Are you, as a therapist, family member or case worker, feeling stuck in your relationships with people who have extreme experiences of psychosis? Maybe it feels hard to envision a world of recovery activities and you are wondering if distant, passive, and impoverished relationships are as good as it gets.  Maybe it seems like the only help you can provide is to ask them if they took their medication.

Or maybe you struggled with these challenges yourself and would like to help other people join you in better healing from these challenges. Maybe you don’t feel safe talking about what happened and mask your personality because you don’t want to go back to problems that can be monumental and scary.

If you are in either of these two categories, I have created a twenty-hour training workshop that aims to help achieve better outreach to people in extreme experiences of psychosis. This community-oriented workshop is built to help you feel comfortable exploring the contents of what has been experienced in a psychosis with a road map of healing suggestions so you can join people on their journey and help them be more flexible in how they make meaning of their experiences and work towards recovery.

What people go through in psychosis can be scary and overwhelming or joyous yet destructive; regardless, a lot can be learned from studying these experiences and there still is the chance for relationships to flourish when sharing happens. To demonstrate the value of this, I share several of my stories and there is opportunity for others to share as well.

I am currently recruiting participants to attend ten two-hour training sessions in 2026 from 4-6pm the first Sunday of the month. In 2024 I completed said training and disbanded a troop of supporters who I will invite back.  It was hard to give up that community.  I have missed the camaraderie and connection I experienced over the ten-session year. I hope you will consider joining me for 2026.

Working with people who experience what I prefer to term as special message crisis can be challenging. Often people suffering may hold you at an arms distance and refuse to share the contents of what they are experiencing with you. I find that reviewing components of the training helps keep me hopeful and creative in my work. When I am not working on the contents of this training, it is easy to feel stuck and hopeless.

I am aware that I may be competing against CBT for Psychosis, a training that is accredited. To be honest, I have not taken that training to compare it to mine. That’s why I wanted to take a minute to explain that I have not come to develop this training by reading accredited books or completing research. I have crafted this training being in community with message receivers where I work running clinical groups. This training comes from the perspective of someone with lived experience and who in addition has seventeen years of experience running these groups as a practitioner. It aims to better prepare you to come up with creative interventions

Yes, I have attended Hearing Voices Network Training and I have both participated in and facilitated these groups as well. I found these trainings were exceptional, but I also think my work gives guidance toward being able to bring the wisdom of a community experience to an individual relationship with techniques and activities that bear the potential of helping prepare you to change lives. Perhaps you may find as I do that working in community helps inspire you in the moments you have with a message receiver to provide something they may need.

There is a suggested price of $200 to attend the training. I see this more as a suggested donation as I plan to admit people who can’t afford the fee. If you are thinking about joining me but are scared off by the fee please reachout to me in email, I want you to join us.

Once you have paid the fee, or joined me for a while, you can continue to participate in future trainings until you are satisfied and have mastery over the material. As I stated before, this is a community-oriented workshop full of didactics, stories, videos, exercises, and discussions which means that participation also helps me learn grow and improve the training.

Sign up for the 2026 Journey Though Psychosis Sessions

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When you think a person has a delusional idea, it is so important to remember that they often have amassed a significant amount of evidence to convince them they are correct. They likely know what they used to think, it is just that what they currently think seems to be more accurate. In fact, we consider ways the persons’ course of study might make some of their ideas more accurate than mainstream ideas on some occasions!

Ask Yourself: How Did You Get So Lucky to Witness a Delusion!

In many cases, the delusional person has experience in the mental health system has had other people tell them they are delusional in the past. Thus, the fact that they have let you know their thoughts is significant. To know how to respond, it can be important to know why they have told you their thought in the first place.

Maybe they have told you because:

• You have spent time with them so that they trust you,
• They have hope that you can help them,
• They presume you and everyone else have had the same experiences that they have,
• They are desperate and endangered in their emergency,
• or perhaps they are just testing you out to see where you stand in the conspiracy.

It is a good idea to understand why they have shared the idea and be delighted that they did.

In group therapy, I have found countering with your own experience with delusions and stories about what happened to you, and encouraging others to do the same, helps invite exploration. More on this later.

Don’t Presume Delusions are Wrong, Explore and Confirm Ways They Are Right:

In dealing with people in a mental health setting who are labeled as delusional, across the board, I think the worst thing that you can do is confront them and tell them you think they are wrong! They historically don’t have enough support in the world to be able to agree to disagree and it can really hurt them to hear that you too don’t believe or care about what they are going through.

Ultimately, more and more we are finding that voices and other experiences that make them delusional have value! The hearing voices movement has helped emphasize the importance of this. Often, the delusional person will need to know that you believe this before they will let you be of assistance to them.

Even if a delusional person asks you your opinion and says it will help, I believe you will be far more valuable to them if you are willing to spend a little time getting to know the journey of what they are experiencing without having an agenda.

Believe me they will be testing you to see if you have an agenda.

How can it hurt them or you to listen for a while? We often entertain ideas from distinct ideologies and look for common ground to make relationships. Instead of looking for ways they are wrong, confirm ways that they are right.

