|
| WOODSHEDDING
TO RECOVERY -
24
Years: A Personal Journey through
Schizophrenia
|
|
 |
‘Woodshedding’
is a term used by American jazz players to describe times in their careers when
they retreat to the woodshed to sharpen or shape their style, and to reflect on
their lives and make changes. Many people who experience mental illness apply
woodshedding to their lives. Taking time out ‘in the woodshed’ to ride out
an episode, recover from hospitalization, or simply ‘be’ is vital to the
recovery process.
In
this book, Mikey has found the courage to speak honestly about his very personal
journey through mental illness in a world that is still profoundly prejudiced
against people with mental illness. Mikey leads the reader through crisis and
distress, regrouping and restoration (woodshedding), and eventual recovery from
schizophrenia.
Mikey
is a survivor. His battles have been overpowering, his resilience extraordinary,
his tenacity more than most would have thought possible.
We
all need heroes and role models. This story will be inspirational to people with
mental illness and those close to them. It could serve as a tool for
professionals working in the mental health sector, who may better understand the
healing and treatment processes that impact on the people in their care.
|
|
In Store Price: $AU23.95
Online Price: $AU22.95
ISBN:
1
921118 70 9
Format: Paperback
Number of pages:
192
Genre: Non Fiction
|
Author:
Michael Ellem
Publisher: Zeus Publications
Date Published: 2006
Language: English |
Michael has
experienced schizophrenia since the age of sixteen. For many years, he lived in
isolation, was institutionalised and experienced loss of rights and hope.
He now works
in the community as a consumer support worker, advocating for the rights of
people who experience mental illness.
Michael lives
in Toowomba, Queensland, Australia.
IT’S OKAY
It’s
okay to walk an imaginary dog,
Dressed
in a safari suit and a dressing gown,
On
a stinking hot day
In
the city of fashion.
It’s
okay to drive a yellow Chrysler,
Wearing
a yellow bicycle helmet,
With
a medieval sword and a didgeridoo,
Sticking
out the window.
It’s
okay to tell the Jehovahs,
The
Mormons and the Adventists
That
you’re an existential paganistic nihilist,
Who
doesn’t give a fuck.
It’s
okay to snort like a dog,
Scratch
your back on the floor,
And
demand that your stomach get scratched
Just
to get attention.
It’s
okay to eat chips,
In
the gutter of
Anne Street
,
During
rush hour,
With
pipe playing acquaintances from Nimbin
As
an experiment in human tolerance.
It’s
okay to play a home-made guitar badly,
And
polkas on the piano accordion
In
front of professionals
At
a blues symposium.
It’s
okay to tell your case manager
At
the C.E.S.
That
you’re a surfing, pantheistic poet,
Overqualified.
It’s
okay to take your two-year-old nephew to an environmental park,
And
discuss raising a child with single mums,
The
joys and the pitfalls,
In
the hope of getting a date.
It’s
Okay!
READ A
SAMPLE OF THE BOOK:
I was
sixteen and living in
Beenleigh, at that time a semi-rural, working-class town halfway between
Brisbane
and the Gold Coast. My parents had just gone through a nasty divorce and I was
struggling with my work and personal life. I hated my job at the Commonwealth
Banking Corporation. From my first day at work, not knowing how to use paper
clips and filing new account cards all day, I knew this wasn’t for me.
There
were, however, moments of happiness during the week, like emptying the rubbish
into an old incinerator out the back, watching it burn and smoking two
cigarettes. Those were the years when you could still smoke inside workplaces.
Just about everyone smoked, the women
St Moritz
and the men mostly Winfields. I still felt uncomfortable smoking in front of
adults; I didn’t smoke at home, so I would sneak one or two at work out the
back in the car park or in the lunchroom. Occasionally, much to the disgust of
the manager, when the incinerator was full it would send ashes and dust over all
the parked Mercedes, Volvos and BMWs.
It was
towards August that I started to experience strange, obsessive thoughts and
visual hallucinations. I would be lying in bed and my mind would be subsumed by
sexual thoughts about my friends, work colleagues and myself. The thoughts went
beyond sexual fantasies because they were constant, running uncontrollably and
my friend’s faces and bodies were distorted. These experiences were upsetting
and disturbing, despite being limited only to nights and mornings. I began to
find it difficult to be around my mates and felt guilty and ashamed of the
sexual thoughts. By September, they were more intrusive and distressing,
occurring during the day at work, when I played soccer or went out with mates.
