Self-Focus and Mental illness
Self-focus is something I have observed in some people with mental disorders. All the children with learning difficulties that I have had contact with give the impression their only interest is the activity they are engaged with at the moment.
When I went through psychotic episodes in the distant past I had no recollection of what was happening around me. This to me reflects the amount of self-focus that was involved.
It is that time of the year when in the midst of celebrations there are those who are all alone. Often with suicidal thoughts. Social isolation breeds self-focus. When I was going through mental illness I was the most isolated than over any period in my entire life.
I had quickly got on the property ladder. Finding rising interest rates a struggle, I could not afford social engagements in my new environment away from everyone I knew. I became intensively self-focused over this period. I could not afford to travel to visit my parents or siblings. I could barely afford the occasional telephone calls I made overseas to my parents.
My life as a single person a mortgage was one of social exclusion. The social activities I needed as outlets were not available as I did not have the social contacts nor could I afford the activities that would bring the new ones. In many ways I lived the life of an orphan with no relatives. By the time I first am able to visit my parents after two years of isolation, my Dad asks me to stay behind.
I told my Dad I had made a materially better life for myself. I had a job to get back to. There was none there with him. Within 4 months of my return, I was to enter the mental health system. I remember a colleague frustrating me with changing of the keyboard layout on my workstation. By this time I had become paranoid about unexpected changes in my environment.
A long-term relationship from my University days had broken down, I had changed accommodation thrice and finally got on the housing ladder within two years of starting to work in the profession I trained in. I did not appreciate at the time that these were all major life’s stresses happening in relatively close proximity of each other.
One of the senior managers at work who at one time I overheard saying “watch him” had picked up that I was having challenges dealing with stress. I was put on a stress management course . Within a month of this I was to collapse at the airport and find myself in a mental hospital.
Release on care in the community marked another phase in my life. When my mum appreciated that I did not want to return home she started making efforts to establish some form of social life for me with her contacts.
Winter and Christmas brought its own feelings of loneliness as I live alone. On my regular appointments with a Consultant psychiatrist I recollect a suggestion that I may be prone to Seasonal Affected Disorder. The longer periods of darkness was making me focus on my feelings of loneliness even more. I recollect acute feelings of loneliness during these periods.
Through the years of living alone, I became even more self-focused. My feelings were overwhelmingly my focus. In the later years when I was finding myself in demand to help others in my circle of contacts was the time my journey in the mental health system started coming to an end.
Today, I am a vital member of my church community. Most of my resources is engaged in helping others and there are no shortage of needs that I am made aware on in my environment.
For more on my story, get a copy of Defying the odds: One Man’s Struggle and Victory over Mental illness and His Wife whose Faith in God Never Failed [June 01, 2011] Onah, Zoe A: Destiny Image Europe
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