tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6161065053564080769.post6207538815544273886..comments2023-10-29T00:36:46.747+10:00Comments on grahamm44: Two complex casesAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14519461744750490160noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6161065053564080769.post-18359198428925759782012-05-13T15:34:01.306+10:002012-05-13T15:34:01.306+10:00Re: Your acquaintance who is anorexic & self-h...Re: Your acquaintance who is anorexic & self-harms. There seems to be so much contempt in the medical professional for these poor souls who are merely trying to "feel" or counteract another feeling with the self-injury pain. Many friends & acquaintances have been cruelly handled & verbally abused in A&E for anti depressant overdoses, various cutting activities & allowing sadistic sexual partners to injure them. Most recently, I have been blamed for the suicide death of a friend who ended up hanging himself shortly after I was chatting with him on Facebook. He was a gorgeous-looking fellow, brilliant in the computing field & when younger had been very athletic- climbing moderate, snow-covered peaks all over the world with his twin brother. His dad had been a cruel taskmaster- rarely home & constantly changing the kids' schools while chasing big mining engineering jobs around the world. I don't know how my friend became the way he was at 40, but I can imagine it. It was clear from his self-injury attempts that he had no desire other than to experience the pain & see the blood, but he also thought these things might be life threatening as he would call the ambulance or drive himself to A&E. Usually he was sewn up, no anaesthetic, and verbally abused, thrown out on the streets with no appointments organised at 2am. Prior to killing himself he did this 3 times in one week. He didn't like his appointed therapist & wasn't "allowed" to try another, didn't attend groups regularly, kept up his alcohol abuse & still managed to go and live with a "girlfriend" for 6 month before being thrown out. I used to spend time with him- "baby-sitting" was the term his age-congruent friends used- I would take him for walks & photography trips around the city, talk about current things & mutual friends & events. Meanwhile, if he mentioned his cutting etc, I would try to explain what he had done anatomically and why the nurses/doctors weren't taking him seriously. I encouraged him to continue to try & find a suitable therapist and to persist with suggested treatments for a few weeks to give them a decent try. We also discussed that if either of us felt that life really wasn't worth living any more, we would kill ourselves in a "foolproof"way- but we never discussed details- just that sometimes things were painful, where he had his cutting & I had social withdrawal & no sleep. If only the psychiatric/psychological/medical/social work professions could just "work with" people like my friend, there would be less suicide. Just because someone is labeled "borderline" or "narcissistic" doesn't mean they fall outside the bounds of humanity. Real human beings live inside these people and the world lost a lovely one with my friend.Murfomurfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12975382358013125434noreply@blogger.com