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 people denounce the illuminati. I mostly know about the organization from a Tupac lyric. Still, it takes me a minute to figure that the post is probably a hoax. I get my ass off the commode and prepare to depart.

If I can trust this EMDR trainer, I may choose to pay to join her network and attend her trainings. I have found the other two famous experts I have taken workshops from to personally wound me.

I have already tried EMDR with my therapist. I am in therapy because of my history of bad experiences with therapists and my inability to get along with my head-shrinking colleagues. One time my therapist got frustrated with me and said he thought I wasn’t a good candidate for EMDR, but I hadn’t allowed him to give up on me.

Taking time for the sake of learning is a challenge at this time. At work we are switching to computerized records. It is not clear if we are going to survive this transition. Our unit has been targeted by administrators who call our service a dinosaur.

***

On my way across San Francisco traffic I listen to a podcast I’ve agreed to appear on in a few days. This podcast is: Baltimore is Talking Live; with hosts Reverend Dr. Q and Aaron Green. I am a little old school. Podcasts are generally not a part of my world unless I am going to appear on one.

In this era, reality is NPR and MSNBC verses Fox News. The impeachment inquiry is on the table and Dr. Q bounces from the bullets in his neighborhood to slavery to the hypocrisy of the left.

I think about the propaganda of each side so often I have a tendency to tune out; but I kind of like Dr. Q.

I work primarily for people who live in board and care homes amid the buzz of bullets in the inner-city. I feel their stories of oppression are not even part of the debate.

If I believed the text books I’d read in college, I would not believe the things they tell me about oppression in the inner city. It seems like books and education the fact program participants can’t write notes on themselves as a justification to take money that should be going to them.

Alas, I don’t trust books written by psychotherapists all that well.

On the podcast, the guest is an author about porn addiction who seems to talk like the hosts weren’t there. His own porn addiction put him in jail for a year and he clearly was far more down to earth than he would have been otherwise. I am impressed that he speaks from a place of lived experienced.

For my clients with porn addiction, the short discussion really helps.

***

I race through the last lanes of traffic and break a few laws. I follow google and park in a lot under the Hilton and get to the bathroom before the conference starts.

As introductory comments are being made a woman who is my age slips into the seat next to me. She whispers at me some introductions and asks if I had read the book that the training is based on. I lift my hand to flash my wedding ring and tell her no just a bit bluntly.

I think back the dating years and think about how blatantly rude I had been. Others might think it was as if someone had lobbed a big fat softball at me and I whiffed horribly. I make some other friendly comments to compensate.

At the first break, I am feeling pretty good about the training.

The woman next to me explains her behavior by exclaiming she’s got poison oak. This genuinely interests me and I inquire and learn that she’s been in Ventana Wilderness which I know well.

I met my wife on an event like that and recall how hard it is being single.

I am quick in and out of the restroom because there are almost no males in the conference. Scanning the room of hundreds, one might see maybe three or four.

As if he read my mind, a man walks up and starts a conversation. He looks very dapper wearing an earthy necklace with a stone in it. He works in a group practice in Palo Alto primarily with adolescents. Clearly ten year older that me, he approaches me like he is interviewing me for a position and wants to know what I’ve read about my specialty, psychosis.

I explain that I am an award-winning author who writes about my experience running professional groups for psychosis. I am not afraid to tell him I have not read many authors who write about my specialty.

He suggests John Weir Perry. Of course, I recognize the name. He was mentor to a psychotherapist I know. I have heard this psychotherapist call me out my name with a bitter voice. Meanwhile, other cohorts he would call, dear.

I acknowledge that I have heard of this deceased writer who was in favor of medication free clinics in the seventies. I mention Soteria House, I-Ward, and Diabasis. The man correctly acknowledges that Perry started Diabasis . It figures, Diabasis was clearly the expensive version of the three! I am less motivated to read the academic ghoul now.

The man, really suggests that I read Perry. “He really did some deep work, and it is very assessible.”

***

The illuminating woman with poison oak invites me to lunch. As if she knows it will interest me, she talks about living in Nicaragua and how most Americans don’t even understand how lucky they are.

She agrees with me when I talk about the facility I work at and the disparities in mental health treatment verses physical health. She says in the nonprofit she works at the quality of facility is an afterthought.

My attention lapses. I remember the trainer’s rehearsed voice, “and then, you start bilateral stimulation and let the person process . . .”

I think about the urinal I am most used to using. I think about the leak that has colored the underneath floor on its way to the drain. Seven years ago, I put in a work order to fix the urinal and years later the drip did get fixed. Still the glistening yellow stain remains. Stradling the stain daily, my eyes are likely to notice the psychotropic shit smears on the textured wall. Psychotropic shit is particularly rich in odor! I think of the soot on the screen outside the bubbled window. The soot built up the years they demolished the old wing next to us the clang and buzz sounding above our voices in the group rooms.

And when I am ready, I submerge from my trance. I figure maybe three seconds have lapsed.

Somehow, I doubt the we are talking about the same level of neglect!

I continue listening to the poison oak woman who has talked about her South Bay family in a scenic suburb. Sure enough, they were personal friends with the trainer. She intends to say “Hi” to the trainer from her sister.

My first supervisor comes from the same town and it conjures up images.

“You know mental health is a very small community,” said that old supervisor the last time I saw her, “If you do something to piss someone off, word definitely gets around.”

I think about how I believe I have been black balled from the county panel that would enable me to open a practice.

***

In the next hour I listen to the trainer’s current concern about the rise of homelessness that is overwhelming the Bay Area. I think about the Great Depression and the presence of Hoover towns often when I see the sprawling encampments.

She launches a story about a kid from Danville who ran away and lived on the streets. Years later a newspaper found the hardened street person and reconnected them to their wealthy brother and got him therapy. He was doing well and getting treatment for his trauma, but then ran away again and overdosed in an encampment. It’s a story that sounds like the movie, Paris Texas.

