Clyde Dee's Blog

Reflections on My Mistrust for Other Mental Health Workers

Back when I was battling with what a State Hospital labeled as schizophrenia, I had little reason to trust mental health workers. Prior to the catastrophic occurrences that rendered me a ward of the state, I had survived for seven years as a mental health professional. I knew what a lot of mental health workers said behind closed doors and in team meetings. I longed for a day in court where I could rectify everything that happened to me, but the mental health workers at the hospital simply rolled their eyes when I tried to share my story. At key points I was mocked. This is the story of how I’ve lived with mistrust for mental health workers ever since. 

Initially, as a mental health worker, I thought I was doing good work. But once incarcerated in a state hospital I realized how delusional I once had been. I had not realized how much I dehumanized mental health patients until I was one of those dehumanized patients. I saw the way the staff demeaned, mistreated and put themselves on a pedestal in front of me. And they took home good salaries for treating me this way. I initially decided not to return to work in mental health. 

My therapist of seven years had told my parents I would be in and out of hospitals the rest of my life while I was trying to escape to Canada to seek asylum. My parents believed her. Right before I was released from the longest three months of my life, my father begged me to stay in the safe hospital for another nine months rather than allow myself to be released. I had been restrained and punched in the back by staff because I was confused. I was seriously threatened by a veteran with a history of violence. I had received offers to join a gang and I was a person of interest among those connected to the local Mexican mafia. I survived dangerous and deplorable conditions. I didn’t need nine more months of this. I had devoutly followed this therapist for seven years and ignored the part of me that felt she was an ivy league snob who grossly underestimated me. Now I could see her as the mental health worker she really was, one that was there to control and suppress me. 

 

Control and Suppression:

Streeted to a Greyhound Bus Depot in snowy Montana, I made my way to sunny Fresno California. I did okay. I managed to find a job and establish an apartment until I ran out of meds at the end of the month. Hence my battle started with housing insecurity and underemployment. It would take years and years to return to secure professional employment with weekends off. Somehow on this recovery journey my mistrust for mental health workers never changed.

In Fresno off medication, I believed that the government sewed a tracker in my dog when the pound fixed her. I believed that the men who drove white trucks were in the mafia. I believed that all the oranges in the streets were left there to let me know that the mafia could take my life if I snitched. See, I had this unique knowledge about the reality of the drug war based on recent epiphanies I gained on my last social work assignment in Seattle Washington. I believed that my father was a high-profile crime boss on the east coast working under the umbrella of the society of friends (or the Quakers) and that he was funding this negative attention I was getting throughout Fresno to silence me and protect his fortune.

When my meager savings got low enough my aunt in the bay area offered me an arranged job at an Italian Delicatessen if I move to Antioch CA and endure a ten-mile bike commute and hour-long BART ride to work and back. Only then would my parents help me. And I had to see a shrink for 125$ an hour.

I was making 9$ an hour and the shrink made me see her two hours a week (250$) and she just could never understand why this might anger me. “Why sweat the small stuff,” she said. And she was very critical of me for giving my power away and letting the rich kids who worked at the deli bully me. “I too shop at AG Ferrari,” she said. So, this relationship didn’t exactly heal anything. I did learn to lie to her and compromise and balance my emotions.

 

Returning to Mental Health Work Without Blowing the Whistle:

Although it’s true I hadn’t wanted to go back into mental health, after ten months of poverty, isolation and deli work with this long commute, I changed my mind. Getting a new education was costly and I was desperate to get back control over my life. 

I returned to taking medication which enabled me to get a job in social services working with developmentally disabled individuals as the manager of satellite housing. After six months of this low wage work, I healed enough to return to mental health. The first job back in mental health I failed to attain because I had a panic attack in front of my clinical supervisor on the first day. They used me for three months and cut my per diem hours. Luckily, I landed on my feet and managed to get another per diem hire at an outpatient psychiatry program. 

I learned to hold my tongue around mental health workers. As I heard them compare the schizophrenic mind to that of a dog, I dealt with this by working harder and longer than them. I felt so afraid of falling into homelessness I blindly followed people I secretly did not like so that I could work. I saw a lot of things go on that I had used to speak out against. Now I had to accept them and prove that I would not again blow the whistle so that I could survive.

In early internships, which I maintained after the clinic hours to get the required five-hundred child and family hours necessary for California Licensure, I kept a low profile and did not disclose my history of madness to anyone. How was I to make healing relationships when I was forced to hide parts of myself that are vital to understanding my mission and purpose in life? 

I worked six years in silence. Half of this time I worked without any time off, seven days a week. In 2008, when I finally got my license, I started running a group called special messages in which I disclosed my history of madness and institutionalization to the clients so we could collaboratively share the contents of psychosis. It was at this point where other professional therapists I had largely ignored started to get my attention again. 

It wasn’t just because I was aware some of my colleagues were calling me, “crazy Tim,” behind closed doors that I left the job three years later. I knew what I was doing was unconventional and for that reason I produced extensive write-ups of my group curriculums to document what the clients and I were creating. Sure, colleagues took those write ups to the manager with concerns trying to get me fired. I really thought that the institutional mentality of the staff was unnecessary and possible to escape. In doing this I stopped facilitating the groups which were wildly popular and beautiful. I left for greener pastures. I took a pay cut and entered a county recovery project where they used recovery language.

 

Racing into the Arms of Recovery: 

As a Recovery Services Administrator working in the county’s pilot program merging three best practices called CHOICES, my lived experience was to be considered an asset. Even the author of the project admitted that he had once been in a cult. The organization I worked with were all peer counselors. 

But alas, I walked into a political bee’s nest and that the person who was going to get stung would eventually be me. The company that hired me was from Arizona and several people in the multicultural county were having issues with one of the owners and her openly color-blind views on race. Her attitude that race doesn’t matter, only qualifications, was not well received. I also heard enough of what she had to say to be offended and set boundaries with her. I would not promote her racial ideologies that were alienating her staff and the local professionals who worked with us.

But there were other players in the county who weren’t offended and who were willing to partner with the company owner, and they seemed to be giving her bad reports about me and my behavior in the team meeting. I worked against these negative senses of things while I was getting bullied in the team meetings, working towards a brighter outcome. The teams I was working on were often hostile and superior to my workers and I had a need to defend them and often faced a room full of people being unfair. 

It wasn’t long until the professionals in the county became very concerned about what I had to say about psychosis, enough so that one time the project director set up an ambush in which I was the target. All the professional therapists in the room were mad and wanted a client who as a gang member forcefully medicated and I pointed out that it was illegal to do so.  They all knew I was right. 

They accused me of being against medication and dangerous! 

I said, “Why would I be against medication? I take medication. I am for self-determination and choice.” 

One other professional saw this political ambush and pointed out it was unfair, and she got written up by her boss.

I left that job and the sixty-hour work weeks after a year and a half. I got demoted because the owner said it was dangerous to have me working with clients. She agreed with the recommendation of the director of the program that I was better off just reviewing charts.

