According our country’s cultural delusions, social institutions take care of people and deliver social justice based on a persons’ merits. Institutions for education, law, health, religion, athletic achievement, arts, recreation, work, transportation, housing, and social entitlements are often thought to be entities that people can trust to learn from and get the support they need to thrive in society.

Yet, there violence in the streets. Many come out of jail worse than they were when they went in. Help proffered in our involuntary psychiatric units leads to a revolving door and distain for therapy.  Board and care homes and halfway houses may subject individuals to a sense of poverty. Many of our institutions become the source of pain and trauma. Some institutions work for some people. Some people get targeted, punished and hurt and become marginalized.

Intersecting generalizations about race, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, citizenship, mental and physical health interfere with a person’s capability to self- actualize. Some people are raised to fight and fend for themselves by any means necessary and there are institutions built for them; while others are insulated from these challenges and have wealth and sometimes luxuries to lean on; and there are institutions built for them.

Cliques and societies are formed in every institution that push out people who don’t belong. Some peoples’ skills are celebrated while others are ignored and undermined. Sometimes based on a stigma, a slander or a gossip, skills or abilities get lost.

While often abuse is thought to start in the family system, much of our lives are spent outside the family in institutions that are supposed to guide us in the right direction. How, then, can some of us become mired in mental anguish? Institutional abuse is important to consider when people are suffering.

The Importance of Doing an Institutional Analysis: 

Assessing a persons’ attitude towards the institution is important towards knowing if that institution has functioned to abuse the person. Institutions can do harm in many different kinds of ways. It doesn’t only depend on what the institution is meant to do.

Consider people who thrive in an institution. If they have dealt with an institution that is positive about them like earning a spot on a travel sports team, has it led to better performance and has the selection turned out to be a good outlet for their skills and esteem?

There is a lot that can go wrong on a sports team. When a person doesn’t thrive and optimize their skill it is important to know what happened. Perhaps they went elsewhere and found another outlet or discipline to perform. This happens when we assess people’s passions and interests.

Many clinicians tend to do an institutional analysis in this manner without thinking about it. When dealing with institutional trauma, it becomes important to help a person utilize contexts and times they have thrived in institutions in order to look at the times when they haven’t.

When there is a positive experience, it is important to extract resources from those institutions. If they have a negative outlook on an institution, it is important to learn about the institutions that they did feel good about. If they did have some good experiences in which they thrived, it is important to understand what went wrong.

Often, one doesn’t get this kind of information on the first psychosocial experience. A clinician needs to remember institutional issues and return to them and excavate them later in session.

It is also important to consider resources that often aren’t addressed. Have they had success with a peer group? Have they any attachment to counterculture? In some contexts, it is important to consider institutions that are not given legitimacy like jobs working for black market industries. It is important not to judge the institution, but rather to explore it for resources.

Mental Health Institutions:

Not always do institutions with negative stigmas do people a disservice. Even when the purpose of the institution appears to be to ruin the person’s life, there are often opportunities for good learning experiences that help a person avoid complete defeat.

Thus, if they have come to contact with an institution that is thought to be negative such as a county jail or a county mental health facility, the question becomes what have they learned about themselves from the experience? In the case of mental health institutions labeling a person with a diagnosis with a poor prognosis: do they agree with the negative prediction? What happens to their social performance when they leave?

In my experience with public mental health institutions, compliance may result in a worse outcome. In twenty-five years of working in them, I have tended to see that many programs are built for social control and to maximize financial gains.

Often the way things are set up is so top down that the individual’s needs get lost in the process. Cookie cutter concepts of evidence-based practice often fail to promoting health and healing and personal growth. Some people just get worse and worse over time so that labels like schizophrenia get to be thought of as illnesses of progressive decline.

It is clearly arguable that understanding any person involves understanding how they fit in to the institutions in which they associate. It is not enough to simply learn about the list of institutions that have impacted them. It is important to learn about how they dealt with socialization in the facility in order to learn what they learned from their experience.

Thus, a clinician needs to be patient and not make too many generalizations. After all the secret stories and heaps of bullshit that might need to be excavated. A great question to ask is about people who worked in those contexts that didn’t fit the mold. Part of my reason for writing this is to encourage more people to work in these contexts who learn to counter the negative missions of many institutions.

Assessing the Impact of Abuse Within the Institution:

Often, institutional abuse is covered up and needs to be drawn out to even get seen. The victim may not even have the power to have anyone believe a word they say and that is frustrating!

To help a person heal from institutional trauma, a clinician must learn to see the person they support in a different manner than the institution that damages them sees them. That means acknowledging than an injustice is happening becomes a first step. Too many clinicians working in an institution aren’t inclined to do that. Many workers accept the status quo and impose increased trauma on an individual especially when the person is negative about the institution as they are going through it.

Acknowledging the harm is the first step. Often this is simply a listening skill that needs to develop and a sense of justice is necessary. Sometimes a clinician can suspect this is going on and ask questions that can draw out stories and abuse.

Then, a clinician can develop an alternative narrative for how things might be if the institution was being fair to them. It’s true a clinician can’t change the institution, but they can articulate and advocate for what is needed for a particular client without being able to deliver it. This is essential to building an alliance and mitigating the damage being done. It is a direct route to healing.

It becomes essential to look at what is happening through the client’s eyes.

Understanding Your Institution’s True Mission:

Each institution has a mission and people it is trying to serve. For example, if the county mental hospital is there to prevent homeless people from committing suicide it can be important to acknowledge that that is what the institution is trying to do. This might help the person who has been damaged by the institution realize why they did not fit in and get the help that they needed.

Puzzling through a county’s mentality in treating people also involves considering the bottom line which is the way the institution makes money and survives. This involves understanding the counties finances and the need of the contracting agencies to make money.

In a federal prob the county where I work has been deemed to be criminal in its services. A lot of money goes to emergency hospitalization services and not a lot is set up for treatment outside the hospital.

Abuse might involve more than just suspension of a persons’ bill of rights. It might be an institution is built to control violence and impose involuntary medication and this might have nothing to do with a person’s needs.

It might involve exposure to substandard facility hygiene and this might or might not be what the person is used to. Some might see an unhygienic unit as an insult while others may recognize it as like many other unkept situations they are exposed to.

A therapist is keen to understand the mission of their institution. Believe me it is not in the institutions mission statement! It is more likely to be seen in the metamessages that the institution puts out. It requires real-life interpretation and perhaps some Marxist financial analysis.

What was wounding about the true mission of the institution when it didn’t suit the person you are seeing in the therapy room?

Examples of Differing Institutional Missions:

In my life I have had a lot of conflict with the missions of the institutions that most powerfully affected me. I share them now to demonstrate the kind of race and class bias inherent in institutions. Indeed, if I were your patient, understanding how the mission of three of the institutions I have been subjected to is important to understanding my trauma.

When I was admitted to a state hospital during a break, it seemed like the institution was there to prepare me for living in permanent poverty. The presumption was that I would not be able to work and that I would therefore have to adjust to board and care poverty. It was built into the institution as a mechanism to fill the local businesses, according to my observation.

Enduring that mission, being treated like a piece of cattle in the field, was very hurtful to me when I transitioned back into professional work. It is important to understand the impact that being treated in such a manner has on a person.

In contrast when I attended a private prep school, ten years prior, I was taught that my classmates and I could be anything we wanted to be if we just did what they said and got transferred to an elite university. What mattered was the prestige of the university.

When I decided that I didn’t trust that institution and figured that prestige was some bullshit, four years later I graduated from a local commuter campus in the inner city. The message I got as a freshman, that most people I went to school with weren’t going to graduate, demonstrates that the mission of that particular institution was very different than the mission than my private prep school.

The help I got from the career center suggested I should be a cop. I don’t think many of my prep school graduates became cops. Believe me, it’s not the only time I was invited to join a gang that may exacerbate social violence. I received several offer in the state mental hospital.

In my case, I could see the contrast in the different institutional missions and I always knew that I didn’t fit the mold. I didn’t trust the mission of the prestige prep college. That is something you would definitely want to explore.

Luckily when I was discharged to the streets from the State hospital, I had three thousand dollars to start my life over and prove that I could work in spite of my “break.” There is a lot to explore and many stories to be told. I am in favor of letting the stories be told while assessing the re-traumatization factor. Too many clinicians are afraid to know or counter the mission of their appointed institution. We need more therapists who stand against the mold in the institutions. They do matter and can help.

The Importance of Having Faith and Extracting Resources:

It is true work on institutional trauma takes time and is best done when the clinician has a strong sense of the persons resources. There are times when the person needs to rant and rail against the way they are or have been treated. A clinician who does not believe the resources that might exist or who starts to extoll the virtues of the institution really can set the person into a traumatic response.

Thus, I think clinicians need to have faith in a person’s inner resources. I can be hard to teach this especially when the clinician is not native to the persons culture or contexts. It takes a long time to learn these multicultural skills. Setting up systems in which students and young workers are responsible for knowing things they just don’t get is not a good way to train or heal institutional trauma.

Keeping pay at entry-level salaries, hiring people who don’t have a background outside a degree, and having young managers who are eager to advance and lack cultural understanding is not a good way for organizations to address institutional trauma.

I believe clinicians who have humanistic views of various kinds of people who don’t judge people about external behaviors have a better chance of extracting a person’s resources and helping them love themselves again. Conversely being fearful and condemning of a person who has behaved in problematic manners is a good way to have the person clam up about their resources. When a clinician maintains that kind of stance, it can become a self-fulfilling prophesy that exacerbates institutional trauma

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Fawning, saying yes sir, or shining it on is such an important skill in enduring life, especially during a break from reality. It is a skill I struggled with during times of mental health crisis prior to my break. Indeed, I have had to get pretty good at this fawning skill to survive.

Prior to the break I was prone to tangential rage and resentments against people who rejected, humiliated or abandoned me. It felt like everyone I knew, would eventually betray me.

In fact, this is a repeated pattern in my social relationships. Other people would see me alone and bullied and take some interest in me and I would reciprocate. Eventually I would disappoint them or they would get what they needed from me and there would be a falling out. At times of mental breakdown this pattern would become evident to me. And I would get down on myself and the world.

It is my understanding that fawning is a symptom of complex trauma. People learn to fawn due to childhood neglect or abuse. They don’t feel safe so they fawn and fail to confront people who are abusing them. In their reality there is no point in asserting themselves. There is no use.

As a therapist I am learning to encourage people to stop fawning with me and trust me with their true process. Being able to know a person’s authentic process and feelings toward me is indeed a privilege that I am eager to promote.

But in many ways, I am not ready to throw the act of fawning under the bus. Indeed, I went through a lot to learn how to fawn.

It depends on your station in life whether it is not safe to let people know exactly where you are coming from. I believe much of the world is oppressed by privileged people. When you are supposed to be oppressed, I’ve come to feel it is wise and honorable to fawn a little.

Becoming a Targeted Individual:

In the years leading up to my two-year break from reality, I shared my realities of being targeted and undermined with a therapist in my twenties. She taught me I was paranoid. There was no concept such as complex trauma or Asperger’s at play. It was an extensive cocktail of medications. I trusted the psychology degree behind the cocktails and worked my way through a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology.

The mentality of blame the victim in psychology is such a powerful force. When I tried to ignore the patterns of abuse and built relationships anyway, it was far easier for the one person who had the ability to see what was going on for me, to blame it on an illness. She would one day tell my parents that I would be in and out of institutions for the rest of my life. For a long while, this did direct their support of me.

Deference to this power of psychology was the skill that made me a successful social worker prior to my break. Prior to my Master’s degree, I often respected my superiors and turned to them for direction. But along with education came the responsibility to think about what I was doing and to help rather than just cover my ass.

I moved out west where I didn’t know anyone and started work in a Section 8 Housing project in Seattle Washington. I started to resist standard business practice of blaming the victim and making the money. Indeed, I started going the extra mile.

As people were being hurt and even killed, I started talking to reporters. I worked extra hours and I made good relationships. It’s true I felt more appreciated by the people with whom I worked. When the company offered me free tickets to a concert so I would stop my vigilante patterns, I turned around and invited all the residents to the music festival. Unfortunately, this led to into a state of consciousness in which I became a real targeted individual.

I had a friend with a nefarious past who threatened me. It proved to be a very credible threat. When I admitted I was scared for my life and told him what I was doing. I tried to run to Canada and got stopped and manhandled by police. I got a three-month, hospitalization rather than a promotion for work that challenged the system to be better.

