I recently found myself explaining to a relative why the involuntary psychiatric treatment via California Care Courts being suggested on the March ballot under Proposition 1 is not a good idea. I suggested to my relative that there are many other innovative approaches to address the problem of homelessness that are being ignored. I mentioned having training for mental health workers on how to build collaborative relationships with people who are or have experienced a break from reality. I feel the public’s understanding of what is happening during a break from reality is profoundly lacking and as a result the arranged interventions are not at all helpful. Even mental health workers rarely get specific training to understand appropriate responses. They tend to learn from the machine that pushes warehousing options.

I am currently attempting to reach out to three local graduate schools to promote a training I have built over the last fifteen years that is based on the premise that service workers need to learn to explore psychosis with the people enduring a break. Working with graduate students with specific training may help them have better experiences when they do their time in community mental health. It may help them specialize in working with psychosis and commit themselves to dealing with the problem of homelessness. At this point community mental health often attracts workers early in their careers who learn off the backs of our society’s most vulnerable. Many of us who start in mental health move on once we’ve built up our confidence and skills. Many of us end up shaking our heads about the trouble we’ve seen.

Unfortunately, I am finding that it can be hard to get the needed support to get my word out to graduate school students. Would-be supporters are skeptical that because the training is 16-20 hours, I might not have concise bulleted messages one coworker suggested. Others are concerned I don’t possess a doctorate. They may figure that if no institution or movement is sponsoring this effort, that it must not be a worthy endeavor. Perhaps they note a little social anxiety in my demeanor and think I can’t do it. Some of these claims are baseless. I wrote an award-winning memoir about my experiences with madness. I know how to be concise. With regards to other concerns, like my anxiety, I am practicing to better the chances of a smooth delivery. Luckily, I am finding some promising support along the way. If I can get my training into just one of the schools, I am looking at. I may build enough of an audience to make the endeavor successful. I already have several participants.

My training argues that whether the afflicted person is in or out of emergency, it is still crucial to learn how to engage with someone who has different ideas about what is going on in society and the universe. It suggests that it’s important to study ways that what they are saying is correct so we can validate rather than reality check them. Most of the treatment out there doesn’t teach people how to understand and explore the rabbit-hole; and, as a result, experiences are typically treated as though they are deviant, taboo, and have no value. If any mention of their experience is uttered the afflicted are punished or excluded. The fact that exploration is not a common societal practice creates problems that lead to power struggles, incarceration, and trauma associated with involuntary treatment.

I used to be a social worker working with people who experience breaks and I used to label people as carrying diagnoses of all the interrelated schizophrenias when the DSM used to divide them up into types. I did not know how to be helpful because I received no specific training. I fought to preserve my job and did what my supervisors told me to do. As time wore on and I started to better understand the environments in which the afflicted resided, it started to seem like what I was being asked to do was incredibly cruel and inhumane. Then as started to work in a section 8 housing project that was highly regulated yet rife with drugs and prostitution, I better learned what it was like to live in such a realm. I started amp up in compassion and advocacy until I went of my medication and experienced a catastrophic break myself.

Six years after I recovered, I obtained my license. I started running professional groups that explored the contents of psychosis. I wrote a curriculum and shared my lived experience. What resulted was a fundamentally different understanding of psychosis that incorporates not only the internal experiences of those who are struck with it, but also the social processes involving loss and exclusion that prevent many suffers from returning to social functioning. My training offers a great deal of direction in terms of what is helpful as it redefines psychosis into something that is healable. The training is not based on reading books and research, it is sharpened by experience, observation, self-reflection, and the perspective of the people who have worked with me.

I have found that many who experience trauma also relate to many of the extraordinary experiences that I identify in the training. Thus, I believe that the training is helpful to the mental health of other challenges, not just those who have breaks from reality. Indeed, those who dissociate, who study mysticism, who have trauma, or are neurodivergent have a history of benefiting from such groups. I believe I have something important to bring to the world that has value and can change practices. I could have been locked up and subjected to care courts when I was homeless. Instead, thanks to the relative who helped me and who inquired as to my thoughts on the issue, I have been of service to others and have created something that could help you have more success connecting with others like me. You could help me sell these ideas to the universities and to the young social workers who might be willing to learn in a different way.

The monthly sessions will be recorded, and participants will have access to the videos for review and study or in case they must miss a month. There will be group exercises and practice interviewing me to learn skills and apply techniques.  To learn more, click here.

The post Currently Recruiting for my 2024 Training appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

Completing eight-hours of the Journey Through Madness Workshop in the month of November was a great learning experience. It was a humble but auspicious beginning for what I hope to be a fruitful effort to train people how to feel comfortable going down the rabbit hole with someone who has extraordinary experiences and extreme beliefs.

I was wrong about the fact that eight hours would be enough time to complete the whole training. I don’t think I completed a half of my material.

I also started with four and ended up with two loyal participants who want to complete the whole training. I now have four two-hour tapes that can be viewed on YouTube.

By the end of the training, I became comfortable with the situation and started to enjoy presenting the work. In the beginning I plowed through significant social anxiety that may have interfered some with the quality of the product.

I believe my work can transform a person’s perspective and ability to work with people who have a break from reality, and many others who have had extreme experiences that haunt their current relationships. I believe understanding how people who experience a break come to believe the things they do is useful to humanity. It humanizes the process when participants learn how they can relate to the experiences.

However, I also learned that my participants need more time to complete the training before they truly feel confident managing the anxiety associated with going down the rabbit hole.

Turns out I will need at least sixteen hours to complete the full training and plan to pace myself during recording sessions. I will need to do a little better with recruiting participants and deepen the pool of interested parties. I believe I may achieve this by recording one Sunday night a month.

Keep in touch with the Sign Up for the Journey Through Madness Workshop box on my website at https://timdreby.com/product/masterclassfor the latest in your opportunity to participate.

The post A Humble But Auspicious Begining . . . appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

How To Be A Healing Presence Without Becoming Anxious, Power-Struggling, Or Referring the Mad Person To A Hospital

How It Works

Starting this November in two-hour sessions on Sunday evenings, I will teach you a new model for understanding psychosis that will help you be able to relate with a person in madness in a manner that helps them heal. We are looking for nine volunteers who will receive the training for free in a webinar format on zoom. Volunteers may be professionals (including peer counselors) looking to hone their skills, family members seeking better relationships with their loved ones, or people with lived experience who want to share their perspective and contribute to a new model. The sessions will be taped and edited and eventually sold at an affordable price. Come bring your stories and perspectives to the discussion, ask questions, and we will all learn in community.

Here’s what we’ll go over:

Week 1

• How listening to stories and reflecting on commonalities helped me deconstruct experiences into solvable problems and formulate the structure of the rest of the presentation

• Why the medical model definitions lead to limited solutions and ultimately to the poor outcomes, stereotypes and the dehumanization we see.

• The way the thirty differential diagnoses that include psychotic experiences in them may have kept us from creating a counter culture and focusing on solutions. 

Week 2

• Why the notion that this is a thought disorder is wrong, and the importance of considering the conglomeration of experiences that cause one to experience a break from reality.

• The reason trying to stop a person from perseverating about their experiences by telling them that they are ill only decreases mindfulness and thwarts efforts to stop perseveration.

• Why it is often important to research and know about real government conspiracies to gain a message receiver’s trust and learn about what they think.

Week 3

• How expanding the ways message receivers think about what causes their experiences adds to flexibility and can have a positive impact on functioning.

• Learn to use what we term “the trickster concept” to likewise increase flexibility and open up faith without reality checking and sabotaging your trust with the message receiver.

• Why processing past behavior and negative outcomes is essential to help a message receiver start to accept boundaries and use the social skills that work for them.

Week 4

• How social, institutional, and internalized stigma are linked to a message receiver’s irrational thinking making timing and context important as cognitive therapy is used as a tool to help them. 

• How a mindful understanding of special messages can still be a valid part of an individual’s effort to discern reality without leading to a crisis or an emergency.

• How to use this system of care in group and individual contexts so that you can meet the message receiver where they are at and develop intervention strategies.

