Never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long

I never heard the melody until I needed the song . . .

. . . I never I spoke “I love you” till I cursed you in vain

Never felt my heart strings until I nearly went insane

–Tom Waites, San Diego Serenade

It is funny how sometimes one cannot really see themselves until they get a glimpse of a harsh paradoxical reality. Perhaps doing so gives one that alternate perspective that is so necessary to really see oneself and gain wisdom. I think that’s what Tom Waites is getting at in the excerpts of his song I posted above. That is why the ability to relate to others is such a powerful teacher and healer that is so needed in a therapeutic endeavor. Other people’s struggles help us stop and see ourselves better. Even if it is painful, growth is likely.

And, just as the song goes, I never really saw myself as a learning-disabled person until I just recently had the opportunity to sit with an individual while she was receiving a mid-life diagnosis. It was a diagnosis that I thought might be helpful. Little did I know that before this sitting, I rarely considered the full effect of how a learning disorder affects me as a writer, therapist and mental health consumer.

***

Learning disorders, as I often educate people as a psychotherapist, are an aspect of neurodiversity that are most characterized by an imbalance in areas of brain abilities. Some realms may be significantly lower, while other areas are particularly high. Thus, as my explanation goes, certain areas of learning become very difficult without a high level of support, time and determination. A person who struggles in this manner may suffer from attention difficulties, may need extra time to complete things, and may like Albert Einstein, develop a particularly high drive to exercise their strengths because of always struggling and straining to keep up. Of course, when not properly supported and safely nurtured learning disabilities can cause people stop exercising abilities and accept oppression.

I am also likely to talk about how learning disabilities are generally considered to be neurodevelopmental disorders. This means that they are severely impacted by a mix of biological and environmental stressors. There are a couple of points I accordingly am likely to highlight.

First, I will suggest that we are learning, intergenerational trauma can be inherited and this might contribute to the brain’s lower abilities. Second, I will argue that having learning struggles can lead to a resulting life of ongoing trauma and mistreatment that can add to and exacerbate the lower realms particularly if support is not provided. Thirdly, I will point out that it is well known and demonstrated that trauma results in brain damage and that learning disabilities give us an opportunity to address those issues of trauma. And most certainly, I will add that compensating for a relative deficit may cause there to be unusually high ability in some other areas and exercise always makes them stronger.

In addition, after making these points, I am certain to reference studies on resilience that demonstrate that healing from trauma and neuroplasticity can cause people to become stronger than they would have otherwise been. In fact, being damaged can cause the brain to strengthen up in ways that would not otherwise happen. Thus, creating a sense of safety and providing people the opportunity to heal from trauma enables them to grow so strong that they become grateful that the trauma happened. Many who attain that sense of safety become very practiced at being strong, spiritual, and high functioning individuals.

***

Unfortunately, the African American woman I referred for testing got informed that she had learning disabilities, without having any of my suggestions reinforced. I found myself reflecting on the fact that maybe my ideas are simplistic and not scientific. Instead, from my perspective, the focus was on what she couldn’t do, and what was possible to help her overcome these deficits thanks to modern technology.

I went home after the sitting, was editing a chapter of my current book, and suddenly found myself so hypercritical that I froze. It occurred to me that I don’t read the way others do. In fact, I hate reading so badly that I rarely look extensively at the work of others. Everybody says that to be a good writer, one must be a prolific reader. I usually tell myself that I learn through writing, not reading. I usually say that I am exercising my talents, making myself happy, and learning rather than wasting my time.

But in a frozen state, it occurred to me that I am not being realistic as so many negative people in my life have told me. Maybe those fears I am constantly working against really are true.

All the rejections I have been getting from journals and blog sites plus the people who have used the vulnerability in my work to politically marginalize me started to gain tractions in my head. Frozen, my sense of empowerment felt like it was swallowed up and wallowing in stomach acid. The fact that I won five literary awards for my memoir didn’t matter. Instead, I found myself returning to perseverations on the ways that my memoir has only heightened my sense of alienation. All that mattered was that it was not selling, attracting reviews, or achieving what I had hoped for, to decrease my sense of invisibility. Suddenly, instead of being unrelenting and meticulous during my seven-year struggle to write the thing, I told myself that couldn’t read the way other people do and that my writing must show it. I told myself that I had to work twice as hard as others to no avail. Old tapes started to dominate the day.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” one writing professor had complained in a college course, “but it took me ten rewrites to get my detective novel published!”

“Ten rewrites,” I had once been proud to say to myself, “that is nothing! And I am having fun.”

Suddenly, that confidence that once helped me thrive was taken away.

***

Sure, in school, I was always the last person to complete the test, but my grades were always good. It’s true some teachers tended to get on me about spelling that I could not do anything about, but I tested okay in meaningless math. It’s true when the homework got heavy in high school, I could only manage to get four hours sleep a night, but that was also because I played sports, exercised, and didn’t eat much. When I became addicted to starving, I just thought I was a hardworking perfectionist who didn’t want to be stopped.

When anorexia led to incarceration, I was forced to halt all behavior and gorge on food. Once the tears and fight subsided, I learned to write when I couldn’t exercise.

It’s true I had poured my heart into my poetry notebook the year before only to receive a B+. The comment from the teacher to my mother—the school reading teacher—was that my work was just too depressing. She didn’t like it.

Straight out of the hospital and still angry about the B+, I took writing assignments and turned in lengthy stories or songs instead. I wrote twenty-five-page papers with long bibliographies. The results: poorer grades and a college essay nearly got me kicked out of school because it made the school psychologist—my teacher’s wife and mother’s friend—think I was suicidal. I still wasn’t educated enough about the social psychology of the situation: I was exposed as a mental health patient, my grades suffered regardless of how good I was getting. I had a different experience and message than others. My successes, leadership, and hard work in eleventh grade became a subverted, living lie. When I chose my only available form of rebellion against this, to go to a local commuter college, the school chose to lie in the yearbook and said I was going to overpriced Antioch College in Ohio.

I ran as far away as I could run without using the college money which I suspected had gone to hospitalizations. In a ghetto with a girlfriend who was seven years my senior, it was the easy courses with lousy textbooks that got my GPA off to bad B+ start. Suddenly immersed in large crowded auditoriums, my anxiety went up and my attention, down. I would be struck with the worst kind of writer’s block. I started the practice of outlining and memorizing everything that I read. I ended up achieving a 3.9 average, but I never went to a single party or took any time off work.

My poetry teacher in college who repeatedly chose my poems to share with the class had once said at the end of an intense semester in which we wrote a poem a week: “Then, there will be some of you that have to keep on writing, not because you want to, but because you have to.”

I don’t know if I listened to him or if I just found myself to be one of those who had to write. I took fiction and personal essay classes and obsessed over my take-home exams trying to get the wording just right.

I did get diagnosed with learning disabilities working my way through graduate school. Because I was working with a psychologist who unbeknownst to me didn’t think I was college material, I became very aware of all my deficits and tended to communicate about this with my peers. I took a heavy dose of medications that I later found out I didn’t need to such an extent. Interactive courses in which the info came from multiple sources and required in the moment listening often overwhelmed me. I put my writing away during those seventy-hour weeks and did my best to become involved and social with my peers. I learned that I worked oh so much harder than they did to prepare for tests. I often got ridiculed for asking so many questions to keep myself alert and tracking, but I was used to that. When I got through those three years without a hospitalization, I happily returned to an intense poetry habit.

***

I must admit it was my suggestion that the African American woman get tested for learning disabilities. At least I educated her about my views of learning disabilities before I set up the testing. However, I was still stunned by the outcome. I later learned that the specific tests used were known to be culturally biased against African Americans. On a closer look at the material there were in fact areas of superior performance that we neglected to review. I am using this essay to thaw the writer’s block that has struck me in the gut over the past few days.

I do believe I will return to being happy obsessive, unread writer for my own lonely needs again.

A year after I graduated, I moved to the west coast to start over again. I think of the times since: when things were hard; when I had to escape incarceration and face homelessness, underemployment and long work days just to evade the mental health system and get back on the career track. When I think of these experiences, I get mad that people are reduced to different types of pathological disorders, like learning disorders. At the same time, as soon as I developed the diagnosis of schizophrenia, learning disorders didn’t matter anymore. I became a warehoused genetic cash cow. In the mentality of mainstream treatment, schizophrenia trumps neurodevelopmental disorders, yet so many of the institutionalized individuals I work with struggle with undiagnosed and unsupported learning disorders.

They are brilliant, complex, utterly alone, living in squalor, and extremely righteous and good people. I just don’t understand why psychological tests and treatments, and the demands of society make it so hard on good people to make a living wage.

***

Perhaps, the reader can tell, I have decided to be out with my history and experiences as a professional, writer, and mental health consumer. I still find there are many people who pick up on the fact that I am a little different and try to scapegoat and marginalize me. It happens repeatedly like the rising ebb of the San Diego sea on the shore as Tom Waits at one point had pondered.

I never saw the mornin’ ‘till I stayed up all night

I never say the sunshine ‘til you turned out the light . . .

. . .I never saw the white line, ‘til I was leaving you behind

Never knew I needed you until I was caught up in a bind

Really, it still hurts because criticism comes from every direction. However, eventually the hurt will go away. I will still be writing. And I hope and pray that that brilliant person I got diagnosed with a learning disability will be there with me, making the most of her meaningful life no matter what “they” say.

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When people seek mental health services from me, I routinely break what was once a cardinal sin to me early on in my recovery; I review my diagnostic history. I do this with love in my heart to help inspire recovery, however, in the process, the “s” word, “schizophrenia,” will bubble up.

I do this habitually in the outpatient program I work in. I have done this by redefining the medical model definition of the word so that it more accurately reflects the shared internal process that we with “schizophrenia,” or “schizoaffective,” or “bipolar,” or “depression,” or hosts of other diagnoses experience.

As a professional with over twenty years of experience, a diagnosis tells me more about the doctor or therapist who diagnosed the person than it does the identified patient. Many clinicians will judge the mad person based on their counter-transference: their take on the color of their skin, their sex, the socioeconomic experiences in their story, their particular take on social Darwinism, or their subject’s level of trust or emotional openness.  “Schizophrenia” will result when the subject is not liked, is judged as hopeless, or by a clinician who is not accustomed to hearing harsh stories. Depression is more likely when the clinician has been snowed, has failed to really access the details of the dilemmas, or is a righteous advocate trying to undermine stigma.

