Are you, as a therapist, family member or case worker, feeling stuck in your relationships with people who have extreme experiences of psychosis? Maybe it feels hard to envision a world of recovery activities and you are wondering if distant, passive, and impoverished relationships are as good as it gets.  Maybe it seems like the only help you can provide is to ask them if they took their medication.

Or maybe you struggled with these challenges yourself and would like to help other people join you in better healing from these challenges. Maybe you don’t feel safe talking about what happened and mask your personality because you don’t want to go back to problems that can be monumental and scary.

If you are in either of these two categories, I have created a twenty-hour training workshop that aims to help achieve better outreach to people in extreme experiences of psychosis. This community-oriented workshop is built to help you feel comfortable exploring the contents of what has been experienced in a psychosis with a road map of healing suggestions so you can join people on their journey and help them be more flexible in how they make meaning of their experiences and work towards recovery.

What people go through in psychosis can be scary and overwhelming or joyous yet destructive; regardless, a lot can be learned from studying these experiences and there still is the chance for relationships to flourish when sharing happens. To demonstrate the value of this, I share several of my stories and there is opportunity for others to share as well.

I am currently recruiting participants to attend ten two-hour training sessions in 2026 from 4-6pm the first Sunday of the month. In 2024 I completed said training and disbanded a troop of supporters who I will invite back.  It was hard to give up that community.  I have missed the camaraderie and connection I experienced over the ten-session year. I hope you will consider joining me for 2026.

Working with people who experience what I prefer to term as special message crisis can be challenging. Often people suffering may hold you at an arms distance and refuse to share the contents of what they are experiencing with you. I find that reviewing components of the training helps keep me hopeful and creative in my work. When I am not working on the contents of this training, it is easy to feel stuck and hopeless.

I am aware that I may be competing against CBT for Psychosis, a training that is accredited. To be honest, I have not taken that training to compare it to mine. That’s why I wanted to take a minute to explain that I have not come to develop this training by reading accredited books or completing research. I have crafted this training being in community with message receivers where I work running clinical groups. This training comes from the perspective of someone with lived experience and who in addition has seventeen years of experience running these groups as a practitioner. It aims to better prepare you to come up with creative interventions

Yes, I have attended Hearing Voices Network Training and I have both participated in and facilitated these groups as well. I found these trainings were exceptional, but I also think my work gives guidance toward being able to bring the wisdom of a community experience to an individual relationship with techniques and activities that bear the potential of helping prepare you to change lives. Perhaps you may find as I do that working in community helps inspire you in the moments you have with a message receiver to provide something they may need.

There is a suggested price of $200 to attend the training. I see this more as a suggested donation as I plan to admit people who can’t afford the fee. If you are thinking about joining me but are scared off by the fee please reachout to me in email, I want you to join us.

Once you have paid the fee, or joined me for a while, you can continue to participate in future trainings until you are satisfied and have mastery over the material. As I stated before, this is a community-oriented workshop full of didactics, stories, videos, exercises, and discussions which means that participation also helps me learn grow and improve the training.

Sign up for the 2026 Journey Though Psychosis Sessions

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Therapists and peer supporters learn not to impose their beliefs on the people they help as part of their cultural competence training. Why, then, do so many people who suffer from psychosis flagrantly have beliefs imposed on them in treatment?

A huge part of knowing how to provide treatment that does not impose beliefs involves understanding and acknowledging the extent to which beliefs are being systemically imposed and countering with an oasis of techniques that counter that tendency. If you stick with me through this you will attain a sense of what it feels like to have reality imposed upon you and the need for skilled treatment providers who know how to recognize and counter this.

Many of us who endure treatment in the mental health system develop refined radars that detect when beliefs are being imposed. When supporters do this, they may immediately link themselves back to the system of involuntary care that can be equated with detainment, involuntary medication, and a fundamental loss of human rights.

