Wednesday 30 April 2014

1:34am Wednesday

I need to work on my sense of leadership. You see, when you've been in a psychiatric ward for a while your self-confidence is torn down. People habitually doubt your authority. They find you unreliable, your grasp on reality untrustworthy. I wish I could say that I've overcome the harm this attitude has caused, but I'm still very much there. I doubt myself as someone who initiates. I aspire to follow with ingenuity, not be the first to raise a notion. I aim to be in some sort of accord with those around me, with leadership being the option I am reluctant to pursue, even though I could do it, and sometimes find it necessary to bring out. I avoid being the one to dramatically change the direction of something, because I fear ridicule or rejection. I take a dismissal of my opinion really personally.

As such, I typically find it hard to express myself when I badly want to introduce a new notion, but am too guarded to come out with it. It's painful, and with each swallowed initiative I feel like less of the person I once was.

The mental health system is very negative towards its consumers. It tells them that they will have to take drugs their entire lives, might find it difficult to hold down jobs or have healthy and meaningful relationships. I recently read in a 'model of recovery' that it was encouraged that consumers create 'meaningful' lives for themselves. What does this mean? Is it because psychiatrists see consumers as divorced from meaning that they are dehumanised in such ways? It is because the meaning of my life was invariably negative that I was admitted to hospital in the first place. I was always leading a meaningful life. I find this configuration extremely puzzling. 

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