I AM SAILING STORMY WATERS.... WELL JUST A BIT OF POETIC LICENSE GOING ON HERE!

I've just treated myself to a glass of champagne,for being a clever girl!
Why? Cause I've just spent the day learning to sail.

It has been a terrifying and exhilarating day.
I have been in control of the gyb sail, I have taken the helm. Crewing is definitely easier than being at the helm.

If you are crewing you get to sit in the same place, sometimes leaning out of the boat and sometimes putting all your weight forwards, depending on how the boat is in the water.

There have been 5 of us learning today and I was teamed up with a 17 stone rugby player. I'm 9.5 stone dripping weight. So him plus the instructor in a Laser 2000 made for some interesting hanging out when my co learner was at the helm. Cause when your at the helm guiding the tiller, you have to change sides of the boat depending on where the wind is blowing.

When I was at the helm the boat was more evenly balanced as the other two were either side of the boat. I slipped once and landed on my bottom in the bottom of the boat. I tried inadvertently to capsize us once when I forget to let go of the ropes holding the main sail. I spent most of the day with wet feet in my pumps and a soggy bottom in my shorts.

It is an amazing experience going what felt very fast across the water, although no doubt wasn't by any experienced sailors standards!

It felt utterly horrible this morning when every time I had to tack (turn the boat round) I kept watching what I was doing and then making a balls up of it. Although not such a bad one for a beginner. But this afternoon I got that you had to watch where we were going and then using the tiller came naturally.

This morning our instructor had us standing up in the boat and ducking when the boon came over. This afternoon's instructor made us sit in place till the boon had moved then changing sides. Much easier, but it felt good to have got a measure of balance and know that I could stand up without falling in!

Being in a small sailing boat is like riding pillion on a powerful motorbike, learning to move with the machine without thought, but going with the flow.

So right now I'm excited about going back next Saturday...... whether I'll stay that way through the week remains to be seen.

Can't stay here any longer gotta go practice tying bowline knots!!!!

THE LAST POST...... LEST WE FORGET

Just want to respond to the amazing comments that I've received about my post about PTSD.

My wonderful Granpa was in the WWI he was with his older brother and his twin brother on the Somme. Both of them were killed in action there and Granpa was sent home like Private Ryan to serve the rest of the war in Cambridge teaching new soldiers.

He was the most gentle soul, when he was 70 I bought him what I thought was a wonderful present, I was about 14 . It was a recording by a man called Vince Hill of the song Roses of Picardy. I knew it had been a first World War song. I thought in my innocence that Granpa would like it. I played it in front of the family. He sat there crying and not saying a word. I don't know if anyone spoke, I don't have any more memory of the event.

I don't know if he ever talked about his experiences. And it was only years later after his death, when his stolen diary turned up that I got the chance to read his story of being sent out to France till the day his beloved twin brother died, when he stopped writing.

I have always felt powerfully drawn to the history of WWI, and in the last two years have been to both Ypres and to the Somme. In the later I saw my Great Uncles name carved into the monument at Arras, Granpa's twin brother.


In my job I work counselling anyone the GPs send me. I specialise in getting people to deal with their emotions be they anger or sadness or whatever. I do not exclusively work with ex military, they are just a group I'm seeing more of and doing some intensive work with at the moment. But then I'm also doing that with a fair few people at the moment.

And in answer to one of the comments, or course hundreds of servicemen and woman will not need counselling. Just as not all the population needs it. Although I think everyone would actually benefit in knowing healthier ways to deal with their feelings. Especially those who use stress related disorders like depression and anxiety or addictions to deal with their stuff.

I only work with people who have reached a point in their lives for whatever reason that they feel trapped by their own ways of working emotionally, and they come needing to find a different way so as they can make sense of their worlds.

So crying and yelling works in a way that when tried, is a real eye opener to the person who has been severely stuck emotionally before. It's not some wacky sort of cult stuff I'm advocating here. It's learning to be whole emotionally and logically and not frightened of our feelings. We all have them, we're born with them. But we don't all feel at ease expressing them.

