How Will Support Be Next Year/2018?

As this year ends and the consumerist oblivion that is Christmas is a memory ago I have to ask this question moving forward. This is likely to be my last blog post for the year (a statement as melodramatic as it is vacuous).

Right now I'm waiting for my third attempt at the spectacular shit show that is the Work Capability Assessment. They have had two chances to do their job and failed each time. While the stone-faced receptionist was on the phone the HQ to find out why my second appointment had been cancelled, it didn't cross her mind to perhaps arrange someone there and then to see me. Whatever; they didn't. So now it's back to sitting by the door looking at the letterbox as if Jack Nicholson was about to smash his way through it and stab me to death. It doesn't feel much better.

In the midst of all this, where is my support? I work with (as a client, or 'customer', or whatever the correct term de jure is) a group who seem increasingly to fade into the background noise, like all the rest. The saddest part of all isn't the dismal predictability they might be just as useless as every other funded group, but that, despite offering increasingly less, they are still better than nothing.

To be fair, I don't think they are as bad as some groups (Working Links for instance). They haven't been hostile, though that could easily happen as so many of these groups are incredibly thin skinned and brook absolutely no criticism. I don't dislike my advisor, I think she means well - now that really is the saddest part of all. Good intentions don't mean shit in this society.

This is by far the biggest problem: they have such a limited array of support that the only thing it can produce is a victim blaming narrative. For example I suspect I will be 'encouraged', following my meeting with the not-a-colour colour therapist, to join in their wellbeing programme (which was meant to happen a few months ago, only they forgot to tell me it had actually started running, despite my asking). As it turns out this programme is very basic which means it will of course ignore the wider context people like me (and indeed everyone without a stable income to cushion the fall) find ourselves in. That context is the structure of a capitalist society run by an elite.

Absent of an understanding of that - class consciousness in other words - how can any attempt to provide 'wellbeing support' ever hope to do anything successful? Sure there is a time and a place for 'goal setting' (the same lexicon used by the Salvation Army, way back in the day when I saw them) or 'motivation', or, as one part of this curriculum asks, 'what makes you happy'?

The focus is on the individual. That's fine, but when it ignores the wider context how can it possibly do anything other than create a violent disconnect? People can set all the goals they like, but how will they feel about themselves when they can't accomplish them because the DWP has taken away their income or left them for months struggling with no Universal Credit? How are you supposed to motivate yourself then? How will positive thinking break through the very real wall of crushed opportunity and empty stomachs? I guess all those homeless people that I now see on the streets, where town centres are now campsites for the increasingly marginalised and dispossessed, are just lost in their own 'negative thinking'. Come on!

As for what makes me (or you) happy? It is entirely contextual. One day I might enjoy a piece of music, the next I might be in no mood for it at all. One day I might receive a letter telling me I have passed my WCA, the next I might be called in for another. This is such a trite question as to betray the utter uselessness of such services.

Now I'm not saying those that provide them don't mean well, or that they aren't nice people. This is another pernicious element of the system. It creates this assumption that criticism of the service, of the lack of understanding of the broader reality (the context I've been referring to), means that I think ill of those providing that service. This is something I find desperately tedious as I cannot bear having to constantly make this point. It's like being interrupted all the time - and it is used to control the conversation, to keep critics off point and unable to make their criticisms.

And now I have forgotten what I need to say next - which is the point.

It would be naive to assume these organisations are suddenly going to turn into revolutionary cells, but if they don't or can't accept the level of awareness that is required to really make positive change (and where we go with that is another struggle entirely) then how can they ever expect to help? When they are unwilling to refund my bus fare to the WCA, an demonstrate a fundamental lack of awarness of the nature of these tests, what can they possibly achieve? My advisor agrees that I'm not fit for work, she even offered to write a letter to that effect. Unfortunately that letter said "...needs to be challenged", in reference to helping me move forward. What she fails to understand is that saying anything like that will be taken as testimony that I can work - that work will heal me, the pernicious arbeit macht frei paradigm at the heart of this system.

The doublethink involved in what she has done is, with the greatest of respect, completely beyond her, just as is the notion that if I ask the WCA people to refund my bus far, it will confirm to them I am capable of work. We all know that is part of the test, they ask it to everyone who attends ("how did you get here today?" - it's not an innocent quiestion, Leon). How can people so ignorant of this reality ever expect to be helpful?

So That, Too, Just Happened...Again

Ah, sweet memories.

Remember the good times we had when I attended my WCA way back in the day (or at least November)? All the stress and anxiety worrying about coping in the waiting room, being made to wait for ages to be seen by someone who, despite not being a mental health professional, would ask a series of questions ignoring your health all just to find a tiny sliver of capacity they can use to completely deny you an income? Those good times?

Well...they're back!

So the not-a-doctor who saw me back then had decided that, in case she got sued or something, I'd have to be seen an actual doctor (but still not-a-doctor, because if you were a doctor you'd be a proper doctor, not working for the Gestapo here). Consequently, despite attending in good faith, and ignoring all the ensuing anxiety and dress, I had to tootle off back home like nothing had happened (which ironically is what happened). 

