Foreword to the following report: I have discussed an unfortunate encounter between Thomas Kabir and I on Thursday evening, 21st May when he was sitting, unsuspecting, at a dinner table and I appeared, three sheets to the wind and sat down beside him (see below). My subjective experience and reflections around and from this encounter are relayed in both of my blogs.
Consequently, since I have no knowledge of Thomas Kabir whatever outside of the brief meeting I had with him at the Conference, my comments can only be seen as an index of my own generic concerns and issues. Nothing I say can or should be taken to reflect on Thomas Kabir in anyway whatsoever. Any appearance of such reflection should be dismissed as misleading. Thanks.
Last week I spent a couple of days in Nottingham for the MHRN Scientific Conference (organised by Thomas Kabir I was given to understand by someone or another..). The event was well attended by experts by experience as well as experts by profession amongst the delegate group, whilst the speakers were overwhelmingly selected for their professional expertise predominantly as psychiatrists from Kings College and from the Institute of Psychiatry (both in London).
There was plenty of attention to quantitative data analysis and statistical probability factors, to neuro-imaging and to psycho-pharmacology and a certain amount of language use that couldn't reasonably be interpreted other than as inadvertently reinforcing stigmatising and redundant intellectual frameworks.
I noticed the prevalent references to terms such as 'disease', 'cognitive impairment', 'loss of grey matter' and so forth and an approving reference (indeed 2 approving references) to Kraepelin offered in the first case in selective and frankly distorting contextualisation.
One speaker, whose name escapes me but reminded me of the word Shit (quite wrong by the way; but I'll correct it in next posting and you'll understand the shorthand memory jogger I gave myself) was particularly interesting; I couldn't regard his position as other than predominantly medical model but his thinking appeared subtle and intelligently tentative: what a very welcome breeze in a largely unimaginative community of interests.
One of the most infuriating aspects of much research that is being pursued is that in itself the research subject matter is not uninteresting yet the inflections of priority and value base informing such research and the circles of conversational network within which such research develops and continues, removes from it the more interesting potentials for interdisciplinery dialogue and productivity that its funding might justify.
Instead of becoming exciting it is excitably protected inside intellectually sterile frameworks. Still, there are reasons to be cheerful, we kept being told and so (dum dum dum) let's keep smiling and keeping the faith (wink)
In a somewhat inebriated condition I approached Thomas Kabir at the Conference Dinner and confronted him with my concerns about the selection of speakers (as said above, very high proportion of psychiatric academics, a sprinkling of psychologists and one expert by experience co-presenting with an academic) and the weighting of biological and pathologising interpretations of mental health distresses and disturbances. He didn’t seem delighted with me.
He seemed even less delighted with me the following morning when I sensed his aversion to my presence. I made a decision to approach him and apologise to him for my rudeness the previous evening. My rudeness as I recall consisted of an attempt to encourage him to take me seriously by pointing out that I was old enough to be his mother. It was an inappropriate effort to give myself leverage to equality of speaker status with him.
Thursday, 28 May 2009
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Blast From the Past
Found emails between Janie Greville and Dr. John King, Consultant Psychiatrist (now retired) from September 2008:-
RE:
From: Janie Greville (janiegreville@hotmail.com)
Sent: 17 September 2008 01:25:42
To: King, John (Psychiatry) (john.king@worcsmhp.nhs.uk)
Hi John,
Thanks for your email.
Re my essay - frankly I almost never feel that way every day these days! However, I felt that way every day from leaving hospital last autumn until well into April this year and between November 2000 and August 2003 I felt like that - at the worst suicidal thoughts pacing and smoking state - pretty much 24-7 apart from a brief respite that I believe I spent in hospital at your suggestion in 2002. And I was struggling on and off with the medium level (the doing nothing waiting for godot/coffin) until really quite recently.
But you see the fact that I'm emerging from that is less the point than the huge importance of being absolutely blunt about just how bad it is hidden from society with a 'madness' label hung around your neck invisibly but as surely as a slave's burned stamp. I want those who are hidden thinking they're alone and freakish to find they're not alone and that there is hope. The very fact that I can write about it is evidence that I'm moved or rapidly moving past it. My articulacy is the gift I have to give to those without a voice and I feel honour bound to use it.
But to reassure you - I feel far from despairing. On the contrary, I don't remember the last time I felt so genuinely well. As in my adrenalin system not raging in my body in either depression and anxiety or raging hypomania. My sister's been up for a couple of days and has been saying the same - she reckons I'm 'janie' again as the person she knew as we were growing up - that's a pretty good feeling - frankly I feel much much happier than I did as a child, since all in all I've worked through a lot of issues and let a lot of hurt and stuff go over the years I've been sitting at home - I couldn't afford the psychotherapy so I read a few books and I seem to have done a fair amount for myself.
Meaning that now I'm much freed up for more purposeful work. I've written about 10,000 words over the last week and most of it will be usable. I've got a few projects on the go in a small way, with the writing, and I imagine that by just plodding on this way I will probably have achieved a reasonable amount by the end of the year - or by this time next year anyway.
The reference you mention - it's to the CEIMH at Birmingham University. I attend their Suresearch general meetings (Service User Research and Education) and their writing group meetings, and I've just signed up for a 'train the trainers' course there that begins in November, just one day a week. It's been great - for the first couple of times I went I felt a bit awkward and shy but I rapidly noticed what a positive reception I was getting from a few individuals for comments I contributed or etc., and it's enabled me to remember and draw on my confidence from so long ago it's untrue, and being 25 years older now than then - I'm more, not less, confident than once I was. Also, however, wiser, so I've learned to keep quiet as well which is all to the good.
Hard to know where to get the essay published. It'd make a good two parter in a major newspaper, maybe a sunday edition - or a three parter - perhaps I need to build in a note of hope in a final section. To get it into such an organ however I'll need to put my brain to the matter of how to network myself into a position to get taken seriously. This maybe where my 1990's journalism hobby with the Birmingham Post ultimately comes into it's own. I'm feeling it may be the right time to apply for a whats-its-name journalist card-passport!
Well, yet again I write 25 or 50 words to your 1 - twas ever thus I believe, no worries, twas ever thus with everyone I write to. I love to write more than I love to speak, and as we all know, that's quite a claim for me to make!
Over and out, see you on the 30th September I think it is,
Janie
________________________________________
From: John.King@worcsmhp.nhs.uk
To: janiegreville@hotmail.com
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:51:30 +0100
Subject: RE: RE:
Janie-
Thanks for your news and for sending the essay. It makes a poignant read and indeed seems very despairing and I hope you don’t feel this way every day. However it is a vivid account and it will be interesting to see what responses you get. Who will be the readership exactly?
There was one or two things you didn’t expand on, for example
Sometimes I leave the house and arrive at a place where I am welcomed and invited wordlessly to bring up something of the healthy and positive and creative dimensions of my being – it is as a rainbow on an otherwise overcast universe
I wonddred what that place is (not Orchard Place??!!)
