When a message receiver can identify the fact that some of their messages are tricksters it can go a long way towards improving efforts to fit in, heal trauma and reduce consensus reality confusion. A supporter who is trusted may be able to articulate the concept, spot it when it’s happening, and teach spiritual skills that can help the message receiver mitigate damages.

According to Wikipedia, the concept of a trickster is a cultural archetype. In other words, a trickster is a cultural reality of the collective unconscious that Carl Jung identified. Accordingly, all cultures feature tricksters in their mythology. In Navajo culture, the trickster is a coyote. In Greek mythology, Hermes, patron of thieves, was a trickster character. In the Bible, Jacob was. The trickster as an archetype is a revered spiritual character that cheats or cons people for their own material gain or just to cause mischief. In effect, a trickster is a very real part of reality that must be negotiated.

The idea that special messages veer into the spiritual realm of the collective unconscious may become appealing to many message receivers. Indeed, for me, message crisis or “psychosis” used to be real government and mafia surveillance; now that I know how to navigate, the surveillance reality mixes with the spiritual emergency narrative Stanislav and Stephanie Grof helped articulate. Let us not forget that other causal strategies can be operant. Thus, not only are political and spiritual causation at play. It is also important to consider the interplay between psychology, science, and trauma as we have explored elsewhere.

But without support or resources, trickster messages deceive people into either or causal realities. Often, people become too spiritual or too focused on the fact that they are politically controlled. They may fail to incorporate other causal potentials. As a result, they come into conflict with consensus reality, get burdened by the illness narrative myth, get ineffective treatment, and find that social decline results.

Thus, to navigate through a spiritual emergence effectively in the modern world it becomes important to realize that a significant number of messages function as tricksters. In crisis or emergency, trickster messages get believed very literally when they ought not to be. As examples of negative and positive trickster phenomena will reveal, believing trickster messages reinforce the power that message receiver to give to their message experiences. The more power given to messages, the less the message receiver cares or knows about the ideas that govern consensus reality.

Examples of the Negative Trickster Phenomenon:

 The classic example of a negative trickster that a message receiver may experience is that the message receiver believes they are being followed collecting messages that tell them so. Then, because they believe they are being followed, they act as though they are being followed until the police and psychiatric establishment do follow them and put them in an observation unit. Then, they really are followed and monitored.

The result of such a trickster phenomenon is that all messages that were signs of being followed are believed to be accurate and important when some were, and some may not have been. The message receiver learns to trust all those messages more than mainstream consensus reality concepts.

An associated example of a negative trickster is an intuition based on body language that a person doesn’t like the message receiver.  The result is the message receiver is hurt and angry and behaves as if the message is accurate and the person picks up on social energy and behaviour and then really doesn’t like them. What comes first will never be known but the fact of the matter now becomes accurate.

So, a voice gives a message receiver a command that they must follow to avoid being tortured and the message receiver becomes fearful and vulnerable and when they don’t listen the torture comes. Then, they become victimized by tactile torture and fail to get out of bed for a day and do not seek support because no one will believe them.

Another example of a negative trickster is the blacklisted political refugee who resists the host countries effort to control them.  They may defiantly send out resumes for good jobs, each from a different mailbox. Then, this willful behaviour makes the host country increase surveillance and control.

Ineffective Reality-Test Treatment:

 Often, the reality of the negative trickster foils a supporter’s efforts to reality test. Picture the message receiver who gets told not to trust their messages by a supporter. The well-intended supporter considers the evidence and tells them it’s not true that they are being followed. Then, the message receiver finds out they really were getting followed. Now the reality test turns into betrayal and the value of and trust for the message reality is amplified while trust in supporters and consensus reality decreases. I advocate for trying to teach the trickster phenomena before making a reality test. Then, a supporter can isolate the special message that leads to the divergent view and suggests that maybe it’s a trickster. This becomes much less offensive to a message receiver.

Combatting Negative Tricksters with Positive Self-Fulfilling Prophesies, Mantras or Prayers:

Meanwhile, isolated message receivers get put on an observation unit in the hospital. They must choose to ignore it all the blatant ways they are being followed and pretend that they are not being followed. If the message receiver ignores and exudes confidence in front of all the messages (real and unreal,) the police and psychiatric establishment will either not become involved or eventually will give up and stop the following behaviour. But to interrupt the process, the message receiver needs to put prayerful energy out in the universe that tells everyone they are not being followed repeatedly. When they do get followed, they need to ignore it and move forward.

