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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simple Formulas for Dealing with Complex Trauma:

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Politics Bubble Up . . .

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

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

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

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

A Simpler Formula for the Surrounding Community:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remembering the Intention of the Holiday:

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

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

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

We all know that ending a secreted abuse and getting public support is an important element of healing. Indeed, it is nice when society comes to the rescue as they did to victims when the world trade towers fell. When victims sense they are supported there is more opportunity for resilience, heroism, and healing.

But alas, many of the people I work with on an Outpatient Psychiatric Unit do not enjoy such support. Many lead lives of poverty and neglect due to what is presumed to be the medical illness of the mind. Many have done stints standing on the corner with a cardboard sign and are used to be seen in a negative light. Imagine the constant digs or exclusionary put-downs they may receive from their community of origin. Many choose to withdraw from the world. It is as if society has managed their crisis by tying them down to their beds like African-American, male Katrina-victims. Progress toward healing is slow.

As a worker in the system, I have come to feel that many of our clients get dehumanized when we focus on behavioural control rather than freedom from abuse. Focusing on behaviour can point out what is wrong with the person and make it unsafe to talk about the ways they have been hurt. I feel weeding through hurts helps a person gain acceptance and healing.

Perhaps this focus on behaviour happens because of the way our institutions define human suffering as being part of a medical mental illness. Thinking you have an illness may feel good at first but often make problems worse down the line. Some who suffer may feel, they have been born with a diseased mind all along. They may feel this way, for example, with a label of schizophrenia because many people with a disease model mentality may treat them that way.

I believe that when trauma is hard to detect or complex, the mental health system assigns blame inside the scientific sanctity of the individual. This can result in things like multiple diagnostic labels, use of forced medication as a punishment, restraints, solitary confinement, psychiatric incarceration, and, eventually, permanent warehousing.

As a psychotherapist, I have found that understanding these problems as signs of micro abuse that accelerate with stigma and exclusion to be vital to being able to connect with participants in our program.

Understanding the Role of Sexual Trauma in my own Life:

Like many psychotherapists, my first client has been myself. I admittedly have lived experience with a long list of psychiatric labels including recurrent depression, anorexia, bulimia, ADD, dyslexia, schizophrenia, and now that I have recovered, schizoaffective disorder.

I have spent decades in therapy and received care that emphasized the illness narrative. I have taken pharmacies of detrimental pills even though I have come to a place where I believe I get some help from small doses. I have even been referred to as permanent warehousing in a state hospital in Montana.

I am writing to demystify the role that complex trauma has beneath the surface for so many of our most defamed, dehumanized, and marginalized people.

How Controlling Behavior May Lead to Re-traumatization Instead of Help:

It is true I have had an ongoing suspicion that I was sexually abused. Particularly when locked up for extended periods of time for an eating disorder, and most recently for schizophrenia, my suspicion that my suffering had sexual abuse behind it escalated. I went through a phase of clothing myself while bathing post-latency that was always hard to understand. My sense of shame associated with my body was suggestive to me.

Yet, I once had a female therapist confront me about secreted accusations I had made against my mother on an inpatient unit. At the time I was confronted, I could not remember the real incidents of sexual abuse that I experienced. I just stopped confiding in the therapist in any meaningful way. This really added to my sense of shame. It’s true I recovered, but I lead a limited life of work and torment.

Without knowing that I once was abused, it becomes that much harder to discern triggered re-traumatization, from abuse. People who don’t realize that their suffering is due to trauma are often unable to do this. They may repeatedly feel abused a gazillion times and it becomes hard to see how the community might come to the rescue. Instead, we get cast as not taking responsibility for our own problems that are generated by our defective genes.

The Importance of Vigilantly Assessing for Disassociation:

I have always been aware that I disassociate. I think it is a good idea for therapists and mental health workers to assess for disassociation. It is a simple question but may need to be teased out a bit to accurately assess for it.

Though I had been in therapy my whole life, I only had one therapist take note and get suspicious about the disassociation I described. What I have come to realize by listening to others is that if a person has experiences of disassociation, there is the possibility of incidents of distressing events that they may have forgotten.

An example of a disassociation I experienced was when I was alone scouting a trail. I stepped within six inches of a rattlesnake, a childhood obsession of mine. The rattle made me run even though I knew better. Then I became aware that I lost track of time. Finally, one of my peers on the Outward-Bound course came and found me staring off into space and I grounded myself.

