J you said I could name you, and that the paedophiles wouldn’t get you but I’ve decided to play safe on this occasion.
Nearly 400 hits on my blog today babe. An all-time high. You’re helping my stats and popularity no end babe!
THAT’S why I don’t wanna talk on the phone right now hon. Cause right now this is more interesting and exciting.
We’re an unbeatable combo, J. With you as my ‘partner in crime’ I swear I can do anything!
X
Y’see, good service users of Haringey (and Soho, Angela!) We don’t really need to be fighting each other! We need to go forth into battle IN SOLIDARITY…
For me, that means mental health service users working together. Bringing physical and mental health ‘disability’ together, as you did with Equals, just doesn’t work for me. The issues we face are different.
It’s really nothing personal Nora and Barbara. It’s just, this ain’t my vision. And I’ve never met another mental health service user who thought it was theirs, either.
At the end of the day, I could still make a complete recovery from my ‘illness’. It isn’t set in stone. And it could even confer greater than average ABILITIES. I find it a pessimistic and fatalistic outlook to cling to a ‘disabled’ label.
I want to engage in debate and I don’t mind people disagreeing with me. I KNOW my view is not the only one. I ENJOY differences! That’s why I came to live in Haringey!
Come here service users of Haringey and let’s talk!
Angela? Will you agree to work with me NOW?
The offer’s still there. I won’t work for you. I’ll work with you.
Still love you very much.
To be on your own? No direction home? A complete unknown? Like a rolling stone?
Dunno? Let me fill you in.
I’m a vulnerable mental health service user. As if society’s marginalisation and stigmatisation of me and my kind wasn’t enough, I then had to face further ostracisation and vilification from a ‘social firm’ I was foolish and naive enough to join, as a volunteer.
Their name is Equals Training. One of their esteemed ‘directors’ was the chronically directionless Angela Salway. And they employed my equally (hah!) easily-led ex-partner of eleven years as their Web Manager.
What do you think was going through their heads good people of Haringey?
To want to voluntarily and proactively expel and alienate a dangerous, uh, writer from their ranks?
I’ll tell you, as I’m studying for my PhD in Advanced Mind-Reading.
They chronically underestimated me, my kind, and even themselves. They thought I was ‘too hot to handle’, and that their organisation was not big or flexible enough to contain my ideas.
But were they honest about this? Uh uh.
They launched a hate campaign against me in order to justify their behaviour.
And I think you’ll find we all have our limits. I reached mine this year. And turned into a real writer.
They wanted to stop my flow, interrupt it. They pilloried and disapproved of my blog and my emails. They complained to the police about their chosen scapegoat. They were out of touch with reality. They thought I would go away and self-destruct. Instead, I go from strength to strength, take on bigger targets, all the while watching them implode.
For Equals Training read Mediocrity on the March. Read brown-nosing with the hacks of the hierarchy. Read Victim Mentality Promotion. Read Ideologically Challenged, Total Lack of Vision Training. Read ‘Wow guys, we can get away with murder!’ Read ‘Playing the Mental Health Card!’ Read ‘Total Hypocrisy’. Read ‘Sociopaths Anonymous!’
What your best friend wouldn’t tell you, Angela?
‘Equals Training’ is a mediocre, vision-less name for a mediocre and vision-less ‘firm’. Except I did tell you, babe! Someone had to.
And anyone of any taste, discernment or brains can see it just from checking out your very own website.
Please stop insulting our intelligence, as well as your own. Service users don’t need or want this kind of flaky and immoral outfit fighting our battles for us. ‘I stand for something, and you won’t stand your ground for nothing’.
‘There’s a thin line between love and hate/And there’s a thin line between real and fake/ There’s a thin line between everything/ That’s why more times I don’t say anything’.
Kano, Grime MC.
Hi Peeps. Today , after meeting my Care Coordinator Wayne for coffee and breakfast we both turned up for an appointment with Gavin’s line manager at Haringey Council.
Wayne couldn’t stay long. I felt apprehensive as we phoned her extension and were let in. I had had dealings with her before, though only by email and letter. So I was all geared up to face yet more stonewalling.
As ever, though, I approached her with an open mind and heart, and she turned out to be a little bit of a star.
She was a quiet and gently-spoken black lady. She seemed to ‘get’ the situation that I described. I warmed to her, and she to me.
Gavin is not at work today but she undertook to speak to him tomorrow about trying to arrange another mediated meeting with Equals. Failing that, she said she would ask that they put their complaints against me in writing.
It’s been two good and productive days in The Campaign. What happened at DRA yesterday was immensely cheering, as were the supportive emails from my son, though he seems to be frowning at my decision to post them here. I told him if he objects I can take them down, but I felt they were far too wonderful to be kept to myself and the two parties concerned, Angela Salway and Richard Adam (ex best friend and partner respectively).
Glad the snow is melting, at least here in North London. I just can’t stand slippy sliding my way around the ungritted death traps that the pavements become.
Just one more way that pedestrians and non-drivers are punished for doing the right thing!
Later on today I have my counselling session and Alpha.
Lots of love and blessings, folks. Z xxx
How desperate does a girl have to be for her 14 year old son in foster care to have to intervene on her behalf?
Please note. Professionals, even the very good ones, have completely failed to bring a resolution to this situation that no vulnerable person should ever have to face.
Let’s face it. There are agendas. From the top, the idea of enabling and promoting a ‘social firm’ ticks all the ‘inclusive’ boxes, doesn’t it, Haringey Council?
That the firm in question turn out to be a ‘girl gang’ of (very) loose cannons to whom accountability is a foreign and unknown concept, is just plain inconvenient.
Regret to inform you, Haringey Council. The thirty thousand pounds (or however much) you paid them to run their appalling ‘course’ enabled them to make my life Hell for nine months, and I seriously doubt it helped anyone with a mental health problem get a job.
Please, next time you want to get a pat on the head from on high. Thoroughly check out the product you are paying for first. Proper professional accountability is not optional.
OK Guys. When all professionals fail, what’s a gal to do? Bring on the big guns, in the shape of my fourteen year old son in foster care! Have at you Gavin (and the rest)!
I tried
From: j
To: angela.salway@equalstraining.com
Subject: Plz take this in
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 01:56:08 +0000
first things first i really dont want u to think that my mum has told me to do this, because she hasent. I know to u im only a child in all of this, but i do understand. Look, all i can say to u is my mum is a wonderful person and always will be and all i know is u and her have been close for years, i just wish u could both see past all thats happened, ill tell u now that ive emailed richard just before u and was talkin about memories, k im really not trying to warm ur heart so that u talk to mum but for some reason i always remember watchin chicken run with u, its so fuckin wierd whenever the film is mentioned, i remember both of us sitting on the sofa watching it, good times ay. Actually maybe i am trying to warm ur heart so that u talk to her, but to be honest i really dont give a fuck, as long as u talk to her. Just try Plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I really dont know wat to say, other than life is so fuckin retarded, y r two good people that used to be really good friends arguing. At least try, i know im repeating myself but i just want it to sink in, adults never seem to understand me and i dont want u to walk away from this email thinking my mums using me as ammunition and that this email isnt genuine. Oh yh almost forgot its 1:55 and ive got school in the morning, just to prove i give a shit.
Love from J xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I tried my best
From: j
To: richardadam@blueyonder.co.uk
Subject: were all human
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 01:33:52 +0000
Firstly, i dont want u to asume mum has told me to send this email.
Ive been sitting next to my laptop for like 20 mins trying to figure out what to say to really get ur attention but to be honest, im shit with emails and words.
I just cant believe uve broken up after everything weve been through, i mean shit i dont even know how many years u have been there for me and although ur not my dad ur the closest thing i have to one. I was looking at some old pictures i have and there was one of us building a snowman, when i was like seven, i had such a big smile on my face. You could say im just a child in all of this and dont understand, but thats not true. I know its hard to get back together because u just cant agree on anything at the moment.but at the end of the day my mum is a lovely person and so r u, its such a shame. Plz at least talk to her, she told me u blocked her phone calls and texts, because i asked her. Do u remember when i went to that black family, sorry to refer to them as that black family but they were lol. i wouldnt let go of ur leg because i wanted to stay with u. That always sticks out in my memory for some reason, u could say im tryin to guilt u into talking to her in a way, i mean the memories. But its genuine, i really dont know wat to say other than plz take this in. Plz dont ignore her. 1 more thing plz dont think shes using me as amunition against u because this was my choice.
love from J xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ps. I need u to drive me to contact so u cant go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pss. Its 1:30 am, thats how much i care!!!!
That’s an Eminem line folks.
‘I bully these rappers so bad lyrically…’
And it has to be said. It has to be said.
Zoe bullies Equals so bad lyrically, intellectually, creatively, morally. I think you get the picture.
And Haringey Council? Y’know what? They block their professionals’ computers, so as to more effectively cut them off from the outside world. So as to feed them more effectively their daily diet of lies and corruption.
So I know that a lot of you good and caring professionals of Haringey can’t even get to access the blog link that I sent you. So I would ask you to go home and access it there. Cause I’m doing this for you!