She did say that she would try and get me a home appointment, but I had assumed that wasn't going to happen as a couple of weeks later I got a letter for a new appointment at Gestapo Central - not a home visit. Well that appointment should have been today.

Should have?

That's right! They fucked up again! So my appointment, much to the perfunctory hard-assed stone-faced bemusement of the desk droid, had been cancelled. She had to ring HQ to get the correct programming in order to deal with this second clerical error.

To cut a long story short: it was cancelled, though no one bothered to tell me (despite them having my phone number, which she confirmed as part of establishing my ID), because I was supposed to be getting/going to be getting a...home visit!

So that's another load of stress for precisely fuck all. What do I get for this? I get to go home and wait for yet another envelope of doom to fall through the door and wait afresh. 

What a wonderful system. Clerical errors ohdearhowsadsorryaboutthat. Bullshit, this is people's lives!

"I'm not a colour therapist, I'm trained in the therapeutic use of colour"

Yes, that's what she said when I went for my social enterprise-booked appointment with a colour therapist (or not, as she seemed to say - presumably to come across more amenably). A colour therapist who was dressed completely in black.

So what is colour therapy and why am I doing it?

CT proper is pseudoscience. It's a 'complementary therapy' (which means it isn't therapy) based on the existence of Chakras, the ancient Indian metaphysical system of bodily energy points. Each has its own colour and so the purpose of CT is to balance and align them. Only problem is that there's no evidence Chakras exist. It's a lovely worldview, but I see nothing that makes it real. Sorry. I can't afford to invest in fictional ideas.

CT as advocated by a colourless, if friendly (and she was, don't misunderstand me), not-a-therapist therapist involves the notion that we respond to colours in the way people respond to horoscopes. They make us feel good (which in reality is a rather prosaic truth), and, like horoscopes, they associate with a range of personality traits: creative, spiritual, assertive, etc. All the usual tropes. Supposedly.

I'm just not sure what I'm meant to do with that; we all know horoscopes are essentially meaningless precisely because they are statements constructed to appeal to anyone. We've all seen the experiments and tricks done (by the likes of Derren Brown) where the same horoscope is read to a person from each of the different signs, with each person claiming that was a unique fit relating to their experience. I think these are called Barnum statements, after PT Barnum the circus guy.

It's harmless enough, and, like so many beliefs, it contains a kernel of truth. We like colours and respond to them in different ways. But whether that can determine personality traits? In reality people are complex with ever shifting characteristics that derive from circumstance and environment, all of which shift. The archetypal phrases associated with colours and horoscopes are what we'd like to think we are; they are aspirations. Some of them are true, but they belie the act we change. Today I might not be assertive, tomorrow...?

So I'm presented with a pile of photos; each a picture of a scene in nature: a forest, the sea, the sunrise, some flowers, etc. I'm told to pick my favourites. These then represent colours I somehow in some way identify with. But the problem is that I'm not just responding to the colours, but the image as well. For example, I pick a striking image of a purple violet sunset over the sea. Had that been a purple violet piece of dog turd it would have been a different story. No one would pick that!

Next I'm invited to sift through a series of cards, each naming a colour and listing it's associated personality traits/characteristics. It's like being asked to pick a horoscope - I'm a creative person (or so I'd like to think, which, as I say, is the point I think) so that means I'm...purple? What does that mean? This is the question I didn't ask because I knew no answer would be forthcoming. Am I to surround myself with purple? If I buy lots of Prince albums will that make me more creative? I don't get it. Purple is a nice enough colour, I guess. I mean it's existence doesn't offend me, but I wouldn't want to live in a sea of it. Unlike Prince.

All of this exists within a certain context: this 'intervention' was recommended to me by the social enterprise, funded by the lottery, that are meant to be helping me. I only agreed to this because I feel obliged to. When you are offered next to nothing you have to realise that when you refuse something, no matter how rubbish it might be, you are seen to be refusing 100% of what they have to offer. Consequently you are subsequently accused of not engaging with the service. This is lazy. If all they can offer is colour therapy then perhaps they need to consider what they can offer, but anything for a quiet life I guess.

Colour therapy of course doesn't begin to address the deep seated social reasons why people struggle. Look at the society we live in, look at the structures that exist over which we have no control, yet they in return exert unjustified ocntrol over our lives. Look at how we depend on them for food, clothing, shelter, and all that good stuff. Look at the demands placed upon us by an economic system that is increasingly running on empty - falling wages, increasing workloads, longer hours.

Is it any wonder people are stressing to the point of pills and suicide? Half of all ESA claimantrs have attempted suicide. A situation completely unnatural that should not exist, but it does. Yet it is within this context that colour therapy is offered to me. Now, perhaps they recognise that it isn't meant to be a great panacea and merely 'something to think about', as the colourless therapist said to me. Ok, that's fair enough, but it's still not really any kind of help is it? Who doesn't find some colours more pleasant than others; who doesn't enjoy a still life or a natural vista?

