Following up from my last post that featured political causation ideas, this post features examples of some spiritual causation ideas that I frequently use to understand some of my current message experiences. These  last two posts are from my second to last chapter which documents psychological, trauma, and scientific causation explanations in addition to the political and spiritual explanations I am including. I assert in the chapter my belief that the more causation understandings that a message receiver has at their disposal, the more they are able to establish or maintain the flexibility that is required to break out of a message crisis or “psychosis” episode. As I describe below, key to being able to break out of an episode is a willingness to leave causation up to god, and choose the causation explanation that enables you to function with the least amount of distress.

Ultimately there are more causation arguments than I could possibly identify and the more we listen and learn to new explanations for unique individuals, I’d argue the better off we will be.

Detailed Spiritual Causation Examples:

Messages come from god, the devil, angels, demons, aliens, ghosts or what we in the west call supernatural experiences.

            The belief that messages represent a break through to a spiritual world is often thought to be delusional, but for many others (and I) who have experienced it, contend that this can be a valid interpretation that warrants real consideration. This contention is a hard one for many. In other epochs some people believe that message receivers are possessed by the devil and persecuted them accordingly. Additionally, if the message receiver is hostile toward you and calling you a mafia leader when you don’t see yourself that way, being told that that person is in contact with spirits, has discernment of spirit, or a keen ability to interpret right and wrong might not fly. So often there is a tendency to use words like spiritually preoccupied, religious delusions, or in mania when these kinds of contentions are made. But having gone through such experiences many of us are ardent that they can make sense, but that the subject needs to be trained or supported with these kinds of break through experiences.

Let me say to the reader that when I was buried in the political, secret society causation ideology, the idea that there was more to what I was experiencing than just mafia oppression was very helpful. When I started to think that maybe god was communicating with me, I went through a profound change in thinking and experience. Not only did it make me feel less exploited and victimized, I also started to think that a good higher power might offer me hope for the future. Yes, I did think I was Jesus and yes I was even more concerned that I would be imprisoned and die a torturous death, but the shift in thinking was a huge relief and a step towards recovery. And yes, I am now much more influenced by the role of spirituality in our world.

In fact, once out of crisis, I have learned to use this explanation to explain how some of my messages come true. Now a message is a message and I have to put it on the back burner to see if it is a spiritual message, a mafia message, a traumatic trigger, just a dream-like mental reference, or a result of neurotransmitter imbalance. In fact there are many other kinds of explanations possible and I let time tell. I have learned to see the losses and trauma I have endured as necessary to become a reasonable and effective therapist. Just like Job, I had my possessions returned to me, and now I am working with purpose to help others learn how to understand what they experience in a spiritual manner. Indeed, in groups that I run religious texts and wisdom are often brought up and used to guide people into a healing alternative. Old stories from ancient times also are full of things like voices and other messages and can be a truly powerful resource.

Messages are current dilemmas that are happening elsewhere in the world that spiritual connection is helping the message receiver tap into for a reason.

            Having had the opportunity over the past nine years to normalize divergent views, uncover theories, and crack open special message experiences, I do believe that not only myself but other message receivers learn about realities that are real.  Many of us bring the realities of atrocity, genocide, and colonization into our lives and here I ask the reader if there is a reason for this. Though different message receivers have different kinds of experience, themes clearly reflect real wars at our doors. Perhaps, we are connected to others who are suffering or who have suffered in past epochs through spiritual connection.

Perhaps when we hear our deceased loved ones voices or see their vision in dreams or in front of us we really are tapping into something important. Perhaps there is a real spiritual world that is not imagined that message receivers can tap into. Perhaps, the problems that arise from spiritual connection are the result of modern world persecution and efforts to silence the whistle blower. Perhaps the message receiver just can’t negotiate and make sense of without guidance and community and what they are given instead is not all that helpful.

I personally feel that some of my message experiences give me truth from a higher power, but that I get these mixed up with messages that come from negative experience that negative spirits and histories of abuse and exploitation are responsible for. I have had to learn that I cannot tell the difference and that I need to be passive and play along and let my higher powers reveal to me reality in their time. A lot of time humans don’t always understand the complexity of right from wrong and the people who do the most good spend a lot of time trying to be good but admitting it when they make mistakes. The more I listen to message receivers quoting the Bible, the Koran, and Buddhist teachings, the more faith I have that I am not entitled to or in possession of the truth; but that with guidance and respect for others and time, that god may take care of me if I do my best.

Perhaps having a place to process these kind of experiences as spiritual experience can help message receivers make better decisions in our day to day life to live the way god wants us to. Perhaps going back to society with our discoveries and re-establishing a relationship can help guide society in a more godly direction. This is hard to do when the powerful medicalization of these experiences and discriminatory laws discredit us.

Messages are there to test your ability to be good and evil and are there to lead you to lead others. 

            The above supposition is an extension of spiritual thought and a return to traditions of some indigenous societies and some cultures that are less focused on power, dominance and exploitation. I am not on board with what I believe to be a Eurocentric view that Finland is paving the way for a reintegration of a spiritual and whole community. I believe that many cultures that aren’t so corrupted do just as good a job of this unbeknownst to Eurocentric thinkers. If historically we were the Shaman, perhaps if we empower ourselves as a culture we can help contribute and improve the world.  Maybe we can learn truths from each other that can restore the role of spirituality in peoples’ lives. Maybe if we meet others who have been able to survive in a good way we can be more faithful in our spiritual endeavors and more righteous.

The post Special Messages Excerpt: Self-Exploration through Causation2 appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

This excerpt is going to operate with the contention that there are five causes of “psychosis”: political, psychological, scientific, trauma, and spiritual. In the chapter I have written, I extensively review differing types of causal arguments that can arise within each causation style. Clearly in the chapter, there is some cross over as science mixes with trauma and politics etcetera. In the chapter, I post ideas that I clearly disagree with and that are not for me. I do so because I have nine years of experience listening to the causal arguments of other people and I respect that other causal arguments may be true for other people. Indeed help comes in different forms for different people. In the chapter, the intention is that as the reader reads through these causation examples, they may relate to some new causal explanation they haven’t thought of. I believe that increasing the number of causal arguments that you have gives you more power to be resilient and flexible when you face threatening or distressing messages as you go through life.

But here, in the excerpt below, I am just going to share three political causation ideas I have heard over the years. This is the theory style that I was most stuck on when I was in crisis. Though thinking this way was toxic for me at the time, in recovery I can reflect on ways that some of my special messages were in fact political in nature. I personally was able to dig myself out of crisis when I shifted to the spiritual causation theory style, a style that causes some to get stuck and marginalized. In the chapter, I legitimize these two causation theories in addition to thoroughly exploring the other legitimate theory styles, psychological, trauma, and scientific.

Detailed Political Causation Examples:

Messages are caused by secret societies who may interact with or utilize governmental technology in order to silence and marginalize the message receiver in terms of their ability to affect politics.

Over the years I have worked with message receivers, I have met many individuals who fit a profile that I myself am familiar with. While this may not fit the mainstream conceptualization of mental illness, there are many individuals who function or have not been able to overcome being political prisoners within the system. Indeed, the narrative that the mental health system functions as a means of social control that silences whistle-blowers who act brazen in standing up to power may sound foreign. This not only applies to squares, but also substance abusers who are attempting to get out of a gang, or professional who are trying to escape an abusive work group (like Edward Snowden.) Hence, special messages mirrors real social processes even a collective unconscious of a society that is poorly understood by those insulated by the mainstream.

It may seem irrational that in the land of the free that malicious power might be so abused. Indeed if an observer were to look at an elder in a psychiatric ward who will not take care of himself, objecting to the treatment and the oppression at the board and care by calling the FBI and talking in code to them, paranoia may seem operant. However, as someone who has gotten to know some of those peoples’ stories, and as a person who has one to tell myself, I would like to argue that protesting against the wrong people can result in this scenario, for real.

First, consider psychiatrist David Rosenhan’s experiment as depicted by Adam Curtis in, “The Trap Part 1.” This was a social experiment conducted in the late seventies in which eight subjects without mental health conditions presented at west coast American hospitals. Each of the eight participating subjects was instructed to tell one lie, that they heard an innocuous voice saying “thud” in their ears. Every subject in the experiment had endured horrifying and traumatic experiences and came out with severe diagnoses: seven with paranoid schizophrenia; and one with bipolar. Subjects found they had to lie to get out of the institutions. When the results of this study were published one of the offending institutions asked for a replay. Rosenhan then told that one institution he was going to send an undisclosed number of individuals back into the institution, but then sent no one. The institution then released forty-one individuals who they identified as subject of the experiment only to learn that Rosenhan had tricked them.

Consider that subjection to such a system of punishment is a great was to get to political dissidents when prison isn’t as much of an option due to legal complications. Being emotionally tortured in incarcerated institutions cause individuals to lie in order to get themselves free. It then is easy apply counterintelligence to keep someone marginalized.

I, for example, once admitted during my incarceration that I used heroin and crack, but not cannabis. I was trying to see if I could get staff and peers to stop harassing me. Being that I thought everyone knew I was incarcerated because my parents were mafia, I truly believed the admission might help me get out of the institution.

While I still have a number of unanswered questions: a year later, the apartment that I managed to set up while I worked twelve hour days at minimum wage was ransacked on one occasion as though there was a police search. A man at the library I kept on running into on multiple occasions during those days I was looking for a better job, told me he worked for the CIA, for the multinational corporations. This man did demonstrate to me that he had good hacking skills. He also supported me by suggesting I get better computer skills because employers would want me to have them.

Before my incarceration I got to the point where I was openly blowing the whistle on a public housing authority that served vulnerable individuals with number of social issues including substance abuse, prostitution, and drug trafficking. From my perspective, I was the only member on the team who was not complicit with the drug dealing and crime in the building. That made me a very likely target to catch a case. And that’s what happened. I was easy to isolate and because I had poor social support.

Indeed, there are many individuals who live in such circumstances without jobs who are surrounded by criminal and law enforcement secret societies who are against illegal crime and thought to be square. There are likewise angry substance abusers who are willing to snitch once they get clean. Broadening the scenario, there are many institutions that have secret societies built into them: educational, mental health, work sites. Those who are not complicit with the rules or are overly complicit are likely to get targeted. Universally square people are more likely to get a crime pinned on them or get targeted, discredited, slandered or bullied into gang membership. There is a lot of secondary gain that society gets by discrediting and alienating individuals who are complaining about broken laws. For those individuals who are not used to the streets, consider what happens in work place politics. Backstabbers and those who make waves, even in an accountable environment, are more likely to get cut. If however, they are organized, motivated, and hard to catch, those people may get moved up into management. Generally people have to accept that not all rules are going to be followed one hundred percent of the time. But break too many and there might be problems as well.

Like the subjects that were in the Rosenhan experiment many protesters and other contrarian types catch a mental health case and receive treatments that make them vulnerable for more punishment and so they lose their power to testify.

While not all messages that are received are likely to be caused by instruments of social control, it is very possible that secret societies and various branches of the government do become involved with some persons of interest. Quantico does have a behavior sciences division. With the Patriot Act medical records may be accessed by law enforcement during relevant or irrelevant investigations. This kind of reality does not always apply but indeed may apply in more cases than the mainstream realizes. In California, 5150s may well show up in a police records. Indeed, some people get started out in this manner and become increasingly oppressed as time goes on, developing more messages about social control than are really there. However, mix up social control messages with messages that come from other causal factors, like stigma, and a person who has a beef with law enforcement or at least with some real secret societies, like the mafia, can be tormented for years.

Messages come from family systems in which economic survival and good social standing, sometimes reinforce scapegoating requiring that everyone be open to change.

During the era of family systems, there was a lot of work done on how to work with families to prevent scapegoating, which is in my mind a form of political abuse. Early preoccupation with the double-bind considered the suffering of message receivers who get put into situations in which they can’t act in any manner without facing negative abuse from the family. In fact, this predicament of the message receiver was expanded to include other conditions. While many theories sprung up, in particular, Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory was built particularly from working with Midwestern individuals who carried a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Bowen, using insight and rational arguments, and long term consultation was focused on the ability of an individual to differentiate from their family of origin. He taught therapists to track issues of differentiation through the generations. Bowen advocated for therapists to triangulate themselves into the system in a protective manner addressing conflict and problems to help increase the level of differentiation and decrease the tendency to scapegoat the identified patient. In general, this and other family systems theories postulated that family homeostasis requires that successful family members to dominate and bully the scapegoat who develops mental problems as a result to keep the rest of the family functioning. Thus, family dynamics become toxic to the message receiver. It is arguable that split off negative sides of the family’s trauma get attributed to the message receiver and that this may continue to affect a message receiver whether or not they maintain contact with their family.

