It has been a long time since I have written a blog post. I turned my efforts away from creative essays and introspective exploration. Instead, I focused on creating a 12-16 hour Master Class entitled: Redefining “Psychosis:” A Cultural Approach to Working with Madness, A Roadmap to the Rabbit Hole.

Time away from weekly writing has been important for me as I was not gaining an audience or selling many books. I’ll admit a sense of frustration was entering into my work. It’s not a good look writing about how jaded you feel. In working on the Masterclass, I had plans to present it, but those plans fell through when I couldn’t agree on a contract with the agency with which I was working. I decided to complete the project and apply to present the class through PESI. I am aware this is a long shot, but completion made sense. This way I am prepared if any opportunity arises.

I have been finding my Facebook feed is full of advertisements about creating online courses. I have started to explore and research what would be needed to convert my knowledge and skills into something that is concise and that could offer me a return on investment. I figure I could market through the infrastructure I have built up on my website.

I think my greatest challenge is to tilt my perspective towards providers who work with people who are in special message crisis.

I remember starting out in social work while I was in graduate school. I didn’t sign up for the job because I wanted to do harm, I just listened to my supervisors and tried to make it. I just didn’t fully understand what the people I was trying to help were going through. I didn’t want to know that I was doing everything wrong, but I did want to have good relationships with the people with whom I was working.

Some preliminary web searches has connected me with the work of Ron Unger out of Oregon and I see he has sold a number of online courses in my field.

I also have been interviewed by Charles Shaw over the course of a few years. It is my understanding that in his new book there will be a chapter about me. Working with Charles was interesting. I had the opportunity review his work and to see myself through Charles’ eyes. Charles is a writer who has been able to gain an audience. My hope is that I too can build an audience that can help change the public’s perception of “psychosis” if I can adjust what I am doing and learn how to teach online.

I am currently on transit from a visit back east to see my parents. I am in the Denver Airport and am sitting in a crowd of people who are waiting to go on a plane to Wichita, Kansas. During the visit with my father, we commiserated a little. He has also struggled for years to have his voice influence public policy with regards to ecology and economics. He eighty-one years old and grieving that he doesn’t have the influence he would like. I have listened to him talk for years and he has good ideas about save lives and the planet and address the economic income gap. He has struggled to be satisfied with his gains and to accept the fact that his ideas aren’t popular in the mainstream.

I am working on having more compassion for both of us much as I need to build compassion for the people who don’t want to listen to us. None of us are perfect. Fighting against mainstream views takes compassion and patience even when you feel like your efforts are going nowhere. I had a great time writing my memoir and it won awards for being well written. I haven’t been able to attract a large audience as a blogger or writer but am still working to find that voice that people want to hear. I love writing, but also recognize that currently YouTube and videos attract a larger audience. If people want to learn something it is important to meet them where they are at. If people like my courses, maybe they will also purchase my book.

At this point, I have a meeting with an online course guru to see if I can get help marketing and producing a digital product. I am not sure what it will bring, but I will keep readers posted.

Click here to learn about my Master Class!

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Guest post written by Samantha Jane

From Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho to M.Night Shymalan’s Split, the media has long been guilty of using psychosis as a scapegoat for fantastical criminality.

Even among newsrooms and journalists, crimes attached to any iota of mental illness are sensationalized with splashy headlines. This macabre fascination has only worsened the existing stigma towards mental health. With over 70% of the American public getting their mental health information from TVs, newspapers, and magazines, it’s not surprising that these inaccurate depictions have had negative effects:

Cases of criminal malingering have increased

A prevalent effect of misrepresented criminality within psychosis is the proliferation of malingering. Described as the act of feigning insanity to evade a heavier punishment, malingering occurs in about 17.5% of convicted criminals.

One infamous case of malingering involves one-half of The Hillside Stranglers Kenneth Bianchi. After terrorizing most of California in the 70s, Bianchi pretended to have an alternate personality (Steve) when he was captured. And he argued that Steve was the actual perpetrator. Bianchi was ultimately found guilty after his ruse was debunked. But at this point, his act had lengthened proceedings and cost the state more money. Since then, both criminal defense lawyers and convicted criminals alike have tried malingering, with many simply mirroring the signs of psychosis they see on film or TV.

Law enforcement has had to pivot their approach

As a direct consequence of the previous points, law enforcement officials have had to further their own understanding with regards to mental health. To prevent malingering and to justly identify defendants who were—or are—suffering from psychosis, many local and federal officers implement forensic psychology into their investigations. Officers who have completed either in-person or online forensic psychology degrees have been trained in abnormal psychology, criminal behavior, and social sciences. This enables them to make educated preliminary assessments of persons of interest.

Alongside this, a growing number of cities are implementing crisis intervention team training. These programs teach officers de-escalation techniques and the appropriate way to divert individuals to mental health services, when available. While these efforts have shown significant dips in unwarranted arrests or violent altercations, many states have yet to mandate these initiatives.

Vulnerable communities are further alienated from society

One of the most dangerous consequences of misrepresentation and sensationalization is the picture that it paints of those with mental illnesses. Under the guise of “informing” the public about red flags that indicate criminality, people who consume this media are influenced to fear those with mental health conditions. For instance, data suggests that 40% of all police calls are mental health-related events. This is despite the fact that only 5% of all violent crimes are committed by individuals with pre-existing mental health disorders. A study even shows that those with mental illnesses are more likely to be a victim of a violent crime, rather than the perpetrator. But even in more “white collar” circles, people are conditioned to perceive those with mental illness as untrustworthy or subversive.

Such was the case with Tim Dreby when he shared his own workplace experiences as someone with diagnosed schizophrenia. Despite the fact that Tim worked in the field of mental health, his diagnosis and survival story was used almost as blackmail. Unfortunately, a similar story is echoed across the nation as surveys show those with mental illness are up to seven times more likely to be unemployed.

Will Media Be Changing Anytime Soon?

True crime shows and horror movies are some of the most well-received media today. So, unfortunately psychosis will probably continue to get associated with criminality. Of course, this isn’t to say that some changes aren’t on the way. Organizations like the United States’ National Mental Health Association (NMHA) and Australia’s Mindframe program have begun to suggest guidelines that more fairly and safely depict mental illness. Whether these guidelines are to be widely used and accepted, though, remains to be seen. For now, criminality and psychosis are still part of an industry that seems to have little care for the widespread consequences they encourage in the name of “entertainment.”

Article written for timdreby.com

By Samantha Jane

The post Media’s Misrepresentation of Criminality and Psychosis: How it Affects Real Life appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

A Definition of Psychosis that Includes Internal Processes:

I believe there are fundamental ways that the inaccurate social definition of psychosis and schizophrenia lead to mistreatment in mental health institutions. The historical definition of psychosis in all the Diagnostic Statistical Manuals is: hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking. In master’s level training I never got more information than that when it came to working with psychosis. I did not understand psychosis. With that limited framework, I was paid to work with schizophrenia for seven years. Oh, how it limited my view of the potential for recovery.