The visual hallucinations were particularly disturbing and I reacted to the
sexual thoughts with a combination of embarrassment, acute guilt and shame.
People changed shape while we were talking and objects moved and transmogrified.
I’d be driving along with a mate and would see cars with appendages, phallic
shadows hanging down from bridges and trees moving and transforming into sexual
beings.
There
was also the visualization that people were constantly around me. Often they
were naked, some smoking pipes, but there was a constant flow of people. They
weren’t threatening at all and they talked about superficial nonsense, but it
was distressing and disconcerting to experience these spectres.
Within
the space of three months, I had developed schizophrenia. The thoughts and
visual hallucinations were with me every waking moment. Every minute, every
second, I was consumed by emotion, distressing thoughts and confusing visions.
The constant turmoil and fight with my being was emotionally exhausting and I
didn’t have the strength left to function as a normal sixteen-year-old boy. I
was terrified. I had no idea what was happening to me. I was also very young and
had adolescent problems – acne, friends, peer pressure and relationships. Now
I had to cope and deal with a serious mental illness.
h
h
WAY
DOWN THE FOOD CHAIN
Leave, stay,
leave, stay,
Switch on,
switch off, switch on, switch off,
Empty, fill,
empty, fill,
Leave, stay,
leave, stay,
Open, shut,
open, shut,
Must leave, must
stay, must leave this shit,
File, batch,
file, batch,
Smoke, coffee,
smoke, coffee,
Good morning,
Commonwealth Bank. Can I help you, can I help you, can I help you?
Stamp, sign,
stamp, sign,
Batch, batch,
batch, batch,
File, must
leave, file, must leave,
Smoke, coffee,
lunch, smoke,
Must leave this
shit, must leave this shit,
Don’t believe,
Must leave.
In those
days there wasn’t much literature or public education about schizophrenia and
I had absolutely no knowledge of or insight into mental health problems. For me,
I guess 1983 was about adjusting to these new experiences and trying to cope
with work, family, friends and their expectations. Every day was a struggle.
It’s extremely difficult trying to discuss at work an error in a customer’s
passbook, or count a moneybox, or count cash when the customers change shape, or
when their umbrella or walking stick becomes a phallic obelisk. Since high
school, I had always struggled with my self-esteem and confidence. I had
pimples, was introverted and generally didn’t feel confident around people. At
Beenleigh High, I had been treated like a pariah, victimized and bullied for
being an academic not a footballer or athlete. Even back then, I had exhibited
strong feminine qualities. I cried when I saw violence and because of my
academic abilities often discussed work with teachers, earning me the nickname
of ‘sook’ and ‘teacher’s pet’.
I
survived high school because of my friendship with Dwayne Treble. We were both
in the same typing class. He was there because of the girls; I was there because
I wanted to be a journalist. We developed a close friendship, not on any grounds
of common interest, or similar beliefs or philosophies. He liked Kiss and I
liked Tchaikovsky; he believed in violence and sex, I believed in pacifism and
love. But for some strange reason he developed an affection for me and I him and
we would often sit and talk during the lunch break about life, music and girls
and share a cigarette under the trees. From grade nine onwards Dwayne protected
me from victimization and the word quickly spread that anyone who bullied me
would have Dwayne to deal with. The friendship helped me survive.
It was
also a very difficult and stressful time in my relationship with my father. Dad
was bitter towards Mum and wrote me long letters expressing his bitterness and
about how I had failed and my faults. He wanted to know everything that was
going on with Mum’s life. Dad was living in Chinchilla and was trying to cope
with life on his own after a long marriage and life without his children. In
many ways, I can now empathize with Dad because, even three years after the
divorce, he was emotionally devastated and constantly dwelled on the events
leading up to the split. At that stage, he blamed Mum entirely for the marriage
breakdown and I guess I took on Dad’s angst, guilt and feelings of failure.
This pressure early in my life has shaped the way I engage with people’s
emotions and energy, absorbing their feelings and thoughts like a sponge,
soaking up their emotions and distress and feeling their pain.