The trainer says, “I think when people live on the streets, they get a sense of community in the encampments. I mean why else would someone return and choose to live there?”

As the whole room bobs its head, I fume.

I think of the old flick Paris Texas and I know there can be a lot of reasons people choose to run away. Why can’t a trauma specialist think of other reasons? When I saw Paris Texas, I remember the clear sense of an affair that happened between the homeless man and the brother’s wife who hadn’t wanted him to return home. It was a reality one had to sense. My whole life I have wondered how it is that other people don’t all run to join the streets!

One can feel very guilty for coming back from leading a life outdoors and feel rageful! And there can be so many millions of reasons to run! Some of us are born to run, baby!

At lunch I get a Messenger spot on my phone. The person who invited me to join the illuminati has actually contacted me again and is demanding a response. This time the face on the little circle is one that I recognize. I put the phone down before I am sure of this.

I remember collaborating with the face on the little circle picture. She’d sent me a flyer with the silhouette of a cannabis leaf to announce our mutual event at the hospital.

I recall how I played dumb and asked a patient who was once affiliated with a famous drug dealer before legalization. Publicly he says his family business is in “manure” so some of us may not understand. He comes to program so he has a public excuse not to behave violently and works to avoid smoking.

When I’d taken the time to assess his feelings about the cannabis symbol, he’d sighed and confirmed it was a leaf. I think he appreciated my effort to console him. We’ve always liked shooting the shit with each other.

I think that as a psychotherapist on a psychiatric unit, I am already a member of too many secret treatment team societies.

I pick up the phone and respond: “No, thank you for asking.”

I am not going to sell my soul any more than I already have.

***

I bump into a colleague who used to work at the unit I work in and we decide to lunch.

She got caught in a cross-fire of bullets one evening outside the hospital on the way to her car. This caused her to ask for a transfer to the more suburban outpatient psychiatric unit.

She is an attractive married woman with a slender physique. She says she’s on a gluten-free diet and we discuss this a bit.

I want to tell her that she can’t con a con.

We had never been super close. I’d shied away from her because I’d sensed she was still a partier. But we’d had a few good experiences together.

She was a basketball star in college, comes from Texas, and likes Whole Foods. She has recently seen my presentation on psychosis and was nice about it.

I am surprised to learn that she comes from El Paso as she also is part Italian. She talks about how distressed she is about the mass shooting that happened in the WalMart. She has a private practice two days a week and that is what I want so I pick her brain a little. She talks about her history of receiving EMDR and what she’s gone through to become a specialist.

I think about how I felt hearing about homelessness and lie. I say how much I am enjoying the conference. She really supports me in my wish to open up a private practice for my niche.

“People at Fairmont don’t understand how well they have it. Things were really tough at Highland,” she says. “I have a friend in the county, I will follow up with him and see if I can find out if you are really on a blacklist for the county panel. I heard they are currently looking for providers”

***

The rest of the training is a review of the basic tenets of EMDR mixed with four videos that demonstrate them in action. I am pretty able to follow. Participants are asked to visit very dark places and use images and memory of personal resources they have developed in their life to now support them in imagining different outcomes.

The fist two videos are done with therapists who are in training. They are clearly very trusting and articulate. They really demonstrate how this treatment can transform lives. The discussion and review of the points of training are very helpful.

However, as we all know, people who are used to therapy have an easier time processing traumatic events and moving on with their lives.

When I worked with my therapist on resourcing, I realized that all the people I identified as resources had also seriously hurt and betrayed me. Outside my wife and my dogs, it was hard to identify sources of comfort. When I was finally able to think of the writer Charles Bukowski as a resource, I got somewhere. I love his writing and never felt bruised by him.

Indeed, when I will try EMDR post workshop, I will find that bilateral stimulation with the paddles to sound artists like Tupac and Bruce Springsteen help me significantly as well.

***

The rest of the day is a video on her effort to do EMDR on a difficult community person. He is a porn and meth addict who got busted for having some child pornography mixed in with his volumes of pornography.

He did a year in jail and got connected to a church and is now clean, but denies that he has much of a problem and expresses no remorse or emotions when you ask him.

“And,” says the trainer a little playfully, “You might notice that this man is not very intelligent.”

As the video starts the hulking man is wearing a Yankees cap. He is clearly not a hat wearer as the hat is unworn and does not come close to looking good on him. The hat reminds me of Omar from The Wire wearing a tie in the courtroom. His demeaner is like Kevin Spacy in Unusual Suspects.

I instantly think of the Yankees cap as a gang symbol. I know some local gang signs from Oakland, but this man appears to be of Italian Heritage and I think of the New York five families.

He comes across like he’s not going to trust this snobby goof and does deny all his feelings as promised. And who would? The good doctor’s demeaning opinion of the man comes across clear in my eyes.

Sure enough, the man is married with children to whom he had stopped paying attention because of his addiction. He admits that he used the porn to seduce porn stars who stayed late at the strip clubs to film after hours. There is no mention or concern for how he got money for the copious amount of meth he used. In high school, he regrets he was more of a bully than a student.

I rage at the trainer’s clear lack of understanding.

The man has the respect of authority of a soldier. In the conference, the expert doctor makes fun of him for having it. At the end he pretends to want to make her happy.

I have been trafficked by people like him. And now I work in a public sector job that is being choked by one of his buddies.

Once again, bovine heads bob. Now I am almost certain I do not want to learn EMDR from this person who speaks before me.

I have been too hurt by people who have failed to understand me in therapy!

That said, the man did get to the point where he could cry before her and access those pent-up gangster emotions.

Who knows what masterminded violence he was processing by taking that meth and porn! I think about drugs women, or guns, the commodities of the black-market America. I think of how smart and twisted the courts were to use the child pornography charge to force him away from gangsterism. He likely would have had to go protective custody in the pen with a sex offence.

I am grateful he is healing and living more in love, though. He’s got to live in mind-dumbing fear of retaliation through, no doubt.

