Rufus May - When the Truth is Tricky

 

So, I'm in a phone box in the south of France. I'm phoning Professor Mary Boyle. She's head of the clinical psychology doctorate at the University of East London, where I've been studying for three years. I passed all the course and the placements. She's quite an intimidating woman. She's somebody I respect greatly. She's written a book called Schizophrenia: A Scientific Delusion? Really challenging the idea that we can know anything scientific about people's intense confusion and we need to look in a lot more creative way at these experiences. 

 

The phone rings. She answers. She doesn't suffer fools gladly, so I'm a little bit scared. “Hello, Mary,” I say. “Hello, Rufus,” she says. “Hello, I was wondering if there was a student who had mental health problems in the past, but when he got to the course, he had not mentioned it when he started the course. I know it's a dismissal offense not to mention it on the Occupational Health form, but he just thought he might get discriminated against, so he kept quiet about it. And then, he wanted to be more honest. Now, he's close to qualification.” 

 

She said, “Rufus, are you talking about yourself?” I said, “Oh, yes, Mary, I am.” She said, “Well, it shouldn't be a problem.” She said, “So, what was the mental health problem?” I said, “Well, they gave me a diagnosis of schizophrenia.” “Oh dear,” she said. I was thinking, “Mary, think of your book. [audience laughter] It's a delusion.” I said to her, “Look, I had some problems when I was 18. I haven't taken medication since the age of 19. I really want to train as a psychologist. I don't have to keep this secret anymore.” She said, “Rufus, you really shouldn't have lied.” I said, “Well, Mary, I'm not sure I would have got to where I am today if I hadn't lied.” 

 

One of my more sanctimonious moments. [audience laughter] She said, “Well, I want to support you, we want to support you, but we're going to have to take this further.” So, they spoke to the Occupational Health Department. And the Occupational Health Department said, “Well, what do you think? Do you think he's worth standing by?” And they said, “Yes, we do.” And they said, “Well, we'll have to talk to his GP.” So, they wrote to my GP. My GP wrote a report saying that at the age of 18, I'd had a nervous breakdown related to family, related to stress and it had psychotic features. 

 

I thought, oh, that sounds good. That sounds a lot better than schizophrenia. I wish they'd have told me that at the time. [audience laughter] What they told me at the time was that I'd have to take medication for the rest of my life, that I had this lifelong illness and that I needed to lower my expectations of what I could achieve. I was a bit rebellious, so I didn't believe them. I got through, I had a clean slate, I could now be open. Mary and the team supported me. I qualified, and I got a job in East London and I wanted to be honest.

 

But I didn't know how to bring that part of me in. I'd hoped in psychology I could bring it in as a form of wisdom, but there never seemed a place for it. Personal experience just didn't seem to fit in there. A year later, there was a conference. They really wanted to hear stories of people coming through what's seen as severe mental illness. And so, I wrote and applied to give a talk. They took a risk. They'd never heard of me. 

 

I got to give a talk about my journey and how I worked as a professional. I wanted to bring the two things together, how that I'd experienced in psychiatry, heavy drugs, no talking, a bit of doom and gloom and a bit of occupational therapy, how that had influenced me and what I had found helpful and how I worked with people. Before I gave the talk, it was really important to look like I was sane. [chuckles] So, I wore my best shirt. I did a few press-ups beforehand, a bit of yoga to look serene. [audience laughter] 

 

There was a woman next to me, Sandra Escher. She's like the fairy godmother of the Hearing Voices movement. The Hearing Voices movement is like a network of self-help groups for people who hear voices. She was next to me. I told her it was my first ever talk. She was really nice. As I was giving my talk, there were 150 people there. I was talking about people who'd helped me and inspired me. One of the people I was talking about was my mother. My mother had a brain hemorrhage when I was 11. And together with my dad and family and friends, she'd done lots of exercises. I'd seen her make a real strong comeback from her brain hemorrhage. 

 

I was talking about that, how it inspired me. I paused, and Sandra Escher said, “You're doing really well.” Something inside broke and I just started to cry, which was a disaster. [audience laughter] I wanted to appear sorted. That's how we're trained in clinical psychology, to appear like a sanity consultant. [audience laughter] Not only was I crying, there were sobs. I couldn't speak. I looked to the audience, to my friend for support, and to my horror, she was crying too. [audience laughter] So, I thought, I'm going to have to leave the stage. And I just said, offhand really, “Someone help me out.” 

 

A guy stood up at the back and started clapping. And then, everybody started clapping. I could breathe and the sobs subsided and I could carry on. So, I finished my speech. I felt like I brought these two parts of my life together, the professional and the personal. I felt like I'd spiritually come home. It was valued finally. 

 

[fireworks in the background] 

 

[audience laughter] 

 

[audience applause] 

 

When I got to work after the conference, obviously I kept quiet about this. So, they didn't know. And then, they did know. Some of the professionals, they were uncomfortable. One therapist said to me, “This kind of thing is best left on the therapist's couch.” Somebody else was honest enough to say, “I feel really intimidated by you and I'm sure when people do come out, they are a bit intimidating.” You're suddenly mad and proud. [audience laughter] 

 

got a bit of a reputation and I got a bit of media coverage. People knew about this two parts of my life, often there was some coverage of that. A few years later, I was working in Yorkshire. A junior doctor came to see me. Her name was Ruth. She just wanted to meet someone, another health professional, who also had mental health problems and how do you manage that. We had a chat. And then, a week later she called me up to say she'd been suspended from her medical training, because she'd had a period of depression six months before. She'd been hospitalized for a month and she was horrified. 

 

She was so passionate about becoming a doctor. And then, a week later she phoned me up again and said, “I've started hearing a voice and the voice is telling me to kill myself.” And I said, “We better meet.” I'd been working a lot with self-help groups around hearing voices. A few days later, I had a dream. I knew about a bomb being put in a grocery store and I didn't say anything about it and then the bomb went off. I woke up feeling the most immense amount of guilt. I interpreted that dream. There might be other ways to interpret that dream, but I interpreted it as if I didn't reach out to Ruth, I was going to lose her. There's a high suicide rate amongst junior doctors anyway, and she was under tremendous pressure.

 

She knew that if she told her doctors she heard voices, she'd definitely lose her career. She was too junior to get the support she needed. So, I agreed to confidentially support her to learn how to manage the experience. We tried lots of things. She did many different approaches, including self-help groups, using nature, using exercise. One of the things we did was I talked with her voice. I'd only just learned this technique. 

 

One of the tough things about voice hearing is no one else knows what you're going through. But this technique, we ask somebody to sit in a different chair and be a spokesperson for the voice. Now, I'm a bit more skilled in these dialogues and I would ask, “What pain are you holding onto that makes you so angry? Is there anything we can do to help you?”

 

I didn't know how to do that stuff then. We didn't try to get rid of him. We tried to strengthen Ruth so she could get on with her life. She managed to make compromises with him so she could. She got back onto her training. You can see voices as often carrying painful experiences, parts of people carrying terrifying experiences that have been shut away. We need to help people, both set boundaries with them, but also help those parts come to some peace. So, I guess I just wanted to share those ways to speak our truth and face our demons.