been accused of being homosexual because his abusers included males – his abuse started at the age of 3.

I know that women are also subjected to this sort of minimisation, denial and warped thinking.  But because of the perception of gender roles, many societies do not look at male sexual abuse victims in the same way as female victims.  This inequity can be seen in the stoning of a female rape victim in Somalia and the need for articles about the problems male rape survivors experience in America (e.g. Male disclosure of sexual abuse and rape).  This also makes sense within my culture – I crave secrecy about my abuse because I am an educated middle class woman of European descent, and “they” aren’t victims.  In New Zealand men are expected to play sport, hunt and do all things masculine, they are not expected to be victims.  Victims are that group of people whom no one ever sees, hears or knows.  The perpetrators are unknown “creepy” men in long overcoats whom drive slowly past schools.  Yes, stereotypes are alive and well around the world.

Maybe Rambo-Ronai (1995) and Blair (2002) were right when they compared society … to an abusive patriarch who demands the silence of his children. The groundbreaking work of the feminist movement did much to decode the complexities of violence and abuse, and new service delivery models for trauma have emerged (Goodwin, 2005); however, despite their titles, many agencies that identify themselves as sexual assault centers only serve women. This preclusion of male victimization is no doubt due to the primary mission to address the impact of male perpetration. However, through its inadvertent sole-gender mandate, these centers deny the reality of sexual victimization of men. Thus, male victims are provided with no avenue of reporting or addressing sexual abuse. What occurs is that social stereotypes are indirectly reinforced, and male survivors of sexual abuse remain social enigmas (Goodwin, 2005; Pelka, 1997).

(Lemelin, 2006, pp. 345-346)

We live in New Zealand where as a female survivor of abuse, we can access woman’s support programmes and specialised domestic violence courses for female survivors.  If I was a male survivor, my options for accessing those free programmes would be limited.  Many of the programmes receive funding on the proviso that the programme be targeted to a particular population (predominantly females, youth or a cultural minority).  I can see how this may assist the participants, but I can also see how this may create a barrier as well.  I’m not advocating for the gender specific programmes be disbanded, but rather there be a balance.

It has been interesting writing this entry.  There has been much angst about it internally due to the fear of offending any readers.  I apologise if I have caused offense by what I have written – especially to the male readers of this blog whom I know B and Sophie care about.  I also realise that this may offend woman readers, but I hope you can see that I’m not trying to minimise the woman’s experiences, but rather draw attention to a perceived inequity regarding an access to services and an attitude towards male survivors.

Reference:

Lemelin, R. (2006). Running to stand still: The story of a victim, a survivor, a wounded healer, a narrative of male sexual abuse from the inside. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 11(4), 337-350. Retrieved June 9, 2009, doi:10.1080/15325020600663128

Unfortunately, the article is only available through subscription or purchase.

Ever get that feeling like your wading through molasses?  Like your trying to reach the other side of the river, but half way across the water has turned to sticky molasses that is trying to suck you under?  That’s what the last few weeks have felt like.  We’ve had little clues as to what has been causing this, but we’re at the point where we need to write them down in order to try and work them through.

1. We’re incredibly threatened by Liz
A healthy amount of challenging is appropriate from a therapist, but we’ve interpreted Liz’ experience in the dissociative disorders as a threat.  This is for many reasons, pretty much all of them could be assigned to our insecurities and negative experiences with previous mental health professionals.  We know that we can work on this by trying to communicate with Liz as much as we can – we’re starting to do this by giving her a copy of all of our YouTube work.  If nothing else, these clips give a different view-point into our experiences and interpretation of what is occurring.

2. We are increasingly aware of how anger effects us.
Several blogs we’ve read have lately have looked at the issue of anger, predominantly how it is expressed by the abuse survivor.  We do have this as an issue – some of us do feel anger which is not expressed appropriately.  Yes, some of us self-injure; but this is rare and those that do self-injure don’t seem to do it out of anger – or else the anger is off the scale to the point where they appear to be operating on auto-pilot.  But our main issue at the moment is being able to understand how anger is expressed by those around us.  When Kriss doesn’t contact us regularly, we interpret this as the brooding anger that the father exhibited while we were growing up.  Today the team leader was getting angry about a decision that the library manager had made, but was questioning and raising her voice at us instead of the library manager.  This triggered a young one to the point where we nearly crawled under the desk – not a good look for a supposedly mature librarian.