***

On my way home at the end of the conference, I say goodbye to the male adolescent therapist. The illuminating poison oak woman has distanced herself since I stood her up at lunch. Oops!

I check my phone and clearly the option to join the illuminati has passed as the two messages have been erased off my messenger account.

My ex-coworker comes over to say goodbye and I lie again and say I really liked the conference. I really can’t say anything bad about our talk other than the fact that I lied.

I know that I have gotten a lot of learning from the conference. I am impressed with how EMDR enables a person to work through trauma without taking the therapist there with them. Like the last scenes of the TV series the Sopranos, I feel surrounded by shrinks who are sipping wine and being asses all around me.

I remain unmotivated to read therapy books or join therapy associations.

Alas, I am not internally moved past my stubbornness. I am not vying to become a fucking liar like the rest of them!

The post Modern Day Healers and Tupac’s Illuminati appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

Watching Buzzards Swirl:

It has been my honor and privilege to work for fifteen years on an urban inner-city psychiatric unit that is currently being targeted for closure by a hospital system that is facing a budget crisis. There is a proposal on the table to merge our program with its suburban counterpart, taking away the specialized care we provide to the urban, primarily African American, community that we serve.

This week I went in front of the board to argue against the closing of this clinic. In preparing to do this, I found myself recollecting things I had learned at commuter college I attended in Camden New Jersey. I developed a grand plan to tell a story that would change the board’s mind.

I sat in front of the board for three hours before I was able to break the spell of the story. Listening to the board belabor many points, I realized it wasn’t the place for my personal perspective. I ended up barely getting my head together and saying some words that fit in with the wider efforts of my professional peers.

Our team said what it had to say and did a good job. Now I must wait two months and see what will become of my life’s work.

Community Stories Outta Oakland:

I have learned a few things about Oakland in my years working with local people. Stories surface that paint a mosaic for myself and the people in the program that are central to the way we put our wellness together, that are central to our community. While Asian Mental Health and Casa Del Sol Clinics primarily serve Asian and Latino clients, our population is mostly black and a minority white. As I share slivers of our stories that we have learned from, I realize that these may not be as welcome in the new community.

Historically, a diaspora of black people primarily from Louisiana settled in segregated neighborhoods in the West and East after World War II. Fleeing from racism and economic oppression, many families prospered. The old Richard Hawkins gospel song Oh Happy Day came from Oakland and made it to the charts in 1968. Elders in the community tell many stories of prosperity and strength. Indeed prior to World War II only 3% of the community was African American.

I have heard many say that within segregated communities, black people could get anything they needed within their community prior to the civil rights movement. Crosses were burned in surrounding communities. Though, of course, currently there are many other enclaves of diverse peoples to which I have less ability to speak about, similar changes have resulted as work went from manufacturing to our current service economy.

Prior to this shift, Huey Newton, Bobby Seals and the Black Panther Party grew out of Oakland and worked to defend the community against racism during desegregation. I have heard many memories of this movement was targeted by the U.S. government and was replaced starting in the mid-seventies, by Felix Mitchell’s crime organization. Word has it that Huey Newton got into drugs and was shot three times in a West Oakland Neighborhood in 1989.

Felix Mitchel’s influence survived only ten years and brought crack into the community. I have heard one community member say, “It’s like you just woke up one morning and everything was just crack,” Felix Mitchel competed with Micky Moore, who survived, reformed and became a preacher. I have heard stories of relatives killed and butchered during these years. In 1991 Tupac Shakur was brutally beaten by Oakland PD. Many large businesses tended to leave the city. Though neighborhoods differ significantly, post-industrial poverty continues to pulse through parts of the city.

During the shift to post-industrialism, the incarceration industry expanded. Residents are allowed three jail visits and then are shipped out to the pen. In the pen, many enter gangs out of which they can never leave without surviving protective custody and solitary confinement. They can get assignments that they must carry out that can jeopardize their efforts to maintain employment in the community. Probation and parole monitor a person very strictly and marginalizes ones’ career opportunities.

While many proud Oaklanders object to criminal organizations and work hard to stay free and safe, it is easy to see how post-industrial wages and generations of poverty have necessitated them. The war is zoned and police precincts fight to keep it out of wealthy districts. Task force reality in your neighborhood makes living hard. I am always in awe when I walk through suburban neighborhoods and smell cannabis wafting where people are safe and free to use it.

Still there are predominately services available in Eastmont Mall, which was once a shopping mall. Still, there are neighborhoods rife with shootings and even, before 2000 there has been migration out of the city out to places like Pittsburg, Antioch, Vallejo, Hayward and Freemont.

Currently, however, the price of housing is skyrocketing, causing more and more working families to commute to the city for work spending long hours in the car. However, displacement seems to be slowed by an extraordinary amount of homelessness. Between 2017-2019 homelessness has increased 47% according to figures released in the Oakland Chronicle.  Fifteen years ago, when I started working, a person could easily get into a shelter; now an Obama phone and a waiting list is a must and the streets are full of tent encampments.

Those of us witnessing this believe that people in the tech industry are taking over the city and displacing people who have made this their home since the nineteen forties. For years I have heard of tech companies handing out the tents that are erected throughout the city. Current figures suggest that 34% of Oakland homeless live in tents and 23% live in their cars. While only 11% of the city is now African American, 50% of the homeless population is African American.

Fighting to Save Our Unit:

Perhaps the story I wanted to tell was as much a testament to why I, a white man, choose to work in an urban, primarily African American community. Perhaps it helps me understand why despite the privilege of my skin, I feel put upon to go out to the suburbs into stories that are significantly different.

If I feel this way, imagine how our community participants feel! There are many white participants who feel the same way I do. We have learned to use this community to enrich our lives.

I have sensed that the decision has been made by the company and that our appeal to power is just theater. Nevertheless, I decided to speak because my bosses said that we needed to fight for the people currently being displaced in the city of Oakland.

It hurts me extraordinarily to lose all the love I have built with patients who have been healing and improving their lives over the course of my fifteen-year tenure. Many will not tolerate the move.

