Am I Still Ill?

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.