Clyde Dee's Blog, page 15

Generativity and Recovery! Part One: The Need to Plan for Generativity from the First Break

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

***

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

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

 

 

***

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

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

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

 

 

***

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

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

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

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

 

 

***

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

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

The Role of Generativity in Mental Health Recovery

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

While there can be very diverse responses from family and friends, there is the unfortunate tendency to turn to mental health providers for support and direction. Many providers only know the standard of care which is to refer the person to a hospital and psychiatric medications. Few providers take an interest in understanding and exploring the important experiences that lead to the break. Still fewer recognize the trauma involved in the lives of the people who have first breaks and that the trauma that gets worsened as the standard of care—medication, social security, and warehousing—get implemented. While there currently are movements that seek to change this, still, there are perhaps several providers would not take the contention of this essay seriously: that to recover, what people really need to get their feet back on the ground and have the responsibility and roles that can most certainly include that of caring for others.

Sure, when people have a break, there is behavior that can become scary and hard to tolerate. It may be the last thing that supporters think is that this person needs more responsibility. But here I am arguing that it is a human need that is much-forgotten that needs to be part of the equation.

For many supporters who do stick around, there is an amplification of shock and distress when they find that hospitalization and psychiatric medications are not even possible until there is danger or grave disability. The thought is often that nothing that can be done until the standard of care is implemented. It is enough to push many to desperately pray for hospitalizations and psychiatric medication. Plans are made and trajectories are set for permanent warehousing and poverty. Many supporters think the afflicted person can be backed into that corner where they are forced to accept consensus reality, take their medication, and return to the person that everybody wants them to be. It can become a self-defeating, tough love mentality for many.

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

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

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

When I think back to my twenty-two-year career working with other providers, my mid-career first-break, and the things that did help me recover from it, I think that it is the very presumptions that make up the standard of care are most likely to lead people into permanent warehousing and poverty.

Running survivor-led group therapy over the past nine years, I have identified at least seven tools other than CBT for “Psychosis” that significantly help during a break. So here I am with my generativity contention preaching that teaching people who have breaks from reality to care for each other may take some time, but doing this opens so many coping strategies.

Now, seventeen years after my own two-year break from reality, I work in a program constructed for people who have done their time on the streets. Most of our participants are in permanent warehousing circumstances. Much of what I am saying about generativity comes from observing people in the program. Mostly we don’t get to work with people until they are fifty and have utterly given up. Finally, they accept that the twisted system that has guided them into permanent warehousing can offer them support. And so, we provide transportation and provide them a place to heal. In this crazy world, we save the government money by ending the revolving door of the hospital while charging top dollar. That is not to say that many have not done a good job surviving on their own and are just now getting services for aging as they are falling into low income housing. It simply is not fair to categorize a program such as ours in simplistic manners.

I believe we have some of the nicest and most beautiful people one could ever experience and what we do for them is skillfully encourage them to build a community or family in which they can support each other. Once I learned the ropes, I learned to consider participants to be unpaid volunteers and to be regaining an important role—the ability care for others after terrifically traumatic experiences.

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

 

 

Generativity in My Own Recovery:

            I was convinced that my three-month psychiatric incarceration was a political sham aimed at discrediting me after I had blown the whistle on social issues at a section 8 housing authority complex in a liberal city. On my way to Canada to seek asylum, I was stopped by police. I evaded them for three days and surrendered from a ditch at midnight on a mountain pass. It was hard for me to accept the way I was treated during this process. I endured a month of permanent warehousing conditions having to wear other peoples’ clothes to brave the cold of the barely heated ward. I learned a lot about the mafia from a mob boss’s daughter who supposedly had the hots for me. I learned enough to believe that the mafia and the FBI was following me.

My psychiatrist told me, “one time we had someone come here saying the FBI was following him. In fact, he hadn’t done anything wrong but he was a person of interest.”

Because it took her two months to meet with me despite my written requests, I didn’t trust her to find out if that person was me. Was it the FBI or the mafia striving to push me into permanent warehousing?

Yes, at the time I did endure some trauma that I needed to process. Everyone I knew just presumed they were delusions. My most loyal friend with a nefarious past suddenly threatened me. My parents had historically dealt with my non-conforming behavior by referring me to providers who I no longer trusted. I responded by heading to Canada to seek asylum. The police intercepted me, manhandled me, separated me from my car . . .

As soon as I got out of permanent warehousing, I started over again in Fresno California. As soon as I got a job at a daycare center, I got a dog. It was a promise I made to myself to endure the hospitalization. This was a dangerous thing to do with the low income I was dealing with, but something told me it was what I needed to survive.

Shortly after I ran out of my month’s supply of medication from the hospital, I started to get overwhelmed by strange incidents on the streets that made me feel like I was being followed just as I did when I was trying to make it to Canada. I lost my job. I strained to find employment and spent down my money till I had just a grand and a half.

I did get a responsible job in the nick of time, but I was worried about being followed and monitored everywhere I went. I was seeing special broadcasts on the television. I was getting sick from food I believed was being dosed with laxative powder. I believed the government sewed a tracking device into my dog when they fixed her. These beliefs were constantly reinforced by intense experiences that followed me everywhere I went.

My aunt said she could get me a job at an Italian Deli if I moved up closer to her. She could negotiate with my family who agreed to support me if I moved and accepted underemployment. I had already discerned that the mob was tied to this new job at the foster care agency I had gotten. I figured making sandwiches for the mob was better than corrupting foster care kids. I made the move to a town on the outskirts of the bay area.

The whole time my dog was the one thing that kept me going. I had utilized the local dog park to socialize her under invisible video surveillance. She loved to play fetch and frisbee endlessly. I helped her build confidence and she loved me unconditionally. She was a very good girl.

Even when I had to leave her for twelve hours a day, unable to afford a dog sitter as I biked and rode the train four hours to work at the Italian Deli and back, she never peed on the apartment rug once.