I am sorry not to have emailed you at greater length, but yours makes up for it to some extent. Were you to actually achieve some recognition your creative activities, I daresay you would find the criticisms of not doing housework etc would be magically silenced – I don’t suppose that well known authors get taken to task for not performing housework
By the way I saw Dr Dow today at a meeting, who mentioned you to me – I believe he is well disposed towards you and will try to help as best he can.
I am still developing some ideas but am rather swamped also by routine matters, however I will look forward to talking to you at greater length when you come up
All the best for now
John King
RE:
From: Janie Greville (janiegreville@hotmail.com)
Sent: 17 September 2008 01:25:42
To: King, John (Psychiatry) (john.king@worcsmhp.nhs.uk)
Hi John,
Thanks for your email.
Re my essay - frankly I almost never feel that way every day these days! However, I felt that way every day from leaving hospital last autumn until well into April this year and between November 2000 and August 2003 I felt like that - at the worst suicidal thoughts pacing and smoking state - pretty much 24-7 apart from a brief respite that I believe I spent in hospital at your suggestion in 2002. And I was struggling on and off with the medium level (the doing nothing waiting for godot/coffin) until really quite recently.
But you see the fact that I'm emerging from that is less the point than the huge importance of being absolutely blunt about just how bad it is hidden from society with a 'madness' label hung around your neck invisibly but as surely as a slave's burned stamp. I want those who are hidden thinking they're alone and freakish to find they're not alone and that there is hope. The very fact that I can write about it is evidence that I'm moved or rapidly moving past it. My articulacy is the gift I have to give to those without a voice and I feel honour bound to use it.
But to reassure you - I feel far from despairing. On the contrary, I don't remember the last time I felt so genuinely well. As in my adrenalin system not raging in my body in either depression and anxiety or raging hypomania. My sister's been up for a couple of days and has been saying the same - she reckons I'm 'janie' again as the person she knew as we were growing up - that's a pretty good feeling - frankly I feel much much happier than I did as a child, since all in all I've worked through a lot of issues and let a lot of hurt and stuff go over the years I've been sitting at home - I couldn't afford the psychotherapy so I read a few books and I seem to have done a fair amount for myself.
Meaning that now I'm much freed up for more purposeful work. I've written about 10,000 words over the last week and most of it will be usable. I've got a few projects on the go in a small way, with the writing, and I imagine that by just plodding on this way I will probably have achieved a reasonable amount by the end of the year - or by this time next year anyway.
The reference you mention - it's to the CEIMH at Birmingham University. I attend their Suresearch general meetings (Service User Research and Education) and their writing group meetings, and I've just signed up for a 'train the trainers' course there that begins in November, just one day a week. It's been great - for the first couple of times I went I felt a bit awkward and shy but I rapidly noticed what a positive reception I was getting from a few individuals for comments I contributed or etc., and it's enabled me to remember and draw on my confidence from so long ago it's untrue, and being 25 years older now than then - I'm more, not less, confident than once I was. Also, however, wiser, so I've learned to keep quiet as well which is all to the good.
Hard to know where to get the essay published. It'd make a good two parter in a major newspaper, maybe a sunday edition - or a three parter - perhaps I need to build in a note of hope in a final section. To get it into such an organ however I'll need to put my brain to the matter of how to network myself into a position to get taken seriously. This maybe where my 1990's journalism hobby with the Birmingham Post ultimately comes into it's own. I'm feeling it may be the right time to apply for a whats-its-name journalist card-passport!
Well, yet again I write 25 or 50 words to your 1 - twas ever thus I believe, no worries, twas ever thus with everyone I write to. I love to write more than I love to speak, and as we all know, that's quite a claim for me to make!
Over and out, see you on the 30th September I think it is,
Janie
________________________________________
From: John.King@worcsmhp.nhs.uk
To: janiegreville@hotmail.com
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:51:30 +0100
Subject: RE: RE:
Janie-
Thanks for your news and for sending the essay. It makes a poignant read and indeed seems very despairing and I hope you don’t feel this way every day. However it is a vivid account and it will be interesting to see what responses you get. Who will be the readership exactly?
There was one or two things you didn’t expand on, for example
Sometimes I leave the house and arrive at a place where I am welcomed and invited wordlessly to bring up something of the healthy and positive and creative dimensions of my being – it is as a rainbow on an otherwise overcast universe
I wonddred what that place is (not Orchard Place??!!)
I am sorry not to have emailed you at greater length, but yours makes up for it to some extent. Were you to actually achieve some recognition your creative activities, I daresay you would find the criticisms of not doing housework etc would be magically silenced – I don’t suppose that well known authors get taken to task for not performing housework
By the way I saw Dr Dow today at a meeting, who mentioned you to me – I believe he is well disposed towards you and will try to help as best he can.
I am still developing some ideas but am rather swamped also by routine matters, however I will look forward to talking to you at greater length when you come up
All the best for now
John King
Anyone There?
I'm not sure if anyone's been visiting this blog recently. It doesn't help that it's been so long since I posted on it.
In case anyone is visiting the blog - welcome and apologies for the long delay since the last posting.
So, you may be asking what's been happening with MissionMiraculus. As you probably are aware, we have put up a website; http://missionmiraculus.co.uk that we sorted out using office live small business tools - all free, and the design standard of the site kind of indicates why that is.
We're not complaining however - indeed, we're very grateful: I paid £70 for a site through host-papa that declared itself especially designed for people without prior web design and web building skills or experience. That site is completely unused by me since I don't even know where to start with it.
I'm not saying that they've taken my money and a number of other people's money and then failed to deliver the product they promise. I am saying though, that I have been very disappointed by HostPapa. If anyone else has had dealings with HostPapa and has had good experiences with them please let me know because I don't want to give them any bad publicity that they don't deserve.
Infuriatingly, this whole arena of IT skills building has been swamping MissionMiraculus's progress, which is partly why the postings have slowed right down. About five of us are now beginning to organise to prepare for 'live' appearances as consciousness raisers and edutainers in a variety of contexts. I won't say any more than that at present. We'll keep in under wraps and report back when we have news. We had scheduled a team building event at MM headquarters for this weekend but contingencies have intervened to prevent that for two of us so another delay crops up..
I'm noticing that by focussing on writing, reading, talking to close associates, being involved at the CEIMH and going on the internet either checking or posting on these blogs or looking at or for other things via google, I keep myself at a safe distance from what needs to be done now : an action plan of 'live performances' and a programme of letter writing and sending and phone call making to obtain contracts.
So presumably I'm terrified of all of this. Time to face my fears and get on with this next step.... Aaarrrgghhh
Fear aside, however, there is a project that I want to take on and where it had been something for later now it's becoming a priority. Children and young people who grow up in a family where one or both of their parents or close family members are affected by mental health problems, are statistically vulnerable to developing such problems themselves in later life. MissionMiraculus joins hands with Depra and the emerging Poglai! founded by Renata Azman, author of 'Depra' (a journey of recovery) and much loved visiting writer at Birmingham University's CEIMH once a year in exploring the healing value of personal narrative in processing challenging experiences. This project needs applying to children.
In case anyone is visiting the blog - welcome and apologies for the long delay since the last posting.
So, you may be asking what's been happening with MissionMiraculus. As you probably are aware, we have put up a website; http://missionmiraculus.co.uk that we sorted out using office live small business tools - all free, and the design standard of the site kind of indicates why that is.