Perhaps the tendency to impose beliefs stems from the misguided cultural norm that expects people in psychosis to suppress the experiences that lead to their immediate crisis. The concept that involuntary ideas can be changed by physical punishment and containment may work immediately but is fundamentally flawed.

The fact is that this often is the only help available to families is an assault on people who experience psychosis. As supportive healers, it is essential to offer places where experiences are honored and explored with coping strategies in mind. I believe the way to do this is to build a relationship that does not impose beliefs. However, as you will learn, this may require working against the grain and a willingness to explore those experiences, even though everyone else isn’t.

Imposing Beliefs Statistically Extends Periods of Suffering:

I got better from two-years of continuous psychosis. The fact that I was expected to suppress my psychosis through punishment prevented me from learning some very simple lessons that could have saved me a lot of grief. All I needed was someone to teach me about the rules and regulations of the black market. I learned those lesson from trial and error without guidance or support. The sense of punishment was unrelenting and I had to utilize all my strengths and privileges to endure.

Although negative, statistics in E. Fuller Torrey;s book, Surviving Schizophrenia, suggest that sixty-five percent of people learn to suppress behavior and thrive like I have, they also suggest that half of us who do endure ten years of rocky and traumatic experiences and loss. Many of us fall into periods of extreme poverty that makes social rehab very challenging.

Usually, treatment starts with experiences of involuntary hospitalization during which victims are held until they start to suppress. This can seem like a nightmare for many of us who already have trauma and struggle to suppress. It is my intention to put a face to this struggle and motivate healers towards establishing non punitive places where experiences associated with psychosis can be explored and mindfully expressed.

Imposing Beliefs via Containing Behavior Results in Resistance to Treatment:

The message in the local public psychiatric emergency room is, “you can’t beat us. You must contain your behavior.” If you object and cannot control your behavior involuntary medication may be used and the incarceration is extended. Other counties and states throughout the country set up distinct strategies to impose and contain. In Montana, I was held for three months and spent the first two weeks locked up on the ward. A month of that experience involved exposure to warehouse conditions which are very degrading to one’s self esteem. Being treated in that way seemed to speak to me that was what was inevitable and that there was no use trying.

Many people who are released from this situation will not want to follow up with therapy because injustices witnessed during incarceration. It can take years of decline and high degrees of suffering before many suffers willingly accept treatment.

This is often blamed on a nonexistent disease (instead of a neurodevelopmental difference as science suggests) and I assure you there is very little reflection on the process within social institutions. For many who work in such contexts, it often isn’t clear whether the goal is social rehabilitation and recovery or to fuel the mental health industry with passive contained smokers and coffee drinkers who will stay out of the way.

While experienced patients may learn to utilize a given hospital and system to contain themselves or get a break from the stress of being on the streets, the situation is not likely to springboard social rehab efforts in the community. The set up is more likely to reinforce isolation rather than rehabilitation and for many this may decrease the idea that therapeutic encounters can help.

Squandering of Personal Resources and Trauma

Often the support system, if there still is one, is more eager to get the recipient care than the sufferer (post hospitalization) trusts the thought of therapy. Many of us who suffer fear stereotypes associated with our diagnosis. Sometimes, our family may have stronger beliefs in our worthlessness based on stereotypes, than we have in ourselves. If we fear having schizophrenia and being subjected to warehousing, many of us will do everything we can to stay free utilizing our personal resources and avoiding therapy.

Perhaps if the sufferer is not informed of the ill effects of poverty and public warehousing, they may internalize the efforts of the institutions to turn people into contained, powerless compliant cash cows. I was a social worker and knew well the ill effects of being on social security and warehoused. I refused to believe that I needed warehousing and that I couldn’t work.

Currently, if youthful suffers are lucky, they may get discharged back to their family which may not necessarily be part of the problem. Some families can learn how to continue to be a support to things they don’t understand, and some don’t change their minds so easily. For some, early prevention programs help avoid immediate decline into board and care home environments.