I'm never happier in therapy than when I get women letting go of their rage and men crying, so working against the typical stereotypes of how each gender should behave.

Psychological distress has been around for ever, I agree you can find it in any poetry from the WWI poets. The only difference now is we know it's coming. Back then nobody knew about psychiatric illness being as result of warfare. Pat Barker's trilogy about this makes fantastic reading as it looks at the development of the psychiatry service that continues today.

This time though WE know that the young people who return will be likely, but of course not definitely, be suffering from PTSD.

We the people here have a responsibility of care for them. Brushing it under the carpet will not do. Thinking that it's not real won't work. If we do this we will have a situation like that in America related to their Vietnam vets.

The armed forces need their disciplined and obedient soldiers.

We need normalised young people back.

The photo at the top is of Tyne Cop, the biggest Commonwealth Grave in the world. There are 11,000 bodies buried there, and 50,000 names engraved on the walls of the monument of unfound bodies in Ypres.

Lest we forget.

WHO /WHAT/ WHEN/ WILL THEY GET HELP

First published in June 2008, but even more relevant today.
____________________________________________________


I am doing an increasing amount of work with ex military personnel related to PTSD.
It is proving very difficult for them and for me.

One of the remits of the armed forces is the need to make men into fighting machines. I appreciate that women are also trained but for the sake of convenience 'men' will apply to all generically.

So depending on which branch of the forces is entered depends on the length of time they are trained, an infantry man- 12 weeks, a para-28 weeks and a marine commando 32 weeks. As for the SAS and the SBS they have more on top of the original training.

In those weeks the military needs the person to let go of all their soft and gentle side, to become a mean fighting machine. Someone who when asked will follow orders, be prepared to kill, to work as a team with their comrades.

The upshot of this is that the men become very fit, very hard, and are trained to a high standard to be able to without question do as they are told. The when not working then play hard as anyone who lives in a military town will probably attest to.

In some branches of the forces the training is so tough that the fall out rated is huge, as in the Marines, out of 500 that join less than 50 will actually achieve the coveted Green Beret.

The aim of young people joining up is on the whole to see the world and to see some action.

Perhaps now the getting to see the world is eclipsed by the amount of action that they will see.

I am not here to justify the wars we as a country are involved in, in fact I think they are wrong politically. But I do feel passionate about this country's need to support it's armed forces personnel, particularly on their return.

And therein lies the problem.


There isn't enough help available for the number of soldiers (another cover all term) who will return needing psychological help.

The armed forces have had a view over the years, that to be upset about what you have gone through is just part of the process, which is why it allows the hard bitten behaviour of it's personnel to go on when they are outside of their bases. The heavy drinking, fighting, shagging that goes on with the foot soldier.

However this won't do anymore, as slowly men who are now getting close to their 50's in age are starting not to be able to hold in the trauma that they went through in whatever conflict they were involved in; Ireland, The Falklands, Bosnia etc.

It is starting to affect their lives, in fact it probably always has, but when we are in our 20s and 30s we have more resilience to put away stuff that is too painful. It is only as we reach the lost decade of our 40s that it becomes so difficult to continue to deny pain.

This is not just true of the armed forces, it is no surprise that most people who seek out psychological help are in their late 30s to mid 50s. It is in our 40s when we start to question; is this all there is? that people want to reinvent themselves, to start new relationships, to not feel lost and without hope.

So it is with these men. And what therapy has to do, crudely, is break down all the long held dehumanised views and help the person get back in touch with his emotional side. That is, to smash all the extremely well built up ways of defending themselves from getting in touch with their humanity.

Before every single terrible atrocity done by a soldier in the name of war they are likely to feel utter terror for a moment, before their training kicks in and they do what they have been trained to do.

And it is that moment of fear that the soldier will feel most shame about, as it goes against what he as trained to do. The problem with this is, that before the man became a machine, he was a man.

And men bleed.... emotionally as well as actually.

