The Crying Game

John decided to talk books with me for the first 10mins of our session yesterday so I got away with having to do the imaging...I have told him that I dred doing it and he knows that but I also know that it is a vital part of the treatment.

John is very interested, as a Psychologist, in the process that Art can have with mental illness. He is interested in my love of books that are a bit 'dark'. And then there is the fact that I write quite raw poetry (or whatever you wish to call it).

I have not cried for over 10 years and John has asked me to list Films/Theatre that has made me cry...he believes that I may be able to use those moments to make me cry...I am not quite sure why it is so important that I do cry but I am told it is quite useful. (during this convo John said that he thought modern art was bullshit and that lots of people are being fooled...ha ha..kudos!)

I gave him some examples....I saw Midnight Cowboy when I was quite young and the ending chokes me even now. It doesn't make me cry anymore but he is interested to know what it is about that one scene that gets to me. What is it in the characters that made me care. I will not say what the ending is in case you have never seen it...if you haven't then do because its my favorite film ever.

Theatre still remains the one art form that really moves me....it is hard to bring these elements into 'real' life but both are reflections of real life. I am a Cinema snob...I admit it! If you do not learn something from what you are watching there is little point in seeing it...this is my mantra. Books, Films and Theatre are my comfort in this cut off life I live from human contact. They are my lovers.

After my session I went to see a lawyer for some advice and I have been given some useful language. She was interested in my 'social isolation' and has given me some pointers. She works in the field of mental health advice so she is not a 'money grabber'. They set up a group that is charity funded and these people are amazing. It does help to go and talk to someone outside the 'health care' loop....

Things are going OK right now..I had my little storm last week and it passed over. Depression is like that and its a question of trying to remember that it will go as the black dog barks again.

T A Roberts (London March 2011)

Important Day ...(and my fear of imaging)

I may be on the cusp of someone giving me a chance in the work place again..albeit part time. All I know is to work so this past few months have been alien to me..I left School at 16, joined West End Theatre two weeks later and its all I have known since. It kind of went ok this morning

I have a therapy session this afternoon and they get harder and harder....I have been putting it off by ranting when I see John but I know that he wants me to return to imaging work. This is really tough to do because I have to go back to times that I found the hardest in my life at School...and other places. When I exit the image it is like you are tasting that experience for the 1st time...imaging is vital to the schema therapy but I fucking hate doing it. And I know he wants to start it when I get there...because of its emotional impact its not something you can do half way through the session.

Once I have finished that at 4pm I have a meeting with a Mental Health Lawyer. I need to know more about my rights because they are few and far between...Mental Health discrimination is still rife and I am not going to be trodden on by the State. The State would much rather us all commit suicide but that aint going to happen to me. My mind set is a million miles from that...I will forever be an activist once I come out of the worst of this. I will make it my business to expose ATOS and other Government agencies as bully's of the people at the bottom of the pit. This will start on March 26th during the mass protest when I will attempt to occupy their head office.

Much Love...T A Roberts (March 2011, London)

The Body Image And Self Harm SHOCK Blog....

I did once burn my flesh many years ago when I was younger....self harm is not a cry for help..it becomes a way of life that few understand...fight it with all you have...get help..Don't let it wreck your life

It is unacceptabe for society to shut its doors on those who have done nothing wrong but get ill..society rejected me and I will not allow it to happn to others..we live in a country where it is ok to have a drink problem but not mental health problems...The UK makes us 3rd class 

I will NOT except that we have to be hidden away

Society treats people with a mental illness like
 freaks...it is unacceptabe in a so called caring society. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE MENTALLY ILL TO HAVE A MENTAL ILLNESS...stop closing your eyes to what is going on all around you....I have been left alone by society and am alone in this world but will do all I can to make sure others are not!!

I can now live with who I am...I can get naked

And I can look in Mirrors.....they do not own me as much as they used to!
                                                                                    Marks on my arms forever there....
                                                           I write poetry about torment and not being accepted

SoThiS Is Me NaKeD                          Exposed

It Is Lonely And Desolate In Here (left to rot)

Well I did try to get something together, like a group, or be led in the right location but I am talking to myself. The so called 'clever' people out there are very quick with bad advice. I said in my previous blog that most doors are closed to a 46 year old man, and this is something I am in the throws of proving to John my psychologist. He has, like so many have, this idea that London is full of groups I could join...believe me I have put the leg work in. There is nothing not anywhere that I can find. I have anyone who wants to tell me telling me that I should 'get out there'. When I ask where this 'there' is the answers are normally...'well there must be something....or hundreds of people join groups etc. This is not true. I do get a bit sick of the self made shrinks and hug a tree brigade on twitter for this reason...life is fucking gloomy where I am at so I am suprised I ever get a sense of humour. Those who tell you that this that and the other is out there clearly know nothing about being 'alone' in this world. I have said before, I am not asking for violins...I am asking to 'live'.

London Tonight did an article not too long ago about how London is cut off for single men in their 40's and 50's and the social isolation of it....I was so happy that they covered this that I wrote to them thanking them because I am sick of making a noise about it and everyone telling me what is out there...now take that survey and the fact that I have 'complex issues' then the doors really are closed.

So I have won my argument...he says that he has his team looking into things for me and like I have told him they will not find anything!..It would be nice to be part of something but it is not going to happen. I had a really deep crisis (as the Dr's call it) last year and part of my 'safety stratedgy' was for me to tell them who I could contact that weekend, like a friend or something....I told them there is no one and I almost burst when I have to keep repeating this fact. No one means no one. I have done all they told me...yet nothing changes. I am not a bad person, just one who is judged...

One of the scary things for me, when I felt really bad, was the fact that if I did have an 'accident' in my flat, no one would miss me for maybe two weeks....so therefore I may die in total isolation, as in life! This was a reality check and a nasty one....

I read a very sad case about the woman they found dead (suicide) and no one knew her...she had a funeral with no one there...that made me sad and maybe focused my mind away from ending it all when I used to think that way. If I get run over and killed I will still be 'alone' for the last act but it would not be so fucking tragic. It pisses me off having so many experts out there who know nothing about being on their own and I doubt they have ever spent more than a few nights alone....in Johns words...'' you are like an old person who's family have all died yet you are only 46.'.....welcome to my world...its damn desolate and I pat me on the back for surviving it.

T A Roberts ( March 2011, London)

Can anyone HELP please..writers/poets etc

Ok one of my challenges from my therapist is to get out there...join and book group/poetry group...meet people etc. Now this is the base I am starting from...I KNOW NOONE....so it is just me, me and me. I do not exaggerate this. I have told him that I will never make friends...he does not agree. Now I am not talking fucking romance here. That was long dead and buried many years ago. I have told you, it is coming up to 7 years not being close to a woman in anyway what so ever! My poems do not lie!

Now I find it hard to do stuff but I am going through my hard to do list and most of the stuff on it makes you look an idiot when you are alone. It is as if the whole world is with someone. How the fuck does a 46 year old man 'get out there'? I have looked high and low for groups...a book group etc/writing/poetry. So when I hit a brick wall he says start your own!...I tell him I try but how do I start when I know no one!

If anyone knows anything I can join please let me know...I can not even get anyone to do the demo with me on March 26th....I am trying but I have told him I am giving up. It makes me angry when I keep getting told that there is this that and the other out there...I am creative but ignored. I win...he loses

Anyone want to start a radical writing group do let me know....coz I am pissed off with trying xx

Tim (March 2011, London)

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