Clyde Dee's Blog, page 13
March 25, 2018
A One-Lining, Love-Liable Normal Narrator
When I profess to love you forever,
You should know, cause I already told you
That I’m lying—that my love is for never.
Now I can see that your attractive look
Diminishes as time passes on, first
Impressions of your beauty, I know I mistook
Because now your pimple skin has pus;
Now you hobble, dusting spider webs, gawking
Cause this old delinquent gave you a cus
As you smell like some rank, dirty underwear
Especially after you insisted that I bleach
Skid marks off my aged tighty whitey spare.
Then you go off to the toilet seat
While I’m smoking a bone, and I’m thinking:
“You know, farting should be discreet”
And yes we’re both from northern towns,
And yes we both support the same political party—
When chance is like this, you place your bets down!
And so here you are, paying rent to live with me
But why are you there, smiling, drinking tea
While I’m here, pitcher full of martini.
Please go fix your school girl hair some other way
I, myself, would be hip with a mohawk or krisna tail,
But I couldn’t find either in a toupee.
Oops, there goes your humpback-whaling whine
Bleeding for affirmations of my eternal love,
While I, with my Playboys, am feeling just fine.
And now I’m sending you this Hallmark card
After they’ve gone and throwd me in jail,
And I’ll be happy here mooning the guard
And bullying the skinny kid with purple hair;
At which point I realize that you’re special to me.
I, a threat to all whose commissary I share,
Am here without you, shirtless in my dominion
Cause regardless of what anybody says of my hernia gut,
I can count on you for a numb-nun-special one.
All you readers forming disgustful theory
Better learn that love at its best persists on a shelf.
You are single, or celibate, or less normal than me
And cannot admit that every restless, questing soul
Abounds outside love’s confines. So criticize me
From the depths of your existential hole,
I know that the miracle of love is the act of not loving too.
It is a quest for stench and misery and marriage
So we ain’t alone when we take off our rancid shoe.
One-Lining, Love Liable, Wise-Ass Narrator
When I profess to love you forever,
You should know, cause I already told you
That I’m lying—that my love is for never.
Now I can see that your attractive look
Diminishes as time passes on, first
Impressions of your beauty, I know I mistook
Because now your pimple skin has pus;
Now you hobble, dusting spider webs, gawking
Cause this old delinquent gave you a cus
As you smell like some rank, dirty underwear
Especially after you insisted that I bleach
Skid marks off my aged tighty whitey spare.
Then you go off to the toilet seat
While I’m smoking a bone, and I’m thinking:
“You know, farting should be discreet”
And yes we’re both from northern towns,
And yes we both support the same political party—
When chance is like this, you place your bets down!
And so here you are, paying rent to live with me
But why are you there, smiling, drinking tea
While I’m here, pitcher full of martini.
Please go fix your school girl hair some other way
I, myself, would be hip with a mohawk or krisna tail,
But I couldn’t find either in a toupee.
Oops, there goes your humpback-whaling whine
Bleeding for affirmations of my eternal love,
While I, with my Playboys, am feeling just fine.
And now I’m sending you this Hallmark card
After they’ve gone and throwd me in jail,
And I’ll be happy here mooning the guard
And bullying the skinny kid with purple hair;
At which point I realize that you’re special to me.
I, a threat to all whose commissary I share,
Am here without you, shirtless in my dominion
Cause regardless of what anybody says of my hernia gut,
And I know I can count on you for a nun-pun-special one.
All you readers forming disgustful theory
Better learn that love at its best persists on a shelf.
You are single, or celibate, or less normal than me
And cannot admit that every restless, questing soul
Abounds outside love’s confines. So criticize me
From the depths of your existential hole,
I know that the miracle of love is the act of not loving too.
It is a quest for stench and misery and marriage
So we ain’t alone when we take off our rancid shoe.
March 18, 2018
Are you Prepared to Address Psychosis in Your Practice? (Feature-Length Version)
In Madness and Civilization, philosopher Michel Foucault has predicted a proliferation of madness as disparities increase and modern society advances. Indeed, with psychopharmacology industry booming, rates of addiction, fueled by the opioid epidemic, skyrocketing, terrorism wars raging abroad, ongoing drug wars afflicting low income neighborhoods, escalation in homeless encampments in major cities, and a rise in bullying in schools, and even cyberbullying, it really does seem like higher percentage of people have been forced to explore their mental health struggles. While mass shootings have kept danger stigma in the media high and the media response continues to reinforce silence about mental struggles, the field of psychotherapy does have a lot more trends to address.
When I look through my state’s psychotherapy association’s annual conference, I see many of these trends getting addressed in workshops. But ever invisible is the issue of psychosis. Is it possible that the issue of psychosis functions as a significant part of the madness narrative? Is it possible that psychosis too is affecting more and more Americans as Foucault inferred?
What the Statistic Say:
I do not believe that running through NIMH statistics reveals much about the prevalence of psychosis. I believe that psychosis affects individuals across diagnostic divides.
According to this year’s statistic by the NIMH, approximately one in five people will struggle with a mental health issue and 46 percent of the population will sometime struggle with their mental health. In fact, there is the suggestion that these stats may be a little lower than they have been in recent years perhaps due to the economy fluctuating. Contrast this with the ever-present statistic that one percent of the population carries a diagnosis of schizophrenia added to the unspecified number of individuals who experience bipolar (which is 4 percent of the population,) and the relevance of psychosis continues to seem very small.
I believe this is a gross underestimation. I believe hearing voices and other types of experiences that trigger alternate realities is very common throughout the population so much so that it warrants the attention of psychotherapists in private practice. I believe that many people go in and out of these experiences and may have occasions in which they are defined by them. However, the cost of being open about them is very high perhaps because there is little to no established treatment available outside the psychiatric ER.
On the Ground in Oakland, California:
As a psychotherapist on an outpatient psychiatric unit, I deal mostly with people who have spent their lives funneling through emergency rooms and perhaps lived in State Hospitals or at home until they aged out and hit the squalor of board and care homes. Or maybe they were homeless or incarcerated or maintained a job and, before the local housing crisis, an apartment. Indeed, I would like to convey that there are many who have worked but as they age, they get confronted by their issues with the aging process. Our participants would be labeled with SMI, “severe mental illness,” the majority being fifty years or older or 2.7 percent of the population. Oddly, according to NIMH statistics, the SMI population is approximately double the size among youth.
Finally, in the outpatient psychiatric unit, we provide treatment that has oft been neglected to address participants’ trauma and their mental health issues. I have created a program to address issues related to psychosis, or what I prefer to call special messages. And wouldn’t you know it, the issue of psychosis bubbles up in different ways for different people across diagnostic divides. Indeed, people many participants will share things with each other, they will not share with a psychiatrist.
Deserving of a Seat in the Psychotherapy Office:
In my training, I was always encouraged to refer out when it comes to psychosis. Let the ER deal with that, was the mantra of most of my trainers. Psychosis is scary.
Because I had to earn a living throughout my training, I took my living from the poor in the inner-city and volunteered my time for the rich. Perhaps, because I consider myself a wannabe philosopher and sociologist, when I finally got licensed and earned my freedom, I started to explore running psychoses focus groups on the unit that had supported me on my way through.
And after doing many groups over the past ten years I am writing to suggest that more and more psychosis deserves a place in private practice and the revolving door of the ER is not an ethical move on the part of the trained psychotherapist. I call our local ER the homeless encampment and feel that it sends people in psychosis a large and disturbing message when they get confined to it.
How Diversifying Causation Beliefs Can Lead to Recovery from Psychosis:
I believe that a powerful dialectic exists when participants study their similarities in psychoses focus groups. Converse to the great opportunities for growth that result when participants genuinely identify with each other, there are often important points of difference highlighted that likewise can lead to growth when nurtured properly.
To be specific, I have observed that participants often become more communicative about their diverse beliefs regarding the causation of their psychosis experiences. And I believe this leads to collaboration and accommodation that can help message receivers move toward social rehabilitation and recovery.
There is little doubt in my mind that the causation of psychosis experiences is a natural preoccupation for people who suffer. In fact, this preoccupation is so powerful, it warrants becoming part of the definition of psychosis in the model of treatment I have created.
Having led many long-term psychoses focus groups over the past ten years, one of the more powerful solutions I have developed involves helping sufferers learn diversity lessons about the causation of their (psychosis) or special message experiences.
I categorize the causation beliefs of sufferers as being: political, psychological, spiritual, scientific, or trauma based. In the thick of a body’s psychosis process, causation beliefs often rigidly stay in one or two of these styles. While there is often an ability to consider and ponder other beliefs, the tendency is to immediately create explanations according to a single style or two of causation beliefs. Further, there is often an immediate need to solve or comprehend what is happening that can feel addictive.
Increasing Flexibility of Causation Ideas:
What I believe happens particularly when it is finessed and highlighted by the leader is when sufferers tell stories about the experiences of their psychosis, they hear similar experiences interpreted with a different style of causation. In supporting their peers, they become forced to see how these rigid causation beliefs lead to errors.
If I could count the number individuals I’ve worked with who are in what I like to call message crisis (psychosis,) who try to reality check me when I tell my story—well, you might say I’d be a high scoring. Indeed, I have found training them to better understand my experiences often opens them up to be willing to share their story with me.
They say, “No, I don’t think you were really followed by the mafia, I think that is a delusion.”
Then, I review specific evidence that is convincing and some evidence (or special messages) that are less clear.
I have found that this helps people be more willing to reveal what is happening to them with me.