Still, I recall the story that lived in my mind and wonder what it meant to me. Why did I think it would help people of power change their minds about the value of culturally competent care?

The Story that I Couldn’t Share:

Back in my junior and senior year in college I remember a woman lived in the apartment complex across the street, It a little while, but eventually she introduced herself as Gwendolyn. She was just a tad masculine when she shook my hand. She did not use the standard neighborhood handshake like the youth I’d befriended first couple of years in the city.

She was clearly the elder with her freckled face, well-tended hair, and shades. She took it upon herself to start up the conversations. Although I was initially a little guarded, fearing she’d end up asking for money, I remained receptive and open to her.

One of my schoolmates was known to joke about the amount of money he imagined that I would give out to street people. I heard him call me out of my name with his little comedy routine once. I didn’t think it was cute. He took writing classes with me and like most of our cohorts commuted into the city when he wasn’t at work. He was known to stop off at the frat house and write about his escapades.

I clearly didn’t fit in with him or many of my schoolmates. Many would tease me as they got to know me. I didn’t pay them much attention. I just thought they were dumb, in and out of the city in their old suburban high school cliques and stereotypes.

Gwendolyn (and the rest of the neighborhood for that matter) did not ask me for money.

Maybe they knew I worked at the local Korean-owned deli, which meant that I was paid under the table and was expected to guard the shop with the Glock under the grill and the shotgun over the trashcan.

I’d just recently moved into the one local apartment complex which did not allow drugs. I had spent my first year in the city living with an older woman who would not let me have outside friends. My second year was devoted to breaking up with her and establishing some independence in writing classes.

I would talk to Gwendolyn about the roach infestation problem we had.

“Oh, we won’t allow bugs in our apartment,” she exclaimed, adding, “I am absolutely certain of that!”

This seemed strange, with all the traffic going in and out of that building, it didn’t seem clean from the outside. I always did wonder if that meant they did not have cockroaches or if she was talking about something I didn’t understand.

I still think of the three winters I lived there as Gwendolyn’s neighbor and our conversations by the corner payphone. There were times I wanted to give Gwendolyn money when she was underdressed on the corner in her jean jacket shivering. But then again, I too was often too lazy to dress for the cold and was also shivering. We were both far too thin for our bodies.

Perhaps we were both not taking care of ourselves. She was often drinking from a bag and I occasionally had a small bruise on my throat.

But the fact is that Gwendolyn’s constant respectful outreach meant a heck of a lot to me. There was very little college life outside the frat house. I delivered sandwiches to the dorms and was mad at many of my lazy peers who would neglect to tip me.

Just as she practically lived alone on the corner using the phone and talking to associates, I practically lived in the library belaboring to outline everything that I read. I’d later learn that I was battling my undiagnosed ADD and Dyslexia. If I wasn’t at the library, I was at work. Once a week, I was coming home from the suburban shrink appointment on the speed line with bags of groceries that I’d bring into my studio.

Maybe Gwendolyn sensed something in me to which she could relate. In fact, maybe we were both trying to escape some of the same demons. I wouldn’t understand that until many decades later. Finally, I would recapture some memories that would help me understand my odd take on things and how my senses often turn out to be correct. I think Gwendolyn could relate to that!

I did know that I was trying to escape the dependence on a family and community that I didn’t trust.

I had been born into a Quaker school community where both of my parents were teachers, my father a principal. I had spent half of my senior year in several mental health institutions and had returned to a close-knit community that was informed of intimate details of my struggles.

I was no longer able to play sports, so I spent my time writing. My writing efforts now appeared downgraded. Now my best essay nearly got me kicked out of school! The school psychologist, the wife of my English teacher, arranged a confrontation with my parents. Everybody knew about it before I did.

I started to have the sense that grades were political and stupid. Now there is research that says that sense is accurate particularly when skin color is involved.

During my time in institutions, I had come to see things differently. I wanted to badly to avoid all the people who seemed to make up their minds about me in a way that wasn’t going to ever change. I turned down my admissions to private liberal arts colleges and made an escape.

Somehow, I sensed that Gwendolyn understood me better and valued me more than all the people in my old community of privilege.

And it was not just Gwendolyn, it was Doc and Ray who’d trained me to work at the Korean Deli. It was Julio and Jose who I’d trained to work there. It was Ruth the security guard at the library, my coworker Craig, his cousin the janitor. It was my apartment manager who I delivered lunch to on a regular basis. Sprinkled throughout the neighborhood were people who I could connect with and who kept me afloat. I felt they gave me another chance. They didn’t see me as the skinny anorexic that I was, they were curious. It was the familiar look of the customers who came in and out of the Deli. They seemed to respect me and believe in second chances where others did not.

Overcoming Generalizations and Stereotypes:

In retrospect, I was twenty years old. It was an era of extremes in my life. I overgeneralized and felt the whole world of privilege was united against me. Maybe, I just needed to establish my independence from it.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe some of the privileged world that had reared me could understand that people deserved second chances. Many of them seemed to choose my parents and their secrets over me, but maybe not all of them were like that. Maybe there were some of them that could learn to see beyond stereotypes.

Sure, there was all the disrespect I’d witnessed towards me going to my sister’s graduation. Sure, there was the same disrespect in family get-togethers. I would eventually learn that I had a great aunt who was given a lobotomy and left to rot in an institution. Maybe the whole community of privilege is not like that.

Maybe it’s possible that some other suburban people find community in other contexts. Maybe some people on the board could understand that need to be understood and respected that is necessary to find when you have no place else to go.

Maybe that’s what I have spent the last fifteen years of my life going above and beyond in my work efforts! I feel guilty that I take a competitive salary away from the community. I must pray that I am not only taking from, but also giving back to the community that gave me a chance to come back.

Buzzards!

I am not the first person who has had the meaning and purpose in my life taken away by some people of property. I feel like I am waiting for the buzzards to pick over my bones.

