Okay so creating an online course these days is quite the rage these days. Every entrepreneur and their cousin are out to sell you an online course. Therapists are becoming coaches and selling courses so they don’t get trapped in the therapy mill. I must say that fifteen years ago when I started work on building my course, I didn’t anticipate all this rage. I didn’t know about creating funnels and email campaigns and perfecting an evergreen project that I could sell. I didn’t know about testing it out on my audience and making sure that it will sell etcetera.

Writing my award-winning memoir has taught me the importance of marketing. It never occurred to me during all those rewrites that I would get to the end of the project and find that no one cared about me, my story, or my awards. I did what I could to build a writing platform so I could market the book in spite of this. I blogged for years, built my website blogged three more years, and the results: maybe three books sold off my website.

It’s true my frustration about the futility of this effort did start to make it into a few of my blog posts. I recognized that I was feeling negative and putting out stuff that was attracting nothing but negative. I retreated and licked my wounds and finished my course.

Now thanks to Facebook I am learning that I need to go through a process so I can create a business so that I can sell my course.

I remember fondly days when I was writing my book and learning to present my training. There were some good times.

I remember one year I stood in front of an attentive crowd at a CASRA Spring Conference. I was explaining how it had seemed to me like the traffic lights were getting messed with to set me up to be late to the conference. I was explaining that I had to stay cool and not become emotionally impacted by these thoughts as I had in the past when I thought I was being harassed by the Italian Mafia. Right when I said the word mafia, smoke started filling the room. I recognized this as the likely work of a smoke bomb in the air conditioning vents. The hotel workers suggested maybe the air conditioning was broken. The room was forced to evacuate, and a woman looked at me through the smoke and said that that was real smoke coming out of the vents. Believe it or not, I knew that the smoke was real! I laughed.

Determined to finish the presentation we found a new room and got through what I had prepared. In fact, I got very good feedback for the hour and a half presentations year after year. I learned that I had to get comfortable and be myself in front of the crowd.

The online course I have created is approximately twelve hours. I plan to run it a few times with about ten participants. I hope to be able to do this over the summer.

Because there are a lot of moving parts to creating an evergreen course that will sell, I am shopping for a coach who can tell me what I have to do. It seems key to finally building an online audience so the same thing that happened with my book does not repeat itself. I know I am needing to find a way to get more support on social media. That might mean having to come out of my shell a bit more because blogging didn’t work. So I have to get someone to teach me how to do this.

January 25^th at 3:32 am I got messaged on messenger by someone I must have accidently friended. It reads”

Illuminati Invitation

Based on the membership criterion of the illuminati,

we find you are of great interest in possession of a good

manual dexterity and academic proficiency. With this,

we look at you as the class that will be the platform for

which you stand to meet the wealthy people who can raise you

to wealth, power, fame, and glory. I strongly

recommend that you join us in the illuminati.

Joining us you become wealthy and live the life you desire.

Do you accept the offer?

Now if you are thinking I don’t have to hire a coach and jump through internet hoops to get my presentation out there, then you don’t know me very well. A month and a day after I received this message, this man named Larke followed up and I still haven’t answered.

Sure, one could argue, all I really must do is keep quiet and accept wealth and power and find out if the illuminati is real by having a conversation with Larke. But clearly, I believe in transparency and no secrets. I have tried to avoid belonging to secret societies as much as possible. Being part of a treatment team at my job is bad enough. Joining the illuminati takes belonging to a secret society to a new level.

Sure, I want people to read and consider what I have to say, but I feel I have been harassed by secret societies in the past, I don’t want to join that which nearly broke me and ruined my life. I was told that I had schizophrenia, would need treatment the rest of my life, and that I could not be cured. I believe I lived the life of a modern-day indentured servant, and no one cared or believed that what I went through was real. I wrote a book that got some good reviews, but still people didn’t care. Many people I knew judged me. I guess many prefer to use words like sick or crazy to describe me.

So I choose to ignore the Facebook message I got from a man named Larke. I just keep trying to do what I believe is needed to get my work out there. But all this effort suffering and hurt that I have gone through feeling invisible continues because I am stubborn. The whole thing makes me feel the world is fake and stupid.

To learn more about my course click here.

The post My Plans Moving Forward . . .To Evade the Illuminati appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

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".

Readers may have noticed that my productivity on my blog has decreased in recent months.

Over the past couple of years, the community mental health program where I have worked for seventeen and a half years has undergone change. This has been a significant source of grief for me as the community has lost six full-time therapists and half of its community members over that last couple of years.

I have had the need to write my way through some of these work challenges. I tend to write about what I am going through and have done so in two unpublished blogs. In these blogs I have sorted through my feelings and experiences at work. Until I sort through my professional plans and see what is going to happen at my job, I think it is best to keep these thoughts and reflections to myself.

About a year ago, I cut my hours at the job and opened up a part time private practice. I currently have no shortage of referrals and feel guilty about the long list of potential clients that sit on my wait-list. However, I am very bonded and committed to the relationships I have that remain in the community mental health program.

Last week I finally learned of a change in management. The new management wants to rebuild the program and is far more transparent about their intentions. However, changing horses in midstream will not be easy and I am fearful about what will transpire. Already top-down decisions are being implemented that may not be well received by those on the bottom.

I anticipate that my heart will continue to break in new and accelerated manners as new changes start to unfurl. Rebooting the program may change relationships and require new procedures. If it fails to work, our jobs could get cut. I hope things get better, not worse.

The Future:

Operating a private practice and being my own boss has never been my end game. A part of me wants to stay connected to community mental health. It has taken me a long time to learn how to really work with people and provide quality mutual services. I am a healer and I want to see reforms that enable me to improve recovery and justice for people. I constantly am learning about things like politics that bog down the process and do not work.

I wrote this on the fourth of July. I sit today a week later rewriting and lamenting about what I am meant to do.

Preparing to Put More Time into my Training:

I also am in the process of negotiating a deal with a local peer agency that would help me provide my training in ten session increments as a new source of income.

I will likely be turning away from publishing blogs and turning toward fixing up my six-hour PowerPoint. I hope to make the slides a bit prettier and add some interactive exercises that can be completed in a zoom format that will reinforce skills.

I am praying for optimal negotiations and a healthy experience.

The post Writer’s Block? appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

In my experience, being singled out and excluded from the discourse because I don’t fit in is what causes me most pain. It is taking me a long time to realize exactly how and why this happens to me repeatedly.

For me it is not a simple process. It seems to do with people who seek to manage me. My managers get internalized in my mind. I have had managers in my family, managers throughout my education, mangers in the mental health system, managers at work, managers amongst my peers, and most recently I have encountered managers in the recovery movement. Fundamentally, the needs of managers are about power and control. They define what is appropriate from what is not.

