Very intimate diaries  13

 

Year after year a shambles of voices settled down in my head. Each of them is trying to attract my attention, they shout louder as each other until a symphonic cacophony is heard. Each asked me to follow their path. And so, I created a maze of paths of life which I don’t know where the exit is anymore.

 

As soon as I finally kill one, another takes its place as the monstrous heads of the Lernaean Hydra where for each head cut off it grew two more. And with one rustle it succeeds, also, to numb me to remain to its service.

 

One servant, dozens masters.

 

To be able to stop hearing them I engulfed, sank myself day after day deep down in me like in a bottomless pit.

 

Until one day I realized that they would be with me forever since each is bound to me as the earth to the sun; our survival depends on that of the other. I am their creator and they are my creatures. They’re like kids screaming, jumping, exploding at any moment without warning.

 

I then understood that I have to allow the hurricane to pass, head down, walking against the wind, keep moving and get in that place in me, inviolate by these repeated aggressions, who protects me and tirelessly feeds me; Life.

 

Pending completion of it, I move forward...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lights  Scrapbook  9

When you flee, you’re not free. When you dare, no more scare.

- Unknown –

I already know the answer. That’s the question I looking for.

- Rohinton Mistry –

The unconscious is always ahead of the conscious.

- Scott Peck –

Life goes on. You live until you die.

- Jonathan Durand –

If you have trouble pursuing your passions, put passion in your pursuits.

- Thomas Kincade –

The past is a beacon light not a port.

- Anonymous –

When you feel guilty that's not your fault you hate but yourself.

- Anthony de Mello –

The past is not what's gone but what belongs to us.

- Arnaud Desplechin –

I have so many things to do today I will have to meditate twice as long.

- Gandhi -

Very intimate diaries 12

Every time I try to free myself of a habit, an obsessive pattern, that became very painful to live with over the years, what’s annoying me is that instead of reducing my pain it increases due to the "mourning" that my brain seems to do to abandon this habit/obsessive pattern which has been around since tens of years and had become an integral part of my being.

To be able to "improve" myself it seems that one of the prerequisites is to be a masochist...

(....)

Through the years I often make the same finding from time to time; I wouldn’t, for nothing in the world, want to live my previous years again! Absolutely not but not at all! Even those that seemed the "good ones" because when I’m looking more closely I see that there were as much painful periods as the so-called "bad ones".

I have also thought I could relive some periods of my past... but correcting this n’ that, by removing this n’ that, by having my understanding of today, etc... But that wouldn’t be reliving my past because by modifying it, that wouldn’t be my past anymore...

(....)

I have always wondered what I would change in me if I had a magic wand. Then I think; be tall or be beautiful or follow my intuition or being fearless beyond reproach, etc, etc, etc...

And on second thought I realize that these "defects" I would so much like to change they have built me, created me and modeled me as much as my so-called "qualities". And they even, in some way, my qualities and my defects, worked hand in hand and now they are virtually indistinguishable from one another. Also, I have to admit that I like what I've become.

(....)

(P.S.: Still, I must admit a little that I would have liked to be… beautiful. Oh, Vanity!)

Very intimate diaries  11

I have long tried to "neutralize" the negative waves of events before they reach me. In vain! Until I realized that the waves and negative events will always be; it’s my reaction that I have to change.

(....)

All my life, I looked for and waited for the "psychological clicks" that would wake up my mind, my brain and finally solve various mental knots where I was chained.

Like lights that would suddenly be on.

But I still bogged down in this big intolerable darkness until one day I realized I could not see them because I had my eyes closed...

(....)

Sometimes when I’m writing my Pages, I enter a kind of hypnotic and meditative state so strong that, for a few seconds, I have no knowledge of what I have just written.

(....)

A while ago, I thought of all these numerous years of painful therapies and medications I had been through, dozens and dozens thoughts of death that had crossed my mind and I realized that as deeply nourishing and uplifting that might be the love of my family and my friends, it was not what could make me want to stay alive, but the following questioning: Is it enough? Did I accomplish my mission? Is it time to go?

I have found no answer. That's why I'm still here.

Lights  Scrapbook  8

Life stops when the fear of the unknown is stronger than momentum.

- Hafid Aggoune –

Many of our fears are the thickness of a tissue and one single brave step would be enough to cross them.

- Brendan Francis Behan –

Where is God? God is in reality.

- JL –

It isn’t necessary to know where we are going; it’s necessary to have a vision.

