-SELF HELP RECOVERY- FREE, FREE, FREE...

Hi,

KINDNESSTHERAPY wrote:EXAMPLE, if YOU know of some people that are homeless, find one of them and offer them a pack of cigarettes and or a cheap bottle of wine etc...

Sorry to focus only on one bit of your post. But you claim to have worked in mental health for two years. Is that where you picked the idea that giving alcohol to a homeless person is a good idea? You know that substance abuse is closely related to homelessness?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1772151

Credible estimates of the prevalence of alcohol and drug abuse suggest that alcohol abuse affects 30% to 40% and drug abuse 10% to 15% of homeless persons.

Anyway. Not to undermine your entire post. It's just that as a recovering addict who knows people who have been homeless due to their substance abuse I found this... surprising.

OLIVERIRA & RICCOLA ETC... sorry about the poor advice that I gave and if one of the moderators would delete the portion of my opinion that was poorly thought out... If you are unable to delete this portion of the post then delete the whole post and I will submit a new post without the bad advice.....

Ps, the reason I thought this was a good idea is that I at the time was dealing with one on one bases not a whole group of people, I did a lot of volunteer work on my own dealing with people on a one on one bases....

1) Kindness/respect alone does not make me not want to kill myself. Sorry, but it doesn't. In fact, as someone with borderline traits, kindness only caused me to respect boundaries even less because I felt I was getting away with NOT respecting boundaries. I'm not saying someone should be heinous toward another person, but what I needed more than kindness was boundaries. The lack of boundaries is what made me clueless when it came to people's reactions to me, and that caused me to split/have black and white thinking about someone, and I would lash out when it went to black. All because I could not respect boundaries. (That is, the second someone decided to set a boundary instead of being sweet to me, I would get angry/horribly invalidated and act out.)
2) Opening a thread and seeing "SUICIDE-SUICIDE-SUICIDE" doesn't help, either. It's very, very triggering.
3) Yes, being kind makes me feel good temporarily. But, in and of itself, knowing I was kind is not enough to keep me from feeling depressed/suicidal. There is so much more to it than that. I spend all day building up my students and treating them kindly, but I can still easily go home and think about suicide if depression has gotten the best of me that day. I can still be miserable despite knowing how kind I was.

Bottom line, Kindness. What people come here looking for is not a professional to tell them what kind of therapy to get. People come to PsychForums to talk with other people struggling with similar issues regarding to mental illness. For example, I joined when I began experiencing depression and eventually started self harming. I had never known anyone who was engaging in self harm, and I wanted to hear other people's stories - people who had been through it, not people who claim to be a professional. I already had professional help. What I didn't have was someone who understood me. And that is where PsychForums came in. And in your case, if you are anti-psychiatry, coming here to share your personal experience and relate to others as they share their personal experiences about psychiatry's negative aspects is the best way to use the forum. And the way it is intended to be used. You'll likely get more responses that way.

Gratteciel, Thank you for the informative post, your reply helps me in how and what I put in my future posts.... Since I have posted many time that I do not have mental illness and I am not a mental health professional, but I am a good observer and I am trying to pass along my limited knowledge to help anybody that is interested... Since my limited knowledge comes from a group experience, YOUR reply is very helpful and again thank you....

I'm three quarters of the way through reading this thread. I think this is really great. I'm going to implimenet this straight away.

Here is a side story to ACTS OF KINDNESS at the rehabilitation work facility I had been working for about six months... I would take a milk crate and go into my garage and or basement and fill it up with stuff that the clients could use for their personnel needs -FREE-, I got great pleasure out of seeing the clients smile because they got something for -FREE- with no strings attached... I did this once and or twice a week and the results were speculator until a PROFESSIONAL COUNSELOR who I respected, told me to stop being -KIND- to the clients because it interfered with their program of DISCIPLINE- etc....

That is when I started to realize that something was wrong with the -PROGRAM- that was supposedly helping them....

Okay I've read the entire post. Thank you Kindess . I think what also helps is thoughtful acts of kindess where you come up with it yourself creatively, such as I thought of one just now for a caregiver in a hospital delivering food they could pick a flower from the garden and say "I picked a flower for you" I think that would make such a difference. I love this idea it resonates so much with me, it's like stumbling onto a total gem that I kind of always new on some level like when getting back to an ebayer about giving fair trade and ending up giving to charity today incidently how it felt good but was kind of short lived and that didn't feel right like it should be all the time feeling great I kind of knew on some level and now I know the key and it's such a key.

-- Sat May 09, 2015 9:30 pm --

I was reading/watching youtube videos from this guy recently called Charles Eisenstein, he talks about a gift economy and it's right up this street and it's beautiful and now reading this which is like that but so simple and easy to implement, I wish I could bridge the idea to him as he is becoming a well known public speaker and it's such a good idea. I ###$ love this thread.

Btw that sounded a bit weird when I said about the flower, I'm imagining a little flower delivered in a mug of water delivered on tray of food given personally to all the patients or whatever to clarify.

pat789, I and others are happy that YOU see the worth of KINDNESS etc. and YOU give examples to back up this idea, thank you....

When I have been emotionally fragile, it is so important for me to be surrounded by positivity. Being around negative people alters my mood, and it only makes matters worse. Authority makes me rebel, and I feel that there are far too many authority figures that abuse their position of power. They have no respect or compassion towards people not in their position. Example was a a security guard in the hospital I was at was at. Complete ASSHOLE. He would steal money from the patients wallets. Act all big and macho around patients and talk about how he could of made it as a football player, but, got hurt. He would mock and humiliate the patients, calling them retards and talking about times he restrained patients and would get arise out of it. He had googily eyes and what pissed me off most was his sarcastic smile. He would pat me on the back and just laugh in my face. Don't touch me! And he wasn't the only guy in there with no respect towards us.

There was a time in the hospital when a worker showed an act of kindness. She had offered me a pair of jeans and shirt that didn't fit her son anymore. This simple act had made me happier and simply made me appreciate the fact that there are truly some caring people out there. It may be rare, but, there are. We need to try and surround ourselves with these kind of people in our lives. I get that.

It's just easier said then done.