Join in and Contribute Conspiracy Ideas:

It is far more effective to share conspiracy ideas that you have yourself to normalize their experience. Do you think JFK was really killed by Lee Harvey Oswald? Clearly there is some degree of conspiracy that you can buy into! In group therapy that I have run over the past eleven years, it is helpful to normalize conspiracy topics and collaborate with them.

When “delusional” people get together and get invited to share, they often help each other by working together to excavate these ideas or experiences. Often, they will not volunteer their thoughts unless other conspiracies are on the table. Expounding on conspiracy with peers is a great way to tease them out.

I have learned to respect conspiracy ideas as bearing the potential of being more correct than mainstream ideas; but also bearing the possibility of being wrong when examined over time. I find that most delusional people can accept this with reflection. A group is often effective if it just lets the conspiracies rip and gets people talking.

The Importance of Finding Out How the Idea Came into Being:

As I suggested above, conspiracy ideas don’t come from nowhere. They come from a long string of experiences that get put together. I call these experiences special messages. A lot can be achieved when a delusional person is willing to identify what experiences they have had that help them think this way.

When experiences can be uncovered and identified, I believe the delusional person will feel a sense of relief and will be more mindful of those experiences. I don’t believe that identifying experiences only serves to reinforce them,

Think of it this way: being more mindful means, they judge them less and accept them more. Instead of racing to solve the conspiracy that may threaten their existence, they can reflect on the one experience with someone else. As if each experience was traumatic, uncovering it and clearly explaining is more likely to help the person let go of it.

Identifying These Underlying Experiences in a Group Context:

In group therapy with other delusional people, defining the different kinds of experiences that can lead to delusions (or what I prefer to term divergent views) can help facilitate associated stories that highlight certain kinds of special messages. A group facilitator can share their own experience with an experience and others can relate to it. This way individuals become more aware of their experiences.

Examples of special message experiences are things like:

Uncanny intuitions,

ESP,

Sensing the thoughts of another,

Having others be able to sense your thoughts

Premonitions,

Hearing voices,

Visions,

Dreams,

Tactile torture,

Interpersonal feedback,

Seeing clues of conspiracy in media,

Seeing clues in words,

Seeing clues in numbers,

Seeing clues in the world that surround you

Not Moving too Fast:

Often, before a delusional person is willing to disclose their underlying experience, they may need to have a corrective experience of making sure they will not be punished or incarcerated again for sharing their ideas. There is a tendency in mainstream treatment to impose reality on delusional people that often comes with loss of rights, unwanted medications, and, most commonly, by being ignored or called “crazy” or “delusional.”

Additionally, many have experienced severe poverty, like homelessness, as a result of their delusional ideas and these kinds of depravations can be perceived as an even worse form of punishment.

Thus, a facilitator is wise to recognize when a delusional person just needs to tell their shocking stories and beliefs without connecting with others or disclosing underlying experiences. This story, while it may raise eyebrows, may be getting told to establish safety and freedom from punishment. It needs to be encouraged and valued by the facilitator even if other delusional people don’t get it.

What About Reality Testing?

Someone who is delusional for some years likely feels oppressed in the mental health. Reality testing often leads to an end in the exploration or relationship.

It is important to remember that, in most cases, the person who is looking for reality testing would prefer being in control of the test. They may ask you questions and trick you to get authentic answers.

For best outcomes, anticipate this and provide persistent authenticity. Thus, all questions need to be answered with honesty, without defensiveness, and with congruent non-verbal and verbal responses.

Rarely will your feedback resolve the issue and experiences they are having. It is possible that the experiences they are having will continue to some extent for a while. But hopefully they can get to the point where they trust you through it all.

I work with delusional people a long time before I try to provide reality feedback. I generally do this when the person is testing me to see if I am the mastermind of their problems. When I am aware of this happening, I believe correcting them via non-verbal cues, and communicating about the feedback they are receiving from me can help.

In general, I will support what I think they believe to the best of my ability. Indeed, I still believe that often delusional people are correct in ways that are surprising.

Teaching the Public What You Know:

In fact, delusional people are quite common. But when delusional people are treated in the mental health system, the result be very severe isolation. Too often, this isolation is totally reinforced in repressive treatment that tries to further suppress traumatic experiences, rather than heal.

A far better strategy is to try to change public opinion about underlying experiences like ESP or voices. are and how to further include people who experience an influx of them in crisis. Most people get feedback from dreams, nonverbal communication, and intuitions, which are types of underlying experiences. They can learn to relate

The post How to Help When You Think Someone Might Be Delusional appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

The Hearing Voices Network training that I attended in the end of January turned out to be a time for self-reflection and personal growth. I experienced a mixture of validation and a profound sense of alienation. One of the trainers, Marty, sensed this in me and asked me to reach out after the training was over. In sharing my experiences and perspective with Marty in a lengthy email, I felt very heard. I know the truth about the way I have been treated locally and the importance of taking a best practice and adjusting it to local cultural contexts. Marty’s curiosity and ability to acknowledge and support my perspective means a lot to me.

