Detached Protector (a Schema)

During the early part of my therapy a year ago it was to explained to me, by John, what a Schema therapy was and what schema is. Best way to describe one in my terms would be, it is a seed planted in your early life and it forms the core belief systems and emotions you carry through you life. The first part of this therapy is lots and lots of forms to fill in and score and at times you feel as though you have answered the same question 100 times.

The end of this process will be the Psychologist giving you your core schema's. The ones that really fuck you up. They are stubborn little fuckers and they fight all treatment.

My defective schema had the highest score that can be achieved and this is followed by 6 others but the one that interests me is the Detached Protector schema. Now I have got John to agree with me that in some aspects of life it does me favors. An example being that if there is a disaster in the World it does not touch me emotionally. I am not scared of anyone or anything in the real 'living world'. I am scared of the imaginary shit that goes on up there in headville. And why should I give a fucking damn about anyone else? I have been left to try and get help on my own all my life...had do many doors slammed in my face..why? Because I am a bit different. My reality is that my own life is very, very tough. I doubt there are few of you who have spent 10 years in your own space with no one to talk to...not ever, apart from a therapist. When I say I am on my own and know no one....this is a 100% truth. There is no one there..no one. So I care little for what goes on outside my world because I had to get tough to survive..this to me is the upside of detached protector.

The down side is that a detached protector can make me very complacent in my attitude to how I live my life. In the past week I have dropped 4 bottles of wine down my throat knowing it does not go well with the meds. I do not fear being thrown out onto the street and ending up homeless...I should do...I do not care enough that I find it impossible to relate to anyone else.! I should do according to John. I believe my detached protector makes me the most independent person I have ever met. I lean on no one for nothing. Well, outside of John. It is changing this attitude that he is finding hard in me but like I have said to him...most people run quite fast once they realize you have issues, so it is not all my own doing.

The insights I have been given by schema therapy are priceless....John wants me to read Jung but fears it will mess up my rather dreamscaped head that helps me write stuff.....really you want to be in my dreams! The most vivid life I do live there...sometimes the most amazing like Oz landscape...others..pure hell.

T A Roberts (London March 2011)

The Two Way Mirror

I have tried to use this particular blog to explain, in my limited terms, exactly what BDD is and how I think it came to ruin my life and to hope that it will help anyone who feels the same.

I took part in a 'body image' phone in on bbc5live this morning. Was a good subject and vital. Body Fascists are taking over our planet and wrecking lives and causing self harm.

I now have the benefit of hours and hours of hard core therapy and these days, well most of them, I do look at myself in a different way and the mirrors and reflections are not such a scary thing. I don't self harm anymore and I have not done so for many years.

An example being that in the process of CBT I am asked to look at the benefits I have now; I am 46, 5ft 8, I weigh 11.5 stone and my waist is 31 inch. From my G.P's point of view that is sensational. From my point of view not so because I still fail to always feel like a man! Yes it is complex.

Writing my kids story is taking it out of me; I am proud that I have written 11,000 words but it is a release and sometimes exhausting. Yes it is a bit of fun but there is a sub text to it; I am trying, in a very unskilled way, to relate exclusion in writing this story...about being bullied etc and the redemption of the bullied person. It is an emotional roller coaster writing it. That will sound odd maybe but I have given up writing poetry because of it...for now at least. Even when I write my rather dark and tortured form of poetry it is like a large part of me is being extracted.

I am doing my list that John has made me do and listing that things I find difficult...going swimming was very hard but it felt good after. Going to the pub, which is very hard to do on my own but I now know that nothing bad is going to happen. He wants me to join a book group or drama group so that I can meet people. Like I have said many times...this illness has cut me off from people and at 46 I do not have anyone I can call on as a friend. This is sad but I now know that it is sad and only I can do something about it.

Please do share your thoughts on here if you suffer body image problems.

T A Roberts (March 2011, London)

Finding it hard and closing my poetry for public viewing

I have found the past two weeks really hard after I had been doing so well for a few months. It seems as though the whole system is against me and I am not getting anywhere on the job front. Those of you who follow my blog will know that I was kicked out of my job last August....When you have an mental health problems such as I it is very difficult to find anyone who will give you a chance. I am doing all that is asked of me and I miss none of my rehab appointments. I am a man and I am 46 and I have the most fantastic CV packed with experience but when you are a chronic depressive with bdd this counts for little.

I have no support network outside of my therapy...like moral support....from anyone so I am talking to the walls but the problem is the walls do not have any answers.