I’m as pissed off and jaded as you sometimes feel faced with this ever growing wall of bullshit. But UNLIKE you I am in a position to say it and spray it loud and proud. I have no job to lose! No status to jeopardise! So I CAN be the whistleblower that you have been praying for, to come and kick these ‘mothers’ into touch!
See me as your ally, good people. Never see me as the Big Bad Wolf. You have nothing whatsoever to fear from me if you are doing your best in a fairly thankless role.
Bullshit detecting is what I do. The writing is a sideline!
Today, at my DRA meeting, I shared honestly and openly about the precise nature of what I’ve been enduring these last nine months. This included making it very clear to everyone present who was responsible…without naming any names.
And everyone rallied around. No one was threatened by the sad tale of corruption I had to tell…about our very own Fellowship. And I suggested a Group Conscience on the matter. And we are having one next week. And I am no longer suffering in silence folks. No longer alone.
Please keep praying all those of goodwill who read this blog. Because miracles can and do happen. Davids can slay Goliaths. Worms can turn Nemeses. With just a little divine intervention.
Got to go. Getting kicked out of the Day Centre (it’s closing time).Heaps love. Z
From the Equals Training Website:
People who have experienced difficulties with mental health are often socially excluded and frequently the exclusion is profound. The mainstay of mental health social exclusion is stigma which is widespread both in employment and society as a whole.
Way to go Equals! Keep fighting the good fight, eh! Like a trio of Joan of Arcs, off you ride on your mission to save these poor marginalised types from themselves, eh?
Poor wee service users, eh Equals? If only we could all be thrusting and successful ‘businesswomen’ like yourselves!
Y’know what? With mentors and advocates like you three, not entirely convinced I need enemies…
Equals. The name kinda prepares us I suppose. Not exactly imaginative. Not exactly visionary. Humdrum. Generic. It could disappear without trace among all the other ‘Equals Trainings’ on Google Search.
Though maybe that’s what you were counting on? Was this just another of your many self-sabotaging actions? Or did you have a feeling that you might, at some stage, want to just conveniently disappear?
In Angela’s world I am ‘either nice, or abusive’. There just is no grey area, no in-between. Black and white thinking. You’re either for us or ‘agin’ us. It’s Equals on their little raft against the whole world! Having reservations about anything that we do is just not an option.
On the course Barbara Lisicki said at the start ‘Not participating is not an option’. If only she could have warned us then that ‘Disagreeing with the party line is also not an option’. And that the unhappy volunteer who dares to express her own views is basically ‘asking’ to be bullied, vilified, demonised and stripped of two close friendships!
Remember. The victim mentality that pervades this tiny firm means that they expect to be alternately pitied and patted (on the head by commissioners, service providers etc) wherever they go. They simply do not compute the fact that many of us actually do NOT enjoy being patronised. Or pitied. A telling little psychological quirk that I have observed in the Equals camp.
They are a superb case study in abnormal organisational psychology, if such a thing exists. Codependency Rules OK! Boundaries? What are they? Self-reflection? Isn’t that what we do in the mirror of a morning? Accountability? You mean divvying up the readies? Criticism of any kind or honest self-evaluation? Not welcome or acceptable: may result in severe bullying and being hounded out of the organisation.
This little piece of Equals baiting is not up to my usual standard. I’m tired and my heart’s not really in it. My heart is sick and sore at the latest entrenchment of my ex ‘behind enemy lines’. I can’t help thinking I am destined for greater things than this! Equals are just too soft and feeble a target for my satirical barbs, and that’s the truth.
Night Peeps.
And so it goes.
Snow down here in Kent today. But apparently, none in London.
And I’m frozen out of the hearts of some of those who were so close and so loved.
Had to witness the tragic sight of my 78 year old mother trying to reason with Richard on the phone. Soul-destroying, and draining to watch.
Yesterday I was buzzing, and very creative. Today rather flat. Exhausted. But looking forward to my Fellowship meeting tomorrow. I will be ‘sharing’ more openly than before about the precise nature of the situation I am enduring. And here on my blog, I no longer have any compunction about naming these people. Why oh why should I protect them?
The Bible yields a little comfort. Otherwise, I survey a frozen wasteland this snowy Sunday morning.
Much love, Z xxx
And while we’re at it, Public Enemy Number One. If I’m to be demonised, I might as well do it in style, what!
Here’s a pome what I wrote (on the train).
You just don’t get it, do you?
Tho’ richly recompensed
The more complacent you become
The more you sit on the fence
The more the funds in your account
The greater your offence
You just don’t get it, do you?
Total indifference.
You just don’t get it, do you?
Don’t hear the cry of pain
Don’t see the haunted visage
Don’t witness stress and strain
Looking away as you evade
Accountability
As you watch the clock you’re out of touch
With the needs of those like me.
Richard’s fear of my poetry is palpable, as he cringes away from my every ‘beep beep’. Let’s name the guy. Richard is a common enough name, and this Richard an obscure enough guy, for him to continue as he started and evade the ‘walk of shame’ along with his ‘Equals‘ mentors.
Why in God’s name should I keep protecting these people?
And can I find it in my heart to even pity them? No. Their complete lack of feeling for me, evinced in their every action, has extinguished every last twinge of compassion in my normally highly empathic heart.
I’m at my Mum’s, guys. And I’m happy, warm and cosy, with a cup of tea at my side.
And on the menu for tonight is mushroom and madeira pie from Waitrose, with roast tatties, gravy, and the works.
I think I’ve discovered my vocation. Possibly even two or three. I’m a writer, An observer from the wings. A warrior in the fray. A victim of the jackboot of ‘mental health care’. A mistress of psychology. An aspiring mystic. An advocate for the voiceless. An advisor for the professional seeking guidance from the grassroots. An avenger of the meek. A whistleblower. A poet.
Is that enough vocations to be going on with, think you? Let’s add in, budding comedian and satirist shall we, as I’m on a roll?
And it’s inexpressible joy, folks, to take something as dire and desperate as a bullying situation, and turn it around with the skilful use of words and all the outlets at my disposal. And my Mum and I have drawn closer than for a long long time, over this. Also a massive bonus.
While I have my outlets, and the strength to write, I will continue to survive and thrive. And no one can take this away from me, folks, no one.
Because I dream of the day when my reputation will go before me into the mental health professionals’ office.
I dream of the day when they handle me with as much care and love on the mental health ward as, say Adam Ant!
Not because I pranced around in a pirate costume thirty years ago. But because they know that if they cross me, patronise or otherwise offend me, they will be written about here. And that though I often won’t name them…I actually could.
Mum gave me a good idea today. She’s full of them! Write an article for the Guardian, Zoe, on the subject of ‘My child in care’. I knew instantly that idea had serious legs. How many mums of kids in foster care can write like me? It’s just the sort of thing the Guardian would jump at. Maybe I’ll even be paid!
Laugh away, haters (not you, gentle reader!) If you don’t have a vision, you will never create jack shit. And I have vision a-plenty, thanks very much.
How many of you are prepared to come and critique my prose style in a comment? None. Because I’m a bloody good writer, and you know it.
I write to elucidate, and not to baffle. I write to illuminate, and not to waffle. I am not self-indulgent. And I don’t give you the creeps. I am not weird, I am not nuts, and I don’t send you to sleep.
This blog is value added. This blog repays a glance. This blog speaks of the human. And the anti-human dance. This blog won’t cause a headache. Or put you in a trance. Unless of course you’re Equals! Or in Gavin Eastley’s pants!
Gavin, fair Gavin, you are a favourite Muse of mine. Gavin, you are up there, with the greatest a-holes of all time. Gavin I shoulda warned you. Though I really think I did. You messa with Zo, she breaka your legs. Here’s lookin’ at you, kid!
Love, peace and blessings folks. Z xxx
The vulnerable, isolated and marginalised service user turns scary ogre, object of fear and loathing to so many, and probably featuring in many a nightmare!
Please note folks: expressing a personal viewpoint can leave you open to being witch-hunted out of your own existence. Whoever would have believed a mere opinion could render you sub-human?
Adam, Angela’s husband, once also a friend, tells me I am ‘self-righteous’ folks. Never at any stage, apparently, have I looked at my own actions.
Having been demonised by an ever-growing cohort of very righteous ‘professionals’ I am to go and stand in the corner like a primary school kid, and think about what I have done wrong.
Note the mind-reading, and the unrecovered codependency and lack of boundaries.
They can’t be specific as to what I have done wrong, in their eyes. But that will not stop them continuing vague slurring and smearing by means of the trusty epithet ‘abuse’.
As they cannot pin down what is so abusive about me, I open this up for ‘general sharing’ as we say in the Fellowships!
Folks, do this poor benighted Zoe a favour. Show me the error of my ways, as my persecutors are unwilling to do. You would be doing me a great kindness, gentle reader.
Where is the abuse? Where?
I slept well, am still alive and am going to visit my Mum in Kent and spend the night. I would ask any of you who are on first-name terms with God or any sort of Higher Power, to pray for me, please.
People of integrity will often be persecuted in this corrupt world of ours. Fact.
