To: K-list
Recieved: 2000/04/13 09:26
Subject: [K-list] A Few Words
From: Lynda Waterson
On 2000/04/13 09:26, Lynda Waterson posted thus to the K-list:
I get the feeling it's time to stop lurking. It's the talk about mental
health. I feel as if I've got a foot in both camps at the moment. I'm not
sure whether I have a 'Dissociation Disorder Not Otherwise Specified '(DDNOS
according to DSM criteria) or it's a K thing. Or it could be both, or it
could be something else altogether.
A brief synopsis of my story follows,(I'll try not to make it too long, but
it's hard to know what to put in and what to leave out as it seems
ludicrouly complex at the moment.)
For the first part of my life I worked in community theatre, eventually
living in Ireland, where I met a lady teacher during an Artist in Residence
in Schools programme. We became close and she introduced me to meditation. A
couple of years after this I returned home in search of a 'career' (I was
feeling very tired of working alone and had got a bit unnerved about the
group work I was doing) and became a Local Goverment Community Develpment
worker. I rose through the ranks and was piloting a democracy initiative and
feeling very stressed out. I attended a Community Building Workshop based on
the work of M. Scott Peck. It was held in a beautiful place but the
experience was weird. On the third day towards the end I felt like I was
being struck by ligthing and a few moments later I exploded into laughter
and all I could say was 'I've got no words'. I went home and went back to
work, but kept feeling strange sensations and tinglings. Three days later I
collapsed during a group with all my vital signs going haywire. I was rushed
to hospital by which time I couldn't speak and a stroke was suspected. They
did lots of tests while it seemed to me I was going in and out of a dream. I
remember saying to my daugther in a moment of lucidity - I'm dissociating,
although I had no idea what the word meant. I came back to myself three days
later on a psychiatric ward and discovered I'd been sectioned and was told
I'd had a 'brief psychotic episode' only the psychiatrist was very puzzelled
as she'd never seen any one be psychotic one minite and right as rain the
next. She thought it was a stress reaction and I needed rest. My experience
was that I'd been 'dreaming' but the mechanism that usually keeps you
imobile when you enter REM sleep hadn't been working. I rested. Three months
later I went back to work. I attended a two day training course on managing
conflict that was led by a Quaker organisation. And - yes - three days later
it happened again, and three days after that I was back. Thats when I got
the lovely label DDNOS. I haven't worked since ( for the first time in my
life I feel fragile) and live on disability benefits and can manage what
I've come to call 'wierd time' (when dream material seems to 'leak' into
daily life) OK and very useful information it is. But it is a bit scary
sometimes ( am I going mad?) and I do feel very alone with it On the other
hand I have got back into the theatre again ( theatrical people don't seem
to be too phased by my ocaisional 'vacancies', or perhaps vacations is a
better word. And I've become involved with Carnival Arts which seems to
keeping me much more 'settled'.
Well, what d'you think?
I forgot to mention the heat, well there's an awful lot I hav'nt mentioned,
but I'd put that down to the menapause.
Oh - and has any body heard of Dennison's laterality repattening and/or
Edu-K exercises?
Lynda
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