Quote from the psych ward:

Quote from the psych ward:

Them: "No I'm not washing away my odor.  It took me years to get this. I'll get in the wet water, but I will not use soap. That's kicking away life. "

Me: (in my head) I like you.

Convo from the psych ward

Convo from the psych ward

Them: "Its like when you go to CVS; you don't buy all the twinkies! You have to leave some for someone else!"

Me: You're completely right. I like that you care  about how others feel.

Them: Well...yeah!

---a patient expressing empathy towards other patients and staff. The patients and staff were on the receiving end of another patient's hurtful and demanding statements.

BIG DEAL

Surviver is a strange word. Almost insulting, minimizing. I just don't like it.  All I can really say is I don't feel that I've survived anything.

Suicide Prevention Awareness Month 2017

The month is coming to a close,  but we need to keep talking about it.  You are not alone.  Truly.

...

Did I love his eyes enough?

Unwanted

I certainly have complaints about our mental health system, but today I forgot to notice when one of the psychiatrists I work with said,  "WE WORK WITH THE PEOPLE NO ONE WANTS."  That knocked me over.  I've never put it quite that way before.  It can be difficult to make work an "I want you to thrive" sincerity while navigating through a system that forgets what it is that happens on the front lines. And many on the front lines compromise their own ethics as well.  For those of us in the mental health field,  remember why the people we serve are often unwanted.  For those of you outside of it, know that there's plenty to want.

My 11/8/16 Sentiments on Trump's Win Posted on Facebook

11/8/16 Tuesday
10:36am

I work in a psych hospital and one of the patients registered to vote! Don't know who they voted for, but it's exciting.

National Suicide Prevention Week 2016

Today marks the beginning of National Suicide Prevention Week.

To learn more,  see https://afsp.org/

Suicide is not the easy way out
It is not for cowards
It is not shameful
It is a reflection of not knowing what else to do
THERE IS SO MUCH TO DO
TO BE
TO SEE
AND I SO VERY MUCH WANT YOU TO FEEL BETTER.
WITH ALL OF MY BEING I CAN TELL YOU
IT IS HERE FOR YOU
YOU CAN HAVE ANYTHING YOU WANT SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU WANT IT
BE PATIENT WITH THE WONDER THAT YOU ARE
WORTHY WORTHY WORTHY
STICK AROUND YOU WILL SEE IT

Suicide Hotline : 1 800 273 8255
24/7 connection to a trained counselor who is here for you.


http://youtu.be/NFZ58L0qLqo

The doctors do their thing and I do mine

You know you're making a difference when you make a psych patient pinky swear that they'll continue to take their meds after they leave the hospital. Yep. My clinical skills in action, folks.

Words From The Ill And Spectacular

I consider it to be a great compliment when someone in a raging state of psychosis tells me that I am a free spirit.

you'll have a good day

 

I made it.and I do.

Up

I made it. It helps

it will be okay

made it, living it today..

To Forgive or Resent: Henry Rollins on Suicide

Henry Rollins is man I admire. You can even leave Black flag out of it. He is a great, storyteller, writer, introspective thinker, generous with his time, and he takes his work and us very seriously. We are truly fortunate to have a person of admiration put out so much energy and send it our way. Now, here are the reasons for this post. My thoughts on mental health are intense and for many reasons. Two that I feel I can disclose are that 1) I had a friend who took his life and 2) I work in a psych hospital with people whom I consider to be my heroes and sheroes.

 Below you’ll find two posts that H. Rollins wrote about suicide. One crushing and the other is redeeming. Make your own decision.  

Henry Rollins: More Thoughts on Suicide

By Henry Rollins

Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 4:14 AM

Categories: Henry Rollins!

[Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here on West Coast Sound every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Sunday KCRW broadcast.]

As you might imagine, I got a few letters about my recent column about suicide. Actually, it was a lot of letters. For days. I read them. No matter how angry or instructive, I appreciate them all because they were written with complete sincerity, even if some had only two words, the second being “you.”

After reading carefully and responding as best I could, it was obvious that I had some work to do in order to educate myself further on this very complex and painful issue. I am quite thick-headed, but not so much that things don’t occasionally permeate.

In the piece, I said there are some things I obviously don’t get. So I would like to thank you for taking the time to let me know where you’re coming from. None of it was lost upon me.

I cannot defend the views I expressed. I think that would be taking an easy out. I put them out there plainly and must suffer the slings and arrows — fair enough. I won’t attempt to dodge them. However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t be taught a thing or two. I have no love for a fixed position on most things. I am always eager to learn something. I promise that I will dig in and educate myself on this and do my best to evolve. Again, thank you.

In the short amount of space afforded here, hear me out. Like a lot of people, I have battled depression all my life. It’s nothing special, in that it’s too common to be considered unique. This state has made me have to do things in a certain way to remain operational. There have been some truly awful stretches, as I am sure there have been for anyone who deals with depression, that have at times rendered me almost paralytic. Hours pass and I slow-cook on a cold spit. I have likened it to being a peach in a can of syrup yet fully conscious. In an attempt to keep moving along, I must stay in the immediate present tense, acutely aware of everything happening, like driving a car on a highway. If I conclude that I am not citizen grade, I do my best to avoid people so I do not act unpleasantly. No one deserves it. This has kept me in hotel rooms, my kitchen and the corners of gyms. When I have a show that night, it’s minute-to-minute.