It is true true I felt my family didn’t set it up to be easy for me. It seemed like they wanted me to fail. They told me I was lucky to have their support at all. I usually believed they were mafia, but sometimes I when I just figured that they felt people like me just needed permanent warehousing; then they’d tell me to hug my dog for them. It was the one thing that helped.

I figured either the mob or the U.S. government were walking my dog for me. I collected daily evidence that my apartment was being broken into. I figured if they had the time to torment me in this manner, the least they could do was walk the dog for me. Really, I couldn’t believe she could be so loyal to endure twelve-hour days for me without pee. So, I did everything in my power to make sure she was amply exercised in my spare time. I didn’t mind when she chewed through everything I owned, which wasn’t very much anyway.

I continued to be unable to find employment and believed I was blacklisted. Finally, after ten months I got a car, then benefits came and I finally got back on medication. The level of harassment at work declined and I eventually found work outside the Italian Deli.

I really don’t know if I could have done it without the responsibility I had for my good old girl. Lord knows I was not a perfect owner. I was mad and didn’t always exhibit the best judgment.

In fact, during my struggles, I was tormented that it seemed the community around me felt bad for my dog having a madman as an owner. It seemed there wasn’t a soul who was not critical of me to the utmost. On nights when I cried to my mother on the phone afraid I was going to get unjustly fired because the mob kids had set me up at the Deli and begged to be able to come home, it was my dog that helped me get through. And my Mom would remind me I had the dog to hug.

It was so humiliating to admit that what they said about me was correct, that I had schizophrenia and that all my suffering was because of that. The corrupt world was fine if I took my medication. Some murders that happen in the city get covered up. Only my dog could understand that, ultimately, I was alright.

My dog lived to be sixteen and a half years. She and I grew once we got out of that Italian Deli. We had the greatest relationship and often became the envy of other dog owners at the dog park we frequented. She was beautiful. She was loyal. She was proud of me despite what “they” said.

 

 

Resources and Preferences:

Many people who have breaks from reality get that permanent housing trajectory in their heads and rant and rail against it. They may still believe that there is such a thing as schizophrenia and be disinterested in the lives of their peers who are clearly schizophrenics. Those who have breaks, like me, are extremely diverse with distinctive cultural backgrounds, differing preferences and different access to resources and differing levels of buy into to the concept that they are permanently ill with something that will never go away. Believe it or not, not every person who has experienced a break is a dog lover. Many are parents and have a different journey when it comes to generativity that sometimes involves utter heartbreak.

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

I believe it helps to share diverse ideas, coping strategies and learn more about the culture of peoples who experience a break. I believe group therapy that focuses on the experience of “psychosis” can help restore that much needed human need for generativity. I believe that people who get special messages and have first breaks have skills that could become gifts if they learn how to manage them. I tend to think of them as being neurologically different not psychologically and developmentally impaired.

Perhaps as a people, we are mistrustful for a good reason. Some of us have problems with things like guilt and shame and others don’t. Some may be industrious and have initiative, just like some “normals” do, and some of us may not. Likewise, we may have different levels of need in terms of intimacy and generativity, but we do have these needs just like everybody else.

Not everyone in our culture has grown up in freedom and not everyone has the resources that makes things like an apartment and rescuing a dog possible. However, when a person has a first break, it is a real shame when, suddenly, all resources go to providers who set trajectories of permanent warehousing and poverty. I believe it is wise to invest in people who get special messages and that when they are either economically empowered or enveloped in a safe and healing community. I feel that getting important needs like generativity met can help. I believe that a message receiver doesn’t have all or none of the psychological milestones to deal with just because they hear voices or get other types of special message experience. I believe in the hearing voices movement and want to help it drill down into the system and create a culture for our peoples to augment the revolving door of hospitalizations that hammer individuals into the warehousing system.

Although I function with a good job and a good relationship, I still struggle with the lack of safety I experience when dealing with mainstream community. Outside the community where I work as a facilitator, I prefer to stay at home with the canine who we just rescued three weeks ago. The two of use just sniff each other’s asshole and I write about how shitty the world is. I never have done well socializing over name brand clothing at cocktail parties, I prefer to adapt to the positive qualities of my dog. I strive to have a mutual relationship with my pouch, just like I do with the message receivers at work.

Additionally, whether we experience the gifts of special messages or not, I pray that we all can learn to resource ourselves in ways that help us thrive and be blessed with the gift of giving to others. Generativity is truly a beautiful thing to experience. And there is nothing wrong with sharing it with a person who receives special messages and is in crisis.

 

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My new puppy, Jayla O,Kayla

Learning Disabilities and Psychosis

Never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long

I never heard the melody until I needed the song . . .

. . . I never I spoke “I love you” till I cursed you in vain

Never felt my heart strings until I nearly went insane

                                                           

–Tom Waites, San Diego Serenade

 

It is funny how sometimes one cannot really see themselves until they get a glimpse of a harsh paradoxical reality. Perhaps doing so gives one that alternate perspective that is so necessary to really see oneself and gain wisdom. I think that’s what Tom Waites is getting at in the excerpts of his song I posted above. That is why the ability to relate to others is such a powerful teacher and healer that is so needed in a therapeutic endeavor. Other people’s struggles help us stop and see ourselves better. Even if it is painful, growth is likely.

And, just as the song goes, I never really saw myself as a learning-disabled person until I just recently had the opportunity to sit with an individual while she was receiving a mid-life diagnosis. It was a diagnosis that I thought might be helpful. Little did I know that before this sitting, I rarely considered the full effect of how a learning disorder affects me as a writer, therapist and mental health consumer.