For example, I recently found out based on my inability to get into a particular health insurance plan, that my current doctor has diagnosed me as a schizophrenic. My last doctor, said I was a bipolar. “So you’re bipolar, what’s the big deal about that!” He said when I described my redefinition work to him. And then there was younger-than-me doctor I saw before that, who clearly tried to be a good parent to me. He said I was a schizoaffective. One might imagine that I changed a lot, but I can assure the reader that with every psychiatrist case I deal with, I do not change my behavior or the details I share. I am cordial and accepting of the fact professionals are going to insist on seeing me until they have enough money or trust to know that I don’t need to be bothered with them.

In the program where I work, I entitle the specialty group I have developed special messages. I like to think that we have developed into a little counterculture. In group, participants are encouraged to share experiences associated with “psychosis.” Some will come to just listen. Others will talk when they are suffering without caring about what others think. Many become compelled to join the majority and talk. Still others will demure and filter into the group when they develop strong enough relationships on the unit so as not to face stigma. They may want to reflect on their growth or end their silence. Many share things with their peers they won’t share with their doctors.

I have created jargon to define seven other common experiences (in addition to special messages) that message receivers can relate to. I call this gooney-goo-goo jargon. Often, people who get helped by my groups come up to me and we have goofy fun with gooney-goo-goo talk, usually making nano nano signs. When we crack enough jokes, having enough fun to help each other feel cool and accepted, I like to think it makes onlookers more curious and willing to explore special messages. Many do.

It’s true that I have struggled some over the years with some of my clinician peers who have had issues with me being out as a schizophrenic. I think this is because historically, people presume that the role of the therapist is a competent model who can guide the client towards more mainstream success. For many the presence of special messages is an indicator that something is unhealthy.

However, among group participants, I have found that demonstrating that one can be mindful of special message processes without experiencing crisis offers hope. I have also found that crossing over and using peer techniques humanizes the process of therapy. This can be very welcome by a people who feel condemned to therapy as their sole purpose in life.

Clearly it is arguable that disclosing that you have schizophrenia has grave social consequences. Research on stigma conducted by Patrick Corrigan suggests that trying to eradicate stigma through education and through protest both lead to higher levels of stigma in the public. In contrast, this research suggests that first establishing contact with the local public and proving that you can fit in is necessary before you come out of the closet with your disability. Thus, contact is an effective means of eradicating stigma.

When I think of my professional experience I can see that when I have grounded myself in a therapeutic community for five years and demonstrated that I could out-work many and temper my emotions sufficiently, I have been able to eradicate stigma on the unit with support of the people who I help. When I left the small world of this community and assumed the role of an identified schizophrenic, schools of piranhas openly assaulted my reputation. I found myself widely targeted and irrationally scrutinized.

As a result, I believe that I have developed that unwarranted reputation because I am out as a schizophrenic in the county. I may be delusional, but they seem to disempower me frequently. They say I function without a strong peer support system; they say my college wasn’t good enough; they say I don’t utilize psychiatric emergency service enough. I have discerned this through both human interaction and intuition. The piranhas seem to say so much. But still, I am good at what I do.

With my new definition of what it means to be in “psychosis,” (or message crisis,) I have created and documented some very effective treatment strategies. I have had success connecting with people who have been silenced and institutionalized for years. I have learned to be my authentic neuro-divergent self and communicate about special messages in the room. With people who prefer individual contact, I have had to spend months being interviewed to prove that I truly have experienced message crisis. Some have needed to do this before enough safety was established to help transition them to talk about what is really going on with them.

Many message receivers live in constant states of immediate trauma. They are not willing or able to talk about the process of what is going on with them because doing so can get them punished in a psychiatric instituion. As a result they fail to get that perspective on what has happened to them to make that shift to a less traumatized state. Often, I have observed that groups with other people randomly telling stories are extremely helpful towards inspiring individuals to make that shift in awareness.

I yearn to share what I have learned in our de-stigmatized therapeutic community. Over the past few years, I have received an occasional speaking opportunity and am trying to hone those skills.  Now as I am marketing an award-winning memoir about my journey with “schizophrenia” and trying to prepare for service cuts that are likely in the current political climate, I am exploring opening a small private practice. But, I repeatedly run into that barrier of trying to sell myself as a schizophrenic. I struggle in contexts in which people are not warm toward me.

Already, I have been excluded from joining the county’s provider list once. This is a huge barrier towards being able to help the niche I specialize in.

Since that time, I wrote a grant program that sought to explore whether four individuals with a history of message crisis could learn to talk about their experiences as they develop into careers as mental health workers. The program was led by someone (not me) who had established themselves as a mental health professional in spite of having special message experiences. During the course of the grant several worked through housing crisis’s and struggled to improve their lives as they de-stigmatized the local community and started up groups in local clinics and hospitals. The grant was very successful and participants were able to use the training and support to improve their lives. Three of these pioneers now work in mental health full-time. They have helped prove to others that it could be done and give me hope that I can continue to survive telling those who accept services from me about my history with special messages.

However, in spite of all this work, I have only received more indications that my reputation has been further smeared. They say I protest against evidence based practice too much. They say my work doesn’t fit into the trendy early prevention focus that currently dominates treatment. They say I am rude for trying to push for services for those on the streets and institutions.

So with my recent application to join the county’s provider list lying in wait for potential rejection, I found myself leafing through my mail earlier this week. I received a copy of California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists Annual Conference brochure. In scanning this professional advocacy group’s workshops, I noted there continues to be no workshops that teach clinician’s about how to work with people in special message crisis.

So here I lie in wait to see if a person who has established a new therapy really can be permitted to do a private practice with the “s” word on the loose.

Will that CAMFT Annual Conference one day be able to diversify to include message receivers as people who also need therapeutic support? Will public insurance continue to fund treatment for message receivers at all? What will be the plans for those invisible people fall into the streets or into institutions?

If you heard that I have “schizophrenia,” would you seek out services from me?

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Nine Social Skills I Developed for Myself:

Though in developing these social skills, I initially took a stab at writing from a universal perspective, I have had enough experience running them by people in groups to recognize that many of these are personal. Mad people are very diverse. As a result, the following are meant to be helpful in helping message receivers consider social skills that they need to penetrate the cultural enclave of their choosing. However, it is a wide world with very distinctive individuals and cultures so message receivers need to be constantly exploring their social skills even if they are neuro-divergent, like me, and struggle to do so.

I, for example, have learned to adapt to a ghetto culture and am somewhat comfortable in these contexts, however, have a difficult time switching so that I can be in mainstream culture without losing my social skills. When I feel excluded or sense gossip and slander, I withdraw and lose my ability to socialize. Thus, my ability and sometimes willingness to overcome deficits varies.

The following are set up to help me survive and overcome hostile environments. I’d argue that all message receivers need to consider adjusting social skills to overcome stigma and work together to help each other be successful. Perhaps some of what I have put together for myself may help message receivers and their helpers spot these issues in others and better reflect on the social skills they need to use to replace their retaliation reactions. The goal is to build relationships instead of break them.

Social Skill #1: Learning lessons from being punished or unjustly victimized

            When I get victimized I tend to personalize punishment that validates a sense of shame I live with. When this happens, I have noticed that my self-esteem goes down and the power of the message experiences goes up. Personalizing punishment feeds right into my negative divergent views and new special messages take form that support the painful negativity. Since message receivers go through social sanctions associated with message receiving, they need to learn to escape the victimization involved. In other word’s they need to learn to learn from unjust punishment.  This may be best exemplified by survivors of great atrocities.

Victor Frankel, a Jewish Holocaust survivor and existential creator of logo-therapy in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, serves as a compelling example of this skill which he defines as the ability to make meaning of suffering.  Thus, making meaning via taking spiritual levels of personal responsibility that go beyond that which results from a persons’ intentional actions.  In other words the skill of learning valuable life lessons from social sanctions rather than letting them victimize the message receiver is hence exemplified.

In recovery, I have learned to reframe what I went through during two years of message crisis as bearing a lesson that I ultimately needed to know to work effectively as a therapist.  Seeing it from a spiritual vantage point, it helped me better understand the privileges I was initially given as a private school kid, privilege that may have been based on the fact that my ancestors may have been exploitive to others. Thus, acknowledging personal responsibility for those advantages helped me accept and tolerate some pretty oppressive circumstances. Thus, seeing ones privileges, talents, and social advantages is an important part of creating the personal responsibility to learn from punishment.

I believe that helpers need to see this and help message receivers realize the advantages they hold to help them develop this sense of personal responsibility. If they cannot see this, how can they help their loved one accept the devastating punishment and suffering so often associated with medical care in this country, especially psychiatric treatment? To do this, it is so important to not fall for the trap of pitying the message receiver as it interferes with developing this personal responsibility. Stigma of all types need to be eradicated. Just like it does not work when a guilt stricken Caucasian person pities an African American person and fails to see the strengths they hold because of the color of their skin, so too does perceiving special messages as a deficit due to the medical model prevent a message receiver from learning from the unjust victimization

Victor Frankel’s work making meaning out of the punishments endured during the Holocaust, it was inspirational to me personally. To stop falling victim, I had to consider the arrogance of my initial whistle blowing belief that I could save institutionalized peoples without even understanding the codes of ethics that informally policed the neighborhood.  I didn’t realize that I was no different than the institutionalized person but for my early privilege.

Thus, the making meaning skill needs to be applied to traumatic message experience and to the double whammy of being punished for it as well. Narratives of strengths and privileges need to be seen to build personal responsibility and help message receivers choose functional flexible theories or alternative meanings that they can live with. Even harshly subjugated individuals have advantages in their life that need to be considered to develop the personal responsibility if they are to overcome the senseless persecution they may have experienced in an oppressive context. This has to do with accepting that the social sanction and stigma game is rigged and anticipating abuse and being grateful when it doesn’t come.

Social Skill #2: Creating a public-professional self:

Special message support groups establish and reinforce this principle every time divergent views and retaliation reactions are defined and reviewed. Reinforcing this as a social skill might not be too shocking and does not necessarily have to be explicitly stated. But for many like me the process of professional performance is not easy to maintain without practice and steady opportunities to work at it. Leisure time may involve just not having to fake it. This may be the time we talk back to voices privately or creatively vent and emote our stress.