But to get back to what I primarily want to convey, I often see that when participants can see messages (or psychosis) happening to other people, it leads them to be more aware of the role that their own causation beliefs have in their suffering. Often the causation beliefs of others are at least slightly different. When the message receiver notices that different causation beliefs lead to errors, it challenges them to be more flexible in how they interpret their own psychosis experiences, which I like to call special messages.
Indeed, it is clearly conceivable that every special message (psychosis experience,) has a different causation style. Any psychosis (or message crisis) is full of thousands of these special message experiences. I believe that when every message can be interpreted with flexibility, the message receiver can return to accomplishing things that relate to social rehabilitation.
Five Styles of Causation Beliefs:
Below I have listed the five causation styles along with common explanations that have been expressed in groups I have lead over the years. Some are perhaps noticeable as common psychological theories, others as less conventional ideas that might be considered delusional.
I believe that all causation beliefs are valid, important, and perhaps operant at different times in a person’s story. I like to argue that people may be predominantly correct about the causation of their message experiences. This validates participants in a way that is needed to heal from the potential trauma they have been through. However, I argue that any given message receiver may need to incorporate other explanations to survive and thrive in the modern world.
Psychological
Messages are your inner thoughts or unconscious beliefs. They are just in your head. We broadcast our unconscious beliefs in ways that cause others to interact with us in ways that make our unconscious beliefs realities.
Messages are a way of processing things that we are not willing to deal with.
Messages are a return to a regressed period of attachment in which the baby has destructive relationships with the boobs.
Political
Messages come from people following you around and tormenting you to control or seek revenge on you. These followers could be a gang, police, CIA, government, corporations, masons, illuminati, aliens, or other secret societies.
Messages are real evidence that the government is socially controlling and preventing the mainstream from knowing. They have their ways of taking snitches and putting them in ditches.
Traumatic
Messages are nothing but figments of past perpetrators or abusers.
Messages come from the social thoughts or judgments of others, the social mainstream, or the collective unconscious of others (Stigmas) that are being used to decrease your social standing
Spiritual
Messages come from god, fairies, aliens, ghosts or what we in the west call supernatural experiences.
Messages are processes that may help or hurt you in evolving or adapting to the dilemmas of a modern environment.
Messages are there to test your ability to be good and evil and are there to lead you to lead others.
Scientific
Genetic differences or scientific processes that develop because of nuero-diversity. Eugenics suggest that these genes aren’t fit for survival and justify a complex system of abuse and social control.
Messages happen when neuro-transmitters get changed through things like environmental stress patterns that fall into genetically derived conditions.
Messages happen when spiritual genes get persecuted in our society
Case Study:
Because I don’t make it a habit using case histories out other message receivers, I will review my own story to demonstrate how all five causation styles may be necessary to employ to help a message receiver survive in the modern world.
I would agree with the reader who says this is convenient and limited as a result.
However, in my defense, I have used insights from other message receivers’ causation beliefs to be able to understand my journey in the following manner. Indeed, for years, I could not even tell these stories. I needed to attain economic stability and to lead professional groups with diverse individuals to be able to make sense of what happened to me.
Additionally, people take different routes on their journey to better functioning. I would also argue that being able to relate and recreate your own experiences is one of the benefits of listening and relating to other message receivers. Therefore, I host groups and encourage those who are stuck in a single style or two to come out and listen to help diversify their views.
Preoccupation with Political Abuse:
My own message experiences involved descent into political abuse that could have rendered me homeless and jobless if I had given up. Persistent throughout the two-years of psychosis I endured, I believed I was being harassed by the government and the mafia.
I was working in a section 8 housing authority complex amid significant drug use and trafficking and had leaked information to the press to try to protect the vulnerable. The result was that the company that contracted with my company, a powerful authority with connections to the President targeted the people I wanted to protect for eviction. Then, the housing authority offered to give me a large amount of free concert tickets.
Of course, I used the concert tickets to advertise the music festival throughout the project and take out twenty-four of the vulnerable clients who would come out to the expensive mainstream event. I felt it was a good use of the bribe.
After that stunt, I continued to be very popular among many of the residents. I persisted in trying to crack the mystery of the local drug war that just didn’t make sense. I learned more and more details, until I started to get scared of the persistent threats. I started to get a strong sense of connection, like people were putting on skits around me to either help or foil me.
Among other things, I called a friend with a nefarious history. He heard what I had to say and made a powerful threat. Then, I ran away. Then, I withdrew all my money from my bank account. Then, I headed for the Canadian border. Maybe my friend was using me to help him move drugs through the project. Suddenly, it all made sense.
As I neared the border of Canada I was convinced I was being followed. I stopped at a gas station to fuel and I got accosted by two policemen. One bruised my wrists and drove me eighty miles from my car.
At the hospital I lied to the psychiatrist and was given the opportunity to run.
I surrendered a few days later, from a ditch, on a mountain pass, at midnight.
In the State Hospital there was a clearly defined mafia daughter and a lot of people wanting to help her run away. She showed all patients documents of how she had taken a shot at her father. I suspected these were phony and wasn’t at all attracted to her.
However, she was most interested in me despite the persistence of my unpopular mannerisms. Indeed, she seemed to salivate after me trying to extract information about my sneaky escapades. I received an offer to join an outlaw gang for protection against her. A lot happened in three months.
Discharged to the streets, I took a greyhound and got a job in Fresno. But when I ran out of medication, I was released from the job. Not only had I refused to take over the supervisor’s job, I had started to act funny. Then, I couldn’t find any work for three months. I tried everywhere, from Walmart to county social work positions. Finally, I got a job at a Foster Care Agency.
This forced my family to get involved. At least it made me willing to accept their help. I thought they were an Irish mob family who had hidden their illegal activities from me.
A black sheep aunt who lived in the bay area was able to offer me a less risky job at an Italian Delicatessen if I moved up into Antioch, California.
Causation Beliefs toward Spiritual Causation:
My interpretation of all events that happened to me at the Italian Deli led me to the belief that I was human traffic to my mob bosses. Unable to afford a car I biked twenty miles a day to the train station and back and took the train an hour to reach my job, which was in a wealthy suburb. Every train ride I took, I could spot a rider who was clearly following me.
One day it was a resident from the job I had at the Seattle Housing Project. He was dressed in a jean jacket that had a CIA Officer sign attached to it’s pocket and handcuffs attached to the belt-loops of his jeans. I had heard he’d been arrested before for impersonating a CIA officer when I was in Seattle. He had also cackled at me like a chicken and told me he had killed people before.
I persisted this way for ten months. I tried to find any work I could find outside the deli where I felt harassed endlessly.
Finally, I got a call back from an interview I had in the tenderloin. The job would lengthen my commute by an hour; but paid a good deal better.
In the group interview, I noticed that several of the workers were religiously preoccupied. They reminded me of the State hospital patients I had been locked up with.
Suddenly, in the middle of an interview that was going swimmingly well, a Latina woman spoke out in a shrill voice, “Oh, my god, the energy in the room is intense. It reminds me of the movie Stigmata.”
The room was accepting and rolled with this outburst with inquisitive questions.
I went home and rented the movie and suddenly it occurred to me, it was possible I wasn’t the son of a famous Irish Mafia family, maybe I was the next Jesus Christ, himself . . .
Incorporating Scientific Causation:
I was called back for a third interview, but when I asked to change my day to accommodate the interview, my boss told me he’d have to fire me if he did. This was the way I was used to being treated there. They were very controlling.
“You’re allowed to work with us, but you just can’t work anywhere else,” I was told by my boss.
Even worse, I was being sexually harassed. A co-worker told me my reputation was smeared, by a female supervisor I jaded. She started a rumor about me that I was a pedophile.
However, now when I went to church, the priest seemed honored to have me in the congregation and to woo me as if he knew something I didn’t. I came across a Cadillac with a plasticine frog pinned to a cross and I figured that my crucifixion was eminent.
Then, I got hired by a wacky social worker at a therapy internship. His name was Jack and he said and sounded like he came from South Boston. “We’ve got to get you out of that Italian Deli before they cut those fingers off,” he said.
My hands were carefully bandaged to conceal the large warts that had taken over my hands ever since the uncleanly showers of C-Ward at Montana State Hospital.
“Hey, I get something from you,” he said, “I’ll bet you’ve been in some real impoverished neighborhoods back east.
Even though Jack was right about me, I was uneasy with his intuition.
“Do you trust me,” he asked.
The first day of the internship, I was utterly overwhelmed because everything Jack said seemed to come from private phone conversations I had had with my family. His face often turned red. “Hey, I know what they need to do with all those boys on the corners: just turn on cold showers and take the heat away from them. Then, they’ll be just fine.”
Later that afternoon I had another interview at a job I really wanted that bombed. The interviewer had been distressed by my level of anxiety and red face.
That night I didn’t sleep a wink. Was I ever going to avoid this eminent crucifixion? I kept blowing my professional opportunities. I had medical coverage. I decided to see a psychiatrist.
Incorporating Trauma Causation:
My boss at the delicatessen seemed to be much more accepting of me once I was medicated. He started to tell me, “good job!” when I continued to complete the tasks with care and detail.
It was true that I felt traumatized the whole time I was politically exploited. But I never thought the endemic bullying I experienced everywhere except amid the vulnerable population was my fault. Indeed, perhaps I was traumatized as a child and that was in part why I was bullied.
But now that I was medicated and started trying to make friends with my co-workers at the delicatessen I realized that they weren’t all bullying me in as organized a fashion as I imagined. There were ways I could appeal to injustice. Indeed, some of the less dominant kids really looked up to me. A few other young females had true crushes on me. They seemed to have fantasies of rescuing me. One even said, I had a beautiful mind.
It started to occur to me that I might not be a mafia kid but more of a bullied Aspergian child.