 

***

Learning disorders, as I often educate people as a psychotherapist, are an aspect of neurodiversity that are most characterized by an imbalance in areas of brain abilities. Some realms may be significantly lower, while other areas are particularly high. Thus, as my explanation goes, certain areas of learning become very difficult without a high level of support, time and determination. A person who struggles in this manner may suffer from attention difficulties, may need extra time to complete things, and may like Albert Einstein, develop a particularly high drive to exercise their strengths because of always struggling and straining to keep up. Of course, when not properly supported and safely nurtured learning disabilities can cause people stop exercising abilities and accept oppression.

I am also likely to talk about how learning disabilities are generally considered to be neurodevelopmental disorders. This means that they are severely impacted by a mix of biological and environmental stressors. There are a couple of points I accordingly am likely to highlight.

First, I will suggest that we are learning, intergenerational trauma can be inherited and this might contribute to the brain’s lower abilities. Second, I will argue that having learning struggles can lead to a resulting life of ongoing trauma and mistreatment that can add to and exacerbate the lower realms particularly if support is not provided. Thirdly, I will point out that it is well known and demonstrated that trauma results in brain damage and that learning disabilities give us an opportunity to address those issues of trauma. And most certainly, I will add that compensating for a relative deficit may cause there to be unusually high ability in some other areas and exercise always makes them stronger.

In addition, after making these points, I am certain to reference studies on resilience that demonstrate that healing from trauma and neuroplasticity can cause people to become stronger than they would have otherwise been. In fact, being damaged can cause the brain to strengthen up in ways that would not otherwise happen. Thus, creating a sense of safety and providing people the opportunity to heal from trauma enables them to grow so strong that they become grateful that the trauma happened. Many who attain that sense of safety become very practiced at being strong, spiritual, and high functioning individuals.

 

***

Unfortunately, the African American woman I referred for testing got informed that she had learning disabilities, without having any of my suggestions reinforced. I found myself reflecting on the fact that maybe my ideas are simplistic and not scientific. Instead, from my perspective, the focus was on what she couldn’t do, and what was possible to help her overcome these deficits thanks to modern technology.

I went home after the sitting, was editing a chapter of my current book, and suddenly found myself so hypercritical that I froze. It occurred to me that I don’t read the way others do. In fact, I hate reading so badly that I rarely look extensively at the work of others. Everybody says that to be a good writer, one must be a prolific reader. I usually tell myself that I learn through writing, not reading. I usually say that I am exercising my talents, making myself happy, and learning rather than wasting my time.

But in a frozen state, it occurred to me that I am not being realistic as so many negative people in my life have told me. Maybe those fears I am constantly working against really are true.

All the rejections I have been getting from journals and blog sites plus the people who have used the vulnerability in my work to politically marginalize me started to gain tractions in my head. Frozen, my sense of empowerment felt like it was swallowed up and wallowing in stomach acid. The fact that I won five literary awards for my memoir didn’t matter. Instead, I found myself returning to perseverations on the ways that my memoir has only heightened my sense of alienation. All that mattered was that it was not selling, attracting reviews, or achieving what I had hoped for, to decrease my sense of invisibility. Suddenly, instead of being unrelenting and meticulous during my seven-year struggle to write the thing, I told myself that couldn’t read the way other people do and that my writing must show it. I told myself that I had to work twice as hard as others to no avail. Old tapes started to dominate the day.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” one writing professor had complained in a college course, “but it took me ten rewrites to get my detective novel published!”

“Ten rewrites,” I had once been proud to say to myself, “that is nothing! And I am having fun.”

Suddenly, that confidence that once helped me thrive was taken away.

 

***

Sure, in school, I was always the last person to complete the test, but my grades were always good. It’s true some teachers tended to get on me about spelling that I could not do anything about, but I tested okay in meaningless math. It’s true when the homework got heavy in high school, I could only manage to get four hours sleep a night, but that was also because I played sports, exercised, and didn’t eat much. When I became addicted to starving, I just thought I was a hardworking perfectionist who didn’t want to be stopped.

When anorexia led to incarceration, I was forced to halt all behavior and gorge on food. Once the tears and fight subsided, I learned to write when I couldn’t exercise.

It’s true I had poured my heart into my poetry notebook the year before only to receive a B+. The comment from the teacher to my mother—the school reading teacher—was that my work was just too depressing. She didn’t like it.

Straight out of the hospital and still angry about the B+, I took writing assignments and turned in lengthy stories or songs instead. I wrote twenty-five-page papers with long bibliographies. The results: poorer grades and a college essay nearly got me kicked out of school because it made the school psychologist—my teacher’s wife and mother’s friend—think I was suicidal. I still wasn’t educated enough about the social psychology of the situation: I was exposed as a mental health patient, my grades suffered regardless of how good I was getting. I had a different experience and message than others. My successes, leadership, and hard work in eleventh grade became a subverted, living lie. When I chose my only available form of rebellion against this, to go to a local commuter college, the school chose to lie in the yearbook and said I was going to overpriced Antioch College in Ohio.

I ran as far away as I could run without using the college money which I suspected had gone to hospitalizations. In a ghetto with a girlfriend who was seven years my senior, it was the easy courses with lousy textbooks that got my GPA off to bad B+ start. Suddenly immersed in large crowded auditoriums, my anxiety went up and my attention, down. I would be struck with the worst kind of writer’s block. I started the practice of outlining and memorizing everything that I read. I ended up achieving a 3.9 average, but I never went to a single party or took any time off work.

My poetry teacher in college who repeatedly chose my poems to share with the class had once said at the end of an intense semester in which we wrote a poem a week: “Then, there will be some of you that have to keep on writing, not because you want to, but because you have to.”

I don’t know if I listened to him or if I just found myself to be one of those who had to write. I took fiction and personal essay classes and obsessed over my take-home exams trying to get the wording just right.