Locally, I have tried to work with the hearing voices network in a collaborative manner. As a board member, I have faced a significant amount of objection to this from people with whom I have wanted to collaborate. Instead of feeling co-promoted, I have tended to face suspicion and have sensed a tendency to be marginalized and silenced. Some have objected to me expressing my work in trainings and two people even left the group with this as one of their complaints. Additionally, I have felt incredibly underestimated and slighted by some people with whom I yearn to collaborate.

As a neuro-divergent man I come with a mix of abilities and disabilities. The sense that people are judging my disabilities and using them to marginalize me goes back a long way for me. I had to repeat kindergarten and would not have been accepted, had my parents not been teachers at the private school I attended. When I brought home straight A’s my father said that I should not be able to get such high marks. I achieved a great deal in high school and graduated cum laude, but I lost my respect for school when I experienced stigma for having anorexia. I knew my writing was improving and yet my grades went down. My essay nearly got me kicked out of the school instead of receiving the praise it deserved. As a result, I chose not to go to the fancy schools I got into and continued to work hard living in the library when I wasn’t working.

During the training, I was validated that the jargon that was laid out matched much of the gooney-goo-goo jive/jargon that I co-created with people who attended special messages group over the years. I have been writing to sharpen this jargon for the past ten years. While my work is organized as a structural redefinition of psychosis (or special message crisis,) hearing voices network is structured around normalizing and accepting the experiences of hearing voices. They have “an other” section that includes many of the experiences I lived with for two years, and I have done some work to further define this.

While my groups cannot be acknowledged as part of the hearing voices network because they are professional, I feel I have done a good job replicating the values and ethics of the Hearing Voices Network movement quite naturally as I have become a professional who identifies as a person with lived experience. I hope that the fact that the same concepts have been learned in different locales might help validate the paradigm shift and legitimize the concepts. I am in favor of teaching professionals the lessons of the HVN so that we can get therapy specialists who better know how to work with experiences associated with hearing voices and special messages crisis.

At the same time, I had some important points reinforced during the training. For example, when I train people not to re-traumatize themselves, I may in fact alienate many participants. Doing this does not reinforce and equal and mutual relationship, it reinforces power dynamics that are toxic to many and prevents many from sharing their story. I had the opportunity to reflect on times I had done this in the community and lost participants as a result. This important point is something that I needed to have reinforced because I am often warned not to re-traumatize people as a clinician. This is something I can fix.

Another thing I learned from the training, is that I must do more to get off this uninhabited island I am stuck on. I need to reach out to people. I need to stop raging against things I have no control about and make friends like Marty. During the training, I had the opportunity to network with some people who had read my book or are willing to support me. Not everyone is working to exclude me. The more power I give to those feeling of exclusion the more real it becomes. When I get angry that the HVN excludes me, as I did during the training, I only give those critics who are looking to marginalize me the power and satisfaction that they can be successful.

I loved the HVN training and I think that the fact we have a handful of trained people is a massive opportunity to expand the formation of local groups. I met a grant writer in the training and perhaps I will be able to promote outreach groups to help those isolated in board and care homes. I know that to extend HVN groups to institutionalized peoples that we need to know the local culture and act accordingly. I think this can be done. I have done it for ten years and I hope to be able to do it for twenty more.

I have applied to present my six-hour training to CASRA Spring Conference. They have supported me in the past. I have also applied to present a small portion of my six-hour presentation and hope that at least one will be selected.

I have many posts I am trying to officially publish in a host of different venues.  This is a very frustrating process fraught with rejection. Still I have published the following posts on my blog you can see by clicking below:

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For the past ten years I have used the words special messages to bring people together behind a better-defined notion of psychosis. I hope in this article will help better define what I mean by special messages and why I think that messages are part of a process that includes seven other components that I defined in my last article.

Many people who have worked with me presume that when I say special messages I mean voices. It’s true that the words hearing voices ring true as music to my ears. Indeed, the hearing voices movement has vastly improved the social understanding of what is happening to message receivers. Less dominant are the memes associated with all the “psycho” stigma that gets equated with the psychosis word. However, I still argue that just saying hearing voices fails to unite all people under the umbrella of the word psychosis.

I have come to feel that saying hearing voices is like saying the letter “a” instead of the word alphabet. It’s true that voices offer real and valuable experiences that society tries to suppress. But, I think that there are at least twenty-five types of experiences in addition to voices that can be relevant in creating psychosis. Put those experiences together in different ways and a person can create a vast masterpiece of meaningful reality that functions as an alternative to mainstream thought.

Not everyone who experiences psychosis uses all twenty-six types of experience, but some individuals may use far more than I can depict in this article. I believe each message receiver has a profile of messages: some that they can and cannot relate to.

I contend that no message is sicker than another. Indeed, problems associated with special messages need to be measured by the level of distress they cause, not by their existence. In fact, someone who hears voices is not necessarily sicker than someone who has more “normal” message experiences like getting an intuition or having a dream. In fact, one person may hear a voice and experience little distress, but have an interpersonal interaction that troubles them drastically. Others don’t get upset about their intuitions or interpersonal interactions, but are harassed to no-end by the fact they hear controlling voices. Sometimes it is the convergence of many different types of messages that cause the distress.