After all I already carried a diagnosis of ADD and Dyslexia, why not throw another neurodevelopmental difference in there. At least then I didn’t have to hate all the pot smoking population for participating in making me a political prisoner. I was very socially awkward and did tend to amuse people.
And, finally, I got the job outside the Deli, but agreed to stay on one day a week so that I could maintain the income necessary for my independence. Even though I had learned to shine my parents on, I did not like the way they used my economic need to control me. Indeed, being a piece of human traffic had helped me build personal skills.
And Finally, Incorporating Psychological Explanations:
It is hard for me to immediately define how I have come to consider that psychological processes may have been involved in my message experiences.
Perhaps, this is because the bay area therapist I saw believed that psychodynamic processes were happening between us. From my perspective, she was unable to admit that her fees were financially exploiting me. The therapy was imposed on me by my parents. I believed they would in fact hold me financially accountable for the very unhelpful relationship.
Indeed, I often felt that if people listened instead of presuming I was wrong about everything I experienced—if they explored the ways I was correct about what I was saying, that they could have really gotten my attention and helped me.
And a lot of what I believed has turned out to prove correct. For example, genetic testing has since revealed that my predominantly old money family really was predominantly Irish. Additionally, my mother who admired her father’s fame as the chair of the Harvard Psychology Department, may have in fact named me Timothy, after her father’s friend, Timothy Leary. (O’Leary, in my Irish mind.) Indeed, my Harvard grandfather really did work for the CIA and get rich from remarkably wise stock trading.
For example, it was true that my father, who everyone assumed I was wrong about, really had retired from his career at age forty-five, really did live primarily off-the-grid, via stocks and landholdings, yet still too busy to keep up with me. It was true that I really didn’t understand how he did this because finances were always hushed. Of course, my nefarious friend, an ununionized longshoreman, really did have a nefarious past with ties to the Philadelphia PD (an officer with the same first name as my father.)
Indeed, the drug war really does ensnare and incarcerate a disproportionate number of mentally ill individuals like myself leaving wealthy cartels to pay off the politicians. And support the dominant and violent. And I later learned that the Italian Deli that I worked at really did have mafia ties. I was able to confirm this when a street-wise person inadvertently dropped a name I recognized from my deli days.
Once I learned that I really was molested as a child just as I suspected; once I finally, in my first week employed away from the Deli, heard my name called in a harsh, metallic voice; once I developed the strength to call myself a schizophrenic and validate myself, I could start to see psychological causation beliefs. There were personal issues that were getting replayed in surrounding relationships. In fact, I will explore this process more in my next article as it is a component of my system of treatment.
Teaching Psychotherapists to Diversify Causation Beliefs:
Often, I find that message receivers in psychoses focus groups learn a lot from kicking around their ideas and experiences, much as I have just done. Though the order in which they uncover causation beliefs invariably differs, I believe that we can learn to support each other by proposing alternate meanings that are based on alternative causation beliefs. I believe that we can empower ourselves to navigate injustice and oppression in the modern world. I think we need psychotherapists who can help us with this.
Many message receivers aspire to become healers. In a traditional sense, it is our shamanic calling. As we learn to navigate message experience with rhythm and flow, groups are a great place to practice telling healing stories to message receivers who are still stuck and in crisis. On Facebook there are many sites dedicated to normalizing the spiritual emergence narrative. They need to be expanded and extended to the homeless population.
Additionally, in groups we can give each other credit and acknowledgement for diversifying causation beliefs. Not only can this be a great way to nurture and build relationships, it can reinforce movement to social rehabilitation. Too often, we stay stuck because our efforts to change our causation beliefs fail to arouse interest in those who are paid to support us.
Without mentors who can help us by modeling and articulating these insights, how are we to know we are on the right track? Perhaps, this is part of the reason it seems like so few of us survive to socially rehabilitate.
I believe that if psychotherapists support and learn from the experiences of the hearing voices network in other countries, they can become involved in providing services that teach message receivers to heal outside the punitive environments of the psychiatric ER or the State Hospital.
We need to promote healers and success stories who can connect with the one percent of the population that is persistently struggling and create pathways for social rehabilitation. We need statistics that more accurately report on the prevalence of psychosis to support these efforts. We need psychotherapy offices that specialize in psychosis!
Preparing Psychotherapists to Address Issues Related to Psychosis (Feature-Length Version)
In Madness and Civilization, philosopher Michel Foucault has predicted a proliferation of madness as disparities increase and modern society advances. Indeed, with psychopharmacology industry booming, rates of addiction, fueled by the opioid epidemic, skyrocketing, terrorism wars raging abroad, ongoing drug wars afflicting low income neighborhoods, escalation in homeless encampments in major cities, and a rise in bullying in schools, and even cyberbullying, it really does seem like higher percentage of people have been forced to explore their mental health struggles. While mass shootings have kept danger stigma in the media high and the media response continues to reinforce silence about mental struggles, the field of psychotherapy does have a lot more trends to address.
When I look through my state’s psychotherapy association’s annual conference, I see many of these trends getting addressed in workshops. But ever invisible is the issue of psychosis. Is it possible that the issue of psychosis functions as a significant part of the madness narrative? Is it possible that psychosis too is affecting more and more Americans as Foucault inferred?
What the Statistic Say:
I do not believe that running through NIMH statistics reveals much about the prevalence of psychosis. I believe that psychosis affects individuals across diagnostic divides.
According to this year’s statistic by the NIMH, approximately one in five people will struggle with a mental health issue and 46 percent of the population will sometime struggle with their mental health. In fact, there is the suggestion that these stats may be a little lower than they have been in recent years perhaps due to the economy fluctuating. Contrast this with the ever-present statistic that one percent of the population carries a diagnosis of schizophrenia added to the unspecified number of individuals who experience bipolar (which is 4 percent of the population,) and the relevance of psychosis continues to seem very small.
I believe this is a gross underestimation. I believe hearing voices and other types of experiences that trigger alternate realities is very common throughout the population so much so that it warrants the attention of psychotherapists in private practice. I believe that many people go in and out of these experiences and may have occasions in which they are defined by them. However, the cost of being open about them is very high perhaps because there is little to no established treatment available outside the psychiatric ER.
On the Ground in Oakland, California:
As a psychotherapist on an outpatient psychiatric unit, I deal mostly with people who have spent their lives funneling through emergency rooms and perhaps lived in State Hospitals or at home until they aged out and hit the squalor of board and care homes. Or maybe they were homeless or incarcerated or maintained a job and, before the local housing crisis, an apartment. Indeed, I would like to convey that there are many who have worked but as they age, they get confronted by their issues with the aging process. Our participants would be labeled with SMI, “severe mental illness,” the majority being fifty years or older or 2.7 percent of the population. Oddly, according to NIMH statistics, the SMI population is approximately double the size among youth.
Finally, in the outpatient psychiatric unit, we provide treatment that has oft been neglected to address participants’ trauma and their mental health issues. I have created a program to address issues related to psychosis, or what I prefer to call special messages. And wouldn’t you know it, the issue of psychosis bubbles up in different ways for different people across diagnostic divides. Indeed, people many participants will share things with each other, they will not share with a psychiatrist.
Deserving of a Seat in the Psychotherapy Office:
In my training, I was always encouraged to refer out when it comes to psychosis. Let the ER deal with that, was the mantra of most of my trainers. Psychosis is scary.
Because I had to earn a living throughout my training, I took my living from the poor in the inner-city and volunteered my time for the rich. Perhaps, because I consider myself a wannabe philosopher and sociologist, when I finally got licensed and earned my freedom, I started to explore running psychoses focus groups on the unit that had supported me on my way through.
And after doing many groups over the past ten years I am writing to suggest that more and more psychosis deserves a place in private practice and the revolving door of the ER is not an ethical move on the part of the trained psychotherapist. I call our local ER the homeless encampment and feel that it sends people in psychosis a large and disturbing message when they get confined to it.
How Diversifying Causation Beliefs Can Lead to Recovery from Psychosis:
I believe that a powerful dialectic exists when participants study their similarities in psychoses focus groups. Converse to the great opportunities for growth that result when participants genuinely identify with each other, there are often important points of difference highlighted that likewise can lead to growth when nurtured properly.
To be specific, I have observed that participants often become more communicative about their diverse beliefs regarding the causation of their psychosis experiences. And I believe this leads to collaboration and accommodation that can help message receivers move toward social rehabilitation and recovery.
There is little doubt in my mind that the causation of psychosis experiences is a natural preoccupation for people who suffer. In fact, this preoccupation is so powerful, it warrants becoming part of the definition of psychosis in the model of treatment I have created.
Having led many long-term psychoses focus groups over the past ten years, one of the more powerful solutions I have developed involves helping sufferers learn diversity lessons about the causation of their (psychosis) or special message experiences.
I categorize the causation beliefs of sufferers as being: political, psychological, spiritual, scientific, or trauma based. In the thick of a body’s psychosis process, causation beliefs often rigidly stay in one or two of these styles. While there is often an ability to consider and ponder other beliefs, the tendency is to immediately create explanations according to a single style or two of causation beliefs. Further, there is often an immediate need to solve or comprehend what is happening that can feel addictive.
Increasing Flexibility of Causation Ideas:
What I believe happens particularly when it is finessed and highlighted by the leader is when sufferers tell stories about the experiences of their psychosis, they hear similar experiences interpreted with a different style of causation. In supporting their peers, they become forced to see how these rigid causation beliefs lead to errors.
If I could count the number individuals I’ve worked with who are in what I like to call message crisis (psychosis,) who try to reality check me when I tell my story—well, you might say I’d be a high scoring. Indeed, I have found training them to better understand my experiences often opens them up to be willing to share their story with me.