Now, decades later, I think calling it a thought disorder is a fundamental misunderstanding of what is happening. I believe there are processes going on internally to create the external behavioral descriptors of the mainstream definition. I think its high time mental health workers get trained to pay attention to the internal processes that create these anomalous behaviors. Instead metal health workers team up to madly try to correct behavior through incarceration, medication, and behavioral health treatment like case management.

I believe it is important that people we call psychotic or schizophrenic be more self-aware of what they are doing as they are playing truth detective. In the process, it is important for supporters to be aware of those processes and to support, learn about and eventually collaboratively guide those internal processes.

I believe that people like me who experience them need them to be so aware of their internal processes that they can willingly let go of them and chose to behave in accordance with consensus reality. I call this ability to let go and comply with social dictates, message mindfulness.

Applying Mindfulness to Psychosis:

Six years after I was able to suppress my experiences to the point where I could resume my career, I got my Marriage and Family Therapy License. I began my quest to define those internal processes. I wrote a curriculum for groups. I ran them, and I revised and sharpened my views. I have developed eight components of which to be mindful and eight resulting solution strategies that can help a person create a social rehabilitation. I am writing today to present the first concept in my list of eight solution concepts, message mindfulness.

Mindfulness is currently a popularized concept in mental health that involves going toward your feelings and getting close enough that you can fully experience them enough to process and let go of them so they don’t linger in your body and overwhelm you. Marsha Linehan has done a good job identifying six skills associated with mindfulness, which is based on Buddhist Philosophy.

According to Linehan’s training, one can achieve mindfulness by noticing your feeling, putting words to it, and taking the time to fully participate with it. It is also important not to judge the feeling, only do one thing at a time, and focus on trying to do what works in the situation. All this allows the feeling to be released and forgotten about. Those who live mindfully stay present and engaged in the moment.

With mindfulness, we balance our thought processes and our emotional processes so we can let go of painful emotions and the occurrences that cause them. Instead of changing our thoughts, we experience our emotions.

When I talk about message mindfulness though, I am not talking about emotions, I am talking about experiences that trigger the sleuthing process that lead to thoughts that diverge from consensus reality.

Indeed, in that short sentence I have introduced the first three internal processes of psychosis. These are my first three components and are essential to understanding message mindfulness. Thus, it is important to help the person with psychosis pay more attention to what they are doing. This actually entitles them to talk about their experiences without getting shut down, rejected or controlled.

Suppressing triggers to psychosis is a fundamentally different process. Often the person who is trying to suppress their experiences does so because they have been punished for having them. The person may end up at war with those experiences and tormented, they only increase the frequency and intensity with which they experience them. They start to trust them more and to trust people with cultural delusions less.

I am arguing that suppression conversely makes those experiences stronger.

Hence, if someone is traumatized and rages in defeat without trying to function through it, their quality of life and social functioning, declines into a stew and everyone rolls their eyes and calls them a bump on a log. If they fight for survival, the world will see them as a royal pain in the ass and torment them because they are different. Both are recipes for ongoing trauma and suffering.

In contrast, message mindfulness suggests we not judge these experiences, we experience them fully and we move through them staying focused only on the present. It becomes important for supporters and the person experiencing them to learn this lesson. The outcome can be some interesting metaphysical philosophies. With the right kind of balanced conclusions, social life can resume and persist.

Hence, I will officially pause to abolish the words psychotic and schizophrenic because they are profoundly judgmental words to those of us who have experienced them. Instead I will call the person who experiences these phenomena message receivers who will benefit from gaining awareness of message mindfulness

 The First Component of Message Mindfulness: Special Messages.

Message receivers deal with special messages. These are experiences that trigger awareness of an alternate way of making sense of things that others may or may not understand. The definition is very broad because there are a lot of types of things that can be special messages.

Special messages may involve things that everyone can relate to: a sense of intuition; a dream; or the nonverbal sense of another person we get that is based on body language. In a state of hypervigilance, people can be very attuned an sensitive to these experiences. These experiences alone can lead to pondering conspiracies, positive or negative.

Special messages can also be more peculiar voices or visions, tactile, taste, or olfactory hallucination that are unique to the individual but that others probably do not experience in the same way.

These special messages get complicated and mix with other special messages.

For example, a voice says, “I am the devil and you smell like shit!” Perhaps the person figures that the devil is criticizing them for lack of cleanliness. But there is still so much to consider like the race sex and age of the voice. Is the devil really coming from telepathy with the message receiver’s German Sheppard who is just talking wuff talk?

When there is a stabbing pain in the back when the message receiver is not able to get to the shower, one might feel tortured by the devil. It might help to engage with the devil and assert oneself and try to compassionately stave of the stabbing.

Maybe we’ve studied the devil’s voice over time and learn the right ways to heal it so we can prevent the stabbing.

These kinds of messages need to be drawn out and interacted with to help people heal. There is a growing body of literature on this: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-rUvtCwt_cvc5_yqWQX7uA?fbclid=IwAR0clCSfZOWp3u8tCUmFb3OOehLvzWO5IVivdmiTIBV7hSTqUZNy4UQCY3I

Extra sensory perception is also an example of a special message, as are de ja vu experiences, serendipitous coincidences, or mindreading telepathic abilities. Many of us may have these abilities/occurrences. At the same time, it can be hard to know when we have access to them. Thus, we successfully mindread on three occasions, and then we think we are doing it on a fourth but are incorrect. Also, we may assess that others can read our minds when they can only do so fifty percent of the time.

Coded words, double meanings and numeric associations can also lead to special message experiences. For example, pigs in a blanket for a dollar means a hot dog on a bun; not police in a sleeping bag by a campfire, or raw pork chops rolled up in a newspaper. Or does it? Also consider the meaning of the name of my favorite rapper: KRS-ONE, Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone. Or consider the name of another rapper: fifty cent, 50 cent or 5-0-scent. Playing the game of punny coincidences can get very complicated especially when spies are involved. Just watch Austin Power’s, The Spy that Shagged Me!

Additionally, the written word may lack a clear emphasis or have an unintended emphasis to make significant conspiracy inferences that may or may not be true. Finally, words can be metaphors with entirely different meanings, like children’s song, puff the magic dragon means a bone of cannabis getting smoked. Or Captain Jack will get you high tonight mean booting heroin into your veins.

The world and reality become full of symbolic occurrences. So does TV and movies. There may be more learned about reality in art than there is on the local news.

These may be guided by corrupt powers in the government, by a wide variety of secret societies, or by righteous spiritual processes. Perhaps time travel has influenced covert futuristic codes. Then, these coded coincidences may mix with the actions of people around them that are acting in similar manners or using TV or movie references to make a point.

Welcome to the work of divergent views, causation theories/frameworks, and spiritual trickster and self-fulfilling prophesies. All of these are other components of psychosis that we gain with mindfulness. There still are others.