At times, I have found myself contemplating these kinds of issues from a slightly different angle. Could it be that that some people don’t have the attributes that a family that is particularly insulated by their social role, demands. In other words, the family has particular attributes they promote to maintain themselves economically and socially. Then, those who don’t fit the family mold may get persecuted. For example, I grew up in a private school academic family in which both parents were teachers and I turned out different partly because I was a whistleblower and because I had learning disabilities and poor social skills. Another person from a different background may require other attributes in order to be financially sustaining. Consider insulated families of people I’ve worked with who come from a different backgrounds. Let’s say I like them had grown up in a military family or a mechanics family, or a family that sustained itself through sex work, or in a motorcycle gang. Perhaps those modes of work weren’t a good fit. Perhaps some of my clients found themselves in a similar situation that I found myself in; particularly if they, like me, didn’t have good social skills to recreate themselves in a new way. Perhaps in route to a different type of job, ex-communication happened leaving them unable to adapt to a different role. Is it possible then they would fail to differentiate or develop needed skills likewise prompting a flight into messages. Can it be as easy as just being born a little bit different and facing excommunication without having a mentor? Could the politics of that kind of situation be enough stress and pressure to cause a flight to messages in some situations? Clearly in many situations there might be love and flexibility to help a person overcome these circumstances, but not always. It may well depend on how encapsulated the family is in their social world. As such politics of culture might contribute to vulnerability.

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Messages happen to unprotected people when they are under distress from use of street drugs and connection to black market realities.

I believe that it warrants mentioning that the slew of individuals who get messages due to the use of street drugs may fit in to political causation, in addition to the other causation theories, (psychological, trauma, spiritual and scientific.) I believe it warrants our attention if there are ten psychotic disorders in the DSM that cause message crisis. Consider that people who lose their social protections may become treated like dissidents if they aren’t in the know, or blessed with social support. From meth to molly to smack to bath salts to tryptamine —even conventional use of alcohol, cannabis, and crack (which is increasingly mixed with meth)—drugs may help induce message experiences for many individuals. Sure it’s just as possible that some brains under the stress and strain of the abuse that drugs are supposed to cause fall into messages (trauma causation.)  It’s also clearly arguable that that chemical processes trigger message experiences (scientific causation.) Indeed it’s even arguable that street drugs as causation crosses the psychological and spiritual domains as followers of Timothy Leary would point out. But I am just mentioning this here in the event that unsupported individuals become political dissidents when they aren’t protected by gangs or money or livelihood. I do this here because this is my favorite domain. Maybe the government dosed me repeatedly with tryptamine mickies just because I was named after Timothy Leary, just as I thought.

The post Special Messages Excerpt: Self-Exploration through Causation appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

Philosophy of Reality that Promotes Anti-Stigma Cognition:

In order to sell the good parts of cognitive therapy as a tool for social rehabilitation, I have had to create an underlying philosophy about what reality is. This is a model that can come up at various points in individual and group therapy as a means of motivating a message receiver toward using the material world to fact check their spiritual insights.

In this model, I consider reality to be a dialectic between the spiritual message world and the material modern world. The spiritual message world involves all the message experiences that I took pains to identify in chapter four and throughout the text. In short, this includes things like ESP (i.e. reading minds,) hallucinations (i.e. hearing voices) and intuited reality discerned through things like coded linguistic coincidence and loosely associated coded symbols that inhabit a real or imagined world. The spiritual message world is very much in the subjective perspective of an individual consciousness.

In contrast the material modern world (or profane reality) consists of the reality that is shared in the mainstream social world that is based on scientifically arrived at concepts that exist in the collective consciousness of an established culture and rooted in observation of the social world that is inhabited. Ultimately, message receivers are living entirely in the message world and need to increase their focus and motivation to strike a balance between these two entities.

Ultimately, as the intellectual community has learned over time, scientific paradigms get created and occupy the social mainstream for decades and centuries until a scientific figure discovers something that changes that paradigm. And so Europe stops thinking the world is flat in 1492, and in the 1800s Darwin challenges literal interpretation of the creation notion in the Bible, and sometime in the future enough power and money will effectively topple the Western psychiatric establishment and the DSM will be replaced with science that better depicts the interplay between trauma and neuro-divergence.

The dialectic of these two worlds is not all that different from Marsha Lineman’s dialectic between the rational and emotional mind. I consider the constructs to be similar but defined for a slightly different ethos of people. Much as it is with Marsha Linehan’s dialectical behavioral therapy, I postulate that a person’s sharpest perspective of reality comes when there is overlap between the spiritual message world and the profane material world. I believe that this is a simple lesson that can inspire the message receiver to avoid the all or nothing trap when it comes to receiving special messages. Message receivers need to pay attention to the information they receive from special messages but they need to be mindful of it and learn to fact check it against the profane material world. They need to pretend and go along with the profane concepts and fact check. In some cases, they may need to decrease stigma that is due to false mainstream concepts (particularly when it comes to themselves) and plan to reshape the paradigm so they can be permitted to play significant roles that fit them in society. In my experience, these concepts can be very easily taught to message receivers in a manner that resonates and helps them feel both understood and motivated to use the tool of anti-stigma cognitions.

I want to spend some time looking at the ramifications of this model. Essentially, what this philosophy suggests is that there is a part of the message world that is real, and a part of the material world that is not. This may be challenging for some to accept so I want to further explore each world so that my generalizations about types of reality can be further discerned.

Truth in the Spiritual Message World:

Yes, I have lived with messages long enough to believe that a part of the message world can offer a valuable view of the way the world is put together. Being in message crisis I learned truths about the way technology mixes with social control and sustains propaganda. Thanks to people like Edward Snowden and criminalized individuals associated with Wiki leaks who have devoted their lives to letting the public know more about what is really happening, I have had it confirmed that many of the divergent views I had during my message crisis were real.

As a result, I am no longer a protester and a whistle blower and I thoroughly understand the criminal networks of the American black market along with the need for it. I see now that I have learned a lot about social oppression, wars and genocide by making meaning of the world I have experienced in ways that are very valuable. I have learned that intuitive material can give me premonitions on some occasions, but that if I overly rely on it I will get burned and become emotionally distraught in ways I do not have to be. In other words, I get confused about intuitive reality and anxious projections.

In observing private stories of other individuals who navigate message crisis over the last ten years, I have learned that similar themes about social control, power, corruption, and spiritual reality come up for many message receivers. People with different values, political ideologies, access to resources, or and allegiances develop different takes and play different roles in the narratives of their divergent views. Perhaps, instead of the mafia, the enemies are aliens or demons, but the world operates in a similar manner and takes into consideration wide historical perspectives. Not everyone receives truth that might be best explained by spiritual connection. Likewise, not everyone faces evil that is tormenting and abusive. However, by connecting to the right facts in the material world a message receiver can better understand and endure what they are going through. Maybe they might be living their lives like they are in another time period or a war zone, but unleashing their stories and applying them to the profane material world can be a helpful activity. Indeed a savvy helper in a trusting relationship can do this in a way that promotes alternate meanings and functional flexible theories about message causation.

A story I often use that demonstrates this is my old fixation with California license plates. In my message crisis, I believed them be used to incorrectly define people as corrupt enemies of the state or as powerful agents within the state. To explain: I believed that associations I made to the numbers and letters helped me understand where the state was coming from with regard to people. Many of the number association were reinforced by the numbers of the specialty sandwiches I worked with in the Italian Deli.

Ten years later, I came across a newspaper article that disclosed that some license plates actually do code messages in them based on government code . . .  in Cuba. So I learned that experience did have reality in it. I was just a few countries off! Additionally, I did learn in a message group once that the chef who made up the sandwich specialties really was a local Italian kingpin. Of course, I don’t know for sure if that’s true, but it doesn’t matter to me anymore.

Lies in the Profane Material World:

Yes, part of the material collective ethos of a society is based on lies and human exploitation. Extremely, complicated science is based on ever-shifting paradigms that are found to be inaccurate and that can produce facts that can lead to magnificent oppression. Indeed, facts can be attained based on faulty science that have inherit concepts of superiority attached. I am going to explore just one aspect of this, psychological testing.

For example, consider the way psychological testing from IQ, to the Thematic Apperception Test, to the Rorschach might get misused. Considers ways they might not only get used to understand and help, but also to justify institutionalization and political marginalization. Consider that they are not always culturally competent. Consider they are a snapshot of a person at a given time of crisis that get reviewed repeatedly. Consider that altered states change that people who are incredibly hurt heal, that we do not publish psychological tests to understand or select our leaders, but to direct those who are downtrodden through our social institutions. Consider that they do not account for racial, class or gender tensions between the tester and the subject. Consider how law enforcement can use them to solve crimes. Mix those tests with knowledge attained by the social psychology field and you start to get a different picture. Consider that people most often selected to be psychologists have an elevated p factor, p standing for psychopathology.

There are many ways pseudoscience in American society has functioned to justify differing types of atrocity and justify a prison system that is filled with people of color. Whole industries are made illegal and as a result violence is taught and perpetuated. And so people are ranked and educated so as to spend their life in institutions regardless of significant cultural issues, people like Sylvester Stallone. Stallone attended an expensive special education school in Philadelphia. I worked at a similar institution for a year and can imagine some of what he might have been subjected to. I was taught that some of those with conduct disorders respond best to negative reinforcement. Students were on a negative reinforcement point system because that’s what psychology suggests works best. Often they seemed to respond better to physical restraints wielded with love by individuals who were paid so poorly that they had to engage in illegal activity to survive.

I personally believe Stallone had to create an ingenious manner to stay out of prison and stay free. And so Rocky was created, great story, and eventually used to promote hatred against the cold war Soviet Union.

Indeed there are many ways that inherently false beliefs that are promoted and held to maintain social order. Rhetoric and propaganda hide reality and irrationally connect people in ways that encourage strife, conflict, and politics. Sure notions of good and bad power exist, but some people are clearly silenced bagged and tagged sold up the river in ways that many people believe is justified. The words of some are amplified, and of others are irrationally silenced. Institutional bullying leads to swaths of stigma and irrational reality.

Not all science and knowledge about nature and the material world is false. Much of the information that we know in the modern world is trustworthy in some contexts. Some may be sanctioned by god and some may be driven by human corruption to increase inhuman, irrational oppression. In other words, the information age that ignores the experience of the message receivers who fill our churches and mental health wards might need some spiritual guidance.

Using the Philosophy of Reality in Modern Social Rehabilitation Efforts:

Think of it this way: classically, message receivers become overly focused on the spiritual, message world so much that they break away from the profane material world entirely. In order to motivate message receivers to increase their focus on the profane material world, I argue that when the spiritual message world functions in unison with the profane material world that is when a body is most in reality. I find that many message receivers are particularly motivated by truth. Thus, I argue that when the message receiver can use rationality and apply themselves and it to the profane material world they can bring the two worlds into balance and have a more rational, real experience. Ultimately, they could experience a reality that might make them less hurt, angry, fearful, or mad.

Thus, cognitive therapy, or anti-stigma cognitions may need to be leaned on to promote some degree of social rehabilitation. It is clearly arguable that knowing the scientific paradigms that are out there in the mainstream is an important thing to understand and know.  Message receivers may even need to subjugate themselves to them for extended periods of time. Operating like a drone and subjecting themselves to these paradigms might in fact be an okay thing to do for a while to sustain an entry-level position in a society or a mental health clinic. This may require a very intense period where anti-stigma cognitions need to be amplified and positive affirmations about the message receiver’s real skills and gifts may need to be mantras. While having support can clearly be very helpful, ongoing acts of stigma and subjugation are likely to persist. There needs to be a sense that a message receiver is competent with mainstream scientific paradigms before they are safe using their messages to their advantage. And a message receiver needs to have an ability to know what messages they have fit into the mainstream paradigm. I would go so far as to argue that message receivers may be able to break some of the current paradigm maintained by the well-funded medical establishment that is responsible on a wide scale for the subjugation of message experiences. Indeed, I hope to help some of us do this!

This is why I feel many solid and withstanding indigenous societies used message receiving shaman with spiritual abilities to improve society. Many humans crave rational order and shaping society so that it follows spiritual, message principles is a good way to promote rationality and justice for all. For modern society, in which subjugation is maintained through superpowers, finding ways to include shaman and message receivers may be an important way promote sustainability on this earth. Indeed, it is arguable that the religious texts and narratives of the world’s major religions are aimed at helping large super-powered states out in this manner through the epochs. I believe it can work when they are not turned against each other in violent crusades based on extremist rhetoric, corrupt propaganda, and the promulgation of superpower secrets that preempt violent conflicts.

