Whatever happened to, ‘..the best is yet to come…’ (2011, 2019)

Human beings are notoriously bad at predicting. What we are good at, both instinctively and through the acquisition of further skill is anticipating in the short term, ‘the two second advantage’ [1] as some have called it. Many, unaware of how much of life is highly sensitive to initial conditions, boldly go in for futurology. The key to anticipation, having made one move, is how able are you to dump everything you think you know, and make a fresh assessment of the new, current and different situation? Think of all those sports where the ball travels so fast that you must start your move before it has been hit! And when you miss, how fast can you forget?

However, we are always being told by others to set aims, objectives, goals, plan and sign-up to mission statements. When I posted the following in 2011, I was playing that old trick, that rarely works, of hoping that a public declaration of intent would force me to get on with it and comply!

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Things don’t turn out as we intend, the best attitude to ‘failure’ or indeed anything which might be regarded as a mistake, is to see it all as part of an inevitable process and an opportunity for new learning. You can even go so far as to regard depression in this way, as always reactive to something; you feel down in response to a loss (of any kind), is your response grounded in a real event where sadness or grief really is the right emotion, or is it that things just didn’t turn out the way you planned them? If the latter is the case, one legitimate response is to conclude that it was simply a lousy plan in the first place.

Events happen, change occurs around us whether we like it or not. I was a psychiatric inpatient for a brief period at the end of 2011, and for a month or so in the spring of 2012, the autumn of 2014 and the summer of 2016. My father died in 2014, he’d been the last of the previous generation, so his estate contained within it not only the possessions of many direct ancestors but their ‘life documents’ too [2]. In 2014 the sea wall outside my window collapsed and in 2016 I moved home. But I should confess, that all of this is by way of a distraction - for there is a sleight of hand in what I’ve written so far!

As stated in the post, all the writing was already half complete, I wouldn’t have had the nerve to assert their contents if they hadn’t been. Now, the first and last have already been posted, leaving just the meat in the sandwich. But, having had the pleasure of finding things out, the kick of discovery (to misquote Feynman) [3] I’m bored and face the tedium of laying out the argument and evidence step by step. (The answer to that kind of task is of course mindfulness!) Distraction is sorely tempting, like transcribing and publishing the audio recordings I have (conversations with 2 clients, a nurse, 2 support workers, a student and an educator.) The passage of time and an already tested form of presentation takes care of any confidentiality issues. Come to think of it, this is more than a Masters thesis, more like a PhD!

(I ought to hurry up though, because I want to claim for myself the phrase Ways Of Being With, and the concept of Social Craftsmanship.)

Of course, real intellectual confidence would be not feeling the need to do any of it. The most obvious recent example being flash Dave. In the course of doing a first degree you realise you’ve already proved to yourself your capability to do this kind of stuff and your attention shifts. Just how long does it take to become Prime Minster? And remember, political careers always end in failure, so at the first major mistake, get the hell out and find something better to do!

[1] Ranadive, V and Maney, K (2012) The Two-Second Advantage

[2] Plummer, K (1983 & 2000) Documents of Life

[3] Feynman, R. P (1999) The Pleasure of Finding Things Out 

Bibliography of the half-written!

Never say never again - inpatient 2016

The view of Haytor from the Haytor Unit, a view I'd first seen 22 years before when it was called the Edith Morgan Centre (did the 45 mile version of Ten Tors in 1977.) (photo by Nick Hewling)

Luckily I was transferred to the old Cypress Independent Hospital within the week (Community Care Trust as was.) (photo by Nick Hewling)

Some argument about Wordsworth, probably me saying something about always read the original and remember the context - wild daffodils, between the edge of the mere and the tree line. (photo by Nick Hewling)

Not difficult to scare oneself (photo by Nick Hewling)

Still had to serve-out 28 days, part of deal, still cheers! (selfie by Nick Hewling)

 

Time and space - inpatient 2014

Location on, screenshot by Nick Hewling

Tortured by the view, photo by Nick Hewling

Selfie, clearly I had more kit than 'they' did, photo by Nick Hewling 

1.12.2014 10,48 food obsessed, photo by Nick Hewling

2.12.2014 17,00 must have been out, photo by Nick Hewling

Where my head is at now

For my most recent mental health writing see Natural Mental Health. Everything else promised on this site is coming, and more besides, eventually!

New header photo 2019 (photo by Nick Hewling)

The man with no name (updated 2014)

(This piece first appeared in a local newsletter in 2008. At that time I slightly censored my original text but restored the cuts and updated the content when it was first posted here in January 2010. Now I’ve briefly added more text in italics at the end which brings it up to date again! When it first appeared some readers wondered if the other person referred to was real, I can assure you he is).

I first met him on a psychiatric ward, I knew his name then but have forgotten it since. We lived in almost the same street for many years but rarely spoke, though we saw each other all the time. The last time I saw him, a few weeks ago, he passed briefly through the café before jumping the train. We have known each other now for nearly sixteen years, and it seems that there is a bond of shared experience that will never go away. Let me try to explain.

