Another stone

This stone is taking some moving. I'm still very ambivalent about whether it was justifiable for anyone to make the decision for BLPT not to respond to me regarding my complaint, even in the supposed interests of my mental health.

So many past messages have been triggered by this. There's considerable vulnerability for me around the issue of being ignored. There were rules I learnt very thoroughly in childhood, and did not question for many years. Only in therapy sessions did I unpack that box of rules - and only then could I look at whether it was "right" or "helpful" for certain of those rules to have been taught. The conclusions I came to were that no, it was not helpful that I was not allowed to express my views if they disagreed with those of adults around me. The messages I was given around not expressing my emotions were not healthy ones either. Silence - being ignored - not being responded to - these were all sanctions which taught me these particular rules, and it was agreed in therapy that silence used as a weapon was not helpful in my experience.

So how, then, do I reconcile those messages of therapy with what has happened recently? How do I reconcile my understanding that refusing to allow a child to express their emotions and opinions is not a healthy state, with the actions of an organisation which exists to provide care and yet refuses to acknowledge my opinions and emotions? How do I reconcile the use of silence as a tool being unhealthy in one situation and healthy in another?

Equally, the person who helped me to see that these childhood rules were ones which were not helpful and which could be discarded now was the same person who gave clinical advice to ignore me. I don't know how to reconcile that either. I'm grappling with my fragile belief that I have a right to be heard, while at the same time recognising that others are deciding on my behalf that I should not be acknowledged.

Who decides what is right for someone else? When does someone with a mental illness (or any illness) become incapable of making decisions? When is it right for someone who has clinical expertise to contradict the wishes of a patient? I'm sure there are laws and rules about this. I'm equally sure they won't help me to put this stone into place in my wall. For what this comes down to, ultimately, is that I have a right to believe that the decision to ignore me was wrong. However, all I can do is try to explain my point of view. Others have made their decisions and I can't change that. I can put on record that I don't believe ignoring someone is right (especially since nobody informed me of this clinical decision until I asked for an explanation of why BLPT were ignoring my emails.) I can't change what has happened. I'm not sure I can understand it either. Some things are incomprehensible, and I might have to accept that this is one of those things. Accepting that this stone is heavy is an important step to moving it into place in the wall.