Hi, I’m Tim 

Early on in my 27 years of working in the trenches of community mental health, I thought I was a good worker when I did things like: 1) take care of people who were experiencing a break in reality by doing things for them to build trust; and 2) reminding them to take their medication. As I realized what people were living through in impoverished warehouse circumstances and fought for better services, I started to notice ways I was being followed by the company that owned the housing project where I worked. When I received a threat from a close friend, I myself descended into madness. I tried to flee to Canada  and was rapidly warehoused as a ward in a last resort State Hospital. I learned very quickly that madness wasn’t what I was trained to believe it was in school. I learned 1) that being treated like I was incapable of doing anything myself felt insulting; and 2) being told to take my medications was pointless; these kinds of interventions were not the help I needed.  

It was a lot harder to get ready to go back to work in mental health than I thought it would be after three months in an institution. Enduring housing insecurity, moves, and underemployment was very hard. When I did manage to get my license I started to run professional groups that explored not only what psychosis was, but also what could be done that was helpful. I used my lived experience to help other silenced individuals open up. The things we all learned in the process of sharing stories were astounding. I have documented these learnings over the past fifteen years and want to release to you my findings in a course that will help you know how to intervene when faced with someone who experiences a break from reality.   

Click to Schedule Interview with Tim

There will only be only nine to ten participants so set up your interview today

The post Nine Volunteers Can Join Journey Through Madness Webinar for Free appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

When I came out of hospital, after my first psychotic episode in 1996, aged 27, I felt compelled to write about my experiences. I used to have romantic notions of madness, was the first sentence of what, I didn’t realise at the time, would become My Beautiful Psychosis. Reading it now, it doesn’t sound like me: I never use the word ‘notions’ for a start. And the narrative voice was a little self pitying but it was part of the process of recovery.

When I was in hospital, I didn’t realise that I was experiencing psychosis. To me it felt like a spiritual awakening. I couldn’t understand why the doctors thought differently. They weren’t the ones on the inside of it and didn’t even ask me what I was experiencing so how could they know. I wrote because I needed to communicate. I felt so unseen, so pathologised and labeled. I was no longer a ‘normal’ person; I was a mental health service user. I wanted to right the wrongs that had been done to me in the name of psychiatry and tell my story as a form of complaint. The motivation to write was to share what a terrible time I’d had. But injustice and feeling misunderstood was just the top layer. There were deeper elements at play.

Apart from a poem about my pony that was printed in Pony Magazine when I was about 12, I had made zero attempts at writing. Teachers sometimes read allowed my work to the rest of the class so I had a natural talent. I didn’t admit to myself that I wanted to be a writer until I married one. I was privileged enough to witness up close someone going through the publishing process. It seemed doable.

Psychosis gave me something important to write about. I’m not a novelist: I find it difficult to make things up so memoir became my medium. It was a while before I figured out whether My Beautiful Psychosis was a novelised memoir or just a memoir. I would have loved to have been a novelist but I realised I needed to make it clear that my story was a true one. This was essential for the message to have the impact that I wanted it to have.

That brings me to the next layer. I have written My Beautiful Psychosis because the mental health services have got it so badly wrong. I not only need to put the record straight and tell my version of the story, I need to change how people see psychosis so that we can better treat it. The psychiatric service is not working. It is failing people, leaving them to live compromised lives instead of helping them to heal. We have accepted this situation for too long. It is time for a change.

In order to do that, we have to find new ways of looking at psychosis and new ways of treating it. So what is the current definition of psychosis? An official definition might go something like this: psychosis is a mental disorder, which causes you to lose touch with reality. You might see, hear, or believe things that aren’t real.

The perception of psychosis as being out of touch with reality is at best arrogant and at worst, false. For a start, there is no way of knowing what ‘reality’ actually is. It is something the brain constructs. Cats see everything blue but that does not make them deluded. It makes them better hunters. There is no reason why consensus reality of humans is any more real than cats. It is simply the one that humans have evolved to perceive in order to best function in our world. Perhaps there is another animal that sees reality more clearly than us.

An experiment shows that people with schizophrenia, the condition involving repeated psychoses, are actually able to perceive more accurately than so called normal people. It uses the Hollow Mask Illusion and involves identifying whether an image of a mask is concave or convex. All the participants with schizophrenia could distinguish between the two types of photos, whereas control volunteers without the condition were fooled 99 per cent of the time. ‘Normal’ perception is not something we can even trust as accurate.

During my own personal experiences of psychosis, I was able to see auras around objects and people, in real life and onscreen. I heard a voice, I can only describe as angelic, tell me that I was beautiful. I knew about certain traumatic events from childhood that I had repressed and forgotten. I saw a sparkler of light appear and form a figure of eight shape, the infinity sign, before disappearing again. I had memories from past lives play out with certain people around me. I could hear incongruent thoughts that people were thinking but denied, which I thought was their unconscious mind. They were being nice on the surface but it was simply a fake cover up for their socially unacceptable negative thoughts beneath.

Even in times when I was not experiencing psychosis, I have had some unusual experiences that would be interpreted by our modern material reductionist view as not being real. I saw a golden ribbon of light come from my belly button and attach itself to the duster that I was holding. I have also felt the energy of spirits inside my body communicating to me how they had died, by taking the shape of the weapon that had killed them. Each time I acknowledged their death, they sent love into my heart as thanks before moving on. I have also communicated with dolphins, psychically. There is no way we can prove that any of this in not real. Unfortunately the onus is on me to prove that it is and that is not possible either.

To say a person is out of touch with reality is to ignore the validity of the reality that they are in touch with. This is not only disempowering, it fails to celebrate the journey that the person is on, albeit in their alternate reality. It is also, more tragically, a missed opportunity.

I have been able to study psychosis, first hand, as someone with a degree in psychology. I have also been a professional shiatsu therapist for 10 years, which has given me an eastern perspective through which to view my experiences. I now believe that psychosis is actually an attempt by the psyche to heal.

Psychosis comes from the Greek word for ‘psyche’ meaning soul and ‘osis’ meaning process. So it can be seen as a soul process. On the highest level, it is the soul attempting to return to wholeness. It does this by first moving the ego out of the way. The ego is an identity that is constructed by the mind in order to survive as a social species. It doesn’t exist per se, as a physical organ, like the brain. It is simply the mind’s created idea of who it thinks it is. Observe a child at the age of 3, as yet without a fully formed ego. It expresses itself freely and in the moment. It doesn’t care what anybody else thinks about it. The ego provides a useful function: making sure we behave in a socially acceptable way so that we’re not banished from the tribe and made vulnerable to predators. Watch the same child at age 5, with an ego, and you will see how it is watching to see how it should behave. It is working out the rules and deciding which ones it wants to break and which ones it needs to work with. The ego helps us survive by taking care of ourselves as a separate body. If we were to remain like a baby, feeling oneness and bliss gazing into faces and eyes, we’re likely to walk across a busy road and get splattered. But when it comes to the health of the soul and the spirit, the ego is not only unnecessary, it can be an obstruction.

So once the ego is offline, the soul can take over. It can re-connect with Oneness, Bliss, Peace and Love. This is the point at which some people mistake their own Christ Consciousness for being the actual Jesus. Without the ego to remember who it thinks it is, mistakes like this are easy to make.

Next all of the repressed psychological material that the ego banished to the basement of the subconscious comes up to join the party. The love actually attracts it out of hiding. This psychological material needs to be fully digested in order to re-integrate rejected parts of the self that were treated by the ego as socially unacceptable. To fully digest it would be to accept and welcome it. When that happens, it no longer causes problems. To label these as symptoms is to miss a unique opportunity. Psychosis is a moment in time in which we have privileged access to our repressed nature. It therefore holds the potential for transformation, if we know what to do with it.

We can see it like a broken clock that doesn’t work because there is too much dirt in the mechanism. The mental health service puts the clock on the shelf labeled ‘damaged’ and gives it a little oil so it feels less bothered about the fact that it doesn’t work properly. But there is nothing wrong with the mechanism: it just needs a good clean. Psychiatry could and should be doing just that. I believe that psychosis makes the ego disintegrate for a very important reason: in order to access the dirt that is clogging up the mechanism. This dirt is the trauma from childhood and even further back. What if psychiatry were to help clean this out?

