If

Tags

emotion, healing, judgement, laughter, love, mental health, mental strength, self-knowledge, strength, the mind, therapy, thoughts, weakness

Source: Google Images

If the things that mattered to you
No longer matter to you
Then there must be something wrong:
It doesn’t mean that you’re not strong

If the things that mattered to you
No longer matter to you
And you cannot find the love that you seek:
It doesn’t mean that you are weak

If the things that matter to you
No longer matter to you
On finding that laughter has lost its way:
It doesn’t mean that you have feet of clay

If the things that mattered to you
No longer matter to you
Search the chambers of your mind
Keep delving until you find

The things that mattered to you
They still matter to you
Your mind sometimes feels the strain
And troubles can be a source of pain

So that the things that mattered to you
No longer matter to you
When things go wrong:
It doesn’t mean that you’re not strong.

~ Marie Williams – 2017

“It’s Good to Talk …”

Tags

awareness, compassion, counselling, counsellor, creativity, emotion, fears, healing, journey, Julius caesar, letting go, mental health, mind, opportunity, pain, self-knowledge, therapy

Image: Courtesy of TheCrazyBagLady

HEALING HURT
(Talking Therapy)

In moments of pure fantasy
And wild imagination
I fancy that Karen could be
Just distantly
Related to Julius!

But I’m rudely awakened
And snap back to reality
As beaming, in black she beckons me
To her small but cosy surgery

Karen Caesar sees me as
Her work in progress
She’s dedicated to releasing
And decreasing the pressure

That calls me religiously
Each fortnight on a Friday
To discuss with some intensity
The demons that bind me

For Karen Caesar
Explained her calling
At the end of a session
Which begged me to question

The degree of her ability
To address the responsibility
Of dealing with healing
The complexity of the human psyche

Karen Caesar tells me
That caring seized her
From a very young age
And at the stage

Where she felt that
She was able to lend her
Tender, and compassionate bearing
To caring for victims
Whose minds were so painfully hurting

It’s a splendid opportunity
This talking therapy
To engage with a professional
As dedicated as Karen
Caesar, who certainly aspires

To deliver with some certainty
A tireless and dedicated approach
And unstinting efficacy

To help her patient,
Speak, cry or remain silent
In her surmountable journey
Of feeling, healing and self discovery!

Dedicated to Dr Karen Caesar

This poem was written eight years ago, but I thought it tied in nicely with my posts on agoraphobia which having spanned 17 years of my life to date has had an enormous impact on my life and the way I live. My counsellor encouraged my creative side which emerged in the form of poetry as I started my healing journey. She said very kindly when we parted after a year in counselling that she would be the first to buy my poems if they were ever published.

I also want to thank TheCrazyBagLady for allowing me to use her sketch in this post. I saw it months ago before I even decided I was going to write about agoraphobia, but I felt at the time that it was such a beautiful sketch that I would one day use it. The opportunity came today and I took it, just as TheCrazyBagLady says on her sketch: “Every day another door opens”.

And to close, in the words of British Telecom (in their sales initiative some years ago): “It’s good to talk…”

~ Marie Williams 2017

copyright Marie Williams – 2009

Agoraphobia: part 2: Professor Green, Talking Therapy and Me

Tags

awareness, child abuse, fears, fun, healing, journey, letting go, Loose Women, mental health, Professor Green, rapper, rapping. laughter, self-knowledge, therapy

Warning: this post contains references to rap which might not be everyone’s cup of tea. But I hope this will not prevent you from reading to the end.

You may remember that in my last post I spoke about agoraphobia and how it impacted my life. Not to go on at length, but to explain how Professor Green (a British rapper, not a University professor) helped me in my own healing process, I would like to share my thoughts with you. I also want to touch on talking therapy/counselling which I really believed saved me during this uncertain and debilitating period of my life.

I was at home watching ‘Loose Women’* on television, and Professor Green was a guest on the programme. Professor Green is a well-known rapper who catapulted to fame in recent years. He is a young man who has documented how his early life impacted the way he is today and how his music reflects this. He grew up on a council estate in London, mainly raised by his grandmother. His father was absent for most of his life. This affected him in many negative ways, but he rose above this to become an international rap star. Professor Green’s father took his own life shortly after he had become reconciled with his son many years later and after he [Green] had become famous. This devastated him and he has since recorded a television programme about suicide in which he speaks openly about his love for his grandmother (who stabilised his childhood) and the impact his father’s untimely death had on his own life.