The post Excerpt from Special Messages Book, Chapter Seventeen, Anti-Stigma Cognition for Social Rehabilitation appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

Jargonizing the Stigma Concept:

Stigma is a mysterious external process that becomes internal that all message receivers face. Though stigma works in many different ways, I think it is particularly astounding and deceptive that it is not considered part of the definition of all forms of schizophrenia disorders. In my mind including it in the definition is a way of acknowledging and respecting that part of the negative outcome for those who suffer is the way society and our culture defines and treats the phenomenon of special messages. Acknowledging the role of stigma suggests that the outcomes of people becoming resigned to isolate, to sit and smoke all day in a board and care setting, is not only the result of their internal choice or abilities but the systemic interplay of individuals and the community that surrounds them.

For example, having myself transitioned from being treated like a hard-working, conscientious social worker who inspired social change, to a mental patient who needed to be locked on a ward for my own safety, I know that the power of this concept first hand. The transformation was profound! Suddenly my strengths were no longer defined by me. As I walked in circles on the floor to maintain my need for exercise, the only strength my psychiatric nurse gave me was that my family, in spite of all the hurt that I had experienced over the past fifteen years, was good family support. Two years later stigma still dogged me as a deli worker who worked under the constant threat of being fired. Now, fifteen years later, in spite of the fact that that I have a house, a wife, and a job where I am appreciated, I still battle with a sense of being slandered and rejected while my work remains unacknowledged. While I have not let stigma ruin me, I work with people who are extremely undervalued who are fighting the same demon. I write notes that diminish their efforts so the organization I work for can get paid.

In jargonizing this construct I want to consider that stigma starts in the message receivers’ mind long before the special message and divergent view constructs.  Stigma starts with a subjective perspective or preconceived notion of what words like: “crazy,” “mad,”  “psychosis,” or “schizophrenia” means. It needs to be remembered that the minute one enters into a message crisis unconscious stigma pounds and punishes.

Early impressions are the foundation around which stigma takes root. For me, it was the librarian in my third grade who first introduced me to the concept of “schizophrenia” in a pamphlet. I have come to best see those early impressions as lies regarding incurable brain disorder that is very rare. At the time subsequent interfacing did a lot to diminish my sense of humanity for those who suffer with this. It was somehow okay to throw them away because there was nothing that could be done. Oh, for sure it was sad, kind of like when someone dies in an earthquake.

But having this early impression reinforced persistently through early experiences in hospitals for eating disorders, in Abnormal Psychology text books in college that used misleading twin studies, and as a young professional in the mental health field did a lot to make me feel punished when I received the diagnosis. None of the trauma that I had been through mattered, only that early impression of what the “disease” was.

Early impressions of “psychosis” for those who have parents who struggle from it are going to be very different. Targeted abuse from symptoms or the outside world may result in innocent suffering and form a starkly different impression. Likewise, individuals who grow up in rural, urban, or differently zoned areas than I, where mentally ill people are housed or warehoused, are likely to develop very differing impressions of mental health in very different sets of circumstances. They may not be so book focused.  They may have more or less humanity in them. Nevertheless, I would argue that early impressions start a process of hurt and misunderstanding in many individuals’ experience.

Through this and the next chapter, I will approach stigma as though it is potentially false notions of dominance that distort the rational world and prevent the individual from using their strengths in a meaningful manner.

It’s arguable that stigma comes from the same social processes initiated by the formation of the “state” that empower some to dominate others. Social order of all sorts depends on distorted vision: how else do we all accept the fact that slaving peasants in Uganda make brand name shoes for pennies an hour, while famous endorsers who make them cool, make millions per a few seconds.  It is the justification of illogical, unreal, oppressive and perhaps even selfish reality. For people high up in the social order, stigma serves a real purpose. It is real and many would argue part of reality. But for the people in hacienda camps, their beauty and strengths might wither and disappear and that is not real. At least we could thank and honor them for allowing us to be where we are at. But in reality, the haves are the ones who hate the have-nots because of stigma.

Meanwhile, on a more personal level, for the individual cast out of their community, I believe stigma universally erodes the individuals’ genuine strengths and mandates unfair, submissive roles that are culturally-defined and that can in some cases erode the potential for self-actualization.  Here I am speaking directly about individuals in the mental health system, the industry that exacerbates wounds and defines messages in ways that barely makes sense: amplifying the myth of eugenics and denying the roles of trauma and spirituality. As I will review in chapter eighteen on mad diversity, suddenly there are dominant hereditary eugenic beliefs and myths that justify internment camp conditions, and message receivers feel controlled like a marionette by massive coils of knotted message experience and stigma shaken by corrupted powers above.

Oddly, in institutions it is often people with heightened views of stigma that message receivers have to be in relationship with to get out; they become obliged to utilize elementary social skills and R+R tasks to make friends with, rather than overthrow the oppressor; social skills that may under-estimate their true abilities that may be committed just shine on with ultimate plans to escape. Indeed sometimes the only way to escape from bondage is to take denial (the Nile) down-stream in fake-it-till-you-make-it style.  If the message receiver does not utilize denial and social skills they run the risk of staying stuck or traveling up the river into permanent warehousing.

Stigma Driving the Double Bind and Brain Damage:

Stigma and social sanctions work together in a way that makes it impossible for a message receiver to act without facing some form of punishment.  In my training, I learned that this concept was coined by anthropologist Gregory Bateson as being a “double bind.” I believe that double bind circumstances become inherent in institutions, families, and just about any social group in which power is operant. Even well run, non-punitive message groups run the risk of the “double bind” when they are backed by a system of punishment. In spite of my best efforts, I have seen this happen to individuals and bear responsibility for that even when I have done what I can to prevent it.

Hence, I am going to take a minute to explain how the “double bind” fits into the special message definitions. Recall how special messages stir up emotions that cause the message receiver to sleuth, creating streams of divergent views that soothe. In this process, the message receiver can: 1) rationally test out the divergent views sleuthing for more evidence; 2) give in and act as though the divergent views are true, committing retaliation reactions; or 3) distract from the emotion by completing R+R tasks. The first two options clearly lead to punishment. First, sleuthing will increase the special message phenomenon (which can be traumatic in many cases) until the message receiver reacts and reacts stronger. Second, retaliation reactions inevitably lead to social punishment unless the message process is understood and allowances are made. In both cases stigma further advances and exacerbates social sanctions. But with R+R tasks there is a way out! This I have argued.

But here I want to consider the way that stigma inherently can interrupt this option. If stigma is an inaccurate definition of the problem that steals identity, the able bodied message receiver does what they can to complete R+R tasks for hours, years, or in many cases decades. However, stigma functions to undermine the acknowledgement of such success. Stigma says there is still a process that is going on that impacts and gets in the way. Stigma sniffs out this process, shines a light on it, and confronts it. Stigma wants the message receiver to stop denying that they are different. It seeks to undermine characteristics of the success. It seeks to demonstrate that if the special messages weren’t present, the work could be even better. Stigma wants the message receiver to pay more attention to the problem in order to eradicate it. Stigma actually believes that there is something wrong with the message receiver, not different. Stigma will use the first opportunity to criticize and diminish the message experience.

Think about it! The first thing message receivers are taught when they commit retaliation reactions is that they will have to be put in a hospital and have help forced on them until they settle down. They are put in a holding setting where they may be more limited in terms of R+R tasks they can complete. Then slowly, they are taught that when they behave better, or at least pass through the holding period that they can have R+R tasks back in very basic and limited manners.

I would argue that this process discourages R+R tasks and social relationships in severe manners. Unless a message receiver is exceedingly well, it is upsetting to see their abilities talked to like they don’t exist. A message receiver needs to be able to dummy-down and not let the ridiculous nature of what is going on impact their sense of self.  They cannot do this if they are told this is treatment.  In my opinion, they may be able to do this if they are taught that it is punishment.

Message receiver’s need to know about the “double bind” and choose to work with the staff who are committed to eradicate it.

Stigma as a Multifaceted Mechanism of Oppression:

In giving stigma a clear role in the message process, it is so important to acknowledge that stigma about “psychosis” is only a part of a much larger picture. Message receivers are only a part of the much wider inhumane human process. I’d consider any reality that is hidden in the history books, any genocide, in which graphic and violent details that the mainstream conspires to hide to be a potential origin. Classified documents and other undocumented conspiracies, are examples. But I’d also argue that behind any legitimized genocide, or institutionalization process, there are many means of subtle social oppression; with each, stigma against groups of people is legitimized.

In considering stigmatic mechanisms of oppression, I want to classify two types. First, those second generation mechanisms that get formerly recognized by an intellectual community that seeks to reduce them, but whose work may remain irrelevant to some in the mainstream; factors such as: race, class, gender, veteran status; immigration status, sexual orientation, ableism. Second, first generation mechanisms that are not formerly recognized, in which the oppression is so raw and fresh that it does not get formally observed.  First generation oppressions may be addressed and limited to some extent through law. However, first generation oppressions keep them alive and well. First generation oppressions may be more cloaked and painted as though they are due to weakness of character, but they are all distorted, oppressive mechanisms through which social order is maintained nonetheless. They may be outlawed and blamed on the victims. They are the means of war on the poor. Examples of first generation oppressions are: educationism, gangsterism, legal justicism, creditism, nimbyism, job historyism, nepotism, traumatism, addictsism, mental disorderism, schizophrenificationism, co-occurringism.

While clearly this first and second generation divide is imperfect, the point I like to make is that those people who can get one label with the most first and second generation stereotypes associated with them in the eyes of the mainstream win. Shifts in laws and cultural changes that are happening now may involve moving the second generation issues down to first generation issues. I’d argue that any kind of institutionalization is the result of multiple layers or isms.

In my opinion, the little popularized field of social psychology with studies that prove elements of “the labeling theory” reveals that mainstream opinion can help make a stereotyped reality or oppression more likely to come true. In my admittedly uneducated opinion, social psychology is key to understanding stigma. Thus, according to labeling theory a subject gets a felony and becomes a “criminal” and regardless of their silenced stance on the role of gangsterism or valid sense of morals, they get traumatically pushed into all or nothing criminal behavior because of the box on the employment application.  Additionally a body who has any sort of altered state, becomes a “schizophrenic” and gets treated as though neurotransmitters are disrupted so forcefully that my brain really does swell and need neurotransmitter disruption due to trauma. But if a white psychiatrist has empathy for the schizophrenic they may become bipolarized if they hide what is going on with them. But, if they are black and bipolar, forget it! Even individuals who are bipolarized will suffer the punishment of the schizophrenic. And finally there is the soldier/hero who regardless of their background, level of support at home, or knowledge of covert intelligence or violence and loss they got exposed to, either stays hero or becomes defective and prone to suicide.  In other words the stigma of a word has a lot to do with the way the body and mind respond, the decisions a stigmatized person makes and the outcome of their life and health.

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Nine Social Skills I Developed for Myself:

Though in developing these social skills, I initially took a stab at writing from a universal perspective, I have had enough experience running them by people in groups to recognize that many of these are personal. Mad people are very diverse. As a result, the following are meant to be helpful in helping message receivers consider social skills that they need to penetrate the cultural enclave of their choosing. However, it is a wide world with very distinctive individuals and cultures so message receivers need to be constantly exploring their social skills even if they are neuro-divergent, like me, and struggle to do so.

I, for example, have learned to adapt to a ghetto culture and am somewhat comfortable in these contexts, however, have a difficult time switching so that I can be in mainstream culture without losing my social skills. When I feel excluded or sense gossip and slander, I withdraw and lose my ability to socialize. Thus, my ability and sometimes willingness to overcome deficits varies.

The following are set up to help me survive and overcome hostile environments. I’d argue that all message receivers need to consider adjusting social skills to overcome stigma and work together to help each other be successful. Perhaps some of what I have put together for myself may help message receivers and their helpers spot these issues in others and better reflect on the social skills they need to use to replace their retaliation reactions. The goal is to build relationships instead of break them.

Social Skill #1: Learning lessons from being punished or unjustly victimized

            When I get victimized I tend to personalize punishment that validates a sense of shame I live with. When this happens, I have noticed that my self-esteem goes down and the power of the message experiences goes up. Personalizing punishment feeds right into my negative divergent views and new special messages take form that support the painful negativity. Since message receivers go through social sanctions associated with message receiving, they need to learn to escape the victimization involved. In other word’s they need to learn to learn from unjust punishment.  This may be best exemplified by survivors of great atrocities.