When I first started leading groups on the unit, I recall walking into the “low-functioning” group and having an African American male who thought he was an aristocrat scream and had an IQ that was likely higher than mine scream, “Buzzards!”

Initially I didn’t know what to do because I was hiding my own history of “schizophrenia,” homelessness, and psychiatric incarceration. I needed the salary and did not want to set off a negative ripple.

But I came back into health. I started responding in ways that were more helpful. I’d do things like flap my arms and making a few, “caw-caw” sounds. And then, I’d simulate being shot by the aristocrat. Then I’d have a real conversation with the aristocrat. Eventually we’d end up talking in the hall as if it was Gwendolyn and I back on that corner in Camden New Jersey.

Leadership that Perpetuates Stereotypes?

Good mental health care must teach people to re-examine themselves beyond the stereotypes! I have a hard time believing that people of power know how to help people like Gwendolyn, myself, and the African American aristocrat. They seem to be like all the people back at Quaker school, not willing to give me a second chance.

If a board member was to engage me in a conversation, I would want to tell them that displacement, union-busting and psychiatric incarceration (which is precisely what our program prevents) hurts. It attacks relationships and ways of life. We lose our love and our means of survival. The architects behind these attacks should be ashamed of themselves! I am ashamed of my part in it!

The post Gentrification and Displacement in Oakland California: An Inside-Out Perspective appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

How many parents out there would rather learn that their child had developed a life-threatening cancer, than hear that their child carries a diagnosis of schizophrenia? Historically burned-out doctors may be known to make such negative statements about schizophrenia at the time of diagnosis. If they end up being wrong, they simply re-diagnose the sufferer with bipolar; but still their comment happened. Perhaps, it challenged you to devalue your loved one.

Well, I am a mental health professional, and nothing excites me more than meeting someone else who has experiences associated with schizophrenia. I instantly know aspects of what they have gone through. It makes them a potential friend to me. Additionally, I come equipped with handfuls of tools that I think may be helpful for them. I am additionally curious to see what they might teach me about myself.

Strange thing is, I am not alone in my world view. Maybe you have heard of the international movement called the Hearing Voices Network? Originating from a psychiatrist in the Netherlands named Marious Romme and Sandra Escher, this movement seeks to normalize one of the many experiences associated with schizophrenia? The movement points out that one in ten people hear voices and that not everyone needs to be institutionalized in the mental health system as a result. In fact, the movement has proved that people who have been institutionalized for years turn out to be great leaders and advocates.

Stereotypes You Are Up Against:

Maybe, it is not fair to blame anyone for a negative response to the above dilemma because of all the negative stereotypes associated with the schizophrenia word. Many people think of a homeless person who is out fighting for their survival on the streets, posturing, or bearing a cardboard sign beneath the underpass. Those a little more informed of the norms may think of a crowded board and care home with nothing to do but to smoke and drink coffee. Still others in some states imagine a lengthy state hospital stay or transitions through hospital recidivism and homeless shelters. Of course, there will be those who think of shows they’ve seen like Criminal Minds or The Guardian. They may conjure images of mass shooting events that are blasted through the media quicker than our very apparent national homeless crisis.

Of course, as a parent or loved ones there is the stereotype of the fresh-out-of-school social workers supervised by burned out administrators who dehumanizes their patients the minute their backs are turned. Perhaps it is hard to watch this happen and easier just to stay out of it. Perhaps, some of you will shield your kids from this reality and try to take care of them on your own. Meanwhile, much of the public feels that we as a nation were kinder and gentler during industrial times when we provided mental institutions. We all know stereotypes are bad but still they exist are real and scare us.

When Stereotypes Become Real:

I can relate. I worked in mental health and greatly despised the life I saw many of my clients enduring. I respected my supervisors, but it never felt right. When I advanced to be able to work independently, I was so successful at advocating for better care, that it is part of what landed me in a State Hospital myself and discharged to the streets.

“You see Tim,” I was told in my second meeting with my psychiatrist two months into my State Hospital stay, “one time we had someone come in here and say they were being followed by the FBI and we found out they were in fact being followed. They hadn’t done much, but they were under investigation.”

Was she really referencing me? I had tipped to press of to murder and mayhem on several occasions. Yes, many of those stigmatized scenes are real, but they are only a small piece of the picture.

Indeed, I was willing to call myself autistic long before I was willing to call myself the schizophrenic that I am. It took me fifteen years of recovery before I started to embrace the ugly word because the stereotypes were so threatening to me.

Hard Decisions You Face:

Such stereotypes may bring really hard decisions. Your relationship with your loved one, the extent to which you perceive justice in social institutions, and your own stigma about mental health challenges may influence your take on what you are hearing.

Remember, that even though your loved one is in an emergency state potentially flailing around with conspiracy ideas and opinions about you, they know you well enough to know how you will respond. They may sense your response and resent it. Historical problems in the relationship may become exacerbated exponentially. For a minority, there is the potential of real violence while your loved one remains in emergency state? How are you to respond if someone you love suddenly sees you as the root of all evil?

And what will your friends say? How may they judge your parenting or partnership?  How do you handle privacy needs? How have you done this throughout their lives up to this point? Do your actions further shame your loved one? How much credence do you put into the medical diagnosis? What have you heard about the word: recovery? Does your loved one deserve the best treatment, or do they need to be treated fairly, just like everyone else? What is the best treatment? What kind of money and resources do you have to play with? How willing are you to support someone who isn’t behaving appropriately? How much do you value your own safety verses theirs?

Support for You:

Providers will generally refer you to the power structure of NAMI for support and you will mingle with others who have faced these dilemmas for years. If you are even willing to stay involved, you can use these groups to figure the most humane decisions to make.

Often, with this referral comes a clear concept of a chemical imbalance to which your loved one is victim. Suddenly you are surrounded by volunteers who give their time and expect you to do the same and support their views. Accepting the power of the illness, setting behavioral boundaries, imposing medications, and accepting dilapidated housing options may be the standard with which you are encouraged to comply.