It’s time to tell a new story about psychosis. One that shows how it is process that holds within it the potential for transformation. My Beautiful Psychosis describes the process of 7 episodes of psychosis as I try to make sense of them. It is available on Amazon.

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The post How Writing Helped Me Make Sense Of Madness, By Emma Goude appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

I contend that the trendy depicton of psychosis as a thought disorder misleads the public and can lead to misunderstandings that sabotage treatment efforts. I am writing to suggest that psychosis should not be defined as the result of spewing distorted thoughts that need to be corrected, but is actually the result of uncanny perception and efforts to cope with that perception. I think that people who relate to those who experience psychosis need to understand that it is perceptual triggers that lead to self-sabotaging thinking and distress. Recognizing those triggers can be key to better strategies for coping.

Even the most advanced research on schizophrenia, which suggests that it is a neurodevelopmental syndrome rather than a psychiatric illness, alludes to the thought disorder narrative. I suspect that this is a political act of supporting the best practice of cognitive behavioral therapy. I am personally in favor of a therapeutic approach that is specifically created for people who experience psychosis across diagnostic divides.

For example, in her groundbreaking article in The Psychiatric Times, Sophia Vinogradov, MD suggests that the problem is cognitive:

We now understand that these are neurocognitive disorders (ie, how neural systems in the brain represent and process information). We also understand that they are neurodevelopmental disorders with genetic components and antecedents during gestation. The developmental course unfolds with increasing signs, symptoms, and cognitive dysfunction . . . (2019).

When problems are depicted as cognitive as such, the conclusion is that the thinking is faulty and that thoughts need to be changed. Too often, people hear this and believe that all such thoughts are incorrect and must be stopped. This can cause pressured and unhelpful communication. I think it is more important to listen and understand before there is an effort to challenge thoughts.

The Importance of Exploring the Meaning of the Experiences to Engage a Sufferer:

I intend to delve into better defining what psychosis in this post and will highlight the importance of other processes beside irrational thoughts that go into a “thought disorder.”

I have come to believe that experiences that cause the thoughts are valuable and need to be further explored for meaning and understanding.

I experienced a two-year crisis during which I thought my family was a mafia family and was persecuting me. I can attest that admitting that two years of my life were wasted on meaningless blither was not a way to engage me in meaningful change. Moreover, although I did need to change and stop making meaning of many things, I have since found that I learned a great deal of meaningful things during those two years that currently enrich my life.

Behind me, sits my eleven years of experience running professional groups in which I revealed my own experiences with psychosis. Behind me is also an international movement called the Hearing Voices Movement that has a considerably longer history.

The Experiences of Psychosis Fit into Different Causation Frameworks:

Those of us who learn to openly share experiences in group therapy, learn a host of different explanations for why our experiences are happening. The hearing voices network define these as frameworks. In other words, experiences are often interpreted from a framework and I am going to characterize five styles of frameworks that are representative of thousands of individual examples.

Often, experiences are perceived based on the dominant framework that the sufferer trusts the most. The framework often dominates the sufferers mind and makes it hard for the observer to even know the experiences that exist beneath the surface.

The first framework that I am going to present is that these experiences can come from spiritual experiences. Perhaps the magical perceptions seem to come from good or bad higher powers, depending on the tradition. At times, good and bad guidance may be mystical and at times those experiences can be erroneous. Experiences that are wrong can be characterized like Carl Jung’s concept of a trickster, they can cheat the sufferer and cause material loss.

All spiritual traditions include the concept of a trickster. Often, it can be hard to tell the difference between mystical wisdom and tricksters. Learning how to manage spiritual feedback takes time and training,

The second framework that often influences message receivers is the concept of political oppression and exploitation. Sometimes, and far too often, there are real people who belong to secret societies that are behind real abuse and marginalization. Consider a treatment team that meets without the patient present and misrepresents that person and extends their hospitalization!

Also, there are powerful government conspiracies that involve secret societies to prevent rebellion and promote public misconceptions. For many frameworks there are criminal, governmental, or intergalactic organizations that work to control the environment. The concept of targeted individuals validates and expresses the realities experienced by many sufferers. Such alternative realities suggest the phenomenon of gangstalking. Thus, learning to stop challenging power can help.

The third framework that is important to note is that there are ways that traumatic events and dilemmas can cause the mind to fragment and re-experience trauma. Differentiating trauma from the reality of current situations can be a lifetime project. This becomes a real issue that most people who experience psychosis have to deal with.

The fourth framework that is often used by treatment providers is that experiences are made up from unconscious psychological processes in the mind that may be related to attachment or fractured personalities. Such frameworks suggest that experiences are made up in the individuals head. Some people respect them and seek to explore and integrate them and some people just think they need to be ignored as a result.

Finally, there are scientific processes in the body that may be behind faulty thinking: misfiring of neurons, schizophrenia genes hidden in DNA that make people permanently impaired. Of course, there are more positive scientific frameworks out there like that some people have spiritual genes that are likely to get persecuted, or that some minds have an ability to perceive on the psychic energy of others, through observing scientific gamma, delta, or other radio waves rays that bounce off the body.

All these different frameworks represent different ways underlying experiences can be explained. Take an experience and put it in a different framework and the meaning of the experience vastly changes. Sometimes hearing thoughts without understanding the framework and experiences that accompany them can make the thoughts appear wildly distorted. Additionally, sufferers tend to get locked into a particular framework that adds to a tendency to interpret experiences in ways that may appear incorrect to someone who hasn’t listened and understood.

In fact, I like to argue that people like me who think the world is against them can lead lives in which the world really is against them. Telling them they are thinking wrong or that those underlying experiences don’t matter becomes invaliding and may result in further trauma and sense of alienation.

Learning the Value of Different Frameworks Can be Used to Disempower the Experiences: 

I believe people who experience different frameworks in the stories of peers can learn to diversify the manner in which they interpret their experiences and begin to see how they come up with thoughts that appear faulty to the mainstream. Ultimately, I think that using different frameworks is necessary to take away the power of the underlying experiences so that a person can function in the social world.

In making such an assertion, it is arguable that there is real benefit of sitting in groups and hearing people’s stories. I believe it teaches a participant in a different manner than a genetic researcher learns through looking through a microscope at the neuroplasticity of neurons. One thing that I have personally learned from running up to three such groups a week over the years, is that people are extremely unique in the way they come to cognitive distortions.

It takes a great deal of work in order to open someone up to talking about their private experiences and to consider listening to others with genuine curiosity. Often, it is important to forget everything we know and listen with a psychosis mindset to make sense of another persons’ experience to draw out the story so that commonalities can be displayed and observed.

One thing that I believe is toxic in such groups is when a leader tries to impose their reality on participants. It is different for example to learn about a different framework by listening to a peer than it is to being told that your experiences really definitively fit a different framework. I believe all frameworks have merit at different times. Just because you know what works for you, doesn’t mean you know what works for someone else. The danger of overgeneralization is a valid concern.

That is why I really like a principle that the hearing voices network advocates for: participants are to speak from their own place of knowing, not the sense of knowing. I have used my experiences of learning from others to stop jumping to conclusions about my experiences and to wait and see. Thus, I am more mindful of my experiences and less attached to them.

As such, disempowering the experiences is helpful, but sometimes to do this it becomes important to pay more attention to them and rationally solve the problem of what is going on.

Identifying the Types of Experience that Lead to Cognitive Distortions Can Help:

It has also helped to do significant work in groups defining examples of underlying experiences. I call these experiences special messages. They include not only voices, visuals and tactile sensations, but also other experiences that trigger conspiracy ideas. Special messages are things like intuitions, premonitions, body language and use of codes and symbolic associations that hide alternate meanings. Some of us have gifts of knowing things that we become overly dependent on and that cause us to get focused on these experiences and trying to learn how they are possible.

Special messages provoke thoughts particularly when the person is trying to figure out what is happening. I define this as a state of sleuthing and the hearing voices network define it as making meaning. When multiple messages are happening fast the experiencer can get an internal buzz of trying to figure out experiences that only leads to having more and more experiences. It becomes very hard to distract from these herd-to-contain thoughts. So often the thinking fits a singular framework. The thinking and thinking about the experiences coupled with the way the public reacts to the person experiencing the thinking can turn the thoughts into distortions.