As a result, I opt to avoid power and control as much as I can.

I am not jealous that managers have the power and control. It’s just that the hurt that come from their use of it keeps smarting and preoccupying my neurodivergent mind.

It’s arguable that being excluded and politically marginalized is the very action that made me experience “psychosis” in the first place. And yet casting people out of the group is so often a cultural norm in the modern world. It can seem like if you don’t cast out a few misfits out you are likely to be seen as someone who fails to take care of yourself.

Throughout my life I have felt cast out. To get back in I have had to learn to work with managers who have tended to wrangle and control my behavior. I have never felt good enough to get noticed or acknowledged. And then, there is a part of me that is so angry about the whole process, that when I do get acknowledged, I have to fight not to want to spit at the manager in the face.

But this ultimately isn’t the story of what happens when I am cast of the ship, it is the story of trying to live a good life while the factions and politics that surround me seem to demonize and marginalize me. It’s about going to my managers and advocating for better treatment. It’s about assertively teaching them that they are wrong about me.

I’ve gone to great lengths to keep politics and factions out of my recovery. But what I’ve noticed is that others don’t. Therefore, after years of letting people play politics, and use factions against me, I am writing today to envision a different outcome. Indeed, this post is about knowing and accepting that these things will happen. It is ultimately about letting it happen and then confronting those who have done this with assertive self-advocacy.

We All Have Trigger Words:

In dealing with experiences associated with psychosis, there are as many triggers. Even when I am out of emergency and able to function optimally, when I am not attentive to my work I may get struck with flashbacks. In fact, it can happen so frequently that I don’t notice that it is happening. I just feel dissociated and depressed. It is when I take care of myself later when I realize that the political hits I have taken actually hurt. It takes time to allow myself to feel and understand them.

It can feel like every managed group with which I associate slashes me. Just persisting and working through the politics and factions is a good thing. For me, there is the medical model unit where I work, and the family of origins relations are constantly surfacing. But the worst experience for me is when people in the recovery movement do it. I had so hoped it wouldn’t happen there, but it has yet again.

For many of us in the mad movement, the words normals use to define associated experiences are triggers. The word psychosis is one itself. I call it the “p” word and put it in quotes as often as I can. I do this because it is so misunderstood and misused that it triggers cultural delusions that are eugenic and ridiculous. And sure enough, it is a word that even if you use quotes around it, might trigger a manager to correct you. I have been corrected and told that madness is really a much better word to use than the “p” word.

There are a lot of trigger words in the “psychosis” community! There is the “d” word for delusions, the “h” word for hallucinations, the “s” word for schizophrenia. The ‘p” can stand for either psychosis or paranoia. All these word trigger misunderstanding and cultural delusions about the “psychosis” experience. A medicalized perspective is most commonly used.

We all have trigger words and we all do our best to deal with them. In some cases, we might use one to reclaim it or redefine it or craftily address a cultural delusion.

Case in point, one time I used the “d” word in the title of a post: “How to help when you think someone may be delusional.” It’s true I used the “d” word a number of times without quotes. I used it a lot and then I started to add quotes around it to accent the point. Some readers got it and responded that they too were triggered by the “d” word.

I had been fishing for mainstream people to read the article and come away from the post using quotes around the “d” word. However, it provoked the ire of a highly regarded speaker who confronted me that using the word delusional was stigmatizing. When I responded to his issue by identifying myself as a fellow survivor and accenting my intention, he was unimpressed leaving bitter and what seemed to me to be superior words.

A few weeks later, a local manager who I have helped and from whom I would like to get support for my work, proposed that we pay this international speaker to come and do a local training. At this point I learned the speaker uses the “p” word without quotes in a similar manner. As a result, my hurt and frustration have been thus compounded.

In this case it is because I have a training that has been well received in several contexts that my managers ignore. Additionally, in my mind paranoia is just as misused as delusional and psychosis and schizophrenic! Is it possible that he was really just trying to hurt and alienate me from his movement? Sometimes I feel like everybody I have known who are his colleagues have done the same thing. It is a small community. I suspect that people talk. Is it the “p” word starting up yet again, or is it a legitimate perspective?

Playing Politics and Creating Factions!

At some point we all have to get over our peeves and entitlements and move on with our lives. I think we can learn to do this. But we have to see what is happening and heal. We have to avoid joining in and slandering the person who has triggered us. It is best to collect our thoughts, practice using them, and consider addressing the person who is marginalizing us. Sometimes we have to make this a long-term project and repeatedly look for openings in which we can assert ourselves. Ultimately, when we are successful a sense of healing may ensue. Maybe we finally get the inclusion.

However, when we hurt, we may factionalize and fight over trigger words and who belongs in the tent. It starts to be about who has more friends, support and power. Maybe we want to follow the person with the higher degree, or the one who went to the more prestigious college. The number of factions in the mental health recovery movement are truly incredulous.

In the “psychosis” community alone, do we split up the voice hearers from those who are targeted individuals? Do we split up the people who learn to benefit from medication from those who reject it entirely? Do we then advocate for more socially acceptable remedies like cannabis? Do we look to kick out the people who don’t fit in and create norms that exclude? Do we separate those who have been on the streets from those who have chosen to live with their parents? Do we divide positive manic camp from the depressed, schizophrenic camp? Do we separate those who abuse substances from those who have been incarcerated and are on probation? Do we gaslight those we don’t like or who ask us challenging questions?

The answer to this question for many is to factionalize. “If black people want to form a group, for example, they can, “I have heard it said by the man’s colleagues. Is it not our responsibility to incorporate their cultural needs into the larger group? Indeed, that perspective is complicated.

It starts to be about how we manage who gets in our tent and who gets cast out. Every four years the nation gets into wars of rhetoric that get everyone divided. Right now, many of us are wondering if there will be a civil war based on mainstream propaganda and cultural delusions about white supremacy.

Understanding the Origins of the Trigger:

Indeed, this kind of issue takes me back to kindergarten which I had to repeat because I used the scissors backwards. Indeed, I would have been denied entrance into what has become in mind, the vile private school I attended; however, my parents both worked there.

I may have graduated cum laude fifteen years later, but they still tried to kick me out again my senior year. Even though my father, a top administrator, had left his position the teachers were divided about me. Some would argue that my spelling was atrocious. Some accused me of lying about how much time I spent doing homework. My mother was the reading teacher and yet I evaded her radar. Some may have been shocked about how low my PSAT scores were.

Maybe I just hadn’t eaten all day and just could not concentrate! I don’t remember.

I slept at tops four hours a night. I continued to achieve mostly A’s, work around the clock, organize community services, and play sports after school; but I stopped eating and landed in the hospital to avoid dying from anorexia.

I spent much of my 12^th grade year in and out of the hospital. I moved in with a friend and my room was converted to a study. My mother first called me an “asshole” and then I became a writer.