When I finally got released from the hospital, I was transient and moved around trying to find work. This added trauma and fear of permanent homelessness as my own cash dwindled. I felt followed and threatened on a daily basis when I ran out of my medication. My perception became populated with threats and symbols. When my resources were getting low and I was unsure of my ability to hold a professional job, I was forced to get help from my family.

Many sufferers are better at surviving on the road or staying independent. They may utilize drugs, alcohol, associated peer connections, and crime or crime syndicates to tolerate these experiences. Currently in Oakland, many are getting into community encampments. I have met many who were resourceful enough to travel. Many do not have families with resources available to them like I had. Many, like me, may have good reasons for not wanting to return to their families.

The Reality of Economic Sanctions Imposed on People with Psychosis:

Released from the hospital, people in psychosis face the high cost of therapy. Specialists for psychosis are few and far in between. The standard of care among many mainstream therapists is to refuse to work with psychosis and refer back to the hospital. A person may need to get on benefits that will pay for treatment if a therapist is even willing to consider it.

Poor prognosis presumptions result in many sufferers being encouraged to go on social security. Consider the several year process of getting on social security. Unstructured time or adjustment to free programs that may expose the participant to sufferers who are impacted by poverty and years of institutionalization. This can be new for some of us. Though this does not have to be a negative experience, to many it feels like it. To many it is just another punishment or poor prognosis reality. Again, early prevention program may fill the void for some.

High cost of therapy is often coupled by disparity in the quality of facility. In the hospital where I work, for example, the facility is an old psychiatric back ward with bubbled widows still intact. While the facilities for most physical conditions are very modern, investment in cleaning services is clearly lower in the historical part of the hospital. I observed this in other programs as well.

If the person is so unlucky as to land in a board and care home or shelter, they might be forced to be out of the house all day and required to attend program. People who are thus subjugated may feel as if they are owned and must comply for others to get paid middle-class salaries. These things are often noticed by participants and they are upsetting. They may suffer just from facing this alternative. These realities may function as economic sanctions that teaches people to underestimate their value to society.

The Devil is in the Details:

Every journey that involves madness is difficult. The details of what one goes through need to be considered. I believe the survivors perspective is important. Thus, I share my perspective on what happened to me to demonstrate how economic sanctions may play out.

When I first went to therapy three months after I was released from the hospital, I tape recorded the interview because I was so afraid that talking at all would get me returned to the hospital. The only reason I went was that it was a requirement for me to get support from my family.

While some part of me knew I needed help, the way I was financially controlled remains unforgettable. I thought my family was the mafia so they arranged to get me a job at an Italian Delicatessen with a twenty mile a day bike ride and two additional hours riding the rails to work. All this effort was needed for a nine-dollar-an-hour job. It has taken me years and covert conversations with family members to unpack and understand the web of relationships that imposed such a reality on me.

Worse, to get financial help with rent, I had to spend $250 a week on imposed therapy. The bike ride and rail ride to therapy was longer than the ride to work. I lived this way for six months using my free time to unsuccessfully get hired elsewhere until my mother relented and gave me three thousand dollars to enable me to purchase a clunker automobile. She defied my father to do this and still feels she made a mistake.

If the therapist had referred me to food stamps and made the therapy voluntary, I might not still suffer the way I do. However, the therapist insisted that the situation was fair and refused to validate or acknowledge the hardship I endured. “I believe you are working hard, but believe me working at a Deli is not so hard. You are giving your power away to those teenage kids. They are not so bad, really. You are letting them bully you!”

By the time I finally left this therapeutic relationship two years later tens of thousands of dollars later, I knew better than to contest the therapist. She said she was not a greedy capitalist. She told me not to become a wounded healer. She told me that in reality I hadn’t been close to homelessness.

I agreed that I was not really hungry and strapped for cash during this process. I concealed all the night terrors and peeing the bed at night during the process. Of course, I lied! I worked until I got my Marriage and Family Therapy License and I wrote an award-winning book about my experience.

I have become a wounded healer! I use insurance rather than demand cash for my services. At least I am not a pretender.