Another time, my best high school friend made a pass at me after communicating in metaphoric manners that were suggestive that he might have been tripping on acid. I came to at several points to find myself hiding in the house. At one point I heard him talking to my mother when she returned to the house. He was talking about gay marriage and, somehow, I had gotten down into the basement again.

And, finally, after being teargassed at the WTO Protest in 1999, and pepper-sprayed directly in the eye, I took a walk and lost track of where I was and what I was doing. Suddenly, I realized I walked past my destination and had been out.

I am now at the point of arguing that these seemingly inconsequential incidents are faint traces that there is a need to explore more. I emphasize that I advocate doing this to help understand oneself instead of vilifying others. For example, my best friend does not deserve to be vilified, and yet the disassociation was real. Though disassociation experience may not seem significant to the daily suffering that gets experienced, I think it is an important indicator of trauma that may accelerate over time if it goes unaddressed.

How I Broke through the Wall:

I took it upon myself to write about starting to disassociate in front of my nephew when he was a bathing cherub in a tub in front of me. I did not fully disassociate and I considered the experience a flashback. I was going outside my body but didn’t leave all the way. This had been happening to me on a few occasions when I was working seven days a week trying to get back on my feet financially after my post-state-hospital period of homelessness.

As I was editing the scene suddenly I got a vague flash of being molested in a bathtub. The girl, my best friend’s sister, was only one year older. I would later remember that she ordered me to take my clothes of and get in the tub with her while our parents were out walking on the railroad grade.

I still don’t remember my response. There is a story that I ate a mothball thinking it was a marshmallow necessitating poison control to be contacted. I was a little old to make such a silly mistake. It’s true I could be wrong, but I connect that action to my response to the tub incident. I do believe that that was the summer I started bathing in my trunks.

When I took this story to my mother, I got an additional answer. “No, you are thinking of the time we caught the babysitter touching you,” she said.

While I continue to have no memory of this incident I remember several occasions when I was around this babysitter later in life. Before I hadn’t been able to understand my piercing feelings, behaviour and memory of those occasions.

“Thank you for telling me,” I stated to my Mom.

“I probably shouldn’t have told you,” she said, “Now you are going to think you have been abused a gazillion times!”

When Hypervigilance and Numbing Seem Like They Are Normal:

Just like the bath with my step-sister might not have been distressing to many untraumatized young boys, there is the possibility that memories of intense hypervigilance may not always be indications of sex abuse. Not all intense memories I have led to recovered memories.

Before I broke through the wall disassociation I could never understand why I got such strong intuition and suspicions. I didn’t realize that I was doing this for a good reason. I often presumed there was something wrong with me. I had to learn to numb out to prevent embarrassing myself worse socially.

I also have a hard time defending myself when I get attacked. When I do defend hypervigilance, I come off too strong and the results never go well. Then, when I am called on to defend myself during a test, I often fail to act because I think it may be hypervigilance.

People who prey on others can see these signs and chose people they can hurt without getting in trouble. This can open a body up to bullying that can become institutional when labels get attached. Powerful mental health administrators have done this to me and I remain marginalized in the county in which I work.

More Meaningful Memories:

When I found out that her brother had sexually abused a childhood friend, I suddenly had a flash and an image. I saw him rape her, became paralyzed with fear and fled. Had I really behaved like that? It seemed like more of an intuitive dream, that a solid reality.

Typical, I thought, for a schizophrenic to hear about sex abuse and think it is all about him. Perhaps some of the readers may think so as well.

However, I do remember visiting the two of them alone in a vacation cabin along the Chatooga River in the Adirondacks. They were skinny-dipping, she with just a shirt on, he in the nude, and me, very attached to my bathing suit. My last memory of the evening involves him standing behind her wrestling her around.

The distinctive flash of a rape and an overwhelming feeling of cowardice and helplessness that overtook me when I should have protected the victim is unconnected to any other part of the evening.

The brother has only admitted to inappropriate touching. So, I acknowledge that even saying the word rape may be inappropriate and unfair. If I considered these flashes reality, there are several other incidents in my life to talk about with other adult men.