This skill is based on the presumption that it is not safe to display the customs or styles of the message culture outside the group.  In other words, the culture should be used discreetly.  In the halls of 12-step meetings they ask: are you friends of Bill? What we have done on the unit I work is discuss whether they should talk about message business right now by uttering Eddie Murphy’s words: Gooney-goo-goo? Other individuals make the “nano, nano” sign with me. These kinds of codes are very culture-building and people are often curious especially when we tell good jokes. It makes them want to be part of the group rather than persecute it. It is a practice I recommend.

On some level, I knew I couldn’t discuss or display my divergent views or retaliation reactions, even early on in the process. When I did, it was often a cry for help, a statement of helplessness, or a test. This is the reason it often takes time for message receivers to open up and discuss divergent views in group.

Clearly throughout this work, I’ve argued that without having a place to be publically open about divergent views, it is hard to conceal them in the places where they must be concealed without medications. In other words, without personally observing and accepting divergent process, it may seep out in unwanted ways through things like social withdrawal, facial expressions, or unchecked oppositional behavior that sabotages the good effort of the message receiver to fit in. The question is: does having a supportive community that acknowledges special message experiences help balance the teeter-totter make it easier to be professional in the halls of human etiquette?

Too many times, by reinforcing professional behavior in therapy, therapists end up happy with the relationship and groups can go on for years that do not address message experience. Additionally, some therapists don’t believe that social rehab is possible outside a protective community; if not, therapeutic communities do not promote simple principles of social integration. The result can be stagnation and cycles of decline and revolt.

Social Skill #3: Killing the punisher with kindness:

In my recovery there have been times when people have intentionally slapped me in the face to test me out or to make efforts to return me to marginalization.  Still people will sometimes wittingly or unwittingly uphold stigmatizing beliefs because they believe they are entitled to do so, or because they have a need to test me out.  Just like a therapist is asked to roll with resistance with the drug culture during motivational interviewing, I believe message receivers need to build social relationships by rolling with social sanctions without retaliating. When we retaliate we may get branded as becoming symptomatic and appearing symptomatic can trigger us back into focusing on messages.

One clear reason for this is that for many message receivers there are a lot of angles where we may see punishment and oppression.  Most of us in the local where I work are more than just message receivers.  We may be racial or ethnic minorities, immigrants, afflicted by sex and sexual orientation discrimination, have criminal records, or come from disadvantaged educational circumstances.  There are so many ways we can be stigmatized, if we want to overcome we have got to roll with resistance and kill all stigma with kindness taking the moral high ground.  This can best be done with a polite smile and a process of keeping on, keeping on.

And regardless of the intention, the solution for all is to ignore all as if they are just names, rather than sticks and stones. This involves us smiling back and regulating the mood and paying the punisher a compliment.  It is about having the peace of mind to give them a piece of chocolate to sweeten them up a bit even if they are the reason you were homeless for two years.  It is a unique skill.  It’s like being able to look the devil in the eye without being scared or damaged.

My experience is that when this is done the racket and tests can escalate, so I’d argue that part of kind killing might need to come from a place of knowing that you are right about yourself in spite of all the stigma. Indeed, when I am hit really hard multiple times, I still slip into negative thinking at times. But still I’d argue that the best execution of this skill is to pursue a relationship with the very person who thinks you are dirt and treats you like an object.

I learned this through working customer service while in a state of poverty and hardship. This skill comes from humbling myself enough to above all else be honorable.  It’s about providing good customer service serving food even though you can’t afford to eat.  It may be about remembering that there are oh so many people who learn to do this on a daily basis.

Killing people with kindness does not mean that we forget. But as is suggested by the research of Patrick Corrigan contact needs to be established first. The message receiver needs to prove their value and social worth before they come out and identify as a message receiver. This is the suggested route to changing individuals’ minds about stigma.  Corrigan’s work may help reinforce the need to meet each normal culture where it is at, rather than trying to educate it about the covert private hell that has dominated the message receiving life. For me, I strive to kill the punisher with kindness. In many ways, it is my only choice.

Social Skill #4: Hanging in there with some troubled relationships through shared activities:

I personally have a very hard time holding onto old relationships and need to remind myself not to give up. Back when I trusted no one, the only relationships that I kept were ones that were required for my financial and material survival. And it was a struggle to hold and honor those relationships. This taught me the ethic to hang in there with some troubled relationships.

Perhaps message receivers may need to be as resilient as water in a canyon to gain the clout necessary to overcome the stigma associated with the illness.  And when they don’t prevail, keeping on via pursuing other social relationships will impact help them and help make the world better.

For a message receiver like me, who experiences paranoia, making friends with the people who were following me around, particularly hecklers in the Italian mafia, was crucial to my recovery.  A message receiver may need to learn more about who they are and the reality of their world in order to heal.

Thus, I am suggesting that any Darth Vader leader needs to encourage group members to pursue all sorts of relationships with all sorts of peoples by finding shared activities that can be engaged in. Message receivers might benefit by reaching out to all kinds of peoples including their worst oppressors. While this is an ethic, I have not always maintained, it can be a very important part of social rehab.

An example would be a time I watched a friend on BART connecting with a heckler who was calling us crazy. The friend who I met at a social club, was exhibiting retaliation reactions and the heckler was a proud Republican. Instead of being insulted, my friend who had studied economics in college, start genuinely talking about his field of interest on his terms not only to kill him with kindness but also perhaps with the intention of building a support. Exhibiting this kind of social skill proudly helped enormously and we had a much better outing as a result.

This is particularly useful for message receivers when they are working with other message receivers who may fall on hard times. In my experience, burning bridges or kicking someone who has hurt me to the curb is something I have had to learn not to do in order to have any relationships. Sometimes I have had to make people who frustrate me little projects. As a person who is sensitive to being bullied I have to remind myself not to give up all the time.

Social Skill #5: Going towards new relationships:

As I healed, I acclimated to a world where many old contacts presumed I was damaged goods. Therefore, I needed to seek out new streams of friends by going out to social groups and engaging in shared social activities. Reaching out to new streams of people can be of vital importance.

For some message receivers, traveling from the bondage of a board and care into the free world of the local community requires companionship mixed with creative resources: the poetry slam, the meet-up-group of alien-enthusiasts, the Disco floor.  Meeting other message receivers from a cultural group such as special messages and going out together into the community is a good strategy for picking up more social resources.

This skill involves remembering that the fisherman who has many hooks out there is more likely to hook a fish.

Social Skill #6: Skillfully knowing when it’s time to reveal trauma to build support:

There have been times once I’ve built relationships that I’ve needed to assertively appeal to people by making contained disclosures regarding trauma they may see in me. This has involved significant judgment as in general it is not appropriate to reveal what I‘ve been through. I have had to learn to sense when people are seeing me as a human being enough so that I can assert myself and explain my behavior via relating some trauma. After all there are times when not doing so makes things awkward.

At the same time I have decidedly chosen not to confront public ridicule systemically because I run the risk of being told I am paranoid.  Confronting it personally involves picking up on social cues that I am so gifted as to be able to do and that I would have to be prepared to address the issue systemically. This involves assuming that I can appeal to position power that is not biased against the mad.  In spite of the ADA, harassment of the mad is not in the public awareness and is rampant in the media.  Thus, I personally feign from asserting my rights and perhaps that is how I have survived professionally.

Asserting rights clearly may be different for others.  It is best done with a thick skin and sharp attention to social cues, qualities that some message receivers may have.

Still by being out as mad and letting “normals” see a part of yourself that is suggestive of your struggles, you may not only change their attitude, but deepen the way they see you.  This alone can be a way of asserting your needs. I personally see it as the way you hold your trauma cards: when to play them, when to hold them and when to fold them.

When we play our cards with normal culture we need to do it strategically, rather than out of need. We have message group and other message receivers to get our needs met. Knowing when to lightly let the cat out of the bag when our relationship is strong enough.  This involves assessing the supporter’s level of attachment to “normal” culture and accepting their boundaries with regard to their personal biases and stigmas.

I am suggesting that it depends on the level of transparency we have about the skeletons in our closet, and our ability to read social cues, how soon we ask for respect.  But there are times when we need to make assertive calls for respect.  Knowing the difference depends on knowledge of your: self, culture, and your need for power.  It is a skill.

For me revealing trauma cards to therapists or medical professional is no different. In other words, the message receiver might wait until the therapist, case manager, or outreach worker trusts them as a regular person and ready to undress the public-self.  The clear suggestion would be to wait to bring up messages, then right as the therapist is genuinely touched and demonstrating respect, the message receiver might throw their false limb off and ask for a hug.  Then the message receiver might assess based on the therapists response whether it is safe to really talk about messages.

I would suggest that message receivers not act entitled to tell their story even if they are paying for therapy. I am constantly prepared to back up and de-stigmatize the therapist about the absent limb.  This can take a lot of patience, risk and work, especially when the therapist is the one who is getting paid and screwing up.  I say this because with the amount of institutional stigma in the literature, therapists often require special treatment and perhaps need to be babied a bit.  They may be particularly hard work but the good news is they aren’t going anywhere as long as the money flows.

It is wise for anyone working with a message receiver to recognize and support this process, they might reflect that they understand by collaboratively morphing along with the process and complimenting the message receiver for skillful behavior.

Social Skill #7: Using humor:

One of the skills I have tried to exemplify at times in this chapter and throughout is the social skill of humor, or effective retaliation reactions.  (You didn’t know I was trying to be funny, did you?)  This can definitely be used to get through this terribly difficult task of building social relationships because making people laugh is genuinely a great way to get appreciated and build relationship.

Consider our friend at the USA day parade who was really quite zany and funny with his behavior too but because it lacked conformity it got punished rather than acknowledged for humor.  Perhaps dressing and behaving normal and couching his commentary in a little story that expressed the same kind of edgy message might have worked, while it satisfied his creativity.  Additionally, I am sure it would have been healing to get real recognition for the personal dilemma the message receiver was experiencing by creating genuine laughter; it would have made it easier for the message receiver to “make friends with the people who were following them around.”