They say, “No, I don’t think you were really followed by the mafia, I think that is a delusion.”
Then, I review specific evidence that is convincing and some evidence (or special messages) that are less clear.
I have found that this helps people be more willing to reveal what is happening to them with me.
But to get back to what I primarily want to convey, I often see that when participants can see messages (or psychosis) happening to other people, it leads them to be more aware of the role that their own causation beliefs have in their suffering. Often the causation beliefs of others are at least slightly different. When the message receiver notices that different causation beliefs lead to errors, it challenges them to be more flexible in how they interpret their own psychosis experiences, which I like to call special messages.
Indeed, it is clearly conceivable that every special message (psychosis experience,) has a different causation style. Any psychosis (or message crisis) is full of thousands of these special message experiences. I believe that when every message can be interpreted with flexibility, the message receiver can return to accomplishing things that relate to social rehabilitation.
Five Styles of Causation Beliefs:
Below I have listed the five causation styles along with common explanations that have been expressed in groups I have lead over the years. Some are perhaps noticeable as common psychological theories, others as less conventional ideas that might be considered delusional.
I believe that all causation beliefs are valid, important, and perhaps operant at different times in a person’s story. I like to argue that people may be predominantly correct about the causation of their message experiences. This validates participants in a way that is needed to heal from the potential trauma they have been through. However, I argue that any given message receiver may need to incorporate other explanations to survive and thrive in the modern world.
Psychological
Messages are your inner thoughts or unconscious beliefs. They are just in your head. We broadcast our unconscious beliefs in ways that cause others to interact with us in ways that make our unconscious beliefs realities.
Messages are a way of processing things that we are not willing to deal with.
Messages are a return to a regressed period of attachment in which the baby has destructive relationships with the boobs.
Political
Messages come from people following you around and tormenting you to control or seek revenge on you. These followers could be a gang, police, CIA, government, corporations, masons, illuminati, aliens, or other secret societies.
Messages are real evidence that the government is socially controlling and preventing the mainstream from knowing. They have their ways of taking snitches and putting them in ditches.
Traumatic
Messages are nothing but figments of past perpetrators or abusers.
Messages come from the social thoughts or judgments of others, the social mainstream, or the collective unconscious of others (Stigmas) that are being used to decrease your social standing
Spiritual
Messages come from god, fairies, aliens, ghosts or what we in the west call supernatural experiences.
Messages are processes that may help or hurt you in evolving or adapting to the dilemmas of a modern environment.
Messages are there to test your ability to be good and evil and are there to lead you to lead others.
Scientific
Genetic differences or scientific processes that develop because of nuero-diversity. Eugenics suggest that these genes aren’t fit for survival and justify a complex system of abuse and social control.
Messages happen when neuro-transmitters get changed through things like environmental stress patterns that fall into genetically derived conditions.
Messages happen when spiritual genes get persecuted in our society
Case Study:
Because I don’t make it a habit using case histories out other message receivers, I will review my own story to demonstrate how all five causation styles may be necessary to employ to help a message receiver survive in the modern world.
I would agree with the reader who says this is convenient and limited as a result.
However, in my defense, I have used insights from other message receivers’ causation beliefs to be able to understand my journey in the following manner. Indeed, for years, I could not even tell these stories. I needed to attain economic stability and to lead professional groups with diverse individuals to be able to make sense of what happened to me.
Additionally, people take different routes on their journey to better functioning. I would also argue that being able to relate and recreate your own experiences is one of the benefits of listening and relating to other message receivers. Therefore, I host groups and encourage those who are stuck in a single style or two to come out and listen to help diversify their views.
Preoccupation with Political Abuse:
My own message experiences involved descent into political abuse that could have rendered me homeless and jobless if I had given up. Persistent throughout the two-years of psychosis I endured, I believed I was being harassed by the government and the mafia.
I was working in a section 8 housing authority complex amid significant drug use and trafficking and had leaked information to the press to try to protect the vulnerable. The result was that the company that contracted with my company, a powerful authority with connections to the President targeted the people I wanted to protect for eviction. Then, the housing authority offered to give me a large amount of free concert tickets.
Of course, I used the concert tickets to advertise the music festival throughout the project and take out twenty-four of the vulnerable clients who would come out to the expensive mainstream event. I felt it was a good use of the bribe.
After that stunt, I continued to be very popular among many of the residents. I persisted in trying to crack the mystery of the local drug war that just didn’t make sense. I learned more and more details, until I started to get scared of the persistent threats. I started to get a strong sense of connection, like people were putting on skits around me to either help or foil me.
Among other things, I called a friend with a nefarious history. He heard what I had to say and made a powerful threat. Then, I ran away. Then, I withdrew all my money from my bank account. Then, I headed for the Canadian border. Maybe my friend was using me to help him move drugs through the project. Suddenly, it all made sense.
As I neared the border of Canada I was convinced I was being followed. I stopped at a gas station to fuel and I got accosted by two policemen. One bruised my wrists and drove me eighty miles from my car.
At the hospital I lied to the psychiatrist and was given the opportunity to run.
I surrendered a few days later, from a ditch, on a mountain pass, at midnight.
In the State Hospital there was a clearly defined mafia daughter and a lot of people wanting to help her run away. She showed all patients documents of how she had taken a shot at her father. I suspected these were phony and wasn’t at all attracted to her.
However, she was most interested in me despite the persistence of my unpopular mannerisms. Indeed, she seemed to salivate after me trying to extract information about my sneaky escapades. I received an offer to join an outlaw gang for protection against her. A lot happened in three months.
Discharged to the streets, I took a greyhound and got a job in Fresno. But when I ran out of medication, I was released from the job. Not only had I refused to take over the supervisor’s job, I had started to act funny. Then, I couldn’t find any work for three months. I tried everywhere, from Walmart to county social work positions. Finally, I got a job at a Foster Care Agency.
This forced my family to get involved. At least it made me willing to accept their help. I thought they were an Irish mob family who had hidden their illegal activities from me.
A black sheep aunt who lived in the bay area was able to offer me a less risky job at an Italian Delicatessen if I moved up into Antioch, California.
Causation Beliefs toward Spiritual Causation:
My interpretation of all events that happened to me at the Italian Deli led me to the belief that I was human traffic to my mob bosses. Unable to afford a car I biked twenty miles a day to the train station and back and took the train an hour to reach my job, which was in a wealthy suburb. Every train ride I took, I could spot a rider who was clearly following me.
One day it was a resident from the job I had at the Seattle Housing Project. He was dressed in a jean jacket that had a CIA Officer sign attached to it’s pocket and handcuffs attached to the belt-loops of his jeans. I had heard he’d been arrested before for impersonating a CIA officer when I was in Seattle. He had also cackled at me like a chicken and told me he had killed people before.
I persisted this way for ten months. I tried to find any work I could find outside the deli where I felt harassed endlessly.
Finally, I got a call back from an interview I had in the tenderloin. The job would lengthen my commute by an hour; but paid a good deal better.
In the group interview, I noticed that several of the workers were religiously preoccupied. They reminded me of the State hospital patients I had been locked up with.
Suddenly, in the middle of an interview that was going swimmingly well, a Latina woman spoke out in a shrill voice, “Oh, my god, the energy in the room is intense. It reminds me of the movie Stigmata.”
The room was accepting and rolled with this outburst with inquisitive questions.
I went home and rented the movie and suddenly it occurred to me, it was possible I wasn’t the son of a famous Irish Mafia family, maybe I was the next Jesus Christ, himself . . .
Incorporating Scientific Causation:
I was called back for a third interview, but when I asked to change my day to accommodate the interview, my boss told me he’d have to fire me if he did. This was the way I was used to being treated there. They were very controlling.
“You’re allowed to work with us, but you just can’t work anywhere else,” I was told by my boss.
Even worse, I was being sexually harassed. A co-worker told me my reputation was smeared, by a female supervisor I jaded. She started a rumor about me that I was a pedophile.
However, now when I went to church, the priest seemed honored to have me in the congregation and to woo me as if he knew something I didn’t. I came across a Cadillac with a plasticine frog pinned to a cross and I figured that my crucifixion was eminent.
Then, I got hired by a wacky social worker at a therapy internship. His name was Jack and he said and sounded like he came from South Boston. “We’ve got to get you out of that Italian Deli before they cut those fingers off,” he said.
My hands were carefully bandaged to conceal the large warts that had taken over my hands ever since the uncleanly showers of C-Ward at Montana State Hospital.
“Hey, I get something from you,” he said, “I’ll bet you’ve been in some real impoverished neighborhoods back east.
Even though Jack was right about me, I was uneasy with his intuition.
“Do you trust me,” he asked.
The first day of the internship, I was utterly overwhelmed because everything Jack said seemed to come from private phone conversations I had had with my family. His face often turned red. “Hey, I know what they need to do with all those boys on the corners: just turn on cold showers and take the heat away from them. Then, they’ll be just fine.”
Later that afternoon I had another interview at a job I really wanted that bombed. The interviewer had been distressed by my level of anxiety and red face.
That night I didn’t sleep a wink. Was I ever going to avoid this eminent crucifixion? I kept blowing my professional opportunities. I had medical coverage. I decided to see a psychiatrist.
Incorporating Trauma Causation:
My boss at the delicatessen seemed to be much more accepting of me once I was medicated. He started to tell me, “good job!” when I continued to complete the tasks with care and detail.
It was true that I felt traumatized the whole time I was politically exploited. But I never thought the endemic bullying I experienced everywhere except amid the vulnerable population was my fault. Indeed, perhaps I was traumatized as a child and that was in part why I was bullied.
