Clyde Dee's Blog, page 19
December 5, 2016
Memoir on Schizophrenia Wins Big in Human Relations Indie Book Award
Clyde Dee, author of Fighting for Freedom in America: Memoir of a “Schizophrenia” and Mainstream Cultural Delusions (Outskirts Press,) was selected a multi-winner in the first annual (2016) Human Relations Indie Book Awards. He received the Director’s Choice Award for Outstanding Human Relations Life Adjustment Indie Book. He was also recognized as a Gold winner (Inspirational category), a Silver winner (Problem Solving category) and a Bronze winner (Self-Reflection/Memoir category).
The Human Relations Indie Book Awards were established in 2016 as a way to recognize indie authors who write on human relations topics. Indie authors from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines submitted books on topics ranging from self-help subjects to human relations memoirs that delve into both personal and professional subjects. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry and children’s human relations indie books were judged on book content, organization, presentation and the human relations message conveyed in the book.
Clyde Dee is an anonymous psychotherapist who writes under a pen name to preserve client privilege. His story spans the ten months that lead up the mental health worker’s “psychotic” break, the one and a half years he remained firmly rooted in a “delusional” state, and the story of his recovery. Revealing the realities of an urban section 8 housing complex, a rural state hospital, and the innards of “Schizophrenia” Clyde believes that the mob is following him and the only job that he can find is working at an suburban Italian Delicatessen. It takes him a year but he learns to make peace with the forces following him around.
The story has already won acclaim through the 2015 Book Viral Awards (ranking 8th out of over a thousand contestants) and the 2016 Readers Favorite Awards (honorable mention) is available on line at Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, and Outskirts Press.
http://humanrelationsindiebookawards.com/book-categories-and-results.php
HUMAN RELATIONS INDIE BOOK AWARDS
In this contest, I competed with books published over the past six years. I won under four categories which includes a Directors Choice Award with which I get a promotional package:
Inspirational Human Relations Indie Book: Gold Winner
Problem Solving Human Relations Indie Book: Silver Winner
Self Reflection/Memoir Human Relations Indie Book: Bronze Winner
Director’s Choice Award Winner:
Outstanding Human Relations Life Adjustment Indie Book
http://humanrelationsindiebookawards.com/book-categories-and-results.php
December 3, 2016
Retaliation Reactions
Jargonizing the Retaliation Reaction Construct:
This chapter’s construct consists of natural reactions that come up for message receivers as a result of acting as though their message experiences are the dominant reality.
Retaliation reactions can be as minor as a facial response: a glare, or a laugh; and in more dramatic occasions can involve actions that put the message receiver or the public at risk. In the course of this chapter I will provide some examples from my experience. While I certainly have observed the actions of others as most readers have too, I will limit the examples within, to my experience. Perhaps doing so will help make a case for group leaders to demonstrate their wellness by being able to take responsibility for their own complex behaviors.
From my perspective as someone who faced a sense of imminent danger against my life, those of us who are taught to defend ourselves or are victims of violent circumstances in their community, may end up in a bit of a disadvantage. In many ways, I certainly can understand how the prisons and jails become full of our people. Message receivers are most likely to get framed in crime rings as well as sucked into them. I certainly was afraid and conscious of this possibility. And I was most definitely recruited. Moreover, I believe that, in such contexts, passivism is clearly an advantage as efforts to hold tormentors accountable in families, work environments, the military and on the streets, ultimately are more likely to lead to incarceration, homelessness/barracks, and death. But I also reveal my own cultural bias here.
From the start, retaliation reactions are an integral part of the special message experience. To the outside observer, who knows nothing about all that has been written up to this point, they might seem easier to be mindful of than concepts such as sleuthing, theories and tricksters. But over time they become less pronounced and more subtle. By definition, retaliation reactions are usually reactions that are likely to lead to disruption in the lives of normal. Over time they shift from being reactions that happen as special message circumstances seem real; and they become corrective measures committed in social commentary on the oppression a message receiver has experienced.
However, because of the way these natural reactions are received by the social world, they become harder and harder to recognize. And the more institutionalized and adept the message receiver becomes, the more minute and innocuous the resistance gets expressed. Ultimately the institutionalized message receiver need to learn to stop all retaliation reactions in order to socially rehabilitate. In re-entering the work force they are often under a high level of scrutiny and retaliation reactions can get them rejected. Perhaps those who make it and who have more a sense of privilege may develop ways to be successful like normals and return to use of retaliation reactions to wield power over others. And this can actually come in the form of bullying, or using power to impose your views and influence over others.
Reducing the ways Retaliation Reactions get Misunderstood:
Consider that a message receiver’s specific message profile is essentially a personalized language of alternative meaning that, during crisis, they believe the world shares with them. As Patricia Deegan in material published off the National Empowerment website and others point out, there is always meaning behind a message receiver’s action even if it is subtle and slight. Seeking to decode and understand this meaning be the meaning subtle and institutionalized or drastic and dangerous, is a great way to help a message receiver. In order to decode the meaning, I’d argue, the helper needs to be curious as to the meaning not punitive. This can happen in group and in any therapeutic milieu. It means being interested and curious about behavior that gets hammered into innocuous institutional gestures; it means decoding the truth behind overt and punishable actions and honoring the communication.