Indeed, people and families are very different as are regions and NAMI boards. A variety of things can be helpful.

What it Feels Like to Find Meaning in Stereotypes:

When I was going through dehumanizing stereotypical experiences, I only felt victimized. I had always thought I was critical of dehumanizing practices; but still, I was shocked! Oh, how much worse that horrific, maddening, and dehumanizing treatment seem when you are in an emergency state. No one believed a word I said. I didn’t think I would ever be glad for enduring it. I could see no value to losing all my social standing and being incarcerated in impoverished circumstances. I feared for my future.

Now eighteen years later, I use all those degrading experiences which lasted two years after I was discharged to the streets to convince patients I work with that I know what they are talking about. I still feel overwhelmed when I think of what I went through, but I now can say I went through them for a reason.

I often say that if I had known that my suffering could lead to a lifetime of meaningful work, it wouldn’t have been so terrorizing. Instead of waking up in night terrors, or having urinated in my bed, I could have gone through what I went through more gracefully. And I wouldn’t have been as hard to manage for all the low wage work community that surrounded me. I mean any innocent child who saw me coming would run the other way. My negative energy was quite off-putting.

You May Be Needed to Make it Possible:

Meanwhile, my father had made his opinion known, he felt incarceration and mental health warehousing would be as good as it would get for me. Just like the treatment system at Montana State Hospital which was set up to help me adjust to poverty and disempowerment, it seemed like deep down he wanted to be right about his negative prediction. Still, he gave me a year of economic support to get it together. Though I could have got food stamps, my parents did help! And I still call them weekly. The memory of them being so concerned they were just enabling me while I was biking twenty miles a day to work a forty-hour week still burns.

Thank god it worked! I was able to get back to my career.

Can you imagine how great I feel with a career in mental health, a wife, a dog, and a home?

Many Others Can Do It:

Many others of us who suffer can do a lot of healing and earning of social empowerment by helping each other out. We can do this by using our experiences to reach others who may appear unreachable to outsiders. However, we also need to be paid for our livelihood.

Not only have I been blessed with the opportunity to find meaning from my suffering, I have seen others do it as well. I have helped employ a team of four to use their experiences associated with psychosis to help others. They outreached and learned to run groups in agencies.

What Is Missing for Schizophrenics in America?

Perhaps not everyone who suffers from experiences associated with schizophrenia naturally takes to becoming a therapist the way I have, but the mental health system really lacks a vision for sustainable roles for us schizophrenics to occupy. And I believe the first step towards creating such roles involves seeing schizophrenia as a culture rather than an illness.

In other countries the hearing voices movement has taken hold, healed many, and given people valuable roles. The premise is simple: let people who hear voices from different walks of life get together and share their experiences in un-monitored support groups. Wow, so much can come from that!

For the last eleven years I have run such support groups as a professional who openly reflects on my lived experience with schizophrenia. Like many hearing voices groups, the focus of my groups extends beyond simply hearing voices. I like to include and normalize all kinds of experiences that lead people to alternative thoughts about the way the world works.

I think these kinds of support groups help direct schizophrenics to care about the experiences of their brethren. Mutual learning and coping strategies result. Hence, letting schizophrenics acculturate and be schizophrenics is a marvelous step in the right direction.

The Need for A Living Wage:

However, in my opinion, support groups are just a start to what is needed to give the culture a meaningful role. In Oakland California, services that outreach to homeless encampments, board and care homes, agencies and shelters can invite institutionalized individuals out to support groups. Many of the people I serve off the streets of Oakland, can greatly benefit from having visitors who come and bring the support groups to them in their board and care home. Then, they might then learn to come out to groups in the community and get around some of the obstacles that keep them isolated.

An organization as such can significantly train and employ schizophrenics to develop a variety of skills. It can give them a chance to make meaning from the stereotypes through which they may have lived or to which they feared Thus a training/outreach program can help schizophrenics move on to better and better jobs.

How You Can Help Your Loved Ones Realize this Vision?

I think it is important to end the medicalized view of schizophrenia. Updated research is defining psychosis across diagnostic divides as more of a syndrome or even a neurodevelopmental disorder like autism or dyslexia. This really supports the work of the Hearing Voices Network which contends that voices and other experience do have value and carry real meaning that must be addressed for healing and survival.

Believe me, there can be complex underlying issues to address.

Thus, as you live schizophrenic stereotypes through your loved one, remember that they may be transformed into your child’s mission in life. You cannot possibly be responsible for all the meanness in the system, but you can take updated research and success stories from the Hearing Voices Movement to your NAMI meetings. You can find ways to support employment for schizophrenics through empowering organizations like the one I proposed above. I ran such a program for a year and a half until the temporary funding was done. I know it can be done.

Successful Schizophrenics:

There are many things that can help schizophrenics find roles that utilize their passions and interests. As a culture, schizophrenics are historically oppressed like heretics in western society. However, if we are to explore many traditional societies, we may find many of the skills that are labeled as an illness to be shamanic and spiritual. There are many wise traditions to explore in creating solutions.

I personally do not throw the tradition of psychiatry down the toilet. I myself utilize medication and work with others who do as well. I also admire and champion people who do not. However, we must offer solutions that help heal the localized abuses that have occurred within the medicalized system. One solution does not fit all.

Ultimately, I still wouldn’t mind using another word besides schizophrenia. I call my groups and my program special messages.

The post How to Help Your Loved One Be A Successful Schizophrenic? appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

In these happier days, I am extremely thankful to have my wife and my dog with me. This Thanksgiving we have escaped the urban psychiatric backward upon which I work for a few days in Lake Tahoe. Still complex trauma must be managed. I am bound to have unpleasant holiday as memories bubble up, no matter what I do.

I may remember the first year I got diagnosed with a personality disorder. I was twenty and just out of the hospital. It was the first year I honored cultural traditions on my own. I remember sitting all alone on Thanksgiving in the roach infested inner-city apartment in Camden New Jersey writing a villanelle praying for a phone call because there was no one to reach out to. Indeed, neither my parents, who were traveling, or the female I’d just asked out were going to call.