The interesting thing about the experiences is that they can often be preconscious. Indeed, the person can be more aware of what they are thinking than what they are experiencing. Of course, the thinking can be influenced by a framework and past experiences that have influenced the formulation of the framework. Thinking can affect behavior and cause the person to be treated in negative manners that add to and confirm the framework suffer. This can increase the power that is given to the underlying special messages experiences and the state of sleuthing and making meaning of what is happening.

The experiences will always happen. They can be real and at times hurtful. Additionally, the more a person sleuths or makes meaning of them, the more vulnerable they become to being impacted by more experiences, or special messages. However, sleuthing in community with others forces the sleuthing process to slow and be better defined. Moreover, doing so with support of others can help the sufferer solve the problems and make changes that can help them transform out of the emergency state.

How Behaviorally Changing Relationships with Underlying Experience Can Help:

Whether dealing with a bullying voice, a negative outcome, a bad energy perceived, or distressing serendipitous occurrence, there are times when the sufferer can be coached to change their behavioral relationship with the underlying special message experience. Talking back to the voice, or humbly adjusting to the situation can be exactly what is necessary.

If this is to happen the message receiver must spend time increasing their awareness of messages and changing the behavioral relationship they have with the experience. This can be just as important as challenging an irrational thought. In fact, it might be necessary to do before rational thinking can be expected.

Challenging Internalized Stigma Can Help:

Clearly there is an element of cognitive dysfunction experienced by those who experience psychosis. However, I believe that a majority of that dysfunction comes from the social definition of schizophrenia as being a progressive illness that gets worse over time. This misunderstanding of psychosis is so rampant in our culture that it leads many to stigmatized views of a sufferer’s abilities that then get internalized. I contend that a majority of these negative beliefs are reinforced by the way associates and mental health workers start to treat their subjects.

While clearly the level of support varies a great deal in a person’s experience, the negative treatment that people experience and the fear of schizophrenia often can set up the basis for extreme cognitive dysregulation. Thus, countering these stigmatic realities with support that emphasizes rational thinking can lead to help. However, getting people to use rationality as a tool to help balance them and increase their resilience does not prove that the problem is a thought disorder.

Conclusion:

I believe there is a lot more to recovery from psychosis than just depicting reality as being rational thoughts. Many philosophers argued against rationality. Hence, I am arguing that depicting the problem as a thought disorder is misleading.

The post Depicting Psychosis as a Thought Disorder is Misleading! appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

When I was in psychosis, or what I prefer to call the message crisis, I was extremely angry when my family used leverage to force me into treatment. For starters, they contacted the police and supported a three-month hospitalization that kept me from seeking asylum in Canada. I concluded that they were a mafia family and the reason I was getting followed and harassed.

Perhaps this scenario sounds familiar to the reader? It lasted for two years after I was released from the hospital.

I continue to feel hurt by many of the things that transpired due to leverage. I may be able to act as I forgive, but I will never forget what it was like to experience such cruelty alone.

Thank god I was wrong about some of it!

Back in those days, I never imagined that I would someday write a blog about how to effectively leverage a message receiver into treatment. I would have sworn that I would never sell out so much to even suggest such an action.

Rethinking the Issue of Leverage:

Thanks to the word, “recovery,” I have been blessed with an opportunity to return to my career in mental health and work toward providing treatment for those who suffer from message crisis. It’s true, I have had to look the other way and swim against the tide a bit, but I have seen a few things work. I have witnessed how even things that I think would have been detrimental to me, can be helpful for some people.

Now, with hindsight as twenty-twenty, I ponder the issue of leverage for the conscientious family member, loved one, or helper who deals with the message receiver who is stuck. While a lot of my work emphasizes the fact that message receivers have a lot in common; there is also vast diversity in terms of strengths, preferences, support, and resources. I want to consider the message receiver who withdraws from their support and the world into the confines of their room or board and care with nothing but, perhaps cigarette smoke, and the wonderland of their messages to comfort or torment them. A recent Facebook post and unassociated conversation encouraged me to do this

 Establishing Treatment Instead of Confinement:

I think the first hurdle to clear is to assure that there is treatment available. This means that message receivers need to work with people who do not engage in senseless confinement and exploitation.

In my opinion, it is rare that using leverage to impose hospitalization and involuntary medication works out. Unless the person is on board due to their own large amount of suffering, imposing involuntary hospitalization or medication may sabotage future treatment. Let involuntary hospitalization happen as a natural consequence, not something to leverage. Anyone who is familiar with trauma research might tell you, it can take a long time for a person to work through being punished for an involuntary experience that is already traumatic.

Finding real treatment is a very tall order in a public system that primarily trains the message receiver to use medication via the revolving door of incarceration. Many therapists go against their licensure training to even attempt to treat a person in psychosis. I was taught to refer out or utilize the psychiatric emergency room.

I have found that developing treatment often involves a space to process how traumatic and confusing incarceration feels.

Additionally, I have come to believe that treatment involves workers and supporters who are curious and knowledgeable about psychosis with copious and flexible coping strategies, and the humility to engage in ongoing learning. I do not believe true treatment can happen when the content of psychosis is not welcome in the relationship. I think when the reality of psychosis is always suppressed, exploitive confinement might be as good as it gets.

The Natural Benefit of Community and Structure:

During the crisis, when the message receiver responds to their terrorizing or spiritual messages via social withdrawal, treatment may require community and structure of intriguing tasks and efforts that help draw the message receiver out. In the process of trying to create such an environment, teaching the message receiver to be interested in and respect their peers can really help.

While good treatment offers the safety of time to heal, it might also require an ongoing nudge toward challenging the message receiver to move on to their hopes and dreams when they are ready. If treatment doesn’t do this, it may easily get misunderstood as confinement. I do not believe productive trust can truly exist until the full extent of recovery hopes and dreams are supported.

I acknowledge that the function of having treatment communities available, which are costly and often scarce is a real service to the special message community. Still, I am not saying that they are for everyone. Treatment might also involve the freedom to say no, but the option of less restrictive alternative actions, such as individual treatment mixed with self-support activities away from the treatment team.

Yes, a treatment facility needs to sustain itself by making money, but it also needs to not treat the message receiver like they are a commodity. It may be okay to ask for some level of commitment to services, but it is not fair to push commitment if it does not lead to something that involves substantial sustainable community integration.

 Importance of Supporting Structured Activities Outside of Treatment Milieus:

Even if community and structured activity treatment exists, it is important not to overly leverage them. If they don’t exist or if they are unwanted, it may be important for the message receiver to receive support towards the social rehab endeavors that most matter to them and to have support in those endeavors.

Social rehabilitation support needs to capitalize on healthy, goal directed activities away from psychosis. Thus, any interest needs to be acknowledged and supported regardless of their ability to meet immediate career needs. If the message receiver is working against their psychosis, there is no need to impose leverage towards things they don’t want to do, like treatment.

A savvy supporter will try to help a message receiver do what they can to reflect positively on any activity away from message crisis. Likely these efforts are happening, but in my experience, they are not always talked about because they may seem to pale in comparison to the rat race we are all supposed to be in. Championing them may mean uncovering them and holding them up to the light instead of presuming that all is lost.

Processing and Reflecting on Messages:

I think it is fair to presume that the message receiver will need to take some time to process and reflect on their voices or other relevant experiences. As I suggested earlier, not inquiring about the magnificent learnings and focusing only on their inactivity with negative comments is rarely fruitful. Rather, encouraging a message receiver to schedule reflection/process time is important, as is encouraging them to join others this endeavor. The message receiver might be encouraged to do so with a therapist or mentors in a self-support group, or at least during exercise.

If a message receiver comes to therapy, it is important to be curious about the experiences they are going through and marvel and champion them, just as you marvel and champion activities away from psychosis. Support groups that bring out the silenced stories and give them time and perhaps some collective wisdom are important.