But now that I was medicated and started trying to make friends with my co-workers at the delicatessen I realized that they weren’t all bullying me in as organized a fashion as I imagined. There were ways I could appeal to injustice. Indeed, some of the less dominant kids really looked up to me. A few other young females had true crushes on me. They seemed to have fantasies of rescuing me. One even said, I had a beautiful mind.
It started to occur to me that I might not be a mafia kid but more of a bullied Aspergian child.
After all I already carried a diagnosis of ADD and Dyslexia, why not throw another neurodevelopmental difference in there. At least then I didn’t have to hate all the pot smoking population for participating in making me a political prisoner. I was very socially awkward and did tend to amuse people.
And, finally, I got the job outside the Deli, but agreed to stay on one day a week so that I could maintain the income necessary for my independence. Even though I had learned to shine my parents on, I did not like the way they used my economic need to control me. Indeed, being a piece of human traffic had helped me build personal skills.
And Finally, Incorporating Psychological Explanations:
It is hard for me to immediately define how I have come to consider that psychological processes may have been involved in my message experiences.
Perhaps, this is because the bay area therapist I saw believed that psychodynamic processes were happening between us. From my perspective, she was unable to admit that her fees were financially exploiting me. The therapy was imposed on me by my parents. I believed they would in fact hold me financially accountable for the very unhelpful relationship.
Indeed, I often felt that if people listened instead of presuming I was wrong about everything I experienced—if they explored the ways I was correct about what I was saying, that they could have really gotten my attention and helped me.
And a lot of what I believed has turned out to prove correct. For example, genetic testing has since revealed that my predominantly old money family really was predominantly Irish. Additionally, my mother who admired her father’s fame as the chair of the Harvard Psychology Department, may have in fact named me Timothy, after her father’s friend, Timothy Leary. (O’Leary, in my Irish mind.) Indeed, my Harvard grandfather really did work for the CIA and get rich from remarkably wise stock trading.
For example, it was true that my father, who everyone assumed I was wrong about, really had retired from his career at age forty-five, really did live primarily off-the-grid, via stocks and landholdings, yet still too busy to keep up with me. It was true that I really didn’t understand how he did this because finances were always hushed. Of course, my nefarious friend, an ununionized longshoreman, really did have a nefarious past with ties to the Philadelphia PD (an officer with the same first name as my father.)
Indeed, the drug war really does ensnare and incarcerate a disproportionate number of mentally ill individuals like myself leaving wealthy cartels to pay off the politicians. And support the dominant and violent. And I later learned that the Italian Deli that I worked at really did have mafia ties. I was able to confirm this when a street-wise person inadvertently dropped a name I recognized from my deli days.
Once I learned that I really was molested as a child just as I suspected; once I finally, in my first week employed away from the Deli, heard my name called in a harsh, metallic voice; once I developed the strength to call myself a schizophrenic and validate myself, I could start to see psychological causation beliefs. There were personal issues that were getting replayed in surrounding relationships. In fact, I will explore this process more in my next article as it is a component of my system of treatment.
Teaching Psychotherapists to Diversify Causation Beliefs:
Often, I find that message receivers in psychoses focus groups learn a lot from kicking around their ideas and experiences, much as I have just done. Though the order in which they uncover causation beliefs invariably differs, I believe that we can learn to support each other by proposing alternate meanings that are based on alternative causation beliefs. I believe that we can empower ourselves to navigate injustice and oppression in the modern world. I think we need psychotherapists who can help us with this.
Many message receivers aspire to become healers. In a traditional sense, it is our shamanic calling. As we learn to navigate message experience with rhythm and flow, groups are a great place to practice telling healing stories to message receivers who are still stuck and in crisis. On Facebook there are many sites dedicated to normalizing the spiritual emergence narrative. They need to be expanded and extended to the homeless population.
Additionally, in groups we can give each other credit and acknowledgement for diversifying causation beliefs. Not only can this be a great way to nurture and build relationships, it can reinforce movement to social rehabilitation. Too often, we stay stuck because our efforts to change our causation beliefs fail to arouse interest in those who are paid to support us.
Without mentors who can help us by modeling and articulating these insights, how are we to know we are on the right track? Perhaps, this is part of the reason it seems like so few of us survive to socially rehabilitate.
I believe that if psychotherapists support and learn from the experiences of the hearing voices network in other countries, they can become involved in providing services that teach message receivers to heal outside the punitive environments of the psychiatric ER or the State Hospital.
We need to promote healers and success stories who can connect with the one percent of the population that is persistently struggling and create pathways for social rehabilitation. We need statistics that more accurately report on the prevalence of psychosis to support these efforts. We need psychotherapy offices that specialize in psychosis!
March 17, 2018
Leaving My Hometown with Nothing but a Platonic Relationship
My mission has become a haze
In these droning hours—
Snaking pavement,
Grass coated medians:
Another couple hundred miles,
Another tank of diesel fuel,
Another nook and cranny town
Left unexplored by my consciousness
As the gas logo sign posts,
Bat me in the eye
Like flies
Pillars and bridges are swooping down
With on and off ramps
Leading to livelihoods
That embrace all the homes
That I defy.
Would they ever acknowledge the
Sentence to freedom, the
Wandering, quivering, blues that (I)
Want to leave behind me.
The diesel echoes in and out
Of ominous, overcast
Purple anger
And I will travel onward
And I’m ignoring the reflected
Spite spat
Upon the mournful plains.
This moving truck is full.
I’ve left nothing behind
Except for friends, family and Rimma
Who is so much on my mind.
I remember the rainy night
In her apartment’s hush
When the only light in the world
Was the bulb hanging above us.
Rimma’s foreign accent
Was so far away from home.
Rimma’s beauty was so lonely
Rimma’s life was on the roam
I see Rimma on every horizon
When my heart sits frozen in fear.
And now that I am finally on the road
I have left her behind to find her here.
So I am trying to find Rimma
And no matter what happens to me
I will still see Rimma on the horizon
And be graced by her eternity.
Leaving My Hometown with Nothing but a Monogamous Relationship
My mission has become a haze
In these droning hours—
Snaking pavement,
Grass coated medians:
Another couple hundred miles,
Another tank of diesel fuel,
Another nook and cranny town
Left unexplored by my consciousness
As the gas logo sign posts,
Bat me in the eye
Like flies
Pillars and bridges are swooping down
With on and off ramps
Leading to livelihoods
That embrace all the homes
That I defy.
Would they ever acknowledge the
Sentence to freedom, the
Wandering, quivering, blues that (I)
Want to leave behind me.
The diesel echoes in and out
Of ominous, overcast
Purple anger
And I will travel onward
And I’m ignoring the reflected
Spite spat
Upon the mournful plains.
This moving truck is full.
I’ve left nothing behind
Except for friends, family and Rimma
Who is so much on my mind.
I remember the rainy night
In her apartment’s hush
When the only light in the world
Was the bulb hanging above us.
Rimma’s foreign accent
Was so far away from home.
Rimma’s beauty was so lonely
Rimma’s life was on the roam
I see Rimma on every horizon
When my heart sits frozen in fear.
And now that I am finally on the road
I have left her behind to find her here.
So I am trying to find Rimma
And no matter what happens to me
I will still see Rimma on the horizon
And be graced by her eternity.
March 11, 2018
How Diversifying Causation Beliefs Can Lead to Recovery from Psychosis
I believe that a powerful dialectic exists when participants study their similarities in psychoses focus groups. Converse to the great opportunities for growth that result when participants genuinely identify with each other, there are often important points of difference highlighted that likewise can lead to growth when nurtured properly.
I have observed that participants often become more aware of their diverse beliefs regarding the causation of their psychosis experiences. I also believe that the causation of psychosis experiences is a natural preoccupation for people who suffer. In fact, this preoccupation is so powerful, it warrants becoming part of the definition of psychosis in the model of treatment I have created.
Having led many long-term psychoses focus groups over the past ten years, one of the more powerful solutions I have developed involves helping sufferers learn diversity lessons about the causation of their (psychosis) or special message experiences.
I have learned to categorize the causation beliefs of sufferers as being: political, psychological, spiritual, scientific, or trauma based. In the thick of a body’s psychosis process, causation beliefs often rigidly stay in one or two of these styles. While there is often an ability to consider and ponder other beliefs, the tendency is to immediately create explanations according to a single style or two of causation beliefs. Further, there is often an immediate need to solve or comprehend what is happening that can feel addictive.
Increasing Flexibility of Causation Ideas:
What I believe happens particularly when it is finessed and highlighted by the leader is when sufferers tell stories about the experiences of their psychosis, they hear similar experiences interpreted with a different style of causation. In supporting their peers, they become forced to see how these rigid causation beliefs lead to errors.
If I could count the number individuals I’ve worked with who are in what I like to call message crisis (psychosis,) who try to reality check me when I tell my story; well, you might say I’d be a high scoring mathematician. Indeed, I have found training them to better understand my experiences often opens them up to be willing to share their story with me.
They say, “No, I don’t think you were really followed by the mafia, I think that is a delusion.”
Then, I review specific evidence that is convincing and some evidence (or special messages) that are less clear.
I have found that this helps people be more willing to reveal what is happening to them with me.
Also, what I primarily want to convey is that when participants can see messages (or psychosis) happening to other people, it leads them to be more aware of the role that their own causation beliefs have in their suffering. Often the causation beliefs of others are at least slightly different. When the message receiver notices that different causation beliefs lead to errors, it challenges them to be more flexible in how they interpret their own psychosis experiences, which I like to call special messages.
