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I want to be me. I have a wife, daughter and a brother, but I also have two sisters and a mother; two sisters and an 85 year old mother who would profess to be loving, caring, professional people yet have turned their backs on their disabled brother and son. I don't fit.
This isn't a rant against my family though, it's a rant about the way mental health illnesses are stigmatised. I used to be a high flying Headteacher, highly successful and in charge of a massively oversubscribed school. One day, near the end of one Summer holidays, I cracked. I'd rarely had a day off work, then I had 18 months off before having to take retirement on ill health grounds aged just 40. I suffer with severe depression and anxiety, dissociative fugue states where I wander, taking on other personalities and very recently have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome.
I'm trying to come to terms with the Aspergers diagnosis still, it explains so much of my past, and especially behaviours which since my breakdown have caused me to feel mad, insane, isolated. I have lost everything, my career, my income, my house, but more importantly than any of this I've lost my credibility. Why? Let me explain.
As a direct result of my mental health issues I've been victimised and bullied to an horrendous extent. The bullying has always been over the internet - it's so easy to type evil words to faceless people who you'll never meet. Owners of consumer forums, who profess to care about the vulnerable, have sent me emails encouraging me to commit suicide, offering to 'lend me their Dyson cord as it is nice and strong' and to 'go and play with overhead train cables'. Hardly things anyone would say to someone with a record of attempted suicide and known serious mental health issues. More worryingly when this person then lies about me, his little crowd of devoted members believe blindly, not asking obvious questions for him to corroborate his lies. His bullying, threats and appalling behaviour are brushed under the carpet, they don't 'really' exist - unless, of course, you're on the receiving end of them as a vulnerable, disabled person.
In addition my two sisters and mother have disowned me. This is as a result of one short argument which took place at a very stressful time last June when my father was dying. The stigma attached to my mental health has led to outrageous lies being told of how I tried to attack my sister with a walking stick - witnesses will tell otherwise. The lies were spread around family and friends thus isolating me to such an extent I couldn't even attend my own father's funeral.
Since the Aspergers diagnosis a couple of weeks ago, much was explained and I tried to make contact with one sister again, she wants nothing to do with me. I've tried many times over the past year to 'be allowed' to visit my own 85 year old mother, but she apparently does not wish to see me. I have phone recordings of my sisters telling my mother to hang up on me - one is a Headteacher of a school with a huge percentage of special needs children, the other an ex-Health Visitor and wife of a GP. These are people who should understand, but having a brother who has mental health issues and Autism does not fit into their picture of 'Happy Families', it's more convenient to turn their backs on me and be discriminatory, to stigmatise me.
I wonder how the parents of children at the one sister's school would react if they knew the reality of what she is like. Both discriminate against a disabled brother terribly. The owner of the consumer forum and many of his 'followers' have behaved appallingly, lying, running me down, mocking me, encouraging my death and making threats which have put me in mental hospital.
I'm reasonably intelligent, I must be to have achieved what I did. I worry about the mentally ill who are unable to speak for themselves as eloquently as I may be able to. The system is rigged against us. The public perception is very much against us. The reality is that mental health stigma is very much alive and kicking.
The saying 'Actions speak louder than words' is so very true in this case. It's easy to talk the talk. How many, when push comes to shove, will actually stand alongside those of us who are severely mentally impaired and join us in our fight to end the stigma?
I don't want to be abandoned. I don't want to be bullied. I want to be allowed to come to terms with my life as it is now, and will be for the time I have remaining. I want to be allowed to be me.
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I was badly bullied by people in the first couple of years at secondary school, mainly just verbally but sometimes it was people hiding my things for laughs. Or causing me to get into trouble with teachers for things I did not start but was down to them.
I have worked most of the time since leaving school at 16 in low paid manual jobs with periods of unemployment in between but these times out of work have got shorter as I've got older so perhaps I'm gradually improving. I'm now 30. I am sometimes hesitant when performing a task, which sometimes makes colleagues or supervisors think I am stupid or slow. Its just that I am unsure of myself after being treated like an idiot and talked down to before by previous bosses colleagues even some of my family etc.