I did get diagnosed with learning disabilities working my way through graduate school. Because I was working with a psychologist who unbeknownst to me didn’t think I was college material, I became very aware of all my deficits and tended to communicate about this with my peers. I took a heavy dose of medications that I later found out I didn’t need to such an extent. Interactive courses in which the info came from multiple sources and required in the moment listening often overwhelmed me. I put my writing away during those seventy-hour weeks and did my best to become involved and social with my peers. I learned that I worked oh so much harder than they did to prepare for tests. I often got ridiculed for asking so many questions to keep myself alert and tracking, but I was used to that. When I got through those three years without a hospitalization, I happily returned to an intense poetry habit.

 

***

I must admit it was my suggestion that the African American woman get tested for learning disabilities. At least I educated her about my views of learning disabilities before I set up the testing. However, I was still stunned by the outcome. I later learned that the specific tests used were known to be culturally biased against African Americans. On a closer look at the material there were in fact areas of superior performance that we neglected to review. I am using this essay to thaw the writer’s block that has struck me in the gut over the past few days.

I do believe I will return to being happy obsessive, unread writer for my own lonely needs again.

A year after I graduated, I moved to the west coast to start over again. I think of the times since: when things were hard; when I had to escape incarceration and face homelessness, underemployment and long work days just to evade the mental health system and get back on the career track. When I think of these experiences, I get mad that people are reduced to different types of pathological disorders, like learning disorders. At the same time, as soon as I developed the diagnosis of schizophrenia, learning disorders didn’t matter anymore. I became a warehoused genetic cash cow. In the mentality of mainstream treatment, schizophrenia trumps neurodevelopmental disorders, yet so many of the institutionalized individuals I work with struggle with undiagnosed and unsupported learning disorders.

They are brilliant, complex, utterly alone, living in squalor, and extremely righteous and good people. I just don’t understand why psychological tests and treatments, and the demands of society make it so hard on good people to make a living wage.

 

***

Perhaps, the reader can tell, I have decided to be out with my history and experiences as a professional, writer, and mental health consumer. I still find there are many people who pick up on the fact that I am a little different and try to scapegoat and marginalize me. It happens repeatedly like the rising ebb of the San Diego sea on the shore as Tom Waits at one point had pondered.

 

I never saw the mornin’ ‘till I stayed up all night

I never say the sunshine ‘til you turned out the light . . .

. . .I never saw the white line, ‘til I was leaving you behind

Never knew I needed you until I was caught up in a bind

 

Really, it still hurts because criticism comes from every direction. However, eventually the hurt will go away. I will still be writing. And I hope and pray that that brilliant person I got diagnosed with a learning disability will be there with me, making the most of her meaningful life no matter what “they” say.

Living with Learning Disabilities as a Psychotherapist, Writer, and Mental Health Consumer

Never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long

I never heard the melody until I needed the song . . .

. . . I never I spoke “I love you” till I cursed you in vain

Never felt my heart strings until I nearly went insane

                                                           

–Tom Waites, San Diego Serenade

 

It is funny how sometimes one cannot really see themselves until they get a glimpse of a harsh paradoxical reality. Perhaps doing so gives one that alternate perspective that is so necessary to really see oneself and gain wisdom. I think that’s what Tom Waites is getting at in the excerpts of his song I posted above. That is why the ability to relate to others is such a powerful teacher and healer that is so needed in a therapeutic endeavor. Other people’s struggles help us stop and see ourselves better. Even if it is painful, growth is likely.

And, just as the song goes, I never really saw myself as a learning-disabled person until I just recently had the opportunity to sit with an individual while she was receiving a mid-life diagnosis. It was a diagnosis that I thought might be helpful. Little did I know that before this sitting, I rarely considered the full effect of how a learning disorder affects me as a writer, therapist and mental health consumer.

 

***

Learning disorders, as I often educate people as a psychotherapist, are an aspect of neurodiversity that are most characterized by an imbalance in areas of brain abilities. Some realms may be significantly lower, while other areas are particularly high. Thus, as my explanation goes, certain areas of learning become very difficult without a high level of support, time and determination. A person who struggles in this manner may suffer from attention difficulties, may need extra time to complete things, and may like Albert Einstein, develop a particularly high drive to exercise their strengths because of always struggling and straining to keep up. Of course, when not properly supported and safely nurtured learning disabilities can cause people stop exercising abilities and accept oppression.

I am also likely to talk about how learning disabilities are generally considered to be neurodevelopmental disorders. This means that they are severely impacted by a mix of biological and environmental stressors. There are a couple of points I accordingly am likely to highlight.

First, I will suggest that we are learning, intergenerational trauma can be inherited and this might contribute to the brain’s lower abilities. Second, I will argue that having learning struggles can lead to a resulting life of ongoing trauma and mistreatment that can add to and exacerbate the lower realms particularly if support is not provided. Thirdly, I will point out that it is well known and demonstrated that trauma results in brain damage and that learning disabilities give us an opportunity to address those issues of trauma. And most certainly, I will add that compensating for a relative deficit may cause there to be unusually high ability in some other areas and exercise always makes them stronger.

In addition, after making these points, I am certain to reference studies on resilience that demonstrate that healing from trauma and neuroplasticity can cause people to become stronger than they would have otherwise been. In fact, being damaged can cause the brain to strengthen up in ways that would not otherwise happen. Thus, creating a sense of safety and providing people the opportunity to heal from trauma enables them to grow so strong that they become grateful that the trauma happened. Many who attain that sense of safety become very practiced at being strong, spiritual, and high functioning individuals.

 

***

Unfortunately, the African American woman I referred for testing got informed that she had learning disabilities, without having any of my suggestions reinforced. I found myself reflecting on the fact that maybe my ideas are simplistic and not scientific. Instead, from my perspective, the focus was on what she couldn’t do, and what was possible to help her overcome these deficits thanks to modern technology.