To get to the point, Professor Green spoke about counselling on Loose Women. He talked about how it helped him come to terms with his ‘demons’. I was incredibly impressed and touched at how openly this young man spoke about his own experiences with mental health issues that I listened with more interest than usual. Having my own mental health issues (PTSD, chronic anxiety and agoraphobia) his thoughts resonated with me.

Here comes the rapping! Those of you who have had the ‘pleasure’ of watching last year’s ‘X Factor’ will get a better feel of what I’d like you to do if you watched Honey G’s performance as a contestant. Honey G would rap saying:

“When I say Honey, you say G”, and this would be repeated many times, depending on how the audience received it. It went down really well. If you like that sort of thing. It’s a matter of taste. So here is my version:

When I say: ‘Professor’ you say: ‘Green’
Me: When I say Professor
You say: Green!
Me: When I say Professor
You say: ‘Green’

I was sittin’ in my home
All alone
got no friends
To call my own
Wanting someone to pick up the ‘phone
give me a call
so I don’t drown
In my sorrows
On my own

Me: When I say Professor
You say: Green!
Me: When I say Professor
You say: Green!

Mental health
has got a bad rap
That’s why I’m gonna
Put it on the map!
Shout it loud
and shout it clear
Mental health
There’s nothing to fear!

Me: When I say Professor
You say: Green
x2

I hope you managed to get a rhythm going. That helps! I hope Lady G and Tareau weren’t the only ones rapping along with me. Were you rapping Hariod? Anna?

Seriously, Professor Green was instrumental in getting me back on the road to recovery. He not only talked about how counselling helped him in his darkest periods, but he went on to say that although his situation was much improved, he still used counselling as therapy whenever he felt he needed it. And consequently, he was at present in therapy. Those words propelled me into action. If Professor Green was on daytime television, advocating counselling and he was not ashamed or embarrassed, what say me?

After the programme, I immediately went on-line to research counsellors in my area. I was very fortunate to find someone who has been incredibly helpful and who has allowed me to see that my case is not hopeless. That was over one year ago and I haven’t looked back since. Thanks Professor Green! I am not going to suggest that a few trips to a counsellor will make everything better. It takes time. It takes a willingness to partake in your own healing. It takes courage. It takes persistence. It takes faith. Often time, it can seem there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I’d like to encourage those who feel that there is no way out, that I found mine, and you can too.

~ Marie Williams 2017

* ‘Loose Women’ is a day-time television programme in which a panel of women discuss current topics.
– Final Part 3 to follow

Approval: part 2: Paws for Thought

Tags

animals, communication, compassion, emotion, harmony, healing, journey, mental health, metaphor, rejection, seeking appeoval, thoughts

“We are good because we are loved.  We are not loved because we are good”. – Desmond Tutu

 

~ Marie Williams  2016

Approval

Tags

acceptance of self, analogy, approval, birth, control, definition, denial, dictionary, family, guilt, mental health, metaphor, seeking approval, self-love, shame, siblings

Why do we seek approval?  Should we pay for it, and how much should we pay?  Is it cost effective, and if it is not why do we urgently seek it out, and if it is, why is it that it seems that there is not enough of it to go around?  Approval, how about we strike it from the dictionary completely and see if it is missed, and then contemplate the lives that have been affected by this word, a word which in itself begs for the very thing it may deny others.

As soon as we are born, although we do not know it, are not aware of it, we become the subject of approval: to be thought well of, commend, authorise, so the definition says, and that stays with us, weaving its way through our lives, lives depending on it, lives failing by it, lives denied by it, lives controlled by it, lives foiled by it, lives sadly wiped out by it.

We require approval from our parents from a very early age, and at that stage it makes us feel. Feelings and approval: cousins, sisters, brothers, it cannot be denied, these two are related and like siblings, first cousins, step children, they do not always get along.  They tussle, they squabble, they fight, they vie for parental affection, believing that they are the first among equals.  But sadly this is not so, because as we know, no parent loves one sibling more than the other.  Or so they lead us to believe.  But we know, approval tells us so!