In the case of feeling followed, the message receiver may not ever know which messages were real and which were tricksters. Perhaps time and investigation will show which ones were true and which weren’t. But ultimately, focusing on overcoming tricksters will slow down the messages. If, for example, a message receiver ignores a message that is intended to torment them, it is very discouraging to the tormenter. Then, the message receiver gets fewer messages that they are being followed and it becomes easier and easier.

With a message receiver intuiting that a person doesn’t like them, the message receiver needs to ignore this negative forecast and approach the person in a friendly way. Thus, the message receiver acts opposite to the way they feel, and they put out energy into the world that may change the person mind. Perhaps they change the observers’ mind and the person who dislikes the message receiver is forced to change their mind via social pressure.

In the case of the commanding voice, the message receiver puts magnets in their shoes, doesn’t listen to the command and takes himself to an HVN meeting and tells his supports that the magnet deactivates the chip in his body that enables him to be tortured and he never does get tortured.

In the case of the political refugee, the message receiver accepts the host countries control and the hierarchy that is abusing him and stops fighting the power.  Instead, the message receiver offers prayers and mantras that he will be employed before he runs out of money and gets hired in the nick of time and continues to behave on the job.

In all these examples prayers, mantras and faith are needed to endure and reduce the negative effects of messages.

Examples of Positive Tricksters:    

 Some message receivers may find that they believe a trickster because it is what they want to hear. Then, later, they find they get socially punished for the belief. This usually involves the message receiver acting out in ways that sabotage their cultural capital or that results in real social sanctions. Numerous message receivers experience special messages that are a positive support and there is nothing wrong with that. However, even people who argue that the world is mostly positive can be dogged by tricksters when they interpret an ominous warning sign in a positive direction.

They may, for example, believe God and country is supporting them with special messages when those messages are not true. If they embark on a creating a business with “grandiose” notions that their government is supporting them and has their back, they may give away money or not fill their water bottle walking down the highway on their way to the post office figuring that the government is good and will have their back. The result is they end up down the road with no money and very thirsty. Instead of arriving at the post office as they had planned to pick up boxes for their business, they find themselves followed by the police, ambulance drivers and eventually by psychiatrists instead of supportive government agents. They may end up in a hospital getting rehydrated and then in an institution that seeks to sustain itself by keeping them incarcerated and the outcome can be negative to their efforts to start up a business.

In the above situation, still, much of the experience can be godly and positive. However, to be successful the positive person still must be on the lookout for tricksters that are, in fact, negative guidance.  Let’s say a friend sets a boundary that the message receiver misinterprets as an invitation to be chummy. The message receiver may be correct about their skills and abilities behind their grand plans, but misinterpreting the few messages that are tricksters can set up major roadblocks. The friend may get upset and call for a mental health consult.

Likewise, a message receiver who believes everyone likes them when others are in fact mocking them collects objects and hands them to people that bear odd meanings. Instead of receiving the object and recognizing the funny or beautiful message of the gesture, a friend mocks and gossips about the message receiver and eventually, someone calls for a mental health consult. The message receiver may then be put on an observation unit while they persist using their skills until they are forcibly shown they have no skills and deserve an impoverished lifestyle.

Though these examples are admittedly random, the result is that positive tricksters get in the way of monumental success.

A Balanced Strategy for Managing Positive Tricksters:

 The all-or-nothing tendency to view all messages as positive may need to be broken. The upbeat message receiver must view the constant energy of their messages with humility. If they don’t, the result can be oppression and institutionalization. Negative alternatives need to be considered as plausible otherwise all the positive energy and ability will be labelled a waste. Ultimately, it always is important to find ways to put positive or negative messages on the back burner and investigate them or let time reveal the truth as the message receiver continues their work towards success.

Positive tricksters need to be managed by the message receiver maintaining a strong grasp of the contents of consensus reality. Playing consensus can be an important strategy. It is also important for those receiving positive tricksters to exude a humble, a nonjudgmental, and an emotionally intelligent mentality. There also needs to be a sceptical act-opposite-from-the-way-one-feels mentality that will slow down the frequency of the positive tricksters. Praying that the positive message is not a trickster is a viable strategy. Additionally, clearly, the message receiver needs to weigh the potential consequences of non-consensus reality behaviour. This will keep positive tricksters from spiralling out of control.