To get a better sense of special messages, you can sign up for my mailing list and more extensive list of examples: https://timdreby.us17.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=875d1a8dc62c7e575c8572fc9&id=d384b7dd74

Mix all the special messages up in a bag and it can lead to some very troubling or wonderful interpretations of reality. Each interpretation might need to be experienced and understood mindfully without letting the emotions get negatively impacted and affecting the message receiver’s behavior. That’s a lot to ask. As a result, to achieve message mindfulness, there may be massive conflicts that need to be worked out or metaphysical beauty to be distracted from. Often it is a mixture of both once you really start to explore a message receivers experience.

The Second Concept of Message Mindfulness: Sleuthing

When a person gets a special message, they may need to get busy in their mind to figure out what the message means. Behind the sleuthing process is an intense emotional alarm that results from the special message. As a result, the message receiver may be on high alert for other details or messages that may add to their plot/journey. Once they are convinced a conspiracy is present or alternative ideas of what is going on are at play, they may end up on the lookout for more clues. Suddenly with a heightened awareness, clues and messages become more frequent and support the concept of the conspiracy. Figuring out what is going on, can be like a twenty-four hour a day job that is rarely interrupted by activities or tasks.

I call this state sleuthing. It is also called making meaning in the hearing voices movement. In a sense, all these special message experiences become highlighted and are often received as they are traumatic or enlightened. Thus, making meaning becomes a coping strategy that helps the message receiver endure. Tell them to stop doing it and distract themselves from these dilemmas and the intensity of the sleuthing is likely to increase. They may sleuth while they are trying to accomplish something making them slow in accomplishing it. They may not get reinforced for their efforts and may feel discouraged in comparison to chronically-normal accomplishment.

I believe that effective therapy becomes sleuthing alongside the message receiver. It means helping them be more aware of the special messages they are receiving that lead them to formulate their thoughts or conclusions. That in a nutshell is message mindfulness. But it also means learning more about and normalizing the next component of psychosis, divergent views.

Additionally, as mentioned above, there are still other parts of psychosis, like studying causation theories or frameworks, or studying negative/positive self-fulfilling prophesies can cause errors, oppression and persecution, Thus, later concepts exist and can also can assist with working with divergent views to change the trauma or elation they may cause.

The Third Concept: Divergent Views

Many message receivers are trained not to share their divergent views. Divergent views can be spot on accurate and they can lead to errors. Usually, reality is a mix. If a divergent view is expressed others are likely to call them crazy, psychotic, or schizophrenic. Many of us have lost many friends and supports this way. Some people get consequences that bite them back within the system in which they are embedded.

The funny thing about divergent views is that so many of the divergent views we have, as I mentioned above, are true.

For example, if we say our phones are tapped it is a major admission that make people call us schizophrenic, but, in reality, the phones are really tapped. Thanks to international fugitive, Edward Snowden, we now know this to be true. But when it comes down to it, people don’t want to hear about intelligence secrets. Message receivers need to learn not to talk about those elements of reality when they experience evidence of them. However, there also needs to be safe havens where they can discuss like therapy and support groups.

With the sleuthing stoked by divergent views, the message receiver wants to talk about it. However, if they share their concerns, they get identified as a schizophrenic. That may intensify the secrecy and privacy of the sleuthing process. They are constantly tempted to behave as if their divergent views are accurate, behavior that could lead to incarceration. Thus, they make an effort to bury that information.

In their swirls of special message experiences, message receiver’s emotions get peaked. They learn that some of their divergent views are accurate and it is a strong positive reinforcer. Intermittent punishment makes no sense. What I am arguing is that divergent views need to be normalized instead of punished.

However, a good way to start discussions about special message experiences is to talk about conspiracy theories associated with governmental abuse or social control. There are many of them out there in the media from the secret knowledge of alien involvement in the evolution of civilization to the history of the Templar Knights in the crusades. Conspiracies theories about all the assassinations in the sixties are another good way to discuss conspiracy. Once you have identified the conspiracy, it is possible to try to identify the special message evidence that reveals the conspiracy to the message receiver.

Message Mindfulness:

Ultimately message mindfulness is the ability to accept the special message experience with no emotional charge and with complete acceptance. It is the ability to let go of the divergent view and divert your attention from sleuthing. It means staying engaged in an activity that will help you survive. This may mean setting limits with sleuthing and doing it after the fact.

Message mindfulness is the ability to act as if consensus reality is all that matters when that isn’t true. It is a willingness to engage with lies and flawed paradigms of the modern world and constructively work to better them.

In another sense message mindfulness is the ability to be aware of the experience, detach from the meaning that is made from the experience, and make peace with the resulting conspiracies in a way that they can be released from the thinking mind. Staying busy and focused on a task can help accelerate the mindfulness phenomena

There is more to message mindfulness than we have reviewed in this blog. Remember there are still five other components of psychosis in my definition. I have alluded to only two others on a few occasions.

The awareness of all those concepts makes it easier to accept things the way they are and resolve the conflicts with society that usually get highlighted by special message experiences. Once the issues are addressed mindfulness becomes easier.

It only takes a bit of faking your way through and projecting the cultural delusions that modern society depends on to survive. That is how you can achieve message mindfulness.

The Madness with Which We Are Treated in the Mental Health System:

In behavioral health treatment they tend to believe that psychotics and schizophrenics of the world are better when they give up on their pursuit of the truth, and behave in concert with the millions of social myths that make up consensus reality. When they can do so they can take care of themselves. If this is the goal, there are good and bad ways to achieve it.

Though its arguable that it can work to criminalize and incarcerate schizophrenia and psychosis, there is also carnage in the process. There ends up being many people who get permanently warehoused or stuck in crisis states. Incarceration and homelessness happened to me and I managed to make it back. I could have been trapped a lot longer if I had not used family support.

I just think it can be done more gently with far less institutional damage and punishment.

I am arguing that this starts by understanding how our internal processes are different. Once we understand we can join with people who are trained to understand and form trusting relationships. We can find people who are supports rather than adversaries and controllers. In doing so, we can learn to be mindful of our internal processes, let them go and act in accordance with the cultural delusions we all agree upon in order to function in nation states.

Message mindfulness, just does not happen in hospitals and treatment facilities on a regular basis. Instead, for everyone’s safety, we get locked up a one size fits all system that forces us to behave in accordance with behavioral norms. If we comply, we may end up living in warehousing conditions, dependent on social security, and perhaps feel like cash cows. Something is foul in the state of Denmark!

Indeed, in the hospital we find ourselves locked up, stripped of our rights, and not even allowed to talk about what we are thinking about and going through. We must suppress what we are going through and act as if it doesn’t matter without becoming violent. Then we can get set free. It isn’t a great deal of help.

We get released unto a world where we must suppress our experiences enough to make a living and, in many cases, pull ourselves out of poverty. Maybe the family takes care of us and becomes responsible for figuring it out all on their own without any guidance. Maybe the family learns the social definition of the problem and the illness mindset and is able to control the situation utilizing warehousing or providing sanctuary. Ultimately this may lead to satisfying relationships, but it often does not.

The question becomes can we train people with the message mindfulness mindset and insert them into our institutions to improve the outcomes? Can we build this into our punitive system via changing the definition of psychosis one mind at a time?