I saw one of the other directors after I left. He couldn’t believe that I had found a job within Alameda County. 

I had gone back to the hospital where I had a supervisor who believed in my work and where others called me, “crazy Tim.” I didn’t tell this director that they barely let me back in the door as a per diem employee. I didn’t tell this director that they would work me a year-and-a-half before they gave me back my benefits. I just looked at his glaring eyeballs and said yes.   

 

Going Up the Food Chain: 

On the one hand, my recovery has brought me a life I never believed would be possible when I was incarcerated in the dank, Montana State Chronic Unit that was only heated to just above freezing at 40 degrees Fahrenheit. On the other hand, my ability to heal that original world view that mental health workers were there to control and suppress has not changed. 

As a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist I have been able to go up the food chain and study with experts to renew my license every two years. The focus of the field and my own studies has been understanding how to heal trauma, something that I believe is needed when people have experienced extraordinary experiences associated with psychosis. Indeed, using these training opportunities to help myself and others heal from trauma I hoped that I could change my relationships with my coworkers and thrive.

Fifteen years ago, I went to a twenty-four-hour CEU training in San Francisco with Bessel Van de Kirk, Ph.D. and he made fun of psychotic people three times and presumed that the audience had all been to school in Massachusetts.

A few years later, I went to an EFT Training with Dawson Church, Ph.D. He referred to people who were unable to benefit from EFT as being annoying and reversed. I was unable to benefit from the tapping and had let that fact be known. Others had told me that it was because I was too dissociated. Good Ol’ Dawson got bolder as the training wore on. “What is wrong with them,” he said, “they are unable to know when something is helpful; they should just let themselves be helped.”

In 2016, I was researching trainers from where I wanted to get my forty-hour EMDRIA training. I took a training course with Laurel Pernell Ph.D. She made fun of one of her subjects as not being smart. In fact, she failed to notice all the code-switching that indicated that he had clearly been born and bred as a mobster. As someone who experienced a year and a half of believing I was being harassed by the mob, I was outraged that she depicted him as being non-intelligent. She clearly had no kind of understanding of the lifestyle he lived or what it’s like to survive in those circles. 

A few years ago, I took an online PESI training course with Frank Anderson MD., and he made fun of people who heard voices. Now there may be some context to his comments that I am not capturing here. But by the time I had heard this it was just another microaggression put out by just another elite trainer.

Thus, in training I found elite trainers to exclude people who do not fit their “trauma” culture. This process of othering is passed down through the institutions into the mental health workers. It is passed on to the most vulnerable who must battle with it in their minds. I have found the best way to deal with it publicly is to be humble and submit to those in power even when it isn’t warranted. What becomes most important is to not internalize their sense of superiority so that it affects your own sense of self.

 

 I Have Survived:

So now that it’s been twenty-five years since I have been hospitalized in a state hospital, I work part-time at the hospital and part-time in private practice. At work in the hospital, I use my tenure and popularity among the clients to challenge the suppression and control of the clients and do my best to promote practices that support healing and recovery. I often feel like I am all alone in my views as I offer the sole dissenting perspective. I try to stay positive and amicable toward my coworkers even when I don’t like their views. 

I have had some coworkers I have connected with over the years particularly when I have functioned in the role of a supervisor. At times I have been able to demonstrate how my dissenting views actually do coincide with the values and ethics of the profession. It’s true that working in the psychiatric system, I must have a sense of willingness to compromise; however, I do my best to honor my sense of recovery first and foremost. It is still easy for me to feel othered in training and via associating with other professionals in networking circumstances. But I am glad to have survived what I have survived even if I haven’t healed my relationships with coworkers or changed my views about psychiatry being about control and suppression.

The post Reflections on My Mistrust for Other Mental Health Workers appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

A Mad Perspective on IFS Training

When the IFS trainer suggested that that we all may have been in training spaces that weren’t safe, I needed to hear that. And then, she also extended a welcome to neurodivergent people in this work. This too was important for me to hear, as I have attracted three neurodevelopmental labels in my lifetime. On day one of this sixteen-week course, I hoped that this popular methodology, Internal Family Systems, might be the answer to addressing my own complex trauma. Being in a safe place that is open to neurodivergent people seemed like an important place to start.

I have found other trauma-focused psychotherapies, like eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and emotional freedom techniques (EFT) very hard to use. I struggled to feel enough to successfully work with either modality. EFT, or tapping on energy meridians, didn’t help me feel any better when I was numb and not feeling anything at all. Likewise, EMDR or using dual attention stimulus while reviewing my own early traumatic events, rendered me in a void at first, and as I worked with it more it started to feel like being inside my head during a hike. Because I don’t experience special healing from either of these modalities it is hard to use these practices on other people with promise and optimism.

I had already taken several PESI courses on IFS and thought I had a pretty good idea of IFS jargon and concepts.

IFS, created by Dick Schwartz, is an approach to understanding the human psyche that reasons that one individual has multiple parts. The impact of trauma is that it drives us away from having the unifying principle of Self that can lead our parts with the wisdom of all our experiences to heal and work together in a healthy existence. When traumatic events (known in IFS as “burdens”) exist in our past, younger “protector” parts come out and dominate our consciousness, taking on extreme roles and fighting with each other to cover up what happened. Being led by the principle of Self enables us to heal our burdens and let our protector parts to live in harmony with each other within our awareness.

The appeal of parts work for me is that it views problems as rooted in things that happen to us instead of some unfounded brain pathology that can only be reversed by adjusting neurotransmitters. Thus, instead of talking about clinical depression we talk more specifically about the part that is struggling. In IFS we get curious about not only what is wrong with a part or problem, but also how it works for us. Thus, when a part shows up that is struggling with motivation and feels negative, we curiously explore the part and as we describe it and explore its history, we find that we stop “blending” with it. In effect our Self, along with the Self-energy of the therapist, comes out and helps us understand it.

In IFS, there are three types of parts: managers; firefighters; and exiles. Managers are socially conscious and try to operate in acceptable ways to hide the effects of our pains and shame. Firefighters are more reactionary and do things that aren’t socially acceptable to ward off the pain and keep the exiles from coming out. Exiles hold the pain and the memory of distressing events. Understanding the nature of these parts becomes very important to get to the point where we can unburden the pain of exiles so that the Self can lead our parts in a healthy manner.

My Experience with The Course:

As I began this latest IFSCA course, I could sense that my experience of doing IFS was different than that of my cohorts. They were more loyal to the model. When they began using IFS, they seemed to have visual or auditory experiences that I didn’t have, which seemingly allowed them connect to their parts. Indeed, having to practice being a vulnerable client—as is often the case in these training courses—quickly became so uncomfortable that I reached out to an IFS therapist who my insurance would cover to work with on my own.