An experience becomes a special message because not everyone else has experienced it and because its meaning is not always clearly defined. Indeed, special messages take an element of speculation to thoroughly understand. Ultimately, sometime message receivers are spot on accurate about reality based on their special messages, but mistake happen.

I have found that encouraging people to tell stories about message crisis or “psychosis,” over the years helps uncover a variety of types of special messages that fit different profiles. It also helps a person feel validated, heal and connect to others. Though it can take some time, I have seen many people realize they are not alone for the first time in treatment hearing stories that others tell.

I also believe healing involves being able to pay more attention to message processes instead of just suppressing them and pretending to be a normal droid. Thus, emotions associated with special messages can be felt without burning their way permanently into a person’s life.

Many of us who suffer may have become preoccupied with real issues of war, genocide, torture, apocalyptic fatalities, spirit discernment, metaphysics, social control, truth, mind control, propaganda, good and evil and healing from these dilemmas may help us become very wise and valuable social contributors.

Additionally, people in message crisis need people who are aware of what they are going through to be with them while they are going through it. Message crisis can be an extremely alienating experience in which everyone wants to correct, rather than support the message receiver.

Although some message experiences in a person’s profile may seem normal or “real,” in crisis, they can dominate the day particularly because they fit together with others that no one would believe. The following are questions that I have developed to help the reader identify experiences that have influenced message receivers into what I believe become cultural thoughts that get defined as psychosis:

• Do other people hint at things that profoundly relate to your life as though they know everything about you as though they have been listening to wire taps or are clued in through word of mouth, or other intuitive skills?

• Do you get special intuitions based on body language or voice inflection or reading peoples’ minds that often turn out to be correct?

• Do you get uncanny premonitions from gut feelings, or intuitions that might be considered ESP?

• Can you pick up on people’s energy so that you can tell how they’re feeling when they pass by?

• Do gestures or specific behaviors of others help you to most definitely know their unconscious thoughts?

• Are things that bear symbolic meaning being left around for you to find that might be there to re-program you as if they are counter intelligence?

• Do you have odd strings of “coincidence” that link together in ways that suggest or confirm things (serendipity?)

• Do people follow you on the bus or train bear objects that identify them to you as people who are following you for better or worse?

• Are you able to instantly tell if people are either for or against you

• Are people sent to represent other people you know for a significant reason (impostors, look-a-likes, doppelgangers, agents)

• Are you profoundly affected by dreams might be prophesies or reveal truths about yourself or the universe?

• Do you experience de ja vu occurrences during which something happens that feels like it is happening to you again for the second time?

• Do you find yourself reviewing vivid memories, sentences or words for hidden meanings?

• Do people use codes to communicate secret info like numbers or words; do you break words into syllables and look for punny linguistic coincidences?

• Do people have clear telepathic communication with you intentionally

• Do movies, songs or shows on the radio or TV come to take on new meanings when you read between the lines. Might they even be special broadcasts that only you get?

• Does certain forms Media contain secret coded truths that only you can understand?

• Are you touched by the truth when you read in between the lines of certain situations?

• Does it seem like people are putting on skits around you to teach you a lesson?

• Is history full of conspiracies that god reveals the truth to you about because of discernment of spirit?

• Are people slipping things in your food that are taking over your bodily processes?

• Do you have bizarre visual experiences that make you think you are in a different dimension or on a different planet?

• Do you see ghosts or entities that communicate with you in ways that other people may or may not be clued into?

• Do you hear your own thoughts as distinguishable words that give personal insights into your being?

• Do you hear people you know talking to you as though you are engaging in in telepathy?

• Do your voices become familiar characters to you that you keep track of and take on personalities that you name and react to?

• Do you get physically tortured through tactile pain or sensations that function in conjunction with your voices?

• Have you ever been taught about the “I” word—illusions—which are sounds, visual experiences, sensations, smells or tastes that mix with reality, that really are there but that may become distorted to give you uncommon experiences?

• Do people make uncanny comments about your private thoughts or experience when you pass by them talking in the community.

• Has a character on the TV starts talking directly at you referencing you by name?

• Has the hiss of a steam heater started turning into voices?

• Have clouds in the sky turn into visual shapes?

• Have you experienced things that are so strange it seems impossible that beliefs you hold are not true?

• Do you have an uncanny awareness of or evidence of who you were in a past life?

• Do you see projected images that show you secret images or entertaining stories that give you secrets about your ancestry or aliens or the mysteries of the universe?

• Can you communicate with spirits, aliens or ghosts?

• Do you sense when reincarnated spirits, aliens, or robot-machines have entered modern bodies as clones by looking at a person’s glistening eyeballs?

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When I think back to my twenty-two-year career working with other providers, my mid-career first-break, and the things that helped me recover, like my dog, I know for sure that the standard of care needs is a disservice to those who experience madness.

