No, but I don’t think Liberal was holding it up as amusing. It’s real…that series of threads goes back a LONG way and every single one is just like what he excerpted. This guy is absolutely convinced that every single thing that happens to him is planned by the US government. It’s been going on too long and consistently to be a hoax.
You said it, brother Bear.
:: no he didn’t ::
:: Shut up! Let him talk! ::
Where was I … Oh yes…no…that wasn’t me. Not that time…Caribou? What. Ah yes. Crackers!
Having a mild paranoid day today. Dude’s thread title…agitated…me a little. Just a little. Hell to live with. Yes it is. I must write about it sometime–that what appears “over the top” to someone else feels perfectly rational. Restrained even. I KNOW They aren’t really monitoring me. But the inexplicable feeling of being watched, the irresistable conclusion that the stranger’s eyes who linger upon me for a split second found more than a casual resting place–it bypasses the rational mind and abides in the mental realm of “fact” and is as difficult to dismiss as the sunrise. The (mis)perception is bad enough, the confusion though, THAT’S the killer! That…and all the goddamned tinfoil.
Oh. hello. OP? Yes. I’ve actually used the “magic wand” comment on customers (to explain that I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about the fact that their car has been totalled and that it’ll be difficult to replace at any price–65 'vette last week). Several times a month. Delivered properly, it’s a hell of a tension breaker. gobear, next time someone gives you grief, whip out your wand and ask 'em what wish you may grant for them!
Tell 'em Inigo Montoya, an incorrigible wand waver in his own right, will vouch for the magic in yours. if that doesn’t get 'em out of your face, well, then your evening might get interesting. 
Them being crazy has a whole lot to do with it, which is why the callers bring it up themselves in an effort to get special attention. They seem to think they merit him doing the impossible, just because they’re mentally ill. So no, he shouldn’t have left the crazy part out. It’s relevant to the rant.
Everybody who calls me has a mental illness or is involved with someone who does.
Gobear sounds like you have a very stressful job. Being on either end of the mental illness experience just plain sucks moldy donkey balls. Add in trying to help, but not having the needed resources, then you have I don’t know what… constant heart-break, endless hopelessness, and on and on. You have my official permission to rant away. We all need to release steam from time to time. Lord knows my frickin’ emotional problems are driving me nuts! Get It? going nuts cause of emotional problems? Hee hee hee, ok I’ll shut-up now. 
The hell? You must have a chip on your shoulder the size of a Sequoia. Fuck trying to be pals with you — you’re too high maintenance.
Irony, thy name is Lib.
Am I in the pit? Oh, good I am.
I swear, we need a fucking time-out forum. Then you folks who take every God-damn opportunity to butt heads with each other can go sit in it facing the hamster cages quietly for five minutes. If you type in a snotty comment, you get another five minutes. If you all calm down and treat each other with respect, you get cookies and milk.
Your blasted personal fights turn an interesting or informative thread into a stupid name calling waste of time.
Ugh. I can sympathize gobear and on both sides of the coin too.
My mom used to work at a community health clinic that has a large number of mental health patients. So in addition to trying really hard to get the basics of the job description taken care of (appointment scheduling, scheduling referrals, tracking down lab results, arranging for homecare services) the reception staff had to deal with the transvestite who would come in monthly and fake grand mal seizures to try to get narcotics, a woman who came in with a poorly made pipe bomb and threatened to blow up the clinic, and a schizophrenic patient who was convinced doctors were trying to harvest his wife’s ovaries and poison him, so he carried with him test tubes of “proof” (ie/ his own bodily fluids) wherever he went.
So while the staff was trying really, really hard to get their job done in all this chaos, they’d still have to deal with people saying “What do you mean I can’t have this, that, or the other right now?”
Badgering the people who really are trying to help you is kinda counter-productive. I know the reception staff and the volunteers at my mom’s old clinic just don’t need people being nasty to them. Their job is hard enough.
And on the other side of the coin, my own bipolar episodes have been acting up, I need to be reassessed. So despite the fact that I was a raving loon last week, the fastest any psychiatrist is able to see me is mid-February. Two months away.
sigh Thank you, cutbacks.
I’m not complaining though – well, not to the clinic staff who are doing their best. I feel like crap, but I’m not delusional, I’m not suicidal, I’m not a risk or threat to anyone else. So as much as it sucks right now, I can wait. There are other more urgent cases that need attention.
Yet! Do me a favor. In black ink, write on the back of each hand: “Nothing Sharp” or some other guidance that you know is anchored in “normal town.” Just in case… 
Keeps me out of trouble anyway.