I lived
with Dad for three years after my parents’ divorce. It was a very lonely time
for me because Dad was always working and I was away from my friends. I was in
awe of Dad, loved and trusted him unconditionally and believed everything that
he shared with me about Mum and the family. When I returned to live with Mum,
however, there was something about our relationship that prevented me from
opening up to him about my illness and I guess I am partly to blame for the
distance that was to come between us. It was not only a physical but also an
emotional distance. Neither Dad nor I could express our emotions openly. We
couldn’t express our love for each other, never said ‘I love you’, never
hugged or shook hands. So when I was with Dad, I shut down emotionally. It took
many years and much pain, self-reflection and hard work before our relationship
was close again. The stress was enormous and I believe along with my unhappiness
at work and social isolation, my relationship with my family contributed towards
my developing schizophrenia.
By
October and November, I had begun to isolate myself from my friends. It became
too difficult to be around my mates with the sexual thoughts. It became too
difficult to go to a mate’s home and sleep over because I was thinking
constantly of sex. Even at that age, I felt that I was abusing the trust and
respect of my mates and my enjoyment of socializing, drinking, fishing and
holidays was overridden by emotional grief and self-loathing.
I was
doing my senior by correspondence, so every night I immersed myself in history
and math, although again it was extremely difficult to concentrate. My friends
were intolerant and didn’t understand why I’d begun to withdraw socially,
but it was the only way I could cope. I began to have doubts about my sexuality.
Girls didn’t find me attractive and I always felt awkward and nervous. I
didn’t socialize with girls or go on dates and had difficulties developing
friendships with the girls at work. They nicknamed me ‘the creep’. Older
women seemed to like me, not sexually, but I think that they empathized and
understood that I was going through inner turmoil and stress. I developed a
close relationship with
Lena
, a single mum and tried to open up to her about some of the problems I was
experiencing with my sexuality and thoughts. Perhaps she suspected that I was
unwell.
Maybe I
was gay. I still fantasized about girls, however, and was attracted to girls. It
was all very confusing because I had no knowledge or understanding about
homosexuality, the subject of sex was taboo in our family and I had no
experience of relationships except for friendships with males. I began to think
constantly about my sexuality. Every day I tried to reaffirm that I was
heterosexual, tried to do boy things such as play soccer and talk about girls
and cars and convince myself that I was in love with the receptionist next to
the bank. The homosexual thoughts and hallucinations seemed to come from an
external force and were somehow imposed upon my being, coming from another
experiential plane. They were not sixteen-year-old fantasies, but distortions of
people, objects and relationships and they were eroding my sense of self, my
belief system and my emotional being. The sexual doubts were tied up to the
schizophrenia and I became more and more upset and distressed.
Mum had
remarried and I found her new partner, Russell, difficult to communicate with. I
didn’t connect with Russell at all and it was difficult to talk with him about
anything but football and girls. On the other hand, Mum and I have always been
emotionally close. Over the years, my illness was to have a profound effect upon
her well-being and emotional health. She became my closest friend and advocate.
We shared and have ridden out many experiences together. But at that time, I
simply couldn’t tell her about what was happening. As I became unwell, I
distanced myself from my sister, Alison and brother Jeffrey. They knew I had
problems but were probably mystified about my emotional distance. Things
weren’t working in Beenleigh. I was a terrible Bank Johnny, was becoming more
and more distant from my friends and had bought a car but had nowhere to drive
it. My family and friends were perplexed about what was happening for me, but I
was so afraid and ashamed of my thoughts that I couldn’t reach out for help.
In
September, I missed the 1983
Sydney
rugby league grand final (
Parramatta
defeated Manly) as I was camping with my mates at Boonah. It was one of the few
occasions that I spent a weekend away and I was plagued by thoughts and
hallucinations the entire time. It was an uncomfortable weekend and it only
heightened my need to withdraw from friends and family. I think that my mates
sensed that something was wrong. I had grown up with them and we were all pretty
close; they couldn’t understand why I was shutting off emotionally and closing
down communication. For the entire weekend, I could hardly talk or laugh so I
just drank beer, smoked and sat by the campfire staring into space. I had never
felt so alone, surrounded by friends, girls, alcohol and laughter, yet I was
closed and inward looking, melancholy and for the first time suicidal. During
the weekend, I thought about leaving my mates, leaving home, leaving this life
and about finality.
Click on the cart below to purchase this book:
HOME
PAGE |