Not only does mad humor demand that a message receiver accept social sanctions but it may help build upon scarred relationships and tragedy in socially “appropriate” manners.  Imagine, the people you are mad at turning around and supporting you with laughter.  It is a great way to make your point and ease your ire.

Social Skill #8: Make efforts to respectfully fit in with Romans when in Rome:

Far too often I have observed message receivers do something that is familiar to me: project our public selves to professionals to avoid punishment, and our private message culture to the public. There is something about this that is beautiful and recklessly funny about this behavior, but it doesn’t bode well for social rehabilitation.

I can even recognize that once I left home I had an unconscious proclivity towards acting like my Mom in front of my Dad and acting like my Dad in front of my Mom. Though this clearly didn’t work, it consistently happened.  I like to think of this as walking like an Egyptian in Rome and vice-versa. While it was good for a punk-ass existence, eventually this kind of behavior had to stop.

As I have gained experience being the therapist outreaching to message receivers in the community, I certainly get the feeling that I am not alone in these regards.  Often, it is as if message receivers flip flop their behavior as an objection to the entire enslavement industry.  Once a message receiver can get the validation to know there is beauty in this behavior and hypocrisy and enslavement in normal culture, they might need to realize that the only way to change this reality is to work to change these behavior patterns.

In state hospital I rebelled with this flip flop behavior by using “normal” skills when I could in the institutional setting because I did not want institutional behavior internalized. Then one day it was revealed to me that the staff in meeting constantly criticized me for being entitled. As such, my flip-flop behavior does not bode well for social rehabilitation. When I learned of the staff’s criticism, I internalized it and it only added to my sense of shame.

Likewise picture me in a room full of people who are acting “appropriate” and potentially excluding. Because I feel threatened disgusted I have to run a trust test behaving in a “message” oriented manner, perhaps with provocative behavior. This inappropriate behavior only puts me at risk of real exclusion.

Ultimately, to avoid the fate of institutionalization, I need to learn to accept the culture where I am at and respect its customs as well as I can in order to avoid the trap. I continue to struggle with this in places where I don’t feel I belong.

Again, I believe that having the beauty of the behavior and the hypocrisy of the system validated and understood would help me improve this behavior.

A message receiver using this skill would start by assuming normal culture traits and assessing and testing for safety before opening up with a high level of distinctive cultural behavior.  They would start by paying respect to the dominant culture and slowly use good judgment in determining how far to go in terms of revealing their own distinctive mannerisms.  They would not necessarily see this as sell-out behavior, they would see this as a necessary step towards teaching others about their culture if others were receptive.

The strength of the group discussing this amid members of varying stages of recovery makes this possible to help message receiver’s work together.  Instead of hating it when their friends are successful, message receivers need to know that they will not be left behind. This is why it is so important for the leader demonstrate the ability to morph back to message and demonstrate that they are in the struggle for the long haul.  This is why it is extremely disturbing for me to see recovered message receivers behaving in excessively excluding manners.  This is exactly why we need to localize and be inclusive.

But this is really about accepting both the “normal” and the message aspects of our experience, making peace within ourselves and promoting peace by taking the higher ground.

Social Skill #9: Playing aloof:

Historically I have been isolated and have often approached social interaction with a high degree of need. As a result of desire to be accepted, I can often sabotage myself by coming across in a needy manner. This is admittedly not very attractive in “normal” culture where everyone is presumed to be loved and supported. Often staying cool and being aloof gives people an advantage in social circumstances especially when they are humiliated or face exclusion. This is a skill that is difficult for me.

This is something that some message receivers may need to be aware of as well, particularly when entering the culture of the oppressor. Playing it cool means we not allow the water to drip on our foreheads, but rather run-off our rubber covered back.

While many of us who have faced significant trauma and exclusion may go from one to one hundred with our emotions, but publically we need to contain that inner pain and pretend like we don’t care.  While vulnerability heals, it does not work in normal culture. Fronting like you don’t care what people say might be necessary for other people besides me.

The post Nine Social Skills Continued appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

To avoid punishment, message receivers will need to build relationships with people who socially sanction the message experience. Social functioning will often require that the message receiver engage in relationships that are in the culture of the “normal” consensus reality. In fact, by the time many message receivers make it into a group many are taught through the mainstream system of care (and perhaps through internalized stigma) to deny their symptoms and play it normal. Indeed at the onset of group, it can take a long while for many group members to share message experiences not only because those experiences are traumatic, but also because they fear being persecuted for doing so. While there are message receivers who stick to their guns especially early in their message crisis, many experienced message receivers already know what it takes to survive in a world dominated by storm troopers. Often, it is anger and emotional desperation that makes them act out their symptoms when in crisis. The game becomes to contain these experiences so that there is no punishment. People may notice something is up with some of us, but social sanctions forces people to contain themselves when they can. Often times the way this is done is silently disdained. And still there are very different degrees of social skills as message receivers do this.

For me personally, learning to submit to this process was very challenging without medication. I do not consider myself to hold good social skills on the whole. In addition to struggling with messages, I like many message receivers have been diagnosed with dyslexia, ADD, and consider myself to be influenced by a mild level of autism. My whole life I have gravitated towards people who are different who might give me a chance. Thus, message receivers who are likewise neuro-divergent might also struggle with basic social skills like looking people in the eye etcetera. While I do my best to accept what I perceive to be the bullying nature of a great deal of social interaction, I do not like the fact that social groups exclude and differentiate themselves from other groups. For me, genuine cuddling is very difficult. As a result, I tend to come from the vantage point that social skills are very difficult when this may not be the case for all message receivers.

Perhaps historically the message receiver begrudges and is angry at “normal” folk for their role in oppressing them. Imagine being homeless and looking at all the people driving cars past on their way home from their high end jobs. For me this kind of outside-looking-in experience hurt hard. I’d feel like a failure, like something was taken from me. I’d been raised to believe that honesty and hard work would take care of me, and this just wasn’t the case. Some message receivers, however already have experienced inequity and have social skills that enable them to fake it. For some others too, it may be hard not to begrudge or be angry with those who have it all. Some people have learned to negotiate these realities without showing their real feelings. Many may already be practiced at this. As a person who primarily connects with people through work of a professional nature, I had to integrate with the very people I was most angry at and that influences my views of necessary social skills

The nine social skills we will review in this chapter are benchmarks that I set for myself in reflection. These were necessary for me in order to make friends with people who appear to be on the inside of the circle. Perhaps some will resonate with some message receivers. They function as nagging reminders for me. In this chapter, I will argue that approximately nine social skills may be set by all message receivers based on who they are and what they need to do to succeed. Undoubtedly, others will not struggle with social skills quite the same way that I do. But they are expressed herein in a manner so as to be representative of the types of skills needed to overcome oppression. The idea is to build a list of reminders that motivate the message receiver to do what they need to recover.

Message receivers do need to be able to play it normal in order to get jobs, improve housing, and thrive in the social world. They may need to reconnect with social groups that have hurt them. Be it with a marginalized ethnic group, with the culture of a prestigious university, or a religious community, a work culture, message receivers usually needs pick a culture to infiltrate that has been more welcoming of them at some point. Then they need to consider social skills that help them survive in these settings.

In this chapter, I am going to argue that this starts with befriending and going towards relationships with helpers. Once they can approach and befriend helpers they need to approach social groups they work with or play with in similar manner. This may involve a high level of executing social skills that they may not be feeling. It may well involve, as I have suggested, meeting a culture that is responsible for social sanctions where they are at and pretending to be part of it as if it is no big thing.

In this chapter we will talk about how this can involve both radical compliance and love on the part of the message receiver, and I will share a compiled list of social skills that are needed by the author to successfully integrate and experience social rehabilitation. Perhaps, some other message receivers may relate to this list.

Jargonizing the Nine Social Skills Solution:

If the message receiver and the normal need to come to a truce, the social skills presented in this chapter are not simply normal social skills. They are behaviors that are needed in the face of social sanctions. They function as skills that need to be executed in place of retaliations reactions.

Recall that if being punished for behavior that is involuntary seems unjust, it will lead the message receiver to resist authority and halt trusting anything outside their message experience. Message experiences then via the trickster phenomenon become accurate. They end up believing they will be persecuted and acting in ways that make some kind of social persecution come true. I argue that this doesn’t need to be. I believe that social skills are needed to back up positive self-fulfilling prophesies that can help put a stop to social persecution. When this doesn’t happen, the message receiver continues to overvalue their messages and continues retaliation reactions that lead to irregular social sanctions and real social persecution.

The trick of the nine social skills behaviors, is to endure the punishment and go towards the relationship with the punisher to try to get some inclusion. As the title of the chapter suggests, it’s compiling a list of behaviors necessary to cuddle up to the plastic of the Stormtroopers. When I was in crisis I called these kiss-ass skills. What these social skills do is seek to prepare the message receiver for the steps they need to take to overcome subjugation and take the first steps to fitting in with a dominant culture. The idea is that if these skills, if applied, will not change the message receiver, but they may well protect them. Then as they adjust to one setting, they might consider changing some of those skills to adapt to another. These is a way to develop a sense of belonging which is needed for good mental health.

When I present the nine social skills, I note that nine means none in German, but may mean something else in a different culture. For example in hip hop culture a nine is a type of gun and may be very effective at leveling the playing field. Beatle fans may have their own views of what the number nine means based on the Revolution Nine song. Hence, for each person the skills may be different. Social skills are always changing in different cultural contexts. So the ones I select are ones that helped me overcome isolation and social sanctions and socially rehabilitate in a hostile professional world.

Nine social skills might ultimately function as great positive self-fulfilling prophesy mantras that enhance multicultural skills. A different set of nine social skills may be needed to penetrate different cultural enclaves. But the key is that when people punish an aspect of message receiving, instead of withdrawing into messages in rebellion, to go towards the punisher and provide the kiss-ass skills necessary to build a relationship.

I intend to impress the reader with the level of multi-cultural and interpersonal skills necessary for a message receiver to integrate. I’d argue that giving the message receiver knowing recognition for successful completion of these skills is a necessary means of reducing social sanctions and stigma that prevent many of us from completing our good efforts. So often, the message receiver may have made efforts of love and acceptance that are unrecognized. Maybe they only get met with criticism and more demands. So often there is a sense of demoralized defeat and contempt for the “normal” world because of this.