One of the only things that gives me a breather is music. I medicate with it.

What has perhaps kept me from seeing things differently about severe depression is that I am sure I don’t have it.

But the power of severe depression was brought up quite a bit in the letters I received. Your anger toward me on this, believe me, I got it.

I serve. That is what I do. It is, to me, the most fortunate position to be in. I have an audience. It is because of them that I get to eat, move — everything. Each member of this audience is better than I am. Braver and more real than I see myself. The only thing I fear besides being misunderstood, which would be my fault anyway, is failing these people. 

For decades I have talked to and gotten letters from people who tell me that something I did helped them, or saved them from killing themselves, helped them get clean, stay clean or come out. Never once do I really think that I had anything to do with anyone staying alive, but I get where they’re coming from. All of them are better than I am and it is them I serve. 

In my mind, all of this is mine to screw up. While I don’t take myself seriously, I take them with a frightening degree of seriousness. They can take or leave me at any time; they have options. They are all I have and, beyond that, I feel I have a duty to serve them because they have made me better.

I guess this is what makes me wrestle with the issue of suicide, when it pertains to those who have an audience, or kids, or both. I feel nothing but debt to my audience. I will try my hardest, but I will never be able to even the books. If I checked out, I would be running out on the bill.

Like I said, I am trying to evolve on this. I have a picture in my mind. There is a person — one with a family and a huge audience — who is on one side of a seesaw. The family and the audience are on the other side. This person’s condition makes him heavy enough to tilt all of them up in the air and send him to the ground. He didn’t want to go, but the condition outweighed all of them and even he couldn’t stop it. Is that, albeit crudely drawn, basically it?

I understand it is my task to learn about this. It might take a while, but I will get on it. It is my belief about an ingrained sense of duty that will make this challenging, but I am always up for improvement.

I got several letters thanking me for what I said. However, it was the ones that took me to task that made me think the most.

To those I offended, I believe you and I apologize. If what I wrote causes you to toss me out of your boat, it is to my great regret, but I understand and thank you for your thoughts.

---------------

Henry Rollins: Fuck Suicide

By Henry Rollins

Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 9:43 AM

Categories: Henry Rollins!

[Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here on West Coast Sound every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Sunday KCRW broadcast.]
Days after Robin Williams died, I kept seeing his face on the Internet. His death seemed to have a momentum of its own. It went from a sad death of a famous person to “a nation mourns” pitch, which I didn’t quite understand. Sites such as Huffington Post swim in their own brand of hyperbole. They call it news and culture, but often, it’s just content.

I understand why people feel Williams’ loss so intensely. His talent as an actor is not in dispute. His performance in Good Will Hunting is unimpeachable. I wonder if he was tapping into his own deep trench of personal pain to deliver some of those scenes. It was brave and excellent work.

The more you think about it, the more you remember one great performance after another. Good Morning Vietnam is a favorite of mine.

When someone with this level of exposure dies in this way, it is confusing. An Oscar-winning actor, well-paid, with a career that most performers could only dream of — how could anyone so well regarded and seemingly fortunate have as much as even a single bad day, much less a life so unendurable that it has to be voluntarily voided?

On more than one of my USO tours, Robin Williams had been on the same stage a few days before me. That’s all I needed to know about him. As far as I was concerned, he was a good man.

But it’s here where I step off the train. I am sure some will strongly disagree with what I’m about to say. And I also understand that his personal struggles were quite real. I can’t argue with that.

But I simply cannot understand how any parent could kill themselves.

How in the hell could you possibly do that to your children? I don’t care how well adjusted your kid might be — choosing to kill yourself, rather than to be there for that child, is every shade of awful, traumatic and confusing. I think as soon as you have children, you waive your right to take your own life. No matter what mistakes you make in life, it should be your utmost goal not to traumatize your kids. So, you don’t kill yourself.

I know some people will disagree. And I get that you can’t understand anyone else’s torment. All that “I feel your pain” stuff is bullshit and disrespectful. You can appreciate it, listen and support someone as best you can, but you can’t understand it. Depression is so personal and so unique to each of us that when you’re in its teeth, you think you invented it. You can understand your own, but that’s it. When you are severely depressed, it can be more isolating than anything else you have ever experienced. In trying to make someone understand, you can only speak in approximation. You are truly on your own.

Everyone handles their emotional vicissitudes in their own ways. I am no doctor, but I think the brain is always looking for a sense of balance and normal function so the body can operate efficiently. Some people medicate accordingly, in an attempt to stay somewhat even. That pursuit can lead one down some dark paths. Someone who is an addict might not be an “addict” in the pejorative sense but merely trying to medicate and balance themselves.