- Robert Lepage –

Between black and white, there are millions of nuances of gray.

- JL –

Life is like a bicycle; we must move forward not to lose balance.

- Albert Einstein –

Saying "I don’t know", I humbly open myself to apprenticeship.

- JL –

It’s only when the sky is dark enough that we can see the stars.

- Martin Luther King Jr. –

The only way to "cure" my past is to change my perception of it in the present time.

- JL –

This is not time which passes; it’s we who pass.

- Unknown –

The woes are "sprints"; happiness a marathon.

- JL –

Outside, beyond what’s right and wrong, there’s a huge field; we will meet there...

- Mawlana Jalal ad-Din Romi –

My shit experiences always become fertilizer to grow my dreams.

- JL –

Wisdom is to have dreams big enough not to lose them of sight when we’re chasing them.

- Oscar Wilde –

I take advantage of the night to delight me...

- JL –

My experiments in psychiatry  1

The Hall of mirrors

The experiment consists of a room separated in the middle with a wall with a two-way mirror (the "mirror" of the name) on the same principle as the interrogation rooms that can be seen in movies or on TV. (N.B.: Even if the name is “mirrors”, in the plural, there was one mirror)

On one side of the room there was my appointed mental health counsellor and me. Also a chair for each of us and a small coffee table with a phone on it near the chair of the counsellor. Our chairs were oriented to be face to face, four to six feet from each other, and about four feet from the wall along the aforesaid mirror.

We wore, each of us, a clip-on microphone which was connected to a sound console on the coffee table near the phone.

On the other side, behind the two-way mirror, were four, six or eight different persons, depending on their availability, all specialized in mental health care (psychologist, therapist, social worker, educator, etc.) whose no faces I had seen. I knew afterward that they were sitting on two rows, facing the mirror. The back row was raised two feet high by a platform so that the people sitting in that row could have a good view of the meeting on the other side of the mirror. In front of the first row there was a small table with a cordless phone. On top of the two-way mirror, there were two speakers connected to the sound console in the other room.

The duration of the session was fifty minutes: thirty-five to forty minutes in the Hall of mirrors and then ten to fifteen minutes in the counsellor's office for a post-mortem analysis.

The principle was the following one:

The session with my counsellor began. When the phone rang, the counsellor answered and listened to the recommendations given by one of his colleagues behind the two-way mirror. He then hung up and put into immediate practice one or several recommendations that were suggested.

And so it was throughout the meeting.

(The idea was to use the experiences of many specialists in mental health care onto the same patient during a therapy session.)

Then, ten to fifteen minutes within the end of the session, the sequence in the Hall of Mirrors ended. And so, I and my counsellor headed to his office where I gave my impressions of the meeting and decide whether another meeting was necessary or not.

A maximum of ten meetings for this exercise were suggested. I was the only decision maker in the number of meetings that I wanted to do.

Positives:

1) I was facing a whole slew of mental health care experts, the best of the best therapists who, through their combined effort, could speed up the resolution of the problems I was experiencing.

2) It also allowed me to test a different therapeutic approach, to give me additional tools on the resolution of my mental health problems.

Negatives:

1) Every time the phone rang, the counsellor-patient link was automatically broken. After several "phone calls" the distance between the counsellor and me was digging further.

2) The counsellor, by answering the phone, lost more and more credibility in my eyes; if therapists behind the two-way mirror often called up, it gave me the impression that the counsellor lacked experience. Or was passing by many important things he forgot to tell me. Or appears not to be able to lead the discussion smoothly. He looked like, in my view, a puppet.

3) If the number of interventions of the therapists was anemic, the principle of the Hall of Mirrors itself was becoming obsolete.

4) Each therapist behind the one-way mirror gave me the feeling to impose its own view of the problem and its solutions, regardless of others, which could make interventions confused at times.

5) Because of the two-way mirror, soundproofing was deficient; I could occasionally hear a therapist, behind the mirror, cough. (A mirror isn’t a wall.)

6) The feeling of being watched and scrutinized by a group, whose faces I hadn’t seen nor known, developed in me a discomfort.

7) Mental health care solutions can’t be “speeded up”; it takes time, much time sometimes....

Conclusion:

The idea “on paper” was excellent! That's why I wanted to do this experiment. But in reality, this exercise slowed the resolution of my problems with the numerous interventions which led to some confusion.

Also, the bond of intimacy necessary between counsellor and patient could not be settled properly.

Nevertheless, I am very glad I tried it; now, I know…