Learning to Fawn:

Earlier in my journey the therapist who had taught me I was paranoid, had already tried to institutionalize me. She’d told my parents that even though I had a 3.9 GPA I was not really college material. She urged them to put me on social security. They never told me this and I resisted her efforts to institutionalize me by working customer service jobs where I had to practice my fawning abilities. It was either that, or a repressive social program. It was embarrassing because I was really depressed, but some people cared enough to support me. Then I got back at it graduated, and went to graduate school.

Ten years later, learning to fawn again as an inmate in a state hospital was a new low. I believe the purpose of the incarceration was to teach me there was no use in even trying to take care of myself. I documented clear signs of abuse and requested to meet with my psychiatrist. It took the psychiatrist two months to actually meet with me. She said one time they had a patient who was being investigated by the FBI. When he was hospitalized for believing he was being followed he really was being investigated. Then, she told me everyone who observed me said I was an entitled person. I agreed to take my medication again.

First, I was locked on a unit for two weeks. When I finally gained grounds, I did everything I could to be industrious and work to feel better. They let me work in an automotive shop and I started to heal. Just as I was getting stable, exercising and strengthening my injured back, they moved me to the chronic unit. It is true I didn’t exactly conceal my distain for my family and the mafia. Those elements were revealed to me chronically throughout the hospital. The chronic unit was old and barely heated during the Montana winter. Massive icicles grew from the crack in the window above my cot. We dressed for the forty-degree temperature inside the dingy barracks.

Self-advocacy was pointless. When I finally took medication and surrendered to them, I did get released.

Fawning to Return to Professional Work:

However, I did not believe that outside the institution that self-advocacy was pointless. I took a greyhound bus to Fresno California with the small nest egg I had saved for myself. First, I got a job. Then I got an apartment.

This would have worked but I ran out of medication and experienced many signs of government/mafia surveillance. The day I got hired, my nefarious friend called me and let me know he knew I got the job. It wasn’t until I withdrew off my medication that I couldn’t control my rage about this.

I tried to find work anywhere. Finally, I got a job at a foster care agency, but did not have the funds for a car. My family only agreed to help if I move into a very challenging situation that my aunt set up for me in the bay area. My nefarious friend agreed that this was what I needed to do.

So, I had a two-hour bike commute and a job at an upscale Italian Delicatessen arranged for me. My grand delusion was that my family was an Irish Mafia family that had set me up for the situation I encountered in Seattle.

At the Italian Deli, I learned the learned helplessness toward the government/mafia that I needed to survive. Eventually I was able to break back into the land of social work and psychotherapy. This included a great deal of fawning towards customers, my family, employers, and mafia triggers.

This fawning skill seemed like an answer to many of my problems and I was able to suppress my experiences with being a targeted individual

Fawning to Survive Psychosis:

When a person experiences a break from reality they must learn not to react as if their tactical reality is really happening. This takes some doing and work. Especially for someone who ends up being a targeted individual, emotional triggers must be controlled.

Thus, even when the person who is in a break is right about the fact that corruption is rampant in our society, they must learn to act as if there is no such thing here in America. We don’t have indentured servants or enslaved people anymore. No, we are the land o the free.

So, on my daily ten-mile bike ride I would see signs of being followed and harassed. Once I encountered a resident who I knew from the section 8 housing complex in Seattle. He walked around with a pair of handcuffs at the train station. He sat across from me on the train. I pretended that I noticed nothing. In front of the demanding customers all that mattered was that I fawn exceptional customer service.

Targeted individuals know their apartment is broken into and their employment mail is violated. They know the people standing outside their apartment with gang tattoos on their shoulders are gang members.

They must learn to fawn for the sake of people who live in consensus reality. In spite of where they have been and what they know, they must act as if they fit in. I think it is imperative to be able to do so to survive at any job or any social setting. One must avoid any action that is triggered by one’s history of being targeted.

One time the police entered my apartment and trashed it, spreading kitty litter over my rug. The apartment complex management told me that my uncle had done this. Nobody cared or believed me that this happened. It was excellent customer service that was required to get rehired into professional work.

It is like code-switching in the African American community, one must fully understand that there is no understanding of your culture and speak as if the culture of the oppressor is the only culture out there at the workplace.

Fawning is a great skill that can help you fake it until you make it.

Fawning for Trauma Experts:

In training to work with trauma, I have attended workshops of Bessel Van der Kirk, Dawson Church and Laura Pernell. In each of these workshops I learned important things, but I did not feel particularly safe and had to do a lot of fawning with people. EMDR and EFT particularly didn’t work for me because I was to dissociated in those settings to work through my issues. I was not sipping the tea.

Bessel van de Kirk made several jokes about psychotic people in his workshop. Dawson Church was clearly angry at people like me who were reversed and for whom tapping did not help. It is very hard to be at ease when the training turns into such a hostile environment and the assumption is made that all the healers in the room are above their traumas.

Let me tell you, after being rejected endlessly for not fawning, it is a real trip to have a group of therapists in a trauma training notice that you are dissociated and fawning and dismiss you as being damaged goods. Suddenly your survival skill is a sign that something is gravely wrong with you. Suddenly if you don’t stop fawning, you will not be successful at fitting in with the clique that surrounds you. I fawned, but I withdrew and didn’t try to deal with anyone,

Teaching the Fawning Skill:

I have actively taught the fawning skill to participants in profession group therapy that accepts and explores psychosis. It is a much-needed skill that is imposed on others in institutional circumstances. But learning when to use it and when not to is a challenge.

Indeed, as a young social worker with a private high school education, the affects of which I learned to hide, I was accustomed to see others fawn at me. In the system, the power differential between the staff and the client often encourages this kind of behavior.

When I was a young social worker, I didn’t know I needed to undermine the fawning responses and make deeper connections with people. So, as I have openly taught this skill, there is always a sense of irony that has historically has made the patrons of my groups chuckle.

This is why I often argue that it can be imperative for providers who work with psychosis to work with the symptoms and normalize them without judging or reacting to them. This creates more of a level playing field so that the person in a break can have their ways respected. Then, it becomes easier to ask them code-switch back into chronically normal mainstream culture. This can give someone the social support they need to fawn for a living.

The alternative for many is to accept institutional neglect and poverty.

Overcoming the Fawning Skill?

Indeed, many people judge and take advantage of those who fawn in certain environments. People who vie for power will test another person in power. If the person in power submits and does not challenge their bully they will be demoted. I have experienced this professionally a number of times.

Indeed, this reality has cost me professionally. I have lost jobs and respect and have dealt with slander campaigns when I have tolerated bullying. It is really hard for me to know when its time to put up my dukes verses when it is time to simply survive in a humble manner. I have chosen to work in contexts in which I am not in power.

Indeed, teaching psychologists not to blame the victim and send people to an institution is not a safe thing to do. Fawning and undermining is indeed the only way to provide freedom to inmates of the institutions.

As I have started a private practice and work with a few people in the tech field, I have learned that fawning is not appreciated and does not lead to success in the corridors of power. It has made me aware that it sure is hard to know when it’s truly safe and necessary to forego fawning.

While in therapeutic service to another person, I feel safe to forgo this kind of skill. Many find me authentic and appreciate my help. I usually reflect on things when I write notes and in my off hours before I take action.

But dealing with people who do not understand their role in institutionalizing others it is not appropriate to forego fawning! I constantly have to watch my back and follow rules and pray that I don’t get made and sacrificed.

The sense that you are going to get in trouble for what you do constantly lives withing the survivors of our societies impoverished institutions. I am not really sure I want to give up this skill amid the waters in which I tread. Indeed, I consider it an emotional regulation skill in many contexts, acting opposite to the behavior you feel.

In another sense, a great deal of emotional intelligence goes with the fawning response. Taking medication has helped me enormously with my EQ and ability to fawn and reconnect with consensus reality in a meaningful way.

Sure, I want to go from surviving to thriving. Sure, when I work with others as a helper, I am able to be authentic and I do not fawn. But until the mental health system shifts from a social control model, to an integrated healing and wellness one, I may well have to keep resorting to those fawning skills. So, when I am training in a room full of therapist whom I perceive as trauma sharks, I will not feel denigrated for having to be alert and fawn.

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If you’ve ever wondered how Holden Caulfield turned out, you’ll want to meet our guest Timothy Dreby (pen name Clyde Dee). Six years into a clinical career, anonymous mental health worker Clyde Dee starts work in a notorious housing project in Seattle. Navigating a fractured system, he finds himself mysteriously compelled to break the codes of standard drug war conduct. After six months of uncanny threats and coincidences, he decides to go off a low dose of antipsychotic medication. What follows is a hero’s journey as he battles injustice, corruption, and stigma – in addition to his own mental illness. Come and meet the writer of this fearless, poignant, and funny book. Thursdays with NAMI is held virtually every Thursday from 7:00​-8:30pm. It is free of charge, but registration is required. Go to www.naminc.org and search “Thursdays” for more information and to register.

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Up Coming Interview with NAMI!

The post It’s Never Too Late to Assert Yourself appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

When a person has a break from reality, others often feel a sense of urgency. Most people think that if this does not get treated with antipsychotic medication immediately, grave and progressive brain damage will ensue. Friends and loved ones may fear that this is the beginning of degenerative process that will leave the person shuffling between institutions and poverty for the rest of their life.

This article is written for the loving supporter or social worker. It invites you to learn about the world of your loved one. My hope is that it will help you gain strategies for how to handle the relationship with someone experiencing psychosis.

The State’s Social Control Model

When you think about the public mental health system, images of crowded psychiatric emergency rooms, violent police restraints, rapid tranquilization needle sticks, jail time, or substandard warehousing barracks may come to mind.

These are all realities of the system. They are mechanisms of the state. These realities either neglect the person in the break or set them up to be forced back into consensus reality. It can become a punitive and damaging process.

Ultimately, I view the goal of the state as enforcing social control, not healing and recovery. It can become about saving money or making the afflicted impotent. It can become about endless submission, silence, and the perpetuation of lies.

There are times when the social control model does help a person improve their behavior. Improving one’s behavior can help a person minimize their risk of escalations of trauma via social punishment. It can be better than nothing. Sometimes, people can learn lessons from abuse, improve their circumstances, and even heal.

Efficacy of the State’s Social Control Model

Still, in America, state social control that guides behavioral change has a low efficacy in terms of promoting recovery. It’s more a part of the problem than the solution. Even of the people who receive early intervention treatment for psychosis, only 42% have a response classified as “good.” And studies in developing countries show higher recovery rates than developed countries! Could it be that state social control is still part of the picture?

Social myths and stereotypes leave many people thinking that degenerative decline is to be expected if schizophrenia is left untreated—when actually it can be the result of treatment. When such social myths are maintained, it can seem like social control is the only option to prevent a horrible outcome.

Still, as I suggested above, stints of incarceration can result in an increase in compliance with consensus reality. However, they also reinforce the idea that it is unsafe to talk about what is happening. In many cases, the follow-up homelessness or warehousing can be so hard that incarceration starts to look better. Throughout all such “treatment,” exhibitions of psychosis are systematically shut down rather than explored. Many go through this process and give up hope of ever working through their experiences with other people.

In this culture, when incarceration and trauma happen, all is not lost. As someone who went through a three-month incarceration that left me outraged, I believe we can learn healing alternatives instead of nurse-ratcheting up social control. Ultimately the fear of returning to dilapidated and neglectful situations did help me conform. I eventually found that with medication I could get better jobs and more quickly restore my social standing. However, it was a two-year process, and I feel like I barely got through. And the night terrors were bad!

And so, I believe that “healing” is not the most likely result of forcible social control.

Few Approach Psychosis in a Curious Manner

To promote healing instead of social control, I believe it is important to understand, normalize, and navigate the break. This doesn’t happen often enough in the system because most people are too afraid to be curious about psychosis.

Society doesn’t understand, and so neither do our psychologists and social workers! Mental health professionals are forced to do the work with little guidance. I was once one of them. Many are untrained interns/workers, and their managers may not be curious about psychosis.

Who is trained to be curious? None of my supervisors ever were. Many I work with question my tactics. There are few organized trainings for being curious about psychosis. Even if professionals are trained to work with psychosis, they may not be able to listen in a validating matter. Invalidating body language can trigger their loved one and they can conclude it is not worth it.

It is very hard to offer treatment when a person is incarcerated against their will and feels betrayed by the people who put them there. Curiosity about psychosis is imperative to initiating voluntary treatment. People who learn alternative ways and grow like flowers through the concrete cracks are so often marginalized.