My first college essay was so good the school psychologist evaluated it and said I was on the verge of killing myself. This nearly got me re-hospitalized. I continued to re-write the essay and sent it out to spite the school, the psychologist and her husband, my English teacher. I got into some good colleges. I also got excluded from ones who didn’t approve. Meanwhile, I was starting to think college would be about more of the same bullshit. I hooked up with a twenty-five-year-old photojournalist and moved to attend school in an affordable inner-city.

It didn’t seem like I made these choices. They all just kind of fell into place. When the school lied and published that I was going to an expensive school in the yearbook, I vowed never to return. It didn’t take long for me to find myself alone in a roach infested apartment in the inner-city on all the holidays from work. I wrote.

A True Outcast:

I really don’t think anyone knows what it’s like to be outcasted until you’ve been homeless, jobless, and endlessly working for your survival while others project horrible generalizations upon you so they don’t have to feel guilty.

When I was in high school and college, I was exercising the privilege of telling the people who raised me to fuck off. Oh, how that privilege washes away when you go to low-wage, entry-level work to get your life back on track after losing everything.

I am talking about my recovery from psychosis. It was a privileged recovery albeit with white skin and family money, but there was a long-term state hospital, homelessness and a constant threat of being forced back into that lifestyle.

Mustering Up the Self-Advocacy:

Talking like this makes me repeatedly lose cultural capital among people who manage me. I have the sense that I am easy to marginalize politically. I feel like I have a different background and experience, so I am easy to disregard, slander and doubt. Many blame the victim even when they think they know better. They fall into becoming like a pack of dogs chasing a puppy in a dog park.

There comes a time when I must notice that not all managers are evil. There comes a time when I must find those few weak links in the chain and make appeals.

I think approaching the managers in a negative manner is not only hard to do, it is not always wise. Managers are renown for threatening us not to do that. Thus, it is a good thing I have internalized them in my head.

When I address a manager, I need to prepare myself. I will be asked for examples that illustrate the points I am making.

Because elements in my past have been traumatic, carrying in them underpinnings of sexual abuse and neglect, I tend to lose my ability to think when pressed for examples. When I am asked for examples or overtly mistreated, it can be hard to directly address it. When I don’t address it, people do have a way of talking and targeting.

Thus, even when the manager may be reasonable when pressed, I start out afraid. Understanding the patterns of abuse that repeat themselves takes me back to a misty October day around my third birthday. It is a memory I endlessly cannot access. But through writing I have accessed others that are significant.

Maybe it was that unremembered day, or maybe it was something else.

All I know is that I just was not able to live up to private school expectations when I was so hurt. Some days I remember nothing accept repeating patterns of marginalization.

Thus, hounded like dogs sniffing assholes, I need to remember that my body holds the trauma. Many do say it is all my fault because I am too nice. Maybe I deserve all the shit I’ve been put through because I am soft. But I am still on my way. Still, I am getting closer.

Writing so helps me prepare and honor what I’ve been through. All this work is there to help me assert myself. I must practice and run my concerns through my head and ask to have my needs met. I have to be like Tom Petty and tell them that I won’t back down.

Yes, the “D” word is bad, but so are the “P” words. Also rooting out difficult people and discarding them doesn’t fix everything when there is generational genocide and good old American inequality to muster through.

It really helps that I have reached a point where the person to whom I am asserting myself can no longer hurt me. And the manager I am dealing with is a lot more than just a comment on Facebook who may not have accurately read my post.

It helps that I have achieved a stable life that will persist regardless of what they do to me. When I was threatened with homelessness and underemployment. I just couldn’t do it, but now I can. Other people can project their stuff onto me and spread slander and refuse to say sorry, but they can’t put me out on the streets again. At least for a little while.

All the times I have been hurt, gaslit, rendered speechless, red faced and marginalized will be gone. I will assert my truth and ask the questions I need to know. I will pitch my work to my manager and ask for help and maybe it just won’t be as bad as I think.

One time recently I have done this and gotten the answer that I’ve always told myself to be true, but that was so hidden from the public. Successes can build on successes and can help me try again with the hopes that I might just might be granted that which I need. And if I don’t, I know what to do. I will return again and again steady and clear voiced and assert myself until I find my own dignity. Maybe when I realize that I can do this, the “they” will change their blaming mentality.

And I don’t need an ultimate confirmation that I or my work has value. Maybe I just need to assert myself in a new manner, Maybe I can learn something that can help me be successful.

When I can do this, the factions, the politics, the stigma will clear from out of my head and all unjust managers and control will fade into the background and I will feel a sense of relief. Maybe this will happen some day! And when it is my turn to cast someone out of the lifeboat, I just won’t do it no matter what “they” say.

The post Overcoming Factions, and Politics in My Recovery from Psychosis appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

Maintaining a sense of community support is precious when you struggle a history of exile. In my life words like “schizophrenia” and “anorexia” mixed with periods of institutional incarceration have resulted in alienation, trauma, and exile. It’s been twenty years since my most recent incarceration for “schizophrenia” and it remains very hard to find community support. I find the pattern of being othered replicates itself.

Healing from my most extreme experience of exile, “schizophrenia,” has involved outreach into many communities. I’d like to recommend community outreach because it’s been full of great experiences and rewards. But to be honest, although it is needed, it often results in repeated triggers that bring on emotional distress and familiar thinking patterns. Persisting has been very important as has finding ways to process those negative experiences and finding primary support.

Ultimately, I have learned to honor the communities where I have sensed safety and support that have enabled me to thrive and be authentic. These communities have enabled me to persist when I get triggered and feel othered. I am writing to share my perceptions about persisting through exile and to honor those places that have assisted in healing and soothing that sense of exile.

Starting with the Origins of Feeling Targeted:

This sense of exile I recently traced back in memory during an EMDR training. I remember being at a family friend’s farm and finding horns that fell off baby cattle. I remember being told that’s what happens to baby cattle as they grow, they lose their horns. It must have been Halloween, after my birthday at age of two or three. I remember the melancholy of feeling like one of those horns. The gray misty rain, the green pastures, the mud, the need to hold onto the horn that I identified with, those images have come back to me during periods of exile.

The family story is that the farm owner hid with me during hide and seek. No one could find us Otherwise I remember only traipses of what I presume to be the day. A glimpse into a crowded, festive room, the visual of a costumed witch, and the contrast, the grey, billowing fog, the misty rain.

I remember the owner asking me at a later point if I remember the day. I remember his sense of intensity. I remember feeling revolted when he touched my ass as I rode on his back. I remember feeling perplexed seeing him interact with his children who were far older than me.  I remain only suspicion about what may have happened.