Examples of overt and offensive behaviors behaviors that I engaged in include: emotional red-faced grimacing when taunted by a policeman, crossing the street backwards on a red light to block traffic, talking to psychiatric inmates to about the evils of the mafia (not smart when you know that gang affiliated individuals share their lives with you,) even, at one point, suggesting that I was mistreated (or pissed-on) at work by gesturing as though I was peeing on the floor. As the name I have chosen suggests, there is a sense of retaliation in the behavior that alarms others and can easily be misinterpreted, even if there were explainable and exceedingly valid reasons for the behavior. They can feel almost involuntary, compelled from the message reality that simmers beneath the consciousness.
As to the references to my own aberrant behavior in the above paragraph what I was saying and how I got treated were very distinct. In other words the communication was poor. Letting the cops know that I had already known they were following me resulted in be being physically hurt. Blocking traffic was meant as a call for help so that I would not be shot as I headed to the border, resulted in a car trying to run me over and further police contact. Talking to inmates about the mafia, resulted in an inability to get a job outside of an Italian deli for two years. And peeing on the floor in front of my nineteen year old boss was an effort to let her know that now she was back from vacation, I knew she was bullying me and being unfair in driving me to work in ways that were unnecessary and unnatural; it resulted in her effort to get me fired a few months later.
Retaliation reactions happen all the time during crisis many of them are so minor, they don’t get scrutinized. Thus when a punishment is imposed via a sanction it has a strong impact because there is a sense that it is unpredictable, unjust, and inconsistent. When a message receiver is under a microscope in a hospital or a job, there is a tendency to try to break them of the retaliation reaction habit through constant sanction. The problem is that this may accelerate the sense of being persecuted and cause many message receivers to develop smaller, more bizarre behaviors to demonstrate their oppression that don’t get sanctioned. Sure there have been official documented studies of peasants done in sociology that document that the same process goes on in economic oppression. When presented in these contexts the behavior perhaps observed as cool or culturally acceptable. The oppressors are too stupid to even notice that they are being got. It is such a frustrating thing to live with such oppression that these expressions are medicalized as an illness. Let me tell you from experience, it can increase mistrust of others and general sense of hopelessness.
So a major technique for managing retaliation reactions is to pay attention to them and usher in communication. Find out what is meant and respond in collaborative and healing manners.
I would like to suggest that before a real problematic retaliation outburst happens there is a pattern of emotional build-up in which many messages and divergent views work in emotional concert with each other until there is a behavioral outburst. In reality, the behavior may be justified but it is not perceived in this way. And when it is harshly punished or negatively reinforced there is a sense of injustice that kill trust for the social world that surrounds the message receiver.
As a result, communication about messages and divergent views can go a long way toward curbing retaliation reactions and preventing them before they build up. And observing small retaliation reactions and making curious inquiry can lead to communication that reduces retaliation reactions in the community that can increase in size and danger to both the message receiver and the community.
Additional Treatment Strategy of Joining with Effective Retaliation Reactions:
If message receivers were publicly understood instead of cast as so irrationally dangerous, they might be complimented for retaliation reactions that provide relief and do no harm. Particularly if retaliation reactions are witty and “appropriate,” there could be a vast decrease in suffering with some acknowledgement. Too often the message receiver is discouraged and overpowered for making a good point just because it is against the grain.
When in message crisis and with the majority culture hitting me with insults, I could not help but come at the majority in a retaliatory manner. I did not feel I had anybody on my side who could acknowledge when I made a good point. This is largely because majority culture tries to distort and silence the valid points that some message receivers make. Instead, it is too often presumed that the majority needs to silence message culture and that if the whole world stand united against the message receiver, the message receiver will have to surrender.
This does not work in so many cases. Instead message receivers become unwilling to share their private experiences and look at them with other people. They bury them deep inside even when they have the opportunity to do so in my group, they do not do it.
Consider, in contrast, a message group in which message receivers have the freedom to explore and get acknowledgement for their good retaliation reaction quips. It is not only fun, it naturally brings up regrets and remorse about bad ones. As these get shared, message receivers who continue to retaliate hear this and reflect on their retaliations in a new manner, with better judgment. With cultural support, retaliation reactions could become more effective and assertive and the experience of retaliatory reactions can be normalized and shaped in a direction that can be acknowledged by mainstream culture.
Thus an individual, who wants to support a message receiver, might start with an eye for supporting and acknowledging the elements of the retaliation reactions that are “appropriate.” Strongly reinforcing humor and glorifying non-damaging push back is a start. Joining with it instead of siding with the system that seeks to unilaterally muffle a process that can be adaptive and healthy is a start; however, a person who wants to do this will observe and run up against plenty of incidence when the pushback humor has made things worse because it is likely to be perceived as “inappropriate.”
Managing this scenario his can be done by fully exploring the meaning that was behind the gesture. Just this very line of appreciative inquiry is markedly different than punishing and stigmatizing the deed. While getting the meaningful intent of a retaliation reaction does take a deep step towards suspending the helper’s judgment. Once this is done validating the intent but challenging its effectiveness gives the helper the ability to then explore the potential social consequences with an eye for the role of bullying. This is a great way to deepen the relationship with the message receiver, teach social skills and change the nature of the retaliation reaction and direct it towards something healing and positive. The ability to tell personal stories that demonstrate these concepts from your own or someone else’s recovery is a great way to do this.