Meanwhile, the basic myths are maintained. Most are trained not to reinforce the delusions. Others fear they will catch the disease if they listen. Still others fear retraumatizing the respondent and making them angry. Then they do because their fear is apparent.

There are ways around that—by validating the experience of psychosis, so keep reading.

Why Do We Choose Social Control over Healing?

There are several reasons that “treatment” via social control is so vastly promoted in the United States.

There is a very poor, medicalized understanding of what psychosis is. Unproven theories about the biomedical basis of psychosis—like the chemical imbalance myth, studies that find a tiny, clinically insignificant connection with genetics, and dubious, poorly conducted twin studies from 50 years ago—are all represented in the media as if they somehow explain psychosis as a medical condition.

If someone starts talking openly about hearing voices or referencing beliefs about being targeted or enlightened, the average person will flee or mock them. This translates into ridicule, social rejection, and pain—and couple that with the state’s aggressive treatments.

Too many people in the state and the public invalidate the trauma that ensues when social control measures occur. So many people feel it is justified. The state’s goal is simple: spend as little money on the victim as possible, tranquilize or imprison them, get them to fill unskilled labor markets, and don’t let them speak out against our cultural delusions. At least, that’s what I must conclude after a three-month hospitalization in a state hospital.

It can feel like there is not much left for loved ones and good social workers to do besides support the effort to socially control the person they love and wait and see if they will recover.

Some Basic Alternatives to Social Control

In order to promote healing from psychosis, it becomes very important to become uniquely adept at listening, validating, and contributing without getting confused, combative, or dissociated. Asking the right kinds of questions—being curious about any conspiracies the person expresses, rather than trying to argue against them—helps the person realize they are not alone. Trust building is very important.

It’s also important to assist your loved one in adhering to the requirements of work or making it possible for them to continue to socially network and have a social life. As L.A. psychiatrist Mark Ragins suggested in a CASRA keynote speech, work, or building relationships (to which I’d include studying spiritual traditions) are ways to teach us social skills, not incarceration.

Indeed, research in the United States behind Dartmouth’s IPS (Individualized Placement Services) model of vocational rehab suggests that a self-directed effort to conform to work with support is a real way to achieve behavioral benchmarks.

In the IPS model, a job is provided until the subject fails, and then another job is found and maintained until it is lost. Keeping the person moving through the job situation and adhering to social dictates until they can master the needed behaviors to keep a job has been shown by research to be the way to go. It’s in the research! Everyone loves research.

Perhaps we can add this mentality to social and spiritual connectivity and enhance outcomes even further.

The majority of persons with psychosis want to work, have friends, and believe in god. They want to avoid a life of poverty, imprisonment, and isolation. Work is a good motivator, and a good way for many to learn to comply with rules. But it requires emotional support which can be hard for people with psychosis to find.

Avoiding Pitfalls

Sure, some social workers and perhaps some families may form secret societies that monitor their loved ones. These secret societies (like treatment teams in the hospital or family discussions/gossip) can easily be abused and defame the person with psychosis. I think family members and social workers must realize that when they do this, they mirror the oppression of other organizations that may be real and may have something to do with their loved one’s awareness and ire—the police, the FBI, prison gangs, corporations, fraternities, the military, religious cults, and others.

Thus, when family or social workers recognize that they can function as agents of the state, they can be open, communicative, and transparent about the secret societies in which they participate. This can greatly enhance trust.

This might include taking responsibility to learn about things the person has experienced that pertain to you that you don’t feel are accurate. Consider asking about the things your voice has expressed to your loved one (as auditory hallucinations). Then try to see the reality of what they are saying so you can confirm ways the communication is and isn’t valid. Always lead with the way it is valid. Instead of denying everything the person experiences, consider how the hallucinations may express their feelings of persecution or danger. How might their hallucinations help you understand your loved one?

Focus on What Healing Interactions Look Like

Consider the opportunity that you have when the person enduring a break from reality gets mad and confronts you, their loved one, with something of which you are sure you’re not guilty.

I’d strongly recommend that before you confront that person with the reality check of your innocence, that you consider whether you want to avoid falling into the role of social control.

If you find yourself determined to prove your innocence, and confront your loved ones with your facts, I want to suggest they may see this as just another social control effort. It is a lot of the same kind of stuff they get in the state amidst the jails, hospitals, and shelters. It might not be appreciated

In other words, I am saying that defending yourself is a power play. It may gain you some compliance with consensus reality, but it also puts you at risk of diminishing trust between you and your loved one.

In contrast, I suggest you take this intensely emotional situation, a potentially false accusation, and keep the goal of healing in mind. Instead of asserting the power play, let the loved one explore all the experiences that the person who is in a break has had that indicate your guilt. Then, communicate and clarify without invalidating.

When This Does Not Go as Planned

I know this is an exceedingly simple suggestion! Let us not forget that asking the above question is a real test of the amount of trust that exists between the two of you.

For example, when I don’t trust the person who asks me to prove what I am saying with examples, I find I am often rendered speechless. It can be hard to put words to those experiences when you know they will be shot down.

In other words, unless I trust you and feel safe to speak about a misperception or two, words that define my experiences elude me.

Thus, if you are a social worker or a loved one and you don’t get any information, it is likely that you have rejected your loved one’s reality so much over the years that they are afraid to communicate with you. It is likely that they have no hope you would ever understand.

I believe working towards a healing relationship involves cultural curiosity into your loved one’s experience. If you can get yourself to be trusted to the point where you can explore all of your loved one’s associated experiences, then I think you are on the road towards healing them.

If you don’t have that kind of relationship with your loved one, focus on trying to get there and forget about the false accusation. Explore with curiosity other kinds of experience they have had.

Understanding the culture of your loved one’s psychosis to the point where you can admit the ways they are right about you is far more likely to reality check them in a more healing manner and really move your relationship forward.

Adapting Your Strategies

Also, it’s worth noting that people who experience psychosis often come from distinctive cultures, have different needs, and approach a break with different moods and core beliefs. In my experience, I believed I was being persecuted by secret, illegal societies overseen by the government. Other people can have vastly different experiences with secret societies.

For example, some may believe they are being spiritually aided by secret cabals like elite police and/or politicians on their mission. Perhaps not all people experience social control in their family of origin the way I did. Still, you can inquire about euphoric experiences that your loved one may have had. Just remember, you don’t want to come down forcefully on the side of your loved one’s punitive state administrators.

Consider the ways that some positive spiritual experiences really don’t need to be healed. Explore enough to identify those positive experiences that have consequences that might be curbed. Consider what happens, for example, if you make the person descend from heaven back into a living hell on earth. Staying on earth can be a challenge.

This may involve envisioning a world in which they do not have to endure social control to force them to come back down. Helping them takes communication and rational, healthy choices. It becomes more about reviewing the consequences that the state will impose if they go down that road. It becomes about mitigating those realities while maintaining your collaborative standing.

Either way, delineating yourself from the mechanisms of control that may have led to trauma or got in the way of healing is an important thing to do! As a parent or as a social worker, this may involve changing the historical role you’ve taken with your loved one.

This means, instead of telling them what to do, you should consider exploring their experiences.

Takeaways

Do not forget that psychosis, special messages, or a break from reality is a collection of experiences. When you force your loved ones to defy their experiences and accept your reality via reality check, it is really about you imposing consensus reality on them and it puts you on the side of social control. They may know better.

I feel this becomes about your power. Ultimately it puts them down. When you do this, they will recognize this and it may trigger trauma from their run-ins with the state. Thus, differentiating yourself from the state becomes an important strategy.

Helping your loved one heal is about using your relationship to help them to navigate consensus reality so that they can achieve their hopes and dreams. If you care about them and their relationship with you, adopt a collaborative approach to their experiences. This is far more important than them respecting consensus reality, which might be full of ignorance and propaganda.

Supporting their autonomy and freedom is needed. Learning about the mistakes you made can also be important. Give them transparent information about what you have said and done on their behalf. Ask them how they would like you to assist, then communicate.

It’s true, doing what they say and working on their behalf does require boundaries. Even if you are a lawyer, you can’t help them beat the state, only evade it.

But most importantly, differentiate yourself from the organizations that impose social control and discriminatory laws on your loved one. You really don’t want to be on the side of marginalizing them!

The post Support Healing from Psychosis Versus Imposing Social Control! appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

Consensus Reality and Psychosis (or Special Message) Reality:

I believe there are a lot of errors among those who remain in consensus reality. I mean it is quite clear when we in the United States consider that different cultures have different consensus realities that there are errors in any reality. Look at Fox News verses MSNBC, realize they are reporting on the same events and you get a feel for the way consensus reality must have errors in it. I mean how can both diametrically opposed viewpoints be true at the same time.

We all learn to accept a consensus reality in spite of errors. There are different people embedded in different cultures. Sometimes we fight and kill each other. Sometimes we get along. And sometimes we put people in concentration camps like jails, prisons, psychiatric hospitals, shelters, public housing authorities, and board and care homes. Sometimes we maintain entitlements of the few by suspending the rights of others.

I say these things because I think it is important for more people to accept psychosis reality or what I prefer to call special message reality even though there can be occasional errors much as there are with different forms of consensus reality

Indeed, I am going to argue that in reality special message reality is a part of many of our lives. If we all understood what it was, many would agree that it is a significant part of reality. Instead we think it is a magical medical brain defect.

Managing special message reality is tricky especially when we are told it is not real.

To get along with others, however, we must respect that it has to be suppressed and behaviorally managed. Much as diametrically opposed cultures that hate each other need to somehow understand each other enough in order to coexist, special message reality needs to be accepted, balanced, and integrated with the modern material world to move forward.

When this happens, I am going to argue, a person can be the recipient of intuitive knowledge and have a sense of connection to spirit. Instead, consensus reality is balanced via a state of misinformation and global delusion.

What Happens to Special Message Reality in an Emergency State:

Many people object to the process by which someone receives their information when they are in madness. I believe that this is because in an emergency state, message receivers believe absolutely in their special message experiences. They may not honor the basic tenants of survival to which we all agree. They may break various forms of social contracts in ways that scare many.

However, regardless of many peoples’ objection to how that information was obtained, there are many ways that “psychotic,” special message information is correct when consensus reality is not. It does not take long periods of psychosis for a message receiver to realize this is true once they’ve experienced psychosis. Too many people don’t realize that special message reality can be accurate. Some do, but just don’t know what to do about it.

Perhaps this is because when a person is in psychosis, many loved ones and supporters tend to disbelieve their experience because it doesn’t fit with their cultural sense of consensus reality. It becomes very clear that things the message receiver knows to be true will automatically be denied or ignored.

Sure, there can be some things the message receiver believes to be true that aren’t. But I believe that most message receivers in the early stages of a break, can tell the difference between something they know for sure verses something that is less certain.

What happens in a crisis is that the message receiver gains the experience of having their less certain beliefs confirmed to be accurate. Then, message receivers become absolute believers in all their messages. Often, many established forms of mental health treatment complete this cycle via protocol.

Once this happens enough, message receivers may need help and support to change from being absolute believers in all their message experiences to being skeptical believers. If the message experiences magically stop, they are not forgotten and it takes time to heal them.

If our loved ones and supporters know how to relate to us with respect for special message reality, they can help us return from being absolute believers, to more skeptical believers over time. Then we can learn to adjust to erroneous forms of consensus reality enough to survive. Often times, loved ones and supporters do not have any interest or understanding of our experiences.

Learning ways Special Message Reality Is Correct and Ways it Isn’t:

I have been working on defining the ways that people in psychosis or special messages emergency derive their information from experiences. Twelve years ago, I coined the term special messages which are the collection of experiences that lead to psychosis reality.

Many of those experiences lead to what I have chosen to call divergent views. When divergent views are expressed people start to get concerned about their accuracy. When a divergent view proves itself to be wrong, we call it the “D” word, delusion. Consensus people wonder why the person can see that it is an error the way we do.

Yes, some divergent views are wrong, but many aren’t.

For example, consensus reality suggests it is safe to talk on the phone and to walk naked in out private space without worrying about being caught on camera. If not for whistleblowers and wanted fugitives like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, the public would not know that consensus reality is actually incorrect about this.

In fact, we are not granted those civil liberties. If we get upset about that, we may struggle with anti-government sentiments. If we cannot behave as if we are not bothered by these realities, we may get targeted.