Indeed, it is clearly conceivable that every special message (psychosis experience,) has a different causation style. I believe that when every message can be interpreted with flexibility, the message receiver can return to accomplishing things that relate to social rehabilitation.
Five Styles of Causation Beliefs:
Below I have listed the five causation styles along with common explanations that have been expressed in groups I have lead over the years. Some are perhaps noticeable as common psychological theories, others as less conventional ideas that might be considered delusional.
I believe that all causation beliefs are valid, important, and perhaps operant at different times in a person’s story. I like to argue that people may be predominantly correct about the causation of their message experiences. This validates participants in a way that is needed to heal from the potential trauma they have been through. However, I argue that any given message receiver may need to incorporate other explanations to survive and thrive in the modern world.
Psychological
Messages are your inner thoughts or unconscious beliefs. They are just in your head. We broadcast our unconscious beliefs in ways that cause others to interact with us in ways that make our unconscious beliefs realities.
Messages are a way of processing things that we are not willing to deal with.
Messages are a return to a regressed period of attachment in which the baby has destructive relationships with the boobs.
Political
Messages come from people following you around and tormenting you to control or seek revenge on you. These followers could be a gang, police, CIA, government, corporations, masons, illuminati, aliens, or other secret societies.
Messages are real evidence that the government is socially controlling and preventing the mainstream from knowing. They have their ways of taking snitches and putting them in ditches.
Traumatic
Messages are nothing but figments of past perpetrators or abusers.
Messages come from the social thoughts or judgments of others, the social mainstream, or the collective unconscious of others (Stigmas) that are being used to decrease your social standing
Spiritual
Messages come from god, fairies, aliens, ghosts or what we in the west call supernatural experiences.
Messages are processes that may help or hurt you in evolving or adapting to the dilemmas of a modern environment.
Messages are there to test your ability to be good and evil and are there to lead you to lead others.
Scientific
Genetic differences or scientific processes that develop because of nuero-diversity. Eugenics suggest that these genes aren’t fit for survival and justify a complex system of abuse and social control.
Messages happen when neuro-transmitters get changed through things like environmental stress patterns that fall into genetically derived conditions.
Messages happen when spiritual genes get persecuted in our society
My Story as A Case Study:
Because I don’t make it a habit using case histories that out other message receivers, I will review my own story to demonstrate how all five causation styles may be necessary to employ to help a message receiver survive in the modern world.
I would agree with the reader who says this is convenient and limited as a result.
However, in my defense, I have used insights from other message receivers’ causation beliefs to be able to understand my journey in the following manner. Indeed, for years, I could not even tell these stories. I needed to attain economic stability and sit in groups with diverse individuals to be able to make sense of what happened to me.
I would also argue that being able to relate and recreate your own experiences is one of the benefits of listening and relating to other message receivers. Therefore, I host groups and encourage those who are stuck in a single style or two to come out and listen to help diversify their views.
Preoccupation with Political Abuse:
My own message experiences involved descent into political abuse that could have rendered me homeless and jobless if I had given up. Persistent throughout the two-years of psychosis I endured, I believed I was being harassed by the government and the mafia.
I was working in a section 8 housing authority complex amid significant drug use and trafficking and had leaked information to the press to try to protect the vulnerable. The result was that the company that contracted with my company, a powerful authority with connections to the President targeted the people I wanted to protect for eviction. Then, the housing authority offered to give me a large amount of free concert tickets.
Of course, I used the concert tickets to advertise the music festival throughout the project and take out twenty-four of the vulnerable clients who would come out to the expensive mainstream event. I felt it was a good use of the bribe.
After that stunt, I continued to be very popular among many of the residents. I persisted in trying to crack the mystery of the local drug war that just didn’t make sense. I learned more and more details, until I started to get scared of the persistent threats. I started to get a strong sense of connection, like people were putting on skits around me to either help or foil me.
Among other things, I called a friend with a nefarious history. He heard what I had to say and made a powerful threat. Then, I ran away. Then, I withdrew all my money from my bank account and headed for the Canadian border. Maybe my friend was only using me to help me move drugs through the project. Suddenly, it all made sense.
As I neared the border of Canada I was convinced I was being followed. I stopped at a gas station to fuel and I got accosted by two policemen. One bruised my wrists and drove me eighty miles from my car.
At the hospital I lied to the psychiatrist and was given the opportunity to run.
I surrendered a few days later, from a ditch, on a mountain pass, at midnight.
In the State Hospital there was a clearly defined mafia daughter and a lot of people wanting to help her run away. She showed all patients documents of how she had taken a shot at her father. I suspected these were phony and wasn’t at all attracted to her.
However, she was most interested in me despite my unpopular mannerisms. Indeed, she seemed to salivate after me trying to extract information about my sneaky escapades. I received an offer to join an outlaw gang for protection against her. A lot happened in three months.
Discharged to the streets, I took a greyhound and got a job in Fresno. But when I ran out of medication, I was released from the job when I refused to take over the supervisor’s job and acted funny. Then, I couldn’t find any work for three months. I tried everywhere, from Walmart to county social work positions. Finally, I got a job at a Foster Care Agency.
This forced my family to get involved. I thought they were an Irish mob family who had hidden their illegal activities from me.
A black sheep aunt who lived in the bay area was able to offer me a less risky job at an Italian Delicatessen if I moved up into Antioch, California.
Causation Beliefs toward Spiritual Causation:
My interpretation of all events that happened to me at the Italian Deli led me to the belief that I was human traffic to my mob bosses. My political perspective did not change.
Unable to afford a car I biked twenty miles a day to the train station and back and took the train an hour to reach my job, which was in a wealthy suburb. Every train ride I took, I could spot a rider who was clearly following me.
One day it was a resident from the job I had at the Seattle Housing Project. He was dressed in a jean jacket that had a CIA Officer sign attached to it’s pocket and handcuffs attached to the belt-loops of his jeans. I had heard he’d been arrested before for impersonating a CIA officer when I was in Seattle. He had also cackled at me like a chicken and told me he had killed people before.
I persisted this way for ten months. I tried to find any work I could find outside the deli where I felt harassed endlessly.
Finally, I got a call back from an interview I had in the tenderloin. The job would lengthen my commute by an hour; but paid a good deal better.
In the group interview, I noticed that several of the workers were religiously preoccupied. They reminded me of the State hospital patients I had been locked up with.
Suddenly, in the middle of an interview that was going swimmingly well, a Latina woman spoke out in a shrill voice, “Oh, my god, the energy in the room is intense. It reminds me of the movie Stigmata.”
The room was accepting and rolled with this outburst with inquisitive questions.
I went home and rented the movie and suddenly it occurred to me, it was possible I wasn’t the son of a famous Irish Mafia family, maybe I was the next Jesus Christ, himself . . .
Incorporating Scientific Causation:
I was called back for a third interview, but when I asked to change my day to accommodate the interview, my boss told me he’d have to fire me if he did. This was the way I was used to being treated there. They were very controlling.
“You’re allowed to work with us, but you just can’t work anywhere else,” I was told by my boss.
Even worse, I was being sexually harassed. A co-worker told me my reputation was smeared, by a female supervisor I jaded. She started a rumor about me that I was a pedophile. This was a particularly intense fear of mine.
However, now when I went to church, the priest seemed honored to have me in the congregation and to woo me as if he knew something I didn’t. I came across a Cadillac with a Plasticine frog pinned to a cross and I figured that my crucifixion was eminent.
Then, I got hired by a wacky social worker at a therapy internship. His name was Jack and he said and sounded like he came from South Boston. “We’ve got to get you out of that Italian Deli before they cut those fingers off,” he said.
My hands were carefully bandaged to conceal the large warts that had taken over my hands ever since the uncleanly showers of C-Ward at Montana State Hospital.
“Hey, I get something from you,” he said, “I’ll bet you’ve been in some real impoverished neighborhoods back east.
Even though Jack was right about me, I was uneasy with his intuition.
“Do you trust me,” he asked.
The first day of the internship, I was utterly overwhelmed because everything Jack said seemed to come from private phone conversations I had had with my family. His face often turned red. “Hey, I know what they need to do with all those boys on the corners: just turn on cold showers and take the heat away from them. Then, they’ll be just fine.”
Later that afternoon I had another interview at a job I really wanted that bombed. The interviewer had been distressed by my level of anxiety and red face.
That night I didn’t sleep a wink. Was I ever going to avoid this eminent crucifixion? I kept blowing my professional opportunities. I had medical coverage. I decided to see a psychiatrist.
Incorporating Trauma Causation:
My boss at the delicatessen seemed to be much more accepting of me once I was medicated. He started to tell me, “good job!” when I continued to complete the tasks with care and detail.
Now I felt traumatized the whole time I was politically exploited. But I never thought the endemic bullying I experienced everywhere except amid the vulnerable population was my fault. But now that I was medicated and started trying to make friends with my co-workers at the delicatessen I realized that they weren’t all bullying me in an organized fashion. There were ways I could appeal to injustice. Indeed, some of the less dominant kids really looked up to me. A few other females had true crushes on me. They seemed to have fantasies of rescuing me. One even said, I had a beautiful mind.
It started to occur to me that I might not be a mafia kid but more of a bullied Aspergian child.
After all I already carried a diagnosis of ADD and Dyslexia, why not throw another neurodevelopmental difference in there. At least then I didn’t have to hate all the pot smoking population for participating in making me a political prisoner. I was very socially awkward and did tend to amuse people.
And, finally, I got the job outside the Deli, but agreed to stay on one day a week so that I could maintain the income necessary for my independence. Even though I had learned to shine them on, I did not like the way they used my economic need to control me. Indeed, being a piece of human traffic had helped me build personal skills.