I went home after the sitting, was editing a chapter of my current book, and suddenly found myself so hypercritical that I froze. It occurred to me that I don’t read the way others do. In fact, I hate reading so badly that I rarely look extensively at the work of others. Everybody says that to be a good writer, one must be a prolific reader. I usually tell myself that I learn through writing, not reading. I usually say that I am exercising my talents, making myself happy, and learning rather than wasting my time.

But in a frozen state, it occurred to me that I am not being realistic as so many negative people in my life have told me. Maybe those fears I am constantly working against really are true.

All the rejections I have been getting from journals and blog sites plus the people who have used the vulnerability in my work to politically marginalize me started to gain tractions in my head. Frozen, my sense of empowerment felt like it was swallowed up and wallowing in stomach acid. The fact that I won five literary awards for my memoir didn’t matter. Instead, I found myself returning to perseverations on the ways that my memoir has only heightened my sense of alienation. All that mattered was that it was not selling, attracting reviews, or achieving what I had hoped for, to decrease my sense of invisibility. Suddenly, instead of being unrelenting and meticulous during my seven-year struggle to write the thing, I told myself that couldn’t read the way other people do and that my writing must show it. I told myself that I had to work twice as hard as others to no avail. Old tapes started to dominate the day.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” one writing professor had complained in a college course, “but it took me ten rewrites to get my detective novel published!”

“Ten rewrites,” I had once been proud to say to myself, “that is nothing! And I am having fun.”

Suddenly, that confidence that once helped me thrive was taken away.

 

***

Sure, in school, I was always the last person to complete the test, but my grades were always good. It’s true some teachers tended to get on me about spelling that I could not do anything about, but I tested okay in meaningless math. It’s true when the homework got heavy in high school, I could only manage to get four hours sleep a night, but that was also because I played sports, exercised, and didn’t eat much. When I became addicted to starving, I just thought I was a hardworking perfectionist who didn’t want to be stopped.

When anorexia led to incarceration, I was forced to halt all behavior and gorge on food. Once the tears and fight subsided, I learned to write when I couldn’t exercise.

It’s true I had poured my heart into my poetry notebook the year before only to receive a B+. The comment from the teacher to my mother—the school reading teacher—was that my work was just too depressing. She didn’t like it.

Straight out of the hospital and still angry about the B+, I took writing assignments and turned in lengthy stories or songs instead. I wrote twenty-five-page papers with long bibliographies. The results: poorer grades and a college essay nearly got me kicked out of school because it made the school psychologist—my teacher’s wife and mother’s friend—think I was suicidal. I still wasn’t educated enough about the social psychology of the situation: I was exposed as a mental health patient, my grades suffered regardless of how good I was getting. I had a different experience and message than others. My successes, leadership, and hard work in eleventh grade became a subverted, living lie. When I chose my only available form of rebellion against this, to go to a local commuter college, the school chose to lie in the yearbook and said I was going to overpriced Antioch College in Ohio.

I ran as far away as I could run without using the college money which I suspected had gone to hospitalizations. In a ghetto with a girlfriend who was seven years my senior, it was the easy courses with lousy textbooks that got my GPA off to bad B+ start. Suddenly immersed in large crowded auditoriums, my anxiety went up and my attention, down. I would be struck with the worst kind of writer’s block. I started the practice of outlining and memorizing everything that I read. I ended up achieving a 3.9 average, but I never went to a single party or took any time off work.

My poetry teacher in college who repeatedly chose my poems to share with the class had once said at the end of an intense semester in which we wrote a poem a week: “Then, there will be some of you that have to keep on writing, not because you want to, but because you have to.”

I don’t know if I listened to him or if I just found myself to be one of those who had to write. I took fiction and personal essay classes and obsessed over my take-home exams trying to get the wording just right.

I did get diagnosed with learning disabilities working my way through graduate school. Because I was working with a psychologist who unbeknownst to me didn’t think I was college material, I became very aware of all my deficits and tended to communicate about this with my peers. I took a heavy dose of medications that I later found out I didn’t need to such an extent. Interactive courses in which the info came from multiple sources and required in the moment listening often overwhelmed me. I put my writing away during those seventy-hour weeks and did my best to become involved and social with my peers. I learned that I worked oh so much harder than they did to prepare for tests. I often got ridiculed for asking so many questions to keep myself alert and tracking, but I was used to that. When I got through those three years without a hospitalization, I happily returned to an intense poetry habit.

 

***

I must admit it was my suggestion that the African American woman get tested for learning disabilities. At least I educated her about my views of learning disabilities before I set up the testing. However, I was still stunned by the outcome. I later learned that the specific tests used were known to be culturally biased against African Americans. On a closer look at the material there were in fact areas of superior performance that we neglected to review. I am using this essay to thaw the writer’s block that has struck me in the gut over the past few days.

I do believe I will return to being happy obsessive, unread writer for my own lonely needs again.

A year after I graduated, I moved to the west coast to start over again. I think of the times since: when things were hard; when I had to escape incarceration and face homelessness, underemployment and long work days just to evade the mental health system and get back on the career track. When I think of these experiences, I get mad that people are reduced to different types of pathological disorders, like learning disorders. At the same time, as soon as I developed the diagnosis of schizophrenia, learning disorders didn’t matter anymore. I became a warehoused genetic cash cow. In the mentality of mainstream treatment, schizophrenia trumps neurodevelopmental disorders, yet so many of the institutionalized individuals I work with struggle with undiagnosed and unsupported learning disorders.

They are brilliant, complex, utterly alone, living in squalor, and extremely righteous and good people. I just don’t understand why psychological tests and treatments, and the demands of society make it so hard on good people to make a living wage.

 

***

Perhaps, the reader can tell, I have decided to be out with my history and experiences as a professional, writer, and mental health consumer. I still find there are many people who pick up on the fact that I am a little different and try to scapegoat and marginalize me. It happens repeatedly like the rising ebb of the San Diego sea on the shore as Tom Waits at one point had pondered.