We're not complaining however - indeed, we're very grateful: I paid £70 for a site through host-papa that declared itself especially designed for people without prior web design and web building skills or experience. That site is completely unused by me since I don't even know where to start with it.
I'm not saying that they've taken my money and a number of other people's money and then failed to deliver the product they promise. I am saying though, that I have been very disappointed by HostPapa. If anyone else has had dealings with HostPapa and has had good experiences with them please let me know because I don't want to give them any bad publicity that they don't deserve.
Infuriatingly, this whole arena of IT skills building has been swamping MissionMiraculus's progress, which is partly why the postings have slowed right down. About five of us are now beginning to organise to prepare for 'live' appearances as consciousness raisers and edutainers in a variety of contexts. I won't say any more than that at present. We'll keep in under wraps and report back when we have news. We had scheduled a team building event at MM headquarters for this weekend but contingencies have intervened to prevent that for two of us so another delay crops up..
I'm noticing that by focussing on writing, reading, talking to close associates, being involved at the CEIMH and going on the internet either checking or posting on these blogs or looking at or for other things via google, I keep myself at a safe distance from what needs to be done now : an action plan of 'live performances' and a programme of letter writing and sending and phone call making to obtain contracts.
So presumably I'm terrified of all of this. Time to face my fears and get on with this next step.... Aaarrrgghhh
Fear aside, however, there is a project that I want to take on and where it had been something for later now it's becoming a priority. Children and young people who grow up in a family where one or both of their parents or close family members are affected by mental health problems, are statistically vulnerable to developing such problems themselves in later life. MissionMiraculus joins hands with Depra and the emerging Poglai! founded by Renata Azman, author of 'Depra' (a journey of recovery) and much loved visiting writer at Birmingham University's CEIMH once a year in exploring the healing value of personal narrative in processing challenging experiences. This project needs applying to children.
Monday, 16 March 2009
The founder of MissionMiraculous is impatient, egotistic, erratic, chaotic and bi-polar. In setting up the companion blogs and asking me to make a practice of publishing things on them both regularly, she hoped with great self-importance, to find that almost overnight the blogs would be capturing the avid attention of any number of people interested in matters to do with daily living and in relation to mental health matters.
In my recent meetings with her I notice she begins to look disillusioned. I have talked with her about the importance of learning curves, of coherent thinking and audience related market research, of patience and perseverence. Currently she just visits both blogs daily to look for comments and finds none and then goes back to bed.
Deplorable conduct I must say. Especially as she blames me for the matter. I'm not in the least bit impressed with her attitude and I've told her so in no uncertain terms. Not that she was listening over much..
Meanwhile I have to ignore her and let her indulge in her childish whining. We have more important things to do.
You may be pleased to hear that some progress is being made on the website building front and there's an outside chance that the home page will be up and online by 31st March. It's less than we had hoped to achieve by that date but it is the minimum achievement we had bench-marked as criterian for our plans so.. More on that in the next posting.
On 4th April a number of people are meeting in Birmingham in relation to a mental health training course some of us did between November 08 and February 09. MissionMiraculous has a particular interest in this group. If anything of interest comes from the encounter we shall get back to you.
Something I haven't mentioned to you before is that five of us with a possible interest in developing MissionMiraculous met together a few weeks ago to form a mission statement for the company to go forward in due course as it is registered with companies house, probably as a Community Interest Company with a Social Enterprise label. When this is finalised and agreed it will be posted on the website. If the website is delayed for any reason it will be posted on this blog in the interim.
MissionMiraculous will be a company that works more as an umbrella for a range of activities than as a laser for one specific goal. The umbrella will broadly encompass values as articulated in the by-line to Amazing Lives (see above), which statement is the initial wording of the mission statement.
To deliver its mission aims and objectives, MM will be focussing on a wide range of ideological, educational, political, creative and commercial services, events and products designed to further goals of challenging prejudice and developing understanding and improving services in relation to the concepts and experiences of 'mental health and illness'.
MissionMiraculous is not informed by a conventionally 'anti-psychiatry' perspective. It does, however, have fundamental criticisms of the historical and contemporary theoreticaL framework and social-economic status and positioning of psychiatry within the culture of 'mental illness' experience and containment. It also has a remit to address these problems in practice as well as theory with or without the co-operation of psychiatry as an institution, rubric and community.
As MissionMiraculous Content Editor and Commissioner I am very keen to encounter individuals training or trained in psychiatry who have a genuine ability to recognise the intellectual bankruptcy of contemporary psychiatric theories. If you are one such, or you know of one - please let me know. Use the comments ref in the box below, press on it and write to me. Alternatively, write to the editor at missionmiraculous@googlemail.com. Any correspondence will be attended to and responded to where appropriate within 5 working days of receipt.
Over and Out,
Your devoted editor.
In my recent meetings with her I notice she begins to look disillusioned. I have talked with her about the importance of learning curves, of coherent thinking and audience related market research, of patience and perseverence. Currently she just visits both blogs daily to look for comments and finds none and then goes back to bed.
Deplorable conduct I must say. Especially as she blames me for the matter. I'm not in the least bit impressed with her attitude and I've told her so in no uncertain terms. Not that she was listening over much..
Meanwhile I have to ignore her and let her indulge in her childish whining. We have more important things to do.
You may be pleased to hear that some progress is being made on the website building front and there's an outside chance that the home page will be up and online by 31st March. It's less than we had hoped to achieve by that date but it is the minimum achievement we had bench-marked as criterian for our plans so.. More on that in the next posting.
On 4th April a number of people are meeting in Birmingham in relation to a mental health training course some of us did between November 08 and February 09. MissionMiraculous has a particular interest in this group. If anything of interest comes from the encounter we shall get back to you.
Something I haven't mentioned to you before is that five of us with a possible interest in developing MissionMiraculous met together a few weeks ago to form a mission statement for the company to go forward in due course as it is registered with companies house, probably as a Community Interest Company with a Social Enterprise label. When this is finalised and agreed it will be posted on the website. If the website is delayed for any reason it will be posted on this blog in the interim.
MissionMiraculous will be a company that works more as an umbrella for a range of activities than as a laser for one specific goal. The umbrella will broadly encompass values as articulated in the by-line to Amazing Lives (see above), which statement is the initial wording of the mission statement.
To deliver its mission aims and objectives, MM will be focussing on a wide range of ideological, educational, political, creative and commercial services, events and products designed to further goals of challenging prejudice and developing understanding and improving services in relation to the concepts and experiences of 'mental health and illness'.
MissionMiraculous is not informed by a conventionally 'anti-psychiatry' perspective. It does, however, have fundamental criticisms of the historical and contemporary theoreticaL framework and social-economic status and positioning of psychiatry within the culture of 'mental illness' experience and containment. It also has a remit to address these problems in practice as well as theory with or without the co-operation of psychiatry as an institution, rubric and community.