It is vital for me to see this therapy through so that I can maybe get a few good years in of being happy and stable...I have said before that I am never going back into hospital again. The last time was 12 years ago when I was given 12(ect) electric shocks. I had years and years of the wrong diagnosis and therapy and now I have found what works. It is my right to see this through and even if I end up homeless I will finish it.

I always try to write these so that I am not appearing to want pity or the violins to play...anyone who really knows me would know that is not the case but it is a very lonely business. I accept that I am a loner and some aspects of it I like but when you have had just 4 walls to chat to when you get home for 10 years it gets quite limiting....

I wrote yesterday that my creative writing is my escape...without it I would have lost the plot years ago and I am quite sure I would not be here now; however my frankness in them is not doing me any favours and I am going to remove my poems/prose from being viewed on line....they mean too much to me just for them to be seen in the way they are. I will carry on with my 'truth blogs' like this one....I was told recently that I would never find a 'lover' 'girlfriend' writing that way coz it would scare them off....Let me tell you my reaction to that....it only hurts because there is not one part of me that ever writes to impress or to 'get a girlfriend'....how pathetic and ridiculous some people are. And they are the ones without mental health problems! Help us all!

I write poetry because it is my company...my friend....my lover...my freedom to express; women do make me laugh sometimes...I heard a chat on the radio just yesterday where someone said men could not possibly write their inner most thoughts....well I do and I getting a kicking for it from? Woman....100%...

To suggest that I do it to get kudos dilutes it..I am not a fucking artist. I just write to express my silence and the prison I live in. I am happy if someone says, 'hey Tim I fucking hate what you write'. That is fair enough but to suggest I do it for any shallow reason has pissed me off and I will now shut them off to public view.

I am just trying to survive here the best I can without leaning on no cunt.

T A Roberts March 2011

Why do I write grubby poems? Coz I fucking want to!!!!!

I have turned my back on writing in this blog on a regular basis because I am turning my back on my illness and my problems very slowly. 15 months of cbt have taken care of that and continue to. However, I feel the need to write this blog in this section though it could have gone in my other two.

I write poetry, or my version of it, because it is my release. I write to help me get over dyslexia as well as BDD/Chronic depression. I have been in a good frame of mind for 6months now because I put the work in.

I place my writing or my scribbles as I call them because I found the bottle to do so. The terror I feel about being 'exposed' is something I can not do justice to in a blog...exposed meaning that I was so scared of my lack of education or so scared of my dyslexia that I always kept what I wrote to myself. Social media and blogging gave me a way to 'express' myself and I have used it but I do hide behind it because no one can see my face or my expressions or even know what it means to have that liberation.

I am someone who is 100% socially isolated...yes I do get out now and go Cinema or Theatre and what I mean by isolated is that I am 100% alone. There are no best friends who come and knock me up to see if I am ok. I have a family who largely don't give a shit. I have been out of any kind of physical relationship for 6 years and have not even dated in that time. I am as on my own as you can possibly get. It worries my psychologist and he has made me make a list of things I have to do so that I can try and interact with 'people' and possibly make friends. The trouble is no one talks to anyone anymore and at 46 I would suggest that making friends is very very hard. Where do you find them?...

I digress; this is not a blog for violins to come out and lament. What I am trying to say is that yes I write my rather gutter prose/poems on line. Not because I think I am clever....not because I think they are good because I don't...that goes hand in hand with my defective belief system. I do it because I feel like they have left me once I post them....I DO NOT write that way to turn anyone on...!!!!! If you could realize what a ridiculous suggestion this is no one would say it. It goes against all I am....I do not think I am capable of 'turning anyone on' in real life and never have....yes DEFECTIVE is what I feel...hence BDD...blah blah.

If I post on line then yes I am open to get a kicking from people who hate it...some like, some hate. That is valid and correct!....It is valid and correct for someone to take me apart in what I write or how. I will gently explain that I suffer dyslexia and that is why my grammar is shit...they accept that and move on. But there are people who think I write for some kind of sinister reason or that I have some kind of agenda. I am a single man, yes...why does that then make my writes some kind agenda? Fuck me, do you really think my style and what I say is going to win me favour with anyone?....read on coz I doubt it. I always appreciate it if someone leaves a comment...good or bad. I am pissed off that there are those out there who think I am a FAKE....I wish I was...wish I did not live in this head of mine. I would cut me arm off for it.

