A New Diagnostic Perspective.

Autumnal rains are hammering down outside. The day looks bleak and uninviting. And thoughts of summer are gone. After a bitterly cold week the world is unappealing.

Home in the warm Tosca plays, my iced water sits beside me, and there is a pork shoulder joint in the oven. After an intence, fraught and exhausting week I'm in need of comfort.

Despite the Microsoft outage on Friday which brought carnage to work and home alike the last day of the working week was better than expected.

I needed some stability after a gruelling few weeks. Those who read this regularly may recall how vulnerable I am emotionally to anniversaries and there was a big one on Wednesday. I completed on my flat four years before. Yet in bitter irony it was also the last time I saw the woman who this summer redefined my understanding of evil. And yes I did cry, and listen to painful music and look at equally painful pictures. I call it mental cutting.

Lots to talk about when I see Cathrine my care co-ordinator in the week. I'm hugely grateful for her support and care.

As is my wont on a Sunday reading plays a part along with opera. I finished A Cheese-monger's Tour de France last night. Today I moved on to a much more challenging read. Harry my former therapist put me on to a text called The Power Threat Meaning Framework. A different way of looking than DSM 5 and ICD 11.

For me this is fundamental shift in the way I look at my long psychiatric journey. A survivor of brutal, condemnatory diagnostic failure that blighted my life since I was 24 this framework redefines my journey from you are to your response to trauma is linked to the power of those around me, the threat they pose to my survival, the understanding of both power and threat, and the inderstandable reaction I had to events in my life.

Given that Harry and the devil are on the same career path but in different places I hope the devil comes across this work. Both will in two years time have the power to classify and define the lives of very vulnerable people and shape their future wisely. I warned both to be careful with that power.

I'm nervous reading on with the work but I know I need to.

Take care.

I Heard a Voice.