The post How Message Mindfulness Can Help Change the Madness Within Our System! appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

The peer movement and Wellness Recovery Action Planning helped revolutionize my approach to therapy and being a real person. In some ways I am grateful but still there are ways I am dissatisfied with the way too many peers perpetuate neocolonialism in the system.

I always struggled with the way the peer movement’s best practice, WRAP, attempts to define consumer values and ethics. It started out as a small sense of internal discomfort. But somehow the, “you cannot practice WRAP unless you uphold its values and ethics,” has become more a bone of contention for me twelve years after the concept was first introduced to me.

Values and ethics—it’s something you hear a great deal about in the consumer movement. ‘It’s important to understand our values, ethics and history,” you may hear a leader say. The more I stop letting myself feel victimized and alienated by these voices who have seemed to treat me just like my family of origin did, the more I start to see this as socially violent stance.

As I have grown as a therapist and built my own private counseling theory, I have reflected on my experiences studying different counseling theories and crossing cultural divides. I have found myself equating the imposition of values, ethics, and fidelity measures more and more with neo-colonialism, greed, manifest destiny, best practice, rather than with liberation and justice.

If you want to avoid the potential of inflicting generalizations on multitudes of people, don’t overreach. Don’t say it is a universally researched practice. Most certainly don’t say it’s an international movement with these values and ethics. Think about defining who you are and who you represent before you spread out with megalomania and glee.

I believe when you start imposing values and ethics, you bear the risk of invading other regions, extracting local resources for your benefit, and starting political feuds. Sure, we all want to affect sorely needed change, but there is a way to go about that so that you don’t create more of the same insanity.

Remember as you spread out into different regions, there is a lot to learn. It is not wise to suggest that because you have research that your way will work in a different geopolitical landscape.

Recognize that as you spread out your ideas, you become at risk of spreading gossip, gaslighting, and bullying people. Remember in any region there will be winners and losers in the system. The winners will be more likely to befriend you and move up by spreading venom and dominating others. Is it really worth it to sacrifice your ideals, just to have things your way in a foreign context?

If you want to promote change in the way you believe is best based on your experience in your region, marginalized cultures from other regions will find white, patriarchal, wealthy, prestigious, and exploitive. (For some reason people of color don’t tend to write and own these practices as far as I can tell.) Many may smile and honor you to your face, but they also may sense another layer of oppression added to their burden.

What Might Happen When You Overextend Your Perspective:

I don’t think these kinds of unintended consequences need to exist. I think it is possible to avoid them.

However, I do know for sure ways that I have been treated when values and ethics clash with portions of my experience that are real, idiosyncratic and rebellious. It burns me. It preoccupies my mind. Parts of me who have been most abused and hurt emerge. And, no, I won’t just give in and sip the tea!

It’s not hard to define who you are and what you’ve done and consider the geopolitical circumstances that have enabled you to be successful. Defining the limits of your approach is just as important as making a social change. If you’ve been successful, let go of your work and let others interpret and learn from it. Indeed, this approach seems to me to be the way to go.

In WRAP, for example, Mary Ellen Copeland does a good job defining her culture and her story. When she does this, she defines who she is and what her landscape is like. However instead of telling us the limits of her vantage point, we get values and ethics that we must maintain whether we are operating in an urban shelter, a county jail, or a New England Community Center.

Don’t get me wrong, there are aspects of the WRAP program that can travel into different contexts and do extraordinary things. But I do want to consider that what is needed to avoid institutionalization can be different in different areas.

For example, in my WRAP training, which happened twelve years ago, there was a participant who wanted to bring up the fact that he killed a person. I recognize there were vulnerable people in the group who might not have felt comfortable with that reality. Indeed, at times in my madness journey that would have been challenging for me. Indeed, it is arguable that it was a murder that I uncovered that set me into madness in the first place.

But because I was well, I was curious about what the participant was getting at and felt the participant was further shamed. When that participant was shut down and told not to do that in a WRAP group, I couldn’t help contrasting it to other challenges that were brought to light by other people. I ended up thinking that we lost an opportunity to learn something real.

I don’t mean to challenge the leader who was really powerful and helped me a lot, but I think that issue depends on the context. There were some participants who were high up in the county power structure who were participating in the training. I imagine they could have negatively judged the program if those boundaries weren’t set.

At the same time there are some places where that issue needs to be addressed. In fact, back in state hospital where there were lifers, I needed to have that issue addressed. Maybe my concerns and feelings couldn’t be addressed in a warehouse setting. I lived among whispers among us clients about those among us who had killed. I was far too invisible to have concerns addressed. And I was too branded as the entitled, out-of-state, political-prisoner who deserved to be ignored.

In short, how might it feel in a jail where every person is facing those fears and concerns to have that issue remain invisible. And so I ask: does the best practice become institutional by denying those realities? Does the need for funding and mainstream acceptance dilute the practice?

How to Know When You Are Engaging in Neo-Colonialism

To be honest, my experience with WRAP has very little to do with my motivation for writing this blog. I make these observations based on more personal experiences with other peer movements. It has been my frustration with things I’ve seen along the way that makes me challenge the way social change happens in the industry at large.

It’s true that everybody needs money to survive. When movements sweep into town based on research and try to change the way we understand trauma, change substance abuse patterns or motivate people to get back to work, they need money to survive. However, in these times the streets are jammed up with homeless encampments. It seems like things just get worse and worse. In spite of lots of innovation, recovery seems to rarely trickle down to the homeless and institutionalized.

Part of mental health is about the exponentially increasing disparities between the haves and the have-nots. When administrators import ideas that worked elsewhere without looking to their own region for people who know the local economy and realities shit storms will arise.

In the industry we have people who are so removed from the ground making the decisions that affect recovery movements it gets ridiculous. They may move from state to state in insular administrative jobs and fail to connect with the people in the trenches who need to be trained and who need to likewise contribute from their own views and notions of justice.

When I consider stories that sparked movements like the one that Marious Romme, Sandra Escher, and Betsy Kline tell, I get excited about the potential for much needed change. But when my work and contribution is overlooked because it failed to follow a charter of ethics that is written in a different country for people of totally different social realities, I get upset. When large payments go out to international travelers from people who won’t even consider supporting my efforts, indeed, I get frustrated.

I understand that some really great people made them up, but I also see that I am surrounded by really great people who are coming back from homelessness and need to be empowered to discover what works best for them. They deserve to be heard more than me. If you come to town and they speak up, honor them. No need to overwhelm them with your superiority.

Hell, I mad similar mistakes and even been suckered by a story of how a few mental health consumers built a recovery empire out of the Southwestern dust. Yes, I allowed myself to be hired by them and be deeply wounded by them. I am lucky I survived that fiasco.

But when any best practice comes to town with their fidelity measures and fails to acknowledge local socioeconomic issues like housing challenges, generations of poverty and slavery and how those issues impact their workers, I start to think about neocolonial transfer of money and resources away from our county. When you start formulating ethics and values or fidelity measures from the geopolitical contexts out of which you arise that you start to create hypocrisy and neo-colonialism.