The main reason I am suspicious is that I have recaptured other dissociated memories about other sex abuse events that went along with family stories. Those stories help explain behavior and actions that were always frowned upon. Clothing myself in the shower and refusing to let anyone see me in the buff, not sleeping for a year on end, starving, sacrificing myself for people I love, these actions would result in incarceration and labels.

Ultimately, I only have a sense that the intensity of my reactions against sex abuse goes back further. For example, I just can’t imagine that I would dissociate so easily fondled in a tub at the age of nine and later, to behave so cowardly at the age of seventeen in the face of an atrocity that I am not even sure is real.

Sense of Exile:

Because I was “so sensitive” and perhaps because I frowned in all the pictures taken of me, I was exiled from my family and the school community in which I was raised. Male anorexia ultimately had a lot to do with this. Who starves themselves like that? It diminished a great deal of constructive work! I stopped being seen.

However, when I trace my history back at the school there was always a sense of rejection. Always a good student, I was nearly not admitted because I cut paper in an unusual manner. Luckily my parents worked there and were willing to have me repeat a year. There were early reports of how I failed to connect with other kids. There was the year I spent a lot of time home and sick. There was the fact that the kids picked on and bullied me. When I rebelled against the other kids, I got sent to counseling. I got psychological testing.

My sense of exile was clear in my decision to thumb my nose at the private school expectations of an expensive collegiate utopia. They published that I was going to a good school in the yearbook, regardless. However, I chose a local inner-city commuter college campus where I could afford to divorce myself from my parent’s influence. I would end up creating the space to hide daily binging and purging. I studied and worked the whole time. I never wasted time to go to a single college party. I graduated with a 3.9 GPA.

I fought a sense of exile among my graduate school affiliates, but I fought for acceptance. I was exiled at most jobs and among my twenty-something associates. I moved west where I knew very few people.

Extracting Pockets of Support:

I write to highlight the importance of finding the places where I did find a sense of acceptance. I owe them gratitude and vie to give back. I have developed and survived in spite of exile. I am more fortunate than many in that I have a career and have developed a sense of primary support.

I was first hospitalized at Child Guidance Center with whom Salvador Minuchin termed “kids from the slums.” I am relieved to say that in the face of what I consider to be significant institutional abuse, I did find streetwise kids had more compassion and acceptance for me than cohorts at private school.

Likewise, in college, working under the table at an inner-city Korean owned deli fifty hours a week through the spank of summer, I was profoundly touched by the fact that the community accepted me. They didn’t care if I was skinny and afraid of food. Meanwhile support and acceptance from cohorts continued to elude me as I entered professional positions.

For the last eighteen years I have found support working for psychiatric patients in a psychiatric unit. It’s true I have been less likely to feel supported by colleagues who called the clients, “crazies” or have took action to have me removed. But once again in the face of institutional abuse, I found community members heard my stories once I grew secure enough to tell them. It was with the clientele community that my mindful spontaneity and facilitation skills developed. I may have been a disrespected droid at family reunions and mainstream events, but I found myself again in the hospital back ward.

Support in the community gives you that sense of being known, respected and belonging. It is an important part of healing and human development. And yet to promote safety, the nature of many communities is that they set standards of behavior or social discourse that govern that sense of belonging. I have found that being fond of and accepted in one context can preclude one from fitting into another.

The road to rediscovering that sense of belonging can certainly be a long and winding one!

The Exile that Resulted from Battling Institutional Hypocrisy:

When I moved to the west coast, I decided that the mainstream needed to know how homeless and disabled people suffer. I was setting up services in a notorious section 8 housing complex. I alerted the newspapers. While it’s arguable I had the experience and capacity to understand the consequences of this prior, I had been taught by a mainstream therapist that if I thought corruption was real, I was paranoid.

It was the era of the psychopharmacology professional and the psychotherapy establishment that monitored me fronted kindness, yet predicted that I would be in and out of the hospital the rest of my life to any semblance of family support system that remained.

My coping strategy was to ignore corruption and work hard in the face of it. Housing Authority officials tried to bribe me by offering me as many tickets as I wanted to a music festival. I didn’t want to be paranoid and think it was a bribe, so I turned around and invited the whole community of residents that they serviced. I requested over a hundred tickets for the residents and was given twenty-four.

I have since accepted that the uninvestigated killing that alarmed me go with the territory in housing authorities, inner-city, and poor-community realities. It’s taken me a long time to accept. I had to go homeless and be an indentured servant for some time.

In my view, we are all a part of perpetuating those realities and decisions. The lure of fast money and soldiering results in a steady stream of death that is not often noted. Many people understand the injustice that happens, but they also know it isn’t safe to shine a light on it. Those that do end up in prison, dead, or unable to find work.

With unobserved rage from getting beat up in the WTO Protest and feeling ashamed for having run away from an incestuous rape, I was one bad ass who didn’t care. I was like Serpico! When I was threatened and told that curiosity killed the cat, I retorted, “Yes, but the cat has nine lives!”

As I started to believe I was being followed, I stopped taking medication and started to understand corruption better. I reached out to my one remaining college friend with a nefarious history and he made a credible threat. Still, I didn’t believe him. I tried to escape to Canada and was intercepted by police.

In fact, they were following me. It’s just that no one believed me.

Understanding the Reality of How American Society Maintains Control:

Being kicked out of the circle or rejected by the majority of the group often gets perpetuated by group leaders who either volunteer or get paid to manage. They vie to control the business and stay in power via controlling behavior and negotiating norms.

Whether done by the FBI, social service employers, educators, unions, lawyers or heads of the family fortunes, crime ring bosses, managers will go to great lengths to control and shape your behavior regardless of laws and justice. I have come to believe that much of it is about maintaining cultural delusions about wealth and privilege.

Thus, people who refuse to conform are pushed out and exiled. This can happen easily if you are not corrupt and are targeted by the community. It can also happen if you are too corrupt and targeted.

People have ways of sniffing out your history of belonging or failure to do so. They may look at the color of your skin or your gender or manners, or friends and presume the culture and experiences you have be subjected to and decide if they want you around.

For example, I believe that as a social services worker, being a productive and effective healer and promoting justice is a good way to get targeted. Clinics are there to make money and control costs, and arguably to control people. Input a little healing, and you become a threat to some people with six figure salaries.

It seems a good way to frame this is that you must agree to toque reefer, but must agree not to toque too much of it. Toque too much and you become a burner or addict. No toque, and one becomes an exiled joke. I feel its arguable that this was the quintessential dilemma that governed acceptance in American culture during the X generation. When Bill Clinton said, “but I didn’t inhale,” it clarified a lot. He promoted the very large Housing Authority company, with whom I was contracted to work, as a model of urban development. I knew that but I still alerted the press.

I must admit that I presume the toque, no toque dilemma happens at many sleep-away colleges and other developmental institutions like the military. I avoided this stage of life by living in a roach infested apartment and working under the table. This way I could live skinny and heal without being further targeted and shamed for being a thin man.