In the past, I was punished by the state for purportedly hearing voices, when I didn’t realize I might be hearing very infrequent auditory illusions. How ironic it now felt in the group to be feeling outcasted for not being able to hear the voices of my parts. I learned that I had to use thinking parts to provide the answers to the questions because my parts didn’t speak directly for me.

With more practice coupled with individual therapy, I learned that with IFS one has to be in a trance-like state that I just wasn’t able to get into. This became very frustrating and I felt myself ruminating over the fact that I was different from the others in the group. It was a familiar rabbit hole that left me spinning and affected my mood and functioning.  I became concerned that the reason I was unable to hear from my parts was because I take antipsychotic medication. I continued to try to do the best I could, but the group was not proving to be a safe place for me. It was a place where I did not fit.

Repeatedly, I was directed to wait and hear from my parts and not let my thinking parts get in the way. One trainer suggested that I showed signs of having very big trauma in my background and that I couldn’t trust myself or my peers. While a part of me felt seen, another part of me felt uncomfortable with this. I have tended to be okay with trusting myself, it is other people I simply cannot trust. Where was this trainer getting this understanding of me from?

I noticed that after being consulted this way, my functioning in the course went down. Every four weeks we had sessions devoted to asking the trainer questions. During one of these sessions, I found myself less able to be attentive to her jargonized explanations. This left me in a tailspin. I found myself feeling bad about myself. This reminded me of being diagnosed with schizophrenia and feeling pathologized to function less and less.

I remembered how I kept the faith and kept working to overcome this. Thus, I went back and watched the recordings of the sessions, did the readings, and got a better understanding of the materials. I got a grip and unblended from the part of me that was convinced that there was something wrong with me because I was incarcerated in a state hospital for three months.

Eventually, approximately two-thirds of the way through the course, I started coaching my cohorts that they had to deal with my thinking parts. Work with my therapist went a bit better because she let me use my thinking parts. Still, as I listened to the complex descriptions of IFS concepts in the training sessions, I couldn’t understand what it felt like to experience the world in this way.

For example, updating the parts was never something I could do because my parts didn’t communicate with me. I found the technique to work for others to enhance self-energy and help protector parts trust and build rapport with the Self. But when others tried to use the technique on me, I wanted to say please don’t ask me those questions because I don’t know the answers. Likewise, in a trance with the pressure on to provide answers, I could not tell if I was blended or unblended so it was hard to know what worked at un-blending from a negative state or part. Mostly I was just blank. I dissociated which is a common firefighter response. I saw others update and unblend from their parts, but I couldn’t.

Meanwhile, I could go and tell my stories about traumatic things that happened to me anytime. I don’t need permission from my protector parts to do so. See, I have practiced telling stories as a keynote speaker. More frequently I have practiced sharing my stories in supportive groups I offer to others who experience psychosis. Furthermore, I have written a memoir to try to undo the sting of all the stigma I experience. I have faced a lot of rejection and weird energies from people who hear about my mental health; and I also wish they would open their ears and listen to the stories I uncover because there are so many valuable lessons to learn from them.

Lessons Learned and Moving Forward:

One thing that I have learned from working with people who experience psychosis or what I prefer to call special messages is that therapy works best when you meet the person where they are regardless of their disabilities or differences. And because of that, I struggle as a therapist to push people into a trance-like state when I can’t deal with going there myself. I found that being in this training made me afraid of trying to go inside because so often when I do, I block and come up empty. This aversion gets in the way of me understanding my parts and how to heal the exile parts that hold the pain.

Now that the course is over, I am going to continue learning IFS with my therapist and see if I can get to the point where I can get in contact with my exile parts and relieve burdens. As a therapist, I want to be able to work with other people’s parts and use the skills I learned, but feel I still have some personal learning to do before I alter my day-to-day practice.

For me feeling different or not up to snuff has a long history. I recognize that trying to do IFS work in the course caused me to blend with this part. The lead trainer named her parts, like her anxiety, and was able to stay in Self. I, unlike her, name my parts but they linger and stick around. In the training sessions, not only did they stick around; they got reinforced and that did not feel safe.

At the end of the training, I took what I consider to be a courageous step to publicly ask if the fact that I take antipsychotic medications may deflate my ability to be in a trance like state. It is also possible that my lack of trust for professionals is so profound that I just can’t do the work in front of them. When the question stumped the trainer, I went through another tailspin feeling insecure about the fact that I had let people know that I had a history of madness.

The course suggested that we keep in contact with our cohorts and, somehow, I highly doubted anyone would want to keep in contact with me. Stumping the trainer felt very awkward to me and reinforced that it is not safe to deal with madness in public spaces.

Even though the trainer had bent over backwards to include neurodivergence and taught us to meet people where they are at, she was unable to deliver safety when there are mechanisms of oppression that are beyond her control. As is often the case, we therapists often think we are safe, when a lot of times we need to take the time to prove it. And sometimes it is impossible to make someone safe in certain contexts depending on what they’ve been through.

I do believe I can benefit from the non-pathologizing approach to healing that IFS promotes and that I can teach others like me who have been institutionalized and take medicine to unblend from warring protective parts. Even if I do not get clear communication from my parts, I know they my parts are there and that I can learn to understand them.

I think I may be able to benefit even if my parts never answer. Nonetheless, my struggles to feel safe lead to an interesting set of questions in my mind:

Do medications make it harder to heal from trauma within these new modalities?Do episodes of institutionalization mixed with ongoing stigma make it that much harder to develop trust so that trauma work cannot be done?Does the IFS community need to do more outreach to include the mad community?

Indeed, in learning the answer to these questions I will have to practice and see what I can learn. I doubt there will be books that will give me an answer to them. Much as it was for me coming back from the schizophrenia diagnosis, I will have to push my limits and defy what doubters say to get answers to these questions.

I do believe the course was a good starting point to enable me to work on my complex trauma. However, I felt extremely comforted when I told a recovery friend about stumping the trainer with my question about madness. He complimented me for my self-advocacy and said maybe my question would help the trainers be more prepared in the future. Viewing my efforts in the positive manner that they were intended helped me recapture my dignity and respect. Indeed, my manager parts—the protector parts that are concerned about being socially accepted—felt they would be interpreted as social-suicide.

 

 

 

 

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My Last Vote Against California Proposition 1:

I knew in my bones that the state-wide California Proposition 1 initiative would pass on March 6th kind of like I knew that the Iraq War would start as a reaction against Osama Bin Ladden and the 9-11 tragedy. Perhaps my sense of this is something that I should keep to myself. Now, mismanaging the feelings I get in my bones, and stating that I believe my own ability to have premonitions could result in grave consequences.

This new proposition is set to mandate treatment to people with schizophrenia related forms of mental illness (not bipolar.) This proposition establishing “care courts” is matched by a similar policy starting in New York City called Kendra’s Law, or Assisted Outpatient Treatment. It is a policy that very well may spread throughout the states. What I fear is that this new power purportedly to help address the problem of homelessness becomes the law of the land. Many of us fear a return to institutionalization.