3. Terrified of making therapy about “us”
We know we’ve been in therapy for about 4-5 years, but most of that has been aimed at surviving the abusive marriage.  We’re now at the point where we have to go into therapy and concentrate on us and how we can heal.  This is terrifying!  We learnt from an early age that we are worthless and anything that we do to try and draw positive attention is futile.  Now we’re meant to spend at least an hour per week concentrating on what we need.  That concept is so triggering it’s incredible.

4. Memories of the perfect childhood.
Possibly to give us hope, or possibly just a way this brain plays with itself, we’ve been getting more images of the perfect childhood that some of us created in order to cope with what was happening to us.  It’s a beautiful childhood that involves having a dog, a garden etc.  What is interesting, is that even in our perfect childhood there is no real sense of having a family.

5. Terror that we’re going to get much worse before we get better.
When we see the hell that other survivors are going through, we worry that if we lift the lid on the emotions and memories that some of us hold, we’ll go through something similar.  It’s a very irrational fear based on looking for ways to block therapy and go into the unknown area of healing, but it’s something that hits us every now and again.  We know we’re lucky in our current level of functioning and are worried about losing that.  We also know that losing that functioning doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with healing.

6. Time-frames for healing.
Liz mentioned that it is reasonable to expect someone with Borderline Personality Disorder to have seven years of therapy before healing.  That is a really long time.  We don’t meet the diagnostic criteria for BPD, but it’s still indicative.  It’s still scary.  Management had a time-frame of being “cured” in six months when we first went to therapy, we knew within a couple of weeks that this time-frame wasn’t possible; but we’re scared of a process that could take years and what could happen in that time.  Part of this is because we have so little concept of time – if you’ve ever talked about seven years to a child, you know the sort of reaction that you can get.  We have a similar concept of time.

Trying to remember to take it a moment at a time.

Today we had a very interesting therapy session.  It slipped into the more familiar (and potentially dangerous) territory of playing with words.  Liz (codename for new therapist), is still trying to understand what we mean when we say certain words.  This sort of thing appeals to some of us who are familiar with verbal fencing.  We’re not word-smiths by any means, but our mind can do the mental agility needed for a debate.  This is potentially dangerous, in that it allows us to test Liz’ ability to keep up.  Our previous therapist (Carol) couldn’t keep up, and many of us weren’t able to respect her on an intellectual level because of this – which is pretty ripe considering we’re not a genius by any stretch of the imagination, but anyway…  Today Liz handled it well, she was able to spar back and gently questioned the beliefs behind some of the statements made.

What is interesting is that she’s now starting to realise that we don’t have a support network.  Our American friend was told over the weekend that his wife wants a divorce – naming his dissociative disorder as the main reason.  They were married and had the children before the dissociation became obvious and she has never really understood it - thank you to the partners of dissociatives who do make an effort to learn and understand.  Because of this news and the implications, he became suicidal.  We spent most of yesterday on the phone with him trying to convince him to give it a month before he makes any decisions.  I was pretty sure that we’d failed in convincing him and that we were never going to hear from him again.  He lives in Texas where the gun laws are pretty lenient – you just need to be an adult and have money, no waiting period or anything (what’s with that????).  Thankfully he didn’t have enough money for a gun.  He’s now planning to go to work tomorrow, so the immediate danger is over.  I know it’s just delayed, but he’s safe for now.

Anyway, my point about the support network…  We told her about being on the phone with him to talk him through it and she knew that we’d also been going through a bad patch of thinking, so asked who we talked to about it.  When we talked about people overseas being closer to us than anyone here, I think it finally sunk in that we have no one.

We’ve been struggling for the last two days to not take down all the posts that refer to the suicidal thinking, which we now see as babyish attention seeking.  But as a contrast, we’d be happy to talk to anyone we consider to be our friends if they were struggling with suicidal ideation or self-injury.  Our American friend wanted us to ramble to him today, just so he could be soothed by Sophie’s voice.  We did it for as long as possible, but Sophie isn’t very good at rambling :)