Many people who have breaks from reality get that permanent housing trajectory in their heads and rant and rail against it. They may still believe that there is such a thing as schizophrenia and be disinterested in the lives of their peers who are clearly schizophrenics. Those who have breaks, like me, are extremely diverse with distinctive cultural backgrounds, different access to resources and differing levels of buy into to the concept that they are permanently ill with something that will never go away. Those without a history of privilege become very susceptible for decline into permanent warehousing conditions that make healing very challenging.

Clearly, dismantling industry constructs for things like schizophrenia and poor prognosis is an important component of recovery. I have a hunch that to plan for generativity, schizophrenic constructs, other disorder constructs that block the formation of counterculture, and constructs from developmental psychology need to be challenged.

***

As I mentioned in part one of this essay, to deconstruct the notion of schizophrenia, nine years ago, I coined the term, special messages. Special messages are a broad set of experiences that lead people into schizophrenia. Special messages can range from intuitions, to dreams, to memories, to interpersonal interaction, to voices or other hallucinations, to coded/traumatic observations of media, words, numbers, or serendipitous reality. During a first break these experiences come together to offer powerful glimpses of reality that is real but overwhelming or confusing. In the least it leads to thoughts that tend to differ from mainstream thought.

Running survivor-led group therapy over the past nine years, I have identified at least seven other jargonized concepts other than special messages that significantly help define what is going on during a break. This involves looking at message receivers without seeing them as behavioral objects with brain disorders. Looking at the process of what is going on internally and externally in addition to the way individuals behave is necessary. And during this process of deconstructing schizophrenia, there are a host of potential solutions that arise. Along with eight components of “psychosis” I have developed eight solution strategies over time.

***

I believe it helps to share diverse ideas, coping strategies and learn more about the culture of peoples who experience a break. Although we come from diverse backgrounds, we become brothers and sisters when we become oppressed during treatment. I believe group therapy that focuses on the experience of “psychosis” can help restore that much needed human need for generativity. The hearing voices movement is currently starting to make this resource available to people. I believe that people who get special messages and have first breaks have skills that could become gifts if they learn how to manage them. Instead they end up separated into isolated disorders and alone. I tend to think of them as being neurologically different not psychologically and developmentally impaired.

Perhaps as a people, we message receivers are mistrustful for a good reason. Who wants to go in and out of the hospital until they are forced into permanent warehousing conditions?

As a paid professional, I was careful to hide my history and prove that I could function just like a normal clinician. It wasn’t until I had worked six years and received my psychotherapy license that I decided to overcome my own fear of being fired for surviving schizophrenia. I started to run groups in which I shared and depicted my own experience and used that platform to foster mutual exploration. I have learned how to work with many in the program, telling stories and defining universal qualities of “psychosis.”

***

Another industry construct that needs to be dismantled are the presumptions that get made with the developmental psychological paradigm of Eric Erickson. The belief that someone with paranoid “psychosis” is stuck in the first developmental stage of trust verses mistrust and therefore not able to conquer later developmental tasks is common. Psychological malapropisms such as this contribute to preventing the industry from really healing people and offering them things that help them with generativity needs. Too many providers think along these lines, fail to explore a message receiver’s experiences and do not train people towards getting generativity needs met

Sure, some of us who have had breaks from reality have had problems with things like guilt and shame in our history, but many don’t. Some of us may be industrious and have initiative, just like some “normals” are, and some not. These kinds of struggles can be addressed intermittently and developmental strengths may exist without the presence of trust.  Likewise, we may have different levels of need in terms of intimacy and generativity, but we do have these needs just like everybody else. The idea that you can’t love someone else until you love yourself is an example of this kind of malapropism. If loving and caring for others is a strength, why not utilize it.

***

When a person has a first break, it is a real shame when, suddenly, all resources go to providers who set trajectories of permanent warehousing and poverty. I believe it is wise to invest in people who get special messages. Once they are either economically empowered or enveloped in a safe and healing community they can engage in generativity and dismantle the constructs that keep them shackle bound.

Indeed, people with psychological training or a belief in modern ways may be at a significant disadvantage in surviving a break. It is well known that in many third world countries with subsistence and indigenous practices, recovery is more common than in modern contexts. This proves to be true even when there is access to medication and the best practice: CBT for “Psychosis.” There are so many factors to consider when considering reality in this manner. It is a very mind-blowing and industry-condemning fact. I feel that getting important needs met like generativity is essential and can help more of us dismantle the paradigms that keep us defeated.

Although I function with a good job and a good relationship, I still struggle with the lack of safety I experience when dealing with mainstream community. Outside the community where I work as a facilitator, I prefer to stay at home where many of my needs are met with the canine who we just rescued three weeks ago. I prefer to adapt to the positive qualities I learn about from my current dog, Jayla, and focus on that present moment of joy she brings.

Meanwhile the apocalypse rages in the backdrop.

The post The Need to Dismantle Industry Constructs (Part Three) appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Following up from my last post that featured political causation ideas, this post features examples of some spiritual causation ideas that I frequently use to understand some of my current message experiences. These  last two posts are from my second to last chapter which documents psychological, trauma, and scientific causation explanations in addition to the political and spiritual explanations I am including. I assert in the chapter my belief that the more causation understandings that a message receiver has at their disposal, the more they are able to establish or maintain the flexibility that is required to break out of a message crisis or “psychosis” episode. As I describe below, key to being able to break out of an episode is a willingness to leave causation up to god, and choose the causation explanation that enables you to function with the least amount of distress.

