Letting It Go

First Posted May 28th, 2007

Quote:
‘When we change our minds, we alter the very substance of matter itself.’
“Larry”
Discussing Grayson’s theories on
Numb3rs

By Patricia Lefave, Labeled D.D. (P)

Speaking of ‘letting it go’, which is a phrase is a phrase that we who are psychiatrized get to hear a whole lot, I have a few suggestions along that line myself. These suggestions though are from MY perspective in it so they may startle you a little, as they are rarely heard. At least when they ARE stated, they usually become part of another ‘diagnosis’ often ‘borderline personality disorder, ’ which of course, effectively cuts off all further comment or debate. Here though, on line, I can’t be interrupted so readily.
At first, this may even sound quite ‘weird’ which is another word we who are psychiatrized get to hear quite a lot.

I have heard phrases like, ‘you must let it go’ and ‘she needs to move on her with life’ and stop having ‘such unrealistic expectations,’ so often and for so long it is nauseating. This occurs if I try to present my own point of view, about my own experience, even privately, to people who do not respond to ME at all, but instead go into another assessment session ‘covertly,’ with a group of others who may expression THEIR opinion on me and every aspect of my life, as much as they wish. Thy may do this and be taken seriously apparently, even if they don’t know me at all. Evidence of that is heard when they discuss me, often by full name, while I am standing or sitting somewhere right beside them. Nevertheless, all these ‘innocent’ mystified contemptuous, eye rolling ‘others’ are presumed to be the ‘sane’ people no matter what they do or say. That’s because they belong to the group of ‘others’ who can never be blamed you see. It is important to understand there are two groups you see and also to know that according to the group who can never be blamed, ‘blaming others’ is only wrong if the group that CAN be blamed is the one trying to blame others. These are I important distinctions that may not be clear to you as they don’t appear to make any sense when they are presented as abstractions in absolute terms. You see if you don’t understand, that is because you belong to the ‘other’ group, the one that ‘doesn’t understand’ that you are not supposed to see a double standard being laid out right before your eyes. The group that does ‘understand’ (in their own opinion) understands that what they are NOT to see, IS the double standard. Understand?

OK then, let’s move along from there.
What I am going to offer in this post is offered to the mental health pros and it is the point of view the majority of them do NOT see, don’t know, and really don’t WANT to know or hear about either. This is a rotten, difficult job but somebody’s got to do it and it is going to have to be those of us who understand it since it can’t be those who don’t. (Obviously)
Since I am not ‘confronting anyone’ with my own opinions, which I have been told would be inappropriate of me to do, I am using this non confrontational form to express myself. That way, those who already think they know everything can make the choice to ignore me as always and perhaps, if I’m really lucky, one or two of them may manage to sneak a peek when they think no one is looking and actually accept another point of view, even if only partially. So I am going for this wild out of the box behaviour here in order to keep faint hope alive. I know that most of them will presume that everything I say is meaningless and others will simply be too emotionally fragile themselves to be able to handle this form of two way communication. I figure if they don’t have o look at me or actually speak directly to me though, they may feel safer sneaking up on my truth as long as they can remain ‘hidden’ while they do it. So I may be able to squeak this by the ‘observers’ of me, and remain on the ‘acceptable’ side of the public’s behavioural guidelines which have been set for me to keep me at arm’s length. So now that I have explained my purpose in this let me carry on by using some of the same words and phrases, instructions, suggestions and allegedly ‘objective’ assessments, ‘as if’ they could be seen and heard from MY side of the experience, rather than from the side of psychiatry, many family members, and the public at large being trained to hear with the psychiatric ear. The “help; being offered very often does not seem like help, when you are the one being ‘helped.’ This is for those ‘helpers’ everywhere who are engaged in pressuring and invalidating the labeled, or the soon to b labelled, into accepting ourselves as less than human. We don’t want to do that. It makes no sense to do so. These are your mistakes. I am going to use the same jargon because I find that when I am talking to those who are programmed in jargon, the only thing they can ever hear is the same jargon attached to a new perspective on it.

You Must let It Go; the other side of that

The first thing you must let go of is telling the people you ‘help’ that they must let it go. It is nauseating to listen to and it is also a simplistic instruction coming from your own blindness. After I heard it the first forty or fifty times I tried to talk to anyone about what was actually going on, or trying to resolve it in my own case, I felt like slapping you every time your robot like response system kicked in. Of course, I don’t slap you and I won’t slap you as I am a pacifist, and even if I weren’t, I know that would only get me a little something to suppress my emotional reactions to you and your fear of me. Not that you would admit to that either of course, but it is true and we both know it, whether you would admit to it or not. This kind of ‘help’ is not what I needed in the first place but this language thing is much of the problem for it is how the individual DEFINES the word ‘help’ that is making us all talk at crossed purposed even while we ‘think’ we all mean the same things. We don’t. I don’t belong to your cult so I mean these things in a more human sort of way, usually while relating as equals and making the mistaken assumption (something I now know to be a mistake which I did NOT know before) that you are doing the same. Of course you aren’t are you? You start by believing you have the superior understanding and/or worth and then fitting me into your beliefs.