In this way, group can be a great way to learn how to increase the safety and effectiveness of the retaliation reaction.
As most therapists who have been responsible for assessing threat know, if a message receiver is able to voice their retaliatory reaction, the chances that they will act on them immediately gets reduced not enhanced. While it’s true this is not an absolute assurance, when someone is able to open up it can go a long way to promote healing. This is why consumers talk about the importance of risk-sharing. The strength of the relationship is the largest predictor of safe healing intervention.
November 20, 2016
The Day the Bomb Dropped
And so I’m hanging with my main man, Dan
Who can’t afford rent, dignity now inept,
Cause federal subsidy is a damn scam!
And we imagine shelterless street sultans
Rooting through boarding home shanties, stench swept
And so I’m hanging with my main man, Dan
And he curses disability program,
Cursing the fate that he must accept
Cause federal subsidy is a damn scam.
I offer him choices. He rejects every plan.
Costly mansions adorn our cross town schlep.
And so I am hanging with my main man, Dan
My flesh freezes, colors mannequin clam:
Cause he just cursed at me; cause he just wept;
Cause federal subsidy is a damn scam!
The radio talks, bombing just began.
People die as those fed flex their bicep
And so I’m hanging with my main man, Dan
Cause federal subsidy is a damn scam.
November 19, 2016
Tricksters
Jargonizing the Trickster Concept:
The symbol of the trickster in Native American Navajo culture is the coyote. The coyote is a revered as a con, a sign of witchcraft, or a type of bad omen that will lead you into trouble and is very powerful. A trickster, as I am using it, is a predictive message that attaches to unconscious and conscious divergent views that are not proven to be true but that can become a powerful truth if it is trusted. Tricksters can become true via the mechanism of negative self-fulfilling prophesy. Becoming aware of this spiritual reality is very important to understanding trauma that gets experienced in a message crisis. Indeed, unless a message receiver can see a way out of very stark circumstances they may get sucked into a meat grinding machine that can make them disappear; they may end up lacking a social role and living in unhealthy circumstances. Understanding the trickster involves understanding how to overcome this social prediction.
Thus, thinking that others are going to exclude or institutionalize you will lead you to put negative energy out there that may help your fears come true. If helpers learn and believe in the power of this trickster spiritual trap, they may learn to practice techniques that trick the tricksters! Instead of receiving a double bind experience, let helpers trap message receivers into no way out but to win situations. This can help jostle a message receiver out of the trickster trap. This might need to be achieved repeatedly for a while before the message receiver learns to trust the helper. If a message receiver has been victim to trickster realities for ten years, one would not expect them to be healed from one intervention.
Awareness of tricksters can help motivate people to consider the merits of utilizing functional flexible theory styles and help increase mindfulness of their process. I have to admit that from my vantage point tricksters involve spiritually giving up on reality and using magical thinking to alter the course of the experience. In both cases it is like using a double negative, (applying magical thinking to magical thinking) to move forward in a positive, rational, rehabilitative direction.
In Contrast to the “Reality-Check” Standard of Care:
For many, awareness of the trickster process has not been operative or reinforced during crisis because it is not recognized as being part of the treatment discussion. Instead there is the concept of the “reality-check.” While some message receivers can accept some “reality-checks,” clinicians often note that others do not take any of them seriously. Indeed, it is arguable that the common failure of the “reality check” that leads to the definition of a “delusion” or, “a refusal to believe in spite of a preponderance of the evidence.” When I was in crisis, many times I was checked about realities that were true. In fact, my reality just didn’t sound true because it was not a part of the discourse of the reality-checker who was totally ignorant of the reality I was experiencing.
I feel it is very important for helpers to realize that many messages receivers get given “reality-checks” in which they are assured something is not true, and then because of trickster reality, they learn that those assurances are empty. The inaccurate “reality-check” is such a radical betrayal, subservient silence is likely to result. When the roofing nails aren’t long enough to reach the wood, thumbs are likely to get smacked and turn black in spite of hard hammering work. As such collective power that imposes reality only further isolates the message receiver. Too often the promise of the positive thought or the reality promise blows up in the face down the road when other associated messages turn out to have credence.
Currently, in the standard of care, falsely believing that all messages are delusions, a helper mindlessly drops a reality test and then wonders in upcoming weeks why the message receiver starts to have inexplicable vindictive, antagonistic feelings toward them. The message receiver may get seen as stubborn, a character defect, and this then gets blamed on the power of the disease. Even worse, the message receiver gets extorted into seeing themselves as symptomatic and the issue of the false reality-test never gets brought up.
Recovery takes years or doesn’t happen in part because of the need to overcome the preponderance of reality checks. It means learning the reality of the trickster internally and falsely yessing the reality checking community when you know you don’t mean it.
In the institution, the right to be self-determined and deal with the consequences of your own decisions, gets stripped. It is a structural and punitive reality check that is very traumatic and can lead to years of decline. Even if it is not internalized and the message receiver stays industrious and believes in themselves, having a false reality imposed on you gets in the way.
