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10/9/2017 Longing For An End Perhaps because it’s the biggest killer of men under 50 talking about suicide has become less taboo but there’s still a lot of stigma and fear when it comes to actually talking about suicidal feelings. People fear that talking about these feelings will result in panic and chaos, that a counsellor will call the police or prevent them from leaving the room until an ambulance arrives with a mental health team and a straight jacket. Some suicidal people want something like that to happen, for someone to relieve them of all responsibility, to take control and let them rest but anxiety about how that may happen prevents them from taking a first step.
My contract has four clauses that limit confidentiality and one of them is if the client is seriously suicidal, but what does ‘seriously’ actually mean? If a client tells me that within the last few hours they’ve taken an overdose then I’ll call an ambulance whether the client says they want me to or not – the fact that they’ve told me at all suggests that some part of them wants my intervention. So far that’s never happened to me. What has happened is that a client has told me enough to make me concerned that they may actively try to kill themselves within the next few days. I’ve asked their permission to contact their GP to get them involved. I’ve done this twice, both times with the client and me in the same room and with the speakerphone on. It’s important for the client to know precisely what is happening. Both times the client saw the GP within 4 hours. They weren’t sectioned or coerced into anything and continued to come to therapy. Huge numbers of people feel more or less suicidal every day. When things seem too overwhelming, when you’re too tired and worn down, when there are too many demands and nowhere near enough resources suicide can seem to be a rational choice. The vast majority of people who feel this way don’t want to die, they dearly want to live, but to live differently from the life that they are trapped in. Poverty, pain, violence, shame, discrimination, fear, exhaustion and a long list of other circumstances can make life anguished and hopeless, compounded by the wretched fashion of positivity that boils down to ‘You are always failing.’ Suicidal feelings can be comforting, they offer a semblance of control when everything else seems frighteningly out of control. If the pain or other struggles become too much then suicide simplifies everything. It’s why prisoners are kept on suicide watch: to stop them having any control whatsoever over their own life. To remove that final aspect of control from a person who sees suicide as their last resort is a form of torture. Feelings of despair and suicidality are more than worthy of being heard, they are the heart of the matter. Sometimes they are a howl from the past when events took over and swept you away. Sometimes the present is unbearable. You know that no one ever gets over the death of a child or another dearly loved person and the idea of living with this pain seems impossible at the same time as beginning to come to terms with it can seem like a betrayal. Moving into the liminal space between life and death can be caused by cumulative smaller events: being subjected to ‘regeneration’ or being made redundant; the end of another relationship or many long years of a violent one; workplace insults and misery can wear a person down to nothing. Living with suicidal feelings can become habitual, the neurological pathways between anxiety, a sad thought, a difficult event and the solution of death become well worn and more swiftly travelled without us even realising it. Whatever the case examining these feelings and thoughts is the work of therapy. Bringing a light into these places can make them less mysterious, less alarming. Looking at them squarely can diminish their power and witnessing them honours what may have been longing to be seen for many years. No counsellor can stop a person who is determined to kill themselves. For some people life is genuinely too complex and painful to endure and no amount of care, trust, relationship, medication, voluntary or involuntary hospitalisation or anything else will ultimately prevent it. Yes, suicide often bequeathes more pain and misery, no one denies that, and there are often ways out of present agony other than death. If you can choose to die at any time, take the time to share your truth with someone who can bear it. Maytree - 020 7263 7070 MIND Samaritans 116 123 International Resources 15/5/2017 #mondayoverexposure
#mondaymotivation is a twitter routine where people and organisations get all whoop whoop about how GREAT the beginning of the working week is. I work with small organisations to help create their social media strategy and know it can be useful to schedule a guaranteed-to-trend hashtag but unless it's truthful it's more than wasteful, it invites criticism.
My local college has been serving the community for a century offering excellent education in a Ward that is the joint first most deprived in London. It was recently sold to the Council in fairly strange circumstances - who are now going to demolish it to build houses. We have been promised that the College is simply relocating - and no doubt it will. Many locals have been incensed by this and their detailed research has uncovered some alarming information about what looks like financial mismanagement of some description. All this is happening at a very high level and the day to day running of the College continues. Banners have been put up outside telling us to prepare for something wonderful and the social media is always good. But their #mondaymotivation post this morning was too revealing.
Another local organisation picked up on it and, to my joy, referenced an article debunking positive psychology. Then they referenced a blog that has been digging into the Colleges finances.