Moreover, when you find yourself having to gaslight, gossip, bully, slander or politically marginalize people to justify your own position and salary, you are probably engaging in neocolonialism. I just thought some leaders might like to know in case it applies to them.

Conclusion:

Peer movements are not responsible for the vast amount of disparity that exists between top administrator salaries (and between a therapy salary or a peer administrator salary for that matter) and the abysmal resources available to subjects confined in squalor in board and care homes.

It is not my intention to diminish the achievements of the peer movement either. The peer movement has helped change the language used in public policy. It has vastly improved the system by allowing peer workers in the work force. It has inspired many people to improve their wellness.

I wouldn’t dare say what I have to say about values and ethics to researched best practices. Okay maybe that’s not entirely true. I am an entitled paranoid loud mouth! Maybe that’s why I felt sanctioned in my HVN training.

But I tend to see the peer movement as being far better able to consider my comments than I would other best practices with high level academic platforms surrounded by elite university Ph.D. titles. It’s true though that in these days of disparity even peer movements also have educated platforms behind them.

I think everyone of us in the peer movement can do a little better with avoiding neo-colonialism. I think that questioning the need to impose values and ethics is a great place to start. I think that each peer services worker needs to tend to the gardens it their own backyard, without trying to incorporate themselves into the mechanisms of agribusiness.

When the way you do things becomes the only way to go. When you have to gossip and slander others to make a name for yourself and, then, gaslight upon confrontation, you are wearing a neocolonial wig.

I think the peer movement is doing a good job in many ways, why sell out and try to join a false best practice bandwagon. Why not try to be just a little bit better.

The post Ways the Peer Movement Could Be Just a Little Bit Better About Avoiding Neocolonialism: appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

May is Mental Health Month!! Celebrate with me online with Solano County! I am excited to report that I will be providing two online events for Solano County this month: On Friday May 8th I will tell my story for peer counselors:.Entitled: Finding Meaningful Work, this event will stream online on Solano County’s Facebook Page . Check it out from 10-12;00! On Thursday May 14th and May 21st I will present my six hour training from 9am-noon. This training has developed out of twelve years from running professional group therapy as a survivor. From these group experiences I have developed an eight-part definition of psychosis that will help supporters explore associated experiences with a sense of direction and a sense of what is helpful. I am available to come train your organization and hope to be able to sell this webinar on my website. I have spent recent weeks refining my training and story telling so posts on my blog have been fewer in number. Still my most recent post: How to Validate Conspiracy When Working with People in Extreme States of Psychosis has been my most viewed post. I also published a post in the Better Because Project that may be viewed on my site, entitled: A Different Kind of Worker: I have also opened my practice and am very busy with teletherapy five days a week at Highland Hospital.

The post TWO TRAININGS appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

When I took the job at the Housing Authority facility dubbed the “Hotel of Horrors” in the local media, I thought I was on a mission from god. 

The weekend before I started the job, I took a spiritual retreat with the Quaker community I frequented. Out on an island on the Puget Sound, in a quaint room, I told a small group of my cohorts that I was following a spiritual calling by taking this job. Maybe that’s just how I dealt with my nerves.

Everybody at the community mental health center where I worked was far too afraid to take a job there. 

I was a master’s level professional. I was able-bodied and good at helping others. I knew that trying to “save” a community was risky. But I did not imagine what I was about to endure.

***

Years earlier, in college, I’d moved to the inner-city in Camden, New Jersey to hide a history of male anorexia.

In the beginning of my senior year, I had to take a semester off because of a mental health crisis. An observant resident of my apartment complex introduced herself to me upon my return from the hospital as if she knew what was going on with me. Her name was Cece. 

Like me, Cece was a fish out of water in the inner-city, entirely alone, surviving amid the roaches. She admitted to a history of shooting heroin in her toes. She knew a lot about psychiatric meds and liked to recommend different medications to me often second guessing my doctors. She had been on all of them!  Now she was on social security, clean, and was seeking employment. 

At the same time I started to get invited out with a group of my fellow students who all commuted in from the suburbs. The leader of this clique was an English student who wanted to help me out in spite of my hospitalization. He would go to law school and use my rental history to establish a bachelor pad for four of us. I was invited to go out with the group, but they made it clear, I was not to bring Cece. 

A year later I was living with the suburban clique and I received a call from Cece. She found a job at a photography store and had managed to get off social security. I had just landed a job in a mental health clinic and was starting my master’s program. Somehow, Cece found out my work number and called me. 

“You are getting ready to do things that are really wrong, but that’s okay, I forgive you.”

What a wise intervention that was! Indeed, I felt bad about leaving her behind. At my new job I’d have to follow the lead of my supervisor who seemed to demean the clients. Cece was right: I’d surely done wrong, and I was fixing to do a lot more that I didn’t feel was right. 

It was the psychopharmacology craze of the nineties and I learned to see schizophrenia as a medical problem that just required medication. I distracted myself from feelings of guilt by chasing connections with fellow students in my master’s program and holding on to the bachelor pad clique. Maybe curing my loneliness, and tendency to get scapegoated by suburbanites, really was as simple as a complex cocktail of four medications. 

To my credit, I worked hard and went the extra mile to help the people coming to the clinic where I worked. And as I got credentials, I took more risks and made more effort to do the right thing. 

Once I successfully graduated, I left it all behind and moved to the west coast. 

***

So, as I was on my mission from god and entering the “Hotel of Horrors,” I pledged to only do what I felt was right. 

In six months there I saw doors torn off of hinges by thugs in broad daylight. I saw addicts get stabbed and nothing done about it. I saw vulnerable residents get hauled off to jail when they were bullied into using their apartments for drug deals. Mostly, the police only came around to take a barricaded paranoid resident off to the hospital because he refused to pay rent.

I did a lot to support vulnerable clients. I met with local advocates. I leaked stories to the media. My job was threatened. When a resident without an addiction ended up dead from a heroin overdose I was suspicious. I arranged for a young newspaper reporter to investigate. I stopped taking my medication.

“One time we had a social worker come down here like you and try to straighten out this mess,” a resident told me. “They told him to stop but he wouldn’t. He ended up having to move down here with us. I just don’t want that to happen to you!”

I started to get a sense of connection. All parts of my life were in play. Had I heard those words for a reason? Were they a threat! I was getting scared. 

I tried to escape to Canada, but I was followed and harassed by police. My parents had put out a missing-persons report so the police were initially violent with me. I believed that they were trying to trap me in a hospital and went to great lengths to resist.  Finally, I surrendered.

Being confined to Montana State Hospital for three months was a lot to go through. Two months in, I was transferred to the chronic unit which was barely heated above freezing and over-crowded. When I finally got discharged to the streets, I purchased a Greyhound bus pass to Fresno California.

***

When I ran out of medication, I lost my low-wage job. I couldn’t seem to find another job and, with my money dwindling, my family arranged a job for me if I moved to the Bay Area. If I didn’t take the job, I was on my own. 

It was quite a coincidence because I had decided that my family was a mafia family, and the job they arranged for me was at an Italian deli. I kept the deli job for close to a year before I agreed to go back on medication and try to return to working in mental health.

