Therapeutic relationships are not your everyday story

Time to write it out, I think.
My mind is thinking on something my lovely neighbor friend said. She was talking about going through a hard time and how she was addicted to her story. Naturally I think she is suggesting that I might be addicted to my story....
and I am trying to understand this idea.
Where does it start, where does it end and am I addicted or am I simply trying to figure out how to write the chapters still? How to write the ending to this story?
Should I right/write an ending to this story?
And how addicted am I?
I will own that I am addicted to something in my story. But I am not totally sure what. I have been trying not to think about it and redirect my thinking to other things. I have plenty to think about and do, and I do think about and do plenty of other things. Yet somehow I am still stuck in this story. This Perri Cheri character still holds a place in my story, the tragic hero that I just can't quite place or has been placed and I can't quite write out of my story. I don't know how to let him stay in my heart without it breaking it and I can't quite let him go completely because I like the me he brought out and was bringing out. Yet the me he brought out is the me that was turned away and rejected. The me that was not worth helping. The me that was not heard or noticed when it so desperately needed to be. Even that me was invisible and unloveable... So I need to let him go I suppose but at the same time... sigh.
...I am not so sure it is my story I am addicted to... I wonder if I am addicted to the sensation I felt in those moments. I wonder if I am addicted to the beautiful tragedy, the comedy of errors. And I also wonder if I am not addicted at all but rather I was left in a cliffhanger of unresolved reality.
I don't know. My mind can take this so many ways and it does. So I am allowing myself a bit of space to I ponder this idea of being addicted to ones story and I wonder what to do about it.
"Just let it go"
I have and I try and I do and I don't and I can and I can't and I am but I am not and time will heal all wounds while absence makes the heart grow fonder....
and...
sigh...
the traps
In reality, I need reality, or I at least know that reality would help. To be able to put into context the reality of what happened with the person with whom it happened. It is the ideal that so few people ever actually get because we are so very human and so very flawed, proud, selfish and scared.
"Be the change you wish to see in the world"
How?
How can I be that change when I am not allowed?
I think the mental health industry has a similar problem to our education systems: We challenge kids and claim we want kids to be creative problem solvers and utilize higher level thinking skills but when they do they are punished for various reasons:

• because it posses a threat to "classroom management"
• because it is not exactly the way it was taught so it must be the wrong answer
• because the teacher does not understand the different way of saying, doing, or seeing something
• because it does not match the test exactly
• because teachers are worried that other kids might follow suit and get lost 
• because we like consistency and order, symmetry and matching and the creative approach or rendition may threaten that
• We like things to me homogenized and homogeneous- it feels safer
• If every kid were doing things their own way it would take the teacher ages to understand and grade
• The kid may be going off on a tangent that keeps them from acquiring the skill that we are required to teach them.

There are many reasons, some reasonable and legitimate, others not so much. It is a tricky balance and maybe an ideal that is impossible to achieve in our current education systems but very often kids are punished, discouraged and/or discredited for creative problem solving. They are taught to conform to the rules of the system and yet we somehow expect them to exceed and excel once they are out in "the real world" that is nothing like the system of worksheets and conformity they were nurtured in.
The mental health industry claims to want to help people be able to manage their "mental illness" and yet when they do they are not listened to, not heard, discredited, discouraged and even punished for it. They are overlooked instead of utilized.
I have learned so very much and when I look back I know I have come so very far because I have worked to manage my mood instabilities and my intensities since I was a teen and yet I am still stigmatized and not heard.
I know my symptoms, I know a lot about what helps and what I need. I know I can do many things I am not allowed to do because I don't fit inside the boxes of others.
My lovely fellow piñata person friend pointed out that they don't want to listen because then it destroys their illusions... Maybe so.
Their illusions of control and sanity that are so very ridiculous and we know because we have been broken open and we know how easy it is to be broken open. But we also know the beauty that can come along with it and how that illusion of control and sanity is making themselves and so many people behave in such unethically insane ways.
...addicted to my story
Maybe so
but also, I think that being addicted to my story keeps me alive, because in this story, with the transference that happened and the mania and the "I will never have anything to do with you" and the "let it burn out" -"it" being me- and the "we need to get you stabilized..." so maybe you should go somewhere else and here are some suggestions," mere suggestions, not referrals and not with the people they have there that have the credentials and know how "oh those two didn't work, check with your insurance because we don't want to work with you anymore" my story ends in sacrificing me for him...
I don't like that ending. I don't want that ending. I think that ending needs to be rewritten, and re-righted. It's too deep and too profound... And every time I tried to go somewhere else I had to relive the story, feed the addiction, and it was confusing to me and the new person trying to treat me. One man fed it, one women shamed me for it, one PA tried to treat me knowing they that were abandoning were better qualified to figure this out so she was careful and cautious with how to proceed, herself very likely unsure of who to believe. Each time... feeding the addiction... the story, the fantasy, the taboo, the effort to resolve, and the what was left unknown to me.
So time, yes, but there is some fighting that also has to happen to break this addiction. Some addictions just can't be stopped cold turkey because it's very dangerous to the addict.