The other testing we did with Liz today was ask her why she considered us to be DID.  She had mentioned something about our dissociation prior to our asking, so it wasn’t out of the blue.  But it made some of us curious and more than a little guarded – in some respects Liz is a greater threat to our system in that she has other DID clients.  What if she looks at us and says we do or don’t have DID?  Which would be worse?  Previous to Liz, the therapists have been well meaning and skilled, but not in the dissociative disorders.  So Liz poses a threat to some – what if she spots the switching?  What if she SEES us?  We can feel the tug of war happening already – some want to move forward and heal, some want to stay hidden so no one can hurt us again.  What is slightly amusing is that W was the main questioner regarding why Liz thought we were DID, and is also one of the ones who wants to stay hidden…

W is so brave and tough, but she had to be…

On Friday we were feeling really good.  It was fairly quiet internally and there was a sense that we were OK.  We even did some YouTube stuff.  Then out of the blue, our American friend we hadn’t heard from in 3-4 months contacted us.  Yesterday we called him and it was a rather odd conversation.  He mentioned that we seemed much more integrated now.  Not sure how accurate this is, and it’s in direct contrast to a statement from Kriss who wonders if he’ll ever be able to talk to me without the protection of the others being there.   I’ve often wondered how the dissociative protection appears for the significant people in our lives, it must be very confusing for them.  I know when we were in high school one of our friends mentioned that we used to get a very nasty expression on our face for no apparent reason – I’m now pretty sure this was some sort of dissociative switch or trigger reaction.  It also helps explain why we didn’t make friends easily (at all?)…

We’re still really shaky and numb from the phone call.  I don’t know all of what was said, and most of it has been taken away from me.  I know we talked for just over two hours, but I only remember about 20 minutes of it, if that.

As for the mindless games – well this one isn’t so much mindless as REALLY addictive and frustrating, it’s called Fantastic Contraption.  The basic principle is that you have to build a contraption to move a piece of block from one area to another.  Kriss sent me the link, and is just a little annoyed that while he was still working on level three we got to level six :)  We have a young one who is great with this sort of problem solving.

As a final note, it seems that this year it’s televisions turn to beat up on Dissociative Identity Disorder – first United States of Tara and now another Criminal Minds episode…  Movies like Beautiful Mind were seen as a fairly accurate description of what it is like to live with Schizophrenia, but also received awards and made box office millions.  Why can’t the entertainment industry learn from this?  Do it well, or don’t do it at all.  But then, I suppose if they lived by that ethic there would be very few television shows or movies produced - and the problem with that would be???

This weekend we HAVE to finish the abuse history for ACC.  So far other fascinating jobs have meant that we’ve been unable to do this.  Jobs such as – doing the shopping; searching for images for a Polyvore set which we ended up not doing; doing household chores; trying to find a new container for a pot plant; playing cards online; answering some messages on YouTube; going to the library to drop off some books not due back for three weeks; this post…  So yeah, like vital stuff :)

Kinda wondering how long we can make this post…

Or maybe we’ll just spell check it lots…

Ohhh Earth Hour means we can’t do anything on the computer between 8.30 and 9.30…

To continue the random theme, there was a very odd conversation on Thursday between B and one of the student assistants at work.  He worked for over 10 years in a psychiatric ward while living in England – he refused to do similar work over here when he saw the conditions, techniques and methodologies used.  We’ve talked previously about mental health issues in general – he has no idea about our diagnoses.  He’s another of our cynical buddies who questions everything – usually appropriately.

Ok, so back to Thursday…  He’d been working the front desk for a couple of hours and when we came out he was ready to pull what remains of his hair out.  He’d had a stream of what he called “thick as” students.  Did I mention that he is probably one of the most intelligent people I know?  After showing his concern about the lack of common sense and academic ability amongst the student body of the institution, we joked about this factor being what made us feel more sane.  Usually he would joke along with us, but for some reason on Thursday he didn’t.  I’m not sure if he spotted us as being more vulnerable or what it was, but instead of the usual banter that would go long the lines of “we feel more sane and intelligent because we’re faced with greater stupidity and insanity”… he just straight up said “I’ve never noticed your brain not working correctly.  It works fine.”  At first we thought he was still playing around; but no, he was really serious.

M just reminded me that on Thursday we had our first appointment with the woman’s support programme, so we probably looked vulnerable to someone who knew what clues to look for.  I know he’s looked closely at our arm a couple of times – one self-injury scar is noticeable if you know what it is.  Hmmm going to have to be very “normal” with him this week and hope he forgets last week.