Returning to my former career wasn’t easy though. I had to bike twenty miles plus take the rails for two hours just to get to my job at the deli and back. Customers and co-workers targeted and humiliated me; they seemed to know things about me they shouldn’t. I ran into residents I recognized from Seattle on my way to work who sat next to me on the train. Every day there were signs I was being followed. Sometimes it seemed that I would be the only person who could recognize the signs, but they were always there. One day the police tailed me in the car I managed to acquire.

When I started back on medication the following continued, but I was better able to ignore it.  Eventually, I was able to get hired away from the deli and back into a mental health position.

For me, it took being diagnosed a schizophrenic to finally realize that just because I am an educated rich kid who knows how to write billable notes, I am not any better. I never fit in with the graduate students that went on to populate suburbia, I was a better fit with my inner-city neighbor, Cece.

Now, I am grateful for all I went through. 

I have found so much meaning in my work in the seventeen years since I returned to working in mental health. It took me six years to start to disclose my history. Then, I started psychosis focus groups and looking for a systematic way of redefining psychosis. I have really appreciated my privilege of working and being innovative to get results that might not have happened if I didn’t know that recovery was real.

I still take medication, but I would never do something like leaving Cece behind again. Instead, I am opening up a practice that aims to help people like her rise above a hopeless mental health system.

I feel for people who work in mental health and believe schizophrenia is just a medical disease that entitles mental health workers to their salary and power. I would be so burnt out and uncaring if I still believed that to be true. I am grateful that I have learned to be a different kind of worker.

This was published in the Better Because Project!

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The post A Different Kind of Worker appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

When in the throes of what is commonly termed a “psychotic break,” people often become focused on good and evil causing interpersonal friction. Whether you are a parent, therapist, spouse, or a friend or colleague this can translate in you being viewed as evil. Perhaps, this projection is not a comfortable feeling for a supporter to sit with.

Often, providers and family members are systematically trained not to go down the rabbit hole with the subject. Often the rationale for this is that we do not reinforce the delusions. Many people think this is a sign of good boundaries. But I am writing today to primarily wonder if this strategy is little more than a just a systematic fear reaction. Those who go down the rabbit hole may get pinpointed as being the root of all evil! Perhaps it is reactive fear of this that prevent us from learning about what our loved one is experiencing.

Case in point, I regularly go down the rabbit hole with people at the inner-city clinic where I work. When I do so, I share my own history of being diagnosed with a schizophrenia disorder. I also share associated stories. I often find myself the subject of being assessed for evil. Sometimes it can be hard to get out without becoming a villain. Occasionally I get a person who concludes that I am the head of their persecution system.

Remembering that there are Good Reasons I May Get Called the Cap Villain:

There are many reasons I might be singled out as a Cap Villain. Sometimes, I come from a different race and class background than many of the people I work with. One could rightly argue that my approach to establishing rapport is different and that makes me suspect. Also, it is arguable that it is my karma that causes me to get placed in such a villainous position. I once thought my father was the cap villain and now it is my turn.

When I become the cap villain, I know I need to work, but believe that I am in a particularly good position to do a lot of good. I personally feel I am lucky am I to be given the chance to do this valuable work?

Perhaps there are reasons for my good fortune. I have advantages that people who haven’t experienced what it is like to be in a break don’t. Maybe that’s why I am so eager to break the mold and jump down the rabbit hole. Of course, there could be other reasons to fear the rabbit hole, but still I wonder if sometimes it might be fear of the conclusion that you are pure evil that keeps people from learning about their loved one’s experiences?

As a survivor, I have advantages.  I know some of the language of “psychosis” and am able to occasionally anticipate from where a person is coming. Perhaps it is because many conscientious family members can do similar things that some people in crisis come to believe their loved ones are evil. Maybe it seems like if you go down the rabbit hole you are only going to get false accusations and hatred. That’s why I am here to embolden you.

How I Respond as A Clinician:

When I sense it is going down, I tell myself that this may mean I am one of the safer people the person has experienced who can communicate with them in their language. I tell myself that a high percentage of providers and family members avoid going down the rabbit hole because they fear or distain being viewed as evil. I remind myself that the unfortunate result is that the persons experiences are presumed to bear no semblance of meaning. We all have good and evil in us, why fear if someone has insight into our evil side?

Still it is hard to do. Sure no one wants someone in a profound state of knowing to hold them in contempt over things they cannot control. It’s uncomfortable, I get it. I have had victims of sexual abuse see visions of me having sex and get mad at me in front of a group of people. It’s hard not to feel embarrassed or defensive. It can feel like I am personally threatened by such an accusation.

But maybe that person is viewing that for a real reason that we can’t understand easily. And if they don’t have a space to work these things out, they will have to live under their explanation for why it happened in silence without support.

The tendency to get defensive and take it personally may be particularly painful for loved ones who revere the person and fear they have done a bad parenting job. But if you can remember to try to feel good about it, perhaps it becomes an opportunity.

As a survivor who sometimes knows how my patients feel, I am constantly trying to absolve myself from having done things that hurt the person, like making a living off their poverty. I remind myself that it is possible that a lot of good can be achieved if I hang in there. I think if I don’t, I become just a cog in the mental health wheel and it becomes less likely the person will benefit.

Things I Look to Accomplish:

I look to the survivor to test me to see if they are accurate. If I see them testing me, I do my best to pass the tests. I pass test by being good, healthy and supportive to them. I will do so repeatedly until I get it right if I need to.

When I am open and curious, I can pass the trust tests they may put upon me. I hope that by proving to the person that I am not defensive and that I want to learn about the evil within me so that I might change it I think that when I do that the survivor will be challenged to realize that the whole world is not against them.

In contrast, if I am defensive and reality test and am righteous about my world entitlements to not be abused in such a way, I believe I am likely to reinforce the vileness of my position as the cap villain. I believe this does make the situation worse and might cause a lasting rift in the relationship.

When someone holds on to their views of you over time and you are not able to wiggle out in such a gentle manner, it is important to remember that you don’t know what they are experiencing. It is a good idea to inquire and respect that what they are experiencing is real and valid for some reason.

Remember that those experiences may rear up from real hardships that the person is going through. Consider what else might be going on to cause a spike in your level of evilness. Perhaps the participant is being neglected over the holidays, or there is neglect in the board and care home, or there is a grief anniversary of a deceased love one. Perhaps, then, instead of being defensive, I can try to be compassionate about the source of the disturbance. I try to share this compassion non-verbally first and foremost and then verbally if it is working.

Reflections on What I Went Through that Support This Process

I remember that in my crisis my father was the head of the mafia that was tormenting me. It is true I accused him of things for which he was not responsible. It was also true that he had done things to me when I was younger that I was ailing from; and yet he was the safest person in my world both as a child and within the dimension of reality I was enduring.

See, in the dimension of reality that I was living in, people were really corrupt, dangerous and guilty. I do still believe there were people like that for real. In my mind at the time they became my father’s minions. Blaming or holding them accountable for the hell I was enduring simply was not an option. If I did confront them, in reality they may have seriously harmed me. And ultimately in my journey I needed to forgive them and be friends with them again. I often observed consequences for blaming things on my Dad. Sometimes they came directly from him.

