HOW BELIEF HURTS

I took a service last night at Littleport. It went well. I was different to usual and I was much happier with my work.

I have been thinking much upon my work recently. I was wondering how to get across what I want to get across. How I have been re-born by changing my belief system thus providing evidence that the central tenet of Spirit is that belief is all important because it creates not just our own lives but those lives around us. In other words,EVERYONE.

All my work for sometime has been upon this subject but I was left unsatisfied by my efforts. I have been thinking about how I can better get it across and wondering if I should just be more honest. The communication I received last weekend not only gave me evidence that my thoughts were known, but it also told me to forge ahead.

Last night I did. I didn’t leave personal bits out. In other words I told of the things I was afraid to. It so much better illustrated the message I was trying to impart-that belief is everything and that we have much more control than we realise.

As a result, the service went well and when it came to doing the demonstration part, that was different too. I had direction, I knew who I needed to speak to. Normally I do not, I just have to describe the person I am seeing and wait for them to be claimed and then I can continue. Not last night. I knew who the communicator wanted to speak with. Whether that stays with me I don’t know. I hope so. It is more efficient I think.

It isn’t just our own personal beliefs that mould our lives but the beliefs of those around us. It can be devastating.

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

I have spent two years, not all at once, in psych wards. Precisely because of the beliefs of those around me and of those with the power, and of my own which I held because I was taught them.

Every psychiatrist I ever met harmed me further. Not one helped me. Without exception they all felt superior and all knew that my problems stemmed from my homosexuality. Their attitude was either I need to be str8 or that I needed to accept it. Open and shut case. Only one ever came close to recognizing that I was a victim of abuse and that this was important! That person only ever said to ‘get away from your family’. That was the sum total of their expertise.

I still recall the arrogance displayed by many of these people and the complete ignorance they displayed of people’s suffering. One, when they managed to get my parents to show up, sat there and asked my if I wanted to have sex with father!!!!! Why? Because I am gay and therefore must be suffering a reverse Oedipus complex. F*cking stupid arrogant prat. I makes me angry just recalling it. How dare he humiliate us all like that? How dare he not recognize what was actually going on and that I, yes me, would pay for his arrogance once we were behind close doors again? To think arseholes like this are in charge of of deeply disturbed people who need great care in order to relieve their suffering. Instead, they get this!

Another, whom I did actually like, was a total prat too. Because I liked him and felt I could maybe trust him, I dared to broach the subject of my rape as a child. I didn’t come right out with it. Of course I didn’t. I started to talk about my loss of innocence. I was 19. He laughed and said ‘all adults mourn the loss of innocence’. He hadn’t a clue yet he was being paid to care for me, label me and he had letters after his name and respect.

Another used our sessions to bemoan the state of her marriage and another still to talk about her overweight problem, to someone, me, who was actively anorexic/bulimic at the time! Some tried to convert me to their brand of Christianity.

Worse was the drugs they forced me to take. I was held down and had them injected into my bum if I tried to stand up for myself and refuse to take them. These drugs are appalling in what they do to a person. The side effects I will never forget. Constant shuffling, drooling, being in a fog. The most awful skin crawling, the feeling of having something trying to burst through my  gut, the hallucinations, the shakes. I have since discovered that these drugs can leave permanent neurological damage. Perhaps the ‘unspecified’ neurological disorder I now have is the result of these drugs.

Not one of my stays in hospitals, not one shrink, not one nurse, ever helped me. All just added to the abuse and the neglect of me. They all knew better than me.

I was lucky I did eventually find a therapist who saved me. He didn’t drug me. He didn’t label me. He LISTENED to me and started me on the long and painful road of undoing all that had gone before. He was true to his word and he was there for me 24/7 until I decided I didn’t need that amount of care. I did need him for 5 years.

Sometimes, like when I write this stuff out, I wonder how on earth I survived and it brings home the enormity of what I have lived through. The above is just a tiny part of it. I have always minimised. One has to to survive. I don’t now and it shocks me.

The thing with this past and the PTSD is that there are days when it weighs heavy upon me. Nothing I can do about it. On those days I am quiet and do little and certainly don’t go out. I feel too wounded. All want to do is curl up into a ball and be held safely. These days are fewer now. Night terrors are fewer and less severe. Flashbacks hardly happen now. Just what i feel now as I write, this enormous sadness and a feeling of rawness in my solar plexus.

At the same time I am astonished at who I am today and how happy  and content and generally at peace with myself I am. My thinking is not the black and white thinking I was taught. I know I can still be happy and at peace with feeling that 100% of the time. Days like today do not mean I am a fraud or a failure. No one is happy 24/7. Besides, I am not unhappy today. It is just a wounded day.