As MissionMiraculous Content Editor and Commissioner I am very keen to encounter individuals training or trained in psychiatry who have a genuine ability to recognise the intellectual bankruptcy of contemporary psychiatric theories. If you are one such, or you know of one - please let me know. Use the comments ref in the box below, press on it and write to me. Alternatively, write to the editor at missionmiraculous@googlemail.com. Any correspondence will be attended to and responded to where appropriate within 5 working days of receipt.
Over and Out,
Your devoted editor.
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Well - you didn't feel like talking about employment did you?!
For Red Nose Day - Warning - not for the sensitive or the tasteful
Sylvia Plath: never met her, never wanted to. Miserable cow. First she writes a bunch of grim poems and then she sticks her head in the gas oven while the kids are sleeping.
For this very reason I’ve never published my poems or had a gas oven. That way I feel in a position to judge her for being an inconsiderate blight on human hope.
If life doesn’t lift and enlighten then at least art should.
Which is, of course, a slight problem nowadays. For some reason the English speaking intelligentsia (and/or those who pretend to that status) actively hunt out the sad, the grim, the haunting, the horrifying, the scandalous, the tragic. Hanging out your dirty washing in public isn’t regarded as bad anymore. In fact, do it publicly enough and you’ve got a good chance of being nominated for a major public award and offered a weekly column in the Sunday Observer.
I’ve been building up a lot of dirty washing lately. I’m wearing some of it as we speak. I’m considering wearing my clothes ‘til they’re stiff with cack and the stench reaches New York from a breeze in Birmingham. And then sticking a label on them and launching them as ‘Underdog Designs’. By delegating outfits for customising to the poor and needy (like myself eg) I will be bringing Designer Fashion into a neat interface with charity. I shall register it as a Social Enterprise.
It was some while ago that I first began to consider a statement I heard made at a mental health conference in 2000.The speaker was Ron Coleman, notorious orator and business man in his own circles. He announced that in the 1990’s he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. ‘It was a bad career move,’ he said.
It stayed with me. Particularly since, judging from his regular speaking appearances and his expensive workshop brochures I suspect he’s managed to get round his career jolt well and truly by now.
Also because, vis a vis the above, I was horribly jealous. I most definitely noticed that being diagnosed with Manic Depression in 1997 was a bad career move: I was forcibly pensioned out of teaching in 2000.
And what really didn’t help was that from my point of view I’d already made a bad career move by going into school teaching. It hadn’t taken me long to discover that teaching in schools was as ghastly as ‘learning’ in them. I was better at teaching than at learning in them but I hated both.
So I hardly wanted a further bad career move..
I spent years and years being so p**d off about it that I didn’t even try to do anything about it. Every now and then ‘Ron Coleman’ would float into my mind (often via an advertising mailshot) and I’d think ‘lucky buggar, why can’t I be more like him’. Then down I’d go again into my thick thick blanket of hopelessness.
It wasn’t a sustainable lifestyle choice. It was like cryogenics for the incompetent. It was like taking a seat in the waiting room at the dentist and waiting there to have all your teeth out at once without anaesthetic.
Waiting, that’s to say, for about 5 years or so…
At last dear reader, I finally decided to start living again. Watch this space…
Sylvia Plath: never met her, never wanted to. Miserable cow. First she writes a bunch of grim poems and then she sticks her head in the gas oven while the kids are sleeping.
For this very reason I’ve never published my poems or had a gas oven. That way I feel in a position to judge her for being an inconsiderate blight on human hope.
If life doesn’t lift and enlighten then at least art should.
Which is, of course, a slight problem nowadays. For some reason the English speaking intelligentsia (and/or those who pretend to that status) actively hunt out the sad, the grim, the haunting, the horrifying, the scandalous, the tragic. Hanging out your dirty washing in public isn’t regarded as bad anymore. In fact, do it publicly enough and you’ve got a good chance of being nominated for a major public award and offered a weekly column in the Sunday Observer.
I’ve been building up a lot of dirty washing lately. I’m wearing some of it as we speak. I’m considering wearing my clothes ‘til they’re stiff with cack and the stench reaches New York from a breeze in Birmingham. And then sticking a label on them and launching them as ‘Underdog Designs’. By delegating outfits for customising to the poor and needy (like myself eg) I will be bringing Designer Fashion into a neat interface with charity. I shall register it as a Social Enterprise.
It was some while ago that I first began to consider a statement I heard made at a mental health conference in 2000.The speaker was Ron Coleman, notorious orator and business man in his own circles. He announced that in the 1990’s he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. ‘It was a bad career move,’ he said.
It stayed with me. Particularly since, judging from his regular speaking appearances and his expensive workshop brochures I suspect he’s managed to get round his career jolt well and truly by now.
Also because, vis a vis the above, I was horribly jealous. I most definitely noticed that being diagnosed with Manic Depression in 1997 was a bad career move: I was forcibly pensioned out of teaching in 2000.
And what really didn’t help was that from my point of view I’d already made a bad career move by going into school teaching. It hadn’t taken me long to discover that teaching in schools was as ghastly as ‘learning’ in them. I was better at teaching than at learning in them but I hated both.
So I hardly wanted a further bad career move..
I spent years and years being so p**d off about it that I didn’t even try to do anything about it. Every now and then ‘Ron Coleman’ would float into my mind (often via an advertising mailshot) and I’d think ‘lucky buggar, why can’t I be more like him’. Then down I’d go again into my thick thick blanket of hopelessness.
It wasn’t a sustainable lifestyle choice. It was like cryogenics for the incompetent. It was like taking a seat in the waiting room at the dentist and waiting there to have all your teeth out at once without anaesthetic.
Waiting, that’s to say, for about 5 years or so…
At last dear reader, I finally decided to start living again. Watch this space…
Saturday, 7 March 2009
Employment Issues
The Return to Work Project: A Case Study (mine)
The following is a somewhat lengthy article I wrote for consideration by the Suresearch writing group at CEIMH Birmingham. In the group we shared observations that employment issues for those with mental health issues are beset by any number of challenges and obstacles. None of these are appropriately addressed or sensitively managed in the latest drive to remove numbers from the incapacity benefit statistics. In the group we discussed the possibility of using the following as the start of a blog, to open up debate around these issues, provide a forum for shared experiences and reflections. I hope that by posting it on this blog MissionMiraculous we may be able to get underway with this idea.
As you will see, the essay was written last August. There are updates. I shall post an update for it within the next week. Please use the comments box to share your responses, experiences and concerns.
On beginning to recover from severe depression this spring I became focussed, almost obsessively, on the goal of returning to work. I haven’t been in regular work since 1999, due to mental health problems (I have bi-polar disorder and have been in hospital numerous times since 1997), so this has been a major decision for me.
However, my older daughter was due to leave school in July to begin university, so my income was due to drop significantly – I needed to find a way to replace the lost income. In addition I had become aware that a significant factor in sustaining my depressions was my social isolation. And guilt feelings that I haven’t been earning my own keep have haunted me ever since I was taken out of work.
I have spent the vast majority of the last ten years in the company of me, myself and I. No pressure to decorate myself in anyway; to fit myself into time schedules, to look forward to anyone needing me between 8 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon; and, in the last few years, frequently little requirement for my company or attention in the evening beyond providing a meal and delivering drinks to various parts of the house.