Assessing the Level of Trust or Recovery Before Discussing the Concept:

 Often, a supporter can count on discussing trickster process and having a message receiver acknowledge that this has happened with an, “oh, yeah,” kind of realization. Supporters may spot times this is happening and spell it out to the message receiver. Transforming out of a message crisis takes time and there are significant back and forth debates about consensus reality that may need to be had.

However, a supporter needs to use judgement before they try to educate a message receiver about this spiritual concept. Experienced message receivers who can function in consensus reality may have already figured out the concept and crediting them for their wisdom and reinforcing the practice is good form.

However, if a message receiver seems routinely expresses ideas that are very far away from consensus reality and continues to act on them, the chances are that they are taking information from tricksters very literally. Before a supporter simply educates the impacted message receiver about the trickster concept, they need to establish an ability to identify message phenomena and collaborate. If support can validate divergent views, and sleuth with the message receiver, it is a good sign that trust is building. It may even be necessary to be able to discuss different approaches to the issue of what is causing the message experiences.

 The Importance of Behavior and Fixing the Relationship with Consensus Reality:

 The result of tricksters being intermixed with accurate message material is that the accuracy of all special message phenomena is believed, and the message receiver’s relationship with consensus reality is likely to become progressively less trusting. Ironically, as the trust for consensus reality decreases, the message receiver is likely to get robbed of their power, identity, social roles and eventually their material possessions.

 Despite a lot of errors in consensus reality that often preoccupy the institutionalized message receiver, knowing consensus reality is an important strategy when it comes to managing both negative and positive tricksters.

In fact, we all know that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK and must act as if it were true in the right contexts. In this manner, message receivers need to learn to put on the façade of consensus reality, to avoid behaviour that will increase the reality of negative or positive tricksters. Message receivers need to let the messages go and let time tell. This is an act of faith.

This does not mean that message receivers can’t be free to live in their messages and share as they want when they are in good company in a group of supporters. Generally, people aren’t always right about reality anyway. But the understanding and acknowledging the trickster phenomenon can help decrease crisis and steer the message receiver toward success in the social rehabilitation realm.

Included in this learning, message receivers need to learn to trust people through their own intuitive communication as much or more than they trust special messages. This takes time and ongoing commitment as it is not an instant change. But knowing that messages have a significant degree of tricksters in them can really help. And communicating about tricksters and re-examining past traumatic occurrences with the associated spiritual skills can really help a message receiver trust the supporter.

The post Identifying the Trickster Phenomena During A Special Message Crisis or Extreme State appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

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

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

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

Thank god I was wrong about some of it!

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

Rethinking the Issue of Leverage:

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

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

 Establishing Treatment Instead of Confinement:

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

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

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

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

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

The Natural Benefit of Community and Structure:

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

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

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

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

 Importance of Supporting Structured Activities Outside of Treatment Milieus:

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

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

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

Processing and Reflecting on Messages:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consequences of Using No Leverage:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion:

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

The post Using Leverage in the Treatment of Madness appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

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

I have observed that participants often become more aware of their diverse beliefs regarding the causation of their psychosis experiences. I also believe that the causation of psychosis experiences is a natural preoccupation for people who suffer. In fact, this preoccupation is so powerful, it warrants becoming part of the definition of psychosis in the model of treatment I have created.

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

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

Increasing Flexibility of Causation Ideas:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five Styles of Causation Beliefs:

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

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

Psychological

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

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

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

Political

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

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

Traumatic

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

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

Spiritual

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

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

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

Scientific

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

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

• Messages happen when spiritual genes get persecuted in our society

My Story as A Case Study:

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

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

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

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

Preoccupation with Political Abuse:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This forced my family to get involved. I thought they were an Irish mob family who had hidden their illegal activities from me.

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

Causation Beliefs toward Spiritual Causation:

My interpretation of all events that happened to me at the Italian Deli led me to the belief that I was human traffic to my mob bosses. My political perspective did not change.

Unable to afford a car I biked twenty miles a day to the train station and back and took the train an hour to reach my job, which was in a wealthy suburb. Every train ride I took, I could spot a rider who was clearly following me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Incorporating Scientific Causation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you trust me,” he asked.