I feel that even skilled workers who acknowledge that there is an element of truth to delusions and can occasionally have a good experience with a reality check; can set themselves up for resentment or the message receiver up with long term distress and catch-22 binds. While sometimes institutionalized people will welcome a helper to have confirmation that the messages aren’t real, I’d argue that it is wiser not to benevolently determine that the messages aren’t real for them because of the trickster reality. I have fallen for this myself and hurt message receivers.
If this seems to be an overblown discussion of semantics, I ask the reader to consider what happens when a helper benevolently reassures the message receiver that there is no need for fear only to have an element of the reality checked fear come true. Not only might this discourage the message receiver, the benevolence reinforces a self-stigma that the message receiver is weak and the reality-check undermines the wider need for mindfulness. Thus, for years the message receiver believes even more in their special message reality and less in the support from their material world helper.
Even if one reality check pans out, the fact that so many others didn’t means the value of an accurate “reality-check” might be made innocuous. Instead, I propose that the concept of the reality-check be replaced by the culturally sensitive practice of acknowledging the potential of the trickster.
Example of a “Reality Check” Gone Wrong:
I want to warn the reader that this is going to be a complex example that reveals the innards of the way trickster realities can come true on the streets of an inner-city community. I am going to include multiple elements to demonstrate how trickster realities become true when they don’t have to.
Consider, for example, the message—a fatherly voice—that tells the message receiver that they have no worth if they don’t believe in Jesus. The divergent view, that the socially respected voice is godly and accurate, coupled with the theory that the deceased father, aligned with the church, represents the heavenly ghost, causes significant trickster hurt and pain. In fact, one day the message receiver reacts to the voice by staying in bed all day and not taking care of her or himself. To make matters worse, when the message receiver in fact stays in bed all day the message receiver’s board and care operator, a friend of the family, comments among the staff about how worthless the message receiver is in contrast to the father as a result of staying in bed all day. The message receiver senses the whispering and negative energy then tests out this reality and gets facial messages from the board and care staff that reinforces the message receivers’ voice, that the voice that the message receiver has no worth if they don’t believe in Jesus. In trickster fashion the voice proved itself right throughout the message receiver’s community.
But to make matters worse, the culturally encapsulated psychoanalytic therapist/helper who just last week had reality checked the message receiver and proposed that this fatherly voice was only inside the message receiver’s head, their inner anxiety. Now not only does the message receiver feel spiritually condemned, they have a helper who has provided a reality check that offers an alternative stab, that the message receiver is to blame for their worthlessness. When the message receiver returns angry the following week and tests the therapist/helper out by saying she had been in bed the whole week, the therapist winces and now offers the message receiver the same feedback as the voice and the community at the board and care; suddenly the whole deal has become not a double, but a triple whammy. If the helper then defends themselves and challenges them over inappropriate anger, we have a quadruple whammy.
Example of Culturally Sensitive Use of Trickster Concept:
In addressing this complicated example, I am going to suggest that a helper who fully understands the ramifications of the trickster concept can help. Such a helper has to believe that negative realities are more likely to come true if they are believed. I seek to demonstrate ways they might better know how effectively confront someone about reality in a way that does no damage.
Helpers who understand and teach the trickster concept can transition the message receiver to a rational conversation about crisis emotions. They can do so by being culturally sensitive to the message receiving experience. Doing so enables a supporter to boost message mindfulness of all message constructs. In essence, this culturally sensitive reality-check that can result might increase the level of trust between helper and the message receiver regardless of the reality of the message receivers struggles.
Using the trickster concept, helpers essentially sidle up to the message receiver’s process and playing a non-domineering role. It can help the message receiver apply the next chapter’s magical positive self-fulfilling prophesy skill thereby, (through prayer or mantra) radically change potentially tragic outcomes. My belief is that in crisis it can help motivate a message receiver to magically reduce the sense of external conflict with the material social world and pave the way for the important role that social relationships play in recovery.
Contrast this to the passive suggestion that the helper hopes the message is a trickster. The culturally sensitive helper, not firmly psychoanalytic, can help tilt the message receiver away from the message process and towards the potential of effectively circumventing the stabs of the board and care staff. With one quick validating swoosh, the helper can get to the heart of the matter, the fact that the voice might play the role of a trickster.
“A trickster, what do you mean?” says the message receiver.
“I mean is it possible that the voice, if you choose to listen to it, could turn around and make itself come true in some way? I don’t think you’re worthless but maybe the voice may make others say that you are, maybe even yourself, but I don’t know if I am making any sense to you at all when I talk like this.”
“Oh yeah, that’s already happened, that happens all the time,” says the message receiver.
Not only are there no whammies in the above interaction, but there are also opportunities to explore the voice and figure out a potential alternative theory styles associated with the trickster that might lead to healing Consider how a supporter might list some alternative ways to make meaning of the voice:
Alternative Meanings
“Maybe on this occasion that fatherly voice is really a demon disguising its voice as your father to do you harm. Maybe there are other times when your father’s voices is very supportive and maybe that is an occasion when an angel is sending you the truth!
“Maybe you are picking up on the reality of stigma that might exist within your community which may even have included your father. Did you know there are local efforts to help decrease stigma that sometimes exists in some spiritual communities; maybe you want to be part of that!