Victor Frankel, a Jewish Holocaust survivor and existential creator of logo-therapy in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, serves as a compelling example of this skill which he defines as the ability to make meaning of suffering.  Thus, making meaning via taking spiritual levels of personal responsibility that go beyond that which results from a persons’ intentional actions.  In other words the skill of learning valuable life lessons from social sanctions rather than letting them victimize the message receiver is hence exemplified.

In recovery, I have learned to reframe what I went through during two years of message crisis as bearing a lesson that I ultimately needed to know to work effectively as a therapist.  Seeing it from a spiritual vantage point, it helped me better understand the privileges I was initially given as a private school kid, privilege that may have been based on the fact that my ancestors may have been exploitive to others. Thus, acknowledging personal responsibility for those advantages helped me accept and tolerate some pretty oppressive circumstances. Thus, seeing ones privileges, talents, and social advantages is an important part of creating the personal responsibility to learn from punishment.

I believe that helpers need to see this and help message receivers realize the advantages they hold to help them develop this sense of personal responsibility. If they cannot see this, how can they help their loved one accept the devastating punishment and suffering so often associated with medical care in this country, especially psychiatric treatment? To do this, it is so important to not fall for the trap of pitying the message receiver as it interferes with developing this personal responsibility. Stigma of all types need to be eradicated. Just like it does not work when a guilt stricken Caucasian person pities an African American person and fails to see the strengths they hold because of the color of their skin, so too does perceiving special messages as a deficit due to the medical model prevent a message receiver from learning from the unjust victimization

Victor Frankel’s work making meaning out of the punishments endured during the Holocaust, it was inspirational to me personally. To stop falling victim, I had to consider the arrogance of my initial whistle blowing belief that I could save institutionalized peoples without even understanding the codes of ethics that informally policed the neighborhood.  I didn’t realize that I was no different than the institutionalized person but for my early privilege.

Thus, the making meaning skill needs to be applied to traumatic message experience and to the double whammy of being punished for it as well. Narratives of strengths and privileges need to be seen to build personal responsibility and help message receivers choose functional flexible theories or alternative meanings that they can live with. Even harshly subjugated individuals have advantages in their life that need to be considered to develop the personal responsibility if they are to overcome the senseless persecution they may have experienced in an oppressive context. This has to do with accepting that the social sanction and stigma game is rigged and anticipating abuse and being grateful when it doesn’t come.

Social Skill #2: Creating a public-professional self:

Special message support groups establish and reinforce this principle every time divergent views and retaliation reactions are defined and reviewed. Reinforcing this as a social skill might not be too shocking and does not necessarily have to be explicitly stated. But for many like me the process of professional performance is not easy to maintain without practice and steady opportunities to work at it. Leisure time may involve just not having to fake it. This may be the time we talk back to voices privately or creatively vent and emote our stress.

This skill is based on the presumption that it is not safe to display the customs or styles of the message culture outside the group.  In other words, the culture should be used discreetly.  In the halls of 12-step meetings they ask: are you friends of Bill? What we have done on the unit I work is discuss whether they should talk about message business right now by uttering Eddie Murphy’s words: Gooney-goo-goo? Other individuals make the “nano, nano” sign with me. These kinds of codes are very culture-building and people are often curious especially when we tell good jokes. It makes them want to be part of the group rather than persecute it. It is a practice I recommend.

On some level, I knew I couldn’t discuss or display my divergent views or retaliation reactions, even early on in the process. When I did, it was often a cry for help, a statement of helplessness, or a test. This is the reason it often takes time for message receivers to open up and discuss divergent views in group.

Clearly throughout this work, I’ve argued that without having a place to be publically open about divergent views, it is hard to conceal them in the places where they must be concealed without medications. In other words, without personally observing and accepting divergent process, it may seep out in unwanted ways through things like social withdrawal, facial expressions, or unchecked oppositional behavior that sabotages the good effort of the message receiver to fit in. The question is: does having a supportive community that acknowledges special message experiences help balance the teeter-totter make it easier to be professional in the halls of human etiquette?

Too many times, by reinforcing professional behavior in therapy, therapists end up happy with the relationship and groups can go on for years that do not address message experience. Additionally, some therapists don’t believe that social rehab is possible outside a protective community; if not, therapeutic communities do not promote simple principles of social integration. The result can be stagnation and cycles of decline and revolt.

Social Skill #3: Killing the punisher with kindness:

In my recovery there have been times when people have intentionally slapped me in the face to test me out or to make efforts to return me to marginalization.  Still people will sometimes wittingly or unwittingly uphold stigmatizing beliefs because they believe they are entitled to do so, or because they have a need to test me out.  Just like a therapist is asked to roll with resistance with the drug culture during motivational interviewing, I believe message receivers need to build social relationships by rolling with social sanctions without retaliating. When we retaliate we may get branded as becoming symptomatic and appearing symptomatic can trigger us back into focusing on messages.

One clear reason for this is that for many message receivers there are a lot of angles where we may see punishment and oppression.  Most of us in the local where I work are more than just message receivers.  We may be racial or ethnic minorities, immigrants, afflicted by sex and sexual orientation discrimination, have criminal records, or come from disadvantaged educational circumstances.  There are so many ways we can be stigmatized, if we want to overcome we have got to roll with resistance and kill all stigma with kindness taking the moral high ground.  This can best be done with a polite smile and a process of keeping on, keeping on.

And regardless of the intention, the solution for all is to ignore all as if they are just names, rather than sticks and stones. This involves us smiling back and regulating the mood and paying the punisher a compliment.  It is about having the peace of mind to give them a piece of chocolate to sweeten them up a bit even if they are the reason you were homeless for two years.  It is a unique skill.  It’s like being able to look the devil in the eye without being scared or damaged.

My experience is that when this is done the racket and tests can escalate, so I’d argue that part of kind killing might need to come from a place of knowing that you are right about yourself in spite of all the stigma. Indeed, when I am hit really hard multiple times, I still slip into negative thinking at times. But still I’d argue that the best execution of this skill is to pursue a relationship with the very person who thinks you are dirt and treats you like an object.

I learned this through working customer service while in a state of poverty and hardship. This skill comes from humbling myself enough to above all else be honorable.  It’s about providing good customer service serving food even though you can’t afford to eat.  It may be about remembering that there are oh so many people who learn to do this on a daily basis.

Killing people with kindness does not mean that we forget. But as is suggested by the research of Patrick Corrigan contact needs to be established first. The message receiver needs to prove their value and social worth before they come out and identify as a message receiver. This is the suggested route to changing individuals’ minds about stigma.  Corrigan’s work may help reinforce the need to meet each normal culture where it is at, rather than trying to educate it about the covert private hell that has dominated the message receiving life. For me, I strive to kill the punisher with kindness. In many ways, it is my only choice.

Social Skill #4: Hanging in there with some troubled relationships through shared activities:

I personally have a very hard time holding onto old relationships and need to remind myself not to give up. Back when I trusted no one, the only relationships that I kept were ones that were required for my financial and material survival. And it was a struggle to hold and honor those relationships. This taught me the ethic to hang in there with some troubled relationships.

Perhaps message receivers may need to be as resilient as water in a canyon to gain the clout necessary to overcome the stigma associated with the illness.  And when they don’t prevail, keeping on via pursuing other social relationships will impact help them and help make the world better.

For a message receiver like me, who experiences paranoia, making friends with the people who were following me around, particularly hecklers in the Italian mafia, was crucial to my recovery.  A message receiver may need to learn more about who they are and the reality of their world in order to heal.

Thus, I am suggesting that any Darth Vader leader needs to encourage group members to pursue all sorts of relationships with all sorts of peoples by finding shared activities that can be engaged in. Message receivers might benefit by reaching out to all kinds of peoples including their worst oppressors. While this is an ethic, I have not always maintained, it can be a very important part of social rehab.

An example would be a time I watched a friend on BART connecting with a heckler who was calling us crazy. The friend who I met at a social club, was exhibiting retaliation reactions and the heckler was a proud Republican. Instead of being insulted, my friend who had studied economics in college, start genuinely talking about his field of interest on his terms not only to kill him with kindness but also perhaps with the intention of building a support. Exhibiting this kind of social skill proudly helped enormously and we had a much better outing as a result.

This is particularly useful for message receivers when they are working with other message receivers who may fall on hard times. In my experience, burning bridges or kicking someone who has hurt me to the curb is something I have had to learn not to do in order to have any relationships. Sometimes I have had to make people who frustrate me little projects. As a person who is sensitive to being bullied I have to remind myself not to give up all the time.

Social Skill #5: Going towards new relationships:

As I healed, I acclimated to a world where many old contacts presumed I was damaged goods. Therefore, I needed to seek out new streams of friends by going out to social groups and engaging in shared social activities. Reaching out to new streams of people can be of vital importance.

For some message receivers, traveling from the bondage of a board and care into the free world of the local community requires companionship mixed with creative resources: the poetry slam, the meet-up-group of alien-enthusiasts, the Disco floor.  Meeting other message receivers from a cultural group such as special messages and going out together into the community is a good strategy for picking up more social resources.

This skill involves remembering that the fisherman who has many hooks out there is more likely to hook a fish.

Social Skill #6: Skillfully knowing when it’s time to reveal trauma to build support:

There have been times once I’ve built relationships that I’ve needed to assertively appeal to people by making contained disclosures regarding trauma they may see in me. This has involved significant judgment as in general it is not appropriate to reveal what I‘ve been through. I have had to learn to sense when people are seeing me as a human being enough so that I can assert myself and explain my behavior via relating some trauma. After all there are times when not doing so makes things awkward.

At the same time I have decidedly chosen not to confront public ridicule systemically because I run the risk of being told I am paranoid.  Confronting it personally involves picking up on social cues that I am so gifted as to be able to do and that I would have to be prepared to address the issue systemically. This involves assuming that I can appeal to position power that is not biased against the mad.  In spite of the ADA, harassment of the mad is not in the public awareness and is rampant in the media.  Thus, I personally feign from asserting my rights and perhaps that is how I have survived professionally.

Asserting rights clearly may be different for others.  It is best done with a thick skin and sharp attention to social cues, qualities that some message receivers may have.

Still by being out as mad and letting “normals” see a part of yourself that is suggestive of your struggles, you may not only change their attitude, but deepen the way they see you.  This alone can be a way of asserting your needs. I personally see it as the way you hold your trauma cards: when to play them, when to hold them and when to fold them.

When we play our cards with normal culture we need to do it strategically, rather than out of need. We have message group and other message receivers to get our needs met. Knowing when to lightly let the cat out of the bag when our relationship is strong enough.  This involves assessing the supporter’s level of attachment to “normal” culture and accepting their boundaries with regard to their personal biases and stigmas.

I am suggesting that it depends on the level of transparency we have about the skeletons in our closet, and our ability to read social cues, how soon we ask for respect.  But there are times when we need to make assertive calls for respect.  Knowing the difference depends on knowledge of your: self, culture, and your need for power.  It is a skill.

For me revealing trauma cards to therapists or medical professional is no different. In other words, the message receiver might wait until the therapist, case manager, or outreach worker trusts them as a regular person and ready to undress the public-self.  The clear suggestion would be to wait to bring up messages, then right as the therapist is genuinely touched and demonstrating respect, the message receiver might throw their false limb off and ask for a hug.  Then the message receiver might assess based on the therapists response whether it is safe to really talk about messages.

I would suggest that message receivers not act entitled to tell their story even if they are paying for therapy. I am constantly prepared to back up and de-stigmatize the therapist about the absent limb.  This can take a lot of patience, risk and work, especially when the therapist is the one who is getting paid and screwing up.  I say this because with the amount of institutional stigma in the literature, therapists often require special treatment and perhaps need to be babied a bit.  They may be particularly hard work but the good news is they aren’t going anywhere as long as the money flows.

It is wise for anyone working with a message receiver to recognize and support this process, they might reflect that they understand by collaboratively morphing along with the process and complimenting the message receiver for skillful behavior.

Social Skill #7: Using humor:

One of the skills I have tried to exemplify at times in this chapter and throughout is the social skill of humor, or effective retaliation reactions.  (You didn’t know I was trying to be funny, did you?)  This can definitely be used to get through this terribly difficult task of building social relationships because making people laugh is genuinely a great way to get appreciated and build relationship.