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

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

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

Incorporating Trauma Causation:

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

Now I felt traumatized the whole time I was politically exploited. But I never thought the endemic bullying I experienced everywhere except amid the vulnerable population was my fault. But now that I was medicated and started trying to make friends with my co-workers at the delicatessen I realized that they weren’t all bullying me in an organized fashion. There were ways I could appeal to injustice. Indeed, some of the less dominant kids really looked up to me. A few other females had true crushes on me. They seemed to have fantasies of rescuing me. One even said, I had a beautiful mind.

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

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

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

And Finally, Incorporating Psychological Explanations:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diversifying Causation Beliefs:

Often, I find that message receivers in psychoses focus groups learn a lot from kicking around their ideas and experiences, much as I have just done. I believe that when we learn to support each other by proposing alternate meanings that are based on alternative causation beliefs, we empower ourselves to navigate injustice and oppression in the modern world.

Many message receivers aspire to become healers. In a traditional sense, it is our shamanic calling. As we learn to navigate message experience with rhythm and flow, groups are a great place to practice telling healing stories to message receivers who are still stuck and in crisis.

Additionally, in groups we can give each other credit and acknowledgement for diversifying causation beliefs. Not only can this be a great way to nurture and build relationships, it can reinforce movement to social rehabilitation. Too often, we stay stuck because our efforts to change our causation beliefs fail to arouse interest in those who are paid to support us. Without mentors who can help us by modeling and articulating these insights, how are we to know we are on the right track? Perhaps, this is part of the reason so few of us survive to socially rehabilitate.

The post How Diversifying Causation Beliefs Can Lead to Recovery from Alternative Realities appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

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

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

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

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

The Initial Influence of Provider-Folk

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Lack of Training:

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

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

The Medication Free Camp:

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

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

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

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

The Seeds of Division:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Supporting those in Repressive Settings:

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

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

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

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

The Reality of Counterintelligence Efforts to Divide Us:

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

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

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

Striving to Be Better than Some Provider-folk:

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion:

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

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

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

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

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

The post The Issue of Medication for Madness appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

My three-month psychiatric incarceration seemed to be aimed at discrediting me after I had leaked newspaper stories. On my way to Canada to seek asylum, I was stopped by police. I evaded them for three days through rural towns and surrendered one midnight, from a ditch on a mountain pass.

It was hard for me to accept the way I was treated. Confined to a ward for two weeks, I walked in circles. I barked on the payphone testing many of my supports. They all just said I was delusional.

I really did learn a lot from a mob boss’s daughter. There are a lot to the rules that govern those of us who get trafficked in this land of the free. Still, I did what I could to disrespect the mob especially because my counselor told me not to. And so, I endured a month of chronic warehousing conditions. I had to wear other peoples’ clothes to brave the ice-cold of the barely heated ward.

Two and a half months in my psychiatrist finally responded to my requests to meet with her.

“You know, Tim, one time we had someone come here saying the FBI was following him. In fact, they were following him even though he hadn’t done anything wrong.”

Of course, I didn’t trust her enough to find out if she really was referencing me the way I thought she was.

***

Yes, I did endure some trauma that I needed to process. My most loyal friend who openly talked about a nefarious past had suddenly threatened me. Could he have had me set me up at the section 8 housing authority complex where I had been working? Additionally, I was in a ten-year emotional cutoff from my parents who were seeming connected to this threat. When the police intercepted me, manhandled me, and separated me from my car, I learned that it was my parents who had tipped them off.

As soon as I got out of the chronic unit, which could very well have prepared me for permanent warehousing, I started over again. I got a job at a daycare center and I got a dog. It was a promise I made to myself to endure the hospitalization. Something told me I would be okay with a simple life and a dog to care for. And so, I would find myself lucky to have an outlet for my generativity needs.

***

Shortly after I ran out of my month’s supply of medication from the hospital, I started to get overwhelmed by strange incidents on the streets. I lost my job. I strained to find employment and spent down most of my small savings.

Eventually, I did get a few job-offers, but I was seeing special broadcasts on the television. I was also getting sick from food I believed was being dosed with laxative powder. I reasoned the government sewed a tracking device into my dog when they fixed her. Everywhere I went I saw convincing evidence that reinforced these ideas.

An aunt said she could get me a job at an Italian Deli if I moved up closer to her. She could negotiate with my family who agreed to support me if I moved and accepted underemployment. I made the move to a town on the outskirts of the bay area.