“Maybe that fatherly voice doesn’t always understand everything about you. Let’s say, a church lady baby-sitter molested you when you were younger and made you feel worthless and question Jesus. I don’t know if that’s true and I don’t know what relationship you want to have with Jesus or your spirituality. But let’s say something like that were true. It might really hurt that your father and the rest of the world always takes up for your abusers!
Perhaps a list of such options leads the message receiver to open up and reflect on their life in some new ways. This can lead the message receiver to better define the potential of a healing explanation. This, I’d argue requires a lot of study of the theory and creative application of different styles of theory. It helps confront the message receiver without imposing reality and challenges. It also might meet this extremely smart and sophisticated pretend message receiver where they are at and make a different.
Then the message receiver might feel inspired to use a positive self-fulfilling prophesy to get out of bed and spend the day walking. At the end of the day the community and the spirit understands the message receiver better and the fatherly voice apologizes and compliments the message receiver for his efforts.
November 13, 2016
Spring Crucifixion in Camden, 1993
He spoke to me the other night
That man there.
He was out with one of his buddies
Out under the decaying urban veranda,
The scent of spring blossoms
Trailing off to sleep
Against the ghetto dust
And gleaming skyline
Of business building core.
“She’s beautiful,” he whispered
Raising his chin to the window.
I held a bucket of grease
And spilled some on my sneakers
Nodding after him.
“Does she have a boyfriend?” he inquired.
“Yes . . .yes she does, ” I lied.
The Man’s buddy consoled:
“Now you know a girl like that
Is going to have a boyfriend.”
I looked over at the glowing skyline and agreed–
It’s a matter of fact
The world on its axle spins.
Every night
The steam from the mini-mart grill
Spirals out the chimney pipe,
Dissipating the dream of a cheese steak
Out into the neighborhood
Where early gasps of spring air
Have been swallowed by the bleak night.
Every night
I return from out of the darkness
Into the store
With my empty grease buckets
And through the blinding light
I see the same man
At the cash register
Eyeing his disengaged angel.
“Do you have any,” he breathes,
“Incense?”
She stoops to check the inflated price
And offers a smile in consolation
Because the man cannot afford his desire.
The angel knows this
But still the man drops a quarter into angel’s hand
And receives
In return
A Tastykake
And cracks an attractive smile
Every night,
I walk past the man as he stands at the counter
And with the insides of my sneakers
Quivering,
Return to the warmth of the grill
To clutch the spatula
And long for the end of my own torment.
I look at the man’s angel
And she is the romantic red glow
Of the horizon
Forever viewed through the tunnel
Of a telescope
Until she comes to me with an order
As her voice tiptoes in broken English:
“Is cheese steaky . . . with . . .”
“Uh, with lettuce and tomato,” I assist
And marvel
At the dainty movement of her feet
As she smiles and skirts away,
I look at a young couple
Being beautiful to each other
In front of me
And nurture myself
On the milk and cookies
Of burnt pizza and Coca-Cola,
As the man drops his head
And exists the store.
I return to the grill
Relieved that I do not
Have to go out into the night.
During the day
The man’s son comes in off the streets
With the cousin
To drop a quarter in the machine.
Yo, Snotty,” hoots the cousin,
“Why don’t you give me forty cent?”
The boy shakes his head,
But the cousin persists
So the boy stammers adamantly,
“I-I don’t got no forty-niner’s cap!”
I look at the son’s crooked eyes
Through which I see
Innocence that is exploited
By the neighborhood
And the intelligence that I see
In the look of an earnest man
Who watches the beads of life
Travel down their string of broken promises
Almost as fast
As the snot travels out
An eight year old nose.
But the cousin ignores
The intelligence in the crooked eyes:
“What!” he snaps, “Give me that!
You so crazy!”
In the “I-I don’t got no forty-niners cap.”
I imagine his father,
That dark profile,
Cat against the glowing sky.
Here in my haven against the night
The grease from the deep fryer
Burbles and sputs
And everyone melts into one,
The equal opportunity of the consumer:
Everyone with money is free.
Here in fifteen minutes
The man will return for another TastyKake
And admire the angel
With a longing that will never cease.
Somewhere in the world,
Lovers are in their gardens
Beneath the setting sun;
Somewhere, sterile offices with tinted windows
Loom in the skyline
Beckoning two thousand stories high.
But for me and that man over there
There is nothing but our histories.
Together we eye the angel
behind the cash register,
While inside
We are dying.
I look at the angel,
I look at about every girl
Who comes into this place
Because spring is in the air
And I cannot help but hope.
I dream memories of blue skies
Neath mountains that glisten with dew.
I dream floral fields that sprout
For the ebb and flow of cloud.
For me the world revolves in eternal cycles
Of distant and forbidden dreams
And though it is spring,
Many of us lie dead in the dust.
November 6, 2016
A Vulgar Marxist Beat
Belizaro’s old Ford pickup
Strained to cross the deep ruts
It has gauged into me,
Grinding its wheels
Across my soft black earth.
The truck coughed an echo
Against my silent countryside,
Carrying in it
An empty-hearted American boy
Who had come to see
My fields of working men.