In other words, when you are naked, and mad at the government, do not glare into your television, say you hate the president and give the camera within it the finger. If you use the right key word, you may get surveyed, for real.

An Example of How Special Messages Lead to the “D” Word:

When I was in special message crisis, I was submerged with evidence of these realities. Although I thought the cameras were in my lights, not my television, it was clear to me that I was under surveillance.

My distress about being surveyed showed in my tortured, illuminati pupils and in many comments I made. Until I learned to suppress those realities, accept the state of my civil liberties, and shoulder the violence of police searches, haphazard community harassment, and my business mail being opened, I was not able to behave appropriately in consensus reality. When I learned to explain all this by calling myself a schizophrenic and concealing it all, I moved on.

What I did was suppress those realities and wait. I got a job in my field, mental health, and I saved my money. Eventually, thanks to wanted fugitives, I was able to learn that myself and many other targeted individuals are in fact more correct than consensus reality.

I learned to pretend it wasn’t so. Eventually, with the help of God, reality was revealed to me. I was, to a certain extent, correct.

There are still many ways my special message experiences are correct. Still, I have to recognize that I must behave as if they aren’t correct and work towards outcomes that lead to my survival. Then when the time comes, I will find out if I am correct or if the divergent views I have are, in fact, incorrect.

Ultimately, there were a few ways that I was incorrect. For example, I thought my father was covertly the head of an Irish Mafia Organization that was responsible for victimizing people in the streets. I thought everyone knew this and was compliant with scapegoating me.

While it was true the genetic tests did reveal that we were unwittingly and predominantly Irish, just as I thought—I was also inaccurate. To understand the ways it is true, the consensus reality supporter needs to know my traumatic history and how I was struggling to escape that history. Then, much of it makes sense.

Of course, I didn’t have any supporters.

Assessing Connection to Higher Powers Over Time:

In many cases I believe the message receiver is obtaining some sort of intuitive knowledge coming from a higher spiritual power or realm. If we train people who are in psychosis, how to have a high level of emotional intelligence and faith, I believe they can learn to assess special messages for intuitive reality and become truer beholders of reality than Fox and MSNBC news combined.

Toward a Definition of Reality that Includes Special Message Reality:

It is arguable that there are many dimensions of reality. Indeed, there are quite a few different subjective perspectives in the world, making the notion of ultimate reality very hard to pin down.

However, in studying special messages in group therapy I have tended to divide the world into two kinds of reality: material world; and special message reality. Defining each feels like differentiating my inward world from my life in the modern world.

Ultimately, I wonder if most of us can relate to both kinds of reality. Is it possible that the special message reality that dominated my life during my emergency is something to which anyone can relate?differentiating inward beliefs against the ones that I must engage in to maintain my professional life.

Indeed, I believe we all have special message experiences like intuition, dreams, and interpersonal perception. Not all of us have lived in an emergency in which we are immersed.

and profoundly preoccupied with these, but many of us have.

Additionally, there are other types of special message experience. Add phenomena like voices, premonitions, strange experiences with the television, telepathy, punny linguistic codes, to the more common special message experiences and emergency gets intense.

Perhaps, some people are graced with more of these experiences than others. For that reason, they have to learn to behave as if they don’t know when in some cases they do.

In the theory of reality that I have presented on the slide above, survival is a mix of both types of reality. Science is limited by paradigms that don’t explain everything and good mental and physical health is based on having our physiological, social, and meaningful activity needs met.

Thus, most engage in the modern, material world for mental health. Then, those of us who care about reality engage in the spiritual/message world to check and see if we are doing so in a way that is giving and loving to others.

The Reality for Those Who Are Neurodiverse:

What I argue, is that for message receivers who may be born with spiritual genes, generational trauma, or neurodevelopmental diversity primarily engage in the spiritual message world. Then, if they care about reality, they have the option of engaging in the modern material world to avoid concentration camps and homelessness. Sometimes family support helps.

How Do We Know What Is Real?

It’s true that in the paradigms of western psychology there is often thought to be emotions, cognition, and behavior. Essentially, like dumbass Freud and Carl Jung, I am simply arguing there is another category. Instead of calling it unconscious or collective unconscious, I am calling it extra sensory perception, spiritual contact, or special messages. It’s really not that complicated. We consensus reality western cowboys just have to acknowledge that we all have different degrees of special messages contact.

If we want to understand our reality, we need to check what we have going for us with the opposite theory of reality. Over time with emotional intelligence and faith we will learn what areas of our experience fit into both the spiritual and the profane world. The parts of our experience that fit both areas is the closest we can come to our reality or god.

Instead of seeing people who are different as sick and defective and rejecting and supporting the genocide against them, we need to partner with them and learn more about their special message experiences so we can all have a real experience. I don’t think this is rocket science, but it’s not likely to happen because things like superiority and privilege are so hard for so many with which to part.

Towards a More Dual Society:

So, many people need to get their ass to spirit and a few of the 1 percent and the bulk of those in poverty need to get their asses into more fitting relationships with the modern world. A good and peaceful society would make it possible to balance these realities. There would be good work/life balance and enough finances for all.

A bad society would amass power and use it to suppress its dissidents, veterans, incarcerated, and diverse-immigrant-worker-peoples-of-color into concentration camps. In my perspective the United States concentration camps exist in things like jails, prisons, mental hospitals, shelters, homeless encampments, or various forms of lawless, unregulated, public-housing-poor-houses. Of course, that is a generalization as not all such situations are that bad, but still. Future, conspiracy theorists predict that these concentration camps will be transformed into the red and blue rooms in Walmart. It’s already like that to some extent, but it could get much worse.

The question comes down to which pill you choose to take: the red pill or the blue?

In this world we call the matrix the red leads to the incorrigible Walmart rooms, and the mass incarceration industry,

In reality, if we want a peaceful, equitable, and spiritually healthy society, we all need to take both pills.

So, I don’t know what we’re going to do as the corona depression hits; not really.

The post How “Psychosis” Can Lead to Intuitive Knowledge and Connection to Spirit: appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

PART ONE–Introduction: 

Perhaps it can seem daunting to agree with some of the radical conspiracies that get tossed around during extreme states of psychosis. When people experience what I prefer to term a special message emergency, sharing their stories becomes very important. However, it can be hard for supporters to truly believe that the resulting beliefs they have about the world are valid. When they are talked about and aren’t believed the participant can become retraumatized. That is why I argue that it is important to honor such beliefs if you are ever to form a collaborative relationship

Maybe aliens aren’t your thing. Maybe you actually believe the earth is round like they say it is. How can you entertain ideas that just don’t fit your training and experience?

***

I have been honoring such beliefs for twelve years and have grown in my ability to have an open mind to conspiracy that doesn’t fit my experience.

I still remember one of those beliefs I heard about which I didn’t believe. One day in the group room I had a participant suggest that there were in fact cameras in televisions so that the federal government could spy on you.

Now, to be honest, I have believed similar things. I may have chimed in that I had believed that my apartment was bugged with cameras in the lights. I easily relate and share those past beliefs to contribute and help that participant feel included. But cameras in the television? Really? A part of me felt that concept was ridiculous.

Well years later, I still remember listening to the radio when the latest wiki leak exposure was released. There it was. Suddenly, there were cameras in television that the government could use to spy on the public. And within the week, the president was accusing President Barak Obama of spying on him in like manner during the probe into Russian interference.

And so I’ve learned to use that story to help me give credit to conspiracy theories in my groups. It helps me remind people that conspiracy ideas and intuitive knowledge need to be honored even if they sound unusual.

***

Sure, at one point I thought the mafia had a tracker implanted int my dog when I had her fixed in the pound. Sure, that sounds unlikely. However, helpers need to be on the side of validating such thoughts. Remember, when I walked with my dog, I experienced things that suggested that I was experiencing an increase in harassment.

If a helper was to work with me and use information to challenge me, knowledge and evidence of potential for such conspiracy is needed. For example, if I was really such a high-level target, maybe it wasn’t the mafia, maybe it was the federal government.

The fact is, if you study phenomena like what transpired in South Boston during the Whitey Bulger years, or when you realize that the intelligence reports reveal that Jack Kennedy turned to mafia assassins during the Bay of Pigs, you start to better realize how high level targets get dealt with in the United States. Facts about real conspiracy can be very helpful. If I were to get that support during my time of need, imagine the decrease in anxiety I might have experienced.

It’s true that when I learned to ignore these realities, I was removed from the blacklist and allowed to work amidst the drug toting public again. But to get there it took a great deal of time and work.

The bulk of this article will explore real theories of causation that can help the supporter know productive ways to validate conspiracy. The point is to create flexible, mindful responses to distressing content. This can involve validating conspiracies in ways that include other modalities or frameworks. Often, offering healing alternative suggestions can help a sufferer feel safer and less stuck.

Quid Pro Quo Stories Leading to Collaboration:

Something that has clearly helped me make such alternate suggestions is my own experience with psychosis, and having achieved a social rehabilitation and the position I hold as a mental health therapist. With my demonstrated ability to work with people who recite the pledge of allegiance and participate in consensus reality, I am also able to choose to tell my own story in ways that are believable and in ways that aren’t so believable.

I know that the America that I’ve experienced is not the America that kids are taught about in grade school and that adults understand by listening to the news media.

I still notice the furrowed brow look I get when let people know what I think about what happened to me.

I believed I was being harassed by my mafia family and the only job I could get was a job arranged by my family at an Italian Deli. But when I tell my story in a way that might arouse doubt, I can quickly add details that are a bit more credible that can help someone understand how I could have come up with such beliefs.

When I am well, I can talk about evidence that sounds suspect and con a person into reality checking me. Then I can use parts of my story that are a bit more valid and suggestible and help them realize that their reality check was a bit premature.

Remember, that when a therapy participant doesn’t believe the conspiracy that I went through and tries to reality check me, there is an unspoken quid pro quo that arises. Now this gives them the ability to tell parts of their story. Now they have something on me. Now if I disbelieve them, it will not be so morally devastating.

See, I believe that whether I say so or not, I will disbelieve them. I believe they will be able to sense that I disbelieve them. I need to establish that permission to work with them and ultimately be a validating, trustable force. If they see I have the ego strength to reconsider my experience, they maybe they can muster the same ego strength.

This is a strategy I’ve learned to exploit over the years to get people to talk to me who otherwise would have only seen me as an officer of oppression or a sell-out. It’s about developing a trusting rhythm that can be used to validate conspiracy. I believe that this is achievable for people who haven’t experienced psychosis and van learn to believe that intuitive knowledge is a force with which to be reckoned

How Understanding Components of Psychosis can a Help A Supporter Validate Conspiracy:

I think it is important to understand that when confronted with experiences like voices, visuals, or other hallucinations, there are also other experiences to consider. Consider powerful intuition, premonitions, or interpersonal observation of non-verbal behavior; consider dreams and linguistic codes; symbolism and imagery, dreams; and consider ESP or mind reading abilities that may in fact be inexplicably real. Imagine being inundated with these vast lists of anomalous experiences so that they preoccupy your mind and dominate the day.

People who get inundated make meaning of these experiences. I have called this making meaning process sleuthing. This is the important process of understanding what these experiences mean and how they may affect your survival. During this process of sleuthing, the person focuses hard on trying to understand where each message or experience or hallucination is coming from and what it means. According to the Hearing Voices Network jargon, this process is termed making meaning and results in developing frameworks.

Message receivers or people who encounter psychosis, spend hours sleuthing by making meaning and exploring frameworks and weighing the consequences of different actions. What I am suggesting is that by better defining and exploring frameworks a message receiver has developed a strong capacity to understand and validate conspiracy. Thus, in groups, exploring frameworks is an extremely important thing to do.

It is my intention to are findings from twelve years of doing this in professional groups with the reader. My hope is to help the reader understand the importance of validating conspiracy frameworks no matter how unlikely they may appear.

From holding these discussions in groups, I have identified five types of framework or styles of conspiracy that can be explored all of which have value. It’s true these ideas may bleed together a great deal, but I believe a lot can be learned by understanding these five frameworks better. I believe that understanding each framework can help a supporter feel a whole lot better about supporting conspiracy because perhaps they will see how all are all possible.

PART TWO—Five Validating Frameworks:

One, Political Frameworks:

This is the controversial argument that persecution is real because social power structures are conspiring to harm a person who is rebelling and outing the real presence of secret societies and corruption in American Society. In other words, schizophrenia is a formal way that snitches end up in ditches.