Indeed, for message receivers to have success, they have to change, but also it would help if those who sanction them stop sanctioning them. In order to do this, this work tries to create a cultural understanding of special messages. Indeed, I believe social sanctions can stop, but to me it seems like the message receiver must take the moral high ground in the bulk of their relationships. In order to do this, helpers may need to be able to enter the message culture, meet the message receiver where they are at, and both notice and support the ways they do engage in nine social skills with them.

As the diagram below suggests, this involves noticing retaliation reactions and recognizing that they are being socially sanctioned. Then, instead of believing that their special messages and divergent views are true, it involves forming relationships with their persecutors. Nine social skills are the skills used to do this. The better they can be acknowledged and promoted by the helper, the more trust will build in the relationship, and fewer the retaliation reactions are that only lead to a stronger conviction in the truth of the special message process.

The Role of the Helper as a Social Skill Provider:

For the helper, this solution, essentially kiss-ass skills, takes preparation and skill to deliver. Let’s review what we have essentially done as helpers up to this point. A good helper or group leader takes the lead and meets the message receiver where they are at and develops human mutuality with the Jedi, the message receiving Yoda figure. They do this by describing the components of special messages and proving they understand. Then once social sanctions are defined, accepted and healed from, the message receiver feels more bonded with their helpers: fellow group members and the leader, and perhaps connection to an outside therapist can increase. But the leader, other group members, or outside therapist need to realize that this bond is happening and help the message receiver identify the nine social skills they are using. In order to do this, helpers need to recognize when social skills are being used and highlight them.

I believe that helpers need to have an awareness that they themselves are in a state of morphing between playing the role of Jedi and playing the role of storm trooper. This is likely happening in the mind of the message receiver as helpers generally can function in the plastic world of the empire and are going to be seen as Stormtroopers. Thus, when relationship skills are expressed toward the helper, the helper can help the message receiver by acknowledging the social skill and define it as a nine social skill. Of course, suddenly doing so means the helper morphs into a plastic Stormtrooper, and then morphs back to being Jedi. Acknowledging that they are doing this and articulating it may help acknowledge the process. Perhaps there might even be some humor in this. “I repeatedly find myself telling male message receivers, “Luke, you do not understand the power of the dark side!” Then, a good helper will morph back into a Jedi and demonstrate their competence with message culture. Of course, the leader might have to morph back into a Stormtrooper to intellectually teach the skill to the group and then they can morph back.

Ultimately in my mind this can teach the message receiver to morph or acculturate to different social contexts that can clearly be of their choosing.

In case the reader is uncomfortable with the Stormtrooper analogy, let us recall the helper is essentially throughout this work the representative of the consensus culture. Let’s face it, consensus reality is the orientation of most effective communicators and is essentially being used all the time so that group members can connect with each other. But the strength of most leaders is their ability to reflect on times when they were in message crisis to prove their humanity to the message receiver. For the most part, the leader exhibits an ability to reflect both cultures and morph into a Stormtrooper throughout.

Thus, nine social skills can essentially become a code word for an important social skill that is being demonstrated. Acknowledging that it is a moral high ground and act of love helps strengthen the relationship. As the message receiver starts to see themselves as bearing a social skill, they may practice sharing it with other Stormtroopers they are motivated to cuddle up with.

Indeed, so much morphing is not always easy for a leader. The leader may at times they are morphing between plastic and Jedi establish a plastic post in the therapy office for the sake of their own security.  Then they might run to the plastic post and cuddle it to get their emotional needs met. Indeed that’s what a good leader will do, be open and vulnerable about their own need for attachment. Message receivers generally have it worse than Barlow’s monkey’s and being vulnerable to show your own depravations in terms of attachment is a great way to model cuddling up to Stormtroopers. Clearly, the work can be done. In my mind reality and recovery consists of a balance between the Jedi and the Empire.

As the message receiver gets a degree of acceptance by a social enclave their view of it as the Empire may become friendlier and more humanized. They may see reality as more of a balance between rational and irrational forces, as more gray than black and white. Achieving some level of inclusion be it in a survivor group, in a profession, in a family role, in a romantic relationship, in a social club, in a religion, in a housing warehouse, or in any entity that helps them get their social needs met will help the message receiver move out of the survival state of black and white, good and evil, or life or death and help them on their journey towards actualization. For message receivers to remain healthy will usually involve the goal of gaining acceptance in more than one cultural context.

Admittedly, I have used metaphor to describe what helpers can do on a daily basis to revolutionize treatment. In this metaphor, mainstream treatment in our current system repeatedly punishes the Jedi until they can say the words necessary to act plastic. Then they are set free and told to stay plastic and given medications that sometimes help.

Role of the Group in Teaching Social Skills:

I believe that the group, with the leader switching from one culture to the other, develops a bit of a safe rhythm that gives participants the chance to work on nine social skills with each other. Thus, there are many times the leader in morphing from plastic to Jedi needs to let the group interact with each other and support those who are engaging in social skill building. Thus, when group members who are used to being excluded seek to sharpen social skills in a way that is inclusive, the therapist might find ways to support these efforts.

However, message receivers as a culture are particularly focused on themes that are often not encouraged in mental health settings such as politics, history and religion. In order to feel permitted to socialize these topic need to be allowed and a leader is wise to acknowledge that when the topic is participant’s natural cultural socialization and be prepared to assist with the natural socialization in a way that promotes multi-cultural skills which are needed for recovery. In my personal experience there is a great deal of socialization with regard to the bible and finding a way to acknowledge honor and include people from different faiths without killing the process is an important art that can happen as the leader becomes familiar with group members

Though, in hosting a mix of individuals in varying levels of recovery from message crisis, it is ill-advised to make participation mandatory, still the leader needs to prompt and assess, particularly when the topic is not about messages. This is an opportunity to use the rhythm and safety to promote social skills.  During these moments I assess whether the message receiver is on track and sync with the social skills the group is presenting. If the participant is bored, offended, just doesn’t want to be bothered, or simply being left behind, these are the times when the leader needs to be able to morph into Jedi and use other aspects of the reconstruction of psychosis, to make the effort to include the member in the discourse of the group. There are times it is time to change the discourse of the group at these times. Perhaps the group may respond to a different culture building message topic.

Hence, often the leader can support the withdrawn individual, by giving them attention and inclusion by listening carefully to individuals who are in message culture and are struggling to fit into the plastic nature of the communication that comes up in socialization. There may also be times when including the message receiver is difficult and it can be time to move on, still honoring the message receiver’s effort to connect.  It may be necessary to remind recovering message receivers that being patient and inclusive will ultimately help them help themselves if crisis returns. In my experience more often than not message receivers have reminded me to be patient as well and to allow the socialization. I have had to perpetually listen. When I become plastic I wait before asserting myself and weigh the temperature of the group before asserting myself.

I believe a leader is wise to remember that these groups are a radical effort to decrease isolation. Once new group members have been introduced and the general strategy of the group reviewed, and perhaps a story or two told, the leader needs to flex with the group when they want to work on external issues and social skills with each other. Though there is still the need to morph during this stage: playing plastic to some and Jedi to others.

The post Nine Social Skills appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

January 7, 2017: I sit stunned in the wake of the tragedy of yesterday’s Fort Lauderdale shooting. As statements appear in the press that insinuate that these evil acts need to be avenged, I grieve for the senseless loss of life.  I grieve and I also wonder if anyone cares to understand the dilemmas that people like Esteban Santiago-Ruiz face. Having just endured another holiday season as a mad person, I am reminded of the importance of giving social scapegoats a space to celebrate their otherness. As a licensed psychotherapist, I create safe places where the untold story can be heard. I know that a state of victimhood can be transformed to a celebration. I see it happen every day. It helps me exponentially.

Having caught a fever, I spent Christmas day in bed in victim mode, reflecting on the way I feel scapegoated. Instead of working through the pain like usual, I lay incapacitated, overcome. I thought of my project design that could bring specialized groups into the county service system. Turns out eighteen months of pro bono work only further smeared my reputation. I not only am left unnoticed, I know there are rumors based on past politics and current ones that I can do nothing about. I reflected how, when I recently shared these ideas in a survivor work group, I only felt further marginalized. This hurt, as did the fact that my award winning memoir isn’t selling.

Reaching out to family on Christmas Day conjured that same sense of invisibility: I was reminded that most family members look away from me when they talk to each other. I reflected on how I stooped with my bad back under a tarp in a rain storm barbecuing for everyone at the family reunion and how disrespected I felt when not a single relative stopped by to check in with me. I reflected further about a recent interaction with a chronically normal co-worker that turned bully in nature. And somehow as I traipsed off to sleep, my dreams revealed that I am still afraid of losing everything. This overwhelming sense of hurt could easily be a daily state for me if I was locked up.

Maybe what was going on during this fever was that I was transported back to Montana State Hospital, to a fever I had there. There had been ice growing on the inside of my window just above the cot where I stacked wet wool blankets. Two months into my stay, I still had not met with my psychiatrist. I had already been told there was no need to take my temperature, because aspirin relief was not legal for me. Orders had not been written and it was Friday. When somehow I got myself up and out to the front, I begged for aspirin anyway. It annoyed the old hen at the nursing station to the point where she accused me of being sexually inappropriate with her. I had my hand sitting on my hip tucked inside the elastic of the sweatpants I had been given. Jolted out of my misery by the accusation, I tried to tell myself I was just being paranoid. It wasn’t fair to judge the old hen. She probably would not write me up. But the next time I could manage to get myself out of bed, a conscientious staff person who I had built a relationship with leaked the reality of the note to me. It really did happen.

As a master’s level social worker devoted to going where others wouldn’t and as the survivor of multiple molestations, I was deeply impacted. Immediately, I was afraid that my three month stint on that old dank frozen, dirty unit would be extended. I was there because they said I was paranoid. And now it was possible that I could be held an additional nine months. This is exactly what my family was advocating for.

But when mad people let themselves feel victimized and hurt by such circumstances, not only do they hurt, they may also harm their loved ones who helped put them there. Suddenly, everyone else looks like perpetrators. This does not help us in the least. When mad people act like victims and point their fingers at perpetrators, they may find dozens of irrational fingers back at them criticizing their every move. This is what Schizophrenia means to me.