Ultimately there are more causation arguments than I could possibly identify and the more we listen and learn to new explanations for unique individuals, I’d argue the better off we will be.

Detailed Spiritual Causation Examples:

Messages come from god, the devil, angels, demons, aliens, ghosts or what we in the west call supernatural experiences.

            The belief that messages represent a break through to a spiritual world is often thought to be delusional, but for many others (and I) who have experienced it, contend that this can be a valid interpretation that warrants real consideration. This contention is a hard one for many. In other epochs some people believe that message receivers are possessed by the devil and persecuted them accordingly. Additionally, if the message receiver is hostile toward you and calling you a mafia leader when you don’t see yourself that way, being told that that person is in contact with spirits, has discernment of spirit, or a keen ability to interpret right and wrong might not fly. So often there is a tendency to use words like spiritually preoccupied, religious delusions, or in mania when these kinds of contentions are made. But having gone through such experiences many of us are ardent that they can make sense, but that the subject needs to be trained or supported with these kinds of break through experiences.

Let me say to the reader that when I was buried in the political, secret society causation ideology, the idea that there was more to what I was experiencing than just mafia oppression was very helpful. When I started to think that maybe god was communicating with me, I went through a profound change in thinking and experience. Not only did it make me feel less exploited and victimized, I also started to think that a good higher power might offer me hope for the future. Yes, I did think I was Jesus and yes I was even more concerned that I would be imprisoned and die a torturous death, but the shift in thinking was a huge relief and a step towards recovery. And yes, I am now much more influenced by the role of spirituality in our world.

In fact, once out of crisis, I have learned to use this explanation to explain how some of my messages come true. Now a message is a message and I have to put it on the back burner to see if it is a spiritual message, a mafia message, a traumatic trigger, just a dream-like mental reference, or a result of neurotransmitter imbalance. In fact there are many other kinds of explanations possible and I let time tell. I have learned to see the losses and trauma I have endured as necessary to become a reasonable and effective therapist. Just like Job, I had my possessions returned to me, and now I am working with purpose to help others learn how to understand what they experience in a spiritual manner. Indeed, in groups that I run religious texts and wisdom are often brought up and used to guide people into a healing alternative. Old stories from ancient times also are full of things like voices and other messages and can be a truly powerful resource.

Messages are current dilemmas that are happening elsewhere in the world that spiritual connection is helping the message receiver tap into for a reason.

            Having had the opportunity over the past nine years to normalize divergent views, uncover theories, and crack open special message experiences, I do believe that not only myself but other message receivers learn about realities that are real.  Many of us bring the realities of atrocity, genocide, and colonization into our lives and here I ask the reader if there is a reason for this. Though different message receivers have different kinds of experience, themes clearly reflect real wars at our doors. Perhaps, we are connected to others who are suffering or who have suffered in past epochs through spiritual connection.

Perhaps when we hear our deceased loved ones voices or see their vision in dreams or in front of us we really are tapping into something important. Perhaps there is a real spiritual world that is not imagined that message receivers can tap into. Perhaps, the problems that arise from spiritual connection are the result of modern world persecution and efforts to silence the whistle blower. Perhaps the message receiver just can’t negotiate and make sense of without guidance and community and what they are given instead is not all that helpful.

I personally feel that some of my message experiences give me truth from a higher power, but that I get these mixed up with messages that come from negative experience that negative spirits and histories of abuse and exploitation are responsible for. I have had to learn that I cannot tell the difference and that I need to be passive and play along and let my higher powers reveal to me reality in their time. A lot of time humans don’t always understand the complexity of right from wrong and the people who do the most good spend a lot of time trying to be good but admitting it when they make mistakes. The more I listen to message receivers quoting the Bible, the Koran, and Buddhist teachings, the more faith I have that I am not entitled to or in possession of the truth; but that with guidance and respect for others and time, that god may take care of me if I do my best.

Perhaps having a place to process these kind of experiences as spiritual experience can help message receivers make better decisions in our day to day life to live the way god wants us to. Perhaps going back to society with our discoveries and re-establishing a relationship can help guide society in a more godly direction. This is hard to do when the powerful medicalization of these experiences and discriminatory laws discredit us.

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

            The above supposition is an extension of spiritual thought and a return to traditions of some indigenous societies and some cultures that are less focused on power, dominance and exploitation. I am not on board with what I believe to be a Eurocentric view that Finland is paving the way for a reintegration of a spiritual and whole community. I believe that many cultures that aren’t so corrupted do just as good a job of this unbeknownst to Eurocentric thinkers. If historically we were the Shaman, perhaps if we empower ourselves as a culture we can help contribute and improve the world.  Maybe we can learn truths from each other that can restore the role of spirituality in peoples’ lives. Maybe if we meet others who have been able to survive in a good way we can be more faithful in our spiritual endeavors and more righteous.

