Just needed to be heard for a little while

Waves_and_Smiles

Don't mind me flooding the thread with posts, there is a degree procrastination happening here. I just read on another thread about taking a child to work and I recalled a happy memory from my childhood. I don't have many so I thought that I would share it.

Whenever my mother was in hospital my dad would take me to work every Saturday which I loved. He worked in the stores in the basement of a building company (one of the most well known and biggest around back then) and one day he had to go upstairs to the offices to get an order. I was given strict instructions to stay with him and be very good. So we went upstairs and I stood by him for a while as he sorted out his paperwork and inevitably got bored as there weren't many people around and I had nothing to look at. I wandered off into a nearby office and spotted a spinning office chair so of course I got in it and started turning in circles. Suddenly, a very smartly dressed older man came in and said hello. I shyly said hello back and he asked me who I was there with. I told him and he said my dad was a very good man. He told me that his name was Patrick and let me look out of his big glass window which gave a beautiful view of London and he pointed out various buildings to me and told me the history of them. Eventually, he held out his hand and led me back to my dad who had been looking for me. My dad fell over himself apologising much to Patrick's amusement who reassured him that it was fine and before he left Patrick gave me £10 (a huge amount of money back then to a 7 year old!) and told my dad what a beautiful daughter he had.

It turned out Patrick was the owner of the company and a hugely respected business man in the city! My dad was beside himself that I had wandered into his office, he wasn't supposed to have children on the premises and I had walked straight into the worse person who could have found me! From that time onwards up to the time my dad died my friend Patrick would send me a card and £10 every Christmas inside my dad's bonus, what was hilarious was he would place the money in a brown envelope just like my dad got his wages in with my name as Miss <name> on the front.

Thank you Mr Patrick (as I called him), you were a very kind man.

Waves_and_Smiles

Aw, thank you JM, I think that, that is probably it. The videos are making me feel 'different and odd' and it is painful. As you say we are all mentally ill at times and I am doing well. I am the first to say that I am not defined by my mental illness and I refuse to be, I think I also need to remind me not to define myself by it.

dibuzz

What a lovely memory and very kind man. £10 was a small fortune back then.

jobbingmusician

Waves_and_Smiles wrote: »

Aw, thank you JM, I think that, that is probably it. The videos are making me feel 'different and odd' and it is painful. As you say we are all mentally ill at times and I am doing well. I am the first to say that I am not defined by my mental illness and I refuse to be, I think I also need to remind me not to define myself by it.

Two things:

1. I think you should feed this back on the course, as it may well be that the course is unintentionally reinforcing this view of people with mental illness.

2. However, it's not such a bad thing. We've just been discussing how lovely, special and life enhancing different and odd pets are. Remember that special is often used pejoratively nowadays, but it can also be the most tremendous compliment. (And you are a truly special person! - and I feel privileged that there are several on this thread )

Waves_and_Smiles

It was dibuzz! I had never had so much money in my life! I thought Mr Patrick was rich, which he actually was it turned out when I learnt more about him. He was such a nice man, and he was so good with children. He made me feel immediately at ease and I must have spent 20 minutes with him while he showed me all of the biggest buildings in London. My dad used to half laugh and half cringe everytime I got my £10 Christmas wages, he mentioned the incident in horror for years afterwards. He couldn't quite believe I had wandered into Mr Patrick's office, for my dad it must have been his worse nightmare come true!

Also, when my dad died Mr Patrick gave my mother quite a lot of money to support us both, he didn't have to as the insurance only covered my dad dying on the premises but he honoured as it if he had.

Waves_and_Smiles

Good idea, JM. I will mention it on the feedback page. It is done sympathetically but there is a huge emphasis on negative symptoms, I think that I find it partly depressing? It is important health care providers realise the problems suffered but it isn't all bad. Also the interviews tend to be with people who have been in long stay hospitals ( it is explaining the difficulties of patient advocacy when there is little self-autonomy) and so far doesn't really cover those of us who live independently.

elsien

This may be me talking rubbish, but I'm sure I read interviews over the years with people who are bipolar who don't want the highs and lows evened out because they hate the flat feeling that meds can give and mourn the loss of creativity. Now if people are coping with that in their own way, its not causing massive problems and its a choice they are well enough to make, then there must be positives they feel its worth hanging onto. Maybe your course could look at that aspect as well.