My Own Experience with Leverage and the Importance of Picking Your Poison:

My parents required me to take six hours in addition to my sixty-hour work week (two-125$-hours, plus travel time to and from the office) to meet with a therapist. A modest but life-sustaining amount of financial support was attached.

Had I been able to talk to this therapist about my messages without getting judged or treated disrespectfully, I may not have resented the large chunk she was taking away from my future nest egg. I may have been thankful. The exercise on the way to therapy plus the exercise I got on the way to my job was helpful.

Even though I did feel like a resentful slave or a piece of human traffic, what did help me get through this trying time was the fact that I had chosen it.

I wanted to work. I had happened to have worked in too many structured programs to feel they were worth my time. I felt that many programs I had worked in were too disempowering and provided little future.

I knew deep down that being a social worker was likely not feasible. Indeed, I had obtained a social work job and had an opportunity to risk homelessness for that job, or work at an Italian Deli when I believed my family was the mafia. That opportune choice was key to enduring a large amount of torment and suffering.

As a result, I did do my best to make the exercise time and therapy time work. It could have been easier for sure, but I avoided jail, homelessness and more psychiatric incarceration—things I was truly scared of.

Consequences of Using No Leverage:

While now one might argue that such drastic, do-or-die leveraging as I went through was harsh, I now reflect on how life might be with no leverage at all.

I work with some people who were once warehoused in State Hospitals and who live in board and care homes. When people are trained to withdraw into messages for years, stories become buried and goal-directed behavior get blunted. I am also aware that there are people who withdraw into messages who live at home. I am aware of the natural consequences of this: when their loved ones die, they are likely to become sequestered in board and care homes.

Thus, I think that there are times when working with leverage can make sense in lieu of negative consequences that may lie in wait. If treatment means getting to know people who are worse off, it can be an eye-opener that can help motivate. I think knowing local services and getting help with communication during the leveraging process can be helpful.

I have seen small, slow, humane amounts of leverage work without causing trauma. I think protecting a person from the harsh realities of the mental health system needs to be done with reason. Helping suffers know their choices and lead the lives they want to live even if it does not fit your own hopes and dreams for the person is certainly a brave thing to do.

 The Need for Ongoing Support and Encouragement When Leverage is Used:

I still reflect on times I wanted to give up. I can say that it was helpful and redeeming when my parents credited my efforts as mattering and being financially relevant. Being encouraged at these times was very important.

I feel compelled to add that if the leveraged message receiver tries and fails, all is not lost. It is important to remember that important learning can be capitalized upon from any failure. Good support does not use a failure to impose an agenda, but rather is there to support the learning that can happen. Advocate to apply the learning to the next opportunity of their choice! Good support maintains a positive perspective on the effort put forth regardless of the outcome.

Remember, this is supported by an evidence-based practice that is applied to vocational training (The IPS Model.) If you lose a job, get a new one. Keep going until you get one that sticks.

Conclusion:

I still wouldn’t advise using leverage very often. Remember that it is possible that unprocessed ill use of leverage might be part of the problem that is keeping the message receiver stuck. Still, I have come to believe that treatment does exist and can be helpful. Now I can say that apt leverage involves a mixture of timing, series of least restrictive choices and ongoing, attentive support. It involves holding hope for full recovery when the message receiver doesn’t have it.

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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.

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

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

The post Initial Press Release appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

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The post Interview on Psychosis Summit appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

In Madness and Civilization, philosopher Michel Foucault has predicted a proliferation of madness as disparities increase and modern society advances. Indeed, with psychopharmacology industry booming, rates of addiction, fueled by the opioid epidemic, skyrocketing, terrorism wars raging abroad, ongoing drug wars afflicting low income neighborhoods, escalation in homeless encampments in major cities, and a rise in bullying in schools, and even cyberbullying, it really does seem like higher percentage of people have been forced to explore their mental health struggles. While mass shootings have kept danger stigma in the media high and the media response continues to reinforce silence about mental struggles, the field of psychotherapy does have a lot more trends to address.

When I look through my state’s psychotherapy association’s annual conference, I see many of these trends getting addressed in workshops. But ever invisible is the issue of psychosis. Is it possible that the issue of psychosis functions as a significant part of the madness narrative? Is it possible that psychosis too is affecting more and more Americans as Foucault inferred?

What the Statistic Say:

I do not believe that running through NIMH statistics reveals much about the prevalence of psychosis. I believe that psychosis affects individuals across diagnostic divides.

According to this year’s statistic by the NIMH, approximately one in five people will struggle with a mental health issue and 46 percent of the population will sometime struggle with their mental health. In fact, there is the suggestion that these stats may be a little lower than they have been in recent years perhaps due to the economy fluctuating. Contrast this with the ever-present statistic that one percent of the population carries a diagnosis of schizophrenia added to the unspecified number of individuals who experience bipolar (which is 4 percent of the population,) and the relevance of psychosis continues to seem very small.

I believe this is a gross underestimation. I believe hearing voices and other types of experiences that trigger alternate realities is very common throughout the population so much so that it warrants the attention of psychotherapists in private practice. I believe that many people go in and out of these experiences and may have occasions in which they are defined by them. However, the cost of being open about them is very high perhaps because there is little to no established treatment available outside the psychiatric ER.

On the Ground in Oakland, California:

As a psychotherapist on an outpatient psychiatric unit, I deal mostly with people who have spent their lives funneling through emergency rooms and perhaps lived in State Hospitals or at home until they aged out and hit the squalor of board and care homes. Or maybe they were homeless or incarcerated or maintained a job and, before the local housing crisis, an apartment. Indeed, I would like to convey that there are many who have worked but as they age, they get confronted by their issues with the aging process. Our participants would be labeled with SMI, “severe mental illness,” the majority being fifty years or older or 2.7 percent of the population. Oddly, according to NIMH statistics, the SMI population is approximately double the size among youth.

Finally, in the outpatient psychiatric unit, we provide treatment that has oft been neglected to address participants’ trauma and their mental health issues. I have created a program to address issues related to psychosis, or what I prefer to call special messages. And wouldn’t you know it, the issue of psychosis bubbles up in different ways for different people across diagnostic divides. Indeed, people many participants will share things with each other, they will not share with a psychiatrist.

Deserving of a Seat in the Psychotherapy Office:

In my training, I was always encouraged to refer out when it comes to psychosis. Let the ER deal with that, was the mantra of most of my trainers. Psychosis is scary.

Because I had to earn a living throughout my training, I took my living from the poor in the inner-city and volunteered my time for the rich. Perhaps, because I consider myself a wannabe philosopher and sociologist, when I finally got licensed and earned my freedom, I started to explore running psychoses focus groups on the unit that had supported me on my way through.

And after doing many groups over the past ten years I am writing to suggest that more and more psychosis deserves a place in private practice and the revolving door of the ER is not an ethical move on the part of the trained psychotherapist. I call our local ER the homeless encampment and feel that it sends people in psychosis a large and disturbing message when they get confined to it.

How Diversifying Causation Beliefs Can Lead to Recovery from Psychosis:

I believe that a powerful dialectic exists when participants study their similarities in psychoses focus groups. Converse to the great opportunities for growth that result when participants genuinely identify with each other, there are often important points of difference highlighted that likewise can lead to growth when nurtured properly.

To be specific, I have observed that participants often become more communicative about their diverse beliefs regarding the causation of their psychosis experiences. And I believe this leads to collaboration and accommodation that can help message receivers move toward social rehabilitation and recovery.

There is little doubt in my mind that the causation of psychosis experiences is a natural preoccupation for people who suffer. In fact, this preoccupation is so powerful, it warrants becoming part of the definition of psychosis in the model of treatment I have created.

Having led many long-term psychoses focus groups over the past ten years, one of the more powerful solutions I have developed involves helping sufferers learn diversity lessons about the causation of their (psychosis) or special message experiences.

I categorize the causation beliefs of sufferers as being: political, psychological, spiritual, scientific, or trauma based. In the thick of a body’s psychosis process, causation beliefs often rigidly stay in one or two of these styles. While there is often an ability to consider and ponder other beliefs, the tendency is to immediately create explanations according to a single style or two of causation beliefs. Further, there is often an immediate need to solve or comprehend what is happening that can feel addictive.