“The Management Accounts up to 31 December 2016 indicate that the College will fall significantly short of its income target for the current year. The overall shortfall is expected to be in the region of £1.7 million. Governors expressed concern at the dramatic change in financial forecasts compared to what was reported to the Board in October, where the then Management Accounts forecast a year-end surplus of £256k.” Oh dear. I have no idea about what's really going on at the College but, from a psychological stance, this tweet exposes rather too much about the uncertainty and anxiety that college staff may be feeling. The image seems based on purposefully alarming carnival entrances designed to let you know that you're entering a world where the usual rules don't apply. It's menacing and sinister and if you walk through the gaping mouth you are consenting to enter a world that you have been blatantly warned about. You give your consent for anything to occur, especially things that are frightening and disturbing, like being eaten up. The features are based on something that is human but horrifically distorted. Clowns are ambiguous: they're supposed to be hilarious and they're notoriously creepy. They say one thing and mean the opposite. The origin of clowning is in satire, where the Fool was able to tell hard truths to powerful people as long as he kept entertaining them. And everyone knows the narrative of the deeply unhappy clown. I'm not going to say much about the nose on the gif other than that Freud would have a field day with it, and that my more analytical colleagues would have something to say about an unconscious reference to being conned. Positive thinking is clearly linked to denial. (Do a search for 'positive thinking denial'. The second image is of a clown with his fingers in his ears and his eyes tight shut.) Denial is a coping mechanism that allows us breathing space in which to adapt to new, unpleasant information, but refusing to accept that something is very wrong means that the world slips out of your control - like entering into a sinister carnival world. Cognitive dissonance makes the world seem confusing and threatening and, as any recovering addict will tell you, denial traps and isolates you, preventing change. Positive thinking can result in the polar opposite of what we're told it's supposed to do, as it did today for the College. Their maniacally upbeat, ambivalently simple tweet has drawn some very serious attention that is way beyond what a social media team can be expected to deal with. Organisationally, we always have to spin things to our advantage but this is a skilled and delicate job, one that requires complete awareness of reality and the avoidance of being seen to be misleading. Individually, attempting this kind of spin is more often than not denial at best, narcissism at worst. One way or another the truth shows itself, whether we know it or not. *I've not addressed the spelling mistake because it may be that the person who wrote the tweet doesn't speak English as a first language. And it adds to the post's incongruence. 29/3/2017 Positivity Or Denial? There comes a point when you have to take stock and say, “Things are bad.” The beginning of the economic downturn saw a tedious increase in ‘experts’ telling us that positivity would make everything better. Thinking about what is good rather than bad and focusing on the good stuff really can build new neural pathways and change your attitude for the better. But it won't help if you want to walk across the road with your eyes shut. Very quickly the suggestion that positivity can be helpful has turned into a demand. We live in a country where therapists are working with the DWP to make unemployed people go back to paid employment and where paid employment is suddenly perceived as a ‘positive health outcome.’ If you think that’s wonderful then you don’t care about evidence. It is unethical, counterproductive and has no basis in fact. It speaks volumes about the desperation that many therapists are feeling. Because you’re reading this it’s probable that you’re all too aware that things have been falling apart for some time. Many businesses can’t afford the materials and staff they need and so existing staff are working at the edges of their ability and capacity. Public services - the services we all use when we travel, get ill, expect an educated population or want our elderly relatives to have some kind of dignity – have been amputated. Things are falling apart. The most vulnerable amongst us have been telling us this for years. And now ordinary people who are not vulnerable are feeling it.
Cognitive dissonance is “the mental stress experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values; when performing an action that contradicts existing beliefs, ideas, or values; or when confronted with new information that contradicts existing beliefs, ideas, and values.” We all experience it from time to time but many of us are finding a home in this unbearable environment. Demands for positivity have become authoritarian, insisting that we cut a smile into our face and do little dances of joy to demonstrate team spirit or something. Anyone saying, “My life is hard” is a shirker. Anyone suggesting that motivational speeches don’t put food on the table is dismissed as unenthusiastic. People who want to care for a sick child are told that they must ‘arrange alternative childcare.’ How do you discern whether positivity indicates confidence or stupidity? Intelligence, good business strategy and the ability to avoid danger involves knowing when to cut our losses. The alternative is to continue staring at the sun, borrow unsustainable amounts of money, time and good will and crash disastrously. Things are bad for most of us right now and, as adults, we need to look at facts rather than allow our prejudices and desires to rule us. Sterling is falling and the trend is downward. A 60-hour week is no longer unusual. (If you don’t work a 60 hour week that’s a good thing not an indication that you’re lazy.) Anxiety is twice as prevalent as depression. Our children are becoming more and more distressed. If you’ve read my blog for a while you know I don’t like inspirational quotes and the pretence that everything will improve if we all just pull together and think happy thoughts. Now I’m saying that if you’re an ordinary person and you’re not feeling a bit crap that it’s likely that you’re ignoring something. 22/12/2016 Christmas Comes But Once A Year, Thank God.
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July 2018
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work |
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