And slightly off topic, but still fascinating, I saw a documentary a few years back about a surgeon with Tourette's. He was ticcing all over the place when doing consultations, but hands were as steady as a rock when operating. The perseverance it must have taken to get that far and be accepted. I am in awe of anyone who battles through and makes a life for themselves. And that includes people on here.

(And the pedant in me apologises for the grammar. My iPhone struggles with apostrophes and I can't be bothered going back.)

whitewing

Mr Patrick reminds me of a boss I had a few years ago. He was such a joker and always bantering with everyone. He had a son the same age as my son, and he knew I was a single parent at the time with no family in the city where I lived.

Just before Christmas, he quietly handed me £50 cash and told me to spend it on myself or my son for Christmas. I knew he had a heart of gold underneath his joking because he would always look out for his staff, but his unexpected kindness still makes me well up.

WaS, I guess part of the problem with your course is that more functioning individuals would find it difficult to be videoed because of the prospect of 'real life' realising. I am struck by the urge sometimes on this thread to 'come clean' and worry less about typing something that gives away who I am and what I do.

Maybe this thread will help change things in that respect too. I know when I was having counselling, I would have loved to have heard about a professional person with borderline personality disorder. But who would admit to it at the moment...

At the time I felt that I was my mental health issue. Now I see it as just a part of me.

That reminds me, is there a difference between a mental health issue, mental illness and insanity? Even when I had postnatal depression, I never really understood if I was mentally ill or not.

Waves_and_Smiles

That is fascinating about the surgeon, elsien. good on him!

There is a very positive aspect to Schizophrenia for me which is my imagination. Sometimes this backfires but I can place myself in another shoes easily and imagine myself in the same situation as them and feel what they feel. I am not sure that I would be as empathetic without having it. Also, I am never bored, I can retreat into my own mind and watch any event I think of as if it is really happening, it feels completely real to me. Although it is connected to the other worlds difficulties I am not sure that I would want to lose that, I can experience anything I choose to just by imagining it.

Very good points, whitewing. It may be easier for them to interview people who are more unstable as they don't seem, at least on the videos to feel that that anything is 'wrong' with them, in fact two denied having Schizophrenia all together and saw it as they had other illnesses. I am not sure about the fairness of interviewing someone when they are detached from reality but I suppose that the idea is to teach professionals the worse of the conditions?

I have always found that I get different views from different doctors on categories. Schizophrenia is supposed to be the worse you can go and the 'true insanity' but I have far more problems coping with Borderline Personality Disorder and PTSD then I do with that. Schizophrenia is quite black and white to me, I know the symptoms and I know by that when an episode is happening, there is little change. The other two creep up on me and I am not always aware that I am reacting as a result of them being triggered. I tend to think that we are all on a scale, even those with no diagnosed mental illness/issue and we are all higher and lower depending on our biochemical reactions and environmental experiences.

I have been told that I have mental health issues, complex mental health problems, chronic mental illness, a mental disability and even a brain disorder and damage! It all depends which doctor I am seeing at the time. I had one psychiatrist who didn't see Schizophrenia as a mental illness at all, just as a difference in how the brain operated and that it was no worse or better than any other way of functioning.

What a lovely person your boss was. There are some very kind bosses out there, I often think Mr Patrick was the reason I was never intimidated by any boss I had at work, he showed me that they could still be lovely people no matter what their status.

Pyxis

Your story about Mr Patrick was very touching.

Do you realise what it means? If you had come across as a horrible child, or even as an average child, he would certainly not have spent 20 minutes of his precious time with you. You obviously struck a chord with him. There must have been something about you that appealed to him.
Something special.

Plus, he remembered you, year on year, and kept on giving you a very large sum of money, for a child.

You must have been special.

Think about it; the owner of a very large building company, with offices in London, a very, very busy man. He remembers you, year on year.

You must have been very special.

See how wrong your mother was about you? See how wrong she was about 'strangers' only wanting to harm you? Well, he was a stranger, and he thought you were special, and he was very kind to you.

Special? Extremely!