I feel bad for taking things out on my father, but I also faced a lot of real threat and abuse and I needed to express it to someone. Maybe I pinned everything on him because I thought unconsciously that I might best be able to work it out with him.

I try to remember how I was truly appalled when my father would get defensive and yell at me. They were real low points and I will forever remember how hideous I felt. Feeling alone, pissed, and righteous only made me shut him out longer.

Working Things Out with My Father:

I still feel that my father did have real power and responsibility for me and when I had a break. He did somethings that were right. He flew all the way out to Montana to see me. But when that did little to impress me, he didn’t believe a word I said. I told him things that I knew for a fact were true and they didn’t matter. This strengthened my conviction that he was a mob boss. When he thus sided with the establishment, it gave me gumption for staying away and avoid him longer.

My father did call out a missing-persons report on me and then did not want me to leave the horrific institutional living in which I was confined. He suggested that the same thing would happen to me again if I was set free. That was power he had, and using it the way he did was not helpful.

I ended up homeless and destitute and indentured to low wage work for a year. In the process he did step in and support me again. The time we spent together really did matter! The real connection we have did function as a reality check to me. Somehow, we both had to change and we were able to do so.

Eventually, over time we were able to get it right. But if my father hadn’t persisted to support me in my efforts, I might not have changed my mind about what was going on with me. And from my vantage point it was often I who took the lead to change my negativity toward him. This helped us work together again. I also might not have been willing to take medication which helped me with the process of changing my mind.

Understanding Why Your Loved Ones View of Good and Evil Has Amplified:

As I mentioned initially, already the issue of good and evil is amplified naturally by special message experiences which some find to be spiritual, and others find to be responses to trauma. I believe unpacking those stories and getting people to teach you what they have learned about good and evil is important.

Consider that in modern civilization, many with special messages spiritual connection have their experiences defined in mental hospitals as illness. The result can become a profound mistrust of power and a struggle against the power structure that wants to institutionalize them. Suddenly the world becomes full of evil people. People in institutions may seem to nullify all gifts and abilities. When there is a sense of interconnection, and loved ones have initiated institutional care, evil is more likely to be projected onto the loved ones.

Let’s not forget that the institutional system may be traumatic and violent at times, thus, amplifying an amplified process. In many locales, public institutions seem to purposely show people in crisis the door to institutional living as if to say: this is what will happen to you if you don’t shape up.

It can be argued that institutions are set up this way because they aim at curbing behavior. Of course, how the person takes the “treatment” is different for each of us. Additionally, different staff people use punitive, irrational interventions in unique manners some for the better and some for the worse.

Don’t Take it Personal, Explore and Work it Out!

Unfortunately, I cannot tell you what your loved one may be thinking of you and whether they have ways they are correct and ways they aren’t. In this blog I have tried to speak for myself and how I navigate these dilemmas as a patient and a therapist.

When I was in crisis, I was told by my therapist to avoid the issue of good and evil so I wouldn’t be crazy! It was true, I didn’t think she was a very good person to me when I was vulnerable. I listened to her and honored her keeping my true feelings buried. It did lead to recovery.

But I don’t deal with that therapist anymore! To her credit, she did encourage me to write. Perhaps she would change her mind if she knew how I had to write about her to recover from the treatment. Ultimately in my world, I escaped the control of my cap villain and went on with my life.

But moving forward I encourage loved ones and therapists who want to be supportive instead of a thorn, to explore what they’ve done with an open mind and learn about whether it was good or evil. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It is only good and evil. We all have the capacity to do both. If you do a good job you will get the truth. If you do a poor one you will get fake answers.

Keep exploring even if all answers are fake. That can be part of the work that may not happen if you don’t persist over time.

The post What Do You Do When Your Loved One Thinks You Are Evil? 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.

The post The Crossings of 2 American Shamenz appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

In my experience, people who survive psychosis are very diverse! There are many routes to recovery and many different tools used along the way to get there. Indeed, recovery looks very different for one person than it does for another.

For forty years, most everywhere in America there has been one treatment option that is forced on everyone: medication and psychiatric incarceration.

It is already clear that these imposed methods of suppression rarely work Most of us who do survive them are quick to condemn them. They often seem set up presuming that institutional board and care living is the inevitable outcome.

Maybe you’ve heard it said this works for a small 25% percent of us. Likewise, you might have also heard it said that 50% take ten years in treatment to find recovery. Then, there is the 25% that supposedly decline until they die. With these generalizations and with fear of permanent institutionalization and associated stereotypes, the effort to suppress experiences begins.

With suppression as the cultural expectation, it is well known that our brothers and sisters die an average of twenty-five years earlier than their counterparts.

Person-First Care Rather Than Best Practice:

However, I am writing today to encourage myself and other survivors and providers to approach any psychosis with curiosity and do more learning than we do teaching what works for us. We will review many new strategies and innovations aimed at aiding and/or overcoming suppression. These new methods are introduced and promoted all the time, often by survivors. They may be good points of learning, but I am arguing today that each are merely strategies to consider.

I feel like many survivors and providers are encouraged to flout what works for them or what the research says, like the path to recovery is a world religion. I think this leads more to crusading factions than highlighting the collective wisdom. Meanwhile there are vastly different social systems, structures, and barriers that can get in the way. We will explore these as well. People who are in crisis come with vastly different needs and resources.

American Best Practices 

Currently, in Oakland CA, local administrators have explored researched alternatives like the vocational individualized placement services model, the housing first model, corporate peer counseling route, motivational interviewing (which is primarily used for substance abuse,) and CBT for psychosis as means of curing psychosis.

At agencies, providers are trained, often early in their mental health careers, in one or two of these best practices that will help people suppress and control symptoms.

Still, there can be a lingering sense of confusion when providers observe the behavior of people who experience “psychosis.” Many of us would rather be understood and listened to instead of having a researched alternative imposed. Still, I’d argue that there is no such thing as a simple formula or panacea best practice that will work for every individual.

I must admit that I believe that competing to establish and spread a best practice is the way to be most certain to sell out vast groups of people who have endured psychosis. In the competitive market of best practice, it is all about research and appropriations of money. I have seen this mentality ruin systems. Instead, if providers put the person first, they may utilize the researched method when it is needed, instead of imposing it because the system says so. If such care was taken by all of us, things would be a lot better.

An Alternative to the Suppression:

One thing I’ve learned about from listening to the radio and talking to some fellow survivors is the “new technology” ketamine or MMDA treatments. These types of interventions arguably use the reverse strategy to suppression that is available through incarceration and medication. I think they are beginning to provide alternative routes to healing that is appealing to some who have been harmed by incarceration and imposed psychotropic interventions. This route to healing which was suppressed in the sixties by the misuse of LSD in the counterculture, is being revitalized by people who responsibly micro-dose.

