The Pain of Love and Loss

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 them, before I too am called to rejoin the clan.

But as well as the sadness, I realised that I was feeling something else, something that at first I couldn't really identify or put into words.  It took a while for it to come into focus, but finally, there it was. A feeling of absolute outrage, not for my personal loss, sad though I was to lose my aunt's comforting presence. No, a furious burning anger on behalf of those who could no longer feel or process this pain, the pain of loss and grief.

It seems an odd thing doesn't it, to want others to feel the pain of loss. But I have realised that pain is a very necessary part of life, and just as physical pain alerts you to illness or injury, so emotional pain alerts you to something in the psyche that requires attention and healing. A bereavement, loss of relationship, loss of one's home or culture or country.  Whatever the loss, the pain must be felt in order to be healed. There are no shortcuts, and it cannot be medicated away as physical pain can.  This it seems is not well understood by many mental health professionals, who are misguided enough to think that it can.

I stumbled across the Prescribed Harm Community quite by chance when I joined Twitter, and I am grateful to them as a group for what they have given back to me in exchange for my support.

I have learned a great deal from them that I could not have learned in any other way, that is by their sharing of their experiences, and how the harm many of them have sustained has impacted on their lives.  One of the most moving and thought provoking testimonies concerned the loss of memory after being subjected to numerous cycles of ECT (Electroconvulsive or Shock Therapy). The description of feeling left out of family reminiscenses, and being unable to remember the birth and early years of one's children brought it home to me with great clarity, just how great a loss this was.  As if that is not bad enough, I have witnessed multiple occasions when those harmed by ECT have been told that they are mistaken, that there is no evidence of brain damage from ECT.  Where is the compassion? How can you do that, add insult to injury? How could anyone be so wantonly cruel instead of actually listening, trying to understand and empathise?

Nor is this limited to those harmed by ECT. Many members of this community report feeling numb and unable to be in touch with their emotions due to the effects of prescribed psychiatric medications. What are we doing if we are preventing people from feeling normal human emotions which are our natural response to our environment and experiences. Many report feeling unable to connect with memories or emotional content, and are thus deprived of any joy as well as sorrow.

I've been a counsellor for many years now, and seen a variety of people who need support to make sense of their painful experiences and stories. This is a difficult enough task without any chemical interference. Indeed, I have it written in my contract that turning up drunk or stoned will result in both of us wasting our time, but what of people on psych meds? 

It's my opinion that modern psychiatry shows an alarming ignorance about what it is to be human.  How can they not know the importance of memory, of a sense of belonging and place, even if that place has not been an ideal environment in which to thrive? How can they dismiss routinely the experiences of patients incredibly distressed by their inability to connect with feelings, emotion and memory? An ability stolen from them by treatments that amount to tinkering with systems that scientists are a very long way from understanding. If we still know so little about the brain and how it functions, why are we changing it in ways that can, in some, cause catastrophic damage? Why alter a delicate chemical balance with no clear idea about what the outcome might be? No one has yet offered any explanation of ECT and why it is deemed effective, and yet still it goes on, causing catastrophic memory loss in some patients and rendering them unable to function normally or work. 

If the function of psychiatry is to alleviate pain and suffering, the biomedical model has been a catastrophic failure. During the recent Covid-19 virus crisis, which is still in a critical phase of development, I have been alarmed to see a ramping up of fear of an increase in 'mental illness' from certain mental health professionals, using the anxiety caused by self isolation and fear of illness to further diagnose and medicate perfectly normal human distress.  

This cashing in needs to stop, and psychiatry needs to take a long hard look in the mirror. Further isolation, drugging and shock will never be the answer to emotional suffering.  Anyone who knows the first thing about human relationships will know this. Why is psychiatry and their pharma partners so slow on the uptake? 
Get with the program...