In this framework secret societies meet and conspire behind a persons’ back to try to control their behavior. This can be like the treatment team in a hospital or case management team. It can involve teams of people with access to covert databases of information like the local police or the FBI. It can involve secret crime syndicates that likewise have access to those same databases, like cartels, foreign agents, or other entities that engage in black market activities. Finally, there are other kinds of secret societies like the illuminati, the masons, skull and bones, scientology, MKULTRA, the AMA, the APA, the Prison Unions, or other powerful cabals that illegally or legally protect the privileges of the powerful.

Discussing the realities of these secret societies can help validate many message receivers concerns and help give them valid insight into the way they are being marginalized and controlled in the community. When someone is on a psychiatric hold, it is often the cabal of the person’s family working in concert with other power brokers. It is helpful for a political prisoner in a state hospital to understand that they are not alone and that it isn’t safe to out secret societies.

A helper can really validate a special message receiver by revealing what they do really know about what the secret societies want from them. If you know about the rules and workings of a secret society, it can help a message receiver weigh the consequences of their rebellious actions. Of course, you don’t want to out individual members of the team and set them up to get attacked, that is not what I am suggesting. It is, however, possible to give the sufferer a general glimpse into the mentality of the secret society that might be controlling them.

Validating the injustice connected with the existence of secret societies is a good way to validate conspiracy. And so, studying Whitey Bulger in South Boston, oligarchies in the United States, and speculating on other top-secret realities starts to make more sense. Now we may start to weigh the difference between natural evolution and alien intrusion back when civilization first started back in the Sumerian days.

These things aren’t so hard to validate when a person starts to value the role of secret societies from the white house, to high-level administrative healthcare meetings, to medical ethics panels, to the multidisciplinary treatment teams that control behavioral health decisions.

Two, Abuse Frameworks:

Many of the special messages that message receivers get may be related to past abuse. For example, a voice may be that of a past perpetrator that has had negative influence on them. Also, there can be triggered by events, people or objects. These are people or symbols that have the same energy or attitudes that the past perpetrator did. Then, the message receiver in on guard and triggered to re-experience associated feelings.

Police and psychiatric ER nurses may be examples of trigger people. People wearing bow ties may likewise trigger fear of secret societies. Seeing someone restrained and rapidly tranquilized may trigger mistrust for authority. It is arguable that hypervigilance to these roles, events and symbols that oppress and take away the message receivers rights that may further fuel sleuthing.

In simpler terms, messages may become noticeable because of hypervigilance when bad things that happened in the past seem to be happening again. In another sense, they may not be as upsetting to a person if they realize they are being retriggered and evade danger.

In a very real sense, unexplained intuitions and illogical responses may include generational trauma. For some of us who become inundated with hypervigilant awareness some may come from trauma from past lives or historical realities.

It is also arguable that psychic numbing or dissociation may cause message receivers to get in touch with different parts of themselves. On some occasions these parts reflect voice characters that may have uncanny knowledge or even be triggered for better or worse by external events. In situations of severe dissociation people may black out and lose their memory and sometimes have another personality come forth. Some people describe this as a voice taking over and controlling their bodies.

While there is a great deal of controversy over whether a dissociative identity is real (often by people who believe in imprisonment and capital punishment,) I think a lot can be explained and validated through dissociation experiences. Perhaps some of the hallucinations that are experienced are dissociative and point to different dimensions of reality or phenomena like time travel, astro-planning through the neighborhood, derealization, depersonalization and other checks on the mental status exam. For example, dissociative experiences may take over the body and cause blindness, deafness or other hysterical phenomena.

Within this framework a supporter can learn about past trauma and help the message receiver make connections and realize that they are being hypervigilant or dissociating because of particular triggers and restore them to a state of safety.

Additionally, as the science of body energy is currently being acknowledged, it is fully understandable that some people develop senses of stress or energy waves that are getting emitted off the surface of the body. Some even may see colored auras around a person.

Also understanding of neurobiology has taught us new ways of helping people revisit traumatic content through EMDR and bilateral stimulation. One could argue meditation has done this for years. There are ancient eastern practices like Chi Gong or Tai Chi. And what is walking meditation? It is bilateral stimulation.

Often psychosis itself is very traumatic and leads to abusive responses. Consider what it feels like to lose your rights and be hospitalized against your will for having experiences for which you did not sign up. When safety is restored and hypervigilance and dissociation can be reduced the messages will just go away.

Conversely when abuse is not seen or a person is judged negatively for emitting signs of abuse; when people become warehoused and forced to submit to abusive directives; and in the worst case scenario when they learn to trust such circumstances, it not only validates the hypervigilance and dissociation, it activates associated messages which get more extreme especially when they are not allowed to be talked about.

Three, Spiritual Frameworks:

It might sound strange, but a lot of people believe that there is an all-knowing spirit that is sometimes even thought to come in the form of a human being. Perhaps, like Kevin Smith envisions in the Movie, Dogma, such visions take the form of Alanis Morrisette. But oddly, there are also other formulations.

Based on this concept, there is the sense that things happen that are beyond the human realm. There can be good energies and bad energies but generally something larger is behind these experiences that promotes good. There may be good entities and bad entities; there maybe telepathy with loved ones; there may be ghosts or aliens that intermix with human history; there may be inexplicable emotional connections and things like church, scripture, meditation, or Sunday School that cause people to believe such obscure principles.

While many people generally have faith that good will triumph over bad. Still the idea that some people are connected to this spiritual realm has often caused people to be killed as heretics, witches, lepers, or schizophrenics because such beings challenge the social order and power structures.

It’s true the idea that some people are touched by bad spirits or are angry and abused. Currently, the medicalized notion is that what people think is spiritual contact is really just a deficit caused by neurotransmitters called dopamine. Also, many also believe artificially micro-dosing with ketamine and LSD can help heal and advance functioning through likewise tampering with dopamine.

But who’s to say some born with different kinds of minds are born with spiritual genes, kind of like the Jedi’s in Star Wars. Or, maybe god creates people who are different who may be there to challenge or change humanity with developing mutations like Darwin suggested. Either that, or god’s sends divergent aliens to tamper and change the human beings to be more aware of spiritual realities. Some people get more in touch with those kinds of realities. Perhaps these prophets are trained to walk the earth like Job and suffer despicable mistreatment only to become wise kind of like Siddhartha.

Ever talk to an exceeding wise homeless person? I work with them.

The issue of good and evil and a heavy reliance on spiritual texts, from the Bible to the Koran to the Bhagavat-Gita can cause people to reflect on history in really profound ways to make sense of good and evil with spiritual interventions. And many people who experience psychosis do feel they are being blessed and reporting wonderful experiences. It’s just better not to speak of such realities with anyone, otherwise they will call you crazy.

Sometimes people need to learn not to incite these states because of the social consequences. They may believe they are prophets but most people just thing they are broke and crazy and fail to be impacted by the true beauty of their spiritual interventions. These realities need to be worked with carefully because spirituality can lead to Smith Wigglesworth behavior that seems harmful and abusive in consensus reality.

Certainly, there are great mysteries of nature and existence that do happen so that people are greatly comforted and live happier and healthier lives because of what they learn from spirit. It’s a good thing to validate, support, and assist people in making sense of the supernatural. When, however, people are faced with an anomaly like a person who can predict the future, experiences that challenges their own belief system, persecution and hospitals can happen.

Four, Psychological Frameworks:

The idea that messages originate within the mind of the afflicted person I define as a psychological framework. This may suggest that the person is working through their inner conflicts that may be subconscious or based on early attachment issues that have created the conflict that cause the mind to act out.

It’s true that some might argue this is similar to the abuse formulations. However, psychological frameworks stem from a tradition that honors corruption of power. This tradition tends to presume all the experiences of psychosis are happening within the mind of the afflicted.

This is often the explanation or tact that many mainstream therapists take. In contrast to the political explanations which may be thought to be misunderstandings and the abuse theory associated with neuroscience, there is often a push to get the sufferer take the responsibility to change themselves because they can’t possibly change the world.

Thus, messages are seen as the result of their own troubled mind. In some cases, this may be true. The thought is that with understanding and insight of the true conflicts within ones mind, that a person can stop thinking that what is happening is political or trauma and start using personal responsibility.

Particularly with dreams, which are special messages according to my formulation, things experienced are thought to bear a particular meaning that can be uncovered. A trained analyst can tell you what the unconscious is processing. Consider, the belief that you are being followed and the message evidence collected along the way that proves it. This might be signs that you imagine because you are hurting and once you realize this and stop hurting you can choose to ignore them. Same with voices.

Historically, if the therapist learns how to be a secure attachment for the person with the troubled mind, they can heal the issues through the relationship. Thus, the rapist therapist (notice the linguistic code in the word, a special message?) adjusts and proves to you that the world is not so awful.

Psychological approaches tend to focus on insight and understanding yourself so you can explain the reasons for the suffering and struggle which are not true.

Although the reader may pick up on some sense of frustration from me with these processes, it is wise to validate these kinds of processes even when they are not true and other processes are more operant. To be honest, many therapists do not tend to validate these processes even when they are more accurate. It’s true that the relationship can heal so why not allow for that.

Five, Scientific Frameworks:

Right now, the dominant paradigm that gets perpetuated in college texts and abnormal psychology classes (as was done back in the nineties when I studied these things) is that schizophrenia is a eugenic hereditary disease that impairs social functioning. The medical explanation for this rests in the regulation of neurotransmitters between the synapses of nerve cells.

While many message receivers tend to rant and rail against such negative medicalized notions, secretly they may fear that it is the truth about them and that they are doomed to live meaningless lives of poverty and squalor. It’s arguable that the good people among us do accept and live such lives.

Many of us in crisis rebel against such outrageous claims and lash out until we lose our rights and citizenship. We may end up warehoused in situations where they are forced to comply with the most simplistic notions of consensus reality.

What gets conveyed when all is lost in warehoused conditions is that social punishment that is not beatable will be put upon you if you fail to cooperate religiously with the basic tenets of consensus reality.

Being confined in solitary suicide watch in jail for months or years on end makes this situation unbeatable. In the process of being forced to sit on your ass and be patronized, neurotransmitter adjustments are mad to make it easier to comply with the basic tenets.

The fact is that such heinous beliefs and treatment must be conveyed and integrated into a persons’ journey. Many survivors spend their lives condemning and rejecting all aspects of this kind of thinking.

Many who endure the extremes of this experience dissociate and advance in the extremes of their experience. But many do learn and improve. Given a chance to achieve and function within the confines of consensus reality many will work and achieve incredible manners just to battle this cursed social contract.

In my opinion, the fact is that these realities need to be conveyed to people who are at risk of enduring them to help them accept consensus reality to the point where they can achieve social rehab.

In other words, people who experience psychosis need to share and learn about the harsh social abuse that ensues and can be perpetrated by the people who are most close to them. This needs to be taught and conveyed in ways that are not invalidated! There needs to be places people learn about these realities without having to lose their rights and go through it.

Let someone who’s suffered teach the group about this reality and protect them from it. This is a clear win-win.

Message receivers need to put the pieces together and understand the abuse they’ve experienced in order to heal. They must learn to know their enemy. They must protect each other from being hurt, not functioning and becoming warehoused. Additionally, to avoid failing the social functioning tests, some of us may need to learn that medication helps them function better in spite of the detriment that does to their physical bodies.

PART THREE—Conclusion:

Overcoming an Anti-Psychiatry Class Division in Our Culture that May Get Exploited:

Ultimately, I believe people have a right to honor the hell that they’ve experienced the way they chose. Some may condemn all parts of the scientific paradigm and others deserve to function the way they chose to in spite of the damage that gets done to their human organs. I think the division that gets perpetrated here is class-based and it prevents survivors from working together.

At the same time many people who play a role in enforcing consensus reality must learn to dehumanize subjects and do not want to hear or think about their participation in enforcing a ridiculous atrocity.

Personally, I feel guilty for the role I have played taking money from such a system. To go from utter poverty to bay area home ownership in the course of eight years of espionage is despicable. Many in the movement exploit that vulnerability in me. And they don’t want me to be a spokesperson because I take medication.

Then again, I look at what other professions get and how many people accept the crimes of free Wall Street money and deflect some of the criticism that comes at me from other survivors who may hate or distrust me. I particularly cut myself a break if my judgers have been given more than me and use what they have to silence, slander, marginalize, and mistreat me. That’s right, I don’t have too many friends.