Adam is apparently conveniently blind to the fact that Equals maintain they have done nothing wrong and everything right throughout. Including the exclusion of a vulnerable person from their course giving no explanation that holds water, in front of ten witnesses.
They must have been pretty convinced of their righteousness at that point. But to myself, and any competent trainer, if would be a sign that some failure had taken place, and a reason to look into how THEY could have done things differently.
One cannot expect actively and unrecovering codependent types like Angela and her husband to have that perspective. They operate within their own world of faulty boundaries, back-covering, self-righteousness, acting out, projection, and all of it with no solitary time to reflect on themselves.
Where do you see anywhere any evidence of Angela and her cohorts writing anything like what you see here? Where do they get to ask themselves questions? Where do they experience total isolation and distress that breeds the asking of still more questions?
I will be in Kent later today and will blog from there again if I am inspired to, and everyone of goodwill out there…thank you so much for reading.
Lots love and blessings. Zoe xxx
I am sorry Z: you’re not a bit sorry, R but I must ask you to do the following. It is very important that you respect my wishes. Please
1. Do not visit me
2. Do not send any more text messages
3. Do not telephone me
If you email me there should be no abuse of any kind. I will only reply if I wish to. Z: Everything on my terms, Zoe, as always…
Please note this vague and unsubstantiated accusation of abuse, folks, that has been levelled at me by these cowardly bullies throughout.
I am copying Wayne into this email too so that he is aware. Z: So that someone else can pick up the pieces of my mental health, which you have done your best to destroy! I will also email your mum but I do not have her address. Perhaps you could let me know it. I need to preserve my mental health and I hope it will help yours too.Z: Please note folks. Copying his mentor, Angela Salway, in disingenuously and dishonestly playing the mental health card! He does not currently suffer from any mental health problems whatsoever and has not been under a psychiatrist or taken any meds for about thirty years! Also note the sickening ‘hope’ that further isolation and ostracisation by close people will somehow ‘help’ my mental health!
Best wishes Richard Adam
Dear E and P, I am really ‘white-knuckling it’ now, as we say in the Fellowships!
Latest which I forwarded to you is that R refuses all contact with me. He makes the same vague and unsubstantiated accusation (or implication) of abuse that has been made against me all down the line. But demonised? Moi?
Also, in some desperation, called A (A’s partner) on the phone. He told me I needed to go away and think about my own actions. What none of them are prepared to do, despite being asked over and over and over again, is to give any details of what my supposed ‘offences’ actually are.
Exercising my right to free speech, self-expression, and using my blog as an outlet for the psychological torture I am enduring, is obviously a principle objection on their part. But where, anywhere in anything I have written, is contained any abuse? Where?
So I have now lost another outlet. The ability to engage in debate with R. But there’s no demonisation. Obviously. No irrational fear based on ???
And you too and possibly Stephen W as well are now apparently being hounded by NB (who I believed to be a decent guy) for daring to show any compassion and concern for my situation?
Where do I go now E and P? If not to you, to Wayne, to Gavin, to Richard, to my Mum, to Equals, to Stephen…where?
I am alone. I am vulnerable. And the ‘professionals’ in this instance are as much use as a chocolate teapot…which can provide no tea and makes a nasty, sticky brown mess on the tablecloth.
Lots love, Zoe xxx
‘Loving you, makes my life so beautiful…’
I am inspired. I am buzzing. I am proud of myself.
Never prouder than when I managed to lampoon and satirise the whole mental situation while following in R’s wake as he dragged his pet dog around the freezing streets of Edmonton.
In my fevered imagination, I pictured R having a massive crush on A! This is a picturesque and far less mundane explanation for his atrocious behaviour than the sad reality probably is.
A, you have the legs of a Goddess in your wedding minidress! A, it is not even faintly true that your dyed black locks don’t suit you! Those are the words of a jealous woman, A! As if that’s not your natural colour!
I’m beginning to show the faint stirrings of a comic talent.
And I announced to a complete stranger as I got off the bus later on (having ‘scored’ a tenner from R to get a minicab home hee hee) ‘I am going where he will never follow!’
‘I am going where he can never follow’.
Because I have cast my pearls before a swine for long enough.
He cannot appreciate my truth or my beauty. He loves A’s pretty mask. The same mask I dreamt crumbled off her face showing the hideous crone beneath.
A, this is what you get for perpetually forcing those around you to play bit parts in your own soap opera. You get to play a bit part in someone else’s blockbuster movie. Too late to complain now, A!
R phoned A today. She is ‘adamant’ she will not meet with me. She gave as ‘reason’ that I ‘would either be nice, or abusive’. Go figure. Have never abused the woman in any way, shape or form. Unless, of course, you count the above. Oh c’mon! Forgive the catty comment about your hair A. You are just too old to carry off black!
Joy of joys. I sat in my favourite Tottenham cafe and the poetry poured from my pen. And I texted R the following:
‘In the footsteps of the Christ. Betrayed. Denied. Sacrificed.’
‘In the footsteps of the Christ. Betrayed. Denied. As the cock crowed thrice.’
It might work better the other way round, folks.
But what really made my day? My stats rose to previously unheard of heights. A grand total of 145 people read today’s posts.
Gavin? I bet it’s not just me who doesn’t like you. My public and well-earned dissing of you is probably responsible for my new fans!
Seaneen over at ‘The Secret Life’ gets more like 145 readers a minute. But you know what? It’s quality I want, not quantity. And every local reader that I have, either a friend, service user or mental health professional, means a million times more to me than some American ever could.
So lurkers? Fess up, be brave, stick your neck out, and comment!
Please note. I got nasty. And got a prompt response. Lesson for the future. No more Mr Nice Guy.
Please note. More lip service to ‘complaints procedures’. Please note. Reference to ‘stepping back’. Please note. ‘Better not to do this in a public space’.
Please note. People who are engaged in dishonesty fear exposure. People who have something to hide hate and fear a ‘public space’. Those with nothing whatsoever to hide (myself included) have no fear of a public space.
Please note. Denial and abnegation of responsibility by means of ‘neutrality’ and buck-passing to an unpaid and unfunded charity run by a service user.
Please note. Distancing of his own enabling relationship with a bullying, dishonest and incompetent organisation and his role in securing funds for them.
Re ‘corruption’, ‘dishonesty’ and ‘a deep rot’ in Haringey mental health services. I rest my case.
Zoe,
I want to talk to Wayne so this is a quick initial response. I assume you ccd me into your emails because you wanted a witness to the development of events. I view myself on one level as a neutral witness. However you come to me as a member of the Clarendon Centre and this necessarily challenges that neutrality because I am concerned for, and as manager of the Clarendon charged with some responsibility for, your wellbeing. This probably means I am more likely to be perceived as “on your side” by third parties rather than as a potential mediator or go-between.
Z: With ‘friends’ like you, Gavin, I truly don’t need enemies…I bet it will come as news to Equals that you are in any danger whatsoever of favouring me over them!
Secondly, you show the born ‘politician’s’ preoccupation with how you are perceived, Gavin.
Thirdly, better not ‘assume’, Gavin. It makes an ass out of you and me.
When you said you were having mediation with Equals facilitated by Stephen Wish I was pleased as this seemed like a good way forward. I am not exactly clear how this has progressed but I hope all parties are pursuing this.
Z: Yes, Gavin. You hoped the whole sorry mess would just disappear or relocate, didn’t you?
Regarding your issue with Equals on one universal level there is a simple, pragmatic need to see that an organisation you have an issue with has a robust complaints procedure that has been followed. A complainant may not always like the outcome but the process should be followed. I do not have enough evidence to know whether this is the case.
Z: Um. The ‘complainant’ does not ‘like’ being bullied, excluded, ostracised and demonised Gavin. Aha! You’re a kindred spirit of my ex, Richard. He demands ‘evidence’ too! Um. Robust. A less robust organisation than Equals Training you would need to go a very long way to see…
The issue with Equals has unfortunately become entwined with two very close relationships of yours. My thought on this is that they must eventually become separate issues and then trust that time might provide some healing. I know that “stepping back” is not what you feel like doing, probably the very last thing you feel able to do, but most people – all involved in this perhaps – are better able to reflect and consider and change in private and personal space and this is very public at the moment.
Z: Two things here. One, you believe that the fact that these are two close relationships muddies the waters and makes it about me and my personal life. Wrong. The fact that there are two close relationships makes the gravity of the offence against me MORE serious, not less. Try telling Angela Salway to keep her professional and personal lives separate, would you? I was fully prepared to do that from the get-go, and if you cast your eye back over my emails you will see the truth in that.
Two, Gavin, as a professional of unimpeachable integrity as well as an indefatigable ‘jobsworth’, I am quite sure you have nothing whatsoever to fear from a public space? Well, neither do I.
Like I said this is a quick response and I will talk to Wayne about your specific request for us to get more involved and whether or how this might happen.
Yours,
Gavin Eastley
Manager, Clarendon Centre
My Mum has always been my staunchest ally. I would however ask you to treat this email from her with the respect you have not been able to show to mine. She is 78 years old and a retired teacher. I come from a family of teachers. And, with all their faults, of ‘people who know right from wrong’.