Increasing Flexibility of Causation Ideas:

What I believe happens particularly when it is finessed and highlighted by the leader is when sufferers tell stories about the experiences of their psychosis, they hear similar experiences interpreted with a different style of causation. In supporting their peers, they become forced to see how these rigid causation beliefs lead to errors.

If I could count the number individuals I’ve worked with who are in what I like to call message crisis (psychosis,) who try to reality check me when I tell my story—well, you might say I’d be a high scoring. Indeed, I have found training them to better understand my experiences often opens them up to be willing to share their story with me.

They say, “No, I don’t think you were really followed by the mafia, I think that is a delusion.”

Then, I review specific evidence that is convincing and some evidence (or special messages) that are less clear.

I have found that this helps people be more willing to reveal what is happening to them with me.

But to get back to what I primarily want to convey, I often see that when participants can see messages (or psychosis) happening to other people, it leads them to be more aware of the role that their own causation beliefs have in their suffering. Often the causation beliefs of others are at least slightly different. When the message receiver notices that different causation beliefs lead to errors, it challenges them to be more flexible in how they interpret their own psychosis experiences, which I like to call special messages.

Indeed, it is clearly conceivable that every special message (psychosis experience,) has a different causation style. Any psychosis (or message crisis) is full of thousands of these special message experiences. I believe that when every message can be interpreted with flexibility, the message receiver can return to accomplishing things that relate to social rehabilitation.

Five Styles of Causation Beliefs:

Below I have listed the five causation styles along with common explanations that have been expressed in groups I have lead over the years. Some are perhaps noticeable as common psychological theories, others as less conventional ideas that might be considered delusional.

I believe that all causation beliefs are valid, important, and perhaps operant at different times in a person’s story. I like to argue that people may be predominantly correct about the causation of their message experiences. This validates participants in a way that is needed to heal from the potential trauma they have been through. However, I argue that any given message receiver may need to incorporate other explanations to survive and thrive in the modern world.

Psychological

• Messages are your inner thoughts or unconscious beliefs. They are just in your head.  We broadcast our unconscious beliefs in ways that cause others to interact with us in ways that make our unconscious beliefs realities.

• Messages are a way of processing things that we are not willing to deal with.

• Messages are a return to a regressed period of attachment in which the baby has destructive relationships with the boobs.

Political

• Messages come from people following you around and tormenting you to control or seek revenge on you. These followers could be a gang, police, CIA, government, corporations, masons, illuminati, aliens, or other secret societies.

• Messages are real evidence that the government is socially controlling and preventing the mainstream from knowing. They have their ways of taking snitches and putting them in ditches.

Traumatic

• Messages are nothing but figments of past perpetrators or abusers.

• Messages come from the social thoughts or judgments of others, the social mainstream, or the collective unconscious of others (Stigmas) that are being used to decrease your social standing

Spiritual

• Messages come from god, fairies, aliens, ghosts or what we in the west call supernatural experiences.

• Messages are processes that may help or hurt you in evolving or adapting to the dilemmas of a modern environment.

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

Scientific

• Genetic differences or scientific processes that develop because of nuero-diversity. Eugenics suggest that these genes aren’t fit for survival and justify a complex system of abuse and social control.

• Messages happen when neuro-transmitters get changed through things like environmental stress patterns that fall into genetically derived conditions.

• Messages happen when spiritual genes get persecuted in our society

Case Study:

Because I don’t make it a habit using case histories out other message receivers, I will review my own story to demonstrate how all five causation styles may be necessary to employ to help a message receiver survive in the modern world.

I would agree with the reader who says this is convenient and limited as a result.

However, in my defense, I have used insights from other message receivers’ causation beliefs to be able to understand my journey in the following manner. Indeed, for years, I could not even tell these stories. I needed to attain economic stability and to lead professional groups with diverse individuals to be able to make sense of what happened to me.

Additionally, people take different routes on their journey to better functioning. I would also argue that being able to relate and recreate your own experiences is one of the benefits of listening and relating to other message receivers. Therefore, I host groups and encourage those who are stuck in a single style or two to come out and listen to help diversify their views.

Preoccupation with Political Abuse:

My own message experiences involved descent into political abuse that could have rendered me homeless and jobless if I had given up. Persistent throughout the two-years of psychosis I endured, I believed I was being harassed by the government and the mafia.

I was working in a section 8 housing authority complex amid significant drug use and trafficking and had leaked information to the press to try to protect the vulnerable. The result was that the company that contracted with my company, a powerful authority with connections to the President targeted the people I wanted to protect for eviction. Then, the housing authority offered to give me a large amount of free concert tickets.

Of course, I used the concert tickets to advertise the music festival throughout the project and take out twenty-four of the vulnerable clients who would come out to the expensive mainstream event. I felt it was a good use of the bribe.

After that stunt, I continued to be very popular among many of the residents. I persisted in trying to crack the mystery of the local drug war that just didn’t make sense. I learned more and more details, until I started to get scared of the persistent threats. I started to get a strong sense of connection, like people were putting on skits around me to either help or foil me.

Among other things, I called a friend with a nefarious history. He heard what I had to say and made a powerful threat. Then, I ran away. Then, I withdrew all my money from my bank account. Then, I headed for the Canadian border. Maybe my friend was using me to help him move drugs through the project. Suddenly, it all made sense.

As I neared the border of Canada I was convinced I was being followed. I stopped at a gas station to fuel and I got accosted by two policemen. One bruised my wrists and drove me eighty miles from my car.

At the hospital I lied to the psychiatrist and was given the opportunity to run.

I surrendered a few days later, from a ditch, on a mountain pass, at midnight.

In the State Hospital there was a clearly defined mafia daughter and a lot of people wanting to help her run away. She showed all patients documents of how she had taken a shot at her father. I suspected these were phony and wasn’t at all attracted to her.

However, she was most interested in me despite the persistence of my unpopular mannerisms. Indeed, she seemed to salivate after me trying to extract information about my sneaky escapades. I received an offer to join an outlaw gang for protection against her. A lot happened in three months.

Discharged to the streets, I took a greyhound and got a job in Fresno. But when I ran out of medication, I was released from the job. Not only had I refused to take over the supervisor’s job, I had started to act funny. Then, I couldn’t find any work for three months. I tried everywhere, from Walmart to county social work positions. Finally, I got a job at a Foster Care Agency.

This forced my family to get involved. At least it made me willing to accept their help. I thought they were an Irish mob family who had hidden their illegal activities from me.

A black sheep aunt who lived in the bay area was able to offer me a less risky job at an Italian Delicatessen if I moved up into Antioch, California.

Causation Beliefs toward Spiritual Causation:

My interpretation of all events that happened to me at the Italian Deli led me to the belief that I was human traffic to my mob bosses. Unable to afford a car I biked twenty miles a day to the train station and back and took the train an hour to reach my job, which was in a wealthy suburb. Every train ride I took, I could spot a rider who was clearly following me.

One day it was a resident from the job I had at the Seattle Housing Project. He was dressed in a jean jacket that had a CIA Officer sign attached to it’s pocket and handcuffs attached to the belt-loops of his jeans. I had heard he’d been arrested before for impersonating a CIA officer when I was in Seattle.  He had also cackled at me like a chicken and told me he had killed people before.

I persisted this way for ten months. I tried to find any work I could find outside the deli where I felt harassed endlessly.

Finally, I got a call back from an interview I had in the tenderloin. The job would lengthen my commute by an hour; but paid a good deal better.

In the group interview, I noticed that several of the workers were religiously preoccupied. They reminded me of the State hospital patients I had been locked up with.

Suddenly, in the middle of an interview that was going swimmingly well, a Latina woman spoke out in a shrill voice, “Oh, my god, the energy in the room is intense. It reminds me of the movie Stigmata.”

The room was accepting and rolled with this outburst with inquisitive questions.

I went home and rented the movie and suddenly it occurred to me, it was possible I wasn’t the son of a famous Irish Mafia family, maybe I was the next Jesus Christ, himself . . .