Wheezing to a halt,
Its echo was replaced
By the steady:
Swish-swish, swish-swish
Of swinging machetes
That remained submerged
In the tall stalked grass
That grows between the mango trees
And Belizaro’s sugar cane.
Not until the white boy had labored
Across the rows of cane
with a bucket tied to his waist–
And felt the white grains
Of toxic fertilizer
Melt down the palms of his hands,
Did he catch a glimpse
Of the raisin-textured bodies
That move with the swish-swish steel
Of first world production
In its new home.
Resting, gringo boy
Sampled Belizaro’s cane
That must have tasted like
The red,white and blue, bomb pops
He had eaten in the snack bars
Of swimming clubs
While the steady swish-swish
Continued.
In silence
The white boy swung a machete
and uncovered my black earth,
Removing stalk by stalk
The tall grass that covers
TWenty-five square meters
Of a man’s labor
Worth three American dollars.
With mounting fervor
The boy swung the machete
Sweating, straining,
Until I could hear his heart beat:
Swish-ugh, swish-ugh;
Attuned
To the hundreds of square meters
That feed on my earth.
My workers and I
Filled the boy with a vulgar beat
Which continued
As Belizaro’s old Ford
Drove away,
Across my rutted earth.
Each day vulgar hearts
Beat out of sync
Tracking my black mud
Across the wall-to-wall carpets
That keep their distance
From my beating echo:
Swish-swish, swish-swish, swish-swish.
Each day I am engulfed–
I am engulfed to the core.
Positive Self-Fulfilling Prophesies
Jargonizing the Solution Skill: Positive Self-Fulfilling Prophesies
The simple practice of choosing to believe what you want to come true, the positive self-fulfilling prophesy, is a concept that I’ll argue is taught throughout culture. While it may finally be making it into the corridors of the institution, I’d argue that the institution and wider culture fail to teach it to message receivers when it is so particularly needed in message crisis. Indeed, with the wide array of spiritual messages experiences that take over in crisis survival so often becomes of primary concern that social goals associated with self-fulfilling prophesy get permanently dropped when they need to be first and foremost on the helper and messages receiver’s mind. It is hard when someone is locked in a warehouse with nothing to do to teach such a concept. Still, some recovery minded helpers manage to help message receivers focus on activities in some stark circumstances.
In jargonizing this solution, we are going to consider what has to be done to counter both positive and negative messages that both cause conflict with society. In the process we will consider how positive messages are far less problematic and often can set the message receiver up for success as long as they can manage their social relationships. Thus, I will illustrate how positive self-fulfilling prophesies look a bit different when it comes to positive messages. Positive self-fulfilling prophesies are about not only believing in the positive messages that the message receiver wants to come true, it is also about working against the negative ones that one doesn’t want to come true. It is about setting social goals in the material world and outwardly favoring them regardless of what the messages do or don’t say.
Although the concept—what you believe about yourself, it will come true—involves social goals, I treat it as a spiritual concept that gets impacted by both nature and the social world. Believing that god has a plan for you is very hard to do when you are living in substandard barracks and everyone around you is abusively teaching you that you are severely flawed and deserve this kind of treatment. It is very easy to permanently forget your gifts that make you want to be alive: your passions; your natural inclinations. In other word, it is very hard not to lose faith that there is a place for you out there in the world. So many messages become exceedingly spiritual in their message experiences and learn so much in their spiritual journey; but get isolated and deprived from the social world of goals, acknowledgements, and accomplishment. This is a solution skill that seeks to bridge the gap.
Positive Messages: A Prevalent and Positive Force in a Child’s rearing?
To demonstrate what message receivers lack in captivity, I am going to initiate a sports analogy that demonstrates ways the positive self-fulfilling prophesy is widely taught to children in society. In sports, positive messages “I am going to win” lead to a sense of power and agency in the world and often become premonitions. Of course, it might not always work, but when brash predictions occur and come true, time and time again it becomes folklore. Think of Babe Ruth pointing to the bleachers, Muhammad Ali becoming a “bad, bad man,” Joe Namath leading the underdog Jets to victory against the Raiders, and gold medalist downhill skier Bill Johnson. All these sports heroes brashly predicted their future success and then made it come true.
Of course, there are historical examples of some such predictions that didn’t quite work out, but that’s OK they will probably get forgotten. This does not disrupt the ethos of the positive self-fulfilling prophesy towards sports that is needed to succeed and achieve. Consider how sport legends are used to inspire kids to develop agency in their own lives and practice their sport for their health until most come to the realization that they aren’t gifted enough to go professional. Self-fulfilling messages lead to self-actualization and optimal health and are part of all of our efforts to survive.
For positive messages, like, “I am the greatest,” the message receiver only has to be like Muhammad Ali and apply all efforts towards achieving that goal. Thus, positive and supportive messages really aren’t a problem until they are shared with other people in ways that cause problems. For a body to consider they are godly or from a reservoir of personal internal strength is not a handicap as long as others don’t know about it until you are successful and become the “bad,bad man.” In a corrupt world of potential cultural barriers, getting positive feedback from messages can be a feather in anyone’s cap. And listening and collaborating with positive messages be they voices, intuitions, or linguistic coincidences is not very distressing.