My son is another ally. Would you like me to ask him to throw in his two penn’orth? Or can we at this point just agree that this matter requires your further consideration rather than further stonewalling of a vulnerable person in an excruciating situation?
You all appear to be pretty upset and annoyed by my temerity in daring to express my feelings in writing. None of it would have been necessary if you could have treated me like a human being in the first instance. If you want the writing to stop, you know what you need to do. Best wishes.
—– Original Message —–
From: Jean Vincent
To: zoe vincent
Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 11:22 PM
Subject: Past imperfect – Future who knows!
Dear Zoe – or to whom it may concern
Thank you for sending me those e-mails. I was so heart-warmed by Jasper’s to you and from a teenaged boy – quite astounding. An outpouring of his love for his Mum. It must make you feel proud of your own efforts during those years he was with you. I think you forged a relationship with him many others would envy. I can only say – well done Zoe, I didn’t realise.
You know I am extremely concerned about what you are going through at this time. People you once loved and trusted with your deepest thoughts and emotions have, for reasons known only to themselves, abandoned their finer feelings and allowed a vacuum to emerge between you and them which you are constantly and vainly trying to fill with your own despair and pleas for some understanding of what you have experienced.
The months of battering against this wall of indifference from those closest to you has taken its toll on your mental and physical health. There was a definite injustice perpetrated against you by people purporting to run an organisation for facilitating mental health users. Some apparently ejected you from the organisation for putting forward views that they did not agree with – but then refused to answer or debate with you or give you any sort of satisfaction as to why this had happened.
You felt bullied – and justfiably so, in my opinion. Your attempts to engage these people in e-mail correspondence met with stonewalling and eventual villification of you and your motives. They formed a cohort – a group united in a struggle, either consciously or not – to damage your reputation without making any attempt to reconcile or assuage your feelings of being wronged.
This has been a heavy load for one person to bear – while the organisation sails on with total disregard for the damage they have inflicted.
You say you have learned many truths from all of this. I hope it will help you in eventually coming to terms with the betrayal, lack of principle and concern of those who you considered loving friends.
Your welfare is paramount to me and I am sick at heart at the callousness of so-called friends. Be wary….very wary
Ever loving and always
Mum
OK folks. R wants me to tell you that I scratched his arms before he started punching me the night the police were called at 3.30 am. There it is. I scratched his arms. He still has the scars!
He also reveals that A told him that I used ‘sarcasm’ to her at the meeting where she co-opted her partner to rant and rave across the table at me.
Sarcasm? Scratching? Zoe, how could you! This puts an entirely different complexion on everything. How could you mislead us this way? If we had only known you were (gasp) a ‘scratcher’, and, horror piled on horror, sarcastic! Well we would consider that you fully deserved to be struck off everyone’s Christmas card list!
Can’t you see, Zoe, that when you write a blog, it is against ‘blogging law’ to give a subjective account? You are like the BBC, Zoe, and The Times. A balanced view at all times, Zoe!
We are shocked and disappointed Zoe. We believed in you. But you too have turned out to be corrupt and rotten to the core.
Honeys. We will all end up that way.
Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. Sick and tired of trying to explain in words of one syllable to person after person after person that, yes I am a mental health service user. But I am not stark raving mad!
Can you observe, good people, how many technically ‘sane’ people are permitted to perpetrate all manner of atrocities in the course of their workaday lives, while those of us with a diagnosis watch from the wings, or even worse, become the targets of said atrocities?
Gavin, I have more skill, more charm, more vision, more creativity, more nouse, more wisdom, more pretty much everything in my little finger than you can muster in your whole body!
More important than ANY of that, I have integrity Gavin. I have a moral compass Gavin. I am honest Gavin. A dirty word these days possibly, and certainly not a fashionable concept?
I fought shy of naming people on my blog up till now. I also never wanted to become this personal. But the personal has now become political, for me.
I am disgusted to the core, by the deep rot that I perceive in the echelons of power in the mental health field in this borough. And right now, for me, you personify that rot Gavin.
You and the other ‘professionals’ have ignored, discounted, dismissed and invalidated my experience for long enough. Here is my reply. Still not abusive. I have never yet been abusive in an email. I don’t feel the need to resort to that. Words, Gavin, are my friend, and I am a far greater master of them than you will ever be.
Because I speak from the heart Gavin, and from the deep dark recesses of a rock bottom that you will never know or even dream of.
Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 8:56 PM
Subject: Thank you Katy!
Not there. Not on the course. A mental health service user. And not a direct witness of any of this stuff. Nonetheless somehow able to make some extremely sane and salient points, because she reads my blog!
New comment on your post “Aaaargh!”
Sounds like R is of the belief that people react to nothing- how so?
If B is reading this; could you please consider what it was about Zoe that made you decide to exclude her…was it because she disagreed with ‘your’ training style? Do you not see that you could have learned from the perspective Zoe brought and so improved apon what the course had/has to offer for everyone? I, personally, am disinclined to participate in anything which has such narrow ‘vision’…
Having looked at ‘Equals’ site, I see that you have written that there is an appreciation of B’s ‘absurdist’ approach. However, what seems to me to be somewhat ‘absurd’ is the disregard of the fact that B and Z’s input (as equal human beings) is/was of equal value to the organisation as a whole. Why was this not seen? Why was this difference of perspective received instead as a ‘clash’/threat leading to Z’s exclusion?
Is it not ‘evidence’ enough for R that Z was excluded and he and A took sides with B?
It is, indeed, sad that Z and A’s friendship has been practically lost by all of this.
Hope you recover soon, Zoe, from this very hurtful ‘to do’.
Love, Katy X
Nobody. Nobody. Particularly those who are already marginalised from society to some extent by virtue of a mental health diagnosis, wants to have their reality discounted and invalidated, while sundry professionals struggle to ‘remain neutral’ and ‘be appropriate’ at all times. If two of those doing the invalidating (plus bullying, violation of basic human rights etc) are close and trusted friends, how would this not impact on said unfortunate individual’s mental health?
Gavin, I believe that you are SERIOUSLY at fault here. You too have contributed to my distress, refusing to hear my reality, persistently reframing it and making it about my mental state. You could easily have used your position to help me. You chose to make matters worse. Just a fact, however inconvenient or unwelcome.
You are at least partly responsible for getting Equals the funding to run that course. You have shown very little genuine concern for a vulnerable member at your own Day Centre who became a casualty of this untried and untested organisation with no proper accountability or management structure to temper their activities.
I am not the first service user and member of the Day Centre to notice that you appear to have a lot more concern to keep your own job than for vulnerable service users in your care. You are not liked or trusted by most service users who get to know you Gavin. Again. Fact. We are not stupid. We know when we’re being sold down the river.
My position is and has been for some time, that we would be a lot better off without jobsworths like you running our services, Gavin. Your salary alone could probably fund a user run service at a fraction of the cost. It could be a patronisation-free zone! Please do everyone a favour and move away from direct involvement with service users. You clearly do not like them and they richly return the compliment.
I don’t think you could call this email abusive. Angry, possibly. So what are you going to do? Exclude me? I’m being real, Gavin. I don’t like you. I never have.
Yesterday was tough. Very tough. Meeting at my son’s school. Only managed two hour’s sleep. Had to leave home at about seven to get there for nine thirty.
Very stressful, draining and intense meeting. ‘Please go back to school, J’. Times six professional adults plus me, times many many repetitions. No pressure then!
I got to spend some time with him afterward, on our own which was great. My mood was low though. I had had to deal with an email from R the night before. No, he hasn’t closed ranks. No, he hasn’t ganged up. It’s just that he has seen ‘no evidence’ of any demonisation or bullying from Equals.
Let’s take the next logical step from that position. Zoe is a paranoid, masochistic, fantasist who is labouring under an entirely imaginary delusion of persecution.
It will be (maybe) instructive to place that together with R’s belief that I am either physically or psychologically dangerous to him (he told me yesterday he does not feel psychologically or physically safe with me). That I make him uncomfortable is well documented, and was reiterated.
But more than that he is simply unable to say.
Latest fascinating discussion with him on the phone (at least it was he who was paying for the call this time!) After (predictably) stalling that he did not suggest a meeting with Equals (which he did) he proceeded to make a great song and dance out of wanting to read every one of my emails to Equals going back nine months.
Um. Is it me, folks? Is it me? Or is this almost entirely irrelevant to the matter in hand?
You, dear readers, apparently know more about my predicament and situation than R does. He is just the person I used to laughingly call my partner! For eleven years!
He then pretended (sorry R…you’re too transparent) to be suspicious as to why I found his sudden prioritising of ‘reading my emails’ to be a little bizarre. He then said (and this is a classic piece of projection) ‘Why, have you got something to hide?’
That conversation, much of which took place on the bus, was exhausting, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically.
Um. We appear to be inhabiting two different planets. And no, I DON’T mean bloody Mars and Venus!
This is an officially sane man, with a clean bill of psychiatric health. I am the nutjob, remember.
All very well, all those folks who like to tell me (annoying nasal, retarded voice) ‘Zoe, emailing and blogging has not got the result you want so far. So why do you keep doing it?’