Some Historical Context:

Maybe in other generations it was different. In American history at one point it was more about accepting slavery or genocide. To fit in, one must sip the tea. One must go corrupt, just not too much so. Thus, Thomas Jefferson was cool, but hid his pedophilia exploits so as not to go too far. That’s a real American hero, yeah! He got to coauthor the American Constitution.

Makes you wonder what the history books will say about this era? When law and order is about preserving the Jeffery Epstein way of life via the execution of black men in the inner city, you’ve got to wonder! Perhaps this is what America First is all about. Donald Trump did say he could kill someone down on some avenue in broad daylight and his supporters would still vote for him. I have to say, I think he knew what he was talking about.

On the other hand, I would suggest that Donald Trump is transparent about the realities of social control and the feudal oligarchy we have all stupidly called American democracy. All the defenders of the dumb shit authored by Thomas Jefferson and other feudal pimps really believe in the law and constitutional democracy. I work hard to expose lies and cultural delusions, but I sure hope they can protect us from the mind state of a fascist xenophobe.

Perhaps it all boils back to the quintessential American dilemma, do I toque reefer!

“Take it easy, but take it!” This odd quote extracted from one of the bizarre cinematographic dissociative sequences in the movie, Midnight Cowboy still eludes me all these years later. I still say, no.

People like me who repeatedly get exiled and cannot find community might struggle with a sense of shame, trauma and the ongoing exile of pain.

The Science of Trauma and Surviving Exile

Indeed, when we turn to advances in neuroscience to understand what heals trauma: we end up with several different sects about how to create safety and resources. Some proponents identify community support as being important. Thus, in my local EMDR sect, people or things that have served as wise, protective, or nurturing support emerge as necessary resources to address the unthinkable.

The basic concept is to take inventory of good relationships that have existed and create community that you can bring with you to revisit victimization and help you through can be very transformative. Of course, some of these relationships can be with mythical fictional characters or public figures like artists, tv personalities. Or (gulp) politicians who are admirable (if that is possible.) For example, I have realized that Midnight Cowboy’s character Joe Buck is a personal resource for me. “Well, I am not a for-real Cowboy, but I sure am one hell of a stud.”

Taking a deeper dive into resourcing, I am learning that there are many ways to create a safe environment. Indeed, sometimes using mindfulness techniques and meditations can help create safety between the therapist and client. Thus, creating safety can form the basis for community support.

Taking the risk to listen and reflect on what the person experiences might be and help them feel safe and in the window of tolerance when they revisit traumatic images like the gray billows of misty rain, the green pastures, the mud and the cow horns.

Using mindfulness exercises is another way to build resources and keep the person in the window of tolerance. Then, using desensitization or bilateral stimulation and encouraging the person to reprocess that trauma or sense of exile can give people the tools to broaden their sense of safety and sense of support.

The result is that the sense of exile does not get triggered and new community support becomes attainable. Thus, people who attack you politically don’t trigger you into that sense of exile. Thus, you remember the community that accepts you and you avoid the tendency to dissociate and withdraw.

Keep Persisting!

I believe powerful community managers of many sorts will continue to exile you if your experience does not fit the mold they want to see or the realities that they have championed and the power of their salaries. Hacienda owners will attack you with all the power they have when you have done nothing wrong. Maybe it all boils down to the fact that you just don’t want to toque reefer for them, I don’t know.

Ultimately being exiled from their community doesn’t mean you should give up. The more you persist and utilize those communities that do support you, even if they are just in spirit, the less power those community managers have to exile you.

Furthermore, as they treat you like you don’t matter, are invisible, are inferior or are deficient, it gives you the opportunity to practice healing in the face of your original form of exile. You persist and reprocess and perhaps continue to champion the communities of support that have in fact been there for you.

The past year and a half as the community of support that I have worked for has been under assault. Managers say the county wants to create a new system. I tend to see it as another gentrification, race and class war cloaked in mental health reform.

Managers threatened closure and there was a massive exodus of many of the competent counselors of color with lesser tenure. Additionally, the one manager who supported me, was removed from power. Many of the clients gave up their treatment.

Indeed, I have witnessed yet again top down change imposed on the community has been very devastating for community members. I have seen this happen repeatedly in the hacienda system.

I have tended to view many layers of mismanagement. Ultimately, I believe plans have shifted towards blaming the unit’s failings it on the workers and layoffs. The inequity of work is stunning. The atmosphere is: keep one’s productivity high, and get targeted. My theory is that it will make it harder to fire us if we are productive. I have persisted and prayed, but have started up a private practice to protect myself if the cuts in fact prevail.

This week there has been a strike and the power that has mismanaged and harmed the community is reportedly going to be replaced. I still don’t know what this is going to mean for the community.

I have kept my memory of inner-city support in my heart and fought to maintain my productivity. Perhaps I am only clinging on to a baby cow horn in the misty rain. I have documented the work of the community. I worked with them for twelve years to create my redefining “psychosis” therapy platform. They are its architects and they have always deserved better.

I could write about ways I feel blacklisted and betrayed, but I am persisting to maintain community with love in my heart. I feel so touched as to encourage the reader to keep reaching for new community! Things may change.

I believe in peer support and not in involuntary medication. I have fought for these changes for our community for years. I have brought in peer counselors and they worked well. But when change is imposed in a top down manner, communities dwindle and the point is missed. Let change happen regardless of which top down political fool got in the latest punch.

I have heard that my boss of many years who supported hard work and good client care, says, keep fighting. He seems to have come around on the issue of peer support in his years of knowing me.

Me, I am just persisting as I always have done. Perhaps one day all those communities that have seemed to be turned against me will change. Maybe I will recapture a memory and realize that I am truly delusional. Until then, I will continue to persist and call out our cultural delusions.

The post The Challenges of Finding Community Support When You Have A History of Exile appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

In the upcoming months I will be doing a number of training/workshops that I wanted my supporters to know about.

First I will participate in a panel discussion in a panel discussion at UCSF from 10-11:30 on Wednesday, September 9th representing the hearing voices network perspective.

Then, later the same day I will be utilizing some portion of the short version of my training to clinical staff at Community Forward San Francisco along with a colleague from the BAHVN, Heather Riemer.

At work, on Friday September 18, I will provide a brief, hour long didactic training  from 1-2 to doctoral interns who work at Highland Hospital.

Then, October 8, thanks to zoom I will be presenting an hour of my training for a community group in Cincinnati Ohio.

Finally I am in negotiations with Morton Baker Hospital in Oakland to provide a full six-hour training to a small group that wants to start a Special Messages Program in the hospital.

At work I am transitioning down to three days a week as I am expanding my practice to include a yet-to-be-determined weekday. As a result, I am available for a limited time only to provide training to various agencies for free to help gain referrals for my practice.