Of course, the positively afflicted message receiver has to know and accept their limits, enjoy their life, and keep their blessings away from most psychiatrists and the mental health machine. This involves exceptional self-care and interpersonal skill that help them maintain a realm of support around them.
But let us not forget the many message receivers who become inundated with positive messages that lead to elated feelings and power and energy to get the job done. I am not arguing that this never leads to problems; however, if they can focus on their gifts and doing what they need to get the job done instead of just needing to do everything, they can accomplish miracles. Figures like Hallelujah Handel, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobane (perhaps,) Papa Hemingway and Sylvia Plath during the points in their lives when their mundane needs for human health got met were able to apply positive messages to their craft and their genius thrived and lived to inspire others.
But let us not forget that being inundated with positive messages could lead to what would be labeled “mania,” and can be cause for disconnect and exclusion. The person experiencing message-induced-“mania” might resist people who would block this heightened experience and label it potentially dangerous. Fueled by energy and perhaps irritation, sleep may not happen, and health may get neglected. Perhaps the above artists stayed healthy and self-fulfilled themselves by staying focused on their artistry. They needed to defy their negative messages that come from society that say, “you are sick,” by creating positive self-fulfilling prophesies such as I can use this mood to create something the world will enjoy, Hallelujah! And will make time to sleep as well.” In these kinds of situations the positive self-fulfilling prophesy needs to accept and take into account the realities of potential social persecution and tell themselves that they can collaborate with the “you are sick” people, listen to them to some degree and stay focused on their gifts.
In my experience, so many ethnic minority people who are primarily positive and “bipolar,” (with positive experiences) end up suppressed by Caucizoidal treatment providers. As such they are given “paranoid schizophrenic” treatment (which is so wrong and negative it shouldn’t even exist) that their brilliant realities become so non-functional that their contributions never happen. Social hatred is rampant in the system and so hard to witness. Meanwhile the “paranoid schizophrenic” people like me with negative realities who are really odd mixes of political prisoners are given such covert and negative treatment, they essentially have to graduate from Quantico to rehabilitate without a degree.
A Closer Look at Overcoming Negative Messages:
For the message receiver in crisis inundated with negative messages, following a positive self-fulfilling strategy is different. Consider the brash sports legends I already listed. Saying, and being told “I suck and will crack under the pressure,” may not lead to success. Or saying, “I am in danger and the government is going to kill me” is more likely to lead to problems with the government than towards safety.” Positive self-fulfilling prophesies in these cases would be to reverse the negative messages with positive beliefs and attitudes. This will encourage the message receiver to apply themselves and have a better outcome. This is essentially like asking the message receiver to survive counterintelligence campaigns against them and persist at peaceful passive efforts to better the world. The training is to endure abuse and social alienation without letting it change you so your views and social goals will prevail.
Last chapter we have examined how the reverse of the positive self-fulfilling prophesy, the trickster often leads to an increased dependence on messages; with this concept we will review that to overcome this reality, the message receiver needs to utilize a positive mindset and choose to do so repeatedly to regain focus off the spiritual message world and battle to hang in accomplishing material world achievements.
Much like brash sports legends who predict their future success guide the multitudes in motivation, tricksters have a parallel process going on incapacitating positive self-fulfilling prophesies. Hence, miraculous trickster realities result inspire reliance on the truth of the spiritual trickster. Consider how when tricksters come true in a miraculous way, it can make the message receiver rush to judgement about the accuracy of all messages. Message receivers become like a classroom full of Muhammad Ali children all saying their spirit world is the greatest. In reality, each individual classmate, in setting social goals, needs to take into account their natural skills and inclinations and work to be the greatest in something apart from their spiritual world that is really in line with god’s mission for them. In the sports world everyone remembers the legends and presumes that if you think that way all the time you will win. But we all know this is not necessarily the case in reality. But everybody remembers the legends.
Just like people forget about the predictions that didn’t come true, message receivers don’t remember the tricksters that didn’t come true when they were in message crisis. This particularly becomes true of negative trickster messages. Message receivers’ become overwhelmed because they believe in the accuracy of all negative predictors and this greatly affects their performance and social agency. Negative tricksters become more real than ones trust for other human beings and often discourage activity and social agency. As a result projections of social decline, supported by institutional captivity and medication side effects, may become real.
Indeed, the trickster experience is accompanied by a large stigma machine that will be reviewed in chapter twenty. As it often does, abuse and counterintelligence efforts interferes with the message receivers efforts to achieve a positive self-fulfilling prophesy. The medicalized phenomenon of illness replaces, “I think I can do it,”with “you are sick and there’s nothing anyone can do for you except medication,” the institutional mantra. And the self-sustaining business models descend working against the positive self-fulfilling prophesy that leads the individual to focus on achievement in the material world.
As a result, positive self-fulfilling prophesies for those inundated with negative messages need to involve themselves in navigating the terrain of the bad without this rushing to judgment. They need to forget not the value of the message receiver’s applied effort. Positive Self Fulfilling Prophesies need to take into account strengths, inclinations, and inherent human proclivities and ground the message receiver in R+R tasks associated with goals. Positive self-fulfilling prophesies help message receivers suspend judgement on the outcome, apply themselves, and leave the decision up to the higher power that governs the outcome. This is why I positive self-fulfilling prophesies a spiritual skill. And it proceeds with the imminent danger of failure and all of its consequences.