Now thanks to California Proposition 1, a person with my history could be mandated to attend treatment for two years by a judge. I could go from working in the program where I have held a twenty-year tenure as a psychotherapist to being forced to submit to treatment there despite the economic consequences. If this sounds like I am being drastic perhaps you haven’t read the details I have read or had the experiences with law enforcement and family and friends that I have had. Perhaps you haven’t had the dissociated experience of looking down upon yourself as you make your case in front of a judge’s condemning eyes just to realize that no one in the court room, not your family, not anyone, is listening to you.

Indeed, I might need to be more drastic because a lot of people don’t understand what is involved with such a catastrophic loss of status. For me personally, Proposition 1 could mean a return to a long-term dilapidated state hospital stay and years of being trafficked as an indentured servant. Perhaps you don’t believe that human trafficking is real or that it can happen to a white man from a middle-class background in the United Sates of America. But if what I am saying sounds drastic, I urge you to read further because I will provide details that at least will help you see where I am coming from. Indeed, it can and does happen and there are many more people like me than you likely realize.

 

My Fight to Create Safe Spaces:

In my current position on an outpatient psychiatric unit, I’ve been in a battle for sixteen years to make it safe for people like me to process experiences associated with what I call special messages in confidential group therapy. This isn’t easy to get people to do in our setting because the system teaches us that if we show signs of madness, we will endure punishment. To help others know it is safe to do so with me, I have grown accustomed to sharing my own experience.

I do work with some good colleagues, and I have also endured colleagues who have called me crazy Tim. They are good people too. One even left offensive cartoons on my desk. One has spoken to my manager about my work with the clients with grave concerns. Others have given me dirty looks its been clear to me that they have then talked amongst themselves about me. Still others ignore me and make me repeat myself because they refuse to acknowledge my words for unstated reasons. When I am treated like this, the good people I work with might end up needing to distance themselves from me just a little. Or they may need to turn their heads the other way a little. I don’t blame them. We all survive amid an unreal state of disparity on the psychiatric unit. Such is the nature of psychiatric units.

Now, with Proposition 1 out there, I fear that I might have to dig myself out of the same hole I was in twenty-four years ago.

 

Why Target Us?

Part of the reason mandatory treatment is a huge risk to those of us with my targeted diagnostic make-up because the public still doesn’t believe recovery is possible for us. The stated goal is to get us off the streets and into housing. Never mind the fact that in Oakland California, the city where I work, only twenty-five percent of the homeless are “mentally ill.” Also, of the people housed in Santa Rita Jail in the county 20-25% have a mental illness. It may be true that a few of us challenge the mainstream paradigm by letting others take everything away from us and choosing to live in tents rather than endure corruption in programs or low-income housing. Others of us, like me, find other ways to challenge mainstream norms. Some do come in for treatment to manage their living conditions, which, I might add, can be quite hard. I have more to say about that!

 

My Sensing of Violence in a Low-Income Housing Project:

Twenty-four years ago, I worked in such a setting in Seattle. The site was a Section 8 Housing Authority facility called the Morrison Hotel that was dubbed the hotel of horrors by the Seattle Weekly. I witnessed a lot of violence and graphic details of the underworld there. When a resident died of a heroin overdose, I saw enough strange and suspicious behavior to have a similar feeling in my bones that there was foul play associated with the death. I was tormented to the extent that gave the story to a reporter I met a poetry reading. I wasn’t given access to the files Seattle Housing Authority had on the residents and it never occurred to me that I was doing anything other than trying to support the residents who confided in me that they were also scared and suspicious about the death.

Now, with the benefit of reflection and couple of years of experience being unemployed and underemployed, I sense in my bones that that resident might have been an undercover agent of some sort and that outing him may have shined a light on some operations that were covert. There was a change in management that resulted and that affected Seattle politics and drug trade significantly.

Several months later I received a personal threat from a friend when I admitted to him that I had given the story to the press. He seemed a little grandiose about his power when he told me he could do me great harm. Another friend warned me not to flee. I chose to challenge this threat and flee. I ended up getting harassed by State Troopers and hospitalized in a State Hospital in Warm Springs Montana with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. It wasn’t until I was released three months later and had moved to Fresno California that I learned that I was right about the suspicious death and that it helped lead to the housing project getting managed by a different company.

 

The Sense that Things Are Wrong:

I now have fifty-three years of dealing with premonitions/intuitions like this. Yes, I know it is possible that I can be wrong just like I wonder if only 73.3% of the votes have been tallied at the time I am writing this, why the Washington Post has determined that the California measure has passed when there is only 50.3% yes votes. Perhaps there is math out there that enables the Wahington Post to call the election in this way, but it just doesn’t seem likely at first glance. Often, many of us in America take articles like this for granted as being truthful. The Washington Post is reputable, as is our voting system.

 

Details About What It Was Like Being Blacklisted and Indentured:

By the time the world trade towers were attacked, I had moved to Antioch CA and was hired at an Italian Deli food chain in the bay area for nine dollars an hour. I had a four-hour commute to get to the Deli on an old beat-up bicycle and BART. I could not find any other work, though this was not through lack of effort. I tried to work at professional jobs in social work. I tried many local minimum wage positions like Subway or Dennys or Walmart to no avail. On days off I would attract homeless looking white individuals who would follow me as I rode my bike dropping off applications at seven eleven, a hardware store, a restaurant. No job ever called me back. I had to put up with a job that I believed was corrupt and had several worker coworkers who were harassing me with mafia ties.

I was off medication and under the impression that I was being monitored during my bike/BART commute to my job at the Deli where I was often tormented by seventeen-year-old rich kids who mocked, or worse tried to mentor me. Most days I could identify a person on the train who I believed was there because of me. Once, I saw a resident I knew from Seattle sit across from me on the BART on my commute. Back in Seattle he had confided in me in a non-confidential circumstance that he had killed a man. He wore handcuffs and wore a label on his jean jacket that read, CIA officer. I was inundated with these kinds of coincidences or experiences I have since learned to ignore and call special messages.

I maintained this commute and schedule for ten months before I was able to get hired back into social services. Finally, I returned to taking medication and was able to improve my relationships with the less menacing of the rich kids to keep my temper at bay. The mafia kids who seemed to be in the know mostly quit and moved on.

 

Using These Experiences for the Positive:

Now in an Outpatient Psychiatric Unit, I share my story and encourage others to process theirs. I convince them that there can be safe places where they can share what they’ve been through. And over sixteen years of doing this, I have heard a lot of stories that may seem hard for many to believe. We have also shared laughs and good times. Once traumatic material is told, processed, and validated, it becomes easier for participants to compartmentalize their trauma and engage in other types of activities.

I also offer training for providers, family members and survivors who want to help others tell their stories and get relief. There is a lot that can be learned so that people will want to talk and relate what they have gone through as targeted individuals, spiritualists, people with voices, alien communicators, dissociative identities, scuttlebutt spies, and somatic sensors and other manifestations.