I hope you have some good friends like I have who accept you and don't try to change you. My best wishes to you for the future.
This sounds like what is happening to you as you are a high flyer and had potential to go far but an obstacle has been over-exaggerated by others in order to stop you - like how cowards on The Weakest Link use the gang power of votes to overturn the truth and make the strongest look weakest.
Such people are known as "inferiors" and an inferior is a person who drags society and mankind down and should better not exist. Instead of contributing and being creative, he takes away and destroys. He causes suffering rather than joy.
They may be negative towards you but that is a reflection of how they feel about themselves in relation to you. Newton's Third Law states that for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. Your potential is the action, their rejection of you is the reaction. You are too good for them.
I admire you. Aspergers is a form of autism that has only really been recognised in recent years. I know enough about it personally, my seventeen year old daughter was diagnosed nine years ago. Your intellect and achievements do not surprise me. It is quite a common trait for people with aspergers. My daughter is currently doing biochemistry and fornesics at uni. She too was bullied through school. We helped her, and she moved on. My parents both died when I was younger and my wife is ex-JW, so our family circle is very small. Concentrate on what you DO have. Your immediate family.
Your wife and daughter are now your strongest assets, so make the most of what you have now. Never doubt what you have and never let others cause you to doubt what you are.
I read everything you wrote, and as others have said, yes it is courageous, and yes it is inspiring. Now you have the time, use it. Make it worthwhile.
As for the bullying, we all know what kind of people they really are, and you're better that them. Don't let them get you down. Just ignore them and they will give up and move on.
Hope things work out for you.
You need to come to terms with your condition.
High achiever.... clever.....thinker....
Trouble is, too much self analysis can cloud your view.
Make friends with your condition, accept, and continually move forward....onwards and upwards...
Make the best of what you have, you're lucky.....remember many many people are worse off than you!
Good look with your family. I hope you eventually get the emotional support and understanding from them that you need.
Ignore the trolls. Their poison will eventually eat away at themselves more than affect you.
Hold your head high.
And finally, You'll work it out, it will just take time....... good luck!
Prior to the epilepsy some members of my family on my mother’s side (mostly half relatives) didn’t accept me but once I started having epilepsy they started undermining me even more claiming I was mad, perverted, possessed by the devil and more. They wouldn’t accept that I was more capable than any of them as none of them had been to university and when I started they argued I should go to work and contribute towards the family income (a tactic to impair my progress).
I have since been cured of epilepsy and risen above them all – but they won’t accept me in any way. I have reasons to believe that such people who undermine people who have a health problem – especially with the brain – suffer from “inferiority of the inner-self”.
This is a condition I have made up as it sums up people who are not as capable as they would like to be seen as and all their weaknesses are within themselves, so they try to influence stronger people with their weaknesses to become the weakest link in the chain hoping to impair the victim’s progress. Just like what is happening to you (and what happened to me). Our weaknesses are inflicted upon us from outside while those who can’t accept us have it in their inside – one thing we can work in parallel and not let them be the weakest link in our chain; whereas they will always be their weakest link and never be free from their limitations they cannot accept. We all have limitations but many of us don’t experience our own limitations as we are often subjected to limitations imposed upon us by those with inferiority of their inner-self.
ahforfoulkessake
I have on the 8th Nov just gone went to an assessment for aspergers and autism and have been told I have it to a mild or moderate degree.
I can get by just about with working at my current job and keeping on top of the bills but I feel a bit of a failure and was depressed when I was told by the assessor. I have always felt and been told by others that my dreams for the future are bit unrealistic and I have had much enthusiasm for new hobbies but then suddenly lost interest say after say 6 months which means any long term goals never seem to happen for me.
I would get ESA and possible some PIP if I ever did end up unemployed but I would rather work and not feel any more sidelined than I have felt in the past.
I hope things have turned a corner for you since you last posted about this.