Looking after ourselves
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10-06-2017 10:38 AM
10-06-2017 10:38 AM
BOOK CLUB: The body keeps the score
Hope i didn't jump the gun but i'm really excited to read TBKTS (The body keeps the score) with any one else who is going to come along. not sure who else to tag. tried tagging others but the tags wouldn't come up.
still waiting for my book to arrive but thought why not.
hope no one is going to dis-friend me after this.
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10-06-2017 11:40 AM
10-06-2017 11:40 AM
Re: BOOK CLUB: The body keeps the score
Looking forward to hearing the arrival of your book. I'm putting my reading on hold for the next couple of days while I finish off my blanket. I'm a couple of hundred pages in so it'll be good to pick it back up with you and @Phoenix_Rising and hopefully others if they'd like to join in too.
I'll tag @Former-Member because this is what we're reading at the moment and @NikNik because you said you might be interested in picking it up again.
☺
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10-06-2017 03:39 PM
10-06-2017 03:39 PM
Re: BOOK CLUB: The body keeps the score
Hi @CheerBear and @mudsum,
Definitely no de-friending from me @mudsum...although defriending from me would actually be impossible because no one around here is my friend to start with. I don't do friends - they all hurt and go away.
I have been a burrito for most of today, but I am now up and about and my goals for the rest of the day are: 1) vacuum the house and then 2) read chapter 12 of TBKTS. I figure I will just dive in there and then when your copy comes @mudsum I'll start back at the beginning. I have read it before, but it was ages ago.
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10-06-2017 11:12 PM
10-06-2017 11:12 PM
Re: BOOK CLUB: The body keeps the score
Can't wait to hear what you think!
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11-06-2017 01:41 PM
11-06-2017 01:41 PM
Re: BOOK CLUB: The body keeps the score
@Scar @mudsum @CheerBear @NikNikOk, so my one achievement thus far today is that I read chapter 12 of TBKTS. I hope my reflecting on what I read isn't going to ruin the book for you @mudsum??? ***SPOILER ALERT***
The thing that jumped out at me in this chapter is how the whole concept of mental illness is socially constructed. I am thinking particularly of this bit:
Early in the war the British created the diagnosis of "shell shock," which entitled combat veterans to treatment and a disability pension. The alternative, similar, diagnosis was "neursthenia," for which they received neither traetment nor a pension. It was up to the orientation of the treating physician which diagnosis a soldier received (Van Der Kolk, 2014, pp. 184-185).
Wow, nothing has really changed in the past 100 years has it!!!! This is EXACTLY what it is like trying to get the disability pension now. It has nothing to do with actual need, it just depends on whether you can find the right "expert" to tick the right box.
I HATE this system. I hate that we as a society are so obsessed with boxes and labels. Why can't we just focus on need!!!!!!! It reminds me of a time a couple of years ago when I got dragged into hospital by the police. I was in total crisis and severely emotionally dysregulated. I explained to the nurse that I have BPD and ASD and she asked me "so...is the emotion dysregulation you are experiencing right now due to the BPD or ASD?" Er...
I found it really tough reading about the attitudes that society had to "shell shock" / PTSD during WWI and WWII. Sadly, I don't think those attitudes have changed as much in 100 years as we might like to think they have.
I found this statement really interesting; Culture shapes the expression of traumatic stress (Van Der Kolk, 2014, p. 187).
The whole chapter really highlights to me how there are a whole lot of socio-political factors that influence how mental illness is conceptualised. All of that kind-of gets missed in the medical model.
Anyway, they're my thoughts on the chapter. I think chapter 12 was a good place for me to start @CheerBear because we get to the "how-to-fix-it" bit in the next chapter. Maybe you should start reading at chapter 12 @mudsum when your copy arrives. I think reading the how-to-fix-it bit before reading the this-is-how-trauma-breaks-brains bit might create for a more positive vibe. That's what I'm hoping anyway...cos I sure as heck need some positivity in my world right now!