 

Ongoing Senses About War and Genocides:

When the towers fell twenty-three years ago, I knew right away that the United States would start wars in the middle east to avenge the approximately 3000 dead in the tragedy.

By the time of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, I was aware that there had been a lot of preparations for war. I had heard that a pipeline had been constructed to make the war possible. George W Bush’s dramatic threats toward Sadam Hussein seemed like theater to me and I presumed the war was inevitable. Indeed, by 2007 there was an ORB (Opinion Research Business) survey that estimated that 1,033,000 died in the war. This doesn’t include all the losses of life endured during the Afghanistan War which were worse.

It’s true my sense that Proposition 1 was going to pass has been propped up by a great deal of data. As I work in social services, I often see the pipelines going up and the preparations being made. I could pretend I was a rich white liberal instead of a progressive one and read the material, the messaging—treatment, not tents—the propaganda. I could figure how someone who is majority white, liberal, Californian, and uniformed might respond to the issue. For years I have interacted with the public and seen eyes go glass with the belief that schizophrenia is a medical illness rather than a spiritual journey. It is a dominant narrative in our culture.

At a time when both American parties are supporting what many believe to be a genocide in Gaza, the rationale just may be that we did this in Iraq and Afghanistan, so Israel has the right to follow suit. In this manner a race is killed beneath our very eyes in a manner so as that we don’t blink. The issue seems to me to be about power and entitlement, so that the well-to-do do not have to share in the tears and blood going on in the city corners. Yes, all so some kids can be cool and safely sample a taste of the nightlife in college just as they did, there is death an mayhem in the inner cities. Meanwhile the mainstream can go on excommunicating those who dabbled too hard or too soft. It’s all about fitting in and going along to get along.

 

Thankful that I had a Choice:

In a like manner, now I am officially able to be stripped of my American rights as someone with a schizophrenic history. Regardless of what I do, now the fact that good people can treat me with cold, glass wickedness is supported by the law. I choose to accept this and keep the ball rolling. The content of my character becomes invisible as are my rights to privacy.

If I had been forced to attend program instead of work, I could not have afforded housing with family support. I would have had to accept a board and care or a SRO for two years. By the time I endured all that, I doubt I would have healed at all. I likely would have given up and accepted my place. I wouldn’t be married and working.

Working at the Deli enabled me to work through my issues without falling into the corruption of low-income housing and programs. At least it was the choice I preferred. I equate being subjected to such treatment as being incarcerated or being sent to war—you just don’t know if you can come back from that. Working at an Italian Deli with the belief that the mafia was harassing me was hard enough, but it was better than the state hospital for sure. At least I had a choice as limited as it seemed at the time.

 

The Issue of Family Support:

I have a great aunt who I learned about once I restored my role as a social worker. She was lobotomized and institutionalized for refusing to leave her bed when her mother wouldn’t let her marry her high school sweetheart. Just as it seems like it is important for my relatives to believe they come from a good family and a good background; it felt like they then had to recapitulate this historical trauma onto me because I was different and didn’t live up to their standards. I did know of my great aunt, but I just couldn’t get the complete story.

On occasions I have met with extended family, I am met with microaggressions, or signs of excommunication. I have spent decades healing my relationships with my mother and father who are finally transitioning their perspectives after twenty years of recovery and the potential of their declining health. I have an aunt or two who have been supportive, but the attitudes of my remaining relatives, like the attitudes my parents started with, scare me. Institutionalization happened before and despite my toil and labor, I fear it could happen again.

Luckily in my work, I meet with families who display sides that want more for their children. They may not always know what to do, but they would be happy to support a recovery instead of endlessly recapitulate institutionalization. Sometimes I still feel shame that I made it hard for my family because I didn’t just accept institutionalization. That seems to be what was expected of me. But now twenty years later, the blessing of working with these families reminds me not to feel that way.

One thing I am privileged to know is that different American cultural groups handle madness differently. My story and my scenario are just a single grain of sand in a big box of good old American diversity. There are families who have gone to great lengths to shield their loved ones from homelessness and the system, who endure violence and outbursts without help from the state. Others use the state intermittently to shape and guide their loved ones in their learning process. Some utilize tough love and hospitals and decide that they are mistakes and need to handle repair and a process of mutual learning. There is tragedy and hurt that abound in all directions. There is so much needed for healing.

 

Proposition 1 and the Losses Dealt to Peer-Run Communities:

As I brace for the changes Proposition 1 will bring, I see coworkers who seem to be open to the plight of people who are neurodivergent, mad, or have histories of trauma and wonder if they can handle the upcoming changes. Very few people out there understand the behavior of the homeless on the streets, behavior that I have engaged in in the state hospital when I was beaten, confined, ignored, rejected, slandered and denied access to meaningful activity. I worry if outpatient therapists without lived experience really will be able to understand and work with people who have endured homelessness.

With the social sin of homelessness now firmly planted like a target on a minority group, the schizophrenics, society can all ignore the other issues present. I saw a post on Facebook that all we need to do is invest 20 billion to end homelessness, a small portion of what we spend against Gaza and in support of Ukraine. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but still I ask: how are families to learn how to relate to their loved ones now that resources are taken away from recovery-oriented, peer-run communities and allocated for an increase in hospital beds, housing, and the oppression of care courts? Indeed, funding will be cut for recovery services to build more housing and impose more treatment.

 

The Value of the Vote:

In my eyes, my last vote against Proposition 1 may have been my last choice against the genocide and oppression that so impacts my life, work, and worldview. I wonder if my voice really matters. I wonder if voting matters in general in this exploding political system. But maybe these wonderings should just be my little secret. Oops.

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My First Keynote

On June 12th this year I have been invited to do my first keynote at the OCEACT Conference in Bend Oregon. This is a conference for providers who work on ACT teams throughout the state of Oregon. I feel it is a good fit because early in my career I used to work on a case management team as such.

I have created a speech that addresses my concern about California’s recent passing of Proposition 1 that targets people with my diagnostic history as a means of addressing the homelessness issue that is rampant throughout the state.

I will be examining the impact of my exposure to a violent section 8 housing authority project in Seattle WA called the Morrison Hotel and my three-month psychiatric incarceration at Montana State Hospital to examine the impact of involuntary treatment. I will be highlighting how difficult it is to come back from such catastrophic loss and how mandating two years of treatment bears the potential of making social rehabilitation more challenging.

I have felt neglected in terms of gaining an opportunity to do a keynote. I have fears of public speaking that I have worked to overcome by doing workshops. I repeatedly failed to get support from local leaders and eventually stopped going to CASRA Conferences because even though my ratings came back very positive, I was never given the opportunity to do a keynote.

I recently got diagnosed with two bulging discs in my neck and severe stenosis down my right arm adding to the challenge that lays before me. This morning, I got an injection in my neck that I hope will offer me some relief and improve my ability to present.