Later on, when we are older, bolder, approval hangs around like a boulder: huge, solid, unmovable, it dictates the way we should go.  Approved of, we feel nurtured, loved and accepted.  Disapproval on the other hand, based on faulty premises, leaves us feeling like orphans, un-loved, un-accepted, lacking, unseen, in some cases, guilty and ashamed.

We need approval.  It appears to be essential for a life well lived.  But in order to live a life with no regrets, the only approval worth investing in, is the approval we give ourselves.  Let’s keep that word in the dictionary and approve its existence but with the proviso that it includes not only approval from others, but above all approval from ourselves for ourselves in order to live our best life.

~Marie Williams 2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Salmon

Tags

Anna Waldherr, anxiety, compassion, depression, low mood, medical profession, mental health, physical health, salmon, stigma, taboo, understanding

My dear friend Anna Waldherr writes with such clarity, compassion and wisdom about a subject which many find difficult – mental health. For many mental health is considered “taboo”. Many would rather empathise with you on a physical ailment: a broken leg over a mental health issue such as depression. But aren’t those two worthy of the same depth of understanding and compassion. One you can obviously see and understand how debilitating and unpleasant this can be: restricting movement and preventing you from carrying out necessary everyday tasks. The other equally debilitating and that too preventing you from living life as you would wish until it “lifts” if indeed it ever does. Let us remove the taboo heading over mental health and begin to talk about it in just the same way we would never shun someone with a physical health issue such as a broken leg. This is perhaps easier said than done, but someone has to start the conversation, don’t they? Thank you Anna for doing this so brilliantly!

ANNA WALDHERR A Voice Reclaimed, Surviving Child Abuse

Salmon jumping a waterfall on the way to spawn, Author Marvina Munch for Fish & Wildlife Service, Source http://www.public-domain-image.com (PD-Federal govt.)

WARNING:  Graphic Images

Suppose I took a knife and gutted you with it, like a fish.  Suppose I left you to bleed out on the floor, but you somehow survived that catastrophic assault.  Would you expect to be unchanged by it?  Would you expect to recover just by thinking happy thoughts?

Obviously not.

Physical v. Mental Complaints

Yet this is the cold comfort some physicians offer abuse victims suffering from long-term depression/anxiety and PTSD or other chronic conditions, for instance migraines, stemming from our abuse.  We are not trying hard enough for them.  Better still, we must be malingering.  Who could possibly grieve for decades over a “mere” childhood violation?

Forget it.  Put it behind you, we are told.  Easier said than done, however.

The ignorance of such physicians is…

View original post 575 more words

In The Valley

Tags

blog, blogging, depression, friendship, hope, karenzai, light, mental health, mental illness, pain, poems, poetry, re-blog, sadness, shining, valley

I have not reblogged the whole post, but have taken this paragraph from Karenzai’s blog to illustrate my poem’s message which is to be there for those who are depressed, sad, call it what you will. Be there if you possibly can. It really helps.

“Under Reconstruction”
“Musings on mental health, urban education, the sanctity of life, and other things I may come to care about.” http://karenwriteshere.com

“You don’t need empathy to support a depressed person”
“And yes, I wished I had people in my life who fit the above descriptions, and I was indeed blessed with at least one such individual, but it didn’t erase the deep pain of being “left behind”. And one thing I’ve come to realize over a few cycles of depression is this: depressed people don’t need you to empathize; they just need you. A depressed person would rather have you say all the worst possible things, rather than not have you at all.”
~ karenzai

In The Valley

Where the cold winds blow
Down in the valley
That’s where she lay
for a night and a day

She hoped that someone would
come looking in the valley
where alone and lost she lay
for a night and a day

It was hard for her
to communicate sadness
Lost in the valley
all alone in the valley

For those in the valley
All hope can seem fleeting
Shine your light on them today
Be the beacon to light their way

Down in the valley
Empathy is not needed
Sympathy is superfluous
You are all that’s needed
down in the valley

~ Marie Williams