Many years ago, I lived in Silver Lake with a housemate who suffered from severe bouts of depression. When she wasn’t in her small bedroom with the lights off, crying for hours, she was bright and hilarious. Anywhere we went, we laughed our asses off. She fought her depression with everything from bike rides to drugs, prescribed and otherwise. Years after the last time I saw her, I guess she could no longer keep up the battle and killed herself. No one who knew her was surprised. When she was in her deepest misery, she was unrecognizable.

The hardest part about being around her was you knew there was nothing you could do to help.

I get it, but then again, maybe I don’t.

When someone negates their existence, they cancel themselves out in my mind. I have many records, books and films featuring people who have taken their own lives, and I regard them all with a bit of disdain. When someone commits this act, he or she is out of my analog world. I know they existed, yet they have nullified their existence because they willfully removed themselves from life. They were real but now they are not.

I no longer take this person seriously. I may be able to appreciate what he or she did artistically but it’s impossible to feel bad for them. Their life wasn’t cut short — it was purposely abandoned. It’s hard to feel bad when the person did what they wanted to. It sucks they are gone, of course, but it’s the decision they made. I have to respect it and move on.

A few years ago, a guy I’d known for many years hanged himself in a basement. Weeks later, I went to the spot and picked up bits of plastic coating from the cord he used, which were on the floor after he was cut down. I liked the guy, but all I could think of then is all I can think of now — the drawings his kids had made that were pasted up on the walls of his kitchen.

Almost 40,000 people a year kill themselves in America, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In my opinion, that is 40,000 people who blew it.

Fuck suicide. Life isn’t anything but what you make it. For all the people who walked from the grocery store back to their house, only to be met by a robber who shot them in the head for nothing — you gotta hang in there.

I have life by the neck and drag it along. Rarely does it move fast enough. Raw Power forever.

---------------

To follow H.R. at LA Weekly click, here.

Columbine. It's Been 15 Years.

Today marks the15th year after Columbine. Each time this year, I settle in for some reflection, & often a good dose of reading. 

Feminist-sociologist, Michael Kimmel, has asserted that mass shootings seem to have a common theme. Male. White. 

 As a person in the mental health biz, I do know that it can play a part (and I am not suggesting that it had or had not within the Columbine events) but I also think we cannot ignore, that it's not about just illness, and guns. It's often anger, about race, and gender. 

There is great love for all those who want it, and share it--but anger is the only real emotion that is rewarded among men. Aren't we done yet? Can we put down privilege? Can we put down patriarchy? Can we create and move forward with resources for all?

 (source)

To those who died, to those who still suffer. You are bigger than I will ever be.

okay, today

I am the cheese.

On 12/31/2013, one hour before.

Dearest Social Media,
As I made a mad dash from work this afternoon, I was unable to escape the barrage of "Happy New Years!" and "See you in 2014!" I never make resolutions but I certainly have goals. The goals I will have at midnight will be the same that I have now. I don't see New Years as a new beginning or a welcoming but rather fluid time that we have assigned as a marker. Some make attempts to clean the slate and this I have never understood. Perhaps because I never felt the need to clean. But in the midst of "any regrets?" --which I don't have--my attention has been idling. It's always strange when I am working with a patient who is my exact age. Today I spent time with a person, who had placed their face in a camp fire in attempt to save their soul. This person now has insight into their actions and is very aware that psychosis secured a spot in a psych hospital on New Years Eve. This highlighted the fact that we all have ways of doing, undoing, and renewing. In the end hopefully we gain insight and grow. Per Ms. Maya Angelou, "when you know better, you do better." I think the sentiment is not suggesting that all will learn the lesson but rather any change made is due to the knowing that you needed to. So, whether you are getting drunkity-drunk, or banging pots and pans,  watching a ball drop, or rebelling, --or a combo platter of any of these--I hope your moments are grand. Conceptualize time the way you will have it. Love, light and a bit of wonder.

Funny For a Second

The Farmacy

Readily Available

(K) Toon by Adam Zyglis via Political Loudmouth

Good but a little too simple. Also, don't forget to mention patriarchy. We don't just have a mental health problem, we have a macho man problem. How many of these tragic shootings are committed by girls/women? Yes, stigma keeps those w/ Mental Illnesses at bay, but those who do speak up are usually women. Let us speak up & out about Mental Illness & let us speak up & out about how we are raising our boys to "be boys." It's not fair to them & it's not fair to us.

Life Is Hard - Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - Live Music Video at The Box Theater, August 25, 2013

I've been following this one around lately. Or maybe it's been following me. Thanks to this collective for making my fly when gravity isn't what I need.

Life Is Hard - Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Published on Sep 18, 2013

Description: 

Live Music Video. This performance was recorded entirely live in front of an audience at The Box Theater, August 25, 2013

New Self-Titled Album (Including "Life Is Hard") Available Now.
Download on iTunes: http://smarturl.it/esmzitunes

Produced by Community Music and AFOG Productions. Directed and Edited by Alexander Ebert. Cinematography by Hunter R. Baker. Coloring by Stuck On On. Thanks to all who participated. Special thanks to the audience.