After my Keynote, I will lead a breakout session. I will present an abbreviated hour and a half version of my Journey Through Madness Training to demonstrate how culturally specific training can vastly help case managers improve their connections with people like me. I hope to gain participants for my 2025 training and maybe sell a few books. For more information about the conference click: https://oceact.org/

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2024 Training Rescheduled to 4pm-6pm PST, First Sunday of the Month

The time of this training is officially being changed to accomodate people from different time zones. We currently have six people registered and approved at the new time and there is still space for you to join. Learn a system of care that teaches participants how to work with people who experience special messages. Special messages are things like voices, reads on peoples energy, intuition, dreams, punny liguistic and numeric coincidences, mind reading abilities, visions, symbolic objects and hosts of other types of experience that trigger awareness about conspiracy, spirit and reality that are different than the norm.

Participants will learn a system of care that accepts these experiences as valid, yet helps direct people toward the kind of functioning they need to survive and thrive in society. The presenter is a person with lived experience who has survived a schizophrenia diagnosis and managed to run professional groups exploring the contents of special messages and the stories and journeys they create over the past sixteen years. The training will be 16-20 hours dpending on the group input Unforunately CEUs will not be offered. Also, the trainings will recorded and shared with participants for their review and contents of recording may one day be used towards the creation of an online course..

The training is meant to help family members, providers, and peers learn how to reach and connect with people who are in a special message crisis, Trainees might be able to count the training towards their license. By the end of the training participants will have a different definition of what psychosis is across diagnostic categories and hosts of intervention strategies that offer hope for better relationships and social functioning than might have been previously imagined. The training only costs 100$ but scholarships are available to those who are willing to commit to the whole year.

I will be reaching out to people I am familiar with and anticpate that there will be quite a few more participants by the end of the month so don’t hesitate to confirm your spot. The training will be starting March 3 and unavailable to join again until 2025 so act soon.

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Currently Recruiting for my 2024 Training

I recently found myself explaining to a relative why the involuntary psychiatric treatment via California Care Courts being suggested on the March ballot under Proposition 1 is not a good idea. I suggested to my relative that there are many other innovative approaches to address the problem of homelessness that are being ignored. I mentioned having training for mental health workers on how to build collaborative relationships with people who are or have experienced a break from reality. I feel the public’s understanding of what is happening during a break from reality is profoundly lacking and as a result the arranged interventions are not at all helpful. Even mental health workers rarely get specific training to understand appropriate responses. They tend to learn from the machine that pushes warehousing options.

I am currently attempting to reach out to three local graduate schools to promote a training I have built over the last fifteen years that is based on the premise that service workers need to learn to explore psychosis with the people enduring a break. Working with graduate students with specific training may help them have better experiences when they do their time in community mental health. It may help them specialize in working with psychosis and commit themselves to dealing with the problem of homelessness. At this point community mental health often attracts workers early in their careers who learn off the backs of our society’s most vulnerable. Many of us who start in mental health move on once we’ve built up our confidence and skills. Many of us end up shaking our heads about the trouble we’ve seen.

Unfortunately, I am finding that it can be hard to get the needed support to get my word out to graduate school students. Would-be supporters are skeptical that because the training is 16-20 hours, I might not have concise bulleted messages one coworker suggested. Others are concerned I don’t possess a doctorate. They may figure that if no institution or movement is sponsoring this effort, that it must not be a worthy endeavor. Perhaps they note a little social anxiety in my demeanor and think I can’t do it. Some of these claims are baseless. I wrote an award-winning memoir about my experiences with madness. I know how to be concise. With regards to other concerns, like my anxiety, I am practicing to better the chances of a smooth delivery. Luckily, I am finding some promising support along the way. If I can get my training into just one of the schools, I am looking at. I may build enough of an audience to make the endeavor successful. I already have several participants.

My training argues that whether the afflicted person is in or out of emergency, it is still crucial to learn how to engage with someone who has different ideas about what is going on in society and the universe. It suggests that it’s important to study ways that what they are saying is correct so we can validate rather than reality check them. Most of the treatment out there doesn’t teach people how to understand and explore the rabbit-hole; and, as a result, experiences are typically treated as though they are deviant, taboo, and have no value. If any mention of their experience is uttered the afflicted are punished or excluded. The fact that exploration is not a common societal practice creates problems that lead to power struggles, incarceration, and trauma associated with involuntary treatment.

I used to be a social worker working with people who experience breaks and I used to label people as carrying diagnoses of all the interrelated schizophrenias when the DSM used to divide them up into types. I did not know how to be helpful because I received no specific training. I fought to preserve my job and did what my supervisors told me to do. As time wore on and I started to better understand the environments in which the afflicted resided, it started to seem like what I was being asked to do was incredibly cruel and inhumane. Then as started to work in a section 8 housing project that was highly regulated yet rife with drugs and prostitution, I better learned what it was like to live in such a realm. I started amp up in compassion and advocacy until I went of my medication and experienced a catastrophic break myself.

Six years after I recovered, I obtained my license. I started running professional groups that explored the contents of psychosis. I wrote a curriculum and shared my lived experience. What resulted was a fundamentally different understanding of psychosis that incorporates not only the internal experiences of those who are struck with it, but also the social processes involving loss and exclusion that prevent many suffers from returning to social functioning. My training offers a great deal of direction in terms of what is helpful as it redefines psychosis into something that is healable. The training is not based on reading books and research, it is sharpened by experience, observation, self-reflection, and the perspective of the people who have worked with me.

I have found that many who experience trauma also relate to many of the extraordinary experiences that I identify in the training. Thus, I believe that the training is helpful to the mental health of other challenges, not just those who have breaks from reality. Indeed, those who dissociate, who study mysticism, who have trauma, or are neurodivergent have a history of benefiting from such groups. I believe I have something important to bring to the world that has value and can change practices. I could have been locked up and subjected to care courts when I was homeless. Instead, thanks to the relative who helped me and who inquired as to my thoughts on the issue, I have been of service to others and have created something that could help you have more success connecting with others like me. You could help me sell these ideas to the universities and to the young social workers who might be willing to learn in a different way.

The monthly sessions will be recorded, and participants will have access to the videos for review and study or in case they must miss a month. There will be group exercises and practice interviewing me to learn skills and apply techniques.  To learn more, click here.

 

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A Humble But Auspicious Begining . . .

Completing eight-hours of the Journey Through Madness Workshop in the month of November was a great learning experience. It was a humble but auspicious beginning for what I hope to be a fruitful effort to train people how to feel comfortable going down the rabbit hole with someone who has extraordinary experiences and extreme beliefs.

I was wrong about the fact that eight hours would be enough time to complete the whole training. I don’t think I completed a half of my material.

I also started with four and ended up with two loyal participants who want to complete the whole training. I now have four two-hour tapes that can be viewed on YouTube.

