I was a child that saw beyond what the natural mind could
comprehend. A doctor on the ward at Lambeth Hospital told me I had sense
when I first met him during my second section. The sense that I was
born with was distorted by the abuse that happened to me as a child.
Through the many years of my distorted perception I became deluded and
those delusions became the prison that I tried to escape from on many
occasions. By my own willpower I stopped taking my medication without
the supervision of the psychiatrists that were treating me. The first
time it was the psychiatrist who suggested that I stopped. In the
process I went into hospital on five occasions. My last admission was
the longest and the most severe because I tried to kill myself thinking
that I was Superman and that I had to prove my invincibility by playing
chicken with cars and buses at night. However, the psychiatrists that
treated me looked at the written evidence to discern my true mental
state.
The problem with this approach is that it does not give an accurate picture of my mental state based on the causes of why I buckled under the stress. The psychiatrists listened to what I had to say and they quoted what I said in my notes but there was no time for reflection. And I felt that was because there was no one to assist me to understand why I buckled under the pressure. That reflection happened when I moved to Coulsdon and during one of my initial meetings with my GP he told me that he had looked at my notes and saw that it was when I was under a lot of stress that I became unwell and had go into hospital. I did not know this and it never occurred to me that there was a simple solution that was responsible for me becoming unwell, and not because I was fighting against Satan, which I am but not in a personal fight. This fight is for the eternal destination of those who I love. The most interesting thing is that I saw what my GP in Coulsdon told me unfold during my last admission to hospital.
On my second admission to Lambeth Hospital, which was an informal admission, he expressed how impressed he was that I had brought my diary to the discharge meeting. I was a little disheartened because I had to stay an extra day in order to meet him. There was a student on placement who was in the meeting as I was being discharged, and while walking to the door he praised me by saying to the psychiatrist that he had learnt new things from me.
It was during my second section while in his care that I used nonverbal communication to express to a Chinese service user that I was tired and I was going to bed. I simply folded both my hands in a prayer gesture and then put them near my face then bent down over the table to indicate to him that I was going to bed. A support worker who was watching us smiled in approval that I had done this. It seemed as if she had never seen such an act of what I think she was taught about nonverbal communication. However, I could see in her eyes that she felt empowered by what she saw. When I was discharged from that section I sat with the doctor in the discharge meeting and we just talked about everyday life. He suggested that I start to upgrade the kind of restaurants that I go to. Instead of going to McDonald's to buy a burger go to Nando's for a chicken dinner. He suggested that I should visit the cemeteries because they were peaceful places, which I had done on a few occasions before I met this psychiatrist. It was when I was discharged back to the community mental health team that everyone who was involved in my care kept saying they could learn a lot from me but I could not figure out what they were on about. This experience was a good example of how important it is for our leaders to heal the gap between the critical thinkers and the creative voice that I did not have from my parents and so was missing from my life. I could not tell or understand that I was a valued member of the community and that many could learn so much about the human condition from what I have suffered as a feral child in life, living as a feral child while growing up into adulthood through the NHS and my faith in Calvary.
What I really did not understand was the social worker who told me that he could spend all day listening to me. I could not understand why a good man who is a good husband and father and a member of the community because of his integrity and his care and compassion for the vulnerable would want to listen to me. I could not understand how people of this society would want to listen to someone like me who thought that he was the worst of the garbage that came out of the human heart and would want to hear what I had to say when he had a faithful and beautiful wife, a lovely son and a daughter who was studying at Oxford University. The relationship that I developed with this social worker became the beginning of the relationship that I had not developed with my mother, in the sense that my mother had to become the critical thinker to provide for me and my other three half-brothers. And in the process she lost her mind. It was during the process of losing her mind that our relationship began to heal and Jesus began to put our broken lives back together. She became the mother and I became her son, instead of being her husband. Where there used to be so much pain and suffering I just see pure joy and laughter when I am around her and I thank God for sending His only begotten son to die on the Cross so that we could have these precious moments together.
