Anyone For EBT ? And the Queezy Lisa By Mental Health Artist "Goan Van Koff"

Elastic Band Therapy or EBT which UserWatch discussed in its last post about the "distractive therapy" given to some self harmers with thoughts of self harm has now caught the wag of debate and discussion

Userwatch thinks the whole idea is barking really ..

So from the User-Kennel we will growl a few more views out ...

Lets face it, COME ON ... if superficial ideas that rely upon Service Users of the NHS stinging themselves are supported by serious professionals - there must be something in it . Really ?

UserWatch is not aware of any elastic band trials and whether there is a need to use thick or thin bands ..Or even some with a few pins in and maybe attached to a mild self ECT-ing battery ...

We'll ask around the scientific community though. Someone out there may have a good argument to stretch credibility - perhaps some of the same people that are pushing CBT, another "feeling-ignoring" application . Because that is what is if you look very carefully at how its being modelled after Lord Lamebrain had put his pennies into it ..

The CBT put forward by Lord Layard in practice is a very strictured format of partly seeing a "therapist" (you can do a course on CBT for under £500 quid) and doing "homework" and diary .

Userwatch came across this "homework" via a Borderline Personality Disorder Service User who seems to be having a counter-reaction to the therapist who told the User that they must be in bed for 10.00 p.m. do one thing pleasureable and do the washing or ironing - and must fill in the diary or they were going to stop the "therapy" ....

The BPD sufferer currently straining to hold down a job is slowly getting to the borderline of "Fuck off" territory... We wonder if her fist will have an elastic band reaction to the therapist's jaw ..

We have colleagues at UserWatch that have met self harmers and some self harmers feel in control of their lives if they can cut their bodies/arms etc without being dived on by services and automatically legally "sectioned". Then they are really "cut up".....Some self harmers say having their freedom taken away can make them want to cut themselves even more ! And that is lot of stored symptomatic energy they are finally coming out from the lock up with when they have had their symptoms "controlled" ...

On one occaision a colleague meeting a self harmer found the following revealing in so far as it became obvious that the lady concerned had indeed been subject to very nasty sexual abuses but had coped in derivative ways that although were later self harming and thus symptomatic actually gave her an internal hold over the dreadful anguish that she could not consciously emotionally re-associate fully with herself ..

So we should hold the thought that "distracting" self harmers from their ritual harming may not be the way forward.

Rather, an allowance for this symptom coupled with a deep therapy is more likely to unravel the desire to self harm back to immense grief of powerful damage done ..

An important set of views on this by someone who is known as "Stray" who self harms, and who has also been asked by professionals if they have tried EBT (and even drawing on themselves with illusory red pen blood) is HERE . Stray also holds down a job although and they do not claim to be a "BPD sufferer" - they are in that sense also healthily self defining as far as we can see ..

UserWatch thinks Stray's post is revealing and echoes this :

any superficial application of "help" or therapy that is going to ban a symptom or try to distract it, is going to use a lot energy up and create a moral high ground that does not sustain a journey of discovery to the source of blood letting ...And there will be an "elastic rebound" because storing up symptomatic energy is increasing the pressure ultimately for it to connect back again unless its drained off to deeply stored emotional origins of historic harms

But then, there are few explorers in the NHS and fewer still that can bear the Niagric grief of trauma about child abuse and/or early seperation pains and lack of protection and whatever else when its finally unleashed ... NO that would rock the NHS into shock and into deeper humanity ..Even into therapy.

Being human more fully would then be a political agenda ......Oh god no ! - Not that ! Say the anti feeling twats at the DoH .. "That will cost money ... ...."



Finally The Queezy Lisa above was painted by "Goan Van Koff" The Mental Health Artist of Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust areas ....

The poem to go with it is :




I was inspired by a warp and wish
On a ward floor of white

For
I painted
Queezy Lisa
Yes
In yellow piss
And disembodied fright

I guess I just imagined
The policy of pricks
Thin steel sticks

But they laughed when I
Cold press tiled
And they controlled
Their professional kicks....

I felt green and bad
And my head distorted thoughts and
Number vomits
Threw up
Into triples of triple six


I warned them one day I'd write .