Anyway this was a kind of rant...I have dragged me up from the darkest of dark places....it has taken me most of my adult life to get here. 11 years ago I was banged up in a mental hospital. That will never happen again!...11 years ago I had no hope. Now I write and it gives me daylight and a sense of achievement, not only over my dyslexia but over the darkness that I hope has gone. If I stay as a single man who knows no one forever and ever from now on then so be it...I have spent the vast majority of my adult life that way. But do not, when you have no fucking clue about what makes me who I am, suggest that I write to get a wet underwear approval.....fuck that...I really have a bit more about me...I hope.

T A Roberts London March 2011

This is me right now...and the future??

This has been my diary; I have taken a kicking for writing it by some and others show love and love always outshines the haters.1 piece of love is worth 100 hates. I found my voice via blogs on My Space a few years back and I am grateful for them. John thinks it is good for me to express myself this way.

Anyway I have never been straight about this because I fear writing it. But I lost my job in August because of my illness. I have lost many jobs because of my illness, but this one hurt the most. I am gagged by lawyers letters so I can not say too much. What hurt was that after an entire life of 'having something wrong' I was dealing with it. Years of therapy never worked until I found John. I am committed to it and have not missed one session in a year. If I was a woman I would have been better supported at work and before a bra is burnt in protest, I do know this to be a fact. A man with chronic depression and bdd is a non person. Men get a very raw deal when it comes to Mental health yet 5 men to 1 woman take their own lives in UK. Fact.

I have always worked, since the age of 16, and it is all I know. Never shirked a hard shift. I have worked 18 hour days in the past. I get my hands dirty and you get your monies worth. But when I needed support it was not there. So at the moment I am finding ways to get me back in the work place because I need it.

I just need someone to give me a chance. It is unfair that I am treated this way but rather than swimming in my own self pity I am doing something about it...I am just waiting for someone to say, yeah you are ok come work for us. 

I am at the stage in my therapy where John is setting me challenges; to do the things I would find tough. I went swimming which was massive for me. But he wants me to do this that and the other. It is hard because I have no one there to support me through it and most of these things you will take for granted in your everyday life. Going to a bloody pub is fucking hard work for me. A) you look a complete Billy no mates dick when you are on your own anyway. B) when you really are a billy no mates because an illness has scared everyone off over the years then its even fucking harder.

He wants me to join a book club, go back to school and over come my dyslexia etc. If there was someone there who could shout me some encouragement it would be easier. Having that support and shoulder to lean on.

I can say these days that I am an ok fella...would not have said that in the past. I am an opinionated fucker but that is easily dealt with..tell me to shut up. I do all those things on my own that you want to share....a good film that you can chat about after. Its the fear of being on my own everywhere that locked me away. You notice friends together when out and lovers and all that jazz. It can hurt believe me.

That is why there is so much passion in my poems. It has to come out. I feel humble that anyone likes them and it is places like this that gave me the balls to ever post anything. Dyslexia meant I thought I was shit at everything. Life is lonely but I have my books, cinema and an imagination that would keep a whole street of heads busy. I also know now that I 'think' I can cope with life like this. Thanks for sticking by this miserable cunt. x

T A Roberts March 2011 London

Dyslexia the route to my defective outlook and self harm

I tried to explain a schema the other day but I am not a shrink so its hard for me to do so I will try and do a short summary here.

When I was about 8 I was put into a 'hand writing class' because my writing was terrible and I was unable to join up letters and I was writing letters upside down as it were...my S I start from the bottom (as an example). I still do.

In this class I was made to write giant letters on A3 paper..'make the S appear like a wave in the sea' the non teacher said.

I could not do this and became frustrated very easily...something was going on here...the way I held my pen (and still do) was not natural.

Instead of 'teaching me' the process was more of humiliation. I was showing the early signs of dyslexia, according to john my Psychologist. This issue with my spelling carried through to my secondary education and my School reports back this up....'Tim's prose is not easy to follow....Tim must practise spelling...his work is untidy etc etc....'...He also did not understand Maths.......

In short the 'defective Schema was planted in my system during that hand writing class at School. That defective Schema grew and grew until I then decided my body and the whole of me was defective...I have often called myself 'thick' stupid'...ugly..grotesque..a freak. In terms of my psychological assessment, which is carried out with a series of questions (about 600 of them) John tells me that the defective schema's highest score is 56...my score was 56.

I have several active Schema's and they are stubborn fuckers...they fight your treatment...they are your critic...the voice that says you are useless....the devastating effect of these feelings and emotions turn you to harm your own body....me I burnt my arms...pushed cigarettes into my flesh and abused my medication. This resulted in my being put into an acute ward 13 years ago. I was given 12 electric shocks etc...