Consider our friend at the USA day parade who was really quite zany and funny with his behavior too but because it lacked conformity it got punished rather than acknowledged for humor.  Perhaps dressing and behaving normal and couching his commentary in a little story that expressed the same kind of edgy message might have worked, while it satisfied his creativity.  Additionally, I am sure it would have been healing to get real recognition for the personal dilemma the message receiver was experiencing by creating genuine laughter; it would have made it easier for the message receiver to “make friends with the people who were following them around.”

Not only does mad humor demand that a message receiver accept social sanctions but it may help build upon scarred relationships and tragedy in socially “appropriate” manners.  Imagine, the people you are mad at turning around and supporting you with laughter.  It is a great way to make your point and ease your ire.

Social Skill #8: Make efforts to respectfully fit in with Romans when in Rome:

Far too often I have observed message receivers do something that is familiar to me: project our public selves to professionals to avoid punishment, and our private message culture to the public. There is something about this that is beautiful and recklessly funny about this behavior, but it doesn’t bode well for social rehabilitation.

I can even recognize that once I left home I had an unconscious proclivity towards acting like my Mom in front of my Dad and acting like my Dad in front of my Mom. Though this clearly didn’t work, it consistently happened.  I like to think of this as walking like an Egyptian in Rome and vice-versa. While it was good for a punk-ass existence, eventually this kind of behavior had to stop.

As I have gained experience being the therapist outreaching to message receivers in the community, I certainly get the feeling that I am not alone in these regards.  Often, it is as if message receivers flip flop their behavior as an objection to the entire enslavement industry.  Once a message receiver can get the validation to know there is beauty in this behavior and hypocrisy and enslavement in normal culture, they might need to realize that the only way to change this reality is to work to change these behavior patterns.

In state hospital I rebelled with this flip flop behavior by using “normal” skills when I could in the institutional setting because I did not want institutional behavior internalized. Then one day it was revealed to me that the staff in meeting constantly criticized me for being entitled. As such, my flip-flop behavior does not bode well for social rehabilitation. When I learned of the staff’s criticism, I internalized it and it only added to my sense of shame.

Likewise picture me in a room full of people who are acting “appropriate” and potentially excluding. Because I feel threatened disgusted I have to run a trust test behaving in a “message” oriented manner, perhaps with provocative behavior. This inappropriate behavior only puts me at risk of real exclusion.

Ultimately, to avoid the fate of institutionalization, I need to learn to accept the culture where I am at and respect its customs as well as I can in order to avoid the trap. I continue to struggle with this in places where I don’t feel I belong.

Again, I believe that having the beauty of the behavior and the hypocrisy of the system validated and understood would help me improve this behavior.

A message receiver using this skill would start by assuming normal culture traits and assessing and testing for safety before opening up with a high level of distinctive cultural behavior.  They would start by paying respect to the dominant culture and slowly use good judgment in determining how far to go in terms of revealing their own distinctive mannerisms.  They would not necessarily see this as sell-out behavior, they would see this as a necessary step towards teaching others about their culture if others were receptive.

The strength of the group discussing this amid members of varying stages of recovery makes this possible to help message receiver’s work together.  Instead of hating it when their friends are successful, message receivers need to know that they will not be left behind. This is why it is so important for the leader demonstrate the ability to morph back to message and demonstrate that they are in the struggle for the long haul.  This is why it is extremely disturbing for me to see recovered message receivers behaving in excessively excluding manners.  This is exactly why we need to localize and be inclusive.

But this is really about accepting both the “normal” and the message aspects of our experience, making peace within ourselves and promoting peace by taking the higher ground.

Social Skill #9: Playing aloof:

Historically I have been isolated and have often approached social interaction with a high degree of need. As a result of desire to be accepted, I can often sabotage myself by coming across in a needy manner. This is admittedly not very attractive in “normal” culture where everyone is presumed to be loved and supported. Often staying cool and being aloof gives people an advantage in social circumstances especially when they are humiliated or face exclusion. This is a skill that is difficult for me.

This is something that some message receivers may need to be aware of as well, particularly when entering the culture of the oppressor. Playing it cool means we not allow the water to drip on our foreheads, but rather run-off our rubber covered back.

While many of us who have faced significant trauma and exclusion may go from one to one hundred with our emotions, but publically we need to contain that inner pain and pretend like we don’t care.  While vulnerability heals, it does not work in normal culture. Fronting like you don’t care what people say might be necessary for other people besides me.

The post Nine Social Skills Continued appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

To avoid punishment, message receivers will need to build relationships with people who socially sanction the message experience. Social functioning will often require that the message receiver engage in relationships that are in the culture of the “normal” consensus reality. In fact, by the time many message receivers make it into a group many are taught through the mainstream system of care (and perhaps through internalized stigma) to deny their symptoms and play it normal. Indeed at the onset of group, it can take a long while for many group members to share message experiences not only because those experiences are traumatic, but also because they fear being persecuted for doing so. While there are message receivers who stick to their guns especially early in their message crisis, many experienced message receivers already know what it takes to survive in a world dominated by storm troopers. Often, it is anger and emotional desperation that makes them act out their symptoms when in crisis. The game becomes to contain these experiences so that there is no punishment. People may notice something is up with some of us, but social sanctions forces people to contain themselves when they can. Often times the way this is done is silently disdained. And still there are very different degrees of social skills as message receivers do this.

For me personally, learning to submit to this process was very challenging without medication. I do not consider myself to hold good social skills on the whole. In addition to struggling with messages, I like many message receivers have been diagnosed with dyslexia, ADD, and consider myself to be influenced by a mild level of autism. My whole life I have gravitated towards people who are different who might give me a chance. Thus, message receivers who are likewise neuro-divergent might also struggle with basic social skills like looking people in the eye etcetera. While I do my best to accept what I perceive to be the bullying nature of a great deal of social interaction, I do not like the fact that social groups exclude and differentiate themselves from other groups. For me, genuine cuddling is very difficult. As a result, I tend to come from the vantage point that social skills are very difficult when this may not be the case for all message receivers.

Perhaps historically the message receiver begrudges and is angry at “normal” folk for their role in oppressing them. Imagine being homeless and looking at all the people driving cars past on their way home from their high end jobs. For me this kind of outside-looking-in experience hurt hard. I’d feel like a failure, like something was taken from me. I’d been raised to believe that honesty and hard work would take care of me, and this just wasn’t the case. Some message receivers, however already have experienced inequity and have social skills that enable them to fake it. For some others too, it may be hard not to begrudge or be angry with those who have it all. Some people have learned to negotiate these realities without showing their real feelings. Many may already be practiced at this. As a person who primarily connects with people through work of a professional nature, I had to integrate with the very people I was most angry at and that influences my views of necessary social skills

The nine social skills we will review in this chapter are benchmarks that I set for myself in reflection. These were necessary for me in order to make friends with people who appear to be on the inside of the circle. Perhaps some will resonate with some message receivers. They function as nagging reminders for me. In this chapter, I will argue that approximately nine social skills may be set by all message receivers based on who they are and what they need to do to succeed. Undoubtedly, others will not struggle with social skills quite the same way that I do. But they are expressed herein in a manner so as to be representative of the types of skills needed to overcome oppression. The idea is to build a list of reminders that motivate the message receiver to do what they need to recover.

Message receivers do need to be able to play it normal in order to get jobs, improve housing, and thrive in the social world. They may need to reconnect with social groups that have hurt them. Be it with a marginalized ethnic group, with the culture of a prestigious university, or a religious community, a work culture, message receivers usually needs pick a culture to infiltrate that has been more welcoming of them at some point. Then they need to consider social skills that help them survive in these settings.

In this chapter, I am going to argue that this starts with befriending and going towards relationships with helpers. Once they can approach and befriend helpers they need to approach social groups they work with or play with in similar manner. This may involve a high level of executing social skills that they may not be feeling. It may well involve, as I have suggested, meeting a culture that is responsible for social sanctions where they are at and pretending to be part of it as if it is no big thing.

In this chapter we will talk about how this can involve both radical compliance and love on the part of the message receiver, and I will share a compiled list of social skills that are needed by the author to successfully integrate and experience social rehabilitation. Perhaps, some other message receivers may relate to this list.

Jargonizing the Nine Social Skills Solution:

If the message receiver and the normal need to come to a truce, the social skills presented in this chapter are not simply normal social skills. They are behaviors that are needed in the face of social sanctions. They function as skills that need to be executed in place of retaliations reactions.

Recall that if being punished for behavior that is involuntary seems unjust, it will lead the message receiver to resist authority and halt trusting anything outside their message experience. Message experiences then via the trickster phenomenon become accurate. They end up believing they will be persecuted and acting in ways that make some kind of social persecution come true. I argue that this doesn’t need to be. I believe that social skills are needed to back up positive self-fulfilling prophesies that can help put a stop to social persecution. When this doesn’t happen, the message receiver continues to overvalue their messages and continues retaliation reactions that lead to irregular social sanctions and real social persecution.

The trick of the nine social skills behaviors, is to endure the punishment and go towards the relationship with the punisher to try to get some inclusion. As the title of the chapter suggests, it’s compiling a list of behaviors necessary to cuddle up to the plastic of the Stormtroopers. When I was in crisis I called these kiss-ass skills. What these social skills do is seek to prepare the message receiver for the steps they need to take to overcome subjugation and take the first steps to fitting in with a dominant culture. The idea is that if these skills, if applied, will not change the message receiver, but they may well protect them. Then as they adjust to one setting, they might consider changing some of those skills to adapt to another. These is a way to develop a sense of belonging which is needed for good mental health.

When I present the nine social skills, I note that nine means none in German, but may mean something else in a different culture. For example in hip hop culture a nine is a type of gun and may be very effective at leveling the playing field. Beatle fans may have their own views of what the number nine means based on the Revolution Nine song. Hence, for each person the skills may be different. Social skills are always changing in different cultural contexts. So the ones I select are ones that helped me overcome isolation and social sanctions and socially rehabilitate in a hostile professional world.

Nine social skills might ultimately function as great positive self-fulfilling prophesy mantras that enhance multicultural skills. A different set of nine social skills may be needed to penetrate different cultural enclaves. But the key is that when people punish an aspect of message receiving, instead of withdrawing into messages in rebellion, to go towards the punisher and provide the kiss-ass skills necessary to build a relationship.

I intend to impress the reader with the level of multi-cultural and interpersonal skills necessary for a message receiver to integrate. I’d argue that giving the message receiver knowing recognition for successful completion of these skills is a necessary means of reducing social sanctions and stigma that prevent many of us from completing our good efforts. So often, the message receiver may have made efforts of love and acceptance that are unrecognized. Maybe they only get met with criticism and more demands. So often there is a sense of demoralized defeat and contempt for the “normal” world because of this.

Indeed, for message receivers to have success, they have to change, but also it would help if those who sanction them stop sanctioning them. In order to do this, this work tries to create a cultural understanding of special messages. Indeed, I believe social sanctions can stop, but to me it seems like the message receiver must take the moral high ground in the bulk of their relationships. In order to do this, helpers may need to be able to enter the message culture, meet the message receiver where they are at, and both notice and support the ways they do engage in nine social skills with them.

As the diagram below suggests, this involves noticing retaliation reactions and recognizing that they are being socially sanctioned. Then, instead of believing that their special messages and divergent views are true, it involves forming relationships with their persecutors. Nine social skills are the skills used to do this. The better they can be acknowledged and promoted by the helper, the more trust will build in the relationship, and fewer the retaliation reactions are that only lead to a stronger conviction in the truth of the special message process.

The Role of the Helper as a Social Skill Provider:

For the helper, this solution, essentially kiss-ass skills, takes preparation and skill to deliver. Let’s review what we have essentially done as helpers up to this point. A good helper or group leader takes the lead and meets the message receiver where they are at and develops human mutuality with the Jedi, the message receiving Yoda figure. They do this by describing the components of special messages and proving they understand. Then once social sanctions are defined, accepted and healed from, the message receiver feels more bonded with their helpers: fellow group members and the leader, and perhaps connection to an outside therapist can increase. But the leader, other group members, or outside therapist need to realize that this bond is happening and help the message receiver identify the nine social skills they are using. In order to do this, helpers need to recognize when social skills are being used and highlight them.

