What's Your Switch? Find it, and you can switch it off

I've just had a private e-mail conversation with a very great, very strong woman, who is going to do really great with Baclofen. As often happens these days, we inadvertently stumbled across a 'discussion thread' that we didn't expect. My TFTD's are almost never now what I thought they would be when I got up. Something always seems to happen in my day to get my juices flowing, if you can tolerate the very thought of that! Ha!!

Through our conversation, I remembered something that has long since passed. In a former life, I used to practice a lot of obesity surgery; especially the gastric balloon. I always used to consult new patients with a counsellor in the room. She was constantly amazed that I could get them all crying within five minutes. "I'm very good at finding the switch", I used to tell her. "Find the switch and you can switch it off".

She thought I was a genius, because finding the switch made my programmes so much more successful. But I wasn't as smart as she thought I was. You see, people like you and me (and obese patients are not so very different) are desperate to tell you what the switch is. It's just that noone has ever asked them about it before, and certainly not in a way that was non-threatening and only there to help.

"But how do you do it? So effortlessly." she asked.

"You have to be one to know one." I replied. I used to be able to say terrible things to them because I could always use the caveat "I'm allowed to say this, because I'm one of us." Now, I'm not actually that overweight, but by saying these simple words, the threat and condemnation and bigotry and prejudice that they were used to every day of their lives simply melted away. You could see it in their eyes. Within minutes, they had told me about their switch. Tears usually flowed, but with those tears their recovery started. And the road becomes so much easier when you're not dragging that switch along behind you.

A lot of what is in my The Baclofen Programme book relates to this. If I ever get it finished now!!

Did I have a switch of my own? God, I've had a few. Long periods of sobriety inbetween. Then another switch came along. Those that matter most to me do know what my latest switch has been. I share much of my Trumanesque life with you, but their privacy is paramount. As I often say in The Uninivited Guest, if I can't say something nice about someone, then I am going to leave them out. After all, The Uninvited Guest is not an autobiography, it is a personal autopsy. A treatise of me looking at myself. How prophetic that seems today. Not an easy read, but really funny in places!

Please please please look for your own switch. Find it and face it. Exorcise your own Daemon(s). And grow strong, because there may be more Daemons waiting for you over the next hill. That has been my life in a nutshell. Those Daemons weren't remotely demonic, in actual fact. But, with my anxiety-prone character, that is exactly how they felt. Nothing is more real than something your brain tells you to believe in. Everybody else thinks you're mad. But you absolutely know that you are not. Who is right??

I know what my latest switch is. I'm just struggling switching it off. If only I had me to talk to! Ha!!

I hope that made sense. Please let me know if my arse is speaking for me again. It often does. Ha!! Who needs emoticons!!

May your God go with you.

Pip xx