I may recall awakening depressed the very next black Friday morning to two six-hour seasonal shifts. I might remember the ceaseless Christmas music, the selfish stress of the customers, the vat of Barney Dolls sitting right in front of the cash register I was operating. I might remember the one customer threated to throw-up on me because I was so slow. Others were free to pick the Barney dolls up squeeze them. The “I Love You,” song would play from beginning to end. “I love you, you love me, we are a happy family . . .” All day long! Three or four different dolls singing at a time!

Or I may remember losing one of those jobs because I handed out three twenty-dollar bills to three random customers. One customer even brought one back to prove I had done it. Perplexed, I’d quit the job and blamed myself. I didn’t want to risk getting fired. I’d not noticed the signs that I was likely the victim of a holiday flim-flam scheme. Poor cashiers need to have Christmas too. Forty-dollars does make a difference. They were right to target me. My family did come from money.

Or my mind might flash to the Thanksgiving I was just out of the state hospital and homeless. I might remember how I took the day off looking for work to bike ride away from the city of Fresno CA until I caught a flat. I may remember returning to town in the dark and sinking so low as to ask a worker at the cheap motel I was staying at out on a date. No longer did I care if I got any calls. I believed my relatives were mafia and had used their private fortune to facilitate my three-month hospitalization. They did not have access to my whereabouts. Though I hadn’t run out of medication yet, for the subsequent year and a half I would feel followed and threatened daily! I would be alone at Christmas with my credit cards frozen. At least that Thanksgiving, the pretty motel worker was polite about her boundaries and the fact that I was a drifter. I still remember the bitter taste of the Oscar Meyer cold cuts in my lonely room.

Of course, there are hosts of other bad holiday memories that may come up: Christmas, the years I was working seven days a week and the unstable girlfriend was giving me the silent treatment; the “festive” phone call from a cousin in which I heard her in-laws insult me; the Easter holiday I worked alone at the delicatessen because everyone else conspired to take the day off.

Not only will parts of these holiday experiences flash in my mind, they will mix with current stressors. For example, this year we had a well-loved co-worker suddenly die of sepsis during a routine operation. I work on an urban outpatient psychiatric unit. Supporting the clients through this stunning news meant processing violent deaths in the city of East Oakland. Imagine intimate details about a dear sibling getting gunned down in the Felix Mitchell eighties. Then, others would bring up a twenty-two-year-old cousin or two who’d faced similar demise. Imagine living in a board and care home with nothing but these memories and stories to process over the holiday. Or being wrongly incarcerated in Juvenile Hall during that grief and dropping out of school as a result.

Indeed, in Tahoe I feel guilty for being able to escape these realities and the fact that I survived what I did. When it comes to celebrating Thanksgiving, my mind skips from bad memory to current vicarious trauma, to the people who have hurt me during work politics, and then back to bad memory again.

Simple Formulas for Dealing with Complex Trauma:

I have created some simple formulas that help me endure the weekends and holidays when my head gets flooded like this. I have always enjoyed nature and hiking through my pain. One summer I was facing a lot of pain and I took off hiking for forty-six days and successfully covered six hundred miles of the Appalachian Trail. I learned that surviving natures elements is a great distraction.

I have learned that when I am suffering, I need to get out into he woods on a hike. There, I let the troubling thoughts and experiences bubble up. When I process and honor them I can accept them and move forward. It beats internalizing the choir of negative thoughts I have heard about myself over the years. Moreover, my breathing from the exercise grounds me and seeds of resilience kick in.

Another thing that has helped me endure is to acknowledge that I have disassociated through some traumatic incidents leaving me constantly mistrusting and hypervigilant. As I have recaptured a few of these early memories it helps me remember that I am not entirely a genetic mishap who must be behaviorally controlled in a board and care home. For two years I fought against everyone else who insisted this was my reality. Now I know that this is not true about me or anyone else. Sure, I was the child who never smiled, but I wasn’t smiling for a reason.

Also, it helps me to trace my relationship with the community back through my development. Ever since my earliest memories, relations with people who don’t have complex trauma are at the heart of my suffering. What saves me is knowing that my brain is different and truly hated by the chronically normal folk. I’ve got two or three neurodevelopmental conditions to prove it! Therefore, all those years I was bullied and excluded from the circle, it was because elements of trauma showed in my interpersonal relationships. At the time, I never understood why the world was so cruel. Now, when I recognize why and accept it, I can accept the choices I make and appreciate the love that I have found. I can get the chronically normal negative thoughts out of my head. I have had cohorts call me evil for my social awkwardness! I don’t have to agree. I can just say, different!

And finally, it helps to have found love. My wife gives me the space to go through my trauma on our hikes. She has nurtured other family members with complex trauma. In fact, with a history of learning disabilities and OCD, she may smile, but she doesn’t feel much better a lot of the time. She resists the invitation to gang up on me with the rest of my family during family get-togethers. I am so grateful for such a loyal companera.

However, without the support of my wife, without my writing habit, without grounding myself in nature, the judgements and true gossip of the chronically normal folk come into my head like a plague and rule the day. Judged thoughts are so much harder to let float by like a cloud in the sky. I can really see myself being depressed and frozen in a board and care home without these areas of privilege and resilience.

When Politics Bubble Up . . .

I can see that others gossip about complex trauma and poor social skills. I know it happens because I sit in team meetings listening to colleagues discuss the behavior of our patients with complex trauma. They may experience behavior that bubbles up from those painful memories. Cohorts may not understand. They may judge the person based on their pain when they are not grounded. Then, they talk about behavior out of context.

It is easy, for example, for me to hear a person who frequently assassinates the characters of others, and then I see how everyone around me is full of negative perspectives about me and my work and connect-the-dots. When this happens, it makes sense to imagine that there is a real likeliness that my complex trauma is being exploited. Indeed, treatment teams, behavioral health administrators or other forms of secret societies exist and meet!