I believe that helpers need to have an awareness that they themselves are in a state of morphing between playing the role of Jedi and playing the role of storm trooper. This is likely happening in the mind of the message receiver as helpers generally can function in the plastic world of the empire and are going to be seen as Stormtroopers. Thus, when relationship skills are expressed toward the helper, the helper can help the message receiver by acknowledging the social skill and define it as a nine social skill. Of course, suddenly doing so means the helper morphs into a plastic Stormtrooper, and then morphs back to being Jedi. Acknowledging that they are doing this and articulating it may help acknowledge the process. Perhaps there might even be some humor in this. “I repeatedly find myself telling male message receivers, “Luke, you do not understand the power of the dark side!” Then, a good helper will morph back into a Jedi and demonstrate their competence with message culture. Of course, the leader might have to morph back into a Stormtrooper to intellectually teach the skill to the group and then they can morph back.

Ultimately in my mind this can teach the message receiver to morph or acculturate to different social contexts that can clearly be of their choosing.

In case the reader is uncomfortable with the Stormtrooper analogy, let us recall the helper is essentially throughout this work the representative of the consensus culture. Let’s face it, consensus reality is the orientation of most effective communicators and is essentially being used all the time so that group members can connect with each other. But the strength of most leaders is their ability to reflect on times when they were in message crisis to prove their humanity to the message receiver. For the most part, the leader exhibits an ability to reflect both cultures and morph into a Stormtrooper throughout.

Thus, nine social skills can essentially become a code word for an important social skill that is being demonstrated. Acknowledging that it is a moral high ground and act of love helps strengthen the relationship. As the message receiver starts to see themselves as bearing a social skill, they may practice sharing it with other Stormtroopers they are motivated to cuddle up with.

Indeed, so much morphing is not always easy for a leader. The leader may at times they are morphing between plastic and Jedi establish a plastic post in the therapy office for the sake of their own security.  Then they might run to the plastic post and cuddle it to get their emotional needs met. Indeed that’s what a good leader will do, be open and vulnerable about their own need for attachment. Message receivers generally have it worse than Barlow’s monkey’s and being vulnerable to show your own depravations in terms of attachment is a great way to model cuddling up to Stormtroopers. Clearly, the work can be done. In my mind reality and recovery consists of a balance between the Jedi and the Empire.

As the message receiver gets a degree of acceptance by a social enclave their view of it as the Empire may become friendlier and more humanized. They may see reality as more of a balance between rational and irrational forces, as more gray than black and white. Achieving some level of inclusion be it in a survivor group, in a profession, in a family role, in a romantic relationship, in a social club, in a religion, in a housing warehouse, or in any entity that helps them get their social needs met will help the message receiver move out of the survival state of black and white, good and evil, or life or death and help them on their journey towards actualization. For message receivers to remain healthy will usually involve the goal of gaining acceptance in more than one cultural context.

Admittedly, I have used metaphor to describe what helpers can do on a daily basis to revolutionize treatment. In this metaphor, mainstream treatment in our current system repeatedly punishes the Jedi until they can say the words necessary to act plastic. Then they are set free and told to stay plastic and given medications that sometimes help.

Role of the Group in Teaching Social Skills:

I believe that the group, with the leader switching from one culture to the other, develops a bit of a safe rhythm that gives participants the chance to work on nine social skills with each other. Thus, there are many times the leader in morphing from plastic to Jedi needs to let the group interact with each other and support those who are engaging in social skill building. Thus, when group members who are used to being excluded seek to sharpen social skills in a way that is inclusive, the therapist might find ways to support these efforts.

However, message receivers as a culture are particularly focused on themes that are often not encouraged in mental health settings such as politics, history and religion. In order to feel permitted to socialize these topic need to be allowed and a leader is wise to acknowledge that when the topic is participant’s natural cultural socialization and be prepared to assist with the natural socialization in a way that promotes multi-cultural skills which are needed for recovery. In my personal experience there is a great deal of socialization with regard to the bible and finding a way to acknowledge honor and include people from different faiths without killing the process is an important art that can happen as the leader becomes familiar with group members

Though, in hosting a mix of individuals in varying levels of recovery from message crisis, it is ill-advised to make participation mandatory, still the leader needs to prompt and assess, particularly when the topic is not about messages. This is an opportunity to use the rhythm and safety to promote social skills.  During these moments I assess whether the message receiver is on track and sync with the social skills the group is presenting. If the participant is bored, offended, just doesn’t want to be bothered, or simply being left behind, these are the times when the leader needs to be able to morph into Jedi and use other aspects of the reconstruction of psychosis, to make the effort to include the member in the discourse of the group. There are times it is time to change the discourse of the group at these times. Perhaps the group may respond to a different culture building message topic.

Hence, often the leader can support the withdrawn individual, by giving them attention and inclusion by listening carefully to individuals who are in message culture and are struggling to fit into the plastic nature of the communication that comes up in socialization. There may also be times when including the message receiver is difficult and it can be time to move on, still honoring the message receiver’s effort to connect.  It may be necessary to remind recovering message receivers that being patient and inclusive will ultimately help them help themselves if crisis returns. In my experience more often than not message receivers have reminded me to be patient as well and to allow the socialization. I have had to perpetually listen. When I become plastic I wait before asserting myself and weigh the temperature of the group before asserting myself.

I believe a leader is wise to remember that these groups are a radical effort to decrease isolation. Once new group members have been introduced and the general strategy of the group reviewed, and perhaps a story or two told, the leader needs to flex with the group when they want to work on external issues and social skills with each other. Though there is still the need to morph during this stage: playing plastic to some and Jedi to others.

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Jargonizing the Social Sanctions Construct:

Consider this construct a commentary on the ineffectiveness of punishing retaliation reactions with irrational and endless social sanctions. In jargonizing this construct, I have had a lot of success in uniting message receivers behind the idea that their history of treatment experiences basically feel like punishment. Sure some can evade it. Too often this takes privilege or gifted abilities. But those of us who have made it to social rehabilitation might need to acknowledge the advantages we had, advantages that we may have taken for granted during the process due to our intense suffering. And additionally it can help to know ways that you are gifted. Doing this helps one be helpful to others.

Whether primarily appearing to be paranoid, grandiose, somatic, spiritual, religious, catatonic, disassociated or other the tendency of the mainstream to disagree and reject divergent views hurts message receivers in a way that may even open old wounds. And the goal of getting the person into a hospital or a jail and medicated feels initially like suppressive cruel and unusual punishment.

In my experience many in the group will have an acceptance of these suppressive realities have learned that they improve with them. Often they may be homeless or institutionalized in circumstances that are worse, or find their message experience itself so unbearable they already feel a strong sense of deprivation or dehumanization. But still they can relate to feeling punished in some way. Usually, if a person says that a hospital or medication is not so bad they have a much deeper story of feeling punished to tell. All the helper has to do is inquire and learn.

The argument here is that if treatment were to be defined as ongoing efforts to social control and punish people who are different, it would be not only more transparent, but help people successfully adjust to without getting hurt and causing further brain damage. After all, punishment is a message that says: don’t do that or else . . . For message receivers already inundated with messages from varying origins, it is unreasonable to presume that they will take the punishment message the way it is intended.

Perhaps, the inherent flaw in the system of treatment is that special messages aren’t voluntary and that there is no way out but be punished when you are a message receiver.  The famous work of Gregory Bateson and the double bind, the idea that there is no direction the subject can go without feeling punished, emphasizes this point. I believe that it takes a markedly different culture to create no-way-out but win situations for a long time to counter the damage that the mainstream one does.

Special message groups are the effort to create such an environment. In being prepared to review this construct the group needs to have enough strength to hold and manage trauma. Stories of feeling punished and othered for having these experiences may go back a long way for group members.  Simply put, it takes a group that distinguishes itself from others to bring many people out of their shells. Historically I come equipped to distinguish every group I do by normalizing divergent views, asking questions that inquire about message experience, the sharing of my own lived experience, the ability to define associated constructs like sleuthing, theories, and tricksters, and by tolerating the confusion and tangents of those who act out retaliation reactions. Once these processes are reinforced people start to open up about things they’ve kept silent. When we discuss the reason many are so initially silent about their experiences social sanctions naturally social sanctions come up as an explanation.

I believe that in so many cases, being unjustly punished results in a decrease in trust for the establishment, in society and in our loved ones leading to a greater dependence on ourselves against everyone and a stronger faith in our special messages. In other words, message receivers become more committed to their message experiences. It becomes part of the experience of the altered state. As the diagram below depicts, once retaliation reactions get unjustly punished they are most likely to accelerate the message experience

Getting Punished Outside of Institutions:

Social sanctions may go back a lot farther in a message receiver’s consciousness than the first run in in the system and are vastly different for different individuals. I will trace an evolution of social sanctions as they follow a very general pattern involving: 1) early impressions; 2) observing social norms develop; and 3) relationship with first responders. I will start by openly using my own frame of reference, but I will also consider alternate cultural considerations as the experience and views of message receivers is in fact extremely diverse.

Early impressions are the foundation around which social sanctions take root. For me, it was the librarian in my third grade who first introduced me to the concept of Schizophrenia in a pamphlet. I have come to best see those early impressions as lies regarding incurable brain disorder that is very rare. At the time subsequent interfacing did a lot to diminish my sense of humanity for those who suffer with this. It was somehow okay to throw them away because there was nothing that could be done. Oh, for sure it was sad, kind of like when someone dies in an earthquake.

But having this early impression reinforced persistently through early experiences in hospitals for eating disorders, in Abnormal Psychology text books in college, and as a young professional in the mental health field did a lot to make me feel punished when I received the diagnosis. None of the trauma that I had been through mattered, only that early impression of what the “disease” was.

Early impressions of “psychosis” for those who have parents who struggle from it are going to be very different. Targeted abuse from symptoms or the outside world may result in innocent suffering and form a starkly different impression. Likewise, individuals who grow up in rural, urban, or differently zoned areas than I, where mentally ill people are housed or warehoused, are likely to develop very differing impressions of mental health in very different sets of circumstances. They may not be so book focused.  They may have more or less humanity in them. Nevertheless, I would argue that early impressions start a process of hurt and misunderstanding in many individuals’ experience.

The second part of social sanctions is the development of a social sense of what normal is. Though there are a great many ways people are different, children norm up and develop different perceptions on issues such as popularity, conformity, and authority. Bullying starts to happen and directs children in very different directions. But early impressions of what it feels like to be part of a group and what it feels like to be hurt by others along with senses of dominance and submission, have a lot to do in developing what it feels like to be socially sanctioned.

I myself quickly found myself not fitting in when I was not allowed to wear popular clothing. Perhaps my parents wanted me to go through this as they had and develop a sense of character. But I quickly found myself not fitting in and was easily hurt by the exclusion, not having the same skills to build my sense of character. I responded with hatred and isolation and lacked a place where I had a sense of belonging. This was the times when I first experienced issues such as abandonment, rejection, failure to be acknowledged, slander ridicule, intense criticism, issues that would become part of my experience with messages. While it is clear that not everyone with messages experiences this kind of early sense of bullying or feeling unaccepted, they may develop impressions about these kinds of issues that will affect them when they run into being different later on.

The third part of social sanctions are the quality of the support they receive from first-responder people who intervene when they are different. Do those people staunchly defend the norms as they guide the message receiver towards them? Do these people respect and honor the individual’s strengths when they show sign of having message experiences?

Not everyone is so lucky as to have a headshrinker help them along on this path. Early responders can be parents, outside family members, spiritual affiliates, teachers, coaches. I personally had a series of therapists who did not have a track record for accepting who I was and the gifts that I presented with. Yes, I did what they said and I became more normal, but as they noticed that I wasn’t willing or able to norm up and they recognized my message tendencies, the forecast became negative and the support was very poor.

I feel this is largely reflective of society’s vision of Schizophrenia and brain disorder. There was no one teaching me that there were mentors and people who I could relate to who had the same sense of things that I did.  Even though I maintained a career and got an advanced degree education, my headshrinker, unbeknownst to me, did not think I could do it repeatedly. I have been through training in psychotherapy and the standard of care that was taught to me was, to get the message receiver into the hospital and medicated, that therapy is not the place for them. Programs, institutions, and warehousing appear to be the only options to many first responders.

This Effort to Depict Punishment in Institutions

It is true institutions vary a great deal, state to state, county to county, private to public, and jail to prison. As a result, it is very hard to characterize what punishment is like across the board. Again, I will limit what I say throughout to my own frame of reference that spans different states, three decades, and experience both as staff and as patient. As I do this I will do my best to allude to and consider what other people from different backgrounds may go through.  Sure, what follows is limited and generalized. However, as a group leader, I argue that the leader needs to be prepared to explore social sanctions in distant epochs and across distinctive locales and institutions. Thus, as I have practiced in California, I have been called on to bear witness to stories about jail and prison and will make an effort to depict them as they do impact public mental health facilities in significant ways.