As I’ve listened to friends describe how this works for them. I must admit, I sometimes think of it is a strategy that can be done with or without chemical intervention. However, when the surrounding community expects suppression, hallucinogenic drugs give participants the permission to explore and lose their fear of psychosis. I have heard this helps normalize it and enables the exploration of meaning and self-understanding. Perhaps doing so helps them understand their conflicts and heal from the dilemmas that are beneath the surface. These then can be solved and great progress can be made.

I advocate letting people chose their route to recovery. I personally use psychotropics to help me function through abuse and chaos. Not all survivors need or are willing to do this and I think that is great. I think therapeutic hallucinogens are a valid way of responsibly addressing the problem. I don’t think one is superior to the other. I tend to resent notions that one recovery is superior to another.

From my perspective, recovery, like child-birth, is beautiful when it’s natural; but that may not be possible for everyone. Med free environments of the seventies like Soteria House worked for many and should not have been closed by the AMA, but they didn’t work for everyone. Med free environments are an alternative about which American propaganda program us to forget. We don’t walk around denigrating people whose mother’s used epidurals and had c-sections ranking our social structure accordingly.

Maybe we should! Our current system of rank is so in shambles, denigrating so many to homeless encampments!

Neocolonial Best Practices:

These days there are some new best practices that challenge the medicate and incarcerate model seem to come from European regimes that are built on vastly different norms. Open Dialogue and Hearing Voices Network support groups are examples of such potential best practices. One might argue they operate on superior notions of humanity than the libertarian democrazy that is currently assaulting American institutions. While also offering important alternatives to suppression, I aim to argue that mindlessly treating them as best practices that can be imported to distinct American regions can be problematic.

I call them neocolonial because there is still a need to vastly know the foundations of the local culture which includes the diaspora of migration to take the ideas that have worked elsewhere.

Indeed, many Americans have migrated from third world countries where social structures target neurodiversity in much less repressive manners than our medicalized way of addressing things. I ask: might it make sense to learn from those cultures as much as we learn from Europe. I think migrant communities offer a lifestyle that is extremely different and those cultures need to be understood and adjusted to before we impose Eurocentric practice on them. Particularly when we are working with those enduring the horrific repression of migration going on in libertarian America learning more about a person’s history is very important!

Factors that Complicate the Matter:

In America, different states and counties set up their instruments of suppression very differently! State laws develop vastly different norms in terms of length of conservatorship, intent of money-making industries, and the amount of resources that hurting families or communities have to spend.

It’s arguable that county hospitals are modeled after the needs of the prevailing ethos of the location. In other words, there may be gross generalizations that are made about the subject’s race, class, and support needs.

For example, I have heard it said our local psych ER is currently adjusting in the direction toward teaching homeless people to suppress their symptoms. This is because that is the dominant community norm as displacement is going on in Oakland is increasing struggles with mental health among the poor. ER workers may do their best but the structure is set elsewhere by people with other agendas responding perhaps to undisclosed libertarian agendas.

Supplant a person from a different class or race into this learning environment and there becomes significant potential for trauma for that person who essentially told: this is what you have to look forward to if you fail to suppress.

Considering Your Audience and Adjusting Your Practices:

If a person has experienced ten years of American institutionalization in the inner city there is a lot of hope in helping them! However, the order and emphasis of eclectic strategies may indeed be different than they are going to be when working with the College Kid who endures a first break.

Learning to work with each is so worthwhile. Why fight for the needs of one over the other? Setting up services according to researched, best practice narratives leaves an impression on young mental health workers and too many utilize the method it without being curious of the persons experiences that lie beneath the surface.

Why claim there is only one best practice strategy that works for all people. People who deal with psychosis have had very different life experiences and lived through different sectors of society!

For example, now we have the best practice, CBT for Psychosis that gets emphasized in early prevention programs. Let’s say a worker gets trained in CBT for Psychosis at a conference from an early prevention program, but is working with clients who have been institutionalized for ten years and live in tent encampments. It may be that the efforts to teach rational skills and reduce distorted thinking needs to be tweaked. Try taking rational entitlement to a board and care, state hospital, homeless shelter, or another institutionalized environment! In such setting there is a clear ethos of victim blaming and stigma that exist. I believe many is such setting will find rationality to be useless there. It may be there are other good strategies that might help.

One such practice I have developed in my eleven years of running groups amid urban institutionalization is what I call special message mindfulness. This involves becoming more aware of the experiences you’ve had that make you think about conspiracies and letting those experiences go by talking about them. While this won’t work for everyone, I have used it as a strategy for getting people to share their stories of psychosis openly.

In reality, I believe both CBT and Message Mindfulness strategies are valuable and may be needed at different times in different ways with different people.

Indeed, using experiences in group, I have started documenting a host of eclectic strategies in addition to mindfulness strategies. I’d consider such strategies to include spiritual, cultural, behavioral, and narrative wisdom.

Eclectic strategies are available for study here.

In fact, people who experience psychosis have endured different levels of abuse. Cognitive therapy may work for those with lower levels of dissociation and abuse, but other strategies might be needed or introduced first for people who cannot control their thoughts because of histories of dissociation and ongoing trauma.

Using Smart People to Adjust Eclectic Strategies:

In my limited experience navigating the podcast world, I learned about a woman out of Tacoma Washington who studied Open Dialogue in the Netherlands and implanted it into her system of care. I admire this kind of effort greatly, though I know very little about what she did or how to do it myself. I work primarily out of East Oakland and feel that integrating such concepts would be very different with the system and resources available to residents here.

Because I work primarily with older people who have lost their family support it has not been something I have explored. I’ve tended instead toward the Hearing Voices Network movement.

But to be clear, I would not want that person in Tacoma to teach me the principles of her system of care and hold me accountable to her fidelity measures in East Oakland. I think that concept is point blank ridiculous.

I think the survivor community needs to focus less on preserving the integrity of a foreign model, and more on creating an inclusive community across all social divides that explores the strength of the local culture and their local history and intervene in vastly different manners.

My Perception of Infighting that Persists

Among those of us who survive psychosis and try to set up support services, significant infighting can happen. Perhaps this happens because each believes their route to recovery is the way to go. We all can easily forget that we come from different social backgrounds. Perhaps other survivors do not experience this to the extent that I have. I get repeatedly attacked by other survivors because my views about what helps are different than their views.

When I first found out that other survivors exist, I presumed that I would finally find a home where I would be welcomed. While this does seem to happen for some, it certainly hasn’t worked that way for me. In fact, I have endured what I consider to be many attacks from other survivors.

This has been a shame for me. I also struggle with CPTSD and get very triggered when people flout their best practice or way of being. To someone like me, it really is already hard being out as a person with lived experience facing discrimination and slights from people who make projections upon me when they hear I have a psychiatric history. But the survivor community too has hurt me in ways that keep me withdrawn and writing.

They say time heals all wounds. They say lots of things. They still say research is necessary to deliver recovery.

I still say survivors and providers are diverse and require unique and eclectic methods. When I study my own recovery, I realize I utilized many of the strategies referenced here instead of trusting the psychiatric incarceration and medication that was offered in the system.

The post Why Eclectic Strategies Are Important When Working with Psychosis appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".