In families, secret emails get sent, venting gets whispered-down-the-lane, and suddenly the person with complex trauma is barraged by a world of people reacting to what they’ve heard. It is a lot like being treated on a hospital unit. Indeed, the process is replicated in mental health organizations and even in some peer organizations led by those who vie to direct and manage the unit.

Sometimes in team meeting staff members can learn something helpful about complex trauma in their lengthily venting sessions. Sometimes I take the opportunity to speak up and challenge chronically normal reactions. Sometimes other workers speak up too. There are ways to endure and help heal. But we all must pick and choose our battles, or we too will be targeted.

A Simpler Formula for the Surrounding Community:

I suppose this essay isn’t only about surviving another year for me. As a marriage and family therapist I like to think I can share my story to help the chronically-normal-folk understand how not to make things worse.

Let’s not forget that some chronically normal minds might want to be in relationship with us! They may connect with us in ways that don’t stab us and make things worse. Indeed, these chronically normal folk may be our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, co-workers, therapists, case workers, hospital workers. People who are forced to deal with the grief we endure at this time.

Just as I have laid out a simple formula for my survival. My suggestions to the chronically normal brains of the earth is not very complicated. It involves only two things that can be avoided that would make a sufferers’ life much easier.

First, when someone is going through it, don’t tell them they are just being selfish, inappropriate, or shameful. Instead be curious about the stories behind the behavior.

Second, don’t spread an out-of-context freeze-frame of the pain we share, and play whisper down the lane with the community that surrounds. Especially don’t use the struggles against the person to rise to power. Instead try to honor the trauma and suffering the person endured.

If you want a relationship with the person you can tolerate their suffering without personally attacking them. If you don’t, that’s okay, just don’t do the whisper-down-the-lane. There are other ways to be successful.

Initially, I was not brave enough to share the worst memories I have. They involve reflecting on the people who have succeeded by throwing me under the bus in this manner. They often hold high positions in the mental health or other type of social hierarchy. On the other hand, if I were to point them out I would be breaking my second rule.

Remembering the Intention of the Holiday:

In surviving the holidays, I have no need for revenge. I am grateful to be where I am at. The best revenge up here in Lake Tahoe is to celebrate what I do have and take care of myself so I can continue to reach and teach others who are likewise suffering. The point of the holiday is to remember to be thankful. Right before one of the world’s largest genocides, the perpetrators recognized and remembered to be thankful for the kindness of their victim. For god’s sake, let’s hold on to the intention.

Sometimes when I make a biannual escape to Tahoe, I do hate myself for being so lucky! On top of other things, I have survivor’s guilt. But many people I work with on the outpatient psychiatric unit find their own ways to celebrate the holidays despite their trauma. They have ways of being resilient and the least I can do is respect them. No one wants to be pitied. Instead, I can appreciate what they teach me, accept that we all have our ways of coping, and try to be stronger for it. I celebrate with them on the unit and do not feign from mentally bringing them with me on my vacation. And those who are lost and truly suffering as I have been, may they one day find their way to some form of recovery as well!

The post Simple Formulas for Surviving Complex Trauma Over the Holidays appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE     

Outskirts Press Releases New Memoir About Surviving a Diagnosis of Schizophrenia:

Fighting for Freedom in America by Clyde Dee

In the frontiers of America’s mental health institutions, fighting for freedom can become very personal.

September 24, 2015 – Denver, CO and Oakland, CA – In Fighting for Freedom in America, released by Outskirts Press, mental health counselor and author Clyde Dee asks, “Have you ever wondered if something is wrong with you? Have you ever wondered what it is like to find yourself driven into madness; and whether you will ever come back from catastrophic loss?”

Six years into a protected clinical career as a mental health counselor, Clyde Dee moves to Seattle and takes a job in a Section 8 housing project—a complex notorious for drug dealing and a site where no one else is willing to go. As Clyde works to empower and protect the people, he finds himself embroiled in the politics of the local drug war, and a fractured social system is revealed. Uncanny threats and coincidences drive him into madness when he decides to go off a low dose of antipsychotic medication.

Clyde is stopped by police when he tries to exit the country and is incarcerated in a psychiatric ward for three months. In the years that follow after he is released to the streets, he moves through American disparities and cultural delusions, facing some of his worst fears and striving to regain what he has lost.

Fighting for Freedom in America pulls back the curtain to let us see what it would be like to lose our rights and be imprisoned in a state hospital. But while Clyde’s story is shocking, it is also a beacon of hope. Despite homelessness, underemployment, and harassment, he discovers that with family support, it is possible to heal and make his dreams come true. He is able to make peace with the forces that are following him around and morph into someone who is grateful for life—and a person who loves the journey.

At 328 pages, Fighting for Freedom in America is available online through Outskirts Press at www.outskirtspress.com/bookstore. The book is sold through Amazon and Barnes and Noble for a maximum trade discount in quantities of 10 or more, and is being aggressively promoted to appropriate markets with a focus on the memoir category.

ISBN: 978-1-4787-5992-8                  Format: 6 x 9 paperback cream                       Retail: $20.95  eBook: $5.00

Genre: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs

For more information, visit the author’s webpage at www.outskirtspress.com/fightingforfreedominamerica.

About the Author: Now with over twenty years of paid experience in the mental health arena, Clyde Dee works in Richmond, California, in an outpatient program. He additionally works to help train individuals who have lived with “psychosis” to reach those still marginalized by stigma, institutionalization, and isolation.

About Outskirts Press, Inc.: Outskirts Press offers full-service, custom self-publishing and book marketing services for authors seeking a cost-effective, fast, and flexible way to publish and distribute their books worldwide while retaining all their rights and full creative control. Available for authors globally at www.outskirtspress.com and located on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado, Outskirts Press, Inc. represents the future of book publishing, today.

# # #

Outskirts Press, Inc., 10940 S. Parker Rd – 515, Parker, Colorado 80134

http://outskirtspress.com 1-888-OP-BOOKS

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