The post Special Messages Excerpt: Self-Exploration through Causation2 appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

This excerpt is going to operate with the contention that there are five causes of “psychosis”: political, psychological, scientific, trauma, and spiritual. In the chapter I have written, I extensively review differing types of causal arguments that can arise within each causation style. Clearly in the chapter, there is some cross over as science mixes with trauma and politics etcetera. In the chapter, I post ideas that I clearly disagree with and that are not for me. I do so because I have nine years of experience listening to the causal arguments of other people and I respect that other causal arguments may be true for other people. Indeed help comes in different forms for different people. In the chapter, the intention is that as the reader reads through these causation examples, they may relate to some new causal explanation they haven’t thought of. I believe that increasing the number of causal arguments that you have gives you more power to be resilient and flexible when you face threatening or distressing messages as you go through life.

But here, in the excerpt below, I am just going to share three political causation ideas I have heard over the years. This is the theory style that I was most stuck on when I was in crisis. Though thinking this way was toxic for me at the time, in recovery I can reflect on ways that some of my special messages were in fact political in nature. I personally was able to dig myself out of crisis when I shifted to the spiritual causation theory style, a style that causes some to get stuck and marginalized. In the chapter, I legitimize these two causation theories in addition to thoroughly exploring the other legitimate theory styles, psychological, trauma, and scientific.

Detailed Political Causation Examples:

Messages are caused by secret societies who may interact with or utilize governmental technology in order to silence and marginalize the message receiver in terms of their ability to affect politics.

Over the years I have worked with message receivers, I have met many individuals who fit a profile that I myself am familiar with. While this may not fit the mainstream conceptualization of mental illness, there are many individuals who function or have not been able to overcome being political prisoners within the system. Indeed, the narrative that the mental health system functions as a means of social control that silences whistle-blowers who act brazen in standing up to power may sound foreign. This not only applies to squares, but also substance abusers who are attempting to get out of a gang, or professional who are trying to escape an abusive work group (like Edward Snowden.) Hence, special messages mirrors real social processes even a collective unconscious of a society that is poorly understood by those insulated by the mainstream.

It may seem irrational that in the land of the free that malicious power might be so abused. Indeed if an observer were to look at an elder in a psychiatric ward who will not take care of himself, objecting to the treatment and the oppression at the board and care by calling the FBI and talking in code to them, paranoia may seem operant. However, as someone who has gotten to know some of those peoples’ stories, and as a person who has one to tell myself, I would like to argue that protesting against the wrong people can result in this scenario, for real.

First, consider psychiatrist David Rosenhan’s experiment as depicted by Adam Curtis in, “The Trap Part 1.” This was a social experiment conducted in the late seventies in which eight subjects without mental health conditions presented at west coast American hospitals. Each of the eight participating subjects was instructed to tell one lie, that they heard an innocuous voice saying “thud” in their ears. Every subject in the experiment had endured horrifying and traumatic experiences and came out with severe diagnoses: seven with paranoid schizophrenia; and one with bipolar. Subjects found they had to lie to get out of the institutions. When the results of this study were published one of the offending institutions asked for a replay. Rosenhan then told that one institution he was going to send an undisclosed number of individuals back into the institution, but then sent no one. The institution then released forty-one individuals who they identified as subject of the experiment only to learn that Rosenhan had tricked them.

Consider that subjection to such a system of punishment is a great was to get to political dissidents when prison isn’t as much of an option due to legal complications. Being emotionally tortured in incarcerated institutions cause individuals to lie in order to get themselves free. It then is easy apply counterintelligence to keep someone marginalized.

I, for example, once admitted during my incarceration that I used heroin and crack, but not cannabis. I was trying to see if I could get staff and peers to stop harassing me. Being that I thought everyone knew I was incarcerated because my parents were mafia, I truly believed the admission might help me get out of the institution.

While I still have a number of unanswered questions: a year later, the apartment that I managed to set up while I worked twelve hour days at minimum wage was ransacked on one occasion as though there was a police search. A man at the library I kept on running into on multiple occasions during those days I was looking for a better job, told me he worked for the CIA, for the multinational corporations. This man did demonstrate to me that he had good hacking skills. He also supported me by suggesting I get better computer skills because employers would want me to have them.

Before my incarceration I got to the point where I was openly blowing the whistle on a public housing authority that served vulnerable individuals with number of social issues including substance abuse, prostitution, and drug trafficking. From my perspective, I was the only member on the team who was not complicit with the drug dealing and crime in the building. That made me a very likely target to catch a case. And that’s what happened. I was easy to isolate and because I had poor social support.

Indeed, there are many individuals who live in such circumstances without jobs who are surrounded by criminal and law enforcement secret societies who are against illegal crime and thought to be square. There are likewise angry substance abusers who are willing to snitch once they get clean. Broadening the scenario, there are many institutions that have secret societies built into them: educational, mental health, work sites. Those who are not complicit with the rules or are overly complicit are likely to get targeted. Universally square people are more likely to get a crime pinned on them or get targeted, discredited, slandered or bullied into gang membership. There is a lot of secondary gain that society gets by discrediting and alienating individuals who are complaining about broken laws. For those individuals who are not used to the streets, consider what happens in work place politics. Backstabbers and those who make waves, even in an accountable environment, are more likely to get cut. If however, they are organized, motivated, and hard to catch, those people may get moved up into management. Generally people have to accept that not all rules are going to be followed one hundred percent of the time. But break too many and there might be problems as well.

