The woman who acts as my mother blew up her internal CD ROM drive quite recently, just after her father had died. I see some discussion her about the role of surge protectors in combating “mania”………..for the “mentally well” computer illiterate

The concept of fragmentation is interesting. The term ‘recovery’ is not. In itself is controversial and easily misunderstood and misinterpreted by people who are not living with voices. I hesitatite to use the word recovery. In fact I won’t ever use it. – Getting to where I am now, for me its kinda been about looking back on where I’ve come from rather than settings goals to be achieved and action plans around how to reach them, its always been more chaotic….and what on earth am I meant to be recovering from, some other point in my life that I wish to move away from. The voices I heard when I was 15, or the ones I heard yesterday. That’s never really rocked my boat as built into it is a sense of failure around what has been lost, could have been.

I’ve never believed that my voices cause any ‘mental health problems’. I swallow hard when I hear people talking about their past mental health problems or ‘difficulties’, as the term can only be used to reference some other point in their lives which they make a judgment about. Neither do I pertain to having reached ‘mental health’. Lets talk about ‘states of mind’. I am in a state of flux around those ‘states’. I also accept that within certain ‘states’ I am more susceptible to alternative experiences of existence and energy – which in themselves are part of that continuum rather than a reference to my (invariably inconsistent) ‘mental health’ status.

So in trying to make sense of where I am at now, or the voices I still hear, I’ve had (and still do) take many risks and step out of the river called denial, start to accept I hear voices and look at ways to understand them – like the need to defragmentate.

I think here of the importance of regular defragmentation of the computer. Just think, every time you install a bit of software, add new hardware, download, upload, open an application or create a file, this changes the configuration of the hard drive. Bits of files are scattered and stored all over the place and without regular defragmentation the beast will surely crash. Without absolute respect for the equipment – heavens forbid cutting the power supply without shutting down properly – the engine room of the computer just can’t keep up with the changes and it will freeze. OK computer lesson over and no arrogance intended but I do understand that defragmentating computers is important in order to maintain its ongoing functionality.

Defragmentation is about giving the computer ‘time out’ so that it can recover from your fragmentation of it.

My ‘freezes’ have always come when I haven’t been showing myself absolute respect. The ‘crashes’ I’ve experienced have been less about a decline in my mental health and more about my operating system telling me, enough is enough. Me, ignoring my voices and not take any notice of the warning signs that I am becoming distressed. Has anyone ever had the experience of not being able to load Windows to access vital information?

‘Crashing’ has not been about a recurrence of “illness” (you don’t have to go and buy a new PC every time it seems to not work properly) and its something I’ve learnt to manage. So, maybe fragmenting is a necessary evil, part and parcel of the whole experience called existence. Something that we can think about more positively.

Everything we think, do, feel, even ‘hear’, feeds into that and maybe that is just the way it is; good and bad life histories. “Mental health decline” is about recognising this as not necessarily part of illness, or even decreased functionality, rather that this is just the way it is sometimes. And sometimes I hear voices: nice ones, nasty ones, guiding ones, sarcastic ones, intolerable ones. From there here can come positives as I’ve learnt more about our own strengths and develop my own strategies to cope, and survive. I would certainly advocate that more credence needs to be given to the individuals resources rather than always saying thank you to the medics – and the drugs.

What is needed then is not another theory, model or breakthrough in pharmacology, just some time to defragment. Even computers on the brink of the techno scrapheap can be brought back with time attention and an absolute respect for letting them lead the way. (I think, in another context that’s called service user involvement). I call it the ‘logic of computers’ and apply it to every new piece of software I discover or upgrade I install. If it gives me a warning sign that something is wrong, don’t keep hitting that enter button. I don’t ever remember feeling better on higher doses of medication.

I have a friend, a dear friend who has been with me for the long haul. He has no first hand experience of hearing voices. He has been with me through the good, the bad and the ugly of my psychiatric career. He is a computer wiz kid. He doesn’t understand why I may see a psychiatrist, neither does he understand why I have to have Norton System Works running. Utilities are the professionals; at best they allow you to tweak the specs on a computer, without making any fundamental changes to the overall software or hardware components. Like the amounts of mediations I have taken and the endless explanations that are forwarded as to why I hear voices, in the end all the professionals can do is support, manage, control or confine me, through the best of times and when my hard disk has needed reconfiguration.

When my friend’s computer is in distress, he turns it off. He lets it rest; he does not keep forcing more software into it. He does not suggest another installation or another piece of equipment or supplier and if he is successful he always reboots. I have no faith these days in Neuroleptics and very little faith that I will ever stop hearing voices. In periods of distress, I try to look after myself a bit better and not take on any more work, another medication, another theory, professional or provider of service provision. And give myself time to defragment.

If you believe in synchronicity you will know the significance of me having to buy a brand new hard drive the last time I found myself on a section. For all the problems I have had with computers over the years, yes, sometimes they have sent me messages I haven’t wanted to hear, I find myself becoming more and more trusting of their inanaminateness. And while Bill Gates is on this earth there is always more and more potential for upgrades, given time to defragment, the potential for every person who hear voices to overcome the challenges they may face is only as far as our imaginations allow us to go. And much like Bill Gates ability (to make more money), the ability of people who hear voices (as part of a bigger survivor movement) to find their own ways, is something that should be supported and celebrated.

© sara stanton (2002)