Next person to say that to me gets the job of sorting out this problem for me, OK, deal?
In slow and patiently enunciated phrasing (for the severely mentally challenged and learning disabled, let’s be really inclusive now) I will just explain one more time that emailing and blogging is how I hold my sanity (what’s left of it) together. And I have asked until I am almost braindead from the sheer monotonous repetition, for a meeting. For a response. For an explanation.
Long conversation with my Mum on the phone helped today. Her help and support usually comes with an admixture of non-helpful and annoying suggestions and advice. Today was no exception. But we were still filial and loving at the end of it.
And this is what I hope for with R. That the love and loyalty will win through all the sheer insanity, in the end. Not so we will get back together. I can promise categorically folks, that even if the alternative is lifelong celibacy, that is never going to happen. But just so that I don’t feel demonised, bullied, ignored, scapegoated and stigmatised by TWO close friends instead of just one.
Yes I plead guilty to emotional weakness and a certain amount of codependency, that I can’t just write him off, the way he and A seem so readily able to write me off.
Guilty, guilty, guilty. The guy was important and central to my life for many years. He was loyal, dependable, stable. He visited me in hospital during my multiple admissions. He helped me care for my son when he lived with me.
Am I wrong, oh scary, hardline commenters (not you, gentle reader, not you…probably my own inner critic!) to want to salvage at least amicable relations with this karmically significant person in my life?
Lots love Z xxx
The pathologising of the ‘Other’ is a necessary component of the most bestial human behaviour, stripping away the last vestiges of civilized behaviour, appealing to the basest bigotry and ignorance and tearing away the rules and conveniences of war that have so frequently governed face to face conflict between men, creating groups of people to whom the rules of conduct including the rules of war cease to apply (Hirst and Wolley, 1982). Because of their imagined crimes they cease to be seen as human beings and as a consequence may be submitted even in the imagination to the most mind defying inhuman acts.
The main point here is that the premise of the possibility of nuclear war could only be based on a prior pathologising of the enemy by the attribution of all possible means of evil onto that enemy. Without this dehumanizing ideology even nuclear retaliation would be inconceivable. It is only possible to consider such an act against something so absolutely evil that it no longer shares the remotest resemblance to a human being. It would appear that the capacity to stereotype large masses of the population prior to their extermination is preceded by, or highly correlated with, the technological means of their removal. ‘Once a nation base’s its security on an absolute weapon, such as the atom bomb, it becomes psychologically necessary to believe in an absolute enemy.’
Dear All, I met with R today. I had been extremely stressed out last night over his email which appeared to completely deny the reality of my experience for the last nine months. Other people in my life do not demand ‘evidence’ that I have been bullied. They know me well enough to know that I am incapable of imagining a situation that has caused PTSD symptoms, total loss of appetite for months, becoming dysfunctional, hypervigilance, IBS, rapid heartbeat et al. It’s fairly extraordinary that my partner of all people would not be aware of this as he watched me deteriorate before his very eyes.
I am also dealing with the difficulties of my son in foster care, and had to attend a very stressful meeting at his school this morning, having managed a grand total of two hours sleep. R knows this, and cares very much about J. That he can’t seem to extend his compassion and concern to me is a matter for conjecture. However it is safe to say he has felt ‘under attack’ from me quite a bit recently, and it is not difficult to see why.
This is why I have repeatedly asked N and A to account for their part in all this. It is not fair to leave R to take the flak in what is left of our close relationship (one which I still value and treasure, and believe that he does too, somewhere deep down).
I did try to explain the nature of R’s particular difficulties and vulnerabilities in a previous email to you, as well as in the last letter I wrote to A, which she acknowledged having read, via R.
OK, anyway. I have learned to always try to have a third party present while trying to discuss or resolve matters with R. On this occasion, I had to make do with a long phone call to my Mum, who knows R very well. He would listen to her long after having completely ceased listening to me (which I can understand, believe me!!!)
What came out of this meeting was that R is prepared to accept that I felt bullied by Equals. He also acknowledges that it would be painful and hurtful to be dropped by a close friend over a matter concerning work. R acknowledged that he did not want to lose me out of his life any more than I want to lose him: although we both accept that our intimate relationship is over, we would like to continue on a friendly basis.
He suggested (as I say, call my Mum as a witness if he tries to deny it later!) that we would need another meeting, with all three of you present. I do not feel it would be appropriate to ask B, as I have long since ceased communicating directly with her. It seems to me she has more than enough on her plate already. He accepts that he cannot speak for you, and earlier today, apologised for the email he sent last night (after prompting from me!)
He says he has seen no evidence of demonisation or bullying from either of you. Which then begs the question why A has been advised by her professionals to have no further contact with me as well as why N was strongly advised by ‘all the people who care about her’ not to come to the mediation session with me. Most of these people presumably don’t know me from Adam, N, at the end of the day!
Please do not misunderstand. I hold out no hope or even desire whatsoever to mend the friendship with A. That is clearly damaged beyond repair. But as I explained before, R will always be a special and important person in my life, and I have a vested interest in resolving this matter with you as soon as possible, so that the enmity and difficulties between R and myself can be smoothed out, at least to the degree where we can continue on a friendly basis.
One last point. Be grateful, everyone, that emails and blogging exists. Without this healthy outlet for my emotions, I might well have been carted off to the cells by now for criminal damage to poor R’s windows. N, you like me to be candid. And I always am, pretty much. I am a person with a strong facility for words and a natural communicator. Emails, blogging and some sporadic attempts at poetry have been my lifeline through this rock bottom experience.
Please let us all agree to meet. Stephen W is away for a week, in Poland. So some time next week or the following one would be do-able for me. R is usually free-ish on Thursdays and Fridays. I hope that PJ will also be able to attend.
Blessings. Zoe
Dear Zoe,
Here is the email you have demanded.
You say you have been demonised, bullied, scapegoated by equals and myself. You have not shown evidence of this. Not always responding to large volumes of texts and emails is certainly not bullying. You seem to misunderstand what bullying is.
Z: Richard, I think you are the one labouring under a total, self-serving ignorance of ‘what bullying actually is’! Your sheer brass neck is a wonder to behold.
You say I have ganged up with N and A to do the same to you. This is just not true. Nothing said to me by either has suggested that they want to gang up with me against you. On the contrary. A usually talks about work. The last time she mentioned you she asked if I could think anything to help you. N also does certainly not appear to me to wish to demonise you. Remember the mediation session!
Z: Yeah R. I rest my case, mate. I am a non-person as far as your colleagues are concerned! Why don’t YOU remember the bloody mediation meeting?
The idea that they had demonised you was one that I just could not get my head round. You didn’t give me evidence. It’s nothing to do with ganging up.
Z: The fact that YOU can’t get your head around something is no guarantee of its unreality R, let’s face it! The actual reason you see no evidence, is because you have been the most active and hands-on perpetrator of the bullying throughout, in your privileged position as my ‘partner’ and ‘friend’.
Best wishes R
Look at this guys. Would you ever know that this guy was my partner for eleven years up until a few months ago?
What an utter twerp.
Hi folks. I am STILL full of cold. It is my third day not smoking and after my smug announcement of yesterday that I found giving up easy, I feel extremely irritable today.
I’m also downright angry. R is continuing to passive aggressively needle me and I’ve got to say, I’m taking the bait like a good ‘un. I have asked him over and over and over again to put his complaints about me in writing. He won’t do it, but nor will he be civil to me. He’s continuing with the pretence, by now worn to ribbons, that I am in some always unspecified way, unacceptable.
He’s basically aping his Equals mentors. Can they tell me what I’ve done wrong? Nope. Will that stop them from slurring and smearing my character in a vague and generalised way? Nope.
What I’ve seen of the depths to which R is prepared to stoop has shocked me way more than A’s fall from grace. I used to think we shared similar values. I would never have believed him capable of such flagrant self-serving dishonesty, never. In the days when he worked for Friends of the Earth? We were both veggie and against the war in Iraq. We read the Guardian or the Independent.
And to see him fall so low is pretty soul-destroying and tragic. I would rather be wrong a thousand times over than see my once-beloved partner turn bully, liar, cheat and traitor. It’s devastating.
I wanted to go to my poetry workshop this afternoon but I couldn’t face it. Even had to leave the CoDA meeting early, just didn’t feel with it at all.
Sigh! Lots love peeps, Z xxx
Hi Peeps. I’m full of cold. Nose running like a tap. Chesty cough. And I’m taking the opportunity to give up smoking. Have not smoked for last two days. I never seem to suffer much when I give up. I certainly don’t need nicotine replacement and all that jazz. Barely had any cravings at all.
Spent yesterday at home, mostly in bed. Today, dragged myself out to a Polar Bear poetry workshop and did some art in the afternoon, but I wasn’t the full shilling.
Now cooking a delicious meal of corn on the cob, homemade mushroom and tofu pie, baked tattie and salad. Yeah, safe to say I’ve got my appetite back.
Some sad and angry thoughts. But mostly OK.
