Something interesting happened the other night.
Saturday, 2 January 2021 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59I Learned A Lot From The Man With The Sock And The Child Psychiatrist. I Learned Real Is A Word That Means "Whatever The Person Who's Bigger Than You Are Says Is True." I Learned You Can Avoid Having To Ever Go To The Psychiatrist Again If You Just Never Tell Anyone Anything That Matters.*
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A friend of mine who is manic depressive (I'm sorry, but I prefer that term to bipolar, and I will not give it up in my private writing)--k
Anyhow, she told me that, for reasons, she'd effectively stopped taking her psychotropic, and she was seeing the result. She was, she said, feeling more like herself.
(This is common among people on psychotropics, and it's one of the big reasons people go off their meds.)
I told her that the feeling more like herself thing was very common.
And I told her that I'd keep an eye on her We talk often, and I'm familiar with the issues she has, and I'm certainly familiar with crazy people. This was a thing she was doing to feel better, and I wanted to support her, give her some safety in it.
From my experience, this is not the way you're supposed to behave. You're supposed to ask if they think this is a good idea. You're supposed to point out the dangers. You're supposed to caution them, because--
And that's where I run into a all. Because what? This is a woman my age, who knows both her own body and her own mind. She's not resistant to taking the drugs she needs to make her life work successfully. But I think she gets to decide what the definition of successful is. I'm neither her mother nor her doctor. How is it my place to tell her maybe she shouldn't do this? If there were issues she wasn't aware of, I would certainly impart that information, in as impartial a way as I could. But to me, this is along the lines of telling smokers cigarettes are bad for them. No! Really? Who knew?
And besides that, if my response is automatically disapproving, will she still feel safe telling me things? I've hit that wall so many times, and my reaction is, well, I won't bring that up again. I have so much disapproval in my own head, I'm not going to go hunting for it from other people. (Admittedly, I'm overly sensitive. At least, that's what I'm always being told.)
I'm not writing about this because I want to sound so much better than other people. I'm writing about it to get past the fact that it troubles me. After this conversation, I felt guilty. My God, I didn't tell a friend she might be doing the wrong thing, I didn't tell her this wasn't medically recommended. I didn't warn her.
I didn't reiterate in a disapproving way the things she already knew.
What kind of friend am I?
I think I've spent too much time soaking in the scolding culture, to the point that, even thought I'm over-sensitized to being treated that way, I'm beginning to think I'm suppose to treat others that way to be a good, responsible friend.
And I don't believe that.
So I'm going to keep my mouth shut.
*Aaron Raz Link
-:- -:- -:- -:-
A friend of mine who is manic depressive (I'm sorry, but I prefer that term to bipolar, and I will not give it up in my private writing)--k
Anyhow, she told me that, for reasons, she'd effectively stopped taking her psychotropic, and she was seeing the result. She was, she said, feeling more like herself.
(This is common among people on psychotropics, and it's one of the big reasons people go off their meds.)
I told her that the feeling more like herself thing was very common.
And I told her that I'd keep an eye on her We talk often, and I'm familiar with the issues she has, and I'm certainly familiar with crazy people. This was a thing she was doing to feel better, and I wanted to support her, give her some safety in it.
From my experience, this is not the way you're supposed to behave. You're supposed to ask if they think this is a good idea. You're supposed to point out the dangers. You're supposed to caution them, because--
And that's where I run into a all. Because what? This is a woman my age, who knows both her own body and her own mind. She's not resistant to taking the drugs she needs to make her life work successfully. But I think she gets to decide what the definition of successful is. I'm neither her mother nor her doctor. How is it my place to tell her maybe she shouldn't do this? If there were issues she wasn't aware of, I would certainly impart that information, in as impartial a way as I could. But to me, this is along the lines of telling smokers cigarettes are bad for them. No! Really? Who knew?
And besides that, if my response is automatically disapproving, will she still feel safe telling me things? I've hit that wall so many times, and my reaction is, well, I won't bring that up again. I have so much disapproval in my own head, I'm not going to go hunting for it from other people. (Admittedly, I'm overly sensitive. At least, that's what I'm always being told.)
I'm not writing about this because I want to sound so much better than other people. I'm writing about it to get past the fact that it troubles me. After this conversation, I felt guilty. My God, I didn't tell a friend she might be doing the wrong thing, I didn't tell her this wasn't medically recommended. I didn't warn her.
I didn't reiterate in a disapproving way the things she already knew.
What kind of friend am I?
I think I've spent too much time soaking in the scolding culture, to the point that, even thought I'm over-sensitized to being treated that way, I'm beginning to think I'm suppose to treat others that way to be a good, responsible friend.
And I don't believe that.
So I'm going to keep my mouth shut.
*Aaron Raz Link