Tough day, with a caseload of manic and/or paranoid females. Very abusive, and quite creative. Most are pretty intelligent, but quite ill at the moment.
When you watch people being abusive to the police on TV, it's quite different when it's right in your face. Trust me on this. Your body responds to the threat automatically, but the mind has to keep everything contained. Practice and training help.
The line staff experience this most days, and it takes its toll on them. Remarkable, kind, forgiving people, most of them. And I think of 19 y/o kids being guards at Gitmo, subject to worse abuse, plus bodily fluids thrown at them. And one more thing: the people abusing them all have high-priced Washington lawyers, looking for your scalp. Because they're saving America, and if the cost of that is you, who cares?
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The sister I visited is the way you desribe when ill. So I can truly say I understand, having had to cope with a lifetime of her recurring manias. It can be enervating after being so keyed up and having to control oneself from responding in kind to the aggression, or with anger at paranoid accusations.
For families part of teh difficulty is that the relatives stay scarred and may forgive but can never forget. Whereas our manic relatives have amnesia about their behavvior when most psychotic. They think we are defaming their character, lying. I love my relative and loved the mother and brother no longer with us, but the wild episodes made me afraid to ever relax around them.
Very good connection to the Gitmo stuff. Because tho we may get really mad at or scared by our crazy relatives, we at least love them and love stays our hand. But an enemy abusing us? That would be different, with no love to restrain us. Of course JC told us that we can take no credit for being kind to our loved ones, as even publicans and sinners do that. The real test is not returning evil for evil to those unrelated and/or malevolent towards us...
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