 

I never saw the mornin’ ‘till I stayed up all night

I never say the sunshine ‘til you turned out the light . . .

. . .I never saw the white line, ‘til I was leaving you behind

Never knew I needed you until I was caught up in a bind

 

Really, it still hurts because criticism comes from every direction. However, eventually the hurt will go away. I will still be writing. And I hope and pray that that brilliant person I got diagnosed with a learning disability will be there with me, making the most of her meaningful life no matter what “they” say.

Announcing Goodreads Giveaway

[image error]Goodreads Book Giveaway

A Need for Providers who Specialize in “Psychosis.”

This story is for the mental health providers or peer counselors who are invested in developing treatment for people who have experienced “psychosis” across diagnostic categories. I know firsthand that this can be achieved. I want to help other interested parties develop their own practice so that an important need gets addressed.

Maybe the reader can relate to me! I was hired straight out of college into work in the counseling field. I started to work with an adult mental health population at my second job at the age of twenty-three. Since that time I have been increasingly focused on how to make therapeutic engagement meaningful when working with people in “psychosis.” In the field there are many who will say or imply this is not possible. They may argue that the mental health system is the best we can do.

I believe uniquely talented specialists are needed primarily because the mental health system fails so many people. We need outreach specialists with lived experience who can meet sufferers wherever they are at to encourage them to seek out therapy specialists, competent in group and individual practice. The more people with lived experience the better! Even better we need a system of self-support to sustain people outside the system, like the hearing voices network.

 

***

            Working my way through graduate school, I can still remember struggling to get my footings as a professional counselor.

“Oh, you’re good,” said this vagabond homeless man who sticks out in my memory.

“What do you mean?” I asked perplexed by how he could affirm me with such confidence.

“Well, I can tell because you just asked me what was going on with my schizophrenia, like you really wanted to understand it.”

I did a little double take on this man standing before me. I couldn’t understand how when he lived such a deprived, sunburned, and sweaty existence that he could respond to this young, privileged and nervous person in front of him by trying to use support. I didn’t sense that he was doing this to butter me up. In fact, he was far more supportive than any of my friends.

I recall making an internal commitment to him on that day. Hence started my desire to learn about and heal schizophrenia. I felt I owed that man something for his kindness.

By the time I got my degree so that I was promoted to a case management position, I found it a wonderful opportunity to get a picture of what life was like for the schizophrenic clients on the streets, in the boarding homes, away from the clinic. It was not a pretty picture, but I reasoned that now I could provide a service to earn their rapport. Then, I could use my little theoretically informed counseling skills to get at their truth. In many ways, I did not actually know what to say other than, “Did you take your medication?” However, I tried and I was happy with the arrangement.

 

 

***

            In my personal life, I got really tired of being in and around my hometown. Sure I went to school in a ghetto was able to build up the rental history to take up a lease on a suburban flophouse with some acquaintances. Sure I fled that shelled-out place into a pad in the city. But, somehow this plus getting dumped in all the female relationships that I barely managed to make wasn’t enough for me.

 

***

            I switched coasts and accepted underemployment in a new city where I could pick up where I left off at understanding schizophrenia. Here, I really wasn’t expected to do therapy as I monitored well-tended housing for clusters of mentally ill adults, but I did anyway, much to the chagrin of my supervisor, who I often challenged about standard care.

It’s true the clients seemed to have it pretty good in the west coast city. The facilities I monitored were much nicer than the ghetto ones back east. But within six months, after another heartache, I took a promotion in a pilot program setting up services in a notorious section eight housing authority complex.

I have to admit as a kid who grew up in a private school, the streets and the ghetto, much like schizophrenia, had always been a lure for me to wrap my head around. I set up shop in a notorious section 8 housing project and got some real exposure to what people who end up homeless and destitute due to schizophrenia have to deal with. Let me tell you, it wasn’t a very safe holding environment.

Six months in, I was talking with a resident I trusted very dearly. He had once told me who the for-real drug kingpin was about the complex. He paused a minute and said, “You know, one time we had a person like you work for us before, someone who really cared and fought for the residents. That person, ended up losing his job and having to come and live with the residents. I just don’t want that to happen to you.

I looked at this schizophrenic resident who worked a minimum wage job. It was true that since I had leaked stories to the media about some of the suspicious violence and fear that the residents were subjected to, that I had been picking up on random threats and feeling very unsafe.

 

***

Within a week, things escalated into my personal life. I got threated by someone who I believed had the power that he claimed to have if I ever did him wrong. I started getting interesting takes on mainstream movies. I tried to get to the Canadian border to seek asylum and ended up getting separated from my car. Eventually I surrendered to police in a ditch while ascending a mountain pass. They took me to State Hospital where I resided in barracks three months. Just when I was starting to come to terms with this ridiculous black market sea of poverty I was cast into, I was transferred to the most chronic ward where the overcrowded conditions were comparable to the worst of what I’d ever seen.

I spent two years after that trying to overcome homelessness and underemployment in a full blown psychotic episode. I had come to figure that my father was a famous Irish mafia figure. After three months on the streets trying to fend for myself, the only job I could obtain was at an Italian Delicatessen. I’d had to move again to get that job, an apartment, and help from my Mafia family. While I worked at the Italian Deli, my life was hijacked by poverty, rich, drug-using, teenage bosses, and conspiracy that felt relentless and never-ending. I could barely afford to feed myself if not for the support of my Irish Mafia family. When I returned to taking medication, I was able to climb out of this pit.

To even get back into mental health field, I had to put a just barely attained stability on the line. I was working a new career with developmentally disabled individuals, working seventy hour weeks, (part-time at the deli) but was financially independent at least. The ideal mental health job finally came up, but I had to take a considerable risk.