At times he seems like my mirror image. He’s certainly a benchmark by which to measure myself. On one occasion when we met (passed on the street) I was in a neighbouring town, and waiting for the bus home. I was sitting on the wall, staring in the direction the bus would come, looking south-west; the setting sun illuminating me, my body relaxed and my eyes rested naturally on the horizon. I saw him coming from the same direction, the perfect opportunity to ‘read’ him and therefore myself - the simplest of encounters with the minimum of ‘noise’. I knew his gaze had to past across the uprights of the bus shelter and that would clean his memory at the right moment. I remained motionless and allowed the gaze of my eyes to remain fixed. At the right moment I glanced away for a split second in recognition, then back to look directly and uncompromisingly into his eyes - demanding a response. It was then that something remarkable happened. For the first time in all those years he looked undeniably normal, and his expression, in response to mine, was one of sorrow and sympathy. With my seemingly fixed stare I looked distressed to him - he had misread me, in a way only an ordinary person, who cares but doesn’t understand, can do. He had lost, for a while, his capacity to be mad.

He’s a walker, night and day, and so am I. But he needs to be outside more often - he covers more miles. Those who are disturbed don’t wander, they walk with purpose, rhythm and speed. To the onlooker they may appear to be staring blankly ahead whilst taking an erratic course - they look crazy. But this is only because urban landscapes are artificially regular and regimented. The real walker, who moves swiftly but smoothly, is actually following the most efficient path through the real contoured landscape beneath his feet. The path of least effort up a slope is always curved. The apparently fixed staring eyes have in fact come to rest naturally on the horizon - seeing through the fixed artificial urban skyline. But they do blink from time to time, like a camera shutter recording fixed points for navigation. The so called ‘psychotic’ hopes to achieve a kind of walking meditation; whereby the hallucinations, which may be of sound, smell, taste, touch or vision, and the unwanted delusional thoughts that emerge to explain them, may be relieved. If he can stay ‘in the moment’, in the here and now, create nothing but constant change around him, know that all thoughts and feelings can only be about the past or future and let them go - then survival is possible. Finally he may be able to allow his unconscious mind to make all the decisions and find a few hours of peace whilst in constant movement.

By the time he comes to rest, his ‘balance’ (physical coordination) and ability to ‘navigate’ (be orientated in three dimensions of space and one of time) will be restored and his mental awareness as acute as his hunter-gatherer ancestors. Alas, opportunities to be alone and abroad at night are ever more restricted by modern society. When forced into the crowd then disaster may strike unless you are particularly confident and relaxed. You may even be able to ‘part the waves’ by walking briskly in a dead straight line through a crowded pedestrian precinct staring relentlessly ahead, not deviating nor giving way even for a moment. The first time, I did it by accident; I was pre-occupied with my own thoughts and didn’t realise until I was in it and saw its effect. It’s both frightening and amazing if you have the confidence to keep going. The crowd parts in front of you, you are like an arrow travelling through air, it gives a wonderful sensation of power. But you mustn’t take your eyes of the real horizon and make eye contact otherwise you will become rapidly disorientated and liable to fall. I must have gone a hundred yards without touching anyone. Afterwards you need to be able to switch realities; and must make eye contact to be balanced, and able to navigate in the landscape of others!

When we met on the hospital ward it was a crazy place, the staff occupied one mental universe, whilst we the patients had our own individual realities - well almost! There is a realm where two, at most three, psychotics can understand each other and therefore act together. We each define a situation differently and ascribe different meanings to it, reflected in the mutually incomprehensible content of our words - but how much real communication depends on language? He’s a bit of an artist and one day I helped him cover the walls of the music room with graffiti. The unit was attached to a general hospital, any part of which could be explored - if you had the confidence to act as though you had a right to be there. At night the grounds could be a playground too.

The fastest way out of a prison is usually the reverse of the way you came in - through the front door! You are never more than three keys away from freedom in the psychiatric system; one out of seclusion, another out of a secure ward on to an acute ward which is open at some point in the day, and the third which unlocks the transport taking you to and from units or the outside world. Physical methods are extremely slow, the psychological much faster - you have to get those who want you in, to want you out. Using what have become the 'black arts' of psychiatry and psychology, against those from whom you learnt them, can be fun; non-verbal behaviour, hypnotherapy and NLP - plus a little old-fashioned distraction and sleight of hand. Two of you can cause chaos, three of you can get one of you - out of anywhere. And it is a game. If you can understand the source of your distress in the system of care; see its rules, routines and the habits of the workers who reproduce it - then there is much to amuse. But it is addictive and I still can’t walk away from it all.

(Oops! I may have just self-diagnosed myself with an ‘anti-social personality disorder’).

(Now it is 20 years since we first met, and I haven’t seen him for a couple of years – which doesn’t necessarily mean he is not around, just that our awareness’s have changed. I know mine have and I suspect his have too. First there was the time I saw him working in an out-patient art therapy room, absorbed in a very elaborate large drawing. Then months later he had a dog in tow, he was still walking but obviously the pace and priority had changed. Then came the van, the woman and the child. One day the van was parked outside the café – the first time we had been stationary in the same space for more than fifteen minutes, ever! Finally the last time, all three were dressed as if part of a wedding party, on their way to a local music festival.)

Bus shelters are often effective barriers for forcing a 'pattern break' from one kind of a 'trance' like state to another involving more 'reality testing'.