Perfect Chaos

I’m thinking about starting a charity called Empathy.

Today, I was feeling paranoid. It came over me like a wave. Ever since my suicide attempt last year I have struggled with loneliness, seemingly unable to find love and support, even from those who used to be my closest friends. The problem, it seems, is that those who used to be my closest friends cannot relate to what I’ve been through, because they haven’t lived through similar experiences.

In the midst of my paranoid feelings, I felt helpless. I couldn’t call my father, I would just get a stern talking to. My old friends don’t answer my calls or texts. My support worker is on leave.

I thought of Samaritans. Samaritans is a charity that offers telephone support to people in need. I have called them in the past, sometimes it has been helpful, sometimes less so. It all depends on the particular individual you speak to and their capacity to empathise and relate to what you’re going through and have been through.

A man answered the phone, I’m guessing in his forties. I thanked him for taking my call, and began explaining about the paranoid feelings I was experiencing, the diagnosis I’ve been given, and the medication I take.

The man, and I regret that I don’t know his name, was understanding. He asked me which medication I was taking and he had some knowledge of the kinds of medications I shared that I have taken over the years. He didn’t judge me for this. Immediately, there was some healing.

The man allowed me to talk and express myself, and there was a sensitivity and compassion in the way he did so that led to more healing.

Within a few minutes, the paranoid feelings I had been experiencing had gone away completely and I felt serene. I thanked the man for his time and the voluntary work he is doing with Samaritans, and said I should end the call to make way for someone in greater need.

When I hung up the phone, I felt a sense of amazement. I had been healed, not through tablets or discipline or injections or counselling, but through kindness, love, empathy, and compassion. In about five minutes.

I haven’t felt so grounded and optimistic in a very long time. I prayed that God would bring a person into my life that could be a friend to me, who shows the same kind of empathy as the man from Samaritans.

I then reflected on how all that people with mental health conditions need for their mental wellbeing is empathy. They just need someone who understands and loves them without judgment.

I thought about all of these poor souls being locked away on psychiatric wards and injected with ‘antipsychotics’ and how this does so little, if anything, to help them.

I know that if God is willing, because of the experiences I’ve been through, He can use me to help others in the same way as the man from Samaritans helped me today. And nothing brings me greater joy than being used by God to bring healing.

So I’m thinking about starting a charity called Empathy. The charity would focus on the kinds of experiences, particularly suffering, that the people who volunteer for it have been through. Individuals could volunteer for the charity on the basis of the experiences they’ve lived through, rather than just their vocational or academic history.

I know that there are already charities in the UK that recognize the importance of lived experience. But we need free or low cost counselling or befriending to be offered to people with mental health diagnoses as a matter of course. The healing that would potentially take place could change the lives of so many people and far fewer admissions to psychiatric hospital would be necessary.

Of course, it’s a battle with psychiatry as much as anything. Pharmaceutical companies make their millions by enforcing medication on the vulnerable, and psychiatrists see human beings as brain-machines that are either normal or broken beyond repair.

All I can do is offer my best to the world and keep pushing the case for compassion and empathy in healthcare rather than tablets and injections.

It’s a battle worth fighting.