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Jargonizing the Retaliation Reaction Construct:

This chapter’s construct consists of natural reactions that come up for message receivers as a result of acting as though their message experiences are the dominant reality.

Retaliation reactions can be as minor as a facial response: a glare, or a laugh; and in more dramatic occasions can involve actions that put the message receiver or the public at risk. In the course of this chapter I will provide some examples from my experience. While I certainly have observed the actions of others as most readers have too, I will limit the examples within, to my experience. Perhaps doing so will help make a case for group leaders to demonstrate their wellness by being able to take responsibility for their own complex behaviors.

From my perspective as someone who faced a sense of imminent danger against my life, those of us who are taught to defend ourselves or are victims of violent circumstances in their community, may end up in a bit of a disadvantage. In many ways, I certainly can understand how the prisons and jails become full of our people. Message receivers are most likely to get framed in crime rings as well as sucked into them. I certainly was afraid and conscious of this possibility. And I was most definitely recruited. Moreover, I believe that, in such contexts, passivism is clearly an advantage as efforts to hold tormentors accountable in families, work environments, the military and on the streets, ultimately are more likely to lead to incarceration, homelessness/barracks, and death. But I also reveal my own cultural bias here.

From the start, retaliation reactions are an integral part of the special message experience. To the outside observer, who knows nothing about all that has been written up to this point, they might seem easier to be mindful of than concepts such as sleuthing, theories and tricksters. But over time they become less pronounced and more subtle. By definition, retaliation reactions are usually reactions that are likely to lead to disruption in the lives of normal. Over time they shift from being reactions that happen as special message circumstances seem real; and they become corrective measures committed in social commentary on the oppression a message receiver has experienced.

However, because of the way these natural reactions are received by the social world, they become harder and harder to recognize. And the more institutionalized and adept the message receiver becomes, the more minute and innocuous the resistance gets expressed. Ultimately the institutionalized message receiver need to learn to stop all retaliation reactions in order to socially rehabilitate. In re-entering the work force they are often under a high level of scrutiny and retaliation reactions can get them rejected. Perhaps those who make it and who have more a sense of privilege may develop ways to be successful like normals and return to use of retaliation reactions to wield power over others. And this can actually come in the form of bullying, or using power to impose your views and influence over others.

Reducing the ways Retaliation Reactions get Misunderstood:

Consider that a message receiver’s specific message profile is essentially a personalized language of alternative meaning that, during crisis, they believe the world shares with them.  As Patricia Deegan in material published off the National Empowerment website and others point out, there is always meaning behind a message receiver’s action even if it is subtle and slight.  Seeking to decode and understand this meaning be the meaning subtle and institutionalized or drastic and dangerous, is a great way to help a message receiver. In order to decode the meaning, I’d argue, the helper needs to be curious as to the meaning not punitive. This can happen in group and in any therapeutic milieu. It means being interested and curious about behavior that gets hammered into innocuous institutional gestures; it means decoding the truth behind overt and punishable actions and honoring the communication.

Examples of overt and offensive behaviors behaviors that I engaged in include: emotional red-faced grimacing when taunted by a policeman, crossing the street backwards on a red light to block traffic, talking to psychiatric inmates to about the evils of the mafia (not smart when you know that gang affiliated individuals share their lives with you,) even, at one point, suggesting that I was mistreated (or pissed-on) at work by gesturing as though I was peeing on the floor.  As the name I have chosen suggests, there is a sense of retaliation in the behavior that alarms others and can easily be misinterpreted, even if there were explainable and exceedingly valid reasons for the behavior.  They can feel almost involuntary, compelled from the message reality that simmers beneath the consciousness.

As to the references to my own aberrant behavior in the above paragraph what I was saying and how I got treated were very distinct. In other words the communication was poor. Letting the cops know that I had already known they were following me resulted in be being physically hurt. Blocking traffic was meant as a call for help so that I would not be shot as I headed to the border, resulted in a car trying to run me over and further police contact. Talking to inmates about the mafia, resulted in an inability to get a job outside of an Italian deli for two years. And peeing on the floor in front of my nineteen year old boss was an effort to let her know that now she was back from vacation, I knew she was bullying me and being unfair in driving me to work in ways that were unnecessary and unnatural; it resulted in her effort to get me fired a few months later.

Retaliation reactions happen all the time during crisis many of them are so minor, they don’t get scrutinized.  Thus when a punishment is imposed via a sanction it has a strong impact because there is a sense that it is unpredictable, unjust, and inconsistent.  When a message receiver is under a microscope in a hospital or a job, there is a tendency to try to break them of the retaliation reaction habit through constant sanction. The problem is that this may accelerate the sense of being persecuted and cause many message receivers to develop smaller, more bizarre behaviors to demonstrate their oppression that don’t get sanctioned.  Sure there have been official documented studies of peasants done in sociology that document that the same process goes on in economic oppression.  When presented in these contexts the behavior perhaps observed as cool or culturally acceptable.  The oppressors are too stupid to even notice that they are being got.  It is such a frustrating thing to live with such oppression that these expressions are medicalized as an illness.  Let me tell you from experience, it can increase mistrust of others and general sense of hopelessness.

So a major technique for managing retaliation reactions is to pay attention to them and usher in communication.  Find out what is meant and respond in collaborative and healing manners.

I would like to suggest that before a real problematic retaliation outburst happens there is a pattern of emotional build-up in which many messages and divergent views work in emotional concert with each other until there is a behavioral outburst. In reality, the behavior may be justified but it is not perceived in this way. And when it is harshly punished or negatively reinforced there is a sense of injustice that kill trust for the social world that surrounds the message receiver.

As a result, communication about messages and divergent views can go a long way toward curbing retaliation reactions and preventing them before they build up. And observing small retaliation reactions and making curious inquiry can lead to communication that reduces retaliation reactions in the community that can increase in size and danger to both the message receiver and the community.

Additional Treatment Strategy of Joining with Effective Retaliation Reactions:

If message receivers were publicly understood instead of cast as so irrationally dangerous, they might be complimented for retaliation reactions that provide relief and do no harm. Particularly if retaliation reactions are witty and “appropriate,” there could be a vast decrease in suffering with some acknowledgement. Too often the message receiver is discouraged and overpowered for making a good point just because it is against the grain.

When in message crisis and with the majority culture hitting me with insults, I could not help but come at the majority in a retaliatory manner. I did not feel I had anybody on my side who could acknowledge when I made a good point. This is largely because majority culture tries to distort and silence the valid points that some message receivers make. Instead, it is too often presumed that the majority needs to silence message culture and that if the whole world stand united against the message receiver, the message receiver will have to surrender.

This does not work in so many cases. Instead message receivers become unwilling to share their private experiences and look at them with other people. They bury them deep inside even when they have the opportunity to do so in my group, they do not do it.

Consider, in contrast, a message group in which message receivers have the freedom to explore and get acknowledgement for their good retaliation reaction quips. It is not only fun, it naturally brings up regrets and remorse about bad ones. As these get shared, message receivers who continue to retaliate hear this and reflect on their retaliations in a new manner, with better judgment.  With cultural support, retaliation reactions could become more effective and assertive and the experience of retaliatory reactions can be normalized and shaped in a direction that can be acknowledged by mainstream culture.

Thus an individual, who wants to support a message receiver, might start with an eye for supporting and acknowledging the elements of the retaliation reactions that are “appropriate.” Strongly reinforcing humor and glorifying non-damaging push back is a start. Joining with it instead of siding with the system that seeks to unilaterally muffle a process that can be adaptive and healthy is a start; however, a person who wants to do this will observe and run up against plenty of incidence when the pushback humor has made things worse because it is likely to be perceived as “inappropriate.”

Managing this scenario his can be done by fully exploring the meaning that was behind the gesture. Just this very line of appreciative inquiry is markedly different than punishing and stigmatizing the deed. While getting the meaningful intent of a retaliation reaction does take a deep step towards suspending the helper’s judgment. Once this is done validating the intent but challenging its effectiveness gives the helper the ability to then explore the potential social consequences with an eye for the role of bullying.  This is a great way to deepen the relationship with the message receiver, teach social skills and change the nature of the retaliation reaction and direct it towards something healing and positive.  The ability to tell personal stories that demonstrate these concepts from your own or someone else’s recovery is a great way to do this.

In this way, group can be a great way to learn how to increase the safety and effectiveness of the retaliation reaction.

As most therapists who have been responsible for assessing threat know, if a message receiver is able to voice their retaliatory reaction, the chances that they will act on them immediately gets reduced not enhanced.  While it’s true this is not an absolute assurance, when someone is able to open up it can go a long way to promote healing.  This is why consumers talk about the importance of risk-sharing.  The strength of the relationship is the largest predictor of safe healing intervention.

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Jargonizing the Trickster Concept:

The symbol of the trickster in Native American Navajo culture is the coyote. The coyote is a revered as a con, a sign of witchcraft, or a type of bad omen that will lead you into trouble and is very powerful. A trickster, as I am using it, is a predictive message that attaches to unconscious and conscious divergent views that are not proven to be true but that can become a powerful truth if it is trusted. Tricksters can become true via the mechanism of negative self-fulfilling prophesy.  Becoming aware of this spiritual reality is very important to understanding trauma that gets experienced in a message crisis. Indeed, unless a message receiver can see a way out of very stark circumstances they may get sucked into a meat grinding machine that can make them disappear; they may end up lacking a social role and living in unhealthy circumstances. Understanding the trickster involves understanding how to overcome this social prediction.

Thus, thinking that others are going to exclude or institutionalize you will lead you to put negative energy out there that may help your fears come true.  If helpers learn and believe in the power of this trickster spiritual trap, they may learn to practice techniques that trick the tricksters!  Instead of receiving a double bind experience, let helpers trap message receivers into no way out but to win situations.  This can help jostle a message receiver out of the trickster trap. This might need to be achieved repeatedly for a while before the message receiver learns to trust the helper. If a message receiver has been victim to trickster realities for ten years, one would not expect them to be healed from one intervention.

Awareness of tricksters can help motivate people to consider the merits of utilizing functional flexible theory styles and help increase mindfulness of their process.  I have to admit that from my vantage point tricksters involve spiritually giving up on reality and using magical thinking to alter the course of the experience. In both cases it is like using a double negative, (applying magical thinking to magical thinking) to move forward in a positive, rational, rehabilitative direction.

In Contrast to the “Reality-Check” Standard of Care:

For many, awareness of the trickster process has not been operative or reinforced during crisis because it is not recognized as being part of the treatment discussion. Instead there is the concept of the “reality-check.”  While some message receivers can accept some “reality-checks,” clinicians often note that others do not take any of them seriously. Indeed, it is arguable that the common failure of the “reality check” that leads to the definition of a “delusion” or, “a refusal to believe in spite of a preponderance of the evidence.” When I was in crisis, many times I was checked about realities that were true. In fact, my reality just didn’t sound true because it was not a part of the discourse of the reality-checker who was totally ignorant of the reality I was experiencing.

I feel it is very important for helpers to realize that many messages receivers get given “reality-checks” in which they are assured something is not true, and then because of trickster reality, they learn that those assurances are empty. The inaccurate “reality-check” is such a radical betrayal, subservient silence is likely to result. When the roofing nails aren’t long enough to reach the wood, thumbs are likely to get smacked and turn black in spite of hard hammering work. As such collective power that imposes reality only further isolates the message receiver. Too often the promise of the positive thought or the reality promise blows up in the face down the road when other associated messages turn out to have credence.

Currently, in the standard of care, falsely believing that all messages are delusions, a helper mindlessly drops a reality test and then wonders in upcoming weeks why the message receiver starts to have inexplicable vindictive, antagonistic feelings toward them.  The message receiver may get seen as stubborn, a character defect, and this then gets blamed on the power of the disease. Even worse, the message receiver gets extorted into seeing themselves as symptomatic and the issue of the false reality-test never gets brought up.

Recovery takes years or doesn’t happen in part because of the need to overcome the preponderance of reality checks. It means learning the reality of the trickster internally and falsely yessing the reality checking community when you know you don’t mean it.

In the institution, the right to be self-determined and deal with the consequences of your own decisions, gets stripped. It is a structural and punitive reality check that is very traumatic and can lead to years of decline. Even if it is not internalized and the message receiver stays industrious and believes in themselves, having a false reality imposed on you gets in the way.