But still, my life is limited due to affects of trauma and mistrust.

Using Therapy Techniques that Don’t Impose Reality!

I think it is important for healers to halt the process of imposing reality upon sufferers and give them choices and options as to how to manage their situations. Instead of siding with forced treatment and using this to impose your values and ideas on the vulnerable individual, listen to the story of what they went through to get to you. Give them resources that give them choices about whether they want to work with you.

Instead of telling the sufferer what to do and what is safe, be curious about what they are experiencing that causes them distress or delight. Know that real important experiences are behind the alternate reality that they are facing. Know that alternate reality has meaning and purpose that can be understood and supported. Alternate realities may be profoundly different from the world you understand, but be brave and curious. If your conduct becomes part of the problem be curious and learn more about what you are doing.

Don’t use the threat of hospitalization to silence or disrupt behavior associated with alternative experience. Instead, go down the rabbit hole with the sufferer with a road map of coping strategies. Know what your doing if you are going to make coping strategy suggestions. If you don’t know what your doing, it’s okay, admit it. Problems with voices and alternate realities are hard. Just being there without imposing reality will really help. Also, it is usually appreciated if you puzzle through the muck to the best of your ability.

Consider that dangerous and scary experiences are not going to be openly shared with you if you are going to laugh and call them crazy. I would not tell my therapist real experiences that were disturbing because she wouldn’t take my less-disturbing experiences seriously. What ensued was entirely unhelpful to me. It was a total thorn in my side.

I concealed as much as I could and she had absolutely no understanding. Then, when I did things that could have got me killed, like call the FBI, she threatened me with what seemed to be hospitalization instead of understanding and exploring the experiences that led me to do so. That is an example of what happens when treatment is imposed!

A Challenge to the Status Quo Best Practice:

Throughout I have referenced the existence of early prevention programs. Locally and nationally they usually utilize a best practice called CBT for Psychosis.

I’d like to argue that when the best practice for psychosis, CBT for psychosis, allows healers to separate themselves from the beliefs of the client, it makes the process of safe connection much harder. This is a boundary and policy that makes it harder for recipients of treatment to trust because it reinforces the idea that reality may be imposed. Especially, if the helper turns and refers them back to the meatgrinder of psychiatric inpatient to send them a message, it can add to trauma.

I am not saying that challenging irrational thinking cannot be helpful at times. However, not everyone who is abused can control their thoughts. Experiences like disassociation and hypervigilance often interfere with cognition control. Let those who can learn use cognitive therapy use it, but don’t come with a cookie cutter mentality. You may help some, but don’t presume that those who you can’t help aren’t reachable. Consider learning additional strategies.

I utilize broader strategies that include mindfulness strategies, curious inquiry about psychosis as a culture, medication, positive psychology, trauma informed reprocessing, behavioral strategies in addition to cognitive strategies. I believe broader strategies are needed and will leave far fewer people behind. There is a lot that can happen when reality isn’t imposed.

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When I experienced two years of psychosis early during my career as a mental health counselor, I was already getting good at managing trauma with my master’s level training. I always been pretty good at being safe for others.

I wanted some of that trauma support when I found myself confined to a ward on a State Hospital. I knew I needed to establish safety with someone but couldn’t find anyone who would deal with me. Instead, no one treated me as though I was traumatized because they didn’t want to reinforce my delusions. This only made the trauma of what I experienced worse. Invariably, hospital workers were punitive and denied anything unjust was happening to me at all.

Because I worked tirelessly and had family support, I was able to return to my career in mental health. I got my psychotherapy license ten years ago and since that time I have worked to create trauma-sensitive treatment to address the needs of individuals who experience psychosis. Here, I intend to convey two trauma-sensitive solutions I have developed, working with people in groups and in individual treatment.

The Challenge of Establishing Trust:

It’s true that it is hard to establish safety with someone when they think they are being followed. I felt I was being followed by the mafia via government surveillance; others feel they are in miraculous communion with a spirit world. Any therapist who works with individuals who have experienced psychosis can tell you that trust with any such prototype takes time.