When I failed to attain fulltime status, falling short of impressing a hopelessly classist supervisor, I could not collect unemployment and had to do something fast. Luckily, I landed a low-paid internship, a part-time gig back at the Deli, and, most importantly, a part-time job at a hospital with a future in it.

 

***

            What I had learned about schizophrenia at that point was that most people had absolutely no interest in it. As a mental health patient, I found that no one was any longer interested in my story or what I had to say. The five-word phrase, I had been trained to use, “Tell me more about that!” was replaced with a famous five-word question: “Did you take your medication?” Nobody believed a word I said no matter how real I was being. And no longer did anyone care what I was subjected to.

For example, to get to work and back at the Italian Delicatessen, I had needed to bike twenty miles and catch a two-hour long train ride, daily. Nobody had cared that I was in back pain through the all of it. I was still the last to go on break. I was blamed and framed for anything that went wrong. There were constant threats against my job. There had been no acknowledgment for my efforts, only complaints about my service from upper-class people, and punk-ass ridicule from my teenage co-workers. Finally, I agreed to take medication.

How was I to transition from being treated like that—from being locked outside the ward mental patient in sub-zero temperatures freezing like the cow patties in the field while the staff returned late from their lazy lunch break—to being a fully entitled therapist? Finally, I could understand why someone who was even a little bit interested in what it meant to be a schizophrenic was a good worker.

 

***

            To be honest I knew I was not a good worker for a little while. I was just barely-making-it, overworked, highly insecure, and protecting myself. When I earned my way back to working with people individually, I was a little better at getting rapport and experimenting with helping out with schizophrenia. I heard a lot of, “Oh you’re good,” comments. At least I knew enough not to approve of the word schizophrenia. It took me six years and a number of side jobs to get my license and be fully grounded in a staff position.

Then it was time to take another risk.

 

***

            Throughout the training for my license, I had not disclosed to anyone what I had been through. Always too busy to make friends, most colleagues tended to think I was younger than my stated age, and perhaps a little over-anxious about making rent.

I soon found among licensed marriage and family therapists that most presumed that there was not much value in treating individuals who had schizophrenia. Many forced into working with them characterized them as just lazy and unresponsive to instructions. Those who picked up on my insecurity said maybe there was a future for me in providing “just” case management services. I often heard it said, that it was debatable whether there was effective treatment. Sitting in licensure lectures, we were taught that in coming across a person with “psychosis,” the standard of care was to hospitalize and refer to programs.

When I passed those sucker licensure tests in spite of my learning disabilities, I was tired of leading groups full of good people who had experienced “psychosis,” and not talking about what was really going on. I decided to get to work creating my own treatment strategies for schizophrenia. I had heard about the hearing voices network movement in Europe and decided to create a curriculum that deconstructed “psychosis,” and emphasized recovery skills. I took WRAP training, and finally started to experiment using my own story with all its minute details.

 

***

            Learning how to navigate the profession as an identified schizophrenic has been full of challenges. A co-worker found a copy of my curriculum, and turned it over to the manager with grave concerns. Another left insulting cartoons on my desk. I had occasion to hear myself being referred to as, “Crazy Tim!” I ignored these and persisted. Eventually, I took a job where I was identified for two years, advocating for change in the county. My name and condition spread like wild fire throughout. In team meetings, I was accused of being against medications. One person who defended me end up getting written up and eventually fired. When I returned to my hospital job, my primary boss, who, thank god, has been supportive of me throughout, once let me know that when I went over to the county’s ward to run groups, that I had little red dots following me on my forehead.

My groups, my popularity among people who I help, and my own little paranoid vigilance has helped me survive the past nine years and thoroughly develop my own eclectic theoretical approach towards helping who I prefer to call message receivers in group and individual settings.

Things have gotten a lot less hostile for me at work. I now know what to do to help out that vagabond homeless man I met two decades ago. Additionally, I wrote a grant a proved that message receivers could be paid as outreach workers, tell their story to providers, and transition to being group leaders, and mental health professionals while they attracted and motivated individuals who might not have otherwise been motivated. I serve on the board of the local hearing voices network, who also repeatedly proves that this work can be done on a regular basis. Perhaps, one day, other interested parties can get to where I am at without having to face quite as much pain. It is a very sorely needed specialty!

 

Special Messages Excerpt: Self-Exploration through Causation2

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

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

 

Detailed Spiritual Causation Examples:

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

Ode to Self-Discovery

To hell with the insipid emptiness

That keeps good people ineptly drowned!

Gaze into the perplexed distress and bless

The self that is so often shackle bound!

This is my pledge to the introspection

That so often is betrayed or unknown

Or left to rot in the gutter of dread

And then scavenged for the insurrection.

Together we starve and wither alone

Our thirst being a statement left unsaid.

 

There is numbness that grasps the bone

Which is surrounded by layer upon layer

Of prickle that persistently drones

Out experiences that do conjure

Recurrent traumas of spirits within.

Like swollen flesh, nothingness throbs

Throughout enduring routine of day

Expanding its reign under your skin

Until your inner turmoil sobs

Containing misery you cannot delay.

 

A person’s life will lead that fateful course

As a cog in the machine that exists

To drive humanity like a workhorse

Diligently completing endless checklists

Of technological tasks that don’t wield

The magnitude of human emotion

That lights the sky on the 4th of July

With vibrant colors boldly revealed.

The production of utter commotion

Neglects emotion with a heavy sigh.

 

The psyche harnesses a full library

Of tangled needs and twisted fortunes

That become human’s greatest adversary;

And humanity dances to the tunes

Of its own self infatuation.

But oh the sadness that remains unknown

Upon faces that are totally dead.

Dead to themselves, In grand isolation.

They search for connection but remain alone

With original feelings to dread.

 

So long do people ponder solitude

With all its misery and emptiness.