***

My dog loved to play fetch and frisbee endlessly. I took her hiking, helped her build confidence, and she was grateful for our life together. But in the Bay Area, I had to leave her for twelve hours a day, as I biked and rode the train four-hours-a-day to work and back. Still, she never peed on the apartment rug once.

Of course, I was mad! I felt my mafia family didn’t set it up to be easy for me. It seemed like they wanted me to fail. I couldn’t count on their support if I didn’t maintain my job. I frequently accused them of being mafia and held them accountable for all my suffering.

I collected daily evidence that my apartment was being broken into. I figured either the mob or the U.S. government was walking my dog for me. I figured if they had the time to torment me in this manner, the least they could do was walk the dog for me.

But really, I was amazed my dog could be so loyal to endure twelve-hour days for me. I did everything in my power to make sure she was amply exercised. I didn’t mind when she chewed through everything I owned.

I continued to be unable to find employment outside the deli. The dozens of job-interviews I didn’t get had me convinced I was blacklisted.

Finally, after six months I got a car; then benefits came; and, finally, after ten months, I got back on medication. The level of harassment at work declined. I found work outside the Italian Deli.

***

I think it was my generativity for my dog that kept me going through the exceptionally hard situation. I was terrified of losing her. Lord knows I was not a perfect owner. I didn’t always exhibit the best judgment. On nights when I cried to my mother on the phone because mob kids had set me up to be fired, I never did get fired.

It was so humiliating to admit that what they said about me was correct, that I had schizophrenia. The corrupt world was fine if I took my medication. Suspicious deaths that happen in the section 8 housing projects can get covered up. Only my loyal dog could understand that this was wrong.

My dog lived to be sixteen and a half years. She and I grew once we got out of that Italian Deli. We had the greatest relationship and often became the envy of other dog owners at the dog parks. She was beautiful. She was loyal. She was proud of me despite what “they” said.

While everyone including the shrink that I saw just treated me like I was a drain and a bother to be around, I had a beautiful dog that needed me to care for her.

The post How the Privilege of Generativity Helped Me Accept My Family (Part Two) appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

The post The Need to Plan for Your Loved Ones Recovery (Part One) appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

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Jargonizing the Stigma Concept:

Stigma is a mysterious external process that becomes internal that all message receivers face. Though stigma works in many different ways, I think it is particularly astounding and deceptive that it is not considered part of the definition of all forms of schizophrenia disorders. In my mind including it in the definition is a way of acknowledging and respecting that part of the negative outcome for those who suffer is the way society and our culture defines and treats the phenomenon of special messages. Acknowledging the role of stigma suggests that the outcomes of people becoming resigned to isolate, to sit and smoke all day in a board and care setting, is not only the result of their internal choice or abilities but the systemic interplay of individuals and the community that surrounds them.

For example, having myself transitioned from being treated like a hard-working, conscientious social worker who inspired social change, to a mental patient who needed to be locked on a ward for my own safety, I know that the power of this concept first hand. The transformation was profound! Suddenly my strengths were no longer defined by me. As I walked in circles on the floor to maintain my need for exercise, the only strength my psychiatric nurse gave me was that my family, in spite of all the hurt that I had experienced over the past fifteen years, was good family support. Two years later stigma still dogged me as a deli worker who worked under the constant threat of being fired. Now, fifteen years later, in spite of the fact that that I have a house, a wife, and a job where I am appreciated, I still battle with a sense of being slandered and rejected while my work remains unacknowledged. While I have not let stigma ruin me, I work with people who are extremely undervalued who are fighting the same demon. I write notes that diminish their efforts so the organization I work for can get paid.

In jargonizing this construct I want to consider that stigma starts in the message receivers’ mind long before the special message and divergent view constructs.  Stigma starts with a subjective perspective or preconceived notion of what words like: “crazy,” “mad,”  “psychosis,” or “schizophrenia” means. It needs to be remembered that the minute one enters into a message crisis unconscious stigma pounds and punishes.

Early impressions are the foundation around which stigma takes root. For me, it was the librarian in my third grade who first introduced me to the concept of “schizophrenia” in a pamphlet. I have come to best see those early impressions as lies regarding incurable brain disorder that is very rare. At the time subsequent interfacing did a lot to diminish my sense of humanity for those who suffer with this. It was somehow okay to throw them away because there was nothing that could be done. Oh, for sure it was sad, kind of like when someone dies in an earthquake.