By the end of the training, I became comfortable with the situation and started to enjoy presenting the work. In the beginning I plowed through significant social anxiety that may have interfered some with the quality of the product.

I believe my work can transform a person’s perspective and ability to work with people who have a break from reality, and many others who have had extreme experiences that haunt their current relationships. I believe understanding how people who experience a break come to believe the things they do is useful to humanity. It humanizes the process when participants learn how they can relate to the experiences.

However, I also learned that my participants need more time to complete the training before they truly feel confident managing the anxiety associated with going down the rabbit hole.

Turns out I will need at least sixteen hours to complete the full training and plan to pace myself during recording sessions. I will need to do a little better with recruiting participants and deepen the pool of interested parties. I believe I may achieve this by recording one Sunday night a month.

Keep in touch with the Sign Up for the Journey Through Madness Workshop box on my website at https://timdreby.com/product/masterclassfor the latest in your opportunity to participate.

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Nine Volunteers Can Join Journey Through Madness Webinar for Free

How To Be A Healing Presence Without Becoming Anxious, Power-Struggling, Or Referring the Mad Person To A Hospital

 

How It Works

Starting this November in two-hour sessions on Sunday evenings, I will teach you a new model for understanding psychosis that will help you be able to relate with a person in madness in a manner that helps them heal. We are looking for nine volunteers who will receive the training for free in a webinar format on zoom. Volunteers may be professionals (including peer counselors) looking to hone their skills, family members seeking better relationships with their loved ones, or people with lived experience who want to share their perspective and contribute to a new model. The sessions will be taped and edited and eventually sold at an affordable price. Come bring your stories and perspectives to the discussion, ask questions, and we will all learn in community.

Here’s what we’ll go over:

Week 1

How listening to stories and reflecting on commonalities helped me deconstruct experiences into solvable problems and formulate the structure of the rest of the presentationWhy the medical model definitions lead to limited solutions and ultimately to the poor outcomes, stereotypes and the dehumanization we see.The way the thirty differential diagnoses that include psychotic experiences in them may have kept us from creating a counter culture and focusing on solutions. 

Week 2

Why the notion that this is a thought disorder is wrong, and the importance of considering the conglomeration of experiences that cause one to experience a break from reality.The reason trying to stop a person from perseverating about their experiences by telling them that they are ill only decreases mindfulness and thwarts efforts to stop perseveration.Why it is often important to research and know about real government conspiracies to gain a message receiver’s trust and learn about what they think.

Week 3

How expanding the ways message receivers think about what causes their experiences adds to flexibility and can have a positive impact on functioning.Learn to use what we term “the trickster concept” to likewise increase flexibility and open up faith without reality checking and sabotaging your trust with the message receiver.Why processing past behavior and negative outcomes is essential to help a message receiver start to accept boundaries and use the social skills that work for them.

Week 4

How social, institutional, and internalized stigma are linked to a message receiver’s irrational thinking making timing and context important as cognitive therapy is used as a tool to help them. How a mindful understanding of special messages can still be a valid part of an individual’s effort to discern reality without leading to a crisis or an emergency.How to use this system of care in group and individual contexts so that you can meet the message receiver where they are at and develop intervention strategies.

 

Hi, I’m Tim 

Early on in my 27 years of working in the trenches of community mental health, I thought I was a good worker when I did things like: 1) take care of people who were experiencing a break in reality by doing things for them to build trust; and 2) reminding them to take their medication. As I realized what people were living through in impoverished warehouse circumstances and fought for better services, I started to notice ways I was being followed by the company that owned the housing project where I worked. When I received a threat from a close friend, I myself descended into madness. I tried to flee to Canada  and was rapidly warehoused as a ward in a last resort State Hospital. I learned very quickly that madness wasn’t what I was trained to believe it was in school. I learned 1) that being treated like I was incapable of doing anything myself felt insulting; and 2) being told to take my medications was pointless; these kinds of interventions were not the help I needed.  

It was a lot harder to get ready to go back to work in mental health than I thought it would be after three months in an institution. Enduring housing insecurity, moves, and underemployment was very hard. When I did manage to get my license I started to run professional groups that explored not only what psychosis was, but also what could be done that was helpful. I used my lived experience to help other silenced individuals open up. The things we all learned in the process of sharing stories were astounding. I have documented these learnings over the past fifteen years and want to release to you my findings in a course that will help you know how to intervene when faced with someone who experiences a break from reality.   

 

Click to Schedule Interview with Tim

There will only be only nine to ten participants so set up your interview today

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My Training in the Month of November

Over the last fifteen years, I have dedicated significant chunks of my weekend towards writing. I wrote a memoir, I developed draft after draft of my special message material, I built a website, and I grew my writing platform. It used to feel comfortable, like all this work was a natural part of my healing journey. I used to look forward to the weekends and my projects.

I recently got to the point where needed to take a break from writing blogs. I focused on developing my training so that I could teach the system of care that I have created that guides my interventions. I geared the training for providers and family members. But now I am done, and I am just not sure what to do. I am no longer comfortable creating my work. Could it be, it is time to share it?

I have suggested across my platforms that I want to build an online course and have set my website up to help me sign people up for a low-cost Beta Course so that I might practice and assess interest in this endeavor. I believe that the course will take eight hours to complete so I am starting to advertise for four Sunday evenings. I am currently targeting the month of November for this project. That would be November 3rd, 10th, 17th, and 24th 6pm-8pm PST.

The training is for providers, family members, or peer workers who are anxious about addressing comments that seem to be “delusional” in their work with people who hear voices or who experience “other” special messages experiences. In addition to clearly defining “other” types of experiences, the training provides an eight-part definition of psychosis and asserts eight solution constructs that can guide one in developing interventions.

By the time it’s over, the participant will have a system of care that can guide them in their work with others who struggle with these dilemmas. This helps the supporter keep from getting anxious or angry (which triggers trauma) and decreases the need to use the hospital to further marginalize the loved one.

I recognize that eight hours is a lot of time in our busy lives to dedicate to learning skills that will address a challenge like psychosis. It feels like a lot to ask; and perhaps that is the reason for my current sense of paralysis. But I also believe I have done a good job shaving down the material so that it is concise and fun. And understanding psychosis does take some time.

Now I’ll admit that before I decided to reach out with this email, I was trying to decide if I would be better off writing a book and using the platforms I have built along the way along with a launch plan to spread my work in that manner. I consider myself to be more of a writer than someone who enjoys looking at myself on the Zoom or YouTube platforms.

But for you, my followers, I have decided to cast these doubts away. It’s time to ask for your support to see if my work has what it takes to transform the understanding of psychosis, so that providers and family members know how to relate to it better.

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What to do if you think you might be experiencing psychosis

Did you know that mental health challenges affect millions of people each year? In 2021, a staggering 57.8 million people in the United States experienced a mental health challenge. 

These numbers highlight the important impact that mental health has on our society and the urgent need for understanding, support, and practical resources to address this growing concern. 