While we’re putting off the inevitable ACC hoop jumping exercise…  We’ve sort of reached an odd point with this blog.  We enjoy writing here, but as with anything that goes on the Internet it is open to misunderstanding, insults and ridicule.  We’ve experienced all of these in the YouTube and Polyvore sites, and we’ve recently experienced it from one of our blog entries.  With the YouTube comments, they were easily ignored because they obviously were from a very conservative view that was so out of touch with reality that it unsettled us, but didn’t really hurt too much.  But with the Polyvore and the blog instances it was a little harder to cope with.  It also tends to happen more when Sophie is involved – possibly because she is softer emotionally and that can show in the work we do.  There’s not much that we can do about it – it tends to be other people with issues pushing their extreme ideas.

Ohhh well, better go and find something else to use as an avoidance technique…

Today was the ACC mediation appointment.  It was an interesting experience…

1. Don’t assume that because the representatives of ACC are ringing in for the mediation, that it will be any less stressful than seeing them in the flesh – it won’t be.
2. If you’re a mediator for a sensitive claim, DON’T try to reassuringly touch the claimants arm if she is stressed.  This will have the side effect of causing the claimant to “freak” and nearly bring the mediation to an early closure (about 10 mins in).
3. Ensure that if you are the claimant in an ACC mediation process, that you have a kick arse advocate!  We have a kick arse advocate :)
4. If you’re the ACC representative, don’t disclose that a request for a full copy of the claimant’s file was not followed – it will annoy her no end and cause a dissociative switch.
5. If you’re the ACC representative, DON’T call into question the assessors and peer reviewers credentials – it doesn’t make the process look all that equitable or transparent.
6. If you’re the ACC representative, DON’T say that the peer reviewer who slashed the claimants entitlements “wrote the book” on the assessing guidelines – especially when the guidelines are actually written by the American Medical Association…  The big clue about this one is on the title page of the guidelines :)
7. If you’re a mediator for ACC and are alone in the room with the claimant, don’t talk about your Lemon De-tox diet – she really doesn’t care.  Although it was a good attempt at trying to make a hellish situation a little more bearable…
8. If you’re the claimant, try not to self-injure while in the middle of mediation.  OK so it was only scratching, but it’s not a good look!
9. If you’re the mediator, DON’T ask at the end of the mediation if the claimant really works full-time with a rather stunned look on your face – it really made us feel really inadequate that we couldn’t keep it together for the two hour meeting.

Mediation over!  We just have to write up our full abuse history, detail why we are such a mess in our daily functioning and try to explain DID as a support function which allows us to work full-time…  So… like… yeah… like a piece of cake really!

We then have the prospect of having to do another assessment if they still don’t change their entitlement allocations significantly…  Are we having fun yet?

Disclaimer – this is a rant aimed at no one – well maybe it takes a few pot shots at the DID stereotype.  Please don’t take any part of this personally.

Kathy Broady wrote posts in her blog Discussing Dissociation about the 10 Benefits of Being Multiple and What if you don’t like being Multiple.  It’s been interesting reading these posts and the associated comments for many reasons.  As with any group of survivors talking about an important issue, there is a certain amount of transference and triggering by what is being mentioned.  This wasn’t helped by the (necessary) need for Kathy to moderate the comments, which could mean that people were responding to the latest comment visible; but when Kathy got through moderating them, suddenly your response was out of context with what was occurring.

What became apparent, is that there is a great deal of confusion about what happens if you don’t “like” being DID.  We can only speak of our experiences and feelings, but we DON’T like being DID.  This is for many reasons, some of which are -

1. It’s a disorder born from an abusive past – no one wants to own an abusive past.
2. The symptoms we experience as a result of being DID negatively influence almost every aspect of our daily living – and we’re considered high functioning.
3. We’re not just DID – it’s a cliché, but we are more than a label assigned by a psychiatrist.

It could be seen that our dislike of being DID would translate to us not liking each of the ones that make up our dissociative system.  In our case, this just isn’t true.  I freely admit that there are ones which terrify me or whom I just don’t understand.  But this doesn’t mean that I don’t like, or more importantly, respect them.  Some hold feelings and experiences that I can’t comprehend.  Does my fear filter through to these ones in some way – quite possibly.  But if that’s the case, then they can also feel the respect and care that I have for them.

