Category: Narrative Essays

The studio rests six stories high. On top of an old steam heater a fan drones in an open window. Clyde sleeps on a black futon that sits on the floor. He sleeps under a thick Central American bed cover his ex-girlfriend gave him. It took a semester in the dorms, but he’d finally he […]

I unlock the door to the institution’s finest office. A doctor’s name is inscribed on a linoleum slide that changes every few years. I press the darkened door smudge on the off-white paint job that dominates the unit. The door swings open. I invite Eugene’s cousin in. Eugene’s cousin sits in the cushioned seat that […]

It will be my first EMDR training with a master trainer. I receive a message on my Facebook Messenger account. Someone I friended from Los Gatos California asks if I want to be rich and famous? I can join the illuminati, there are twenty available slots. Do I want to apply? I have heard many […]

When I took the job at the Housing Authority facility dubbed the “Hotel of Horrors” in the local media, I thought I was on a mission from god.  The weekend before I started the job, I took a spiritual retreat with the Quaker community I frequented. Out on an island on the Puget Sound, in […]

Tin Man thinks of his great grandfather’s ancestral quilt that hangs in the suburban guest room and how it disgusts him. His people were lumber barons back east, in upstate New York. He was given the quilt even though he feels like the black sheep of the family. Tin Man did what he could to […]

Twenty years ago, I experienced what might be termed a break from reality while I was working as a mental health worker. I worked in a last resort section 8 housing project that was rife with crime. It was called “The Hotel of Horrors” in an article in the local media. For six months, I […]

What was emerging now was different than anything I had experienced prior. I had just gotten support from relationships I had built over the past year at the Quaker meeting-for-worship. Maybe my situation at work had been getting whispered about among my friends. Maybe my spirit was exuding a sense of desperation. Either way, I’d […]

Warning: Graphic Content “I have heard real stories,” said my female therapist, “of men doing graphic and horrible things to women. I don’t think based on what you just told me, there is any justification for any accusation whatsoever. I think you have been saying a lot of hurtful things.” I figured my mother who […]

I was a skinny and reluctant social worker when I first started out. I was working through an eating disorder. Initially, I didn’t really believe that taking home a middle-class salary for nickel and diming those less fortunate was my idea of contributing to the world. I guess, I’d gotten the idea that that was […]

Fifteen years ago, I remember hearing a psychiatrist who had just been away for two weeks say, “There is no such thing as a vacation when you are schizophrenic!” As an unlicensed professional vying to get a staff position on the unit, I had carefully avoided rolling my eyes. I had politely nodded my head […]

Back when I was just a yuppie, I learned a few points of wisdom about working through stigma. I needed mentors to help teach me how wrong stigma is. Now,  I want to pay forward some of  what I learned outside the class room  to some mental health academics and administrators who may not have […]

I look out the window feeling like I am straight out of the mental institution as my wife’s SUV pulls off the freeway toward the Marriot Hotel. We are on our way to visit my wife’s dear friend and goddaughter at an Irish Dance competition. I know I will be feeling straight out of it: […]

Coming out Mad, as a professional with a Marriage and Family Therapy License has been a rocky journey over uncharted, and lawless terrain. I share my experience to help embolden others who have experienced trauma, stigma, and institutionalization to be mentally transparent and come out in an authentic manner in their therapy practice. I believe […]