It touches the lives of people from all walks of life. Mental health challenges know no boundaries and can affect anyone, regardless of age, gender, race, or social status. It’s complex and takes on various forms.

One such mental health challenge, which comes a great deal of stigma, discrimination, and stereotypes, is psychosis. Experiencing symptoms of psychosis can be distressing and confusing because the sufferer doesn’t know what to expect and doesn’t want to be confined to a mental institution for the rest of their life. 

It’s important to understand that psychosis is a condition that leads to a great deal of misunderstanding and mistreatment. Many people who have endured psychosis talk about having a bad time not only with the experiences but also with the way they were treated.

Remember, one in ten people worldwide experience hearing voices, and many do not find the experiences distressing or related to their mental health. Below, we’ll review psychosis symptoms, causes, prevention, related conditions, schizophrenia, and treatments. Remember, you’re not alone, and help and hope are available.

What Are the Symptoms of Psychosis?

Psychosis is a psychological condition in which a person is accused of having lost touch with reality. It is a set of experiences that shape how people think, feel, and act. These are some of the most common warning signs that a person may be experiencing psychosis.

Hallucinations and Delusions

Hallucinations are when you see, hear, smell, taste, or feel things that other people don’t. Some people believe they are having sensations that come from their mind rather than from something happening around you. People who experience hallucinations come up with a lot of interesting explanations for what is happening to them. For example, some believe they can see or hear other dimensions of reality. Some people believe there have been technological advances that enable governments or powerful people to impose these experiences. And, in fact, some of these technologies do exist. These experiences are real, even though there’s no clearly identifiable external stimulus causing them.

Delusions are when someone strongly believes in things that go against what is thought to be reality by most people. These beliefs can seem irrational or impossible, but for those who are experiencing the experiences associated with psychosis, it makes no sense to see the world in any other way. For example, a person starts to collect experiences that indicate they are being followed. As coincidences and serendipities increase and as evidence comes at them from a variety of different sources, they may become convinced they are being watched by hidden cameras; they may conclude this is happening because they have superpowers; they may feel extremely important in a way that doesn’t match how others see them.

Again, these delusions are “real” to a person with psychosis. They can significantly impact how a person thinks, acts, and interacts with others.

Disorganized Thinking and Speech

Psychosis makes the brain work very hard and leads to preoccupation with thoughts about the stimuli (hallucinations or other experiences) that so distresses the person. Then, the person is asked to carry out regular activities in life and it appears like their thoughts and speech are disorganized. This can lead to:

Conversations that don’t make senseSpeech that jumps aroundTrouble focusing on a topic

Thoughts may suddenly appear to be fragmented as the sufferer can’t possibly articulate all that is in their head. In this manner, it becomes challenging to articulate coherent ideas or communicate effectively. 

Lack of Motivation and Social Withdrawal

Psychosis is characterized by a noticeable loss of motivation and interest in everyday tasks. Instead, the person becomes focused more on what is immediately necessary for their survival. The following types of observed behavior may start to apply:

Loss of interest in things they used to enjoyLow motivation in getting tasks startedTrouble staying focused and concentrating

Social withdrawal is also common. This is because the person may feel alone or afraid of being judged or labeled because of their condition. This can continue even when a person has recovered from other parts of psychosis.

Causes of Psychosis

Each person who experiences psychosis is on a journey. The potential causes of this journey are different and might vary widely from person to person. Industries are built around the concept that psychosis is caused by:  

GeneticsChemical imbalancesAnatomical abnormalities in the brain

Indeed, if you look at a college textbook, you will see a lot of evidence in support of these claims like twin studies and pictures of severe brain damage. This causes many of us to forget that there are “life” factors that can either start or intensify symptoms. For example, the following:

Substance abuseSuffering a traumatic experienceChronic stress Life transitions

It is important to work with mental health professionals who are curious and open-minded about the causes of psychosis. Too many have read textbooks and see statistics instead of a person. It is important to craft different treatments for different individuals that are based on the idea that the person can recover and adapt to the challenges they are facing. 

Psychosis Prevention Strategy

Even though it may not always be possible to stop experiences that lead to psychosis from happening, there is a great deal of learning that can help a person manage. Still there may be times of overwhelm and a person needs to work hard to remain healthy and functioning. Keeping your mental state of mind in good shape is essential by using a psychosis prevention strategy.

You can do this by making healthy living choices. For example, the following can all help with overall mental health:

Regular exerciseHaving a healthy, well-balanced dietGetting enough sleepLearning how to deal with stress

Building a solid support network and getting professional help at the first sign of trouble are important ways to prevent symptoms from worsening.

Other Conditions Linked to Psychosis

Psychosis can be a symptom of various other underlying conditions. For instance, other conditions linked to psychosis could be the following:

Bipolar disorderSchizoaffective disorderMajor depressive disorder with psychotic features

Still many other “disorders” coincide with psychosis and are similar. Sometimes a mix of neurodevelopmental disorders underlie experiences with psychosis, disorders such as:

AutismDyslexiaADHDOCD

Also, many disorders associated with trauma may likewise underlie and mix to cause experiences of psychosis, disorders such as:

PTSDPersonality DisordersDissociative Disorders

Substance-induced psychosis may occur due to drug use, particularly stimulants or hallucinogens. Certain medical conditions, such as brain tumors or infections or dementia, can also lead to psychosis. Recognizing and diagnosing the underlying conditions is essential for effective treatment and management of psychosis.

Psychosis vs. Schizophrenia

It’s important to note the distinction between psychosis vs. schizophrenia. While psychosis refers to symptoms, schizophrenia is a specific mental disorder.

It has several signs and symptoms, one of which is psychosis. Schizophrenia often causes long-term problems with how a person thinks, feels, and sees the world. On the other hand, psychosis can happen as a short-term event.

A mental health worker must make a correct diagnosis to develop the right treatment plan and give the right kind of help.

Treatments for Psychosis

Treatments for psychosis are usually treated with varied methods tailored to each person’s needs. Antipsychotics and other medicines can help control symptoms and make them less severe.

There are other treatments, such as behavioral interventions. For example, the following:

Cognitive-behavioral therapyFamily therapy

These can help people learn how to deal with problems and feel better generally. Peer support groups and community tools can also help give understanding, compassion, and direction.

Psychosis Unveiled!

Experiencing symptoms of psychosis can be overwhelming, but remember that help is available. Understanding the encompassing signs, help, and support is essential to treating psychosis.

People can obtain help and resources for their recovery. Remember, you are not alone; with proper care, it is possible to regain control and lead a fulfilling life.

Taking that first step towards seeking help is an empowering act that can lead to a brighter future. Reach out, speak up, and embrace the journey of healing. You deserve support, understanding, and the opportunity to live a fulfilling life.

If you are seeking valuable resources and support for navigating psychosis, look no further than Tim Dreby’s website. Visit the website to access a wealth of information and tools tailored to individuals experiencing psychosis.

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