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.

The post Healers, Imposing Your Reality on People Who Experience Psychosis is Part of the Problem! appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

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

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

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

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

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

Examples of the Negative Trickster Phenomenon:

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

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

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

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

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

Ineffective Reality-Test Treatment:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examples of Positive Tricksters:    

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

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

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

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

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

A Balanced Strategy for Managing Positive Tricksters:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank god I was wrong about some of it!

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

Rethinking the Issue of Leverage:

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

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

 Establishing Treatment Instead of Confinement:

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

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

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

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

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

The Natural Benefit of Community and Structure:

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

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

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

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

 Importance of Supporting Structured Activities Outside of Treatment Milieus:

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

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

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

Processing and Reflecting on Messages:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consequences of Using No Leverage:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion:

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

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Philosophy of Reality that Promotes Anti-Stigma Cognition:

In order to sell the good parts of cognitive therapy as a tool for social rehabilitation, I have had to create an underlying philosophy about what reality is. This is a model that can come up at various points in individual and group therapy as a means of motivating a message receiver toward using the material world to fact check their spiritual insights.

In this model, I consider reality to be a dialectic between the spiritual message world and the material modern world. The spiritual message world involves all the message experiences that I took pains to identify in chapter four and throughout the text. In short, this includes things like ESP (i.e. reading minds,) hallucinations (i.e. hearing voices) and intuited reality discerned through things like coded linguistic coincidence and loosely associated coded symbols that inhabit a real or imagined world. The spiritual message world is very much in the subjective perspective of an individual consciousness.

In contrast the material modern world (or profane reality) consists of the reality that is shared in the mainstream social world that is based on scientifically arrived at concepts that exist in the collective consciousness of an established culture and rooted in observation of the social world that is inhabited. Ultimately, message receivers are living entirely in the message world and need to increase their focus and motivation to strike a balance between these two entities.

Ultimately, as the intellectual community has learned over time, scientific paradigms get created and occupy the social mainstream for decades and centuries until a scientific figure discovers something that changes that paradigm. And so Europe stops thinking the world is flat in 1492, and in the 1800s Darwin challenges literal interpretation of the creation notion in the Bible, and sometime in the future enough power and money will effectively topple the Western psychiatric establishment and the DSM will be replaced with science that better depicts the interplay between trauma and neuro-divergence.

The dialectic of these two worlds is not all that different from Marsha Lineman’s dialectic between the rational and emotional mind. I consider the constructs to be similar but defined for a slightly different ethos of people. Much as it is with Marsha Linehan’s dialectical behavioral therapy, I postulate that a person’s sharpest perspective of reality comes when there is overlap between the spiritual message world and the profane material world. I believe that this is a simple lesson that can inspire the message receiver to avoid the all or nothing trap when it comes to receiving special messages. Message receivers need to pay attention to the information they receive from special messages but they need to be mindful of it and learn to fact check it against the profane material world. They need to pretend and go along with the profane concepts and fact check. In some cases, they may need to decrease stigma that is due to false mainstream concepts (particularly when it comes to themselves) and plan to reshape the paradigm so they can be permitted to play significant roles that fit them in society. In my experience, these concepts can be very easily taught to message receivers in a manner that resonates and helps them feel both understood and motivated to use the tool of anti-stigma cognitions.

I want to spend some time looking at the ramifications of this model. Essentially, what this philosophy suggests is that there is a part of the message world that is real, and a part of the material world that is not. This may be challenging for some to accept so I want to further explore each world so that my generalizations about types of reality can be further discerned.

Truth in the Spiritual Message World:

Yes, I have lived with messages long enough to believe that a part of the message world can offer a valuable view of the way the world is put together. Being in message crisis I learned truths about the way technology mixes with social control and sustains propaganda. Thanks to people like Edward Snowden and criminalized individuals associated with Wiki leaks who have devoted their lives to letting the public know more about what is really happening, I have had it confirmed that many of the divergent views I had during my message crisis were real.

As a result, I am no longer a protester and a whistle blower and I thoroughly understand the criminal networks of the American black market along with the need for it. I see now that I have learned a lot about social oppression, wars and genocide by making meaning of the world I have experienced in ways that are very valuable. I have learned that intuitive material can give me premonitions on some occasions, but that if I overly rely on it I will get burned and become emotionally distraught in ways I do not have to be. In other words, I get confused about intuitive reality and anxious projections.

In observing private stories of other individuals who navigate message crisis over the last ten years, I have learned that similar themes about social control, power, corruption, and spiritual reality come up for many message receivers. People with different values, political ideologies, access to resources, or and allegiances develop different takes and play different roles in the narratives of their divergent views. Perhaps, instead of the mafia, the enemies are aliens or demons, but the world operates in a similar manner and takes into consideration wide historical perspectives. Not everyone receives truth that might be best explained by spiritual connection. Likewise, not everyone faces evil that is tormenting and abusive. However, by connecting to the right facts in the material world a message receiver can better understand and endure what they are going through. Maybe they might be living their lives like they are in another time period or a war zone, but unleashing their stories and applying them to the profane material world can be a helpful activity. Indeed a savvy helper in a trusting relationship can do this in a way that promotes alternate meanings and functional flexible theories about message causation.

A story I often use that demonstrates this is my old fixation with California license plates. In my message crisis, I believed them be used to incorrectly define people as corrupt enemies of the state or as powerful agents within the state. To explain: I believed that associations I made to the numbers and letters helped me understand where the state was coming from with regard to people. Many of the number association were reinforced by the numbers of the specialty sandwiches I worked with in the Italian Deli.