It takes a while to learn, but there are ways to avoid this. There are ways to achieve mental health recovery. Instead, I have learned that we who experience “psychosis” of any form need to celebrate our otherness, our neurodivergence, our madness. We need the space to tell our untold stories. We need to learn from and support each other. This is what mental health recovery helps us do.

Of course, over the holidays, seasonal stories I endure as a licensed psychotherapist in Oakland have added to my sense of hurt on Christmas. I primarily serve individuals who are marginalized in board and care circumstances. I constantly hear reports that end up being very similar to the warehousing I endured on Unit C in Montana. And particularly around Christmas when people are desperate to give others Christmas gifts, there is a lot of theft, or flim flam. As a staff we do our best to undermine the spank of the poverty over the season, but I always find myself paying attention to the individuals who lose during the Christmas raffle. I give those who won’t even take the risk of playing a knowing look.

But because as a staff person, I believe the horror stories and inquire deeper into them; because I share my own lived experience, I have developed a host of techniques and ways to be helpful to individuals who are suffering from “psychotic episodes” or recovering from them.

And suddenly the person who is down because his Christmas gifts were stolen at his board and care can talk about how the voices respond by telling he is going to go to jail. Then I can tell him about how that’s what I believed was going to happen to me when I ran away from my job at a notorious section 8 housing authority and tried to escape to Canada to seek asylum. That is what landed me in Montana State Hospital. Then, someone else can relate similar experiences. Suddenly this person who has never admitted he hears voices in ten years of treatment doesn’t feel so alone. Perhaps, a few stories later he can celebrate his otherness. Now he and I are no longer marginalized victims. We become proud others. And we prevent the whole system that for years has suppressed and ignored from being attacked as perpetrators.

In Oakland, the more we dig, the more stories of real gang, and police harassment surface. At times we uncover never before told experience of police beatings. I find I no longer feel alone in those instances I bumped heads with the police in the days that led up to my hospitalization. In fact, I don’t feel so bad because I was not nearly killed the way my fellow victimized friend was. And together we become able to accept the tragedies that have held us down and heal. While there are ways we’ve had it worse, there are always ways we’ve had it better. I believe we can all walk away with a sense of better understanding the world.  We can be proud of being others. Now we have mad brothers and sisters.

A few days ago, I was presenting to one of our senior Ivy League psychiatrists. I tried to explain what it is like for a paranoid person who objects to the life of crime to be followed for real and what they have to learn to do to avoid being hurt by real crime rings. The psychiatrist who I have always felt snickers about my street informed content, got confronted by one of my peers, an ex-con who has endured brutal police beatings and been tortured to the point where he lost an eye. This co-worker, and age cohort to the psychiatrist, lifted his head and explained that that is what happens to squares on the street for real.  They often get set up and victimized. This is part of how prisons become so filled with mentally ill. This was such an enormous moment for me. I have been working on the unit for fourteen years and I am grateful to have some back up. While these dilemmas do not afflict everyone in the mad community, it is a very common reality for many of us.

This is another example of what happens when silenced stories get revealed, there is such a sense of relief, comradery and connection. Suddenly the recipient feels like less schizophrenic and more like the subjugated person that they really are.

And then, to learn about the fate of Esteban Santiago-Ruiz, an Iraq war veteran, who had become lost to contact from his family as he cycled through a system that tries to forcefully suppress his trauma and experiences. I spend my livelihood forging a way for people like Esteban to rise up and experience recovery. I see it work time and time again. I have never had a person who revealed the truth about their suffering go postal. But when Esteban contacted the FBI, and cycled through the system in Anchorage, it didn’t help. He boarded a plane and flew home. At the airport he killed at least five innocent people.

Now many outraged individuals will believe mad people need to be locked up and go directly into marginal poverty in order to be controlled. Will my right to prevent these occurrences come under further attack and marginalization? Will I lose my wife and my house and end up in a FEMA camp bearing a microchip that says I am autistic?

Though I never came close to shooting, I can relate to Esteban because I too at one point reached out to the FBI in desperation.

It happened a year after I was released from Montana State Hospital. The only job I could find was at an Italian Delicatessen. My delusion was that my family was a mob family and that the mob was picking on me. In spite of hundreds of resumes and job applications, the only job I could find was at an Italian Deli. My aunt, the rare relative who seemed willing to support me, got me the job. Every day I encountered individuals during my two hour commute (ten miles on a bike, one hour on BART) to the wealthy suburb where I worked. Everyday there was an individual who I believed to be following me. Some were real out-of-state gangsters I recognized from my job at the section 8 housing program. Some appeared just to be purposely dawdling, trying to get my attention in effort to mock me. I ignored them entirely and chose to keep my job and risked the uncertainty.

I ignored them, that is, until the day after 9-1-1. On that day a Muslim man was taunting me in a crowd of people in a festival. Thinking it might be a test to see if I would turn a blind eye to terrorism, I called the FBI and left a very careful short and discreet report.  I was afraid of failing the test, but I was also afraid of being taken back to the hospital.

My therapist was appalled. She always sided with the poor kids who were loved had automobiles, and sold drugs. They spent eight hours a day carving me up, and she always took up for them and my family, though she said she didn’t. She judged me for being a drain and a drag to sit with. Paid 250$ per week by my family while I could barely afford food, I couldn’t share with her what was really happening. I learned time and time again that she wouldn’t believe or care about what I was going through. All she did when I called the FBI was, without an ounce of curiosity, threaten me. I would get in real trouble if I ever did that again.

A day later I saw the Muslim man again by chance and went up and talked to him. He said he washed dishes at a restaurant around the corner from where I worked.

I looked at him. We both knew there was no restaurant around the corner. I apologized to him anyway.

I never saw him again. Strange?

I do not think it is okay to randomly shoot people. But so rarely is there consideration that the media response might escalate the occurrences. It is not fair to use this kind of tragedies to spread hatred and ignorance about what so many individuals go through.

It’s true my beloved co-worker, the ex-con, does fly through that same Fort Lauderdale airport several times a year. It terrifies me to think that for all he does as an elder in the community, for all the family he looks after, for the support he has given me, that he too could fall victim to such a desperate and random tragedy. But I am also not going to judge Esteban until I know all the gory details of the trauma he endured in Iraq and elsewhere. I believe he and many like him do not have insurance that covers treatment that helps humanize what they go through. In many places, treatment doesn’t even exist. They most certainly didn’t in Montana. And the program I have built in the outpatient hospital clinic is the only of its kind. I believe it has had quite a profound effect. I believe it helps individuals get what their insurance pays for, treatment.

While I am grateful for having enough at my disposal so I do not, as a scapegoat, have to live in a state of victimhood, judgments about Esteban are a threat to my very existence. It does make me worry about returning to the torture of the incarcerated state of victimhood. Even with all I have learned and created, incarceration pains me so bad. It set me back two and a half years in the past. It remains to be seen what my future will hold as the reality of my existence remains distorted in the public.

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Jargonizing the Retaliation Reaction Construct:

This chapter’s construct consists of natural reactions that come up for message receivers as a result of acting as though their message experiences are the dominant reality.

Retaliation reactions can be as minor as a facial response: a glare, or a laugh; and in more dramatic occasions can involve actions that put the message receiver or the public at risk. In the course of this chapter I will provide some examples from my experience. While I certainly have observed the actions of others as most readers have too, I will limit the examples within, to my experience. Perhaps doing so will help make a case for group leaders to demonstrate their wellness by being able to take responsibility for their own complex behaviors.

From my perspective as someone who faced a sense of imminent danger against my life, those of us who are taught to defend ourselves or are victims of violent circumstances in their community, may end up in a bit of a disadvantage. In many ways, I certainly can understand how the prisons and jails become full of our people. Message receivers are most likely to get framed in crime rings as well as sucked into them. I certainly was afraid and conscious of this possibility. And I was most definitely recruited. Moreover, I believe that, in such contexts, passivism is clearly an advantage as efforts to hold tormentors accountable in families, work environments, the military and on the streets, ultimately are more likely to lead to incarceration, homelessness/barracks, and death. But I also reveal my own cultural bias here.

From the start, retaliation reactions are an integral part of the special message experience. To the outside observer, who knows nothing about all that has been written up to this point, they might seem easier to be mindful of than concepts such as sleuthing, theories and tricksters. But over time they become less pronounced and more subtle. By definition, retaliation reactions are usually reactions that are likely to lead to disruption in the lives of normal. Over time they shift from being reactions that happen as special message circumstances seem real; and they become corrective measures committed in social commentary on the oppression a message receiver has experienced.

However, because of the way these natural reactions are received by the social world, they become harder and harder to recognize. And the more institutionalized and adept the message receiver becomes, the more minute and innocuous the resistance gets expressed. Ultimately the institutionalized message receiver need to learn to stop all retaliation reactions in order to socially rehabilitate. In re-entering the work force they are often under a high level of scrutiny and retaliation reactions can get them rejected. Perhaps those who make it and who have more a sense of privilege may develop ways to be successful like normals and return to use of retaliation reactions to wield power over others. And this can actually come in the form of bullying, or using power to impose your views and influence over others.

Reducing the ways Retaliation Reactions get Misunderstood:

Consider that a message receiver’s specific message profile is essentially a personalized language of alternative meaning that, during crisis, they believe the world shares with them.  As Patricia Deegan in material published off the National Empowerment website and others point out, there is always meaning behind a message receiver’s action even if it is subtle and slight.  Seeking to decode and understand this meaning be the meaning subtle and institutionalized or drastic and dangerous, is a great way to help a message receiver. In order to decode the meaning, I’d argue, the helper needs to be curious as to the meaning not punitive. This can happen in group and in any therapeutic milieu. It means being interested and curious about behavior that gets hammered into innocuous institutional gestures; it means decoding the truth behind overt and punishable actions and honoring the communication.

Examples of overt and offensive behaviors behaviors that I engaged in include: emotional red-faced grimacing when taunted by a policeman, crossing the street backwards on a red light to block traffic, talking to psychiatric inmates to about the evils of the mafia (not smart when you know that gang affiliated individuals share their lives with you,) even, at one point, suggesting that I was mistreated (or pissed-on) at work by gesturing as though I was peeing on the floor.  As the name I have chosen suggests, there is a sense of retaliation in the behavior that alarms others and can easily be misinterpreted, even if there were explainable and exceedingly valid reasons for the behavior.  They can feel almost involuntary, compelled from the message reality that simmers beneath the consciousness.