However, too many practitioners do not feel that the stories of psychosis are worth engaging for the simple reason they might have delusions in them! It’s true delusional ideas can cause a great deal of problems. For example, maybe the police didn’t really taunt me like I reported they did when they bruised my wrists. Maybe I was too hard on the pony-tailed man who wouldn’t give me food and testified against me at my competency diagnosing me with schizophrenia. Maybe I wasn’t really being followed by the FBI like I thought I was. Maybe I was delusional when I said I leaked information from the section 8 housing authority I was working for. All that I knew for sure was that nobody cared to listen. I was on my own for quite some time.

Many practitioners reason that they don’t want to reinforce anything that isn’t real. Instead, the best practice, CBT for Psychosis, directs the clinician to separate their reality from the sufferer and teach the sufferer to evaluate their thoughts to make sure they are rational. I believe CBT for Psychosis may work at times. In fact, think there comes a time when cognitive therapy is necessary for rehabilitation. However, there are times this single strategy may not address trauma involved with the experiences of psychosis.

In contrast, I have had significant success in working with people with psychosis by finding powerful ways to validate the contents of an individuals’ psychosis to address real trauma that may have transpired. This approach is increasingly accepted now thanks to the spread of the hearing voices network support groups. Indeed, I have found that providing group support that allows people to explore psychosis, to be very helpful. Increasingly research is proving to validate the idea that treating psychosis as you would a trauma results in far better outcomes.

The Challenges of Validating All Parts of Psychosis

Of course, some might argue that the hearing voices network does not have a clear methodology for how to validate delusions when they are not caused by voices. It’s true that, some delusions are hard to validate in a genuine manner. For example, many people who hear voices believe that other people are hearing what they are hearing. Such individuals may accuse the practitioner or group leader of many things that they aren’t responsible for, making therapy and group sustainability a challenging endeavor.

My own experience in therapy was a nightmare because my therapist didn’t believe me. Thousands of dollars were spent and not an ounce of trust was achieved.

I have found it’s possible to validate things that aren’t true; however, I have had to take apart the delusional experience and look at them with a microscope. Then, I have found it is possible to validate a part of the psychosis process without validating all the mistakes that happen.

For starters, I coined the term special messages to describe experiences that trigger an alternative way of taking in information and connecting with the world. Thus, not only voices but other meaningful experiences like intuition, dreams, interpersonal interactions, and coded realities from media can trigger alternative views about reality.

Then, I developed seven other code words to represent distinct aspects of sufferers’ experiences. In sum, if the sufferer can become more aware of the process of what they are doing during a psychosis process and the way this process relates to fellow sufferers, they can become more mindful and validated and heal from trauma.

The Message Mindfulness Solution that Supports Trauma Informed Care:

Message mindfulness happens when the person in psychosis learns to see their process by describing it to another person or by hearing similar process that they can relate to in a group. I have found that people in psychosis can often recognize delusions when they are listening to someone. However, when they are not mindful of special messages, they react and cannot see their own process as being potentially delusional.

I believe that when message receivers become mindful of what is happening to them and their peers, they go towards experiences that terrorize, anger or excite them. Then they can acknowledge their emotions in a way that can help them let go of those triggering special message experiences. With awareness, those special message experiences become less judged and easier to let go of without having emotions and thoughts spike. And the sufferer can then acknowledge that they often will be right but don’t necessarily have the evidence to presume that their special messages are accurate all the time.

Helping a sufferer or message receiver become mindful of the experiences that give rise to alternate thoughts or what I call divergent views is not an easy process and can take time. Indeed, message receivers who listen and learn from each other are better able to admit that some special messages may turn out to be true and others false. Still, they can all be considered real and can be validated and better observed by the people who get them. Plus, becoming increasingly mindful of other message processes can significantly help a body reconcile with the ways they were wrong and had their emotions spike needlessly.