Ten years later, I came across a newspaper article that disclosed that some license plates actually do code messages in them based on government code . . .  in Cuba. So I learned that experience did have reality in it. I was just a few countries off! Additionally, I did learn in a message group once that the chef who made up the sandwich specialties really was a local Italian kingpin. Of course, I don’t know for sure if that’s true, but it doesn’t matter to me anymore.

Lies in the Profane Material World:

Yes, part of the material collective ethos of a society is based on lies and human exploitation. Extremely, complicated science is based on ever-shifting paradigms that are found to be inaccurate and that can produce facts that can lead to magnificent oppression. Indeed, facts can be attained based on faulty science that have inherit concepts of superiority attached. I am going to explore just one aspect of this, psychological testing.

For example, consider the way psychological testing from IQ, to the Thematic Apperception Test, to the Rorschach might get misused. Considers ways they might not only get used to understand and help, but also to justify institutionalization and political marginalization. Consider that they are not always culturally competent. Consider they are a snapshot of a person at a given time of crisis that get reviewed repeatedly. Consider that altered states change that people who are incredibly hurt heal, that we do not publish psychological tests to understand or select our leaders, but to direct those who are downtrodden through our social institutions. Consider that they do not account for racial, class or gender tensions between the tester and the subject. Consider how law enforcement can use them to solve crimes. Mix those tests with knowledge attained by the social psychology field and you start to get a different picture. Consider that people most often selected to be psychologists have an elevated p factor, p standing for psychopathology.

There are many ways pseudoscience in American society has functioned to justify differing types of atrocity and justify a prison system that is filled with people of color. Whole industries are made illegal and as a result violence is taught and perpetuated. And so people are ranked and educated so as to spend their life in institutions regardless of significant cultural issues, people like Sylvester Stallone. Stallone attended an expensive special education school in Philadelphia. I worked at a similar institution for a year and can imagine some of what he might have been subjected to. I was taught that some of those with conduct disorders respond best to negative reinforcement. Students were on a negative reinforcement point system because that’s what psychology suggests works best. Often they seemed to respond better to physical restraints wielded with love by individuals who were paid so poorly that they had to engage in illegal activity to survive.

I personally believe Stallone had to create an ingenious manner to stay out of prison and stay free. And so Rocky was created, great story, and eventually used to promote hatred against the cold war Soviet Union.

Indeed there are many ways that inherently false beliefs that are promoted and held to maintain social order. Rhetoric and propaganda hide reality and irrationally connect people in ways that encourage strife, conflict, and politics. Sure notions of good and bad power exist, but some people are clearly silenced bagged and tagged sold up the river in ways that many people believe is justified. The words of some are amplified, and of others are irrationally silenced. Institutional bullying leads to swaths of stigma and irrational reality.

Not all science and knowledge about nature and the material world is false. Much of the information that we know in the modern world is trustworthy in some contexts. Some may be sanctioned by god and some may be driven by human corruption to increase inhuman, irrational oppression. In other words, the information age that ignores the experience of the message receivers who fill our churches and mental health wards might need some spiritual guidance.

Using the Philosophy of Reality in Modern Social Rehabilitation Efforts:

Think of it this way: classically, message receivers become overly focused on the spiritual, message world so much that they break away from the profane material world entirely. In order to motivate message receivers to increase their focus on the profane material world, I argue that when the spiritual message world functions in unison with the profane material world that is when a body is most in reality. I find that many message receivers are particularly motivated by truth. Thus, I argue that when the message receiver can use rationality and apply themselves and it to the profane material world they can bring the two worlds into balance and have a more rational, real experience. Ultimately, they could experience a reality that might make them less hurt, angry, fearful, or mad.

Thus, cognitive therapy, or anti-stigma cognitions may need to be leaned on to promote some degree of social rehabilitation. It is clearly arguable that knowing the scientific paradigms that are out there in the mainstream is an important thing to understand and know.  Message receivers may even need to subjugate themselves to them for extended periods of time. Operating like a drone and subjecting themselves to these paradigms might in fact be an okay thing to do for a while to sustain an entry-level position in a society or a mental health clinic. This may require a very intense period where anti-stigma cognitions need to be amplified and positive affirmations about the message receiver’s real skills and gifts may need to be mantras. While having support can clearly be very helpful, ongoing acts of stigma and subjugation are likely to persist. There needs to be a sense that a message receiver is competent with mainstream scientific paradigms before they are safe using their messages to their advantage. And a message receiver needs to have an ability to know what messages they have fit into the mainstream paradigm. I would go so far as to argue that message receivers may be able to break some of the current paradigm maintained by the well-funded medical establishment that is responsible on a wide scale for the subjugation of message experiences. Indeed, I hope to help some of us do this!

This is why I feel many solid and withstanding indigenous societies used message receiving shaman with spiritual abilities to improve society. Many humans crave rational order and shaping society so that it follows spiritual, message principles is a good way to promote rationality and justice for all. For modern society, in which subjugation is maintained through superpowers, finding ways to include shaman and message receivers may be an important way promote sustainability on this earth. Indeed, it is arguable that the religious texts and narratives of the world’s major religions are aimed at helping large super-powered states out in this manner through the epochs. I believe it can work when they are not turned against each other in violent crusades based on extremist rhetoric, corrupt propaganda, and the promulgation of superpower secrets that preempt violent conflicts.

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