As to the references to my own aberrant behavior in the above paragraph what I was saying and how I got treated were very distinct. In other words the communication was poor. Letting the cops know that I had already known they were following me resulted in be being physically hurt. Blocking traffic was meant as a call for help so that I would not be shot as I headed to the border, resulted in a car trying to run me over and further police contact. Talking to inmates about the mafia, resulted in an inability to get a job outside of an Italian deli for two years. And peeing on the floor in front of my nineteen year old boss was an effort to let her know that now she was back from vacation, I knew she was bullying me and being unfair in driving me to work in ways that were unnecessary and unnatural; it resulted in her effort to get me fired a few months later.

Retaliation reactions happen all the time during crisis many of them are so minor, they don’t get scrutinized.  Thus when a punishment is imposed via a sanction it has a strong impact because there is a sense that it is unpredictable, unjust, and inconsistent.  When a message receiver is under a microscope in a hospital or a job, there is a tendency to try to break them of the retaliation reaction habit through constant sanction. The problem is that this may accelerate the sense of being persecuted and cause many message receivers to develop smaller, more bizarre behaviors to demonstrate their oppression that don’t get sanctioned.  Sure there have been official documented studies of peasants done in sociology that document that the same process goes on in economic oppression.  When presented in these contexts the behavior perhaps observed as cool or culturally acceptable.  The oppressors are too stupid to even notice that they are being got.  It is such a frustrating thing to live with such oppression that these expressions are medicalized as an illness.  Let me tell you from experience, it can increase mistrust of others and general sense of hopelessness.

So a major technique for managing retaliation reactions is to pay attention to them and usher in communication.  Find out what is meant and respond in collaborative and healing manners.

I would like to suggest that before a real problematic retaliation outburst happens there is a pattern of emotional build-up in which many messages and divergent views work in emotional concert with each other until there is a behavioral outburst. In reality, the behavior may be justified but it is not perceived in this way. And when it is harshly punished or negatively reinforced there is a sense of injustice that kill trust for the social world that surrounds the message receiver.

As a result, communication about messages and divergent views can go a long way toward curbing retaliation reactions and preventing them before they build up. And observing small retaliation reactions and making curious inquiry can lead to communication that reduces retaliation reactions in the community that can increase in size and danger to both the message receiver and the community.

Additional Treatment Strategy of Joining with Effective Retaliation Reactions:

If message receivers were publicly understood instead of cast as so irrationally dangerous, they might be complimented for retaliation reactions that provide relief and do no harm. Particularly if retaliation reactions are witty and “appropriate,” there could be a vast decrease in suffering with some acknowledgement. Too often the message receiver is discouraged and overpowered for making a good point just because it is against the grain.

When in message crisis and with the majority culture hitting me with insults, I could not help but come at the majority in a retaliatory manner. I did not feel I had anybody on my side who could acknowledge when I made a good point. This is largely because majority culture tries to distort and silence the valid points that some message receivers make. Instead, it is too often presumed that the majority needs to silence message culture and that if the whole world stand united against the message receiver, the message receiver will have to surrender.

This does not work in so many cases. Instead message receivers become unwilling to share their private experiences and look at them with other people. They bury them deep inside even when they have the opportunity to do so in my group, they do not do it.

Consider, in contrast, a message group in which message receivers have the freedom to explore and get acknowledgement for their good retaliation reaction quips. It is not only fun, it naturally brings up regrets and remorse about bad ones. As these get shared, message receivers who continue to retaliate hear this and reflect on their retaliations in a new manner, with better judgment.  With cultural support, retaliation reactions could become more effective and assertive and the experience of retaliatory reactions can be normalized and shaped in a direction that can be acknowledged by mainstream culture.

Thus an individual, who wants to support a message receiver, might start with an eye for supporting and acknowledging the elements of the retaliation reactions that are “appropriate.” Strongly reinforcing humor and glorifying non-damaging push back is a start. Joining with it instead of siding with the system that seeks to unilaterally muffle a process that can be adaptive and healthy is a start; however, a person who wants to do this will observe and run up against plenty of incidence when the pushback humor has made things worse because it is likely to be perceived as “inappropriate.”

Managing this scenario his can be done by fully exploring the meaning that was behind the gesture. Just this very line of appreciative inquiry is markedly different than punishing and stigmatizing the deed. While getting the meaningful intent of a retaliation reaction does take a deep step towards suspending the helper’s judgment. Once this is done validating the intent but challenging its effectiveness gives the helper the ability to then explore the potential social consequences with an eye for the role of bullying.  This is a great way to deepen the relationship with the message receiver, teach social skills and change the nature of the retaliation reaction and direct it towards something healing and positive.  The ability to tell personal stories that demonstrate these concepts from your own or someone else’s recovery is a great way to do this.

In this way, group can be a great way to learn how to increase the safety and effectiveness of the retaliation reaction.

As most therapists who have been responsible for assessing threat know, if a message receiver is able to voice their retaliatory reaction, the chances that they will act on them immediately gets reduced not enhanced.  While it’s true this is not an absolute assurance, when someone is able to open up it can go a long way to promote healing.  This is why consumers talk about the importance of risk-sharing.  The strength of the relationship is the largest predictor of safe healing intervention.

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Self-Fulfilling Prophesies in All Aspects of Culture:

The spiritual concept of the positive self-fulfilling prophesy, which represents things like prayer and faith, is pivotal for message receiver and arguably for anyone dealing with trauma.  As many people I have worked with have pointed out, the concept is present in the Bible and, I believe, in other spiritual traditions from the major world religions to the local indigenous practices.  Whether this is true or not, I’d argue that the concept of positive self-fulfilling prophesy is also clearly present in modern music (I heard it in a John Mellencamp song) in self-help books (“The Law of Attraction,”) modern spiritual videos (“The Secret,”) and in the foundations of positive psychology. I am essentially arguing that this is a major cultural phenomenon that message receivers are simply denied in the current system due to labels and prejudice which they ever so desperately need!

I argue that the institution and wider culture fail to teach it to message receivers when it is so particularly needed in message crisis. Indeed, somehow social goals associated with self-fulfilling prophesy get permanently dropped when they need to be first and foremost on the helper and messages receiver’s mind. It is hard when someone is locked in a warehouse with nothing to do to teach such a concept. Still, some recovery minded helpers manage to help message receivers focus on activities in some stark circumstances.

To demonstrate what message receivers lack in captivity, I am going to initiate a sports analogy that demonstrates ways the positive self-fulfilling prophesy is widely taught to children in society. In sports, positive messages “I am going to win” lead to a sense of power and agency in the world and often become premonitions. Of course, it might not always work, but when brash predictions occur and come true, time and time again it becomes folklore. Think of Babe Ruth pointing to the bleachers, Muhammad Ali becoming a “I am the greatest. . . a bad, bad man,” Joe Namath leading the underdog Jets to victory against the Raiders, and gold medalist downhill skier Bill Johnson. All these sports heroes brashly predicted their future success and then made it come true.

Of course, there are historical examples of some such predictions that didn’t quite work out, but that’s OK they will probably get forgotten. This does not disrupt the ethos of the positive self-fulfilling prophesy towards sports that is needed to succeed and achieve. Consider how sport legends are used to inspire kids to develop agency in their own lives and practice their sport for their health until most come to the realization that they aren’t gifted enough to go professional. Self-fulfilling messages lead to self-actualization and optimal health and are part of all of our efforts to survive.

Helping without Killing Motivation:

For positive messages, like, “I am the greatest,” the message receiver only has to be like Muhammad Ali and apply all efforts towards achieving that goal. Thus, positive and supportive messages really aren’t a problem until they are shared with other people in ways that cause problems. For a body to consider they are godly or from a reservoir of personal internal strength is not a handicap as long as others don’t know about it until you are successful and become the “bad, bad man.”

There are, of course, many that want to be the greatest who can’t be. The work becomes to accompany to positively motivated person in accomplishing their mission, rather than telling them it is not possible. Encourage the journey towards greatness and a niche where the individual can survive in a humble manner with their need met, using their strengths to have a meaning and purpose. Indeed, a helper needs to help the positively motivated message receiver to create their niche without attacking their message guided positive self-fulfilling prophesy. A reality check that says, “No, you are not the greatest, your messages are wrong” can do an awful lot of damage and undo the mechanism of the self-fulfilling prophesy subduing it with a rapid tranq. Learning that this is just and necessary can do a lot to kill that needed positive self-fulfilling prophesy.

In a corrupt world of potential cultural barriers, getting positive feedback from messages can be a feather in anyone’s cap. And listening and collaborating with positive messages be they voices, intuitions, or linguistic coincidences needs not be cut off; but managed by focusing on survival needs and setting up goals that can take care of additional wants. Particularly with those who are spiritually motivated, teaching humility and guiding the person towards actualizing their greatness as it is meant to be is doable.  It is better to believe in a body’s god given greatness. Helpers who confront it and overpower it teach a body not to listen to special messages, to deny that they exist, may well help pave the way towards institutionalization.

The Tendency to Remember the Negative Trickster Legends:  

Last chapter we have examined how the reverse of the positive self-fulfilling prophesy, the trickster often leads to an increased dependence on messages. Ultimately I will argue that message receivers need to choose a positive mindset and choose to do so repeatedly to regain focus off the spiritual message world and battle to hang in accomplishing material world achievements.

Much like brash sports legends who predict their future success guide the multitudes in motivation, tricksters have a parallel process. Hence, miraculous trickster realities inspire reliance on the truth of the message experience. Consider how when tricksters come true in a miraculous way, it can make the message receiver rush to judgement about the accuracy of all messages. Message receivers become like a classroom full of Muhammad Ali children all saying their spirit world is the greatest. In reality, each individual classmate, in setting social goals, needs to take into account their natural skills and inclinations and work to be the greatest in something apart from their spiritual world that is really in line with god’s mission for them. In the sports world everyone remembers the legends and presumes that if you think that way all the time you will win.  But we all know this is not necessarily the case in reality. But everybody remembers the legends.