As we all find ourselves confined by the COVID pandemic, there are many people who are struggling with special message crisis who need our help and support. Now it is easier than ever to get training out there. Do not hesitate to contact me with your request.

Six Hour Format (click the image)

Intro Format (click the image)

The post Upcoming Training and Workshops appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

The Corona virus is shutting down our social institutions. Our streets are full of displaced people living in shelters or tent encampments. The Federal Government is steering services away from the poor and the elderly in ways that seem to be working. Sure, it’s affecting me, man! But I am still here, scheduled to lead three trainings on the subject of redefining psychosis.

These trainings are based on twelve years of experience running professional groups that explore psychosis. They have not yet been cancelled!

Yes, that’s right on 3/20, 5/6. And 5/20 I am scheduled to lead trainings that aim to impact the way our social workers, peers and educators meet and greet psychosis in the clinics and in the public. I argue that the working definition we have of psychosis is non-descriptive and that a new definition can highlight solutions and justify exploration and intervention.

And as I am preparing to open a private practice, I am willing to train local agencies and treatment teams for free. This is a limited time offer. If you have a heart condition, be forewarned!

Historically, clinicians are trained to avoid engaging with people when they are in an emergency state for fear of escalating symptoms. This workshop is intended to provide a road-map to the rabbit-hole. In other words, it redefines what is happening during a person’s journey through madness in a structured way that justifies intervention and highlights solutions.

I feel my training can help a supporter feel confident that listening and intervening has value and can be necessary to form an alliance that can help. Interventions and solution strategies that get suggested can be used at any stage of a person’s recovery to explore what is happening or what has been experienced.

Often the public struggles to know what is and isn’t helpful. These presentations will give attendees not only a better sense of what is helpful, but also hosts of strategies to consider using.

On 3/20, the Peer Support Services Networking Meeting of Solano County will be hosting the first section of my training. This has yet to be cancelled!

On 5/6, I will be presenting a workshop at the annual CASRA Conference that also will describe the introduction of my work. This has yet to be cancelled as well!

And finally, on 5/20 I will be presenting for six hours of continuing credit, the full Monty. This includes an eight-part definition that better describes what psychosis is like from the inside out and eight solution concepts that can help guide effective interventions. And, of course, this is a social engagement that has not yet been cancelled!

Have you too heard it said that insanity is doing the same thing time and time again and expecting different results?

We’ll have to wait and see.

Click Shop to schedule a training at your agency.

Also, check out this Interview that Deb Brasher from CASRA did with me to help promote that event.

Tim Dreby, LMFT Interview Redacted

Tim, could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be involved in the Special Messages Project?

I was working in Seattle at a section eight housing authority and I was astounded at how covered up people’s lives were.  I started to try to investigate and find out what was going on a little bit.  At the same time, I went off my medication, which I had been on for about seven years.  I started to feel this profound sense of connection and that things were related and that things weren’t coincidental.  I went through a bit of an emergency and was hospitalized for three months.  Then coming out, I had a little bit of money, but I was basically on the streets, trying to recoup and come back from that kind of situation.   That’s the part of my background that taught me about special messages.  A lot of my work has been opening up people’s stories and getting people to tell their story, how the stories work in concert with each other, and how to work through the experiences as a result.  Then learning from that and documenting some of the processes that I’ve seen going on and can relate to from my own story.

Could you define what the Special Messages Project is?

Absolutely.  Special messages are experiences that people have that lead to alternative ways of thinking.  The experiences can be things like voices.  Or extra sensory perceptions that are very bad.  It can also be things like an inner person.  It can be codes in letters and numbers.  They can be intuitions.  They can be premonitions.  It can be an assortment of things that give people information that other people may or may not get.

Could you talk about how your approach is so different from our current general psychological approach to these experiences?

Certainly.  I think the way things work in the mainstream treatment is that people are taught to suppress these experiences because they feel they’re punished when they have them.  So they judge them and then when the experience happens again, they are in conflict with them, or they learn that they can’t talk about them anywhere and it’s not safe.  When this suppression happens, it makes it harder to heal from these experiences because they’re real.  They cause real feelings and they cause real experiences.

How has it changed for you to come out about your lived experience at work, and out in the world, Did it take you a long time to decide to do that?

Yes.  I think, to be honest, I started doing these groups about 11 years ago and I didn’t come out to my fellow staff till more recently.  I learned in supervision – every supervisor I had, had bad things to say about schizophrenics, and that was my diagnosis.  So, I learned that it was very much not safe.  I came out through the help of taking WRAP courses.  That really helped me.  I started doing them and what happened was it was so popular on the unit where I worked that there was no taking it back.  However, there were efforts to get me in trouble for talking about my experiences.  And eventually I learned that I needed to tell people that I was out and I needed to learn how to do that.  It’s a very hard thing to manage.

I had a supervisor who knew and he supported me.  That was really helpful.  I had other people who weren’t so sure.  I wrote up manuals for what I was doing.  They made it requirement that people write things up after I started writing things up (for other groups).  So, it was kind of like a gift.   You know it’s it’s a privilege to be able to do it.

And so this is the birth of the Special Messages Project.  What’s been the response of the people that are in the group, like how have you seen it work? 

People in the group get to tell their stories.  They get to go places that they’re afraid to go elsewhere.  It’s been something that has transitioned here at work.  But I’ve also done it in the community and there’s been very powerful responses.  They do this work at the Hearing Voices Network in Berkeley.  I help out there, and that’s another good place to do this kind of work.  It really, really makes a difference when there’s someplace you can talk about these experiences and and make them less shameful, less traumatizing.

What changes have you noticed in people once they’re able to find a safe place to talk?  And put words to their experiences?

Many people feel more open with psychiatrists, they feel less punished in general.  And they have more motivation to get to know other people who are also dealing with, what they’re going through, “quote unquote psychosis”, or other types of experiences.  A lot of times, when I was in the system, I didn’t want anything to do with the person that was talking to themselves.  I just didn’t want to be like that person.  But it takes a transition period to say, oh, what he’s going through is actually similar to what I’m going through.  If we’re not allowed to talk and realize that, we’re not able to form community and community is very important to healing.  Many people say, when they come to my groups, I never realized just happened to anybody else until I heard you tell your story.  It is powerful.

So, you are a busy man.  You are doing a lot of trainings, like what you’re going to do at the conference.  You’ve got a blog.  You’re the author of the book: Fighting for Freedom in America, and you’re still working in the field.  So, first: how do you do it all?