Years later I had rescue fantasies and psyched myself up to respond to rape scenes. This happened at a time when I took a job in a lawless section eight housing project; and used community activists and the press to fight the management company, the police and the black market dealers against all odds. This is an action that caused the police and my parents to attempt to institutionalize me in a state hospital.

Is it possible that my objectionable behaviour of using the press to out real murder and mayhem was simply an unconscious expression of ongoing existential guilt from unrealized events? Is it possible that some of my schizophrenia was exacerbated by real government monitoring? For a year the only job I could maintain was an arranged job at an Italian Deli through which I thought I was being persecuted by the Italian Mafia. When I stopped acting persecuted and started being thankful for a nine-dollar an hour job, I was able to return to professional job opportunities.

“The first question that gets asked shouldn’t be what is wrong with you, it should be what happened to you?”—Jackie Dillion

I think therapists have a responsibility to assess for incidents of abuse. This is not about potentially wrongly vilifying people like the brother above, it is about healing and changing behaviour. For healing, even heinous acts need to be emotionally accepted, yet never forgot. It involves constant intuitive listening and questioning and remembrance of patterns on the part of a psychotherapist. What is far more common in psychiatry these days is the focus only on symptoms and behaviours associated with mental illnesses. It becomes easy to become part of the problem for many when blame is assigned within the genetic codes and neurotransmitter cocktails of the individuals.

Overemphasizing these concepts without acknowledging the role of trauma promotes stigmas and generalizations. This not only orients us towards not considering traumatic occurrences, it makes it highly likely that we will re-traumatize sufferers and further marginalize them.

I believe that when therapy is governed with an illness narrative mentality, money gets made, and many of the recipients lose support and wind up deprived, impoverished and defeated. The mental health system becomes much more a system of control and ongoing abuse when things are as such.

I would advise someone who is suffering and receiving psychiatric care not to underestimate the role that trauma may have in their suffering. Learning about this and honouring it yourself can help you make meaning of your suffering. Unfortunately, if our communities don’t understand or teach us about trauma, we need to do this for ourselves. I believe this is when psychotherapy can be helpful. However, when psychotherapists maintain the psychiatric illness mentality, therapy can go on for years without understanding underlying complex trauma.

The post Demystifying Complex Trauma for Therapists appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

Early in my career as a social worker, I couldn’t even see the phenomenon of mental health warehousing let alone know how address the issue in a relationship. My college texts had promoted the mainstream eugenic presumptions associated with mental illness. I didn’t know what was needed to recover from things like psychosis, personality disorders, or addictions and live a fulfilling life other than to tell the client to take their medication.

Now, in my twenty-three years of experience working in the system, I have seen many other workers not really learn about the effects of mental health warehousing. It’s as if those of us who work in the field slept during social psychology lessons of Stanley Milligram and the Stanford Prison Experiments. And many of us who do understand the dehumanization process associated with warehousing may abandon the work for private practice. It’d nice it they left a little space in their practice for warehoused individuals. Perhaps some do.

Believe me, I never imagined that mental health warehousing would happen to a conscientious person who excelled in the mental health professional like myself. I used to think I was empathetic towards clients because that’s what always impressed others about me. Now I think I was just sympathetic and encapsulated! Indeed, though it could happen to most us, we rarely think that way. When I did land in warehousing, it was a real education.

I went to work in a section eight housing project and alerted the press and challenged the police. A resident warned me to stop bucking the system, or the same thing could happen to me. He was right.

Now, seventeen years later, most of my clients live in warehoused conditions and need help adjusting to them. Many have lost family support and lived this way decades. Of course, I do what I can do to help them be free; but learning to do so has taken some time. For clinicians new to working with warehoused individuals, I have just five suggestions to make.

 One, don’t presume it is easy to leave these very real experiences behind:

Once subjected to warehouse conditions, people may have a need to honor their experience and have a hard time leaving the neglect behind. Many tolerate and honor things that don’t make sense to the observer. In fact, many observers might have a hard time believing that what warehoused individuals report is real.

How could it be, for example, that in the land of the free, that the only job that a privileged white man with a master’s degree and a beef with organized crime and the police could find was at an Italian Deli with a four-hour daily bike/train commute? It was not for lack of job applications or resumes, I assure you.

