Tuesday, October 05, 2010

WAKEY WAKEY

I have just got back from my swim.Normally whenever I come home the dogs bark excitedly.This morning they made not a sound.I fully expected that once I opened the door they would start.No.Luque eventually opened one eye and looked at me as if to say “do you mind?”  Then he seemed to realise who I was and jump down and came to greet me.The others still had not roused themselves until I opened their pens.  They then forced themselves to go out into the garden.

My swim went really well this morning for the second morning running. 

I do not know what sparks off memories but for some reason I started to think about my time in the anorexic unit of the Atkinson Morley Hospital in 1978.  I believe it was very new at the time.  I do not have good memories of my time there at all. We were treated like bad people instead of suffering people.  The arrogance of the psychiatrists and psychologists and nursing staff still astounds me to this day.They had no idea what they were doing and just caused more damage.I was thrown out after a few weeks because I was still actively anorexic despite their punishment of me.I was considered to have a personality disorder because I did not acquiesce to their opinion of me.To them the fact that I had had a childhood steeped in stress and grief and abuse was not at all important and had nothing to do with my state of mind!

I wish I could say that the so-called professionals that I met there were the exception rather than the rule but they were not.It has been my experience that all of them without exception did not have a clue.At their best they were kind and compassionate but ineffectual. At their worst they were arrogant and abusive. The latter were the more numerous.

The trouble with psychiatry is that they have as their premise that when people are suffering mentally and emotionally it is because they have a chemical imbalance.They see it as a biological disorder.As a result of this they do not take into consideration a person’s experience or what they think and believe.A patient who does not acquiesce is written off as beyond help for nothing upsets them more than a patient who will not submit to their will.

I have been having fun with knitting up so called sock blanks on the knitting machine and dying them.  My first pair was Brushstrokes as shown in the previous post.  I am now on my second pair.  This time I used Kool Aid and I painted the knitted blankets completely differently to the previous two. Once again I have not done both blanks identically so the socks will be fraternal.  This does not bother me one bit and I confess I do not understand people wanting their socks to be identical.Some of my socks are identical and some are not I really do not give a toss.I suppose that I prefer fraternal socks.As long as the colours are the same or match I do not care how they display themselves in the sock.

Our new puppy Ada has settled in really well.I like her attitude very much.  She is very full of herself and she has such an arrogant gait yet she is not at all difficult.  In the past I would have found this attitude to be challenging and I am sure others still do.I have learned though how to handle strong willed dogs like this. At 9 1/2 weeks she walked happily on the lead and she now stands still when I stack her. All I do is stack her and as soon as she is still I praise her and let her go again.As a result, she does not struggle at all now when I pick her up and stack are on the table.However, I still only have her stood for a couple of seconds.I still praise her.I will continue to do this on a daily basis and by the time she needs to be shown, if I show her, I will have a dog that will stand for the time that she needs to.

1 comment:

Penelope Grey said...

I think it is terrible how so much was allowed to happen in the past regarding both mental health and health in general. I know the old chesnut is well people didn't know as much then as they do now, but they were still people, with emotions and feelings and must have been aware that much of what they were doing was destructive rather than constructive. I grew up with a Mum who was a chronic asthmatic and she regularly was given new medication to take, only to have it taken away weeks later as it was found to have some damaging aspects and had been suddenly removed from the marketplace. My real grandfather ended up in a mental instution where he died in the end. His behaviour became such that he had to be sectioned and was given electro therapy while there. It was discovered after his death he had a brain tumour. He died before I was born and when my dad was a child, so neither of us had the real pleasure of knowing him.

PS what does it mean to stack a dog, I am guessing it means a particular position you get them to hold for showing purposes.