What I needed fro you was to be treated like an equal human being with my own valid life experience from my own point of view. I needed to be listened to while I told you what happened to me, not have my experience ‘assessed’ as to it’s validity. I needed to be heard. I did not need to have my experience of my own life denied, invalidated or reinvented to suit you or others in ‘clinical’ terms. That may make you feel comfortable and secure but it doesn’t do a thing for me. There are many other things you must ‘let go’ of but will get to those later.

Weird
From my point of view, you people; psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, the public acting out and making comments (or sometimes threats) from four feet away are the ‘weird’ ones. In fact, many of your couldn’t get any weirder. You are weird to the point that it is nothing short of surreal. One of the weirdest things about you is your grandiose certainty that you know pretty much everything there is to know and that you are therefore entitled to ‘correct’ those who don’t agree with your perspective and opinions. What is even weirder is that you don’t seem to think there is anything you could possibly learn about me and my life from me and so you ask other people to explain ME to you. It is even weirder when you do it right in front of me like I’m not there. It is also very weird that you believe you understand my life BETTER than I do, even when you had no part in it at all. It is weird that you think gossip is an accurate definition of anyone’s ‘reality’ and that you can rely on that.. Now this you ‘normies’, is weird with a capital W.

You Need To Move On
You need to stop telling me what I need and learn how to listen to me tell you that. You get to tell me what YOU need, not what I need.
No one needs to ‘move on’ in my opinion, more than psychiatry. I need to tell you to stop telling me that life is just one big disease and that I must stand still while you control everything bad in it by tranquilizing people like me, often against our wills, for having what is defined by you as ‘incorrect’ reactions. We are not animals and do not want to be treated like animals. We also don’t want to be forced to ‘forget’ what you can’t ‘fix.’ Suppressing truth does not make it go away. This isn’t working. There is no ‘epidemic’ of ‘mental illness.’ What there is now is a large group of people who have developed a way of NOT dealing with real life because what they have come up with as a ‘solution’ is quick and cheap and looks good on the surface. (Short term anyway) It is the system’s denial, deafness, the increasing and overwhelming stress on people, the gung-ho enthusiasm of a fearful public, jumping on the psychiatrizing band wagon that is CAUSING this ‘epidemic.’ Perhaps the problem is in YOUR genes, but I really doubt that too. I know it is not MY genes that are causing me to observe you and perceive you as I do. It is just being capable of seeing what is right in my face all the time. Perhaps you’re right though and I am wrong about that. Perhaps I DO have a ‘gene’ that you don’t have; one that is sadly absent in you; one that allows me to accept a reality that is perfectly obvious but which you cannot see for yourself. In that case, the gene therapy would need to go in the other direction wouldn’t it? Perhaps like transplants now done with bone marrow, the day will come when I will be able to donate my own gene to those who cannot, due to their defective physiology and bio chemical imbalances, achieve a state of psychological enlightenment on their own. We can always pray for that day can’t we?

Having Unrealistic Expectations

Let me list here some of the unrealistic expectations held by psychiatry, some friends and family members and members of the public in relation to the psychiatrized. There are many, so perhaps I had best list them here in pint form for now. I may decide to expand on the point by point at a later time.