What I am spending my time doing is getting these so tough men to let go of the training that they have held dear to themselves for however many years and get them not to be angry, which is the easy route for trained men to follow. The ability to fight, drink, carouse etc. What I have to do is get them to cry, and not just a few tears but to sob uncontrollably for as long as it takes for them to allow themselves to forgive themselves for that perceived moment of weakness when they felt fear.

Only when they do this can they start to integrate their whole selves. That is be someone who is at peace with their feeling side and their logical side, and not one in conflict with the other.

Added to this I may have to do some work with their partner to help them understand what process this person has gone through. Because usually prior to therapy the soldier has given their family hell for some time. It may of course be too late in many cases the partner has had enough, but if not then it is possible to get the relationship back on track.

So I'm doing this now.

My youngest son has a mate who has returned a year early from Iraq because he tried to kill himself. He tells my youngest about some of the terrible things he has been through that made him want to end his own life.

He's 23.......

THINGS THAT CRAWL OUT OF THE WOODWORK

In the last two weeks two old relationships have come out of the woodwork.

WHY?

First off was, Mr Butterfly Kisses, he called me up. He does that when his sense of isolation in his marriage gets too much for him. He calls cause he wants to hear me smiling. He wants he to tell him he's a good bloke and that I still care for him. Even though a relationship between us doesn't stand a hope in hell, as he well knows.
He doesn't want to leave his wife and I don't want a relationship with a married man.

Now obviously I have had one in the past with this man, otherwise he's never have got his name. He was the first man to see me naked after my mastectomy and to make love to me. And he, without thought kissed me form my mouth all the way down my body passed my then very raw scar. He made me feel that it was going to be ok to have sex again, for which I will always be grateful.

So he phones every so often, he doesn't think about the affect of his call on me... he just needs to feel better. There is no way I can ever call him back, even if I wanted to. And nowadays I don't, I've learnt that this relationship is one sided and he calls the shots. So rather than let myself go to a bad place with that I have switched off my feelings for him.

And yet in every conversation he tells me we are going to be together one day, and it doesn't seem to get heard that I don't love him enough for that to ever happen. We get to the end of the conversation and I may not hear from him for another couple of months.

Then we get to the next, old relationship.... the last one.... the one I closed my blog down for.... the one that lies were told about.... the one that I was so angry and hurt that rather than post about it I destroyed prada pixie.

The one that I have spent the the last six weeks getting over. Coping with the hurt, pulling myself out of the abyss of unhappiness to move forward again. It's been tough, and I thought I'd got there.

In fact I went to stay with the friends who held me metaphorically in the bad weeks, last weekend and he was out of my system completely. Enough that I enjoyed a flirtation with a gorgeous sailor (nothing else Trix, just a fun conversation!)

I started on the journey home and he'd text me for the first time since we ended. I answered, he sent another, I answered over the next four hours as I travelled home. Then he phoned me.


WHY?

Was he bored, lonely, out of his latest relationship. He seemed to be wanting contact not because it was me, as was born out of the phone call when he wanted to talk about the woman in Australia who apparently phoned him for an hour and a half a few days before. Did I need any of this..... not much.

Then he ended the call.

And I haven't heard from him since.

And where I've ended up is with another headfuck job. I didn't need this, I certainly didn't want it. I really don't want to spend my time hoping that he'll phone me anytime soon and tell me that he really does want to get back together.

I know two things, one my heart is not in agreement with my head. And it would be an absolute disaster.Not of course that he has offered anything, it's merely my imagination going into emotional overdrive and my head telling me to get a grip. And I'd sorted them out so they were working alongside each other not in opposition!!!!

Added to that I have been informed by youngest with attitude that if he ever claps eyes on him again he'll head butt him for his behaviour to me during the time we were together.

So I'm writing this as a way to get myself back on track.

I'm worth more than either of these selfish men, who think 'hey I'm lonely' or whatever and I'll give byrd a call and she'll make it better.

Go away leave me alone I don't want to play. I just have to keep telling myself that and sooner or later I will as usual totally feel and believe it!!!!!

The photgraph is of a place called Lovers Leap in Dovedale, Nicely ironic I think!