What I resent is being placed into a situation where I feel obligated to accept help even when I know it won't. That isn't fair, that's how the Jobcentre operates - only there it's calcified into the cruelty of sanctions. Here it becomes a more spectral phenomena: am I letting my advisor down? Is she genuinely trying to help? I have to wonder - and that wasn't helped by the fact she didn't bother to tell me that the 'wellbeing' course they were setting up started without telling me...

So she had told me about this right from the off. I said this was something I'd be interested in doing (info pending) while she said, several times, that they were still getting it organised while waiting to get someone in to run it. Next thing I know I'm talking with that someone only to find that course had been running for almost 3/4 it's duration and that I was too late. Moreover, yesterday, the colourless therapist (she looked like she was going to a bloody funeral!), mentioned that next week the people from that course, along with the staff of this social enterprise (some of them at least) would be meeting for an Xmas get together. Ok, she did invite me (unlike my advisor who so far hasn't mentioned any such thing at all, despite knowing I suffer from social isolation). What a kick in the teeth: I'm not told about the wellbeing group and then find they are all having a Christmas get together! Not sure I want to attend as I won't know any of them, they, having already met and worked together, will know each other. I won't.

That well being 'course' starts again next month. The Colourless Therapist showed me the curriculum and, dismally, it's more of the same mundane self help nonsense. I shouldn't say that, if it helps people then fair play, but again - context! The sessions are weekly for an hour and a half and feature such topics as "what makes me happy". Maybe I'm just a massive curmudgeon, but I just don't see how this can help except on the tiniest level. I said I'm interested and I'll probably give it a go because there's no alternative, but it's the low level simplistic approach that bothers me. What makes me happy? Moaning on the internet apparently. Ok, so we focus on these things (perhaps not that)
 and then what? How will that address the fundamental concerns that are being ignored by the Tories as they rip society in half? Purple rain, purple rain.

Loneliness

There may be a ton of other, perhaps even more serious, subjects that do not get discussed. But in my view, and or the purpose of this piece, there aren't many quite as pernicious as being alone. Whether in a crowd (which can sometimes be worse) or genuinely alone.

In fact now that I reflect on this, I'm not entirely sure how to proceed. In so many ways this is something that feels, to me, something that one cannot admit. Whether or not this is a cultural attitude, or an expectation born of gender ("boys don't cry y'all").

The truth is.

Insert enormous pause.

That I am lonely.

It has taken an awful lot of effort to type this, of course that will not come through here.

I am not sure I should be posting this. But if you are reading it then you know that I have and the hell with it.

I have no idea what I want to achieve from this. It is seen as the least attractive thing, it seems to me in our culture, to admit this. In so many ways it is the ultimate sign of weakness.

Or am I wrong? Oh well in for a penny, in for a pound.

You see, I never did well in this area. That's just how it is; some of us shine socially always find someone to share their lives with (for better or worse). Others don't. I think that's how it is with everything. For some people life comes up heads, for others it's tails. Were I a philosophical man I might say it's yin and yang.

What do you do when the options to meet people aren't there? What can you do about a society that seems to place so much stock in being a 'winner' and on superficial things like crafting an appearance of wearing the pointiest shoes. These are the values people admire, because that's what we are taught matters and being lonely is to be a loser. It is the antithesis of those values and to show that weakness is to piss in the cornflakes of society.

We don't teach relationships at school. You sort of have to learn how to deal with people, how to interact with them. You are meant to figure that out the way animals learn things: by observing and copying. But that isn't always possible: what happens when your role models are themselves dysfunctional and you don't know any better? What happens when you gro up in a family where the very word relationship is anathema, where parents and siblings fight because that's all they seem to have known?

It can take lifetimes to break free from that. Yet in the meantime, because of society's demands, you must put on a brave face. People will comment on how great or nice your parents are, and you nod because you know enough not to speak the truth. That would be unthinkably awkward and impolite. You are left screaming inside your skin while a little piece of you dies inside.

Then, as you grow up, you life passes you by. All the things you should have been doing; all the people that you should have met, the experiences you should have had and the relationships you should have formed... they never happened. Life has passed you by and somewhere there's a scorekeeper looking at you disapprovingly tapping his watch and shaking his head.

You get one shot at this life, but you can't force love out of life. You can't make it happen. It's the sole purview of trashy lit and self help guide that there's someone special waiting for everyone: a soul mate just waiting to be found. Life doesn't work that way. There are just people; they walk around blinkered by the expectations of the environment they've known, programmed into them. They will walk right past that person blind to a smile or a casual kindness and never know if that was indeed their soul mate. Life will go on. The pain will go on. It may even become a friend of sorts: a companion that reminds them they are alive.

We shoudln't have to live like this. Our society should be free from aspirationally charged norms. No one should judge each other for their clothing choices or whether their appearance fits a certain profile. They should be valued for who they are. But that's just a pipe dream isn't it. Only it isn't, if enough people believe it - that's my self help book.

And yet here I am. No one will ever notice and it will be too late.

And I am not alone in this.