I imagine a good percentage of men and women under these circumstances show the sort of self-respect that finds them and their homes and gardens in readiness ‘for inspection’ at any time. These people, who I admire and envy, probably have training schedules and proactive project activities that shape their days and weeks and if asked could log lists of their achievements in the face of the challenges they face due to their mental health difficulties.
I do more than take my hat off to these people. I bow and scrape to their dignity, their self-respect, self possession and tenacity. I feel humiliated and ashamed by my lack of these qualities once stripped of the illusion that I ever possessed them in the first place.
I have not, then, been one of those people. I have shown myself what a worthless, pointless space taker I have felt myself to be. I do the absolute necessities at home and nothing else. As a puppy our dog used the top of the landing for a wee whenever unobserved and the carpet’s never been the same since. In the summer there’s a distinct aroma that appeals to no-one but him – I notice it, I shudder, I look at leaflets about carpet cleaning that come through the door and put them away in ‘must save up for it’ files. The garden looks like an ideal jungle venue for an ‘I’m a Celebrity – Get me out of here!’
If the girls are at school I get up at 7 and then, unless some external opportunity to notice my existence is on my calendar (it usually isn’t) I doss on the sofa for most of the rest of the day with the television on while I gaze at it, all the while telling myself that at any minute now I shall get moving and do some housework. And/or fantasising about the books and articles I’m going to write, the ways I shall use my recovery as a vehicle to inspire others in my position and the numerous other ways my creative energies will infuse the world with positive value ‘one day’. That’s on the middling days. On the bad days I pace from one end of the house to the other, thinking about suicide and about what a mortal sin it is and how in any case, sin or not, I can’t do it because of the impact it would have on my kids.
My aging mother has phoned me almost daily all these years “Learn to be a good housewife, THEN you can think about going back to work” has been her consistent instruction. Odd how I knock my mother in her absence and even occasionally to her face, consciously separate myself from her values yet find myself curiously unable either to meet her requirements for approval or to ignore them. The curiously masochistic outcome has been that I leave my house in a state of dust, chaos and clutter that overwhelms and distresses me, whilst being paralysed by guilt from doing anything else instead that I’d prefer.
Finally I decided that if I’m ever to work and earn again – key bench marks of recovery in my mind - then I’d better turn the thing on its head: get a job first and then see if regular human interaction and externally structured purposes increase my self-esteem, pride and motivation for creating a more civilised domestic environment.
I phoned the Jobcentre. They directed me to contact Remploy as specifically contracted to assist people like myself back into work. I did so.
My first appointment was poignant. I was still suffering quite badly from depression, getting through the door was my main achievement. We spent an hour filling in on-screen forms of various kinds of information and set a date for the next appointment. In the interim I attended a Suresearch meeting and that stimulation woke me up, as did, perhaps, the anti-depressants I was taking by then. My spirits began to lift as did my expectations of the kinds of work I might be looking for.
The next major initiative from Remploy was to place me on one of their in-house work-readiness courses. I duly attended. The experience reinforced my suspicion that once ‘out and about’ mixing with others I would begin to lift and notice that my primary problems were to do with isolation – during the week I noticed my social skills and confidence were good, as was my facility to assist others who needed support and encouragement. By this time I was already becoming proactive in looking out for any vacancies that might use my abilities and experience.
Remploy, on the other hand, were more inclined to want me to limit my sights to something in the line of ‘a little shop job’ for example, and to counsel me to avoid looking at work involving responsibility of any significant kind. To my shame I temporarily allowed this advice to flatten my spirits and fill my mind with pictures of a meaningless and drab future of erased potential.
Once again a Suresearch meeting came to the rescue. By this time I’d recovered enough to begin to make contact with other friends so the decline was brief. I began to write down ideas for possible ways forward, and to list my strengths and passions in order to create a kind of profile for the ideal working situation in relation to which I could then survey practical possibilities.
I contacted Remploy more recently in relation to support and advice for self-employment avenues and they have put me in touch with an inspiring woman who is contracted by Business-Link for exactly this purpose. I haven’t made much progress so far but its early days.
I have since had a call from the local Remploy office offering the exciting news that there was a job, 39 hours a week in a factory at minimum wage that I could apply for. This alerts me to the company’s priorities and the kind of pressure people will be under once they are identified as meeting the targets of the government’s political strategy to reduce numbers receiving incapacity benefit.
I fear that this economic and statistical pressure is already giving the lie to the admirable political rhetoric that forms the official language of the initiative. I found that, apart from the confidence raising lift I got from the week’s ‘job readiness’ course and the contact I made through them with Business Link, Remploy’s focus has been fairly solidly to encourage me at all times to lower my sights and lower them some more, to throw CV’s and ‘spec letters’ to pretty well anyone and everyone in the hope of any job at all at any number of hours and with no prospects of any envisagable kind. I have the strong impression that the goal of the organisation is to hit targets of removing their clients from the benefits register as quickly as possible regardless of appropriacy or advisability.
This is a problem that needs investigating. What could potentially revolutionise the lives of those with long term unemployment problems issuing from enduring mental (and other) health issues, such as myself, and bring new hope and quality of life for many threatens to turn into yet another stick to beat us with.
The many ways that I was treated and then excluded from ‘community’ from my first hypo-manic episode onwards rapidly accumulated to create the greater part of my health problems:
• The hospital treatment in itself, between 1997 and 2000 was brutal and traumatising, and I was subjected, there, to attitudes and behaviours that were frankly destructive of any trust I could have in the services.
• My (ex) husband’s reaction from the first was alienated and angry, his behaviour began as chilly tolerance and within a year became visible contempt; treating me as an incompetent servant in front of our children. He pursued other relationships quite openly, starting before I was hospitalised for the first time, and in November 2000 he left me and our two children, then eight and ten.
• Those who I had taken to be friends of a kind stopped calling; some who I had thought were life long close friends also disappeared.
• I have on more than one occasion suffered unprovoked and unexpected insults and verbal attacks from neighbours, (once in the presence of my youngest daughter, who was thirteen at the time) some of whom took to crossing the road rather than saying hello.
• On my first return to work in 1997 my colleagues were wary and distant but formally polite. After my return to work following a relapse 15 months later the attitude had changed entirely. Colleagues actively ostracised me and I was left in no doubt that I was no longer welcome. In addition it was abundantly clear that ‘somehow’ word had got to some pupils that my absence had been due to mental health problems.
• Early in 2000 I was placed in a position where, if I did not agree to resign from my post on the grounds of ill-health I was told steps would be taken to dismiss me from my post on the grounds of my ill-health rendering me unfit for my work. Since I had not done anything at work to leave me vulnerable to any formal discipline procedure this stays in my mind as fully remarkable. The pressure was such that I resigned and accepted the small pension I was offered.
Since being out of work I have been caught between two stools. On the one hand I have not been in a well enough state to take up work due to depression and resilience in the face of the health issues and the impact of the social stigmas I have experienced.
On the other hand I have received a substantial amount of unpleasant ‘feedback’ from others, especially my ex husband and his partner relating to my ‘failure’ to be in work. I have sat and endured two hour long phone calls of character assassination and have recently received a three page letter of ‘character critique’ all insinuating that I am – and most recently explicitly stating that I am – ‘a financial and emotional burden to others’ who deliberately and persistently avoids responsibility.