Get a sense of my anger here? Consider that this results from a three-month state hospital hospitalization, only one month of it was in true warehouse circumstances. Then, consider what a person who has been through months of solitary on suicide watch and years of hospitalization all for instigating a violent conflict with gang members. This stuff is hard to come back from and leaves permanent isolation scars.

Ultimately there is a strong need for diverse groups for those touched by institutionalization in different ways. There needs to be space for all participants regardless for their takes on medication.

Conclusion:

Really, to understand and heal from the scientific framework atrocity, space to study and explore all of all these frameworks need to be granted. All frameworks deserve equitable space in our minds, bodies, souls and spirit. Learning how to be fluid and perform in consensus reality is important in social rehabilitation.

Often, when one framework dominates the day, mistakes are more likely. Then, pronounced messages dominate the mind-space, and social decline and issues associated with poverty become threatening. For example, internalizing the psychological framework when you are in a psychiatric hospital might be a problem. What I learned from trying it out was that treatment just doesn’t exist in those contexts. Outside of two or three anomalous staff people, the scientific framework will dominate the day.

Accept that the system is rigged and act like brer rabbit in the briar patch to get your needs met. Then, the scientific paradigm becomes less traumatizing.

***

It stands to be noted that there can be other valuable forms of frameworks that can be identified, many of which may fall in between these frames I’ve laid out today. For example, I considered adding artistic frameworks, but due to space limitations, I would argue that art falls under the spiritual realm. At the same time, I could certainly argue that studying dreams and cultural archetypes is an artistic venture, but they are discussed in psychological frameworks because of the fathers of psychology.

The point I am making is that no framework should be invalidated. There is a time and a place for all of them. I believe that the more a message receiver explores and studies anomalous experiences, the more flexible they are likely to become in interpreting what they’ve experienced. That’s why, rest assured, it takes time to learn to recovery. Patience on the part of providers is important.

The greater the flexibility, the less likely message receivers are to act out against consensus reality in ways that will get them in trouble.

***

I think the resistance to the exploration of validating conspiracy comes from being closed off to different kinds of frameworks. Often, the belief that there is one presiding framework that makes up reality. If we think of reality as being multi-faceted or not immediately clear it reinforces the mindfulness and emotional intelligence that is needed to respond and not react to the dilemmas posed by the existence of the message receiver.

For example, the message receiver who is entrenched in the scientific framework I laid out should not bring those discussions up at the formal family Thanksgiving meal of the people who perpetrated that system against them. They may need to borrow from things they’ve learned during their spiritual frameworks and scripture or healing modalities from the trauma framework.

It doesn’t mean that they may not be right about their family having overemphasized the scientific framework, but to change the reality of eugenic oppression they may need to teach their family new frameworks so they don’t have to be forever, mistreated or misunderstood.

***

If what I am saying makes sense, the system is ridden with this very eugenic framework which punishes message receiver for involuntary experiences. The quicker a message receiver is able to understand this, accept the system, and join safe zones as promoted by the hearing voices network or therapy specialists who entertain all frameworks, the quicker they will be able to learn to manage their experiences in ways that evade social decline.

Again, if what I am saying makes any sense, it becomes the responsibility of professionals to tolerate and respectfully learn about conspiracy thoughts from frameworks other that the dominant paradigms of scientific and psychological conspiracies that dominate oppression of the system that is creating homelessness and justifying warehousing.

The post How to Validate Conspiracy When Working with People in Extreme States of Psychosis: appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

What does it take to make peace with powerful people who are there to torment and target you? I think the answer to this question becomes a simple formula. It is terribly easy for an observer to suggest, but it is a profoundly difficult to carry out. The purpose of this blog is to articulate the formula and raise awareness of how hard and transformative a process this is thorough which to go.

It is so frustrating to me that in the mental health system that almost no one will tell you what to do. Instead they will gaslight you and punish or abandon you until you get it right. Instead of caring about what you are going through they will suspend your habeas corpus and give you labels, pills, and behavioral control that is ultimately aimed at destroying your life and turning you into an innocuous warehoused cash cow.

Indeed, the formula is simple: you must not fight your tormentors no matter how heinous they might seem. You must accept that they are a higher power and publicly pretend they don’t exist. Instead, of rebelling against oppression, learn to have compassion and respect the oppressors. You may assert that you will not join them, but must recognize that the role they play is important and up to god to judge. Then, play by their social rules and engage in activities that will earn you your freedom and independence. With freedom and independence, you can work to disrupt the oppression through which you have been when you play by the rules.

How “They” May Get the Best of You:

Many who suffer a message crisis or what is more commonly termed a, “break from reality,” feel followed. Sometimes this is the result of voice characters and sometimes it isn’t. Whether for their benefit or detriment, feeling followed can be an overwhelming experience. This can make it hard to develop trusting relationships.

Rarely do others seem to believe or care about the fact you are being followed. So often friends realize you think you are followed, and seem to judge, reject, and lose interest in you. Boundaries and challenges to your reality become the new norm and you may find yourself all alone.

Assessing others, often yields the results you expect. When others don’t fit into your explanation immediately, it is perplexing. They may be friendly and supportive and want to help. However, in due time, they will reveal themselves to your as being part of the conspiracy. They may ultimately disagree with you that you are really being followed.

Worse, you may become enveloped in systems that not only don’t believe you, but that also make gossip about you amongst themselves. This may start on a psychiatric unit and spread to a family. It may be replicated in a malicious manner at a job, among outpatient treatment staff or among board and care staff. Suddenly the world becomes full of people who interpret most things you do negatively. But these kinds of reality are only the tip of the ice burg.

To make matters worse, some of you may hear derogatory voices of other people you down that confirm and augment this process. Maybe you are engaging in telepathy and people really are putting you down. Or maybe the voices you may hear are controlled by government technology which is real and surrounds all everyday citizens. Or what if the tormentor is some kind of spiritual entity.

Maybe a Cabal or a powerful secret society starts to reveal itself to you. Maybe the secret society starts to gangstalk you in ways that mimic the natural negative process of abuse. This could be a criminal organization or other organization like the illuminati. Maybe it is a spy organization from another country. Or it could be a police department that is infiltrated by members of the criminal Cabal. Maybe the FBI starts surveying you.

Maybe you are shown different dimensions of reality in which you come into contact with beings that are not of this world. Maybe this causes your spiritual skills to go into hyperdrive and increase the phenomenon of feeling followed.

Meanwhile, back on the psychiatric ranch, medication may be imposed on you to limit your awareness of all these state secrets. Often, too much medication, quell your ability to work and overcome the chronic, evil oppression that surrounds you.

In fact, this process of slowing down your spiritual evolution may be the worst aspect of this if you get incarcerated and coerced. Labels with long names and chronic predictions may justify your suspended habeas corpus. You may get hounded by people who criticize all aspects of your behavior for no apparent reason. Your brain may get damaged by no way out without punishment situations. You must lose your hope for ever overcoming the Cabal that infiltrates and controls the hospital.

If you are able, you must fight for your freedom. If you don’t the hospital will encourage you to stay because you are their cash cow. When they let you go, they may put you into impoverished conditions. Then, you may get forced to go back to a system that may be inevitably negative toward you. This system may be your family, your job, or your homeless situation. The hospital may rough you up. Your peers at the hospital may do the same. Ultimately you must learn subservience and lies and pick the lesser of the evils that surround you.

How I Started Viewing My Tormenters in a Strikingly Positive Manner

Evil is the use of power to destroy the spiritual growth of others for the purpose of defending and preserving the integrity of our own sick selves. In short, it is scapegoating . . .    Scott Peck, People of the Lie.

There was a point in my own recovery when I decided my best strategy was to be strikingly positive about all the people who were conspiring with negative assessments of my value. It was clear to me that this was happening in my family, at my job, and amongst governmental agencies and criminal organizations.

My family gave me just enough money so that I could afford an apartment in Antioch California with the minimum wage they arranged for me at the Italian Delicatessen. My family forced me to see a therapist for two hours a week who shopped at the Italian Deli and defended it fiercely. She was making 125$ an hour and I was making 9$. My “delusion” was that my family was a mafia family.

To get to my job I had to bike ten miles to the BART station and take an hour-long ride to a town that is a Republican stronghold. Along the way, there were signs I was being followed on a daily basis. One day I was followed by a resident I knew from the Section 8 Housing Authority Complex where I worked in Seattle WA. This man was bearing handcuffs and a CIA hat. One day in Seattle he had come to see me and told me he had killed people. I ignored him as he rode the train sitting across the isle all the way to my job. Most days there were similar “coincidences” or signs that I was being followed on the train.

Meanwhile, there were occasions my apartment was broken into police search style. There were times it appeared to be broken into just to move things around that would send me a message. Since things were never stolen, there was nothing I could do. When mail pertaining to my efforts to get hired was opened, I could make complaints at the post office, but it would not stop the phenomenon from reoccurring.

“Everybody says we are just enabling you,” my mother would exclaim when I complained to her about these details. When I called my father’s family, they were all angry at me and supported my father who I knew to be negative and non-responsive to my concerns.

The shrink would bring up the fact that I said I thought I was sexually abused in the hospital. She had gotten this information from my mother, who was outraged at me for talking about such experiences. The shrink told me that I had nothing to complain about. I never brought the issue up again. It would take years to reclaim some dissociated memories that confirmed my concern.

“Some day you are going to have to trust somebody,” the shrink would exclaim.

My best friend from college had said the same thing. He had paid for college by working surveillance for a dirty Philadelphia cop. He used to sell drugs and now was a gang leader for the longshoremen. He had made a credible threat when I was working at the section 8 housing that cause me to flee to Canada, where I was intercepted by police . . .

So, one day I was thinking about all the stigmatic judgments that were assaulting me. I was distressed because none of them were true but I felt that the world could have its way with me because I didn’t have a support. I finally decided that they could say what they wanted, I would combat them by being compassionate and positive about them. I needed to start being positive about my tormentors in all sectors of my life.

I started with work where the harassment and negativity were the worst. I was likewise positive to the shrink about my parents and vice versa. I started accepting visits from my father. I stopped reaching out to members of my family and hoping to get support. I wrote cards to the social workers who had trained me to lower my moral standard and kept me employed along the way. I accepted a referral for medication. I took half of what I was prescribed and I found my efforts to be compassionate and positive to be vastly improved.

It was a long process to change my perspective, but eventually fifteen years later the relationships are finally starting to change. I certainly still struggle to be compassionate to people who smear my name and gossip about me, but occasionally, I remember the need to do so.

If I fail to be positive about people who lie and gossip about me, which I occasionally do on my blog, I run the risk of sounding like I am not well. When I do this, editors don’t select me. Also, I don’t get as many views.

Changing the Systems Around You that Hate on You:

To change the systems around you that devalue and debunk you is a huge challenge and it takes radical dishonesty of what I like to call “Kiss-Ass-Skills.” The good news is you don’t have to believe in the way you act, you just have to produce a convincing performance. Sometimes they say, you’ve got to look the devil in the eye.

In therapy they presume these are social skills and graces that you have to champion. However, according to the formula I posited at the onset of this blog, only through radical behavioral change can you escape the clutches of the modern world’s social ills. It is the social skills that try to block you on your road to spiritual enlightenment or social justice.

You may not be able to stop secret Cabals like the illuminati, the CIA, the AMA, or the big pharma industry, but you don’t have to join them. Really, you need to have compassion for the organizations that most torment you. You have to look at their agents or minions in the eye and remember to have compassion. Then, you use “Kiss-Ass-Skill,” and change your negative energy for them.

Recently, I walked with a friend who taught me about the origins of the Mafia, the Cabal, that most tormented me, I think. They originated as a militia that resisted the corruption and evils of the Roman civilization. When I try to have compassion for the need to fight corruption that empowers the one percent to enjoy money for nothing, I can heal from what I went through. The people who were killed had broken rules of the secret society and I hadn’t. Though my notions of social justice caused a lot of trouble for a lot of people, I lived. Part of me was relieved.

“What Does it Mean to be Crazy in a Crazy World?”—Will Hall

When a staff member does something good at your shelter, board and care, family or secret society, you have the power to honor it. When they come at you, like most agents of the mental health system do, with superiority and negativity, feel bad for them that they have to work a job that so burns them out and find some behavior that you can compliment. Backhanded compliments help sometimes. As a staff person I am grateful to get them because I don’t always realize when I am misusing my power and I don’t want to misuse it.

Unfortunately, oppressive systems don’t easily change first. In reality, you need to be the agent of change. Maybe you are already and just need to honor yourself. It is arguable that it is your job as the spiritual leader of your failed community to reclaim your role and improve the system. Put out positive energy and have compassion for the forces that corrupt and kill.