People suffer from great ineptitude

Their heads soaking in disorganized mess,

Unable to rid themselves from worry

As they write their books of mental duress.

But they do not access their inner strength

Or ride the waves of self-discovery

That bring them the needed relief from stress

That heeds not a soliloquy of length.

 

People must work hard to discover

The beauty that lurks within the breeze

Which whips and whirls across mother earth—her

Treasure, which transcends mere matter, to seize

The essence of every living being

In which character thrives loving and unkempt.

And how important it is to every creature

To cherish the living element, seeing

The beauty within, that noble concept

That embellishes spiritual features.

 

There is something that does grow deep inside

Every human being who walks this earth

That, with all minor imperfections aside,

Is beautiful with such intrinsic worth.

This amorphous spiritual structure

Is constantly producing character

That comes out in every damn behavior

Harnessing the decisions that do occur,

The physical body, a mere factor,

An adjustable vacant thing to lure.

 

Every single internal perspective

Should breathe the life of spontaneity,

So any person of any respective

Background can, with presence that is witty

Be in touch with their inner creation,

Watching themselves unfold in wonder

With all their needs and desires addressed;

With greed and excess in grand succession

And the lessons of life left to blunder

Within a body that is truly blessed.

 

Heed not the call of the bounding lemming

As it crashes itself deep in the sea!

Listen not to the multitude’s sounding

With its tribute to the land of the free!

Shun this mad dash for material wealth

And speak out against the rich and snooty!

This is a call to the hurting soul

Who sacrifices its spiritual self,

Boldly daring to harm comforts beauty

To feel better about virtuous goals.

 

Special Messages Excerpt: Self-Exploration through Causation

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

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

 

Detailed Political Causation Examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

How to keep “Psychosis” Focus Groups Inclusive:

I fervently believe that having survivor-led group therapy that redefines “psychosis” is missing in the system.

Over the last nine years, I’ve been leading what I call special message groups in multicultural settings. I have found that such groups can be run safely and have the power to transform lives. However, I do admit that when it comes to kicking people out of group to maintain group equilibrium and safety that I believe there are a few things to consider first.

Firstly, I believe that a group leader needs to be prepared for the fact that mad people show up in very different ways. Group facilitators need to be familiar with and recognize a wide variety of presentations or manifestations. Perhaps group members may feel like they are being mocked by others in the group via illusionary ideas of reference or even controlled by them. They may code up their language for protection. They may treat the facilitator as if the facilitator can hear the same voices they hear. They may not believe, in spite of stories shared, that the facilitator has experienced what they have.

I have prepared myself for these challenges by attempting to better define “psychosis.” I have reconstructed a definition that can sync up a wide variety of what have historically been defined as conditions. I believe if the leader is not prepared to accept all presentations, people will not feel safe talking about their experiences. Intolerance for people who show up in a different or what is perceived as a difficult manner can be extremely hurtful.

Secondly, I believe the facilitator can take measures to help train the group to be brave and tolerant of each other. I frame coming together with the specific purpose of sharing untold stories to be an oft neglected privilege that has unfortunately been denied because the “they” experts say it is not safe.

Spirit of Risk Taking

I am always willing to start out with my own story. I advocate for a spirit of risk taking by acknowledging that people in the group may be so used to dangerous or distressing experiences that guaranteeing safety would be a disservice. I also point out that despite what “they” say, this practice has been an effective movement in different countries and I’ve done it for a long time.

These kinds of comments are treating the “set of symptoms” as a neglected culture that is subjugated. In the earlier stages of group development, keeping the group focused on the things they have in common can help. Also, strongly supporting alienated individuals helps train the group to be more tolerant and can help avoid many problems that come up later in a group. It discourages them from expecting a trouble maker will be kicked out.

Thirdly, because there is a high degree of diversity in the mad community, I believe the facilitator needs to be extremely sensitive to all forms of culture, particularly pertaining to relevant issues of subjugation. Discerning the social factors that are affecting the person shows up in a difficult manner is key. Race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, education, legal justice history, substance abuse history, immigration, gang affiliation, disability, employment history are all social factors that can show up

It is wrong, I believe, to exclude someone because they are testing or trying to teach you about these kinds of issues. Some people may try to dominate the groups. A group facilitator needs to be prepared to accept, learn and support everyone. Again, a person who is not accepted on the basis of something that the facilitator is ignorant about or is not curious to explore, may do harm.

Fourthly, it may be necessary to meet with individuals outside of group to learn more about why they are hurting the group. If a group member is dominating to the point he or she is doing intentional harm, that individual may, in fact, be expressing a need to connect with you.

Perhaps, he is experiencing messages that are extremely misunderstood or there is a cultural issue with you that needs to be talked about.

But when the group is truly becoming unsafe for participants, which is rare, out-of-group meetings are necessary and the facilitator needs to work to better understand the problems that come up in group and clear up any cultural issues.

A meeting could involve two individuals. Making the time for this encounter outside the group is an important resource.

Behavior Contract

Finally, if taking the time for a meeting or two doesn’t improve the behavior, the leader can propose a specific behavior contract to protect the group. This approach is best utilized in real emergency circumstances and needs to be devoid of the leader’s cultural biases to the best of his/her ability. This approach is also something that requires the participant’s input so that the problem can be identified and an agreed upon solution can be proposed.

At the very least, the contract needs to be something the participant can buy into. When the participant takes the power to get involved, consequences can involve sitting some groups out or being referred to an individual therapist or perhaps a different group.

I’d suggest that if the participants take steps outside the group to improve themselves, the leader can be in communication with them, pining for their return.

It is true that many people who suffer from “psychosis” or message crisis also have complex histories, trauma and other co-morbid problems like substance abuse and nuero-diversity. I have seen these kinds of complex issues, that may challenge safety, get addressed within a group process as described, even by survivors who visit programs rather than work in them.