This social worker did what my parents were supposed to do while I was growing up and they did to certain degree. He brought out from the buried treasure through my creative voice the message that Jesus has risen from the dead with some of the things that parents teach their children: how to love unconditionally, how to treat the lives of others with the greatest of respect, how to honour, and obey the law because of his respect for the law of the land. However, this was done through nonverbal communication. In other words, like a mother this social worker had the inner qualities of the creative voice that allowed the healing process of the broken relationships through the ideologies that human reasoning had used to destroy my life. But he also possessed the skills of a critical thinker.
The problem with this approach is that it does not give an accurate picture of my mental state based on the causes of why I buckled under the stress. The psychiatrists listened to what I had to say and they quoted what I said in my notes but there was no time for reflection. And I felt that was because there was no one to assist me to understand why I buckled under the pressure. That reflection happened when I moved to Coulsdon and during one of my initial meetings with my GP he told me that he had looked at my notes and saw that it was when I was under a lot of stress that I became unwell and had go into hospital. I did not know this and it never occurred to me that there was a simple solution that was responsible for me becoming unwell, and not because I was fighting against Satan, which I am but not in a personal fight. This fight is for the eternal destination of those who I love. The most interesting thing is that I saw what my GP in Coulsdon told me unfold during my last admission to hospital.
On my second admission to Lambeth Hospital, which was an informal admission, he expressed how impressed he was that I had brought my diary to the discharge meeting. I was a little disheartened because I had to stay an extra day in order to meet him. There was a student on placement who was in the meeting as I was being discharged, and while walking to the door he praised me by saying to the psychiatrist that he had learnt new things from me.
It was during my second section while in his care that I used nonverbal communication to express to a Chinese service user that I was tired and I was going to bed. I simply folded both my hands in a prayer gesture and then put them near my face then bent down over the table to indicate to him that I was going to bed. A support worker who was watching us smiled in approval that I had done this. It seemed as if she had never seen such an act of what I think she was taught about nonverbal communication. However, I could see in her eyes that she felt empowered by what she saw. When I was discharged from that section I sat with the doctor in the discharge meeting and we just talked about everyday life. He suggested that I start to upgrade the kind of restaurants that I go to. Instead of going to McDonald's to buy a burger go to Nando's for a chicken dinner. He suggested that I should visit the cemeteries because they were peaceful places, which I had done on a few occasions before I met this psychiatrist. It was when I was discharged back to the community mental health team that everyone who was involved in my care kept saying they could learn a lot from me but I could not figure out what they were on about. This experience was a good example of how important it is for our leaders to heal the gap between the critical thinkers and the creative voice that I did not have from my parents and so was missing from my life. I could not tell or understand that I was a valued member of the community and that many could learn so much about the human condition from what I have suffered as a feral child in life, living as a feral child while growing up into adulthood through the NHS and my faith in Calvary.
What I really did not understand was the social worker who told me that he could spend all day listening to me. I could not understand why a good man who is a good husband and father and a member of the community because of his integrity and his care and compassion for the vulnerable would want to listen to me. I could not understand how people of this society would want to listen to someone like me who thought that he was the worst of the garbage that came out of the human heart and would want to hear what I had to say when he had a faithful and beautiful wife, a lovely son and a daughter who was studying at Oxford University. The relationship that I developed with this social worker became the beginning of the relationship that I had not developed with my mother, in the sense that my mother had to become the critical thinker to provide for me and my other three half-brothers. And in the process she lost her mind. It was during the process of losing her mind that our relationship began to heal and Jesus began to put our broken lives back together. She became the mother and I became her son, instead of being her husband. Where there used to be so much pain and suffering I just see pure joy and laughter when I am around her and I thank God for sending His only begotten son to die on the Cross so that we could have these precious moments together.
This social worker did what my parents were supposed to do while I was growing up and they did to certain degree. He brought out from the buried treasure through my creative voice the message that Jesus has risen from the dead with some of the things that parents teach their children: how to love unconditionally, how to treat the lives of others with the greatest of respect, how to honour, and obey the law because of his respect for the law of the land. However, this was done through nonverbal communication. In other words, like a mother this social worker had the inner qualities of the creative voice that allowed the healing process of the broken relationships through the ideologies that human reasoning had used to destroy my life. But he also possessed the skills of a critical thinker.
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