The Solution of Mastery Tasks or What I call Recovery and Reality Tasks:

A second trauma informed solution that has resulted from redefining psychosis into eight components, is to distract from distress when emotions spike by completing mastery tasks. I call these mastery tasks, recovery and reality tasks.

In this process, high emotions are soothed by what I have termed the act of sleuthing. Sleuthing is the act of collecting a series of messages and to trying to figure out what is really going on. This leads to all kinds of thoughts about the way the world works (divergent views.) Then, divergent views cause the message receiver to sleuth again and be on the lookout for more special message experiences. Thus, the message receiver often gets more different types of messages until they become entirely preoccupied with distressing or enthralling special message material.

Therefore, I believe that distracting from sleuthing by completing mastery tasks may significantly reduce distressing and intense emotions. When the message receiver sits and sleuths all day they expend a great deal of emotional energy without accomplishing anything. Then, social workers or supporters are more likely to push for warehousing them.

However, to distract from sleuthing, the message receiver needs to practice and strengthen the skill of distracting.

Often, distracting efforts go unacknowledged by others because they are judged negatively in comparison to what could otherwise be accomplished. At first, in my beliefs, the message receiver needs to accept and be supported for basic actions that are productive. Thus, appreciating mastery tasks as helpful for wellness and supporting them regardless of their social standing is another way to validate and support message receivers.

Moving through trauma in such a manner beats being isolated, locked up, or restrained, which teaches the message receiver a great deal of helplessness. Nothing could discourage mastery tasks more. Indeed, these kinds of traumatizing events make message receivers less mindful and elevate the unreasonable expectation that special messages be suppressed.

Conclusion:

While I have also developed six additional solution strategies, I consider the above two solutions to be specific to addressing the trauma that message receivers experience. The six other solutions I propose are experiential, spiritual (there are two of these,) behavioral, cognitive and narrative. These solutions likewise may be responsive to trauma in some ways but are linked to differing components of special message experience and tend to work in different manners. Stay tuned for future solution focused blog posts that may help describe a recovery process

The post Two, Trauma-Sensitive Solutions for Extreme States appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

When I think back to my twenty-two-year career working with other providers, my mid-career first-break, and the things that helped me recover, like my dog, I know for sure that the standard of care needs is a disservice to those who experience madness.

Many people who have breaks from reality get that permanent housing trajectory in their heads and rant and rail against it. They may still believe that there is such a thing as schizophrenia and be disinterested in the lives of their peers who are clearly schizophrenics. Those who have breaks, like me, are extremely diverse with distinctive cultural backgrounds, different access to resources and differing levels of buy into to the concept that they are permanently ill with something that will never go away. Those without a history of privilege become very susceptible for decline into permanent warehousing conditions that make healing very challenging.

Clearly, dismantling industry constructs for things like schizophrenia and poor prognosis is an important component of recovery. I have a hunch that to plan for generativity, schizophrenic constructs, other disorder constructs that block the formation of counterculture, and constructs from developmental psychology need to be challenged.

***

As I mentioned in part one of this essay, to deconstruct the notion of schizophrenia, nine years ago, I coined the term, special messages. Special messages are a broad set of experiences that lead people into schizophrenia. Special messages can range from intuitions, to dreams, to memories, to interpersonal interaction, to voices or other hallucinations, to coded/traumatic observations of media, words, numbers, or serendipitous reality. During a first break these experiences come together to offer powerful glimpses of reality that is real but overwhelming or confusing. In the least it leads to thoughts that tend to differ from mainstream thought.

Running survivor-led group therapy over the past nine years, I have identified at least seven other jargonized concepts other than special messages that significantly help define what is going on during a break. This involves looking at message receivers without seeing them as behavioral objects with brain disorders. Looking at the process of what is going on internally and externally in addition to the way individuals behave is necessary. And during this process of deconstructing schizophrenia, there are a host of potential solutions that arise. Along with eight components of “psychosis” I have developed eight solution strategies over time.