I feel that even skilled workers who acknowledge that there is an element of truth to delusions and can occasionally have a good experience with a reality check; can set themselves up for resentment or the message receiver up with long term distress and catch-22 binds. While sometimes institutionalized people will welcome a helper to have confirmation that the messages aren’t real, I’d argue that it is wiser not to benevolently determine that the messages aren’t real for them because of the trickster reality. I have fallen for this myself and hurt message receivers.

If this seems to be an overblown discussion of semantics, I ask the reader to consider what happens when a helper benevolently reassures the message receiver that there is no need for fear only to have an element of the reality checked fear come true. Not only might this discourage the message receiver, the benevolence reinforces a self-stigma that the message receiver is weak and the reality-check undermines the wider need for mindfulness. Thus, for years the message receiver believes even more in their special message reality and less in the support from their material world helper.

Even if one reality check pans out, the fact that so many others didn’t means the value of an accurate “reality-check” might be made innocuous. Instead, I propose that the concept of the reality-check be replaced by the culturally sensitive practice of acknowledging the potential of the trickster.

Example of a “Reality Check” Gone Wrong:

I want to warn the reader that this is going to be a complex example that reveals the innards of the way trickster realities can come true on the streets of an inner-city community. I am going to include multiple elements to demonstrate how trickster realities become true when they don’t have to.

Consider, for example, the message—a fatherly voice—that tells the message receiver that they have no worth if they don’t believe in Jesus. The divergent view, that the socially respected voice is godly and accurate, coupled with the theory that the deceased father, aligned with the church, represents the heavenly ghost, causes significant trickster hurt and pain. In fact, one day the message receiver reacts to the voice by staying in bed all day and not taking care of her or himself. To make matters worse, when the message receiver in fact stays in bed all day the message receiver’s board and care operator, a friend of the family, comments among the staff about how worthless the message receiver is in contrast to the father as a result of staying in bed all day. The message receiver senses the whispering and negative energy then tests out this reality and gets facial messages from the board and care staff that reinforces the message receivers’ voice, that the voice that the message receiver has no worth if they don’t believe in Jesus.  In trickster fashion the voice proved itself right throughout the message receiver’s community.

But to make matters worse, the culturally encapsulated psychoanalytic therapist/helper who just last week had reality checked the message receiver and proposed that this fatherly voice was only inside the message receiver’s head, their inner anxiety. Now not only does the message receiver feel spiritually condemned, they have a helper who has provided a reality check that offers an alternative stab, that the message receiver is to blame for their worthlessness.  When the message receiver returns angry the following week and tests the therapist/helper out by saying she had been in bed the whole week, the therapist winces and now offers the message receiver the same feedback as the voice and the community at the board and care; suddenly the whole deal has become not a double, but a triple whammy. If the helper then defends themselves and challenges them over inappropriate anger, we have a quadruple whammy.

Example of Culturally Sensitive Use of Trickster Concept:

In addressing this complicated example, I am going to suggest that a helper who fully understands the ramifications of the trickster concept can help. Such a helper has to believe that negative realities are more likely to come true if they are believed. I seek to demonstrate ways they might better know how effectively confront someone about reality in a way that does no damage.

Helpers who understand and teach the trickster concept can transition the message receiver to a rational conversation about crisis emotions. They can do so by being culturally sensitive to the message receiving experience. Doing so enables a supporter to boost message mindfulness of all message constructs. In essence, this culturally sensitive reality-check that can result might increase the level of trust between helper and the message receiver regardless of the reality of the message receivers struggles.

Using the trickster concept, helpers essentially sidle up to the message receiver’s process and playing a non-domineering role. It can help the message receiver apply the next chapter’s magical positive self-fulfilling prophesy skill thereby, (through prayer or mantra) radically change potentially tragic outcomes.  My belief is that in crisis it can help motivate a message receiver to magically reduce the sense of external conflict with the material social world and pave the way for the important role that social relationships play in recovery.

Contrast this to the passive suggestion that the helper hopes the message is a trickster. The culturally sensitive helper, not firmly psychoanalytic, can help tilt the message receiver away from the message process and towards the potential of effectively circumventing the stabs of the board and care staff.  With one quick validating swoosh, the helper can get to the heart of the matter, the fact that the voice might play the role of a trickster.

“A trickster, what do you mean?” says the message receiver.

“I mean is it possible that the voice, if you choose to listen to it, could turn around and make itself come true in some way?  I don’t think you’re worthless but maybe the voice may make others say that you are, maybe even yourself, but I don’t know if I am making any sense to you at all when I talk like this.”

“Oh yeah, that’s already happened, that happens all the time,” says the message receiver.

Not only are there no whammies in the above interaction, but there are also opportunities to explore the voice and figure out a potential alternative theory styles associated with the trickster that might lead to healing Consider how a supporter might list some alternative ways to make meaning of the voice:

Alternative Meanings

• “Maybe on this occasion that fatherly voice is really a demon disguising its voice as your father to do you harm. Maybe there are other times when your father’s voices is very supportive and maybe that is an occasion when an angel is sending you the truth!

• “Maybe you are picking up on the reality of stigma that might exist within your community which may even have included your father. Did you know there are local efforts to help decrease stigma that sometimes exists in some spiritual communities; maybe you want to be part of that!

• “Maybe that fatherly voice doesn’t always understand everything about you. Let’s say, a church lady baby-sitter molested you when you were younger and made you feel worthless and question Jesus. I don’t know if that’s true and I don’t know what relationship you want to have with Jesus or your spirituality. But let’s say something like that were true. It might really hurt that your father and the rest of the world always takes up for your abusers!

Perhaps a list of such options leads the message receiver to open up and reflect on their life in some new ways. This can lead the message receiver to better define the potential of a healing explanation. This, I’d argue requires a lot of study of the theory and creative application of different styles of theory. It helps confront the message receiver without imposing reality and challenges. It also might meet this extremely smart and sophisticated pretend message receiver where they are at and make a different.

Then the message receiver might feel inspired to use a positive self-fulfilling prophesy to get out of bed and spend the day walking. At the end of the day the community and the spirit understands the message receiver better and the fatherly voice apologizes and compliments the message receiver for his efforts.

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Self-Fulfilling Prophesies in All Aspects of Culture:

The spiritual concept of the positive self-fulfilling prophesy, which represents things like prayer and faith, is pivotal for message receiver and arguably for anyone dealing with trauma.  As many people I have worked with have pointed out, the concept is present in the Bible and, I believe, in other spiritual traditions from the major world religions to the local indigenous practices.  Whether this is true or not, I’d argue that the concept of positive self-fulfilling prophesy is also clearly present in modern music (I heard it in a John Mellencamp song) in self-help books (“The Law of Attraction,”) modern spiritual videos (“The Secret,”) and in the foundations of positive psychology. I am essentially arguing that this is a major cultural phenomenon that message receivers are simply denied in the current system due to labels and prejudice which they ever so desperately need!

I argue that the institution and wider culture fail to teach it to message receivers when it is so particularly needed in message crisis. Indeed, somehow social goals associated with self-fulfilling prophesy get permanently dropped when they need to be first and foremost on the helper and messages receiver’s mind. It is hard when someone is locked in a warehouse with nothing to do to teach such a concept. Still, some recovery minded helpers manage to help message receivers focus on activities in some stark circumstances.

To demonstrate what message receivers lack in captivity, I am going to initiate a sports analogy that demonstrates ways the positive self-fulfilling prophesy is widely taught to children in society. In sports, positive messages “I am going to win” lead to a sense of power and agency in the world and often become premonitions. Of course, it might not always work, but when brash predictions occur and come true, time and time again it becomes folklore. Think of Babe Ruth pointing to the bleachers, Muhammad Ali becoming a “I am the greatest. . . a bad, bad man,” Joe Namath leading the underdog Jets to victory against the Raiders, and gold medalist downhill skier Bill Johnson. All these sports heroes brashly predicted their future success and then made it come true.

Of course, there are historical examples of some such predictions that didn’t quite work out, but that’s OK they will probably get forgotten. This does not disrupt the ethos of the positive self-fulfilling prophesy towards sports that is needed to succeed and achieve. Consider how sport legends are used to inspire kids to develop agency in their own lives and practice their sport for their health until most come to the realization that they aren’t gifted enough to go professional. Self-fulfilling messages lead to self-actualization and optimal health and are part of all of our efforts to survive.

Helping without Killing Motivation:

For positive messages, like, “I am the greatest,” the message receiver only has to be like Muhammad Ali and apply all efforts towards achieving that goal. Thus, positive and supportive messages really aren’t a problem until they are shared with other people in ways that cause problems. For a body to consider they are godly or from a reservoir of personal internal strength is not a handicap as long as others don’t know about it until you are successful and become the “bad, bad man.”

There are, of course, many that want to be the greatest who can’t be. The work becomes to accompany to positively motivated person in accomplishing their mission, rather than telling them it is not possible. Encourage the journey towards greatness and a niche where the individual can survive in a humble manner with their need met, using their strengths to have a meaning and purpose. Indeed, a helper needs to help the positively motivated message receiver to create their niche without attacking their message guided positive self-fulfilling prophesy. A reality check that says, “No, you are not the greatest, your messages are wrong” can do an awful lot of damage and undo the mechanism of the self-fulfilling prophesy subduing it with a rapid tranq. Learning that this is just and necessary can do a lot to kill that needed positive self-fulfilling prophesy.

In a corrupt world of potential cultural barriers, getting positive feedback from messages can be a feather in anyone’s cap. And listening and collaborating with positive messages be they voices, intuitions, or linguistic coincidences needs not be cut off; but managed by focusing on survival needs and setting up goals that can take care of additional wants. Particularly with those who are spiritually motivated, teaching humility and guiding the person towards actualizing their greatness as it is meant to be is doable.  It is better to believe in a body’s god given greatness. Helpers who confront it and overpower it teach a body not to listen to special messages, to deny that they exist, may well help pave the way towards institutionalization.

The Tendency to Remember the Negative Trickster Legends:  

Last chapter we have examined how the reverse of the positive self-fulfilling prophesy, the trickster often leads to an increased dependence on messages. Ultimately I will argue that message receivers need to choose a positive mindset and choose to do so repeatedly to regain focus off the spiritual message world and battle to hang in accomplishing material world achievements.

Much like brash sports legends who predict their future success guide the multitudes in motivation, tricksters have a parallel process. Hence, miraculous trickster realities inspire reliance on the truth of the message experience. Consider how when tricksters come true in a miraculous way, it can make the message receiver rush to judgement about the accuracy of all messages. Message receivers become like a classroom full of Muhammad Ali children all saying their spirit world is the greatest. In reality, each individual classmate, in setting social goals, needs to take into account their natural skills and inclinations and work to be the greatest in something apart from their spiritual world that is really in line with god’s mission for them. In the sports world everyone remembers the legends and presumes that if you think that way all the time you will win.  But we all know this is not necessarily the case in reality. But everybody remembers the legends.

Just like people forget about the predictions that didn’t come true, message receivers don’t remember the tricksters that didn’t come true when they were in message crisis. This particularly becomes true of negative trickster messages.  Message receivers’ become overwhelmed because they believe in the accuracy of all negative predictors and this greatly affects their performance and social agency. Negative tricksters become more real than ones trust for other human beings and often discourage activity and social agency. As a result projections of social decline, supported by institutional captivity and medication side effects, may become real.

Exercises that Challenge Negative Trickster Feedback Loops:

A potential exercise to counter the negative feedback loop is to ask the message receiver what percentage of the time their messages come true: 90%, good! Then ask them what percentage of their messages are positive in their eyes, what percentage of their messages are they grateful for: 10%, good! Though I believe the answer to these questions will vary and be challenging for the message receiver to ascertain, they will naturally cause the message receiver to consider the reality of tricksters and positive self-fulfilling prophesies in ways they usually don’t.

Then, another exercise that may work if you have established enough trust with the individual is to examine examples of negative messages that came true and contrast them to stories when the negative messages didn’t. I believe that what you will find is much longer and more powerful stories about negative outcomes coming true in crisis and an inability to remember the ones that didn’t. Really nothing else matters to the suffering message receiver in crisis than the negative ones that come true. Point this out, along with asserting the definition of tricksters, and you may undermine the ethos that is doing the message receiver so much damage. These types of exercises can be used to acknowledge both the reality of tricksters and the need for positive self-fulfilling prophesy.

In essence, you want a message receiver to always work with a positive self-fulfilling mindset and learn to accept, be humble, and persist when they don’t get what they want. You want the message receiver decrease the affair they have with giving their power to trickster messages—positive messages (real or magical) are fine—and help them adjust to the material world so they can find a place that in the classroom of Muhammad Ali clones that fits their natural abilities and inclinations.

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