On to chapter 13 for me...
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11-06-2017 02:53 PM
11-06-2017 02:53 PM
Re: BOOK CLUB: The body keeps the score
I remember so well when my interests and career goals shifted from psych (I'm running off to grab one of my very first text book, well first from post tiny fish study). It was in chapter 1, only five pages in and it was the term 'sociological imagination'.
Sociological imagination: A kind of interpretive imagination that does not treat it's subject matter like objects in the natural world. The sociological imagination is anthropological, historical and critical.
It changed the way I see the whole world and it sparked my passion. It was less than a year after my first admission. I knew something wasn't right about what had happened, but I just couldn't pick what felt so wrong about those boxes until I started seeing the medical model from this lens. The people with the boxes only seemed to care about what was 'wrong' with me, how my mental illness was presenting etc. And they were seeing it from their perspective. They missed the bigger picture about why this may have been going on. This view is too narrow. It's dangerously narrow.
I hate the way society seems obsessed with boxes too. I hate the way boxes are created and used. I hate that people in postions of power are awarded the right to use/misuse boxes. I love that there there are people out there who try to focus on what a person, a human person who maybe doesn't want to be in a box, or shouldn't be in a box, or doesn't fit in any box, actually needs. I hate that there aren't enough of them/they're too hard to find, and that the reason for this is because they're often not the people in power. Grrrrrrr!
Well that was a fun little 'woah there' me moment. It feels kind of good to know there is still a spark there, ready and waiting to become an angry raging fire like it used to be.
I definitely need to finish this chapter so I can read the super important how to actually fix it, remaining chapters. I have about 750 stitches to go and I'll be back into it.
Hope you enjoy the next sections of the book - the chapter titles are exciting!
(And ps - well done on getting through this goal 😊)
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11-06-2017 03:57 PM
11-06-2017 03:57 PM
Re: BOOK CLUB: The body keeps the score
@CheerBear Strangely enough, I just seem to have been silenced on the very issue of how psychologists are trained, on another thread. I posted about it and yet the post is not there. I don't feel nearly as safe on the Forums on the weekends, compared to during the week. I really really really need a safe weekday ship right about now. Suddenly I am super super super badly missing CherryBomb with her core values and beliefs that shone through so brightly in everything she said here in Forum Land. I feel afraid. I know it is just a trigger. I know you hear me and believe me when I talk about bad stuff in the MH system...because you have experienced it too. Maybe it was just a computer glitch...but I have a feeling it wasn't and I know there was nothing inappropriate in my post. I super super super wish it was a weekday right now.
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11-06-2017 04:05 PM
11-06-2017 04:05 PM
Re: BOOK CLUB: The body keeps the score
"I'm going to log off for a couple of hours and find my calm again, which i thought would be easy enough to find after posting here, until I stumbled across a thread with a discussion that seems very relevant to this one, on my way out.
@Phoenix_Rising - I want to rage and vent and yell. I am angry about the way some professions can and do operate, and most importantly the impact it can have on the people they are working for. But I know I can't here, or at least it would be wrong of me to while I am feeling like this. So I will sit quietly and wait for it to pass, while really all I want to be doing is being really loud. I just wanted someone to know that's what I am doing right now."
It looks like we're both feeling not so great stuff. I'm glad we can ride this one out together too.
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11-06-2017 04:08 PM
11-06-2017 04:08 PM
Re: BOOK CLUB: The body keeps the score
@CheerBear I got the email confirming my post was removed. I am in a giant muddle and it sounds like you are too. I need to get to my wave thread. It's totally ok if you can't ride with me. I hate that it is a long weekend. The safe ships will be back on Tuesday. We've got this. Bobbing in the ocean and snuggled in the nest, we've got this!!!!!!
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11-06-2017 04:17 PM
11-06-2017 04:17 PM
Re: BOOK CLUB: The body keeps the score
We have got this.