Incorporating Scientific Causation:

I was called back for a third interview, but when I asked to change my day to accommodate the interview, my boss told me he’d have to fire me if he did. This was the way I was used to being treated there. They were very controlling.

“You’re allowed to work with us, but you just can’t work anywhere else,” I was told by my boss.

Even worse, I was being sexually harassed. A co-worker told me my reputation was smeared, by a female supervisor I jaded. She started a rumor about me that I was a pedophile.

However, now when I went to church, the priest seemed honored to have me in the congregation and to woo me as if he knew something I didn’t. I came across a Cadillac with a plasticine frog pinned to a cross and I figured that my crucifixion was eminent.

Then, I got hired by a wacky social worker at a therapy internship. His name was Jack and he said and sounded like he came from South Boston. “We’ve got to get you out of that Italian Deli before they cut those fingers off,” he said.

My hands were carefully bandaged to conceal the large warts that had taken over my hands ever since the uncleanly showers of C-Ward at Montana State Hospital.

“Hey, I get something from you,” he said, “I’ll bet you’ve been in some real impoverished neighborhoods back east.

Even though Jack was right about me, I was uneasy with his intuition.

“Do you trust me,” he asked.

The first day of the internship, I was utterly overwhelmed because everything Jack said seemed to come from private phone conversations I had had with my family.  His face often turned red. “Hey, I know what they need to do with all those boys on the corners: just turn on cold showers and take the heat away from them.  Then, they’ll be just fine.”

Later that afternoon I had another interview at a job I really wanted that bombed.  The interviewer had been distressed by my level of anxiety and red face.

That night I didn’t sleep a wink. Was I ever going to avoid this eminent crucifixion? I kept blowing my professional opportunities. I had medical coverage. I decided to see a psychiatrist.

Incorporating Trauma Causation:

My boss at the delicatessen seemed to be much more accepting of me once I was medicated. He started to tell me, “good job!” when I continued to complete the tasks with care and detail.

It was true that I felt traumatized the whole time I was politically exploited. But I never thought the endemic bullying I experienced everywhere except amid the vulnerable population was my fault. Indeed, perhaps I was traumatized as a child and that was in part why I was bullied.

But now that I was medicated and started trying to make friends with my co-workers at the delicatessen I realized that they weren’t all bullying me in as organized a fashion as I imagined. There were ways I could appeal to injustice. Indeed, some of the less dominant kids really looked up to me. A few other young females had true crushes on me. They seemed to have fantasies of rescuing me. One even said, I had a beautiful mind.

It started to occur to me that I might not be a mafia kid but more of a bullied Aspergian child.

After all I already carried a diagnosis of ADD and Dyslexia, why not throw another neurodevelopmental difference in there. At least then I didn’t have to hate all the pot smoking population for participating in making me a political prisoner. I was very socially awkward and did tend to amuse people.

And, finally, I got the job outside the Deli, but agreed to stay on one day a week so that I could maintain the income necessary for my independence. Even though I had learned to shine my parents on, I did not like the way they used my economic need to control me. Indeed, being a piece of human traffic had helped me build personal skills.

And Finally, Incorporating Psychological Explanations:

It is hard for me to immediately define how I have come to consider that psychological processes may have been involved in my message experiences.

Perhaps, this is because the bay area therapist I saw believed that psychodynamic processes were happening between us. From my perspective, she was unable to admit that her fees were financially exploiting me. The therapy was imposed on me by my parents. I believed they would in fact hold me financially accountable for the very unhelpful relationship.

Indeed, I often felt that if people listened instead of presuming I was wrong about everything I experienced—if they explored the ways I was correct about what I was saying, that they could have really gotten my attention and helped me.

And a lot of what I believed has turned out to prove correct. For example, genetic testing has since revealed that my predominantly old money family really was predominantly Irish. Additionally, my mother who admired her father’s fame as the chair of the Harvard Psychology Department, may have in fact named me Timothy, after her father’s friend, Timothy Leary. (O’Leary, in my Irish mind.) Indeed, my Harvard grandfather really did work for the CIA and get rich from remarkably wise stock trading.

For example, it was true that my father, who everyone assumed I was wrong about, really had retired from his career at age forty-five, really did live primarily off-the-grid, via stocks and landholdings, yet still too busy to keep up with me. It was true that I really didn’t understand how he did this because finances were always hushed. Of course, my nefarious friend, an ununionized longshoreman, really did have a nefarious past with ties to the Philadelphia PD (an officer with the same first name as my father.)

Indeed, the drug war really does ensnare and incarcerate a disproportionate number of mentally ill individuals like myself leaving wealthy cartels to pay off the politicians. And support the dominant and violent. And I later learned that the Italian Deli that I worked at really did have mafia ties. I was able to confirm this when a street-wise person inadvertently dropped a name I recognized from my deli days.

Once I learned that I really was molested as a child just as I suspected; once I finally, in my first week employed away from the Deli, heard my name called in a harsh, metallic voice; once I developed the strength to call myself a schizophrenic and validate myself, I could start to see psychological causation beliefs. There were personal issues that were getting replayed in surrounding relationships. In fact, I will explore this process more in my next article as it is a component of my system of treatment.

Teaching Psychotherapists to Diversify Causation Beliefs:

Often, I find that message receivers in psychoses focus groups learn a lot from kicking around their ideas and experiences, much as I have just done. Though the order in which they uncover causation beliefs invariably differs, I believe that we can learn to support each other by proposing alternate meanings that are based on alternative causation beliefs. I believe that we can empower ourselves to navigate injustice and oppression in the modern world. I think we need psychotherapists who can help us with this.

Many message receivers aspire to become healers. In a traditional sense, it is our shamanic calling. As we learn to navigate message experience with rhythm and flow, groups are a great place to practice telling healing stories to message receivers who are still stuck and in crisis. On Facebook there are many sites dedicated to normalizing the spiritual emergence narrative. They need to be expanded and extended to the homeless population.

Additionally, in groups we can give each other credit and acknowledgement for diversifying causation beliefs. Not only can this be a great way to nurture and build relationships, it can reinforce movement to social rehabilitation. Too often, we stay stuck because our efforts to change our causation beliefs fail to arouse interest in those who are paid to support us.

Without mentors who can help us by modeling and articulating these insights, how are we to know we are on the right track? Perhaps, this is part of the reason it seems like so few of us survive to socially rehabilitate.

I believe that if psychotherapists support and learn from the experiences of the hearing voices network in other countries, they can become involved in providing services that teach message receivers to heal outside the punitive environments of the psychiatric ER or the State Hospital.

We need to promote healers and success stories who can connect with the one percent of the population that is persistently struggling and create pathways for social rehabilitation. We need statistics that more accurately report on the prevalence of psychosis to support these efforts. We need psychotherapy offices that specialize in psychosis!

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The issue of whether to take medication or not can be a difficult one. While medication may work well for some, it may do little for others. This syncs with the fact that experiences associated with psychosis are vast and varied. People who suffer are very diverse, and causation remains nebulous.

I believe that causation for each person is a constellation of a series of modalities. I have witnessed how comparing causation theories becomes the spice of life in a psychosis support group. I find support groups for people who experience what is labeled as psychosis to be full of cultural learning that can result in powerful growth and wisdom.

As someone whose been in recovery for fifteen years, I have also witnessed the issue of medication to be politically divisive amongst message receivers or people who experience psychosis. Personally, I am starting to see it more as an element of cultural diversity in which differences can make the support groups I run vibrant and spectacular.

I believe I have a moderate view on this topic, which means it can be hard not to feel under attack in differing circles. My hope in this article is to provide perspectives to help people make their own decision about medication and work together regardless of their views and life experience.

The Initial Influence of Provider-Folk

I believe that early on, provider-folk often present an overly biased view about the relevance of medication treatment. Those famous five words, echo down the ward’s corridor and indelibly into the recipient’s life, “did you take your medication?”  Often on a ward, family members who support medication and throw their weight around to support the mission are viewed as good supporters whether the subject responds well to them or not.

I played the obedient client for seven years and took my medication without complaining about side effects. If things weren’t working, I never thought I was getting bad therapy or needed to learn better coping skills, I just thought I needed to change my medication.