And Finally, Incorporating Psychological Explanations:
It is hard for me to immediately define how I have come to consider that psychological processes may have been involved in my message experiences.
Perhaps, this is because the bay area therapist I saw believed that psychodynamic processes were happening between us. From my perspective, she was unable to admit that her fees were financially exploiting me. The therapy was imposed on me by my parents. I believed they would in fact hold me financially accountable for the very unhelpful relationship.
Indeed, I often felt that if people listened instead of presuming I was wrong about everything I experienced—if they explored the ways I was correct about what I was saying, that they could have really gotten my attention and helped me.
For example, genetic testing has since revealed that my predominantly old money family really was predominantly Irish. For example, my mother who admired her father’s fame as the chair of the Harvard Psychology Department, may have in fact named me Timothy, after her father’s friend, Timothy Leary. (O’Leary, in my Irish mind.) Indeed, my Harvard grandfather really did work for the CIA and get rich from remarkably wise stock trading.
For example, it was true that my father who everyone assumed I was wrong about really had retired from his career at age forty-five, really did live primarily off-the-grid, via stocks and landholdings. It was true that I really didn’t understand how he did this because finances were always hushed. Of course, my nefarious friend, an ununionized longshoreman, really did have a nefarious past with ties to the Philadelphia PD.
For example, the drug war really does ensnare and incarcerate a disproportionate number of mentally ill individuals like myself leaving wealthy cartels to pay off the politicians. And the Italian Deli that I worked at really did have mafia ties. I was able to confirm this when a street-wise person inadvertently dropped a name I recognized from my deli days.
Once I learned that I really was molested as a child just as I suspected; once I finally, in my first week employed away from the Deli, heard my name called in a harsh, metallic voice; once I developed the strength to call myself a schizophrenic and validate myself, I could start to see psychological causation beliefs. I will explore this process more in my next article as it is a component of my system of treatment.
Diversifying Causation Beliefs:
Often, I find that message receivers in psychoses focus groups learn a lot from kicking around their ideas and experiences, much as I have just done. I believe that when we learn to support each other by proposing alternate meanings that are based on alternative causation beliefs, we empower ourselves to navigate injustice and oppression in the modern world.
Many message receivers aspire to become healers. In a traditional sense, it is our shamanic calling. As we learn to navigate message experience with rhythm and flow, groups are a great place to practice telling healing stories to message receivers who are still stuck and in crisis.
Additionally, in groups we can give each other credit and acknowledgement for diversifying causation beliefs. Not only can this be a great way to nurture and build relationships, it can reinforce movement to social rehabilitation. Too often, we stay stuck because our efforts to change our causation beliefs fail to arouse interest in those who are paid to support us. Without mentors who can help us by modeling and articulating these insights, how are we to know we are on the right track? Perhaps, this is part of the reason so few of us survive to socially rehabilitate.
February 24, 2018
The Issue of Medication for Psychosis
The issue of whether to take medication or not can be a difficult one. While medication may work well for some, it may do little for others. This syncs with the fact that experiences associated with psychosis are vast and varied. People who suffer are very diverse, and causation remains nebulous.
I believe that causation for each person is a constellation of a series of modalities. I have witnessed how comparing causation theories becomes the spice of life in a psychosis support group. I find support groups for people who experience what is labeled as psychosis to be full of cultural learning that can result in powerful growth and wisdom.
As someone whose been in recovery for fifteen years, I have also witnessed the issue of medication to be politically divisive amongst message receivers or people who experience psychosis. Personally, I am starting to see it more as an element of cultural diversity in which differences can make the support groups I run vibrant and spectacular.
I believe I have a moderate view on this topic, which means it can be hard not to feel under attack in differing circles. My hope in this article is to provide perspectives to help people make their own decision about medication and work together regardless of their views and life experience.
The Initial Influence of Provider-Folk
I believe that early on, provider-folk often present an overly biased view about the relevance of medication treatment. Those famous five words, echo down the ward’s corridor and indelibly into the recipient’s life, “did you take your medication?” Often on a ward, family members who support medication and throw their weight around to support the mission are viewed as good supporters whether the subject responds well to them or not.
I played the obedient client for seven years and took my medication without complaining about side effects. If things weren’t working, I never thought I was getting bad therapy or needed to learn better coping skills, I just thought I needed to change my medication.
The therapist I had and the social workers I worked around rarely reflected on their own behavior. Mostly it seemed, just like it seemed in my family of origin, countertransference and elite defensiveness were the norm.
As I started my career working on a social work team throughout this experience, I can say that we weren’t trained to write reflective notes, we were trained to cover our ass. I mirrored this hard-headedness as a professional, feeling like I had to convey that I had my stuff together.
I now see this as the dominant normal culture oppressing people who are different without taking any responsibility for their role in the poor outcome. Medication compliance was expected and then blamed when there was lack of success. Then, there was that term medication noncompliance and all blame landed squarely on the client or minority culture. “I don’t think their taking their medication,” becomes the popular thing for the benevolent staff person to say.
For a long time, I internalized this damaging mentality feeling it was the bigger thing to do. I remained chronically depressed.
The Lack of Training:
I believe the premiere reason for the medication bias in treatment is that providers never get trained on how to work well with individuals who experience psychosis. They are expected to use their education to figure it all on their own. And much of what they read is full of hopeless eugenic myths that are the result of institutional stigma.
People who have psychosis are most often believed to be dangerous, child-like, or buffoons according to stigma expert Patrick Corrigan. With these hopelessly negative projections cast upon them, message receivers or persons with psychosis are rarely seen as though they can become stronger and wiser from the hardships they are experiencing.
The Medication Free Camp:
I believe that the people who are against medication are right about a lot of things.
We really don’t understand the health problems that can arise from taking medications. The FDA has historically been a poor judge of long term health effects of the various chemical cocktails. The twenty-five-year discrepancy in the life expectancy may in fact have something to do with medication.
Moreover, clearly medications can be used in such detrimental ways when they are forced or over-used. People who are beat down by the streets and hospital’s revolving door may struggle for years until some learn to internalize eugenics. Perhaps their unspoken interpretations of their experiences are elaborate, torturous, and reflect intricate elements of oppressive realities. Or perhaps they may just trust the money-making system in which they medicate their life and activities away in warehousing.
The pharmaceutical industry really does what it can to corrupt doctors and promote their product. The bias that pervades in psychiatric wards and treatment centers is one in which the majority reinforce ugly lies. There is a lot of bad things to gripe about when it comes to medication.
The Seeds of Division:
Currently there is an anti-psychiatry backlash for a very good reason that I support.
However, recall that in my mind the use of medication reflects diversity issues.
What happens in my mind is that some survivors who have been able to thrive medication-free believe what works for them can work for everyone. This can make the issue divisive for some people. For example, I have found that people who have been institutionalized and who have lacked adequate housing in Oakland California where I work, can feel very separated from some peers who have triumphed and been able to survive medication free. What can result is a sense of an underclass that is looked down upon.
I certainly went through a stage where I forgot that I have privileges that helped me survive that others might not have. I believed I could heal everybody. It’s arguable that this is a stage that some of us peer workers may go through. But, after making these mistakes, I believe becoming political about those feelings and fighting for them can divide and exclude.
What I have come to believe after leading thousands of groups that explore psychosis is that there is a higher amount of cultural diversity in the people who experience psychosis than some survivors like me tend to anticipate. I think that it is easy for the recovered person to forget or disregard the privileges that they have that enabled them to recover. Privileges come in all forms and a person who has overcome psychosis has had to use many of them optimally to escape.
Still, on bad days I sense an ethos among some consumers and feel like I am looked down upon by others because I have not joined the upper echelons of wellness and gone off medications. And yet, I am different from many who are successfully medication-free. I navigate with a unique set of circumstances. And so, I have grown to believe that it is a divisive presumption to believe that everyone is better off without medication.
There are a few presumptions that seem to go with automatic advocating for medication withdrawal that I want to challenge. The first is that if I could do it, then you could too. The second is that everyone can do it and it would be wrong to think otherwise.
Issues like relationship to the means of production, availability of a welfare state, family/cultural support, homelessness, race, gender, job history, sexual orientation, educational prestige level, learning disabilities, and incarceration histories are examples of factors that individuals navigate. These impact an individuals’ decision to take medication and may challenge the above presumptions, at least for some of us.
Supporting those in Repressive Settings:
Another thing I know well is that psychosis and the mental health system can put people in some bad incarcerated, warehouse circumstances. When I was in a bad situation, I thought it couldn’t possibly have been any worse. But since I have recovered, I have learned that I had oh so many privileges that other people don’t often get. And I think that this may be true for some others who are successful.
If a person lives in the most repressive of conditions, I believe they may need medication to survive it. It might be naïve to think that anyone can go off their medications at any time. It takes tremendous subservience to survive some conglomerations of oppression. For example, one could say that sufferers shouldn’t have to live that way, but so many do have to live that way. Some people have struggled for decades and still want to improve their lives.
In many cases, a true supporter needs to appreciate the nature of the repressive circumstance first. Then, they may even need to appreciate the time it takes to transition to better situations before they make a three-minute assessment and lean on someone to go medication free.
In fact, why lean on anybody ever? People have a right to honor their experiences in any way they chose. The healthy thing to do in most contexts is to respect each other’s differences and work together.
The Reality of Counterintelligence Efforts to Divide Us:
While we may get that sense of togetherness when we are at conferences, when we survive and start working, real counter-intelligence efforts, egos, slights, and slanders may turn us against each other. I believe this can function to maintain the repression of our brethren.