Like the subjects that were in the Rosenhan experiment many protesters and other contrarian types catch a mental health case and receive treatments that make them vulnerable for more punishment and so they lose their power to testify.

While not all messages that are received are likely to be caused by instruments of social control, it is very possible that secret societies and various branches of the government do become involved with some persons of interest. Quantico does have a behavior sciences division. With the Patriot Act medical records may be accessed by law enforcement during relevant or irrelevant investigations. This kind of reality does not always apply but indeed may apply in more cases than the mainstream realizes. In California, 5150s may well show up in a police records. Indeed, some people get started out in this manner and become increasingly oppressed as time goes on, developing more messages about social control than are really there. However, mix up social control messages with messages that come from other causal factors, like stigma, and a person who has a beef with law enforcement or at least with some real secret societies, like the mafia, can be tormented for years.

Messages come from family systems in which economic survival and good social standing, sometimes reinforce scapegoating requiring that everyone be open to change.

During the era of family systems, there was a lot of work done on how to work with families to prevent scapegoating, which is in my mind a form of political abuse. Early preoccupation with the double-bind considered the suffering of message receivers who get put into situations in which they can’t act in any manner without facing negative abuse from the family. In fact, this predicament of the message receiver was expanded to include other conditions. While many theories sprung up, in particular, Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory was built particularly from working with Midwestern individuals who carried a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Bowen, using insight and rational arguments, and long term consultation was focused on the ability of an individual to differentiate from their family of origin. He taught therapists to track issues of differentiation through the generations. Bowen advocated for therapists to triangulate themselves into the system in a protective manner addressing conflict and problems to help increase the level of differentiation and decrease the tendency to scapegoat the identified patient. In general, this and other family systems theories postulated that family homeostasis requires that successful family members to dominate and bully the scapegoat who develops mental problems as a result to keep the rest of the family functioning. Thus, family dynamics become toxic to the message receiver. It is arguable that split off negative sides of the family’s trauma get attributed to the message receiver and that this may continue to affect a message receiver whether or not they maintain contact with their family.

At times, I have found myself contemplating these kinds of issues from a slightly different angle. Could it be that that some people don’t have the attributes that a family that is particularly insulated by their social role, demands. In other words, the family has particular attributes they promote to maintain themselves economically and socially. Then, those who don’t fit the family mold may get persecuted. For example, I grew up in a private school academic family in which both parents were teachers and I turned out different partly because I was a whistleblower and because I had learning disabilities and poor social skills. Another person from a different background may require other attributes in order to be financially sustaining. Consider insulated families of people I’ve worked with who come from a different backgrounds. Let’s say I like them had grown up in a military family or a mechanics family, or a family that sustained itself through sex work, or in a motorcycle gang. Perhaps those modes of work weren’t a good fit. Perhaps some of my clients found themselves in a similar situation that I found myself in; particularly if they, like me, didn’t have good social skills to recreate themselves in a new way. Perhaps in route to a different type of job, ex-communication happened leaving them unable to adapt to a different role. Is it possible then they would fail to differentiate or develop needed skills likewise prompting a flight into messages. Can it be as easy as just being born a little bit different and facing excommunication without having a mentor? Could the politics of that kind of situation be enough stress and pressure to cause a flight to messages in some situations? Clearly in many situations there might be love and flexibility to help a person overcome these circumstances, but not always. It may well depend on how encapsulated the family is in their social world. As such politics of culture might contribute to vulnerability.

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Messages happen to unprotected people when they are under distress from use of street drugs and connection to black market realities.

I believe that it warrants mentioning that the slew of individuals who get messages due to the use of street drugs may fit in to political causation, in addition to the other causation theories, (psychological, trauma, spiritual and scientific.) I believe it warrants our attention if there are ten psychotic disorders in the DSM that cause message crisis. Consider that people who lose their social protections may become treated like dissidents if they aren’t in the know, or blessed with social support. From meth to molly to smack to bath salts to tryptamine —even conventional use of alcohol, cannabis, and crack (which is increasingly mixed with meth)—drugs may help induce message experiences for many individuals. Sure it’s just as possible that some brains under the stress and strain of the abuse that drugs are supposed to cause fall into messages (trauma causation.)  It’s also clearly arguable that that chemical processes trigger message experiences (scientific causation.) Indeed it’s even arguable that street drugs as causation crosses the psychological and spiritual domains as followers of Timothy Leary would point out. But I am just mentioning this here in the event that unsupported individuals become political dissidents when they aren’t protected by gangs or money or livelihood. I do this here because this is my favorite domain. Maybe the government dosed me repeatedly with tryptamine mickies just because I was named after Timothy Leary, just as I thought.

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