This week I am guesting my own new sister publication (on Substack). I have called it The Bystander.
This type of writing is only appearing on this publication, on “From Psychosis to Mental Health”, for this week only. The Bystander is a darker and much more sad publication than the normal writing on this (here) publication. Please bear with me. The reason normally interactive comments are disabled for this post is because that is part of the experience of being a bystander on The Bystander. (Nothing to say or see here). I hope you can appreciate what I am trying to do with it.
I want to keep writing about my own recovery despite the input from other people. That’s what The Bystander is essentially about. There is one glaring issue missing from the buzzy, “happy” space that recovery blogs sometimes are. It’s not necessarily the “bad days”. Sometimes we do have the courage to talk about those.
No. The thing that we can’t really address from an individual recovery viewpoint are some of the terrible reasons that contribute to mental illness in the first place. On this occasion, I don’t mean problems with what has been called individual therapy or family therapy or similar sounding resource and individual recovery frameworks. The work at the level of individual families and life experiences is well known to therapists and psychotherapists the world over. That’s none of my business today.
No. I’m talking (in The Bystander) about really terrible things that may have happened to you that are genuinely too frightening to talk about (because of the way the world works at this current time in history). These terrible things, that operate at the community, social network and global levels, cannot possibly be solved by one very frightened person acting alone.
The only way to fix them is to stop becoming bystanders to them.
I’ve been working on this new publication for quite a while now in an unpublished format to try to get it right. I need it to be hard hitting without actually targeting any particular person or group of people directly. Why?
BECAUSE THE MESSAGE IS FOR ANYONE WITH A CONSCIENCE.
I hope I have explained the difference between this blog (the one you are currently subscribed to- this one) - and The Bystander.
I just want to introduce it.
This week also features work (on a second post coming out today) by another survivor of mental health treatment (in its current form). I promised another Substack contributor that I would review his book which very accurately describes his real world experience in a modern treatment facility. So that is the other post landing today from the Psychosis to Mental Health platform. Next week, more normal content.
Okay, from here to the bottom of the page you are reading The Bystander.
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The Bystander is a series of fictional conversations based on real events. Today we are listening to: - (a real person somewhere in the world right now)
[Contained.]
“They made me pick a name from a list. They don’t mind a few new suggestions from time to time. The pay? They laughed for a long time when I had the “cheek” to ask that. They diverted the conversation to what mattered to them.
“It’s the c********* that are the issue here.”
We don’t use that word among ourselves. I started yesterday. “***********” has been here for weeks (she is doing WELL, they said to me). She is quite ill at the moment. I’ve tried to explain how to treat that. They are only giving her water for now.
Over there - some more people. Some of them have got, well, ……………… . We always go out in twos. I have not been given a choice about tonight.
People always ask me what my favourite colour is. I’m not going to answer them anymore about that after I what I saw those people do last night. I can’t tell you how frightened I’m feeling.
About last night. My heart is being held in a steel box. I can’t believe that I held up my qualifications for the camera so that when I turned around I would realise that they had all been worthless (for me). They put all those things into a file to be sent on to someone else, to improve their own CV (for a fee). They put a particular (container related and insulting) background behind me when they took the photo.
The “background”. It’s a private joke of theirs. The educational system in my continent is very good. They know this, but they don’t feel like sharing this fact with the rest of the world. They seem determined to teach us the lesson that we are only good for “one thing, maybe two if you’re lucky”.
So “**********” had better be “good value for ………… ….. .……..”, no matter how frightened she is. Because we sleep in the container, we are kept in the container.”
And we die in the container.
Had to be written. Have been having a battle to stay true to myself on this publication despite some outside pressures.