This is the part that strikes me as the ultimate irony. Had I not been rejected from the work place in the first place, had I suffered from a more ‘respectable’ and ‘acceptable’ illness to start with and received social support and warmth rather than fear and contempt then perhaps I would not have spiralled into the frankly nightmarish hole of isolation and despair and poverty that has been much of my existence over the last eleven years!
Ten years on, my project of achieving anything approaching full social inclusion is something akin to escaping from quick sand. That quick sand is no longer the forces outside of me pulling me down, pushing me away, insulting me, downgrading me and drowning me but the forces within me of internalised rejection and shame and humiliation and insult. I don’t even include myself in the human race very often.
Sometimes I leave the house and arrive at a place where I am welcomed and invited wordlessly to bring up something of the healthy and positive and creative dimensions of my being – it is as a rainbow on an otherwise overcast universe of weather blowing me into the hell of an existence best summarised in the phrase ‘surplus to requirements’. Suicide is tragically common among those with my diagnosis. Not to be wondered at really.
Postscript September 9th, 2008
On 26th August I took this essay to a Suresearch meeting to submit it for possible publication. On my return I received a call from Pertemps offering me an interview for a part-time job at the Law Society to work in their Postroom in the mornings.
The interview was informal, went very well and I was led to believe that the job could become permanent in time, although it would have to be advertised publicly first. I took the job enthusiastically. I went straight home, contacted the Benefits agency and cancelled my incapacity benefit. I began work the following morning at 8am. That was Thursday 28th August.
For two days all went well, if slightly oddly. The other part-timer, a man about my age, was helpful and encouraging. The full-time worker (a young woman in her early twenties) was inclined to approach me looking dissatisfied, asking me ‘did he tell you to do that?’ She would then look disapproving and either leave me to it or tell me to do something else. It was a bit uncomfortable.
The following Monday I discovered that the part-timer was now on holiday for a week and the second full-time worker had returned, he also in his early twenties. A new culture settled in which I was made to feel uncomfortable and wrong to ask questions, was offered no warmth or encouragement whatsoever and worked continuously on the outside whilst inside myself fighting increasing feelings of discomfort that I was unwelcome and unwanted and definitely 20 years surplus to requirements. I was arriving early and getting through some basic work preparations before they arrived and I was leaving ten minutes after I was paid but nothing positive seemed to be noticed by my colleagues.
By Thursday I was telling myself not to be paranoid, trying to persuade myself that what I was feeling wasn’t really happening. I.e. I was asking myself to ignore the evidence of my senses.
On Friday afternoon, a couple of hours after I left work, I received a call from Pertemps. My colleagues had reported to their line manager that I was slow to learn and had needed to ask questions about tasks I had already been shown how to do. Therefore, she explained, they didn’t want me back.
So: my bold leap out of protected status had landed me in unprotected and penniless status within a week. More to the point, it knocked me sideways. I entered an intense struggle to fight the invite to internalise accusations of incompetence and worthlessness. Fortunately for me I’ve received strong support from others who have been able to help me refuse the negative projections of my brief colleagues.
Meanwhile I’ve lost incapacity benefit and my financial situation is uncertain to put it mildly.
Let this be a warning to anyone out there who may, like me, yearn to leap free of the indignity of state dependency too impulsively. Take one step at a time. I have to confess I was severally cautioned against my impulsive action in this case and ignored all counsel. From now on, assuming I can sort out my situation without finding myself and my daughters starving in a cardboard box... I intend to plan wisely and cautiously and take one step at a time toward my goals of financial independence and creative and social achievement.
As for Remploy, I will report their response to my current dilemma.
Indeed, I am starting to think of creating a website for reporting and sharing experiences of recovery goals including goals of financial independence.
Many well meaning (employed and/or married) individuals have advised me to relax about my state dependent status. I appreciate their warmth and kindness. The harsh reality for some people, myself included, is this, however: having a mortgage and older children to provide for on the income of state dependent status is a financial nightmare as well as a social vacuum. Somehow or another I have to find substantial sums of money to pay off my ex-husband within the next few years; if I don’t get back on my feet financially I will lose my home AND be ineligible for council housing until my equity has been thrown away on rent. I don’t want that to happen any more than I want to sit in my house on my own 24:7 wondering why I’m still here.
There is a case for rage in the face of shifting political agenda’s as they impact on social groups. When I was forcibly pensioned out of teaching eight years ago I was invited, urged, to accept that I would not work again. I found myself in a culture of ‘illness’, ‘symptoms’, ‘early warning signs’, ‘client compliance,’ and, frankly, thought policing. It was not unlike being held under house arrest for ‘thought crime’ for a few years. I’m not for one moment suggesting that I was not ill – I most certainly had tripped into a severe era of bi-polar disorder and I did need help to accept my diagnosis and to come to terms with it and with the life style changes I would need to make to gain mastery over my vulnerability. What I got for the first five years, however, was help to lose the will to live.
Now suddenly I, and those like me, are supposed to smile brightly, apologise for sapping the nation’s resources and throw ourselves into the mouths of the latest vote preparation lions. Calvinistic idiots like me, apparently, lurch forward before being called…
Janie Greville
9/9/08
The following is a somewhat lengthy article I wrote for consideration by the Suresearch writing group at CEIMH Birmingham. In the group we shared observations that employment issues for those with mental health issues are beset by any number of challenges and obstacles. None of these are appropriately addressed or sensitively managed in the latest drive to remove numbers from the incapacity benefit statistics. In the group we discussed the possibility of using the following as the start of a blog, to open up debate around these issues, provide a forum for shared experiences and reflections. I hope that by posting it on this blog MissionMiraculous we may be able to get underway with this idea.
As you will see, the essay was written last August. There are updates. I shall post an update for it within the next week. Please use the comments box to share your responses, experiences and concerns.
On beginning to recover from severe depression this spring I became focussed, almost obsessively, on the goal of returning to work. I haven’t been in regular work since 1999, due to mental health problems (I have bi-polar disorder and have been in hospital numerous times since 1997), so this has been a major decision for me.
However, my older daughter was due to leave school in July to begin university, so my income was due to drop significantly – I needed to find a way to replace the lost income. In addition I had become aware that a significant factor in sustaining my depressions was my social isolation. And guilt feelings that I haven’t been earning my own keep have haunted me ever since I was taken out of work.
I have spent the vast majority of the last ten years in the company of me, myself and I. No pressure to decorate myself in anyway; to fit myself into time schedules, to look forward to anyone needing me between 8 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon; and, in the last few years, frequently little requirement for my company or attention in the evening beyond providing a meal and delivering drinks to various parts of the house.
I imagine a good percentage of men and women under these circumstances show the sort of self-respect that finds them and their homes and gardens in readiness ‘for inspection’ at any time. These people, who I admire and envy, probably have training schedules and proactive project activities that shape their days and weeks and if asked could log lists of their achievements in the face of the challenges they face due to their mental health difficulties.