Lots love. x
Hi folks. Have agreed a ceasefire on emails and blogging about Equals. Hey, that doesn’t count! Have placed the matter into the safe keeping of Stephen W and Peter J. It’s a massive relief not to be all alone with it any more. So much for mental health professionals! It took two other service users to be of any real help! Not in any way dissing my care coordinator, but magical powers he don’t have.
I’m a bit of a rad when it comes to service user politics. I want to scrap all the services, and for people with mental health issues to run their own show. In a nutshell. Not literally you understand, though hey, wouldn’t ‘The Nutshell’ make a cracking (groan) name for some kind of alternative, user-run drop in centre?
I have little respect for psychiatrists as a breed, though naturally I take people as I find them. I see very little reason for psychs to exist. Couldn’t pharmacists do almost as good as a job, given that so much psych practice is based on trial and error?
Just playing Devil’s Advocate.
Saturday was the Alpha Awayday, on the Holy Spirit. A high point was when we were offered the chance to have two people pray with us. That was pretty intense, especially with a room full of people doing the same thing.
On Sunday I was off to the SLAA Convention. But only lasted for about three meetings worth. Too tired to stay any longer, and the rooms were so hot and crowded. SLAA seems a very popular fellowship that is outgrowing the size of its rooms! A very good guided meditation first thing.
There was a brilliant workshop on Reiki at Polar Bear on Friday afternoon. It even battered down my formidable prejudices. Told my friend I thought I might be a healer of some sort and she agreed. I have a lot of intuition. So maybe I should go try a Reiki class.
R still a downer and a dead weight in my life. He either does the classic passive aggressive ‘let’s wind her up and get her attention that way’ or else he goes into stonewalling mode. He’s acting more like 5.7 than 57 (very nearly). The only contact we have is text. I have no appetite to listen to any more of his drivel, the texts are bad enough.
Then again, this guy has been close to me for many years. I can’t just stop feeling anything for him and make like he never existed. I’m just not made that way. He’s karmically significant. As was A.
Lots love peeps! xxx
This is no time to utter whatever from a place of rarefied observation
To be carried along buoyed by neither aim nor intention
To let life live you blithely while you relinquish your birthright of free will
To sanction guilt and obligation as they hold sway over your most fervent desires,
This is no time
This is no time for equivocation, for hedging and backsliding
For whimpering and decrying all that you have created
For playing victim to predators of any stripe, be they real or illusory
For abdicating personal responsibility in the face of a preponderance of evidence,
If ever there was a time, it is not now
For forthright declaration of your deepest truths
This is the time
For standing your ground for causes that bear the mantle of justice
This is the time
For fostering unadulterated freedom that rings out
above the screech of politics and posturing,
For inaugurating new byways of sustainable evolution by lifting one hand after another
For redeeming without hesitation the wonderful that you believed was gone forever
This, right now, is the time
This is not the time to take the bait of predatory fearmongers
To withhold the emanations of your fracturing heart
To stockpile the succulent flowerings of your soul
To hurl at others the boomerang of judgment or culpability
(lest it return to its rightful owner)
This is not the time
If you have ever yearned to unleash your passions
Ached to be exponentially more than you have dared to be
Hungered for a greater humanity within and without
Longed for connection that defies the so-called bounds of time and space
And have known for eternity that you were born to be Love,
Today
Right here
Right now
It is time
See your experience in spiritual terms
‘Your career had gone as far as it could with your employer. You’d acquired all the knowledge and skills you needed, so a traumatic experience was arranged for you.
The purpose of trauma is to find your purpose and mission in life, and a stress breakdown reprograms your brain in order for you to be able to fulfil that purpose. After a period of recovery you’ll find yourself doing something far more worthwhile – for yourself, for society, for the human race and for the planet – albeit financially precarious.
Try adopting the view that the Universe is conspiring to do you good. The learning you’ve gained from the abusive experience is worth much more to you and your future direction in (human) life than any judgement or compensation.
The growth, maturity and evolution you’ve gained in spiritual terms – which is all you can take with you at the inevitable end of your human life – is infinitely more valuable to you as a spiritual being than any human-mandated judgement or award.’
With thanks to BullyOnline
Peeps, yesterday was an amazing day on many counts.
One. As I told R by text I now feel I know how a shark feels when it scents blood and moves in for the kill. I sense that ‘my bullies’ – that’s how we refer to them at bullyonline…sounds almost affectionate doesn’t it? are now mortally wounded and that the prognosis is poor. ‘The treatment was a success but the patient died’.
Of course, I could be wrong. Then again, to quote John Lydon, I could be right. The sense of satisfaction as I watch this flaky bunch self-combust almost before my eyes, is indescribable. If they do go down, whether as a result of my ministrations or not, I will chalk this up as one of the most significant achievements of my entire life.
And I realised, maybe I am NOT completely without friends, power or influence after all.
Though I have to intercept at this point that I could not be successful in my own tiny battle with the Forces of Evil without the help and support of a Higher Power. Whether this consists of ‘the help and support of good people’, a guardian angel, Law of Karma or God him/herself is immaterial.
Hey this feels like an Oscar acceptance speech! ‘Thank you Mum (sob)!’
I felt AMAZING as I took the train yesterday afternoon to a small village near Stansted where my teenage son resides with his foster family. Feeling ‘amazing’ is not an ultra-common experience for a manic depressive who has to continually be on guard against the flight into mania and psychosis.
But I can report at least for now, that I am neither manic nor psychotic. I just feel amazing. Like I’ve watched a miracle unfold before my very eyes, and now know beyond doubt that God exists.
Saw a book on a shelf the other day (at my counselling centre) called ‘When bad things happen to good people’. This folks, is all too likely to happen in this life. Just look at the Psalms in the Bible if you don’t believe me! The much-played-out scenario of the oppression of the meek (and relatively innocent) by those unencumbered by a moral compass or conscience is observable since time immemorial.
In other words folks, villains often seem to, quite literally, get away with murder. They honestly do not appear to get their come-uppance. True justice, which bears no relation to what goes on in our law courts, seems to be a commodity in short supply in this crazy, topsy turvey world of ours.
And I was (and maybe still am) fully prepared to watch ‘my’ bullies go from strength to strength, leaving chaos and confusion in their wake and having decimated my mental and physical health with insult piled on injury at every turn. This is the harsh reality of life.
This is why, as I said in a previous post, I thank my stars and Higher Power for this blog, and the power of the written word. I even thank them for the technology that has enabled me to fire off emails and publicise and record my plight.
Equals Training (who, needless to say, object to being named here www.equalstraining.com ) have already threatened me with the law, by reporting my antics to the police. I wonder if they’ll try again now? To be honest, they would be saving me a task by doing so. By all means let’s involve the police, Equals! Go right ahead!
In the meantime, I will try and find you some anti-bullying posters for you to stick up at your office! Deal?
But to get back to my son, his Looked After Child Review meeting was held at his foster home. It’s the second time I’ve been there, and I love it. It’s really quiet and semi-rural. It’s not even on the Stansted flight path! Hooray!
There are no words to describe how good I felt yesterday, seeing my wonderful son being treated respectfully by all the professionals who came to the meeting (a teacher from his school, a social worker ‘chair’, the link worker from the agency, J’s own social worker and the couple who are his foster parents.
And I was treated respectfully too!
And after the meeting, where his non-attendance at school was discussed at considerable length, I was able to spend a couple more hours just chewing the fat with him in the lounge. Here maybe isn’t the place to discuss the exact nature of our conversation, except to say that he wanted my account of the events of his early life based on a social services report which he is using to piece together his ‘life story’.
His foster dad (who is a real character and very funny) gave me a lift to the station when it was time to go, and J came to see me off. I felt so loved. I felt so important.
It’s a miracle (and a better one than the demise of Equals could ever be) that my son and I still have such a special bond despite such prolonged separation as we have had to endure.
And he and I have both ‘lucked out’ in a most spectacular way with this foster placement, and I am more grateful to them, and even, yes even Haringey Social Services who placed him there! than words can say.
Lots love. Z xxx
‘I did not always approve of the methods that you chose to use in previous correspondence because I feared that they were hurting you more than they would ever hurt the Equals business. I am aware that your health has been badly affected by this year’s events and if I am responsible for any part of that then I am very sorry – I did nothing intentionally to hurt you, nor would I ever do so.
Through discussions with Wayne and the Clarenden (sic) management, I did discuss the possibility of meeting with you in mediation, but felt that little could be gained in doing so whilst you were still so very angry; my genuine feeling was that to meet with you would increase your distress. Likewise, to respond to any of your emails during that period would not have achieved anything positive, and could only have hurt you more.’
It would appear N, that you have contradicted yourself. In your last email you said that you WERE willing to meet with me at that time and that you said that to W and G.
You are also displaying a talent for mind-reading. What makes you think you know better than I what would help or not? I asked you rationally and repeatedly to meet with me and made it clear that this was the way forward I was seeking. My many written entreaties were met with total silence.
‘Still so very angry’. What is your evidence for my state of mind? I was not too angry to make a reasoned argument as to why I wished for a dialogue with you about what had happened, and even expressed the wish for a win-win situation.
What is different now? Of course I am angry! Being ignored by you for many months, demonised, ostracised, verbally abused and ditched by my close friend and bullied by my partner did not, surprisingly, help one little bit!