YOUR ‘Unrealistic Expectations”
It is unrealistic of you to believe you are somehow ‘hidden’ in plain sight while acting out your derogatory opinions of me. You expect me not to notice that.
It is unrealistic to believe that talking about me in the third person, frequently in my presence as I look right at you, isn’t going to be noticed. You do this often as if I weren’t there and you believe you have ‘good communication skills’ while you do this. It is unrealistic of you to expect me to believe that.
It is unrealistic of you to believe, often after meeting me ten to fifteen minutes before, that you understand my life and experience better than I do and there is therefore no further need to hear any more from me.
It is unrealistic to believe you can diagnose me, or anyone else, from a distance and be rational in doing that.
It is unrealistic of you to believe I will want you to do this and that I am going to thank you for it.
It is unrealistic to ask other people what I think. Other people don’t know what I think. I know what I think. If you think they know what I think, is that because they are ‘reading my mind’? if they think or you think you are ‘reading my mind’ doesn’t that mean (according to your own beliefs) that they and you are crazy?
It is unrealistic to expect I am not going to be angry for forcing me out of my job so that you won’t have to talk to me directly. Very unrealistic.
It is unrealistic to believe that you can apply the horoscope abstractions of the DSM to my life or to anyone else’s life and to believe that is ‘good’ medicine.
It is unrealistic of you to believe that I am going to deny the truth of what you did, so that I can please you by invalidating myself. It is further unrealistic of you to believe that I am going to do that simply because you instruct me to do it and because you are willing to use manipulation, intimidation tactics and coercion to achieve your own ends,
It is unrealistic of you to expect to be ‘respected’ while you behave this way. This behaviour of yours does not deserve respect.
It is unrealistic of you to expect me to pretend I don’t know how boundary violating you have been when it is so obvious.
It is unrealistic of you to expect me to deny the community abuse and judgements, as a result of your suppression of the truth and the evidence of it which I gave you, because if I don’t, you will call It a ‘symptom’ and use it to justify further ‘treatment.’ The ‘treatment’ seems to be more about making me forget what you have done, than about resolving anything for me.
It is unrealistic of you to suggest the problem is that I need to ‘smile more’ about what has happened here so that you don’t have to see my anger or frustration after spending many years, without any success, just trying to talk to you in a direct way about it.
It is unrealistic of you to expect me to ‘overlook this as if my life was not as real and important to me, as yours is to you. It is also unrealistic of you to believe that ‘overlooking’ such an abuse of power would be a mentally ‘healthy’ thing to do.
It is unrealistic of you to think that I should absorb all the losses of this for YOU, so that you won’t have to feel at all disturbed by it personally, and to further believe that I am going to be, or should be, OK with that. This situation just screams double standard to anyone who bothers to listen.
It is unrealistic of you to believe that if you just let enough time pass, while making sure you never admit to anything, or even apologize for it, that I will give up on believing the fault lies in you for failing to own your won behaviour.
It is unrealistic of you to believe that by doing this, I will accept the idea that the fault lies in me for expecting you to live up to the ethical standard you claim you have and espouse in speeches. If you don’t believe in those standards and yet you pretend you do, the fault for failing to live by them lies in you, not in me for believing you. Unless of course you are sociopaths yourselves and that is the ‘lesson’ you are trying to teach me. Is it?
It is unrealistic of you to expect me to fail to notice that you like to use famous or prominent people to promote your bio medical model of a system because most people are followers and they like to follow the well known personalities. It is also unrealistic of you to think I will not notice that most of them are people with drug and alcohol abuse problems and that is what landed them in the system in the first place, offering because it triggered them into psychosis. So maybe the reason they like the medication so much is because that is their ‘treatment’ of choice in the first place.
It is unrealistic of you to have an expectation that if you just ignore the mess you make of my life, that mess will just disappear of its own accord. I believe You call that, ‘magical thinking.’ Maybe my next post here should be on just that: Psychiatry’s Magical Thinking.

If you really want to help people, start listening, then stop manipulating, threatening and acting contemptuously towards those you ‘claim’ you want to save, and please, lose the eye rolling bit. Your palpable disdain for me, and those like me, who end up under your control is obnoxious.
You aren’t ‘superior’ specimens of humanity and if you ‘think’ you are, then you are in the wrong job and don’t have a clue how to save yourselves from your OWN delusions, let alone anyone else.

Is that statement causing you to have one of your emotionally fragile moments? Is your reacting with the anger of one who thinks he or she must be respected no matter what YOU say or do to those from whom you demand this ‘respect’? if so, let me offer you back some of your own advice in the form of some of the more popular platitudes which you currently use to give us a nice little verbal slap.
“You’re just too sensitive.
You’re having a perception problem, a reaction problem, a character disorder problem and you’re obsessing.
You must get on with your life.
Move on.
Let it go.
Give up those old patterns.
You’re just jealous, so stop all that vile attention seeking."
(or sometimes attention avoidance)
If you don’t, then all of 'us', will ignore all of you, until you decide to give up pushing your domination agenda and learn how to communicate like equals.
Maybe then, you will learn how to model boundaries, with an attitude of mutual respect, instead of demanding obedience to dictatorships, with those little smiles of surreal satisfaction plastered on your Psy-Fi faces.

Your most unrealistic expectation is that you are going to solve this problem by ignoring it and by ignoring it, you cannot identify it in the first place. You won’t solve the ‘mystery’ of dysfunctional relating by harping away at victims to ‘forgive’ or ‘overlook’ the aggressor’s behaviour and that of his supporters.
That is called ‘enabling.’ Didn’t you KNOW that?
You will solve the great ‘mystery’ of mental illness when you spend about one tenth as much time harping away at the aggressors and supporters to ‘admit to’ their OWN behaviour, own it, show CONTRITION for it, and change their own minds instead of trying to change their victims minds. What you are doing now is forcing victims to adjust THEIR perception and reactions to accommodate the twisted desires of those aggressive types who ‘seek’ the domination of others as the primary means of soothing themselves.

We are being told to accept the losses for ourselves and everyone else as a result of this reality reversal are ‘mad as hell’ and we are tired of being told to be quiet and just follow the instructions of those who can’t even see or accept the reality of our very REAL problems
It is unrealistic of you to expect that thinking feeling human beings are going to accept this attitude problem of YOURS without protesting about being on the receiving end of it. YOU must ‘let it go.’ Your expectations are the ones that are less than human. As Dr. Phil might phrase it, “what were you THINKING’? Also, ‘how’s that working for you’?