The Prettiest Petite Piñata Lady Ever and her Managed Manic Magnificence

Yesterday I stopped in at the Brain Injury Alliance to say high and see if there is anything I can get involved with there. I am needing to find a place, figure out how to fit into society once again. While there I met the prettiest petit piñata lady ever. I can not even begin to express how much I loved her. She was absolutely bursting with so much energy and so much of what I know so well but keep contained. She says she doesn't open up like that to people, that people do with her but she doesn't like that with them. She claims she needs to. I agree with that but I also am not sure that I should because she and I both know what comes along with that.
It's why we don't embrace our crazy so openly.
She was like manic me if I were on steroids and Ritalin at the same time and yet, she was managing, working and functioning.
Managed Manic Magnificence.
She was like a the live version of so many intensities shared on this blog, the stuff that I only share here and mostly keep restrained in the "real world."
I loved how she related to the spirituality and the way she thought in rhymes at times. I loved that she researches and understands "coming out of isolation." I love that she knows what it is like to be tough and yet not seen and not heard. Actually I don't love that, I wish she did not have that pain and the problems that come along with it. I wish I could take it from her and so many other tragedies she has had to endure, and the thing is she relates to that as well.
She is not me but she understands things about me and I understand things about her that very few do.
She and I, we are valuable in our communities and we are especially valuable in the TBI and bipolar communities. We could help the people who have abused us in the systems that are supposed to help us. We deserve to be heard and listened to, we deserve to be treated with respect and we deserve fair treatment.
She knows there are more out there like us and I hope I can help find them and help them have a voice too. We have taken on burdens and helped people be strong when we were breaking or broken our selves and far too often we were overlooked and/or slandered, talked down to, sacrificed or undermined because we were nice and tough but also independent and even selfless.
I take care of myself by taking care of others and I will keep doing that, only now, I'm also going to take care of others by taking care of and standing up for myself.
I remember asking, in my breaking and in my exiling: "Why me? Why now?"
Because I am stronger than I knew and I am needed and I have done a damn good job of managing and adapting and being a good person despite my "mental illness" and TBI.
Maybe I won't get resolve where or how I would like, but I may just be developing resolve.
And somehow I am letting go by holding on and I can feel things letting go as I reach out and keep trying.
True colors will come out and all that needs to be brought to light will be.
I am going to be okay.

This is what came out today as I reflected on Managed Manic Magnificence and the pains that come along with living and loving. I felt the pains of my lovely new friend and older friends. I felt the weight of the world as I painted. I wondered how and why we can all keep living with so much pain and so much heartache. A few tears fell as I painted, but ultimately, I feel like something beautiful came out of it and I love it. It may be my favorite painting yet.

Tiny victories
and
Keep Fighting
Update: My pretty piñata friend has read this and I love that she needed time to process it and me also, it tells me she is holding onto rational and I know that I can trust her. She told me she wants her name on here and I am flattered that she not only will allow it but requested it. The only problem I have is I don't know how to write her name in now without changing the integrity of my in the moment writing. So I decided to attach it here and in the future I will call her by name... maybe, -well, only if I don't think what I am saying could come back to bite her.- Her name is Renee Casati and she is truly a beautiful person. It is so nice to be seen and nice to be heard and nice to know I am not alone.

It's easy to die ...and industry that feeds it?

One thing I would like to address are the suicidal tendencies and thoughts. I am honestly pretty disgusted about how the Neuroscience Institute and Patient Experiences "Advocates" (those are the obnoxious sarcastic air quotations spoken with derision) overlooked, dismissed and treated with disrespect this very symptom in me. I knew not to say I was immediately feeling these things. I had been locked up once before for making a stupid honest comment. But I was fending those off and I told them so on several occasions. Then when I was really fading and struggling to find appropriate replacement care because they would not allow me to be seen there I pointed out how their actions affect people, to which they responded by calling the police. However, the police could do nothing because they don't treat fading they only can stop an emergency. The police felt they should not have been called, "passing the buck" is what they felt was happening. Other providers felt they should not have called. They never followed up or did anything to make sure I was getting proper care, so I feel it was basically a threat or meant to send a message to me.
I feel like and I suspect they think I was only making comments about this subject to manipulate. I think they are really stupid. If I was honestly trying to manipulate I would have made a bigger deal and I would not have been like, "yeah, I have had those thoughts but I am not right now and I know what to do with them and how to handle it when they come." That is what I said.
If I had been trying to manipulate to pursue I would have said something more like, "I am  feeling suicidal and I don't think I can live with out getting this resolved" or probably something stupid like that. I don't know, I cannot even think of a good intelligent manipulation for this scenario. Probably because I don't (do not) do shit like that.
That is stupid.
No, instead I try to address it but I also kind of try to hide it. It's kind of stupid and probably hard to treat but I try to make sure I am saying enough so they know it is there but won't have me admitted or committed anywhere. I know I can hold on for a long time.
BUT
I also know how damn easy it is to die.
And how it could take just one brainwave malfunction and you could be gone before you even realized what you were doing.
Here are some examples:

• hiking, oops, too close. 
• Medicine, "I just need a little extra"- or "wait, that wasn't a drink"
• the silver eraser that clears the unwanted, painful, memories quickly and completely with one pull of a trigger
• here is one I remember from when I was much younger- I must have been somewhere in the spectrum of manic as I was driving on the freeway thinking through the possibilities for my life. My mind grabbed hold of one path and then, faster than I was driving, as my vivid thoughts raced I lived through the entirety of the plan in my mind and then I was suddenly at the end of my life when my hands fortunately fought back the instinctive reflex to promptly jerk the steering wheel to the left thus ramming me into the cement barrier because my life was supposed to be over in that moment. 
• Oh, darn the river is faster than I thought. 
• It's a nice train. It just wanted a hug.  (or semi, or car)
• Here is one that reminded me I am not totally out of the woods yet: my daughter is telling me about what she learned in biology; that a person can die from water poisoning, by drinking too much water and my brain says "huh, that would be an interesting sensation" as I envision the ease of guzzling a galloon or few of water. 
• I just ran into a friend who shared concern about a family member of hers that is diabetic, because it would be so easy for this family member, all they would have to do is push a button on there pump...

I am sure I could share more but I think this list is sufficient to illustrate how easy it would be in a moment, just a moment, of intense and screwed up chemistry, one could easily do irreversible damage regardless of how well they think they can handle it. 

Fortunately I know that suicidal thoughts are a symptom, not the problem and certainly not the solution, so when I have them I mention them as just that, a symptom. But it is a symptom to take seriously because their is something terribly wrong and this symptom can get worse and/or catch you off guard at just the wrong time. So when someone says they are having this symptom, if they tell you they are feeling these things and if they try to explain any part of it please listen. 

**Ohh... epiphany- as I am writing I am thinking and I bet they really did think I was trying to manipulate because I told them these thoughts were being fed by the situation and the way the transference was  addressed, or maybe rather not addressed. Because I told them they were the root of and possibly the cause of the symptom I was experiencing. And I kept trying to tell them their neglect and desire to be rid of me, their treating me as worthless, was feeding it. 

Man, I am stupid sometimes. 

So it seems likely that my analyzing to maintain control of me and speaking openly about it, was once again, misinterpreted through projection, reflection, deflection. It is possible that my analyzing to maintain control of myself, may have been projected and interpreted as an attempt to maintain or gain some control of them... sigh

But the reality of the way they treated me does feed those feelings, especially when you are in a transference where you were learning to love yourself by loving the bits of you you saw in your therapist -that now needs to be rid of you. This is honesty from my fighting the suicidal thoughts and figuring out why the hell these thoughts were plaguing me so intensely and unexpectedly at all. It was never a manipulation of anybody. It was trying to undo the manipulation of me, that happened in therapy... Accidental or on purpose.

Damn this psychology is deep. But I assure you, it was not about them, or at least it was not supposed to be, it was about me. That is what I kept trying to tell them and will maintain is my truth. Yes, Dr. Cheri was loved by me, and honestly still stupidly is, BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT I WAS THERE ABOUT AND THAT IS NOT WHAT I WAS EVER AFTER IN SEEKING HELP, CLARIFICATION AND TREATMENT. It was supposed to be about me and the screwed up chemistry or injury of my brain. It was supposed to be about me and that when I so desperately needed it to be... But I am an empath and so many things that put my needs last. It should not be that way in that industry. This is where the broken, vulnerable, overlooked, neglected, caregivers need to be noticed, seen, valued, cared for and helped. Too many wounded end up wounding because they are reflective. 

And in this deep reflective epiphany moment, I am thinking maybe I need to be done with therapy with anybody ever again because it is too damn messy and too damn scary and they can twist it and twist you however they feel to either benefit or protect themselves. Sigh... and I thought they only had as much power over me as I allowed them to have. No, they have too much control, too much corruption, too much power, or there is too much disrespect, dehumanizing and stigmatizing of patients within the industry of psychology and psychiatry; the industry that is supposed to understand, help and protect me.