***

I believe it helps to share diverse ideas, coping strategies and learn more about the culture of peoples who experience a break. Although we come from diverse backgrounds, we become brothers and sisters when we become oppressed during treatment. I believe group therapy that focuses on the experience of “psychosis” can help restore that much needed human need for generativity. The hearing voices movement is currently starting to make this resource available to people. I believe that people who get special messages and have first breaks have skills that could become gifts if they learn how to manage them. Instead they end up separated into isolated disorders and alone. I tend to think of them as being neurologically different not psychologically and developmentally impaired.

Perhaps as a people, we message receivers are mistrustful for a good reason. Who wants to go in and out of the hospital until they are forced into permanent warehousing conditions?

As a paid professional, I was careful to hide my history and prove that I could function just like a normal clinician. It wasn’t until I had worked six years and received my psychotherapy license that I decided to overcome my own fear of being fired for surviving schizophrenia. I started to run groups in which I shared and depicted my own experience and used that platform to foster mutual exploration. I have learned how to work with many in the program, telling stories and defining universal qualities of “psychosis.”

***

Another industry construct that needs to be dismantled are the presumptions that get made with the developmental psychological paradigm of Eric Erickson. The belief that someone with paranoid “psychosis” is stuck in the first developmental stage of trust verses mistrust and therefore not able to conquer later developmental tasks is common. Psychological malapropisms such as this contribute to preventing the industry from really healing people and offering them things that help them with generativity needs. Too many providers think along these lines, fail to explore a message receiver’s experiences and do not train people towards getting generativity needs met

Sure, some of us who have had breaks from reality have had problems with things like guilt and shame in our history, but many don’t. Some of us may be industrious and have initiative, just like some “normals” are, and some not. These kinds of struggles can be addressed intermittently and developmental strengths may exist without the presence of trust.  Likewise, we may have different levels of need in terms of intimacy and generativity, but we do have these needs just like everybody else. The idea that you can’t love someone else until you love yourself is an example of this kind of malapropism. If loving and caring for others is a strength, why not utilize it.

***

When a person has a first break, it is a real shame when, suddenly, all resources go to providers who set trajectories of permanent warehousing and poverty. I believe it is wise to invest in people who get special messages. Once they are either economically empowered or enveloped in a safe and healing community they can engage in generativity and dismantle the constructs that keep them shackle bound.

Indeed, people with psychological training or a belief in modern ways may be at a significant disadvantage in surviving a break. It is well known that in many third world countries with subsistence and indigenous practices, recovery is more common than in modern contexts. This proves to be true even when there is access to medication and the best practice: CBT for “Psychosis.” There are so many factors to consider when considering reality in this manner. It is a very mind-blowing and industry-condemning fact. I feel that getting important needs met like generativity is essential and can help more of us dismantle the paradigms that keep us defeated.

Although I function with a good job and a good relationship, I still struggle with the lack of safety I experience when dealing with mainstream community. Outside the community where I work as a facilitator, I prefer to stay at home where many of my needs are met with the canine who we just rescued three weeks ago. I prefer to adapt to the positive qualities I learn about from my current dog, Jayla, and focus on that present moment of joy she brings.

Meanwhile the apocalypse rages in the backdrop.

The post The Need to Dismantle Industry Constructs (Part Three) appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

In the United States, when a person has what is often referred to as a first break, the courses of action that get taken against them may end up being a crime against their humanity.

While there can be very diverse responses from family and friends, there is the unfortunate tendency to turn to the mental health industry for support and direction. Many providers in the industry only know the standard of care which is to refer the person to a hospital and psychiatric medications.

Few providers take an interest in understanding and exploring the important experiences that lead to the break. I call these experiences special messages. Finding a provider who is curious about these experiences, skilled at understanding them, and who knows better than to try to suppress them can be rare.