But having this early impression reinforced persistently through early experiences in hospitals for eating disorders, in Abnormal Psychology text books in college that used misleading twin studies, and as a young professional in the mental health field did a lot to make me feel punished when I received the diagnosis. None of the trauma that I had been through mattered, only that early impression of what the “disease” was.

Early impressions of “psychosis” for those who have parents who struggle from it are going to be very different. Targeted abuse from symptoms or the outside world may result in innocent suffering and form a starkly different impression. Likewise, individuals who grow up in rural, urban, or differently zoned areas than I, where mentally ill people are housed or warehoused, are likely to develop very differing impressions of mental health in very different sets of circumstances. They may not be so book focused.  They may have more or less humanity in them. Nevertheless, I would argue that early impressions start a process of hurt and misunderstanding in many individuals’ experience.

Through this and the next chapter, I will approach stigma as though it is potentially false notions of dominance that distort the rational world and prevent the individual from using their strengths in a meaningful manner.

It’s arguable that stigma comes from the same social processes initiated by the formation of the “state” that empower some to dominate others. Social order of all sorts depends on distorted vision: how else do we all accept the fact that slaving peasants in Uganda make brand name shoes for pennies an hour, while famous endorsers who make them cool, make millions per a few seconds.  It is the justification of illogical, unreal, oppressive and perhaps even selfish reality. For people high up in the social order, stigma serves a real purpose. It is real and many would argue part of reality. But for the people in hacienda camps, their beauty and strengths might wither and disappear and that is not real. At least we could thank and honor them for allowing us to be where we are at. But in reality, the haves are the ones who hate the have-nots because of stigma.

Meanwhile, on a more personal level, for the individual cast out of their community, I believe stigma universally erodes the individuals’ genuine strengths and mandates unfair, submissive roles that are culturally-defined and that can in some cases erode the potential for self-actualization.  Here I am speaking directly about individuals in the mental health system, the industry that exacerbates wounds and defines messages in ways that barely makes sense: amplifying the myth of eugenics and denying the roles of trauma and spirituality. As I will review in chapter eighteen on mad diversity, suddenly there are dominant hereditary eugenic beliefs and myths that justify internment camp conditions, and message receivers feel controlled like a marionette by massive coils of knotted message experience and stigma shaken by corrupted powers above.

Oddly, in institutions it is often people with heightened views of stigma that message receivers have to be in relationship with to get out; they become obliged to utilize elementary social skills and R+R tasks to make friends with, rather than overthrow the oppressor; social skills that may under-estimate their true abilities that may be committed just shine on with ultimate plans to escape. Indeed sometimes the only way to escape from bondage is to take denial (the Nile) down-stream in fake-it-till-you-make-it style.  If the message receiver does not utilize denial and social skills they run the risk of staying stuck or traveling up the river into permanent warehousing.

Stigma Driving the Double Bind and Brain Damage:

Stigma and social sanctions work together in a way that makes it impossible for a message receiver to act without facing some form of punishment.  In my training, I learned that this concept was coined by anthropologist Gregory Bateson as being a “double bind.” I believe that double bind circumstances become inherent in institutions, families, and just about any social group in which power is operant. Even well run, non-punitive message groups run the risk of the “double bind” when they are backed by a system of punishment. In spite of my best efforts, I have seen this happen to individuals and bear responsibility for that even when I have done what I can to prevent it.

Hence, I am going to take a minute to explain how the “double bind” fits into the special message definitions. Recall how special messages stir up emotions that cause the message receiver to sleuth, creating streams of divergent views that soothe. In this process, the message receiver can: 1) rationally test out the divergent views sleuthing for more evidence; 2) give in and act as though the divergent views are true, committing retaliation reactions; or 3) distract from the emotion by completing R+R tasks. The first two options clearly lead to punishment. First, sleuthing will increase the special message phenomenon (which can be traumatic in many cases) until the message receiver reacts and reacts stronger. Second, retaliation reactions inevitably lead to social punishment unless the message process is understood and allowances are made. In both cases stigma further advances and exacerbates social sanctions. But with R+R tasks there is a way out! This I have argued.