It is not hard to see the way mental health recovery fails to trickle down when mental health organizations and powerhouses battle with each other politically. Yes, I think this is part of the master plan that the government has that minimizes the power of rebellion in the United Sates where series of clandestine Libertarian and social Darwinist economists use their secret societies currently rule over democracy. Yes, I think the mainstream view of mental illness has a lot of money and power behind it. Yes, I can function, and I still believe real, undemocratic counterintelligence this is a factor!
When we allow it to make us attack people with alternative beliefs and experiences, we divide the culture.
Striving to Be Better than Some Provider-folk:
I believe that when we throw our opinion around without careful assessment, we run the risk of being just like the unhelpful amongst the provider-folk. When we work in the system, we are going to do harm for a portion of the people we serve if we mindlessly promote only what has worked for us. We need to be mindful that not everyone is going to be happy with us. We need to reflect, explore, be vulnerable and work with those who are hurt by us. There may be an incredible story there.
Peer counselor survivors who understand psychosis are needed on service teams as specialists.
As survivors we must agree to disagree and be culturally competent for each other so as not to just become part of the machine. If we are not careful, counterintelligence agents or messages well may have us divided over issues of medication and other cultural factors fighting one another from other regions just like they have with other social movements.
If we do not cross diversity divides and let our egos rear their ugly heads, we risk becoming part of the problem.
We don’t need a stratified system with subsectors that don’t deal with each other. That is what we have now. We need emotional regulation and an openness to working together and manners that exceed those of the provider-folk to prevent division. Without our voice, the oppressed may remain oppressed.
Conclusion:
I hope in my journey to be able to go medication free sometime when I retire. I am glad to hear that some people can do it and maintain strong recoveries. I have no problems if they promote medication free alternatives, make films, and write websites and books to give me information. In fact, I am grateful for that.
I work in a stratified system and take money from my brothers and sisters to pay a mortgage. I believe my brothers and sisters could do so much better if I shared with them rather than provide them with nickel and dime advice amidst their repressive warehousing. Still, many people I work with recover and lead dignified lives. If democracy comes back to our country, and the rich get taxed at the level that the poor do, we have some mechanisms in place to really tug on and make changes.
I think it is the craziness of the disparity in the hacienda of the mental health industry that I depend on to survive that keeps me on medication. Unfortunately, using medication made a major difference for me. I tried for two years to manage without medication. I couldn’t get out of the homelessness and underemployment that kept me down. I wanted to use my strengths towards something that could provide me a better life. The depravation and abuse were hard. I never worked so hard and thanklessly.
Finally, I returned to the field of mental health to survive and try to use my experiences to make it better. Many could argue righteously that that makes me part of the problem.
I know we could do better for each other someday. But I believe working together and transforming the system is possible even if we don’t have what European countries have. Every day, I see it happen in group therapy for psychosis.
February 19, 2018
Two, Trauma-Sensitive Solutions for Psychosis
When I experienced two years of psychosis early during my career as a mental health counselor, I was already getting good at managing trauma with my master’s level training. I always been pretty good at being safe for others.
I wanted some of that trauma support when I found myself confined to a ward on a State Hospital. I knew I needed to establish safety with someone but couldn’t find anyone who would deal with me. Instead, no one treated me as though I was traumatized because they didn’t want to reinforce my delusions. This only made the trauma of what I experienced worse. Invariably, hospital workers were punitive and denied anything unjust was happening to me at all.
Because I worked tirelessly and had family support, I was able to return to my career in mental health. I got my psychotherapy license ten years ago and since that time I have worked to create trauma-sensitive treatment to address the needs of individuals who experience psychosis. Here, I intend to convey two trauma-sensitive solutions I have developed, working with people in groups and in individual treatment.
The Challenge of Establishing Trust:
It’s true that it is hard to establish safety with someone when they think they are being followed. I felt I was being followed by the mafia via government surveillance; others feel they are in miraculous communion with a spirit world. Any therapist who works with individuals who have experienced psychosis can tell you that trust with any such prototype takes time.
However, too many practitioners do not feel that the stories of psychosis are worth engaging for the simple reason they might have delusions in them! It’s true delusional ideas can cause a great deal of problems. For example, maybe the police didn’t really taunt me like I reported they did when they bruised my wrists. Maybe I was too hard on the pony-tailed man who wouldn’t give me food and testified against me at my competency diagnosing me with schizophrenia. Maybe I wasn’t really being followed by the FBI like I thought I was. Maybe I was delusional when I said I leaked information from the section 8 housing authority I was working for. All that I knew for sure was that nobody cared to listen. I was on my own for quite some time.
Many practitioners reason that they don’t want to reinforce anything that isn’t real. Instead, the best practice, CBT for Psychosis, directs the clinician to separate their reality from the sufferer and teach the sufferer to evaluate their thoughts to make sure they are rational. I believe CBT for Psychosis may work at times. In fact, think there comes a time when cognitive therapy is necessary for rehabilitation. However, there are times this single strategy may not address trauma involved with the experiences of psychosis.
In contrast, I have had significant success in working with people with psychosis by finding powerful ways to validate the contents of an individuals’ psychosis to address real trauma that may have transpired. This approach is increasingly accepted now thanks to the spread of the hearing voices network support groups. Indeed, I have found that providing group support that allows people to explore psychosis, to be very helpful. Increasingly research is proving to validate the idea that treating psychosis as you would a trauma results in far better outcomes.
The Challenges of Validating All Parts of Psychosis
Of course, some might argue that the hearing voices network does not have a clear methodology for how to validate delusions when they are not caused by voices. It’s true that, some delusions are hard to validate in a genuine manner. For example, many people who hear voices believe that other people are hearing what they are hearing. Such individuals may accuse the practitioner or group leader of many things that they aren’t responsible for, making therapy and group sustainability a challenging endeavor.
My own experience in therapy was a nightmare because my therapist didn’t believe me. Thousands of dollars were spent and not an ounce of trust was achieved.
I have found it’s possible to validate things that aren’t true; however, I have had to take apart the delusional experience and look at them with a microscope. Then, I have found it is possible to validate a part of the psychosis process without validating all the mistakes that happen.
For starters, I coined the term special messages to describe experiences that trigger an alternative way of taking in information and connecting with the world. Thus, not only voices but other meaningful experiences like intuition, dreams, interpersonal interactions, and coded realities from media can trigger alternative views about reality.
Then, I developed seven other code words to represent distinct aspects of sufferers’ experiences. In sum, if the sufferer can become more aware of the process of what they are doing during a psychosis process and the way this process relates to fellow sufferers, they can become more mindful and validated and heal from trauma.
The Message Mindfulness Solution that Supports Trauma Informed Care:
Message mindfulness happens when the person in psychosis learns to see their process by describing it to another person or by hearing similar process that they can relate to in a group. I have found that people in psychosis can often recognize delusions when they are listening to someone. However, when they are not mindful of special messages, they react and cannot see their own process as being potentially delusional.
I believe that when message receivers become mindful of what is happening to them and their peers, they go towards experiences that terrorize, anger or excite them. Then they can acknowledge their emotions in a way that can help them let go of those triggering special message experiences. With awareness, those special message experiences become less judged and easier to let go of without having emotions and thoughts spike. And the sufferer can then acknowledge that they often will be right but don’t necessarily have the evidence to presume that their special messages are accurate all the time.
Helping a sufferer or message receiver become mindful of the experiences that give rise to alternate thoughts or what I call divergent views is not an easy process and can take time. Indeed, message receivers who listen and learn from each other are better able to admit that some special messages may turn out to be true and others false. Still, they can all be considered real and can be validated and better observed by the people who get them. Plus, becoming increasingly mindful of other message processes can significantly help a body reconcile with the ways they were wrong and had their emotions spike needlessly.
The Solution of Mastery Tasks or What I call Recovery and Reality Tasks:
A second trauma informed solution that has resulted from redefining psychosis into eight components, is to distract from distress when emotions spike by completing mastery tasks. I call these mastery tasks, recovery and reality tasks.
In this process, high emotions are soothed by what I have termed the act of sleuthing. Sleuthing is the act of collecting a series of messages and to trying to figure out what is really going on. This leads to all kinds of thoughts about the way the world works (divergent views.) Then, divergent views cause the message receiver to sleuth again and be on the lookout for more special message experiences. Thus, the message receiver often gets more different types of messages until they become entirely preoccupied with distressing or enthralling special message material.
Therefore, I believe that distracting from sleuthing by completing mastery tasks may significantly reduce distressing and intense emotions. When the message receiver sits and sleuths all day they expend a great deal of emotional energy without accomplishing anything. Then, social workers or supporters are more likely to push for warehousing them.
However, to distract from sleuthing, the message receiver needs to practice and strengthen the skill of distracting.
Often, distracting efforts go unacknowledged by others because they are judged negatively in comparison to what could otherwise be accomplished. At first, in my beliefs, the message receiver needs to accept and be supported for basic actions that are productive. Thus, appreciating mastery tasks as helpful for wellness and supporting them regardless of their social standing is another way to validate and support message receivers.
Moving through trauma in such a manner beats being isolated, locked up, or restrained, which teaches the message receiver a great deal of helplessness. Nothing could discourage mastery tasks more. Indeed, these kinds of traumatizing events make message receivers less mindful and elevate the unreasonable expectation that special messages be suppressed.
Conclusion:
While I have also developed six additional solution strategies, I consider the above two solutions to be specific to addressing the trauma that message receivers experience. The six other solutions I propose are experiential, spiritual (there are two of these,) behavioral, cognitive and narrative. These solutions likewise may be responsive to trauma in some ways but are linked to differing components of special message experience and tend to work in different manners. Stay tuned for future solution focused blog posts that may help describe a recovery process