I do more than take my hat off to these people. I bow and scrape to their dignity, their self-respect, self possession and tenacity. I feel humiliated and ashamed by my lack of these qualities once stripped of the illusion that I ever possessed them in the first place.
I have not, then, been one of those people. I have shown myself what a worthless, pointless space taker I have felt myself to be. I do the absolute necessities at home and nothing else. As a puppy our dog used the top of the landing for a wee whenever unobserved and the carpet’s never been the same since. In the summer there’s a distinct aroma that appeals to no-one but him – I notice it, I shudder, I look at leaflets about carpet cleaning that come through the door and put them away in ‘must save up for it’ files. The garden looks like an ideal jungle venue for an ‘I’m a Celebrity – Get me out of here!’
If the girls are at school I get up at 7 and then, unless some external opportunity to notice my existence is on my calendar (it usually isn’t) I doss on the sofa for most of the rest of the day with the television on while I gaze at it, all the while telling myself that at any minute now I shall get moving and do some housework. And/or fantasising about the books and articles I’m going to write, the ways I shall use my recovery as a vehicle to inspire others in my position and the numerous other ways my creative energies will infuse the world with positive value ‘one day’. That’s on the middling days. On the bad days I pace from one end of the house to the other, thinking about suicide and about what a mortal sin it is and how in any case, sin or not, I can’t do it because of the impact it would have on my kids.
My aging mother has phoned me almost daily all these years “Learn to be a good housewife, THEN you can think about going back to work” has been her consistent instruction. Odd how I knock my mother in her absence and even occasionally to her face, consciously separate myself from her values yet find myself curiously unable either to meet her requirements for approval or to ignore them. The curiously masochistic outcome has been that I leave my house in a state of dust, chaos and clutter that overwhelms and distresses me, whilst being paralysed by guilt from doing anything else instead that I’d prefer.
Finally I decided that if I’m ever to work and earn again – key bench marks of recovery in my mind - then I’d better turn the thing on its head: get a job first and then see if regular human interaction and externally structured purposes increase my self-esteem, pride and motivation for creating a more civilised domestic environment.
I phoned the Jobcentre. They directed me to contact Remploy as specifically contracted to assist people like myself back into work. I did so.
My first appointment was poignant. I was still suffering quite badly from depression, getting through the door was my main achievement. We spent an hour filling in on-screen forms of various kinds of information and set a date for the next appointment. In the interim I attended a Suresearch meeting and that stimulation woke me up, as did, perhaps, the anti-depressants I was taking by then. My spirits began to lift as did my expectations of the kinds of work I might be looking for.
The next major initiative from Remploy was to place me on one of their in-house work-readiness courses. I duly attended. The experience reinforced my suspicion that once ‘out and about’ mixing with others I would begin to lift and notice that my primary problems were to do with isolation – during the week I noticed my social skills and confidence were good, as was my facility to assist others who needed support and encouragement. By this time I was already becoming proactive in looking out for any vacancies that might use my abilities and experience.
Remploy, on the other hand, were more inclined to want me to limit my sights to something in the line of ‘a little shop job’ for example, and to counsel me to avoid looking at work involving responsibility of any significant kind. To my shame I temporarily allowed this advice to flatten my spirits and fill my mind with pictures of a meaningless and drab future of erased potential.
Once again a Suresearch meeting came to the rescue. By this time I’d recovered enough to begin to make contact with other friends so the decline was brief. I began to write down ideas for possible ways forward, and to list my strengths and passions in order to create a kind of profile for the ideal working situation in relation to which I could then survey practical possibilities.
I contacted Remploy more recently in relation to support and advice for self-employment avenues and they have put me in touch with an inspiring woman who is contracted by Business-Link for exactly this purpose. I haven’t made much progress so far but its early days.
I have since had a call from the local Remploy office offering the exciting news that there was a job, 39 hours a week in a factory at minimum wage that I could apply for. This alerts me to the company’s priorities and the kind of pressure people will be under once they are identified as meeting the targets of the government’s political strategy to reduce numbers receiving incapacity benefit.
I fear that this economic and statistical pressure is already giving the lie to the admirable political rhetoric that forms the official language of the initiative. I found that, apart from the confidence raising lift I got from the week’s ‘job readiness’ course and the contact I made through them with Business Link, Remploy’s focus has been fairly solidly to encourage me at all times to lower my sights and lower them some more, to throw CV’s and ‘spec letters’ to pretty well anyone and everyone in the hope of any job at all at any number of hours and with no prospects of any envisagable kind. I have the strong impression that the goal of the organisation is to hit targets of removing their clients from the benefits register as quickly as possible regardless of appropriacy or advisability.
This is a problem that needs investigating. What could potentially revolutionise the lives of those with long term unemployment problems issuing from enduring mental (and other) health issues, such as myself, and bring new hope and quality of life for many threatens to turn into yet another stick to beat us with.
The many ways that I was treated and then excluded from ‘community’ from my first hypo-manic episode onwards rapidly accumulated to create the greater part of my health problems:
• The hospital treatment in itself, between 1997 and 2000 was brutal and traumatising, and I was subjected, there, to attitudes and behaviours that were frankly destructive of any trust I could have in the services.
• My (ex) husband’s reaction from the first was alienated and angry, his behaviour began as chilly tolerance and within a year became visible contempt; treating me as an incompetent servant in front of our children. He pursued other relationships quite openly, starting before I was hospitalised for the first time, and in November 2000 he left me and our two children, then eight and ten.
• Those who I had taken to be friends of a kind stopped calling; some who I had thought were life long close friends also disappeared.
• I have on more than one occasion suffered unprovoked and unexpected insults and verbal attacks from neighbours, (once in the presence of my youngest daughter, who was thirteen at the time) some of whom took to crossing the road rather than saying hello.
• On my first return to work in 1997 my colleagues were wary and distant but formally polite. After my return to work following a relapse 15 months later the attitude had changed entirely. Colleagues actively ostracised me and I was left in no doubt that I was no longer welcome. In addition it was abundantly clear that ‘somehow’ word had got to some pupils that my absence had been due to mental health problems.
• Early in 2000 I was placed in a position where, if I did not agree to resign from my post on the grounds of ill-health I was told steps would be taken to dismiss me from my post on the grounds of my ill-health rendering me unfit for my work. Since I had not done anything at work to leave me vulnerable to any formal discipline procedure this stays in my mind as fully remarkable. The pressure was such that I resigned and accepted the small pension I was offered.
Since being out of work I have been caught between two stools. On the one hand I have not been in a well enough state to take up work due to depression and resilience in the face of the health issues and the impact of the social stigmas I have experienced.
On the other hand I have received a substantial amount of unpleasant ‘feedback’ from others, especially my ex husband and his partner relating to my ‘failure’ to be in work. I have sat and endured two hour long phone calls of character assassination and have recently received a three page letter of ‘character critique’ all insinuating that I am – and most recently explicitly stating that I am – ‘a financial and emotional burden to others’ who deliberately and persistently avoids responsibility.
