Pulling the Trigger.

At the weekend The Sunday Times published a piece by India Knight talking about calling people snowflakes in a derogatory way. The current generation of students is sometimes vilified as a snowflake generation. The press is littered with reports of student anxiety, of stopping free speech, accusations of being phobic if an individual says something another group disagrees with, and trigger warnings.

I've been telling my story in word and in writing for many years now. Some say it is inspirational. Others get tearful. Many are frightened to delve too deep for fear of what they will see of themselves in there. A couple of years ago a young woman walked out of a talk I did. Apparently it was too triggering.

Until today I didn't understand what that meant. Today I learned what it is like to have a trigger pulled. In a training session on Critical Incident Debriefing my mind raced not to the subject but to so many raw and painful things. It made me feel ashamed to be battle hardened in the mental health world, cynical and anaesthetised. I have seen so much death. Today it all came flooding back.

I'm haunted by the deaths of the students I have known. I feel self indulgent and narcissistic for thinking what the experiences of this world do to me rather than the experience of those I try to help.

To Cambridge, to Prague, to Granada, to Brighton, to Hythe. The well travelled itinerant that I am, never settled in a place or in relationship or in a society. I struggled to cope.

I did stick it out but won't go there again. For so long in my life I saw the troubles of my life in a negative light compared to those around me. But today it hurt and I acknowledged quite how much I have had to do in my line of work, walk away at the end of the day and be fine the next.

The last year has made me question so much. Although I'm in a better place now than six months ago there is still a nagging fear that I have to get out of the mental health business. What price do I pay? Too greater one on days like today.

When I got home I wanted to get out all the old photos from the days when things went wrong. I listened to Alison Moyet sing Only You and wanted tears to flow. They didn't. Cried too many tears over the years. Comfort food and Mozart are my solution. Maybe it is time for a glass of Chianti too.

See you soon.

I Heard a Voice.