The therapist I had and the social workers I worked around rarely reflected on their own behavior. Mostly it seemed, just like it seemed in my family of origin, countertransference and elite defensiveness were the norm.

As I started my career working on a social work team throughout this experience, I can say that we weren’t trained to write reflective notes, we were trained to cover our ass. I mirrored this hard-headedness as a professional, feeling like I had to convey that I had my stuff together.

I now see this as the dominant normal culture oppressing people who are different without taking any responsibility for their role in the poor outcome. Medication compliance was expected and then blamed when there was lack of success. Then, there was that term medication noncompliance and all blame landed squarely on the client or minority culture. “I don’t think their taking their medication,” becomes the popular thing for the benevolent staff person to say.

For a long time, I internalized this damaging mentality feeling it was the bigger thing to do. I remained chronically depressed.

The Lack of Training:

I believe the premiere reason for the medication bias in treatment is that providers never get trained on how to work well with individuals who experience psychosis. They are expected to use their education to figure it all on their own. And much of what they read is full of hopeless eugenic myths that are the result of institutional stigma.

People who have psychosis are most often believed to be dangerous, child-like, or buffoons according to stigma expert Patrick Corrigan. With these hopelessly negative projections cast upon them, message receivers or persons with psychosis are rarely seen as though they can become stronger and wiser from the hardships they are experiencing.

The Medication Free Camp:

I believe that the people who are against medication are right about a lot of things.

We really don’t understand the health problems that can arise from taking medications. The FDA has historically been a poor judge of long term health effects of the various chemical cocktails. The twenty-five-year discrepancy in the life expectancy may in fact have something to do with medication.

Moreover, clearly medications can be used in such detrimental ways when they are forced or over-used. People who are beat down by the streets and hospital’s revolving door may struggle for years until some learn to internalize eugenics. Perhaps their unspoken interpretations of their experiences are elaborate, torturous, and reflect intricate elements of oppressive realities. Or perhaps they may just trust the money-making system in which they medicate their life and activities away in warehousing.

The pharmaceutical industry really does what it can to corrupt doctors and promote their product. The bias that pervades in psychiatric wards and treatment centers is one in which the majority reinforce ugly lies. There is a lot of bad things to gripe about when it comes to medication.

The Seeds of Division:

Currently there is an anti-psychiatry backlash for a very good reason that I support.

However, recall that in my mind the use of medication reflects diversity issues.

What happens in my mind is that some survivors who have been able to thrive medication-free believe what works for them can work for everyone. This can make the issue divisive for some people. For example, I have found that people who have been institutionalized and who have lacked adequate housing in Oakland California where I work, can feel very separated from some peers who have triumphed and been able to survive medication free. What can result is a sense of an underclass that is looked down upon.

I certainly went through a stage where I forgot that I have privileges that helped me survive that others might not have. I believed I could heal everybody. It’s arguable that this is a stage that some of us peer workers may go through. But, after making these mistakes, I believe becoming political about those feelings and fighting for them can divide and exclude.

What I have come to believe after leading thousands of groups that explore psychosis is that there is a higher amount of cultural diversity in the people who experience psychosis than some survivors like me tend to anticipate. I think that it is easy for the recovered person to forget or disregard the privileges that they have that enabled them to recover. Privileges come in all forms and a person who has overcome psychosis has had to use many of them optimally to escape.

Still, on bad days I sense an ethos among some consumers and feel like I am looked down upon by others because I have not joined the upper echelons of wellness and gone off medications. And yet, I am different from many who are successfully medication-free. I navigate with a unique set of circumstances. And so, I have grown to believe that it is a divisive presumption to believe that everyone is better off without medication.

There are a few presumptions that seem to go with automatic advocating for medication withdrawal that I want to challenge. The first is that if I could do it, then you could too. The second is that everyone can do it and it would be wrong to think otherwise.

Issues like relationship to the means of production, availability of a welfare state, family/cultural support, homelessness, race, gender, job history, sexual orientation, educational prestige level, learning disabilities, and incarceration histories are examples of factors that individuals navigate. These impact an individuals’ decision to take medication and may challenge the above presumptions, at least for some of us.

Supporting those in Repressive Settings:

Another thing I know well is that psychosis and the mental health system can put people in some bad incarcerated, warehouse circumstances. When I was in a bad situation, I thought it couldn’t possibly have been any worse. But since I have recovered, I have learned that I had oh so many privileges that other people don’t often get. And I think that this may be true for some others who are successful.

If a person lives in the most repressive of conditions, I believe they may need medication to survive it. It might be naïve to think that anyone can go off their medications at any time. It takes tremendous subservience to survive some conglomerations of oppression. For example, one could say that sufferers shouldn’t have to live that way, but so many do have to live that way. Some people have struggled for decades and still want to improve their lives.

In many cases, a true supporter needs to appreciate the nature of the repressive circumstance first. Then, they may even need to appreciate the time it takes to transition to better situations before they make a three-minute assessment and lean on someone to go medication free.

In fact, why lean on anybody ever? People have a right to honor their experiences in any way they chose. The healthy thing to do in most contexts is to respect each other’s differences and work together.

The Reality of Counterintelligence Efforts to Divide Us:

While we may get that sense of togetherness when we are at conferences, when we survive and start working, real counter-intelligence efforts, egos, slights, and slanders may turn us against each other. I believe this can function to maintain the repression of our brethren.

It is not hard to see the way mental health recovery fails to trickle down when mental health organizations and powerhouses battle with each other politically. Yes, I think this is part of the master plan that the government has that minimizes the power of rebellion in the United Sates where series of clandestine Libertarian and social Darwinist economists use their secret societies currently rule over democracy. Yes, I think the mainstream view of mental illness has a lot of money and power behind it. Yes, I can function, and I still believe real, undemocratic counterintelligence this is a factor!

When we allow it to make us attack people with alternative beliefs and experiences, we divide the culture.

Striving to Be Better than Some Provider-folk:

I believe that when we throw our opinion around without careful assessment, we run the risk of being just like the unhelpful amongst the provider-folk. When we work in the system, we are going to do harm for a portion of the people we serve if we mindlessly promote only what has worked for us. We need to be mindful that not everyone is going to be happy with us. We need to reflect, explore, be vulnerable and work with those who are hurt by us. There may be an incredible story there.

Peer counselor survivors who understand psychosis are needed on service teams as specialists.

As survivors we must agree to disagree and be culturally competent for each other so as not to just become part of the machine. If we are not careful, counterintelligence agents or messages well may have us divided over issues of medication and other cultural factors fighting one another from other regions just like they have with other social movements.

If we do not cross diversity divides and let our egos rear their ugly heads, we risk becoming part of the problem.

We don’t need a stratified system with subsectors that don’t deal with each other. That is what we have now. We need emotional regulation and an openness to working together and manners that exceed those of the provider-folk to prevent division. Without our voice, the oppressed may remain oppressed.

Conclusion:

I hope in my journey to be able to go medication free sometime when I retire. I am glad to hear that some people can do it and maintain strong recoveries. I have no problems if they promote medication free alternatives, make films, and write websites and books to give me information. In fact, I am grateful for that.

I work in a stratified system and take money from my brothers and sisters to pay a mortgage. I believe my brothers and sisters could do so much better if I shared with them rather than provide them with nickel and dime advice amidst their repressive warehousing. Still, many people I work with recover and lead dignified lives. If democracy comes back to our country, and the rich get taxed at the level that the poor do, we have some mechanisms in place to really tug on and make changes.

I think it is the craziness of the disparity in the hacienda of the mental health industry that I depend on to survive that keeps me on medication. Unfortunately, using medication made a major difference for me. I tried for two years to manage without medication. I couldn’t get out of the homelessness and underemployment that kept me down. I wanted to use my strengths towards something that could provide me a better life. The depravation and abuse were hard. I never worked so hard and thanklessly.

Finally, I returned to the field of mental health to survive and try to use my experiences to make it better. Many could argue righteously that that makes me part of the problem.

I know we could do better for each other someday. But I believe working together and transforming the system is possible even if we don’t have what European countries have. Every day, I see it happen in group therapy for psychosis.

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