Having once called every treatment program on the island of Oahu only to find out that there was no help available for a straight depressive, only for drug and alcohol addicts, I can sympathize with both sides of this. On the one hand, it’s certainly not the fault of the person answering the phone that there’s no help available; on the other hand, if you’re the crazy person doing the calling, being told for the umpteenth time, “Sorry, I can’t help you,” isn’t exactly contributing to your sanity! :rolleyes:
I know you, gobear, and I know you are, for the most part, a good-hearted person who’d help if he could, and I know the stigma mental illness carries. That’s one of the main reasons why I’m open about it here and why I do what I can to get things changed so that my seeking treatment for depression is no more unusual or shameful than a friend of mine’s seeking treatment for diabetes. (Yes, I do know and am grateful that, in many ways, depression’s a relatively mild form of mental illness.) Rant away, my friend, you’ve earned it, and I’m glad there are people like you doing a job I can’t.
CJ
I acknowledge the central part of what you were saying, but on the periphery… umm, let’s transliterate it a bit and you let me know how you’d feel about a post titled like and starting out like so:
Dear queer people, get over yourselves!
Yes, I’m sorry that you are a sexual minority, or that one of your family is a homosexual. However, that doesn’t make your concerns pressing or your case a priority!
[followed by sensible second paragraph with legitimate gripes as in the OP]
Look, man, I know we can be really self-centered and single-minded, although we don’t have a monopoly on it, but ultimately the thing you’re ranting about has damn little to do with them being psych patients.
Don’t you think we get enough shit without you staring a “you people” thread?
Actually, it has everything to do with them being psych patients–it’s why I and they are interacting. Basically, I’m feeling like Jesus with the people who want to be healed:
There’s too many of you
There’s too little of me
I want to help, I’m trying to help, but I’m incredibly stressed because there’s so much need and nothing I can do.
Siege:
For the most part? I’m wholly doing my damndest here.
Sadly, there are many people like this. I’m not qualified to diagnose their precise illness, but I’ve seen it enough to categorize the type. Yesterday, as I left the local courthouse, an older gentleman handed me a flyer. It was reasonably articulate. He’d abviously seen an affidavit or two, and was trying for that format.
(Aside to Illinois people, lawyers included. Unless you can cite me a legal requirement for that ss-county-state-close-parens stuff on the top right of your affidavit, stop fucking putting it there. Just because you saw it on an affidavit that you mentor did in 1950 is no reason to include it today. And the close-parens thing only existed because 1920’s era typewriters couldn’t generate a real vertical line. Stop it. You’re generating the caption on a modern word processor. It’s time to join the current century. If you can’t explain why you are including something on your present-day document beyond “it was in the form”, you’re a moron.)
Anyway… My older gentleman was sure that the US goverment, the UK, Illinois’ senators, and pretty much everyone else were engaged in a conspiracy to cover up the REAL reason for his mental problems.
I see this pathology time after time. If you deny the conspiracy, you must be one of the conspirators.
I’m defending one case now where the plaintiff (an ex-lawyer and not a stupid man) is convinced that his brother, his brother’s wife, an unrelated architect, two real estate developers and a national brokerage corporation are engaged in a multi-year antitrust conspiracy against him. His business failures as a residential developer and broker MUST be due to the conspiracy. He’s filed 5 separate lawsuits and three appeals. All of the lawsuits have been dismissed, as have 2 of the 3 appeals. The last appeal is pending. He’s already filed an ARDC complaint against me (I’ve got the architect) and the lawyer for the brother. (It was summarily thrown out). He’s been sanctioned by one of the courts. Yet, he’s convinced that he’s right, and ultimately he’ll win. Very sad.
Sorry, I missed that the first time around. That it’s not a specific (or even general) handful of self-involved psychiatric clients (or psych clients’ family) thinking their problem ought to receive all your attention, but rather that providing legal services to us as a population is what you do.
Good on you. We need attorneys like, ummm, crazy
Do you do commitment hearings? Represent psych patients who wish to remove themselves from involuntary incarceration or imposed treatment?
You can yell all you want.
2 questions.
-
How long have been with this organization?
-
If less than 4 years, can you ask someone there 4 or more years ago what the situation was like then?
go bear, I suspect I know which non-profit you’re with. I’m a consumer, myself (Frankly I preferp crazy person. It’s more honest.) and know just how devastating some of the situations people with mental illness can get into. I feel for your frustration.
I hope you’re feeling less stressed today than you were yesterday.
gobear, if I didn’t know you, I couldn’t tolerate the beginning of your rant very well. But I know the goodness that is within you and I know what stress and frustration feel like.
It’s an awful situation to be in. It’s hard to watch people suffer and remain helpless to do anything. Then you suffer too.
I’m with you there. I know a lot of folks who use “survivor” (in the sense of “survivor of what passes for treatment within the mental health system”), or, more provocatively, “ex-inmate”.
I like crazy person better than the clinical stuff, that’s for sure!