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My Recovery from a Brain Injury from ECT

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This story, my story is a true story of hope for the many people who have been damaged and harmed by ECT (electro convulsive therapy) over far too many years. To begin, I will mention how my brain injury from ECT affected me. First of all, I could not even read or write any more. This deeply troubled me every day as writing has been a passion of mine since I was 17 years old. I have written many books of poetry, short stories, a couple of longer stories, as well as other writings. Writing was how I was able to express myself in the way I truly wanted to. Suddenly after ECT this was all taken away from me. It was so cruel. I used to look at my bookshelves blankly, at all the books that I had collected over many years, and feel despair as I could not read them any more, let alone understand the storylines and plots. I just wanted to give up. What was the point in living any more if I could not write poetry? It really did mean this much to me. I would try to construct sentences, but I jus
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Brain Damage from ECT and the breakdown of loving and meaningful connections within the family Unit - Andy Luff

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I'm Andy Luff and this is my first attempt at a blog post.  People may look upon it as either a good or bad effort. This doesn't bother me really. What I am writing about is the truth about what happened to me  and my family after I had ECT in 2015. Here goes:- I had 4 individual ECTs in the spring of 2015. Psychiatry had diagnosed me with Bipolar 2 when the problems that I was having were due to sensory overload from my Asperger's. I kept telling them this.  I was polydrugged with antidepressants and antipsychotics for 2 years before they gave me ECT, then polydrugged for another 3 years afterwards. The psychiatrists really had no idea what they were doing, using such words as "we must get the cocktail right" and "sometimes it gets worse before it gets better" when I was explaining to them about my brain injury after the ECT that I had been given. Through the denial of brain injury from ECT by psychiatry, I was pretty much abandoned emotionally by my ow
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The Pain of Love and Loss

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Last November, as many of my Twitter family  will know, I received a message from my cousin to say that his mother had died suddenly. My Aunt Jeanne, the pretty girl third from the left in my parent's wedding photo, was no longer with us.  Although she was 88, I was not at all prepared for this to happen, and was hit by a wave of grief that quite took me by surprise.  She was my beloved Dad's baby sister, and as he had died suddenly when I was only 19, she had often been the one I turned to in times of trouble. Now she too was gone. West London July 1945 She and I had often sat for hours, sorting through old photographs, with her telling stories of family life from when they were children. She and my Dad had been born in Canada, where they had emigrated to in the early 1920's, in the aftermath of the Great War. I am grateful for the time that we spent in this way, and as I am now perhaps the only one carrying these stories, I feel it's time I did something with t
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Intervening or Interfering?

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How many people in this world, spanning decades, made it through deepest darkest despair & distress & trauma without any ‘medical intervention’? Please do not underestimate that too. When money is a driving factor in any treatment, it becomes a business, it’s no longer ‘care’. https://t.co/3sbfEpF2XH — Gisella (@ladiegiz) July 24, 2019 This tweet from fellow activist Gisella, got me thinking this morning, about how mental health professionals have positioned themselves to be the indisputable and indispensible experts when it comes to human distress and subsequent breakdown. But is that true or is it a carefully crafted illusion?  Certainly in recent days, I've seen many tweets from medics, proclaiming their vast expertise and experience, and suggesting that without a medical degree, no one else knows what they are talking about. But I challenge that position, and I'd like to try and explain why. The man standing second from the right with his arms fold
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Beginner's Mind

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Before I meet a new client for the very first time, I remind myself of one most important thing. It is this - that I must shut up and listen - I am there to learn.  Listen not with half an ear and half a mind on what I want to say next - no. Listen wholeheartedly, to the story, to the feelings attached to the story, and to the impact the story has had on the teller.  If I say anything during the telling of the client's story, it might be to ask for clarification, or to check that I have understood something correctly.  It's called 'holding space' and I think that's a really good way of describing what happens.  As a therapist I have nothing invested in the space or in the client's life other than to have been engaged to support them, and I have no wish to guide them towards any particular outcome. If there is any 'expertise' involved, it is the ability to suspend judgement and to keep to myself what I might do in the same situation.  The experti
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Losing the Battle, Winning the War

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The last few weeks have been some of the most distressing and dispiriting periods on social media I've ever experienced.  At the end of May, we learned of the death in the Prescribed Harm Community, of our friend and sister Shelly Johnson, who lived in the southern United States.  Shelly had been experiencing huge distress in her journey of withdrawal from benzodiazepines, and often reached out within the  online community for support. Support that clearly was not forthcoming from elsewhere in her real life.  Of course, what we could offer, particularly from as far away as the UK, was quite inadequate, but little support is better than none, and we did our best within the limits of what was possible.  Shelly's life had become intolerable, that was plain to see - her support from family had dwindled and she felt isolated and alone.  She felt she had been blamed for the predicament she found herself in. But all she had done was take drugs that had been prescribed for her. Her vi
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First make sure you are not, in fact, surrounded by a**holes...

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When I first saw this meme a few months ago now, it made me roar with laughter. And before anyone rushes to correct me, I don't for a moment think Freud said anything of the sort, not his style. But as a discussion point, the text no doubt has value. When I'd stopped laughing, I started to think about how true this is, and what an effect those around us can have - on our sense of self and wellbeing.  Whilst I'm not suggesting that people who cause damage always deliberately set out to do so, it can be just as harmful whether done intentionally or not.  Being knocked down by a car is going to be a painful experience whether it was accidental or deliberate.  Emotional injuries are much the same. A relationship that had lasted for over 20 years ended for me in the last months of 2017 when, although I had suspected it was coming, I was told that I was no longer wanted. That my presence was no longer required. I offered to leave and my offer was immediately accepted. It
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