Our dissociation was created in an environment that encouraged our isolation.  We didn’t reach or call out for help because we soon learnt that help wasn’t available.  So now when we look for hope and enjoyment in our life, we try to look externally to challenge those old habits of looking inward.  This is not to say that we don’t have internal hope – Sophie and Katie are our most obvious sources of internal hope; but rather we also need to learn to look outside ourselves.  External hope for us doesn’t involve any sort of higher power, but is more likely to be found in nature – a sunset, our cat acting like a kitten rather than her 14 years, etc.

David commented -

This thread, and the thread prior to it, about benefits of being multiple, have given me a curious sense that having DID is rather like belonging to an exclusive club of some kind, and I’m perceived as not playing by the proper rules of etiquette.

I’m going to take this slightly out of context, in that I have also felt very similar things in some areas of the online DID community.  In the very first online discussion forum that we joined regarding dissociation, it seemed very much a competition as to who had the “worst past” or “worst symptoms”.  Some of the people in the forum had a horrific past, there is no doubt about that.  But it became a very negative environment that seemed to invest in dysfunction rather than supportive growth.  When I say this, I also realise that we wallow in self-pity on occasion and are the first to admit that we are FAR from perfect!

I’ve also encountered suspicion regarding our ability to function and our diagnosis from other people with DID.  It’s a very odd feeling to be questioned about events that have occurred etc.  This has always been regarding things we have revealed, but it is still disconcerting.  What makes it more interesting is that some of us have quite different versions of events.  So unless the person we’re communicating with is aware of our dissociation, it can be hard to tell that they’re talking to another alter so the answer given could be slightly different.  A simple example of this is that W still believes that the family was excommunicated from the Church because we screamed during services as a baby; but I know it was because the mother started using birth control.

So what is all this rambling leading up to?

Only from our experience, we’ve found it very hard to find a community or even a few people that we feel some sort of connection with.  A connection that is based on similar experiences, struggles or views.  Because of this need to feel some form of connection and therefore acceptance, we often fall into the old habits of looking for approval, but expecting to be rejected.  This dynamic means that we look for slights when they’re not there, it also means that we can pick them up when they are hidden within a seemingly innocent question.  Also because of our insecurities and dysfunction, we have to be very careful that we don’t start to change in order to try and fit in a little more.  We did this sort of chameleon behaviour all our life to try and blend in and not stand out too much.

People with DID have different ways of coping, viewing the world and healing.  This is one of the reasons why I hate the generalisations about DID.  We are all different, some will look to a higher power for help, some will find art an outlet, some will continue to find humour in the oddest places, some will find that getting up each morning is an achievement… All of these are valid reasons to celebrate and an indication of healing.  These are also about being human.  We respect each persons right to find a way to heal that suits them, we just ask for that respect be reciprocated to all other survivors.

Today was our last session with Bob.  It went OK.  Our little toughie W came forward to do a majority of the session.  This worked in that she is very definite about what she wants or doesn’t want.  So while the softness of Sophie could be easily swayed, W ensured that this was a last session.

The big problem is that we are now without a therapist… heading into one of the nastiest anniversaries we have.  As we’ve never gone through this particular anniversary before, we’re not really sure how it’s going to affect us. So far, it hasn’t been good.

Bob is concerned that we’re going to have no support during this time.  She really is a good clinical psychologist, she’s highly recommended and we can see why.  The problem is that I’m not sure if she really believed in our diagnosis and tried to force us to quickly move ahead.  A great part of this is because of the way in which ACC fund clinical psychologist sessions (10 sessions at a time), as opposed to counsellor sessions (30 sessions at a time).  She was really nice about the whole thing and tried to assure us that this shouldn’t be seen as our fault – something that Sophie mentioned as we’ve failed to make progress with a highly recommended psychologist.

W has an issue with “running away” – her very childlike understanding of what suicide means.  Her wanting to run away was mentioned during the session and I think Bob picked up on what it really meant to W.  She mentioned getting hold of the Adult Mental Health Team to try and get us some assistance until we can find another therapist.  But the Mental Health Team and us are not a good mix.  They are sure that we have Borderline Personality Disorder, and treat us horribly as a result.  Bob again mentioned respite care and trying to use the respite as a way to try and get some rest and sleep – as well as monitor our safety.  We may have to resort to this, I’m not sure.  We’re not in danger at the moment, but know that this may change if we don’t get some sleep soon.

Just one moment at a time…