One of my other very active schema's is emotional deprivation...the feeling of never having been loved. And then, almost my most dangerous one is 'detached protector'. This means that I can take my head away from a very serious or dangerous situation and care little for it....it protects me from the world.

That is the best I can do to explain my marriage between hating my body and dyslexia. Dyslexia has only come into my life as a known fact in the past year. It has given me the day light I needed to understand why it is I struggle with anger and so many easy everyday things.

I hope this little explanation helps....its important for me to shout about it. I am not ashamed. I am Tim and I have dyslexia and Body Dysmorphic Disorder....John has made me a different man after all these years of fighting what I did not know and so many Dr's getting it wrong. I never self harm anymore and have not done for 16 months.


Tim Roberts London February 2011

One hard mother fucking confession...do read please

Hard, hard week where it has all gone tits up again. My biggest problem remains not having someone close to talk about these things to. I know I am a bore with it but you can not imagine how damn hard it is.

When I go in to my Psychologist in that kind of mood he will give me what is called a crisis session. We got talking about dream scapes. I often spoke of the kind woman who comforts me in my dreams. They are not lust loaded dreams..she is kind and holds me, comforts me. John says that I have never been loved and cared for in the fullest sense of the word....after all, I did not get like this by some accident of birth. This desolate person was made this way during the childhood process. This is not cheap guess work..it has taken John all his skill to get me to really open up and he has used imaging to access the parts of my head that lock down about that past.

I told John, early on, that ever since I can remember, I have felt odd...like I do not quite belong. I was treated in a disgusting way at School and no one was listening. My School reports are a document of education abuse. Hearing a drunk man shouting the place down is what John calls terror....pure terror because a child can not compute what is going on...why do you think I despise drunks...mouthy men who have had a few.Things being broken and smashed induces terror but a terror that grows with you into your adult years.

John does not use Psycho babble or jargon as he calls it..he is a tough northerner...he explains my schema's to me so that I understand them.

I told him of this really painful thing that happened to me when I was going to School once...I was 11. I used to go and meet my friend, Paul Berry, and we would walk to School together. It was when his Mum opened the door that I burst out crying. I told John that I have never forgotten this and how much terror I felt. I told him this because I was trying to articulate the terror I go through when I meet people....go places...do ordinary things.

I cried because I was scared of my History Teacher...I was scared of showing him my home work. I was scared because I was dyslexic....he gets angry when I say no one had heard of it then..he says no Tim, no one gave a shit about your situation...he says, you were in two inner London schools with a process that had been known for years and years...after all, he says, how did they know Churchill was dyslexic..he concludes that everyone was too busy doing other stuff to notice or care to notice that I had a problem.

For fuck sake it is as clear as day in my school reports....Tim can not understand...Tims spelling lets him down...Tims prose makes no sense.....Oh and I must remember we were all on a time limit...16 and out of School....off to work you go...yes John is right....no one gave a shit and all I have ever known is that School was terror for me...which is why I skipped many days of my last two years....I left with 2 CSE grade 2 and 3s...total educational failure....

John does this thing when I say something massive....he stops me...holds me in the moment. He says that this one thing is one of the most important things I have ever told him and it has taken a year to get there. I told him that this one moment lives with me most weeks....like the awful hand writing lessons at Heber Road my awful Primary School.........

John said...why did you cry to your friends Mum and not at home..?...John has come to a conclusion that I was scared...but scared beyond what an 11 year old boy should be. I told him that in my video diary, before my 1st swim recently, I said to the camera that I was sure that I was going to die in there...but was not sure that what would kill me....I knew I would not drown. I still have this video. John said that this extreme of feeling that I am going to be killed or am going die has been in me since School...since being a kid. I know that and I now have someone who has finally dragged it out of me....Dr Bernini said similar things to me 10 years ago.

John thinks I am scared of people.....but not in any rational way....I fear death by them. I have often said how pathetic and sad I think drinkers are....men drinkers...all in the pub like repressed cunts who will go home and batter some poor soul......I hate groups of men and always have done....that oh so fucking macho little angry Englander who gets shit faced.....I fucking hate with all my energy groups of men...all lads together.

I have never been one of them and I am a better man for it.....right wing cunts who need viagra to get a cock up yet they judge me......me with dyslexia....me with bdd....let me tell you something....I never did this to me....me and john know who that is....and in my life that is all that matters....so if I am fucking angry I have every fucking right to be....me who was sent to a two bit all boys Comp....