Well, I think that I do it because I don’t have kids.  This project is like my baby.  And I have support from my wife.  My wife, without her I would probably not be able to do what I do, so I’m grateful for those things.  It took me awhile to get those things and I’m extremely grateful.  I had to work a lot, and I developed a style of working through my hardships.  And so, if anything, when I stop working, which I do on a regular basis, when I hike, I have to process a lot of things and a lot of emotions.  So I’m kind of in a regular pattern of working and processing in writing, which is part of how I process.

So, so what can we, as practitioners, do better?  Even if we’re not running special messages groups?  And don’t come at it from our own lived experience, what’s your advice for us.

I think it’s really important to be curious about the experiences that are happening behind the scenes. Instead of punishing, get people to talk about what they’re going through and what they’re experiencing.  Find out what’s behind the ideas and the beliefs they have.  If they don’t make sense or they don’t fit for you – what is normal or not normal?  Just even having the awareness.

Many practitioners are taught NOT to delve into this kind of topic – “delusional” material.  You were taught to “reality check”.  So what you’re doing when talking to staff is educating them about another way to be present for the person.

Exactly.  I’m making it into something that can be understood.  When the staff person understands what’s going on instead of saying “they’re more symptomatic today” or “they’re showing more delusions”, they can see it as this person is giving me an opportunity to trust them.  I can plan for and I can know what to do when they trust me with this material to open them up.  That is, in a nutshell, what I hope people do.  When I give these trainings in the field, a key part is the idea that you become a trustworthy person.  And that’s huge.  People have different minds.  It’s much more of a neurodiversity issue than it is a disease issue.  The idea of inclusion of different ways of processing the world and experiences is important.  When we think of diversity, we don’t think of people who are different as “you’re wrong and we’re going to punish you”.  You form relationships

So, people that come to your workshop, what can they expect?

We will look at redefining what psychosis is, and how it can lead to alternate ways of helping.  We’ll look at what special messages are and look at what other components of psychosis are.  We’ll look at solutions that arise when we know what those parts of psychosis are.  There are different interventions when you’re paying attention to the special messages, in the way you’re talking about them.  It’s the main meat of how to do things differently.

The post The Best of Times and the Worst of Times appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

Therapists and peer supporters learn not to impose their beliefs on the people they help as part of their cultural competence training. Why, then, do so many people who suffer from psychosis flagrantly have beliefs imposed on them in treatment?

A huge part of knowing how to provide treatment that does not impose beliefs involves understanding and acknowledging the extent to which beliefs are being systemically imposed and countering with an oasis of techniques that counter that tendency. If you stick with me through this you will attain a sense of what it feels like to have reality imposed upon you and the need for skilled treatment providers who know how to recognize and counter this.

Many of us who endure treatment in the mental health system develop refined radars that detect when beliefs are being imposed. When supporters do this, they may immediately link themselves back to the system of involuntary care that can be equated with detainment, involuntary medication, and a fundamental loss of human rights.

Perhaps the tendency to impose beliefs stems from the misguided cultural norm that expects people in psychosis to suppress the experiences that lead to their immediate crisis. The concept that involuntary ideas can be changed by physical punishment and containment may work immediately but is fundamentally flawed.

The fact is that this often is the only help available to families is an assault on people who experience psychosis. As supportive healers, it is essential to offer places where experiences are honored and explored with coping strategies in mind. I believe the way to do this is to build a relationship that does not impose beliefs. However, as you will learn, this may require working against the grain and a willingness to explore those experiences, even though everyone else isn’t.

Imposing Beliefs Statistically Extends Periods of Suffering:

I got better from two-years of continuous psychosis. The fact that I was expected to suppress my psychosis through punishment prevented me from learning some very simple lessons that could have saved me a lot of grief. All I needed was someone to teach me about the rules and regulations of the black market. I learned those lesson from trial and error without guidance or support. The sense of punishment was unrelenting and I had to utilize all my strengths and privileges to endure.

Although negative, statistics in E. Fuller Torrey;s book, Surviving Schizophrenia, suggest that sixty-five percent of people learn to suppress behavior and thrive like I have, they also suggest that half of us who do endure ten years of rocky and traumatic experiences and loss. Many of us fall into periods of extreme poverty that makes social rehab very challenging.

Usually, treatment starts with experiences of involuntary hospitalization during which victims are held until they start to suppress. This can seem like a nightmare for many of us who already have trauma and struggle to suppress. It is my intention to put a face to this struggle and motivate healers towards establishing non punitive places where experiences associated with psychosis can be explored and mindfully expressed.

Imposing Beliefs via Containing Behavior Results in Resistance to Treatment:

The message in the local public psychiatric emergency room is, “you can’t beat us. You must contain your behavior.” If you object and cannot control your behavior involuntary medication may be used and the incarceration is extended. Other counties and states throughout the country set up distinct strategies to impose and contain. In Montana, I was held for three months and spent the first two weeks locked up on the ward. A month of that experience involved exposure to warehouse conditions which are very degrading to one’s self esteem. Being treated in that way seemed to speak to me that was what was inevitable and that there was no use trying.

Many people who are released from this situation will not want to follow up with therapy because injustices witnessed during incarceration. It can take years of decline and high degrees of suffering before many suffers willingly accept treatment.

This is often blamed on a nonexistent disease (instead of a neurodevelopmental difference as science suggests) and I assure you there is very little reflection on the process within social institutions. For many who work in such contexts, it often isn’t clear whether the goal is social rehabilitation and recovery or to fuel the mental health industry with passive contained smokers and coffee drinkers who will stay out of the way.

While experienced patients may learn to utilize a given hospital and system to contain themselves or get a break from the stress of being on the streets, the situation is not likely to springboard social rehab efforts in the community. The set up is more likely to reinforce isolation rather than rehabilitation and for many this may decrease the idea that therapeutic encounters can help.

Squandering of Personal Resources and Trauma

Often the support system, if there still is one, is more eager to get the recipient care than the sufferer (post hospitalization) trusts the thought of therapy. Many of us who suffer fear stereotypes associated with our diagnosis. Sometimes, our family may have stronger beliefs in our worthlessness based on stereotypes, than we have in ourselves. If we fear having schizophrenia and being subjected to warehousing, many of us will do everything we can to stay free utilizing our personal resources and avoiding therapy.

Perhaps if the sufferer is not informed of the ill effects of poverty and public warehousing, they may internalize the efforts of the institutions to turn people into contained, powerless compliant cash cows. I was a social worker and knew well the ill effects of being on social security and warehoused. I refused to believe that I needed warehousing and that I couldn’t work.

Currently, if youthful suffers are lucky, they may get discharged back to their family which may not necessarily be part of the problem. Some families can learn how to continue to be a support to things they don’t understand, and some don’t change their minds so easily. For some, early prevention programs help avoid immediate decline into board and care home environments.