You and A appear to be unhealthily obsessed by other people’s ‘aggression’ and ‘anger’. As I said to you once before, look to yourselves! Yours and B’s behaviour toward me on the course and A and her partner’s at a later meeting was EXTREMELY aggressive and intimidating and entirely unwarranted.
I don’t like writing in this massive navy-blue font as I think it looks quite intimidating. I tried to change it to red but can’t do it. Apologies if you feel intimidated, but I am simply expressing a normal human reaction in these circumstances.
But this is what you appear unwilling to admit. Instead you prefer to pity and patronise me, implying I am not competent to stand up for my own rights and making decisions for me about what is ‘best’ for me.
And this ‘victim’ mentality…either you or I has to be the ‘victim’ in your world it seems, to my mind pervades the whole Equals ethos. A seems to have it pretty bad! And the mental health card, used either against me or to defend yourselves, is a very handy tool when it comes to evading accountability. Would you not agree?
Kindest regards N. I still hope for a satisfactory resolution of this issue and thank you for the efforts you have made in effecting one so far.
Zoe
Zoe
You asked Stephen W to intervene and all parties present, including yourself, reported that there was some progress from that meeting. This is why I don’t understand your bringing up past complaints when I thought that you are working with Stephen to move forwards.
Z: I frankly think you are being disingenuous N and that you ‘understand’ more than is convenient for you to let on.
N: I have explained why it was not appropriate to respond to your emails in the past but all communication was done through your care co-ordinator, the Clarenden (sic) Centre and then through the official complaints procedure in line with policies, all of which were sent to your chosen advocates in this issue.
Z: I am informed by the National Bullying Helpline that if you did not mention my right to appeal in your reply to my grievance, that you are in breach of procedure and I can therefore take you to court.
Re these ‘chosen advocates’ I said nothing about choosing advocates at any stage. If they were supposed to represent my rights to you, they would appear to have dismally failed. Why could you not communicate directly with me? Why do you seem to feel the need to turn me into a victim who necessarily requires someone else to speak for her (like your colleagues A and B)? Can you not see that I am more than capable of representing my own rights, and as the person directly affected, am indeed best placed to do so? Why bother teaching assertiveness on your course if you do not believe us capable of practising it?
N: I recalled the email to you last night because I am not prepared to start having a series of email discussions with you Zoe, it will achieve nothing on either part. Z: Please do not speak for me!
N: When you wrote and asked me to meet with you or Stephen I agreed to do so as you said this closure would help you to move on in your recovery.
Z: Until I have heard all of you account for your behaviour, closure is still very far off.
N: I have said each and every one of your chosen advocates from the outset that there was little that could be achieved in satisfying your grievance as both you and Equals would always have differing opinions about what happened, but that if they thought it would really help your mental health that I would do this. This was my position right from the issue start in February and it remained so whilst you sent all emails, wrote negatively about and named Equals on your blog and also sent letters of serious complaint to commissioners in the borough. These contacts were primarily by phone and if you discuss this with your care co-ordinator he will have to admit that my requests for his intervention were both to get you support through your complaint on this issue and also to assist in your clear distress.
Z: Regarding our ‘differing opinions’, please remember that I was excluded from your course in front of about ten witnesses N. Nearly all of them appear to have been very confused by what happened. R admitted to not being able to see what I had done wrong. (Sadly that was no bar to him subsequently blaming me for the abuse meted out to me by himself and Equals, rewriting history, distorting facts and so on).
Several people openly protested that I should be allowed to stay. Others maintained a stunned silence. There was lengthy discussion of the matter after I had left, and R reported to me that the atmosphere took a dive and that he couldn’t concentrate properly after I left. Stephen was puzzled as to why a firm devoted to social inclusion was excluding someone!
Once again N, the fact that you apparently were willing to meet was not divulged to me by these non-existent ‘advocates’ which I have only just now learned about. It is a shame that you felt the need to communicate via a third party throughout, because it would have been far easier to reply and write to me directly as I repeatedly requested.
Also it would obviously have been better to put your intentions in writing if you genuinely wanted them communicated to me. But bullies are rarely willing to do this, because they know they must then be accountable. All of you, including R, have demonstrated a fear and dread of the written word that is frankly anything but professional. It is a sure fire indicator of shady dealings, dishonesty and being on shaky moral ground.
How dare you expect my care coordinator to pick up the pieces of my shattered mental health directly caused by you and your organisation’s actions! That is not his job. It is way beyond his remit and his capabilities! Or do you believe him to have magical powers?
Regarding my writing negatively about Equals on my blog and in emails to commissioners, it seems to me you believe that thinking or feeling negatively about your firm in any way is in itself some sort of crime. Can you honestly see no link between your behaviour toward me as a group of four people, and my subsequent complaints? Quite simply, what on earth do you expect?
N: Your contact with A and R are about your relationships’ and are not my business as I have repeatedly said. Mental distress that I am witness to in my colleagues is a different issue and whilst one did choose to continue contact with you the other was advised by professionals not to do so. Again, your care co-ordinator will be able to give you details about this if he feels it would be helpful to you.
Z: ‘Not your business’. How very convenient. N, as one of the two people responsible for my being excluded from the course in the first place, and my ‘line manager’ at the time, I’m afraid you are actually more responsible for this awful mess than anyone else!
‘Mental distress that you are witness to in your colleagues’. In other words, their distress, however self-inflicted (or phony and affected), counts and mine does not because you do not witness it? What about ‘being sectioned in hospital ‘ do you not understand?
‘One did choose to continue contact with you’. Uh, N, I am just asking you for one good reason why he would not? We had been close friends and partners for eleven years prior to his ill-starred involvement with you – which would not have happened but for me, as A was my friend. I find your statement offensive in its implications and would ask you to please expand on it in case I have misunderstood.
Possibly even more obnoxious is your revelation that A had been advised by professionals to cut off contact with me. I almost don’t know where to start with that one. I’m simply out of my depth, but I wonder what Wayne (care coordinator) will think about it.
N: This matter has been thoroughly investigated by the management according to the complaints policy which was sent to you and your care co-ordinator. If a copy is required I am able to send it again to Wayne G, otherwise this matter is now closed.
Z: Once again, who is this ‘management’ and where is this thorough investigation? I was under the impression that you had no management but are basically a law to yourselves. If you have now found some management I would like to deal with them direct.
To reiterate: if you did not mention on your response to my grievance that I had the right to appeal, then you are in breach of procedure.
Your last statement is wishful thinking and delusional on your part N. I will be the judge of what is closed or not. I am the injured party. Not you. Not A. Not R. This is not a ‘dispute’. It is bullying, it is a very serious abuse of power by a group over a vulnerable person, and you all of you need to account for the individual actions you took which were, collectively and cumulatively, devastating to my mental and physical health, and continue to haunt me every single hour of every single day.
Please see our website : www.equalstraining.
Just rec’d this. I feel I should say something as Zoe wants to email all you guys with stuff about me.
I know you may not be interested and why should you be, and I won’t go on at length.
Zoe’s version is not an accurate account in my opinion largely because of what it omits.
Regards R
I should have said Zoe’s version is not an accurate account in my opinion largely because of what it omits and also because of factual inaccuracies.
Regards R
Zoe, Following the discussion session that you asked Stephen to set up last week and the positive, forward looking discussion that we had begun, I do not understand what it is you want from me or Equals now.
Perhaps Stephen can continue to assist.
Regards, N
Hi folks. I’m good, thanks.
Had a busy and sociable day with CoDA and my poetry writing group. The writing is starting to flow better, now that I am making more of a habit of it. Practice makes perfect and all that.
Thoughts of intimacy and the desire to have another ‘stab’ at it. Other gals at CoDA are making a go of new relationships ‘in recovery’. So why not me.
I’ve been effectively on my own for a very long time. And learned a lot. I’m ready to move on and take a few risks. Rejection is a fear that seems to abate as one gets older and wiser. If one person doesn’t want to get to know me, another will, and it’s a risk I think I am now strong enough to take.
Ha. Fighting talk.
Did I tell you about the Pastorate? Bible study and general all-round pray-a-thon. Won’t be going again. It’s emphatically Not My Thing. I want to study the Bible with people who know a bit more than I do. But I don’t want to be co-opted into a jollity and rictus-grinfest with a bunch of happy clappers (forgive me Jesus!)
Alpha isn’t really me either. But I can ask about at the church for a smaller, strictly Bible-focused group. I’ll finish the course but I fear I am too wary, too intelligent and too sceptical for this ‘Bible is the Word of God’ stuff. Not to mention the ‘male’ Holy Spirit! Bejasus!
Fireworks night…but the only fireworks that really interest me at the moment are of the indoor variety (ooh missus!)
Lots love Peeps. Z xxx
Hi Peeps.
Quite a good day. In the morning a meeting of the Tree Project. This became a little derailed by a seemingly unnecessary attack by one of the members on another. The unfortunate recipient of the attack was my good friend, and I found it quite triggering and difficult to sit through.
