What makes us feel as though we are going crazy?

an article from the Guardian on what prompts people to seek help from therapists:

Mental illness now accounts for nearly half of all ill-health in the UK, but its share of the budget is so small that only a quarter of sufferers get any help on the NHS. Private therapists talk about what their clients are worried about.

Internet porn addiction - (how many? "a lot of") young men make daily use of porn on the internet. They don't see it as a problem. It is for their girlfriends (if they have them.)  "it is a problem because it interferes with people's ability to form genuinely intimate, erotic and satisfying sexual relations."

Young person's depression - "young people have a discourse of success around having a well-paid job, but house, nice car, and that's hard to achieve..." this generation (in their 20s) has a strong sense of entitlement.

Relationship breakdown - people in mid affair or dealing with the aftermath of an affair.

 "Across all cultures, hardiness and adjustment to life is very dependent on having good relationships. whatever the stressors or conditions, you can resource yourself - or not- by having open mutual relationships that can make you feel OK about life." Can be one partner "but many good relationships - friends and family - are even better. Some people choose to be on their own, but it is often a question mark that people bring to me: "If I can't be in a relationship, why not? - and can I live with that?" (Janet Reibstein, psychologist, Exeter)

Body dysmorphia - dieting and size, bags under the eyes (that the therapist can't see!) and thinning hair. Asian people who are worried about racism whenever anyone is talking to them.

Internet stalking - people who don't want to check on their ex. (or whoever they are obsessed with) but it's too easy and people can't stop themselves.

Insecurity - there's an economic term - "radical uncertainty" that you can see emerging in people's daily lives. People realising that their future is very uncertain. Linked with this is domestic violence and alcohol and drug abuse. Families are stressed and are facing too many pressures.

Multiple relationships - people are experimenting with all kinds of relationships, threesomes and foursomes, Also BDSM or kink. These also cause anxieties.

Social anxieties - expectations and social pressures conflict with real needs. From around 30 yrs of age. women demanding too much of themselves.

Existential crises - who am I? what am I doing?

Social media addiction - porn, gambling forums, Youtube. More male than female. the therapist works on 1. How to manage the addiction and 2. what the client is avoiding.

Harshness in the workplace: there is a fear of asking for help. A fear of colleagues.  Overwork and stress caused by having to meet expectations, targets and deadlines.

"There's so much adrenaline that you have panic attacks, or get weepy, or can't sleep... Everything that used to feel comfortable doesn't any more, such as socialising, shopping, driving, going to work. Your brain associates that as a threat, and people feel as though they are going crazy." Nicola Blunden, psychotherapist practising for 15 years, Aberdare, Wales.

Marriage is a bag which can be stretched in many ways without breaking

One thing that was very admirable about the Bloomsbury group was their determination to cast aside Victorian hypocrisy and be open about their relationships, rather than covert. Perhaps the bravest was Vanessa Bell. She loved Duncan Grant, who was homosexual, so she left her husband and went to live with him and managed to have a child with him; over the years making space for the more passionate relationships he had with a succession of men. She wanted to love honestly and passionately and knew there was no room for a locked-in, watertight commitment. It wasn't an easy or self-indulgent way of life because sharing is hard and demanding, but love survived even though lovers came and went.

I know a woman who was in a very long-standing relationship with a married man and had his child, and he visited and provided for the child. Now there was a wife, and she knew about this, but the marriage survived.  I knew another woman who made the same choice, to have a child with a man she loved, although he stayed with his wife and visited his number 2 family only occasionally. If you read any family story there is very often some instance of illegitimate children and the father having two families. Very interesting. So the advice columns tell you what a healthy relationship in a healthy marriage is, but there are plenty that survive infidelity and, really, polygamy, without collapsing, and in a way, isn't that worth celebrating too?

Women sometimes have 2 partners at once, although this is more hidden, to save the feelings of one of the men. 

One film that made an impression on me is called Pleasantville, with Toby Maguire. It’s a film about an American telly programme where the citizens of 1950s Pleasantville live idealised lives in black and white. Everything is perfect in Pleasantville, orderly and neighbourly, but grey. But when passion comes along the citizens change into pink-coloured people. The mother of the perfect TV family is deeply ashamed that she has turned coloured because of her secret passion for the artistic man who owns the town Diner . Her son (Toby Maguire) helps her to cover her face in grey make up until she looks “normal” again. But the Diner man shows her a painting that makes her cry, and because of the tears he sees that her face is pink under the make-up, and she turns her face away in shame. But he says “That’s beautiful” and he helps her to take all the make up off again. He celebrates her by painting her in lovely bright pinks and blues and making love, and of course he turns coloured himself.

Many aspects of life change in Pleasantville; there is violence because the people are afraid of the fact that people can change. And the message of the film seems to be that life is not nice or tidy and it’s certainly not perfect, but it is dangerous and difficult and beautiful, and we have to deal with that.

In the film the 'mum' character leaves her dull husband because she loves the other man. But the husband  is heart-broken, because he loves her very much in his own way, and she too loves him in a way. So the three of them sit down together and try to work something out. Maybe they can find a way to share the perfect wife. After all, laws and traditions only work as far as they work. Sometimes we need to find a more imaginative solution, and what is really interesting is that people seem to have done so, perhaps always, in their underhand, ad hoc way, although I really know back as far as Edwardian England, and what went on then was truly revolutionary.

post script: Vanessa Bell did not tell her daughter that her father was Duncan Grant, allowing her to believe that she was Clive Bell's child until she was 18, which was, of course, a mistake. Honesty has to go all the way, and must start with the children.