When I finally got released from the hospital, I was transient and moved around trying to find work. This added trauma and fear of permanent homelessness as my own cash dwindled. I felt followed and threatened on a daily basis when I ran out of my medication. My perception became populated with threats and symbols. When my resources were getting low and I was unsure of my ability to hold a professional job, I was forced to get help from my family.

Many sufferers are better at surviving on the road or staying independent. They may utilize drugs, alcohol, associated peer connections, and crime or crime syndicates to tolerate these experiences. Currently in Oakland, many are getting into community encampments. I have met many who were resourceful enough to travel. Many do not have families with resources available to them like I had. Many, like me, may have good reasons for not wanting to return to their families.

The Reality of Economic Sanctions Imposed on People with Psychosis:

Released from the hospital, people in psychosis face the high cost of therapy. Specialists for psychosis are few and far in between. The standard of care among many mainstream therapists is to refuse to work with psychosis and refer back to the hospital. A person may need to get on benefits that will pay for treatment if a therapist is even willing to consider it.

Poor prognosis presumptions result in many sufferers being encouraged to go on social security. Consider the several year process of getting on social security. Unstructured time or adjustment to free programs that may expose the participant to sufferers who are impacted by poverty and years of institutionalization. This can be new for some of us. Though this does not have to be a negative experience, to many it feels like it. To many it is just another punishment or poor prognosis reality. Again, early prevention program may fill the void for some.

High cost of therapy is often coupled by disparity in the quality of facility. In the hospital where I work, for example, the facility is an old psychiatric back ward with bubbled widows still intact. While the facilities for most physical conditions are very modern, investment in cleaning services is clearly lower in the historical part of the hospital. I observed this in other programs as well.

If the person is so unlucky as to land in a board and care home or shelter, they might be forced to be out of the house all day and required to attend program. People who are thus subjugated may feel as if they are owned and must comply for others to get paid middle-class salaries. These things are often noticed by participants and they are upsetting. They may suffer just from facing this alternative. These realities may function as economic sanctions that teaches people to underestimate their value to society.

The Devil is in the Details:

Every journey that involves madness is difficult. The details of what one goes through need to be considered. I believe the survivors perspective is important. Thus, I share my perspective on what happened to me to demonstrate how economic sanctions may play out.

When I first went to therapy three months after I was released from the hospital, I tape recorded the interview because I was so afraid that talking at all would get me returned to the hospital. The only reason I went was that it was a requirement for me to get support from my family.

While some part of me knew I needed help, the way I was financially controlled remains unforgettable. I thought my family was the mafia so they arranged to get me a job at an Italian Delicatessen with a twenty mile a day bike ride and two additional hours riding the rails to work. All this effort was needed for a nine-dollar-an-hour job. It has taken me years and covert conversations with family members to unpack and understand the web of relationships that imposed such a reality on me.

Worse, to get financial help with rent, I had to spend $250 a week on imposed therapy. The bike ride and rail ride to therapy was longer than the ride to work. I lived this way for six months using my free time to unsuccessfully get hired elsewhere until my mother relented and gave me three thousand dollars to enable me to purchase a clunker automobile. She defied my father to do this and still feels she made a mistake.

If the therapist had referred me to food stamps and made the therapy voluntary, I might not still suffer the way I do. However, the therapist insisted that the situation was fair and refused to validate or acknowledge the hardship I endured. “I believe you are working hard, but believe me working at a Deli is not so hard. You are giving your power away to those teenage kids. They are not so bad, really. You are letting them bully you!”

By the time I finally left this therapeutic relationship two years later tens of thousands of dollars later, I knew better than to contest the therapist. She said she was not a greedy capitalist. She told me not to become a wounded healer. She told me that in reality I hadn’t been close to homelessness.

I agreed that I was not really hungry and strapped for cash during this process. I concealed all the night terrors and peeing the bed at night during the process. Of course, I lied! I worked until I got my Marriage and Family Therapy License and I wrote an award-winning book about my experience.

I have become a wounded healer! I use insurance rather than demand cash for my services. At least I am not a pretender.

But still, my life is limited due to affects of trauma and mistrust.

Using Therapy Techniques that Don’t Impose Reality!

I think it is important for healers to halt the process of imposing reality upon sufferers and give them choices and options as to how to manage their situations. Instead of siding with forced treatment and using this to impose your values and ideas on the vulnerable individual, listen to the story of what they went through to get to you. Give them resources that give them choices about whether they want to work with you.

Instead of telling the sufferer what to do and what is safe, be curious about what they are experiencing that causes them distress or delight. Know that real important experiences are behind the alternate reality that they are facing. Know that alternate reality has meaning and purpose that can be understood and supported. Alternate realities may be profoundly different from the world you understand, but be brave and curious. If your conduct becomes part of the problem be curious and learn more about what you are doing.

Don’t use the threat of hospitalization to silence or disrupt behavior associated with alternative experience. Instead, go down the rabbit hole with the sufferer with a road map of coping strategies. Know what your doing if you are going to make coping strategy suggestions. If you don’t know what your doing, it’s okay, admit it. Problems with voices and alternate realities are hard. Just being there without imposing reality will really help. Also, it is usually appreciated if you puzzle through the muck to the best of your ability.

Consider that dangerous and scary experiences are not going to be openly shared with you if you are going to laugh and call them crazy. I would not tell my therapist real experiences that were disturbing because she wouldn’t take my less-disturbing experiences seriously. What ensued was entirely unhelpful to me. It was a total thorn in my side.

I concealed as much as I could and she had absolutely no understanding. Then, when I did things that could have got me killed, like call the FBI, she threatened me with what seemed to be hospitalization instead of understanding and exploring the experiences that led me to do so. That is an example of what happens when treatment is imposed!

A Challenge to the Status Quo Best Practice:

Throughout I have referenced the existence of early prevention programs. Locally and nationally they usually utilize a best practice called CBT for Psychosis.

I’d like to argue that when the best practice for psychosis, CBT for psychosis, allows healers to separate themselves from the beliefs of the client, it makes the process of safe connection much harder. This is a boundary and policy that makes it harder for recipients of treatment to trust because it reinforces the idea that reality may be imposed. Especially, if the helper turns and refers them back to the meatgrinder of psychiatric inpatient to send them a message, it can add to trauma.

I am not saying that challenging irrational thinking cannot be helpful at times. However, not everyone who is abused can control their thoughts. Experiences like disassociation and hypervigilance often interfere with cognition control. Let those who can learn use cognitive therapy use it, but don’t come with a cookie cutter mentality. You may help some, but don’t presume that those who you can’t help aren’t reachable. Consider learning additional strategies.

I utilize broader strategies that include mindfulness strategies, curious inquiry about psychosis as a culture, medication, positive psychology, trauma informed reprocessing, behavioral strategies in addition to cognitive strategies. I believe broader strategies are needed and will leave far fewer people behind. There is a lot that can happen when reality isn’t imposed.

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