She handled it brilliantly, but I knew she was upset as would be all too natural. She then withdrew from the project. This left me unsure about my own position. My friend is the main reason I was even there, and I have no desire to stick around possibly to become the next ‘victim’.
We are all there because we love trees! And there we are getting embroiled in a ridiculous ‘conflict’ over what seemed to me a trifling matter. It left a sour taste.
I was glad to proceed to Stephen W’s Connections Coaching. Those kind of toxic situations just don’t happen there. Things never go that far. A was there and we talked again about her taking pics of me. That feels very warm and nurturing.
I also enjoyed the company of L, a Romanian psychologist who told me about out of body experiences and how she has evolved a method of spontaneously ‘leaving’ her body. She offered to show me how! Ooer. I felt uplifted by the afternoon. A fascinating range of people congregate around Stephen.
Last night’s Alpha was a bit hard going. We were looking at ‘why we should read the Bible’. Which I am very keen to do. I have huge respect for the Bible. However what I’m not so keen on is being told it is ‘The Word of God’. What, all of it? C’mon…
The Alpha course comes across a little dumbed down for my taste. However it’s been great having the opportunity to meet and get to know people I wouldn’t run into in the normal course of my life, one couple in particular who are lovely.
One of my friends is a little concerned that I have ‘found God’. She’s an atheist and didn’t know that I have a spiritual life. I haven’t become a Christian yet though and on balance am unlikely to do so.
The more new friends I make the less I feel the loss of R and A. And keeping busy with a variety of projects is also excellent for my healing and well-being.
Lots love folks. Z xxx
You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning
You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that’s winning
You say I let you down
You know it’s not like that
If you’re so hurt
Why then don’t you show it
You say you lost your faith
But that’s not where it’s at
You had no faith to lose
And you know it
I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
You’re in with
Do you take me for such a fool
To think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide
What he don’t know to begin with
You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, “How are you?” “Good luck”
But you don’t mean it
When you know as well as me
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once
And scream it
No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I’d rob them
And now I know you’re dissatisfied
With your position and your place
Don’t you understand
It’s not my problem
I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is
To see you
Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music
Bullies will use sanctions against others when there is no reason to do so, claiming that their behaviour is in response to an imagined or manufactured offence that never existed. Thus they can portray themselves as victims of their target’s supposed behaviour and recruit others’ support to extend other sanctions against the target. The question is whether or not the behaviour is an unjustified act of aggression or justified as a defence. Bully behavior is generally unjustified & repeated acts of aggression and they often recruit others into their campaigns.
It is generally agreed that it is an appropriate & measured sanction for the negative effects of aggression to be turned on the aggressor, whilst allowing the target to see that the aggressor has been appropriately dealt with. From time to time a target may feel that an opportunity has arisen in which a bully receives a taste of their own medicine. The object of the exercise is to discourage future similar behaviour. However, these acts could also change the nature of the target from defender to aggressor.
The question always to bear in mind is whether or not a sanction is defensive or aggressive. It is not easy for a third party to decide who is the aggressor in a conflict. The sanction of distance by oneself is generally defensive but the sanction of isolation, i.e. manipulating others’ behaviour, isolating and separating from colleagues, excluding from what’s going on, marginalising,
overruling, ignoring, sidelining, freezing out or, sending to Coventry is generally a group action & the result of some recruitment behaviour.
Bullies do not give others the opportunity of making up their own minds in the light of objective evaluation of the truth. Instead they present untruth as if it were truth and all their aggressive & manipulative actions as if they were defence. The actions listed above would all have to be group actions, distance by an individual achieves none of those things, though many of us recognise it as the precursor to a bully recruiting a group to carry out these actions, i.e. the calm before the storm. In other words a bully does not stop at reasonable distance, or indeed anything reasonable or appropriate.
With thanks to the Bully Online website and forums
Going through Hell is not a sign of weakness, folks. It is a sign of strength.
Plenty of immoral and weak people make a life out of ‘avoiding going through Hell’. ‘Protecting self’. ‘Expediency’.
And just as I typed that last word, a nervous softly-spoken Jehovah’s Witness knocked at the door and presented me with a leaflet entitled ‘Would you like to know the truth?’
And what I really want to say now, here, today is that I am grateful for EVERY pang of grief and misery I have endured over the last nine months.
And why do I say this? Well, I have seen the alternative folks. I have seen it in my two close friends R and A. And decided that however ‘comfortable’ and even ‘successful’ their lives may be or become, I do not want what they have.
Could not live with myself. Could not live with the memory and knowledge of what I was prepared to do in order to ‘protect self’. ‘Avoid Hell’. ‘Circumvent, remove or destroy an obstacle in their path’. Because that obstacle was also a living, feeling, breathing human being, and somebody they had once loved. That obstacle was me.
I have seen the richness of growth, change and learning in my life. And seen the total lack of same in theirs.
And my Higher Power wanted me to know what these two much-loved people in my life were capable of. There was no want of alarm bells along the way. But it took an event of this epic grandeur to finally open my eyes and wake up to the fact that we were NOT on the same page.
I asked R in a text last night for his definition of ‘integrity’. He replied ‘Feeling comfortable in your own skin, I guess, as they say’.
And that pretty much says it all. He thinks integrity is comfortable. It is not. He thinks integrity is something for ‘them’ to define. R’s Higher Power would appear to be ‘whoever makes me feel good about myself at the moment’.
I ask questions. He evades or ignores them, but they clearly make him UNcomfortable. While I was a part of ‘making R feel comfortable’ I was important in his life. Now I have started to do the opposite I feel him drift further and further away, and when I try to pin him down it is like trying to grasp mercury.
R is completely given over to preserving his own comfort zone. And this is where we parted company.
And I’ve got to say folks, that I at least find this fascinating. Appalling, maybe. But fascinating as well.
And I’m so glad I’m NOT an Equal.
ex·pe·di·en·cy
1. Appropriateness to the purpose at hand; fitness.
2. Adherence to self-serving means: an ambitious politician, guided by expediency rather than principle.
3. A means; an expedient.
4. Obsolete Speed; haste.
integrity
noun
1. honesty, principle, honour, virtue, goodness, morality, purity, righteousness, probity, rectitude, truthfulness, trustworthiness, incorruptibility, uprightness, scrupulousness, reputability I have always regarded him as a man of integrity.
honesty corruption, dishonesty, immorality, disrepute, deceit, duplicity
2. unity, unification, cohesion, coherence, wholeness, soundness, completeness Separatist movements are a threat to the integrity of the nation.
unity fragility, flimsiness, unsoundness
Quotations
“This above all: to thine own self be true” [William Shakespeare Hamlet]
On Saturday we (R, my Mum and I) had contact with my boy J who is in foster care. It was the first time in six months for R and me. This was because I was too ill in the summer to see him when he visited my Mum and stayed for a few days. I was in the Crisis Unit, comatose much of the time and reading St John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul.
Luckily on that occasion he did have the benefit of a visit from my brother and J’s cousin.
Anyway, Saturday was, for me, probably the best contact we have ever had. It was deeply reassuring. He was on such good form. Chatty, expansive and very funny. J has a quirky observational sense of humour and is an astute people-watcher. He is showing signs of having my interest in what makes people tick.
His foster mum S dropped him off here at the house, and I prepared a vegan buffet lunch. J and I had a chance to talk on our own in the kitchen and this was wonderful and revelatory for me. For the first time in ages I was getting a first hand account from him of what has been going on in his life over the last year.
And it was a reality check of the best sort, when you realise that you had been thinking the worst and maybe even despairing about a situation but you are then kicked into touch that it is not as bad as you thought.
As the afternoon went on J finally agreed (after months when we were waiting on the school or Soc Servs to fund a lap top for him) to let my Mum and me buy him one. Then he even seemed quite excited about the idea, and off we went to New Southgate retail park, and finally settled on one from Comet.
After R had helped J set up the lap top back at our house we all got back into the car and drove him down to the Hertfordshire village where he lives. For the first time since J has been in care we were allowed in! This was a wonderful experience. J showed us his room.
S the foster mum made tea for all of us. She has a beautiful home, is very artistic and quirky, and her partner N is an interesting and funny character too. I was delighted with the house, set in a really quiet, semi-rural road. J has a view of a field with animals in it from his room.
We all tried subtly and sensitively to encourage him to go back to school which he has been refusing much of the time recently. He seemed to be coming round to the idea. It’s a mistake with teenagers to hammer on about any topic too much as that is just likely to set up more defences/rebellion.
I was so happy that we had the mediation on Friday, as R was present and it meant we were able to clear the air somewhat before the contact, so that there was an atmosphere of harmony for J. At the end of the day whatever has happened between me and R (and it is certainly true that our relationship will never be the same again) it was a much better contact for having him there than not.
In the past I have had contacts where it’s just me, my Mum and J and it never goes that well! My Mum and I grate on each other and there’s a sort of territorial locking horns of the two matriarchs, then J would play one of us off against the other. With R there it tends to be more relaxed and R has always had a lot of very genuine affection and concern for J, which is so much appreciated.
This is why I like men! They are more straightforward and you know where you are with them.
Take care all. Lots love, Z xxx
Am I Still Ill? 