During a two-year period, I had to learn not to snitch. I had to accept that people were breaking into my apartment and stealing my things, just as they had done when I was warehoused three-months in the dilapidated Montana State Hospital. Maybe you can’t believe it possible until it’s happened to you!

For people like me, it can take years of revolving door hospitalizations to get to the place where they accept warehouse living to start with. Then, to move on can be a lot for the ego to manage. It is hard to say all the warped things they learned from their experiences in incarceration were unnecessary. It is hard to abandon the post because, often, warehoused people know first-hand that things could be worse.

Two, don’t presume that you could get out of the very real holes they are in:

In working with warehoused people, it is important to temper the amount of advice you give them about how to be empowered in their situation. Just because you have power, doesn’t mean that they do. Thinking that they don’t know how to assert themselves is a good way to diminish the amount of trust that develops.

I have seen clinicians burn out because their advice is never heeded. Maybe they leave behind their duties physically or emotionally because they don’t believe the oppression is real. Many clients have seen this happen repeatedly. Here comes another staff person they are responsible for training. Now, they start from scratch, just so they can get their weekly check.

No matter how seasoned you are, it is always wise to be thankful when your client teaches you something that deepens your understanding of the layers of oppression they face.

Many workers may not realize that they couldn’t manage themselves what they are presuming their clients ought to.

Many clients, like the section eight resident who tried to warn me, know better than to try to fight the system politically. They will see advice or action towards that end as simply being naïve and insulting. Really, they usually know what’s up! Respecting the power structure but talking about how oppressive it is may help.

Three, find ways to address the fact that you are financially exploiting them in the context of the relationship:

Many would say it is cynical to look at the mental health industry and say that there is a lot of money reinforcing the suppression of its subjects into mental house warehousing. Seeing the mental health industry from this vantage point makes it seem like it is a plantation industry with finely educated suits with six figure salaries making decisions about how to keep the peasants maintained.

Clearly, not all the people I work with see managing the trauma and strife in their lives from so cynical a perspective. Still, I believe a therapist who works with people who have been warehoused needs to be prepared to work through these realities and feelings as they get unpeeled in the relationship. At times, I have found that it is important to argue the cynical perspective to help people become sensitive to how being warehoused has impacted them. It may be necessary to help people see and remember the value that they really have. This may help reinforce social rehabilitation.

Many warehoused people will appreciate it when you acknowledge your buzzard role in nickel and diming them and picking through their bones. At least talking about it will help them know you will do what you can not to get caught up in that trajectory.

Although I was only warehoused for a short time, the therapy I got at 125$ an hour while I was making 9$ an hour at a Deli seemed ridiculous. Talk about financial exploitation—for years it was. My parents mandated it and paid for it from a nest egg, but would not give me money for a car.

 Four, know that therapy is still valuable and walk the line:

In retrospect, and knowing the business as I now do, I am just grateful that my therapist did not refer me back to the hospital so that I lost my job and my apartment. If I had seen an intern who wasn’t making top dollar, I likely would have overwhelmed them and their supervisor and been incarcerated back in the system where it would have taken me much longer to heal.

Having a therapist for warehoused individuals is important even if they don’t seem to like you. And good clinicians need to be tolerant, competent with what they are dealing with, and maintain unconditional positive regard.

Supporting your partners is ways that help them make well thought out slightly empowered improvements in their interpersonal situation is possible. In doing this, it is important not to act as if you know, but to collect a lot of information about the barriers in the situation with curiosity.

I think good therapy advances the mindset that it is possible to help warehoused individuals pursue healthy integrated activities that can mitigate the effects of warehousing. That is what I did maintaining a job. Many amazing people have taught me that a bed in a warehouse is just what it is. One can still do their hygiene up and go out and find healthy activities and connections. I now see and support people doing this every day.

Five, help!

And yet when I look at the workshops available to me as a licensed individual, there is little out there in my trade organization that encourages therapists to learn to work with these conditions and limitations.

I wish that more therapists would learn to specialize in helping warehoused individuals. For practitioners who care about social justice, there really is no better way to be of service in the community than to develop specialty practices that can reach out and include such individuals.

Currently we know this population growing exponentially in our local homeless encampments, our flooded shelters, our barrack-like board and care homes, our county jails and over-crowded prisons. Know people can recover and gain back their freedom! Help!

The post How to Work with Issues of Mental Health Warehousing as a Professional appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".