Being a soldier or agent is hard work. Use “Kiss Ass Skills” to compliment and appreciate the people who work for you no matter how stupid or heinous we are. I know it took me a long time to learn to do that at the Italian Deli because feelings of oppression are so hard against which to work.

When it comes to telling the truth, let it be the weak chains in the link with whom you collaborate. When you have a therapist, who can mirror positive things about your spiritual power right back at you, you have a good person with which to work. You might need to explain to them what your voices or messages are saying.

Clear out the irrational chains that hold you in bondage. Every once in a while, you might have a chance to tell people your truth. Every once in a while, you have a chance to be a revolutionary and change the world. Until then you just have to lead oppressive people spiritually and help them develop better empathy and curious inquiry skills.

The post What it Takes to Make Friends with People who Torment You: appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

Tin Man thinks of his great grandfather’s ancestral quilt that hangs in the suburban guest room and how it disgusts him. His people were lumber barons back east, in upstate New York. He was given the quilt even though he feels like the black sheep of the family. Tin Man did what he could to leave the family behind at age seventeen.

Tin is meeting with his associate Lang for the first time. He is navigating with Lang’s directions scrawled on a piece of paper in his little put-put Ford Fiesta. He still resists navigating with Google Maps on his phone like everyone else. Before long he finds himself deeply embedded in urban Richmond.

As he starts negotiating one-way streets, a much younger part of himself emerges. His chest puffs out and his shoulders naturally drop. It’s as if a piece of the inner-city has entered him. He chooses to view this as acculturation rather than racism. He is proud of years he spent striving to fit in amongst an inner-city context as a college-age-youth.

When Tin Man arrives at Taco Bell, he knows his dog, Jesus, won’t do well in the car alone with the window down. Indeed, she barks despite the treat. Tin Man is thrown off center by this.

Lang (short for Langston) is easy to spot in the small sitting area with a sprawled-out suitcase open and many small objects. Tin man notes a carrot stub, a prayer book, some writing pages, a phone, and a candle among other meaningful trinkets. Langston looks like he has lost a lot of weight.

“Hey, isn’t it great, they finally allow them to play Mexican Music in Taco Bell,” says Langston loudly.

Tin catches the wise smile as their eyes meet. But in many ways Langston looks sweaty and vulnerable in his undershirt in a way he did not when he was Tin Man’s guest speaker some years ago.

Tin finds himself having to slow down, check out the scene, and make small talk while Lang collects his stuff and talks.

Finally, Tin Man explains that the barking dog outside is his.

“That’s right,” says Lang, “You have a new dog.”

Tin explains about Jesus’s separation anxiety.

Before long they are headed across the parking lot. Lang says, “Oh, I think we are going to have to make friends.

Soothing Jesus, Tin Man leashes her and lets her out of the back seat.

Lang takes off his hat and bows his head and says, “When she sees I have no attachments to material belongings she will become more at ease with me!”

Before Tin can control Jesus on the retractable leash, Jesus bares her teeth, gets extremely close to Lang’s face, and snaps with precision, just missing.

Tin’s apology does little to pierce the intensity of the moment for him. Lang only becomes more determined and flattens his entire body against the pavement.

Jesus barks as she is pulled backwards but slowly presses against the leash until she successfully sniffs Lang.

“Now we will be okay,” says Lang with assurance.

Lang ignores Tin’s second apology and arranges to put his suitcase in the trunk of the car. Jesus allows Lang to get in the passenger seat without protest.

***

As the car rolls out of the parking lot, Lang lets Tin know what time he needs to be dropped off by to make curfew at the shelter where he is staying. He gives himself an extra forty-five minutes so that he doesn’t have to go to a church service. He is sure he can get away with it.

Tin Man has no problem accepting it when Lang quickly falls into a pattern of doing most of the talking. Tin recalls a time period when he was coming out of crisis when he had needed to do the same thing. Unfortunately, his hosts had usually been very judgmental and socially disciplined him. Tin can almost taste his own bitterness towards them as he drives slow devoting his attention to Lang.

When the car hits Richmond Parkway which circles the north half of the declining, post-industrial city, Tin knows the way. They cross under the freeway and enter the posh Point Richmond. Tin navigates to the little tunnel that goes through the hill.

As Lang talks, Tin is reminded of elements of Lang’s story from the hospital and occasionally fills in blanks he might not otherwise get. Langston was dropped off at an orphanage and adopted by his grandmother. His family expected high levels of success and when he got accepted at UC Berkeley, he had to admit that he couldn’t read due to learning disorders he’d hidden. Lang is good at telling his story!

Now Lang is talking about dropping out of Medical School, which he points out happens to a small portion of every class. A van comes from behind and violently speeds past on the double lines.

Lang is clearly thrown by this display of contempt. He interrupts himself a couple of times to exclaim his disbelief.

Lang’s comfort with homeless shelters is admittedly foreign to Tin. Back when he was in an emergency state, he had worked seemingly endless numbers of twelve-hour days to avoid them. He’d had to bike and BART four hours a day just to travel to his job at a suburban Italian Delicatessen, Money from home was needed for ten months to supplement his nine dollar an hour income to keep him in the boon town apartment he’d rented. He hadn’t considered the alternative of receiving food stamps. If he had been resourceful and applied for entitlements, he would have felt far less tortured by his family during that time period.

As a result, Tin understands that he can’t relate to Lang’s disgust with the speed of the modern word.

***

In the trailhead parking lot, a camper van is parked for the night. There are more and more people enduring a homeless lifestyle in every pocket of the bay area these days. Up north fires are raging and the air quality is poor.

Tin notices a few dogs leashed on clothes lines. He hastens to leash Jesus and move her away from the dogs.

The dogs get up and bark forcing the woman and man sitting in lawn chairs in the dust to pull on the clothes lines. Both Tin and Lang greet them and hasten to get Jesus out of their way by starting up the trailhead.

The walk is a little steep for Lang who is fifteen years Tin’s senior.

It takes Tin a little while to tease out where Lang is coming from. He senses Lang knows some about his struggles against the black-market economy during Tin’s emergency. Lang seems to be trying to help him. There are many stops and a great deal of description.

Lang is proudly able to describe some of his grandfather’s attributes. The attributes explain his rise to power. He ran a company that operated along the west coast in Canada and the U.S. that smuggled alcohol during prohibition.

Lang explained how his grandfather won and maintained his power and how the workers used him to police and eliminate dangerous people. “It is not an easy business,” exclaims Lang, “but it is necessary part of life.”

Lang shifted over to his mother’s father. “When Communists came to take over his village, my Paw Paw who was the leader encouraged everyone to escape and stayed to fight the Communists all by himself

The trio arrive at a fork in the trail. Tin who had envisioned doing a bit more walking accepts that this is the place most of the work is going to happen. Jesus is quite nervous and constantly claws into the dirt pressing against the leash.

“My mother couldn’t look at me as I grew up and my grandma loved me to death. However, when I boarded the plane to come to America, Grandma said she would be right back and I didn’t see her again for two years. I was six years old and I felt utterly abandoned. I have been repeatedly hurt by people who abandon me as a result. When grandma died, I felt I lost everything! I have struggled not to blame people for abandoning me my whole life and it wasn’t their fault . . .”

As Lang talks boldly in this manner including flurries of details, he cries openly; and then, quickly returns to laugher. Then, he seems to return to his next lesson. Tin Man recognizes this being a sign of true healing. He does his best to link into the analogies made to demonstrate listening.

“My mom was hateful to me. She expected me to become a doctor and disowned me when I got into drugs. I wanted to be a minister and author and she said, ‘I will not have a poor penniless preacher for a son!’ That is when I went into the corporate world. It is the one time I really committed evil in this world. I am ashamed of myself for that.

“I never knew a thing about my mother until I visited her on her death bed. She loved my Paw Paw so much she refused to flee with everyone else. The communists killed her family and forced her to come with them. She essentially had to marry one of her beloved family’s murderers to survive. There was a rape in the process. When I learned about that on her death bed, I learned to forgive her.

“Memory and history are funny little beings,” ponders Lang, “It is like that movie Castaway with Tom Hanks, when they tried to find the deserted island that his plane crashed on. All they have to do is be off a fraction of a degree, and they won’t even know the island exists. And the ego suffers in isolation.

Tin had been touched by the Castaway movie which he saw eighteen years ago. He wonders if Langston knows this. Back in his crisis, Tin’s one black market friend had referenced the movie and promised him that one day he would get off the island. Tin wonders if Langston is destined to be his handler of sort. He is just fine with that.

In Tin Man’s crisis, he believed he was being gang-stalked by his own family. He had not trusted a soul other than his puppy dog.

He’d done everything he could to defy his black-market friend and his family. His black-market friend had after all threatened his life. His family had supported a long-term hospitalization. His father had begged him not to leave the dilapidated compound called unit C at Montana State Hospital.

In Fresno, Tin Man had prayed for the chance to have safety in a therapy session like Tom Hanks did in the movie. That kind of safety he hadn’t found until he met his wife twelve years ago.

***

“It wasn’t until 2000, continued Lang that I was finally able to admit that I was bipolar. I was working as a social worker in Fresno and in the height of my addiction.”

Tin noted that he was in Fresno at that time, nearly homeless and looking for work. “That’s where I was when I saw the movie, Cast Away!” he blurts.

When Tin finally got hired at a Foster Care agency called Genesis, he’d had to choose between the job and family support. The only way to get family support was to move up to the bay area and take the Italian Deli job with the killer commute.

He tells this to Lang whose eyebrows rise.

“Yes, I know of that foster care agency!”

Lang makes a reference to the apocalyptic fires burning in the distance that are clogging up the air with smoke. “How can a tragedy so vial become something we learn and grow from. Tin, you should imagine how Moses felt when he wandered through the desert for forty years. Can you imagine what that felt like to walk in circles for forty years.”

“Yes, I can. It must be like the people who drive circles around the city of Richmond without ever knowing the stories that lie within!”

Tin imagines that many of Lang’s stories lie within the city. He is still not sure he’d made any sense. He is either feeling a sense of heightened connection or has a desire to impress, he isn’t sure.

Lang’s point seemed to be that it takes time to heal from slavery. Tin has always known the stories of those enslaved in Oakland and feels the world will learn to care again during Armageddon.

“Tin, I too have written a book and I lost all of it one day when my car got burglarized. It is about the seven deadly sins.” Lang lists each sin and creatively defines each . . .

Jesus’s claws are still digging in the dirt. Lang continues to go from tears to laughter.

Finally, Tin proposes that they begin walking on the flat trail. Tin unleashes Jesus who instantly puts some distance between herself and her owner. Tin notes the distance.

“Give your dog some trust and she will trust you back,” suggests Lang.

Tin definitely understands where Lang is coming from. He reflects on Lang’s suggestion knowing Jesus.

Jesus bolts after a squirrel, a sure sign she will not respond to calls to return to safety. Jesus is a devout hunter and her prey instinct is very high. Lang and Tin are safely above the street on the trail and Jesus is barking up a tree that is ten yards from the road below.

Tin calls for Jesus twice. Eventually Jesus responds. The two reconnect. Lang and Tin walk along the flat trail and the conversation flows.

“You may wonder how a person with a background such as me ends up in prison!” says Lang.

Tin thinks about the terrors of prison and the warehousing of so many undeserving individuals. He believes that it is far too easy for a body to get framed or marked during the process of incarceration. Prior to his hospitalization he had been the only law-abiding social worker in a section 8 housing authority. His black-market friend had connections to dirty Philadelphia Police who paid him cash for surveillance work. Since he’s started understanding the realities associated with these details, he has developed a distain for the law which is made by rich men for rich men.

Lang goes on to reflect on his time in prison fondly. He identifies the role he played as being a negotiator between the gangs.

“Prison gangs have complete control over the behavior of people on the streets because they know where everyone lives and can harm gang member’s loved ones if they don’t comply.

“But for me,” continued Lang, “I knew that my negotiations could result in many lives being saved on the streets and a strong sense of justice that was of optimum benefit for everyone. It was one of the better times in my life.

Langston’s words reinforce many of Tin’s views about prison. Tin thinks of the prison stories of his clients. Prison politics remind him of the State Hospital where he received a few recruitment efforts from the Mexican Mafia and an Aryan gang. Since undergoing these experiences, prison has been a bit of a preoccupation for him.