Just like people forget about the predictions that didn’t come true, message receivers don’t remember the tricksters that didn’t come true when they were in message crisis. This particularly becomes true of negative trickster messages.  Message receivers’ become overwhelmed because they believe in the accuracy of all negative predictors and this greatly affects their performance and social agency. Negative tricksters become more real than ones trust for other human beings and often discourage activity and social agency. As a result projections of social decline, supported by institutional captivity and medication side effects, may become real.

Exercises that Challenge Negative Trickster Feedback Loops:

A potential exercise to counter the negative feedback loop is to ask the message receiver what percentage of the time their messages come true: 90%, good! Then ask them what percentage of their messages are positive in their eyes, what percentage of their messages are they grateful for: 10%, good! Though I believe the answer to these questions will vary and be challenging for the message receiver to ascertain, they will naturally cause the message receiver to consider the reality of tricksters and positive self-fulfilling prophesies in ways they usually don’t.

Then, another exercise that may work if you have established enough trust with the individual is to examine examples of negative messages that came true and contrast them to stories when the negative messages didn’t. I believe that what you will find is much longer and more powerful stories about negative outcomes coming true in crisis and an inability to remember the ones that didn’t. Really nothing else matters to the suffering message receiver in crisis than the negative ones that come true. Point this out, along with asserting the definition of tricksters, and you may undermine the ethos that is doing the message receiver so much damage. These types of exercises can be used to acknowledge both the reality of tricksters and the need for positive self-fulfilling prophesy.

In essence, you want a message receiver to always work with a positive self-fulfilling mindset and learn to accept, be humble, and persist when they don’t get what they want. You want the message receiver decrease the affair they have with giving their power to trickster messages—positive messages (real or magical) are fine—and help them adjust to the material world so they can find a place that in the classroom of Muhammad Ali clones that fits their natural abilities and inclinations.

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Ever since I finally, at the age of forty-three, published some of my writing, I’ve found that I am particularly prone to pain again. Ever since, each morning I have woken up driven to find ways to get people to read my book.

A year and a month later, I have primarily had to pay people to check out my work. There are those who accepted the free book without giving it a read, let alone write promised reviews. Sure the memoir itself has collected two awards and primarily five star reviews, but amid the boom of self-published authors I find myself more hurt by the silent echo, than grateful to the friends who have read, and not balked.

After a tough week,  I find  this pain expounding itself through every facet of my consciousness. I am out walking with my wife and I think about how psychiatrists have hustled me through explanation of my psychotherapy; about the numerous presentations I have provided that ended up empty; about leaders of the psychiatric survivors movement who promote those with less experience; about the presentation when I had people finally laughing and listening to me, and the smoke bomb that forced evacuation. There were past company owners who hired me, ignored statistics as I worked sixty hour weeks and demoted me . . .

Indeed, it’s been quite a goddamn week! A person I’ve employed via a grant ended up seeming to capture all the credit in the county’s eyes; other survivors have excluded my contribution on email chains; a boss has seemed to minimize my stats and expected more and more; coworkers have snickered and blamed me, the schizophrenic, for the vermin in our office. This all seems so overwhelming, I think. I am in fear of losing everything.

Save the awards and professional reviews, this feels like precisely the response my writing and existence has always received. It is why I never shared the decades of poetry I puzzled over for hours with anyone. Because each time I did, I walked away more wounded and invisible. Even better-than-expected compliments had their way of backstabbing and reminding me of my invisibility. Therefore, why try?

I have recently witnessed this sense of starving for the acknowledgement from other people who, like me, end up feeling scapegoated in their family. I have seen them set themselves up for this same kind of relentless sense of bullying. It’s a pattern that one cannot break out of if they still let themselves hurt.

Bruce Springsteen’s voice sounds in the background as we walk. I recall his voice in his documentary on the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town.  Out of the hundred songs he wrote during his most prolific period he says humbly he’s done the best he could in his new album. The desire and pain in his voice tell a part of the story of that period of his life as do his lyrics,”It’s like when the truth has been spoken and it don’t make no difference, something in your heart goes cold . . .”

I think that it is some of that same eternal need for acknowledgement that drives all the pained writers that I most respect.

I think about Charles Bukowski, who somehow captured the ethos of the drunken of the English majors in the ghetto commuter college that I attended. It would be years until I’d actually get a grasp on how the dirty old man  would be a hero to me as well. When I’d see the documentary on Netflix that I’d realize that getting just the bare essential was enough for him to devote himself to the craft that would eventually heal him. Bukowski didn’t write to become famous. In his prison, he wrote to be free and just to get by. That’s what makes someone a real writer.

The music song on my phone shifts and I think of Tom Waits as he writes: “why put a songbird in a cage? Why, why, why, why . . .So the river won’t drown it and the highway won’t take it and the dust won’t settle it and the wind won’t blow it away.”  I think of KRS-One who says: “I am going to teach you about MC longevity: secret one, if it ain’t fun your done, and about your career, yo, choose another one.”

It dawns on me that in craving acknowledgement I am giving my power away and hurting terribly for no reason. All this pained rage from being ignored and silenced in my life is really what makes me able to write.  It assures me that I will go on writing. It is people keeping me in my cage so I can continue to heal and be me. They need to take what they need for themselves. They play a different role in this life. They are helping me really be a real writer.

“Really I could give a fuck if they call me the roach man at work,” I say to my wife.

“But, Poopee you just admitted that they are hurting you when they are blaming you for the roaches in the office,” my wife says, “they shouldn’t do that!”

“As long as I get my basic needs met, I can write.  And that’s good enough for me.” I say, “I get to tell my truth to the computer. I could give a shit if I am their roach man”

I am not needing to give them that power anymore. It is not fair to anyone to continue being a hurting victim when they are trying to make you a writer.

The post On a Writer’s Need for Acknowledgement appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

I think groups help message receivers when it comes to being flexible with the concept of causation of “psychosis.” One of the few rules of a Hearing Voices Network Group is that all causation explanations are allowed. I’d argue that this sets the stage for what I have come to term functional flexible theory styles. Hearing authentic stories from peers about their experience and beliefs of causation  invites collaboration and ultimately flexibility. I think this naturally helps people out towards their social goals

Not only is discussing their experiences without punishment a novel and emancipating idea, it encourages a sense of belonging to a peer group. A positive consequence is that the group becomes more less focused on the content and more the process of what is going on. There is a sense of working together that helps the message receiver be more mindful and open.  For eight years I have watched this process help heal people.

It is true I have developed some jargon to describe the process of message receiving. In the process of doing this I have become a believe that causation flexibility can help facilitate social goals.  For starters, in my upcoming book on Special Messages, I identify five causation styles:

5 Styles of Theory

psychologies

• 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 aren’t willing to deal with.

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

oppression of the state

• Messages come from people following you around and tormenting you in order to control or seek revenge on you who could be a gang, government, corporations, masons, aliens, or other secret societies.

• Messages are real evidence that the government has to socially control snitches and put them in ditches.

trauma

• 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 processes

• Message are caused by genetic differences or scientific processes that develop because of nuero-diversity that isn’t socially selected to survive.

• Message 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

Though groups work quite naturally, I have developed some techniques to help explain or demonstrate the importance of being flexible with causation.  When I jargon-talk functional flexible theory styles with people, I explain that every special message (voice, intuition, interpersonal perception, symbolic interpretation, punny linguistic coincidence, cue from the media or natural occurrences, etcetera) that causes distress can be dealt with by varying the theory style and make alternative meaning of the experience. Usually message receiver us only one theory style during crisis and it make the experience unbearable/

When the message receiver can  learn to become open to accepting alternative theories, it can catapult them in terms of their ability to complete social functioning tasks. Eventually, they simply need to choose to believe an explanation that they can accept that decreases distress. An alternative theory doesn’t even have to claim to be real or true, but if the message receiver can use it to decrease distress, they might learn a positive skill. Then, they need to wait and let god reveal the answer to them. It is about using spirituality to enhance emotional intelligence. Hence I like to call this a spiritual skill.

What does this look like?

Below I have identified five different kinds of message experiences and and created different causation explanations based on the above theory styles. To be helpful to a message receiver in distress from a special message, I propose using  the graph below to create alternative meanings of the special message experience.  These can be proposed to a message receiver not as a reality check but as a means to evade extreme distress when they are open to talking about it.

Punny verbal coincidence:

• Speakers unconscious projecting
• Intentional coded disrespect
• Spiritual linguistic coincidence
• Currently insignificant but reminds victim of a past of abuse
• Neuro-chemicals enhancing reality

Object in the road:

• Visual illusion created by the unconscious
• Intentional mafia expression of control
• God or the devil put it there
• Still impacted by the last piece of random litter and in trauma
• Gene code that forces the brain to make insignificant meaning

Voice:

• Unconscious thoughts
• Governmental/mafia communication via vibrations in your fillings
• Alien Satellite communication through a computer chip in your head
• Telepathic directives from evil societies such as the Church of Satan
• Dead relative
• Past perpetrator
• Result of a specific inherited gene that gets activated

Special broadcast on TV movie

• Unconscious illusions based on: what’s really on the message receiver mind
• Hollywood illuminate coding its secret reality
• A special broadcast from the CIA
• Propaganda overseen by the US Government
• Spiritual coincidence that relates to your life
• Witnessing a coincidence that is tipping of a traumatic recall
• Flood of dopamine between the neurotransmitters

Uncanny intuition from an interpersonal interaction:

• Message receivers personal issues being projected onto the situation
• Maybe message receiver is witnessing a real FBI sting, or undercover agent
• An ability to pick up on real spiritual energy
• Able to sense a real perpetrator/victim interaction
• Coincidental flood of serotonin

I believe that having a cultural feel for what is going on during a psychotic episode or message crisis enables a helper to propose alternative meaning that may help the message receiver decrease the distress. Different explanation will work in different contexts.  It is up to the helper to know the message receiver well enough to propose a successful alternative meaning that is acceptable to them.  This can help further the relationship and increase trust for something other than the information and power that the messages wield.

But don’t expect to run off and propose alternative meanings immediately. Using this functional flexible theory style strategy takes some time and relationship to make work. It’s more like the facilitator can highlight this process when it occurs naturally after many sessions and during points of good group cohesion.

   Two Inflexible Dudes!

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