But here I want to consider the way that stigma inherently can interrupt this option. If stigma is an inaccurate definition of the problem that steals identity, the able bodied message receiver does what they can to complete R+R tasks for hours, years, or in many cases decades. However, stigma functions to undermine the acknowledgement of such success. Stigma says there is still a process that is going on that impacts and gets in the way. Stigma sniffs out this process, shines a light on it, and confronts it. Stigma wants the message receiver to stop denying that they are different. It seeks to undermine characteristics of the success. It seeks to demonstrate that if the special messages weren’t present, the work could be even better. Stigma wants the message receiver to pay more attention to the problem in order to eradicate it. Stigma actually believes that there is something wrong with the message receiver, not different. Stigma will use the first opportunity to criticize and diminish the message experience.

Think about it! The first thing message receivers are taught when they commit retaliation reactions is that they will have to be put in a hospital and have help forced on them until they settle down. They are put in a holding setting where they may be more limited in terms of R+R tasks they can complete. Then slowly, they are taught that when they behave better, or at least pass through the holding period that they can have R+R tasks back in very basic and limited manners.

I would argue that this process discourages R+R tasks and social relationships in severe manners. Unless a message receiver is exceedingly well, it is upsetting to see their abilities talked to like they don’t exist. A message receiver needs to be able to dummy-down and not let the ridiculous nature of what is going on impact their sense of self.  They cannot do this if they are told this is treatment.  In my opinion, they may be able to do this if they are taught that it is punishment.

Message receiver’s need to know about the “double bind” and choose to work with the staff who are committed to eradicate it.

Stigma as a Multifaceted Mechanism of Oppression:

In giving stigma a clear role in the message process, it is so important to acknowledge that stigma about “psychosis” is only a part of a much larger picture. Message receivers are only a part of the much wider inhumane human process. I’d consider any reality that is hidden in the history books, any genocide, in which graphic and violent details that the mainstream conspires to hide to be a potential origin. Classified documents and other undocumented conspiracies, are examples. But I’d also argue that behind any legitimized genocide, or institutionalization process, there are many means of subtle social oppression; with each, stigma against groups of people is legitimized.

In considering stigmatic mechanisms of oppression, I want to classify two types. First, those second generation mechanisms that get formerly recognized by an intellectual community that seeks to reduce them, but whose work may remain irrelevant to some in the mainstream; factors such as: race, class, gender, veteran status; immigration status, sexual orientation, ableism. Second, first generation mechanisms that are not formerly recognized, in which the oppression is so raw and fresh that it does not get formally observed.  First generation oppressions may be addressed and limited to some extent through law. However, first generation oppressions keep them alive and well. First generation oppressions may be more cloaked and painted as though they are due to weakness of character, but they are all distorted, oppressive mechanisms through which social order is maintained nonetheless. They may be outlawed and blamed on the victims. They are the means of war on the poor. Examples of first generation oppressions are: educationism, gangsterism, legal justicism, creditism, nimbyism, job historyism, nepotism, traumatism, addictsism, mental disorderism, schizophrenificationism, co-occurringism.

While clearly this first and second generation divide is imperfect, the point I like to make is that those people who can get one label with the most first and second generation stereotypes associated with them in the eyes of the mainstream win. Shifts in laws and cultural changes that are happening now may involve moving the second generation issues down to first generation issues. I’d argue that any kind of institutionalization is the result of multiple layers or isms.

In my opinion, the little popularized field of social psychology with studies that prove elements of “the labeling theory” reveals that mainstream opinion can help make a stereotyped reality or oppression more likely to come true. In my admittedly uneducated opinion, social psychology is key to understanding stigma. Thus, according to labeling theory a subject gets a felony and becomes a “criminal” and regardless of their silenced stance on the role of gangsterism or valid sense of morals, they get traumatically pushed into all or nothing criminal behavior because of the box on the employment application.  Additionally a body who has any sort of altered state, becomes a “schizophrenic” and gets treated as though neurotransmitters are disrupted so forcefully that my brain really does swell and need neurotransmitter disruption due to trauma. But if a white psychiatrist has empathy for the schizophrenic they may become bipolarized if they hide what is going on with them. But, if they are black and bipolar, forget it! Even individuals who are bipolarized will suffer the punishment of the schizophrenic. And finally there is the soldier/hero who regardless of their background, level of support at home, or knowledge of covert intelligence or violence and loss they got exposed to, either stays hero or becomes defective and prone to suicide.  In other words the stigma of a word has a lot to do with the way the body and mind respond, the decisions a stigmatized person makes and the outcome of their life and health.

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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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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.

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