“I know how easy it is to get caught up and even framed or sacrificed by your crew. I make no preconceived judgements. I was afraid for two years that I would end up in prison. Three months in the state hospital was enough for me. I get what it’s like. So, I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge with me.”

Tin measures Lang’s facial expression to see if his effort at active listening has landed properly.

Jesus has made her way back to the vicinity of Lang and Tin. She creeps up on a mole hole. Suddenly she pounces. Jesus’s motion reminds Tin of the dance move in the 1980s movie Teen Wolf. Jesus assumes the pose and slowly lunges for maximum impact. Then, she digs at the hole trying to terrify the mole.

Suddenly, Jesus makes a high-pitched grunt and then jumps back in fear as the mole has lunged back at her. Poor Jesus has to get a taste of her own medicine.

The three reach a dirt road that cuts back to the paved road. Tin Man leashes Jesus. They descend down the road. It has been a very short hike but a lot has happened.

Tin knows he is not a man of color like Lang. The privilege of his skin is one of the only reasons he did not end up in prison. He really appreciates his freedom. He thinks about how conscientious people like him often become the mark. They end up poor and penniless in the mental health system. From Tin’s perspective, jail and prison are a slave industry just like the mental health industry from which he now takes a salary.

***

The streets of Point Richmond are full of cars on Saturday night. Tin Man circles the blocks hoping to find a parking space with shade for Jesus. He continues to listen intensely to Lang until Lang realizes that it is dangerous to keep talking. Then, Lang aids Tin in just barely finding any space.

Tin knows Jesus is occasionally able to stay in the car for his wife when she runs errands. He sets her up with water and another treat. She immediately starts trying to pry open the window with her two paws and then with her proud chest. She is shrieking with anxiety.

“Okay,” says Tin, “I am sorry but we are going to have to find a place where we can eat outside with Jesus.”

“I’d be happy to break bread with Jesus,” says Lang with a smile.

Tin, Lang and Jesus circle adjacent blocks looking for restaurants with outdoor seating.

Lang talks about wanting to open up a restaurant with friends from the shelter. He is having fun and showing his creative side. The restaurant would be called the melting wok and it would be full of all varieties of America’s stolen cuisines. And workers would share in the profits.

Tin had once wanted to have a show for single people who wanted to avoid domestic tasks. He had always bragged to all who would listen, he would be the nemesis of Martha Stewart.

Lang, it turns out, is on a walkabout, traveling between here and LA. He explains that his wife and son stay in his studio apartment in San Leandro. He doesn’t explain that his wife is an addict and a bad influence in terms of substance abuse, He stops and befriends some patrons of a restaurant with gregarious manners.

Tin can see Lang has resiliency and hosts of social skills that he can use to survive on his walkabouts. Tin ponders Lang’s positivity,

Tin was utterly demoralized back on unit C in Montana State Hospital when he was living a life of neglect. He remembers that Lang is likely dealing with bed bugs and a cot in barracks back at the rescue mission. All his belongings including the carrot stub are in the suitcase he has in the trunk of the Fiesta. And here he is still upbeat and wanting to have a good time.

Unlike Lang, Tin has always been sensitive to depravation. In college he went to an inner-city commuter campus. He never went to a single college party. In those days Tin was an unapologetic Marxist. He gave up his privilege in search of a better world.

Tin Man knows if he was in Lang’s situation, he would not be able to walk up to diners at restaurants and spread good cheer the way Lang does in half con-artist style.

In another sense, he is observing a new skill he can learn here. He often learns by observing the beautiful spirits of others. He now believes in a spiritual world that guides people. It’s taken him a while but he can understand how elements of the spirit can be lost in some Communist regimes as well as by countries that enslave and exploit others for profit or cheap labor.

***

Tin has to reject almost all the restaurants because he is a vegetarian. Many places that look interesting don’t have outdoor seating. Lang and Tin settle on a Russian delicatessen.

Lang has made it clear that he is going to drink with his meal. And asks Tin if he drinks.

Tin explains that he hasn’t had a drink since he was sixteen.

“I had problems regulating my eating and ended up sitting in on twelve-step meetings while in my second hospitalization. Listening to those stories and struggling with an eating disorder was enough for me. I steered clear from all drugs and alcohol.

“How about you,” inquires Tin without judgment, “are you a friend of Bill’s?”

“Yes, the halls are a large part of my life,” admits Lang. “I get a lot of support in meetings. But I still drink. I believe in balance when it comes to substance abuse. I don’t believe in labeling myself an addict.

Tin leaves Jesus with Lang and takes Lang’s order, a sandwich with two meats in it. After he orders for Lang, he orders a cheese sandwich for himself. Then, he gets himself a Gatorade and Lang the Mickey’s Ale he requested.

Tin innocently wonders how strong the Ale might be. Then, he smirks. On the streets a mickey is a laced drink so his answer is clear to him. This Ale must be super strong.

***

Lang admits his shock that Tin does not drink. He eats half of his sandwich and packs the rest of it. He makes polite conversation. Tin Man is not at all hungry but finishes his very boring cheese sandwich. Jesus lays loyally at Tin Man’s side.

Suddenly Jesus lunges violently. I small child has just run past the table.  Luckily, Tin iwas sitting on the leash with all his weight. The table tilts as does Tin’s chair.

“Jesus,” mutters Tin man.

Even Lang doesn’t know what to say. After a moment, he comments that this is very unusual. Jesus is clearly deeply wounded. “I think Jesus has a young soul!”

Tin Man has observed this behavior before. It is very hard to understand what triggers Jesus. Some dogs don’t bother her, yet sometimes dogs and kids set her off.

It has occurred to Tin Man that Jesus may be able to read the personal thoughts of other beings much as he’d been able to do when he was in his psychosis.

Training Jesus has been a far greater challenge than his last puppy dog. Tin Man’s last dog was very mature, loving, and resilient, kind of like Langston.

Tin Man had learned to train himself to act as if his ability to sense reality is not real through caring for his first dog. His past love had to endure twelve-hour days alone. The dog’s love and resilience had been a true inspiration. Her spirit was gregarious.

Tin had sensed that Jesus was wounded when he visited her at the dog rescue clinic. Even the literature that the rescue operation had written about her hinted that she needed help. But now that Tin has a house, a wife, a salary, and is not coming up off the streets, he has chosen to challenge himself.

Tin has his freedom and Yang has had to sleep in bushes and shelters to survive.

And now Tin can help Jesus not react to what she sees. Now he can better understand what others went through during his struggles. Now he could right the wrong that was done to him. Tin prays Lang also has his own sort of freedom and doesn’t have to work for free in prison gangs. He doesn’t really know about this for sure.

***

Tin Man has been collecting his thoughts through the meal. He is stunned by the way Lang honors and loves his family in spite of all he’s been through! The fact thar Lang could forgive his mother really makes Tin think.

Tin Man’s ancestors had total control over a series of Lumber Towns in Upstate New York. His great grandfather had been the justice of the peace over his town. His great grandmother had been the social worker. Together while they exploited the work, they controlled the workers and made sure they didn’t go home and beat their wives and children. While this had always sounded great and noble the way his grandmother had conveyed it, Tin had grown to figure that the workers who acted this way probably struggled with way they were treated by the company. Being a lumber jack is hard and dangerous work.

The rest of the family seemed far more accepting of their privilege. But coming up all alone during summer vacations in the Adirondacks, Tin Man tended to see things differently. Early on neighborhood kids took their anger out on him by peeing on him when he was three years old. His parents did not intervene.

When he was a preteen, he felt he was a part of the welfare family who rented a cabin from them. He worked for his father with them. He rode their dirt bikes down the railroad grade with them. It was with their spirit that he fought back when the private school kids picked on him. His father always told Tin that they worked harder than he did. Then, his father evicted the family. It was true they had stopped paying rent, but this led Tin to having complicated feelings. He stopped being able to sleep. His parents were moving into a modern home and Tin rebelled against this with everything he had.

Now as an adult, Tin Man has learned enough to know what it is like to be treated like a slave. True, his ancestors may have believed they were loved by their workers, but growing up Tin tended to sense the underlying resentment.

Tin always remembers old Jack McKinley who was such a loyal company man he befriended Tin’s father and helped teach him to be handy. Tin’s whole family would visit the old lumbar jack and hear stories, summering away from suburbia away from their private school.

By the time Tin was ten years old the old man started a pattern of ranting at him. Tin’s father would sit back, smile, and let this go on as if there was something wrong with Tin. Year after year, the old man would seem to let out his lifetime of resentment on Tin.

The onset of the rants happened when Tin had repeated something his father had said about the work that was done by the townspeople to clean up the mill site. Tin had merely told his cousin what his father had said. His cousin had told this to Jack on a visit. Tin’s father had never said anything in defense of Tin, just smiled.

Years later, as Tin turned to the service economy for survival at age seventeen, he certainly started to understand how the old lumberjack felt. When he started laboring fifty-four hours a week in the inner-city summer, he wanted nothing to do with the vacation land that the rest of the family seemed to cherish.

It was the land he was raised to take care of. He learned the skills to be a do-it-yourselfer like his father, but he wasn’t having it. Tin would one day get the understanding about how his townsfolk friends like the welfare family survived poverty by running drugs amid rural poverty.

Tin just couldn’t let go of this reality and love his ancestors. The disparities in the summer were just too strong. It wasn’t all his father’s fault! His journey had caused him to empathize with the townspeople.

Ever since his struggles some eighteen years ago his family just seemed to treat him like a schizophrenic failure. That only made it harder to forgive his people. His grandmother’s last words to him were that his book made the family look bad. She hadn’t remembered Tin Man due to dementia, but she had remembered the book. A few years ago, at his father’s 75^th birthday celebration he had experienced a high degree of microaggression from his relatives. Tin man supposed they felt the same way about his writing.

***

Tin and Lang had to hasten themselves from the meal to the car to make Lang’s curfew at the rescue mission. Lang takes a precious minute to see what is left of his Ale. He carefully stows it in his water bottle so it can travel through the shelter undetected.

“Wow, Tin Man, I had so much fun tonight. If this was a date, I’d definitely sleep with you.

There is an awkward pause.

“No, Tin don’t worry! I am not gay!”

Normally, Tin feels embarrassed to have someone witness the deterioration of his affect. However, Tin senses that Lang might recognize that Tin’s extremities are tingling. Tin sensed that Lang could see some of the truth that had made its way back to Tin’s memory when he’d written his memoir. Still, he doesn’t understand this part of himself very well. Somehow, it comforts Tin to imagine that Langston understands

In the car ride back, Lang tells Tin Man that he is a really good teacher for him.

With utmost sincerity, Tin Man repeats these words to Lang.

Tin hopes Lang knows how helpful his work tonight had been for his own sense of healing. Sure, Lang might have to engage in hustles to maintain his habits, but Tin Man is sure, he does mostly good for others. He fancies himself a good reader of Lang’s spirit.

Like clockwork, Tin pulls up to the mission and Lang hops out, grabs his suitcase out of the trunk and, joins the crew coming back from their mandatory church meeting.

***

Tin Man is alone driving back from Richmond and is hit with a sense of sheer exhaustion. He remembers that when he had crossed the boundaries of his job as a social worker and investigated street murders some eighteen years ago, he had lost his heart for beautiful souls like Lang.

As a result of those actions, good people like Lang had been forced to gang-stalk him for two years.

Was this true?

Had all the people who appeared part of the scheme really been forced to go out of their way just because he had not understood the black-market rules?

Tin really does not know.

At first Tin Man had blamed his experiences entirely by his own family. Eventually, he started to use medication. Now he attributes the gang-stalk to the powerful oligarchs that that set up the inner-city sectors of our country.

Tin man can see his interdependence on good people like Lang. Tin prays they can be there mutually for each other in the name of generational healing.

Tin Man still wants to have his heart back. Perhaps all he needs to do is stop all the hypocritical rage.

Tin rages about his own good fortune that forces him to exploit good people like Langston for a living in a slave industry. He prays he is a mole in the system.

His coworkers and colleagues treat him like his dog Jesus treats the moles that burrow neath the surface of this land we call America. Sure, his clients are happy to use him to heal. Sure, they love him. But are they not unlike like his ancestors’ townsfolk? Does Tin really know he is any different?

Langston is right in the wisdom conveyed in his stories. Tin must find a way to forgive his father for his part in Tin Man’s neglect. He needs to love his people more and judge them less even if they treat him like he is invisible to them. Still, he longs to end his dependence on the mental health industry and the machine.

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