Many providers fail to acknowledge the trauma involved in the lives of the people who have first breaks and that the trauma that gets worsened as the standard of care—forced medication, social security, revolving hospital doors, and warehousing—get implemented. Many presume this is a necessary process.

In fact, I know just a few providers who would not take the contention of this essay seriously: that to recover, what people really need to get their feet back on the ground and have the responsibility and roles that can most certainly include that of caring for others.

Sure, when people have a break, there is behavior that can become scary and hard to tolerate. It may be the last thing that supporters think is that this person needs more responsibility. But it is a human need that is so absent in the industry that it needs to be part of the equation. In my mind, the sooner generativity needs are addressed, the sooner the recovery.

***

For many supporters who do stick around, there is an amplification of shock and distress when they find that hospitalization and psychiatric medications are not even possible until there is danger or grave disability. Sometimes the thought is that nothing that can be done until the standard of care is implemented. It is enough to push many to desperately pray for hospitalizations and psychiatric medication and curse the human rights of their loved one. Some may set trajectories for permanent warehousing and poverty.

Other supporters may encourage and advocate for behavioral change without understanding the obstacles that are faced, the experiences I call special messages. Perhaps some supporters think the afflicted person can be backed into that corner where they are forced to accept consensus reality, take their medication, and return to the person that everybody wants them to be. It can become a self-defeating, tough love mentality for many. I consider this mentality to be one that profoundly misunderstands what it takes to build trust with someone who is in a break.

***

I don’t intend to overlook the recent proliferation of early prevention programs which is a very good idea. Such programs are just starting to be created extolling the merits of CBT for “Psychosis.” Herein, therapists just entering the field are taught a best practice that wasn’t even created for the culture of the people it tries to serve. While I would not argue that this is worse than hospitalization and psychiatric medications, I still feel there is cultural bias in it. It may save some who are skilled and supported, but for many, it does little to meet the person where they are at and meet their needs for generativity.

I personally believe that CBT for “Psychosis” offers one valid technique that can be supportive when there is so much more that is needed for a good recovery. For me personally, recognizing that my thoughts are irrationally diminishing me due to the stigmatizing ways others treat me does help; but this did little to get me through until I had escaped poverty.

For me, poverty was such an irrational experience. I needed to learn to accept it before I could overcome it. Indeed, so many like me lose everything when they have a first break. Still others are forced into such circumstances with what may be misguided tough love. Imagine being told to think rationally by the same people who are suppressing you. It can be a difficult pill to swallow.

***

Seventeen years after my own two- year break I tend not to get to work with people until they are in the upper part of middle age and have utterly given up. Finally, they accept that the twisted system that has guided them into permanent warehousing can offer them support. And so, we provide transportation and provide them a place to heal. In this crazy world, we save the government money by ending the revolving door of the hospital while charging top dollar.

That is not to say that many have not done a good job surviving on their own with the occasional hospitalization. Many clients I work with are just now getting services for aging as they are falling into low-income housing. It simply is not fair to categorize a program such as ours in simplistic manners.

I believe we have some of the nicest and most beautiful people one could ever experience and what we do for them is skillfully encourage them to build a community or family in which they can support each other. Once I learned the ropes, which took quite a few years, I learned to consider participants to be unpaid volunteers and to be regaining an important role—the ability care for others after terrifically traumatic experiences. Teaching people who have breaks from reality to care for each other may take some time, but doing so changes downward trajectories.

Much of what I am saying about generativity comes from observing people in the program where I work, so many of whom are in permanent warehousing circumstances.

***

Indeed, when I reflect on what is needed for people who have breaks from reality, I think that what they need most is to maintain the role of being responsible to care for other people or beings. What happens to most people who have breaks and face psychiatric warehousing, is that they lose everything they have and get treated as though they are a drain that others must take care of.

Thus, initiating processes of caring for others and responsibility are novel experiences that can help motivate them get their feet on the ground. I at least would propose that it be a consideration in planning any person’s future who has a first break.

The post The Need to Plan for Your Loved Ones Recovery (Part One) 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.

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