This is the part that strikes me as the ultimate irony. Had I not been rejected from the work place in the first place, had I suffered from a more ‘respectable’ and ‘acceptable’ illness to start with and received social support and warmth rather than fear and contempt then perhaps I would not have spiralled into the frankly nightmarish hole of isolation and despair and poverty that has been much of my existence over the last eleven years!
Ten years on, my project of achieving anything approaching full social inclusion is something akin to escaping from quick sand. That quick sand is no longer the forces outside of me pulling me down, pushing me away, insulting me, downgrading me and drowning me but the forces within me of internalised rejection and shame and humiliation and insult. I don’t even include myself in the human race very often.
Sometimes I leave the house and arrive at a place where I am welcomed and invited wordlessly to bring up something of the healthy and positive and creative dimensions of my being – it is as a rainbow on an otherwise overcast universe of weather blowing me into the hell of an existence best summarised in the phrase ‘surplus to requirements’. Suicide is tragically common among those with my diagnosis. Not to be wondered at really.
Postscript September 9th, 2008
On 26th August I took this essay to a Suresearch meeting to submit it for possible publication. On my return I received a call from Pertemps offering me an interview for a part-time job at the Law Society to work in their Postroom in the mornings.
The interview was informal, went very well and I was led to believe that the job could become permanent in time, although it would have to be advertised publicly first. I took the job enthusiastically. I went straight home, contacted the Benefits agency and cancelled my incapacity benefit. I began work the following morning at 8am. That was Thursday 28th August.
For two days all went well, if slightly oddly. The other part-timer, a man about my age, was helpful and encouraging. The full-time worker (a young woman in her early twenties) was inclined to approach me looking dissatisfied, asking me ‘did he tell you to do that?’ She would then look disapproving and either leave me to it or tell me to do something else. It was a bit uncomfortable.
The following Monday I discovered that the part-timer was now on holiday for a week and the second full-time worker had returned, he also in his early twenties. A new culture settled in which I was made to feel uncomfortable and wrong to ask questions, was offered no warmth or encouragement whatsoever and worked continuously on the outside whilst inside myself fighting increasing feelings of discomfort that I was unwelcome and unwanted and definitely 20 years surplus to requirements. I was arriving early and getting through some basic work preparations before they arrived and I was leaving ten minutes after I was paid but nothing positive seemed to be noticed by my colleagues.
By Thursday I was telling myself not to be paranoid, trying to persuade myself that what I was feeling wasn’t really happening. I.e. I was asking myself to ignore the evidence of my senses.
On Friday afternoon, a couple of hours after I left work, I received a call from Pertemps. My colleagues had reported to their line manager that I was slow to learn and had needed to ask questions about tasks I had already been shown how to do. Therefore, she explained, they didn’t want me back.
So: my bold leap out of protected status had landed me in unprotected and penniless status within a week. More to the point, it knocked me sideways. I entered an intense struggle to fight the invite to internalise accusations of incompetence and worthlessness. Fortunately for me I’ve received strong support from others who have been able to help me refuse the negative projections of my brief colleagues.
Meanwhile I’ve lost incapacity benefit and my financial situation is uncertain to put it mildly.
Let this be a warning to anyone out there who may, like me, yearn to leap free of the indignity of state dependency too impulsively. Take one step at a time. I have to confess I was severally cautioned against my impulsive action in this case and ignored all counsel. From now on, assuming I can sort out my situation without finding myself and my daughters starving in a cardboard box... I intend to plan wisely and cautiously and take one step at a time toward my goals of financial independence and creative and social achievement.
As for Remploy, I will report their response to my current dilemma.
Indeed, I am starting to think of creating a website for reporting and sharing experiences of recovery goals including goals of financial independence.
Many well meaning (employed and/or married) individuals have advised me to relax about my state dependent status. I appreciate their warmth and kindness. The harsh reality for some people, myself included, is this, however: having a mortgage and older children to provide for on the income of state dependent status is a financial nightmare as well as a social vacuum. Somehow or another I have to find substantial sums of money to pay off my ex-husband within the next few years; if I don’t get back on my feet financially I will lose my home AND be ineligible for council housing until my equity has been thrown away on rent. I don’t want that to happen any more than I want to sit in my house on my own 24:7 wondering why I’m still here.
There is a case for rage in the face of shifting political agenda’s as they impact on social groups. When I was forcibly pensioned out of teaching eight years ago I was invited, urged, to accept that I would not work again. I found myself in a culture of ‘illness’, ‘symptoms’, ‘early warning signs’, ‘client compliance,’ and, frankly, thought policing. It was not unlike being held under house arrest for ‘thought crime’ for a few years. I’m not for one moment suggesting that I was not ill – I most certainly had tripped into a severe era of bi-polar disorder and I did need help to accept my diagnosis and to come to terms with it and with the life style changes I would need to make to gain mastery over my vulnerability. What I got for the first five years, however, was help to lose the will to live.
Now suddenly I, and those like me, are supposed to smile brightly, apologise for sapping the nation’s resources and throw ourselves into the mouths of the latest vote preparation lions. Calvinistic idiots like me, apparently, lurch forward before being called…
Janie Greville
9/9/08
Sunday, 1 March 2009
Public and Important Announcement - Editor
Dear Reader, you must have been wondering what on earth Beohamster has to offer missions, miracles and amazing lives. You have, naturally, wondered who Beohamster is and you have hit the 'Beohamster' contributor profile to find out more. And what have you found? Yes, I'm sad to report, nay, horrified and putrified to discover, that Beohamster is nothing other than a reference to 'Bol' and 'Some religious aspects of the millenium' featuring the words 'I seen it', followed by a list of other drivelleries. 'Bol' is similarly empty of any meaningful content.
I would like to apologise on behalf of all hamsters and beos for this degrading state of affairs and to assure you that Beohamster is sitting beside me, head hung in remorselessness accusing me of giving this crap net space associated with MM.
In fact 'tis true. It twas I who authorised the inclusion of Beohamster as an official contributor to Amazing Lives - a contributor who has done nothing at all except sully this blog with a so far irremovable blight of association.
Please accept my apologies and, until technical assistance removes beohamster from the internet, avoid scrutiny of said rubbish. The author of Beohamster is currently in exile making me a cup of tea to say sorry. The hat of most memorable penitence shall be on his head in due course in a public manner around town.
Other technical hitches created by me remain unresolved. However, our good friend and critic Formart H Sax has indicated that the 18th International Committee will be coming to our rescue within the week. Watch this space....
I would like to apologise on behalf of all hamsters and beos for this degrading state of affairs and to assure you that Beohamster is sitting beside me, head hung in remorselessness accusing me of giving this crap net space associated with MM.
In fact 'tis true. It twas I who authorised the inclusion of Beohamster as an official contributor to Amazing Lives - a contributor who has done nothing at all except sully this blog with a so far irremovable blight of association.
Please accept my apologies and, until technical assistance removes beohamster from the internet, avoid scrutiny of said rubbish. The author of Beohamster is currently in exile making me a cup of tea to say sorry. The hat of most memorable penitence shall be on his head in due course in a public manner around town.
Other technical hitches created by me remain unresolved. However, our good friend and critic Formart H Sax has indicated that the 18th International Committee will be coming to our rescue within the week. Watch this space....
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