T Roberts London Feb 2011

The fear of the everyday ordinary

I am going to a gig tomorrow and even though I have been to 100s and even though it is tomorrow night I feel fear; it is not a very rational fear but it is a fear all the same. This is why I have been seeing a Psychologist for just over a year now; I am armed with some tools to deal with this fear but the fact that exists still fucks me off. It should be something to look forward to. OK yes I am going on my own but this is normal. I do everything on my own, so it is not that. I can not even put it into words what this feeling is.

Recently I have been swimming twice and in the words of my therapist this is remarkable; please believe me, it really is. If you had told me a year ago I would be able to go swimming, on my own, in a public baths, I would have called you insane.

I know nothing will happen tomorrow and like I said, I am not quite sure what it is I fear. Once I really understand this, I will have cracked a life time of being afraid....how alien but nice that will be.

T A Roberts (2011 London)

Dyslexia and the barriers

All the things that I thought made me thick come down to dyslexia; unchecked dyslexia from the age of 7. My therapist has nailed my main issue and it is this issue that gave me the schema of defectiveness, which is the most active schema that I have.

I have always considered me to be a bit thick...I could never spell correctly. My school reports tell me that I could not understand thing correctly...that my writing was untidy...that I had no understanding of maths.  I was put into a handwriting class at 7. I was put into a maths class for extra learning at 13/14. I grasped and embraced the spoken word in Drama though...I excelled in this subject with Pinter and Chekhov..it is what made me join pro Theatre at 16 and to escape the misery I felt at school.

My therapist has said that all the traits I display, even now, are ones of a person who has dyslexia. Writing my letters the wrong way round, the way I hold my pen. My ability to use both hands for many things...playing pool with left, playing a guitar (if I could play one)...tennis with both; I hold a pen in an awkward way with my right hand.....I still don’t get on with maths at all. I find instructions hard to follow....most things I have over come myself but I feel robbed and cheated of most of my life and what I could have been. I am alphabet blind and this frustrating at times.

My opinions of myself have always been that I am thick, too small/skinny and ugly. I know believe that my BDD was born from this trauma....the trauma of feeling humiliated at School. This is a place where I should have been taken care of but my therapist said that most of the things said in my school report are quite typical of the lack of understanding there was toward this problem. My school reports as good as write me off.........

I am hoping that I will be able to now explain to anyone in the future that this is what I suffer with and that it will help inspire a little more understanding in the future.

T Roberts (London 2011)

Always on the outside

Imagine this, because not many can; I am 16 years old and have left school, which I hated apart from Drama, and end up 6 weeks later working in West End Theatre...I am from South East London and the boys and girls are tough and uncompromising. Suddenly I am confronted by gay men and women everywhere...I found my home. They were my sympathetic..gentle as well as crude...manly enough but feminine. I had never known an outwardly gay person, not coming out of Peckham/East Dulwich. At school the word poof, homo or gay was used to torment the lesser boys like me.

I knew I was not gay but I knew I liked being around people who were somehow on the outside of life. I befriended black people for the same reasons, but never dare say that my lot was as bad as there's on the left out front. I suppose its why I became a human rights activist.

The bullying that I received at school had left deep marks but I was not aware of  it. I have only become aware of that because of the schema therapy that I am currently going through. During imaging sessions I am taken back to very difficult times in my childhood and teens. The idea is to go back there and extinguish the belief system that I am defective. I mean, I still describe me as being thick. Not knowing I have a form of dyslexia has trapped me for years. The awful bullying I had over my size will still hit me if anyone ever says anything about my size/weight now. Its like all the blood is taken from me...it is awful but people feel they have the right to say things.

These are the facts though....I am 46 and I never go above 12 stone, which for a 5ft 8 fella is perfect according to medics....so if Britain is getting fatter, I am not. I eat well.....I do not eat shit.

I am starting to learn that being an outsider is ok....my psychotherapist challenged me over a few things, like when I said that I am happy to go through life without friends...I have survived up to now. He said that it was very fulfilling to have friends and said we are not made to do life alone. I said that the idea of being in a relationship does not bother me anymore....yes I miss sex and I miss the company and doing things with someone....but I have been on my own for 6 years and I will survive without. He challenged that as well. I said I am still afraid to go through the process of it all. I have come a long way though in the past year of therapy.

I also told him that I have no time for heterosexual men....ultra macho pricks who judge all....well I have just judged some of them. I have been asked on numerous occasions if I am Gay; like people have the right to ask me this. It has never upset me and I take it as a compliment. I like only feminine people and I am a bit like that myself....I have been told so many times....so if I am different and on the 'outside of life' then so be it. Those who follow sheep end up on the dinner table.

Tim.......London Jan 2011