Like that children’s story, “The Little Engine that could,” if you tell yourself you can, you are much more likely to do it.
We really aren’t all that Different: you and I:
I admit, I have depicted different layers of consideration for those who receive positive messages from those who receive negative ones when really it’s irrelevant. Most message receivers get a mix of good and bad messages. But if we were to wave a magic wand and erase the negative way society treats the message receiver altogether; if we replaced the system with accurate, individualized treatment, there wouldn’t be a need to differentiate the good and the bad, the “syntonic” from the “dystonic,” the “bipolar” from “schizophrenic.” Creative constructive positive self-fulfilling prophesies isn’t that complicated. The rules could be simple: 1) don’t talk about receiving messages unless you are in good company; 2) identify barriers (rational or irrational) to success; 3) assess strengths, passions, and inclinations; and 4) create a prayer or mantra that can challenge the negative barriers that accurately challenges the message receiver at their god given abilities.
I think groups in which message receivers are open about their experience and defy positive and negative categories are an ideal setting to work on positive self-fulfilling prophesies. I believe this because each individual gains the opportunity to influence each other about good and bad messages. I have learned that many messages that I presumed to be negative in crisis really might be seen as positive by other message receivers with different cultural perspectives and references. Oddly, it has helped me not only discern what was real from what was not, what was real spiritual insight, from what was a brain fart, but what was a good message from a bad one. And I’d argue that this process is no different than a support group in which people support each other in overcoming a horrific loss or trauma. And I believe that the positive self-fulfilling prophesy, while most definitely needed by message receivers, also can apply to people who have endured hardships across the board.
The spiritual concept of the positive self-fulfilling prophesy, which represents things like prayer and faith, is pivotal for message receiver and arguably for anyone dealing with trauma. As many people I have worked with have pointed out, the concept is present in the Bible and, I believe, in other spiritual traditions from the major world religions to the local indigenous practices. Whether this is true or not, I’d argue that the concept of positive self-fulfilling prophesy is also clearly present in modern music (I heard it in a John Mellencamp song) in self-help books (“The Law of Attraction,”) modern spiritual videos (“The Secret,”) and in the foundations of positive psychology. This is a major cultural phenomenon that message receivers are simply denied in the current system due to labels and prejudice which they ever so desperately need!
October 29, 2016
Ode to a Cockroach
I can see you skittering through my soul.
I can see blood pulse through your kidney corpse.
Dripping live cells into some fertile hole
For upon human life your presence torques
Blood pressured fear. And the multitude
Abandon city and sleep on sheets clean.
You sit in your puddle of Raid and laugh
And will roll on your back in buoyant mood.
Though we may have killed you, our joy is lean
And your joy is our fear inspired staph.
Your sleek arms move like sheets in the wind
Casting into my sea of dirty dishes
For pearls whose value to me has dampened.
While I sit on the pot, mind full of wishes
Denied when you skirt cross kitchen tiles
(Your legs tickling my mind) to vanish
Into the cracks of my kitchen cupboard.
I hack in shame at the dirty dish piles
While wastes still within, I itch to banish
From Myself. You . . .you crave the waste I hoard.
You glisten in definition my roach.
That soul-shuttering tail poorly covers
The seething, leg blackened filth you poach.
And look, there your lasso of filth hovers
In my dirty drawer and apple core floor.
But is your presence in this room my fault?
Oh no! Your loathsome aura would not stay
If neighborhood spike didn’t aptly gore
The shield, the siphon, oh that private vault
Of clean locales that keep you far away.
Some humans consider me inhuman
To live in the dead city in self-stench
And offer you life where their life began.
I work long days, a subservient wench
To retreat in anger and hate, within
Four walls of a home that I afford,
I know how it feels to be a memory—
To remind us of secrets that have been,
The wastes within, feared like dominions sword.
Ah to be blamed for human history!
Beneath this room you dance in furtive zone
Amid the roots of the eternal earth
Where wastes boil and meat decays from bone,
Where death creates life through divine rebirth.
And while the world above soaks like a sponge
In clean chemicals, our mad creation,
You thrive on the falsehood of trickle down
And train to survive in evolving grunge.
You are the world’s wildest elation:
The locus of life, the imposing frown.
I float beneath the fish line of treasure
The sweet pastry baited just out of reach
While I dangle before others measure
Whose septic social contract I breach.
I sense nature’s recourse beneath me
And mourn my lonely life hanging here.
I clutch my Raid, fear your presence whole
Yet long to grasp the life I see,
To hold that flame of human hate and fear:
Ah but are you immortal to my soul?
On a Writer’s Need for Acknowledgement
Ever since I finally, at the age of forty-three, published some of my writing, I’ve found that I am particularly prone to pain again. Ever since, each morning I have woken up driven to find ways to get people to read my book.
A year and a month later, I have primarily had to pay people to check out my work. There are those who accepted the free book without giving it a read, let alone write promised reviews. Sure the memoir itself has collected two awards and primarily five star reviews, but amid the boom of self-published authors I find myself more hurt by the silent echo, than grateful to the friends who have read, and not balked.
After a tough week, I find this pain expounding itself through every facet of my consciousness. I am out walking with my wife and I think about how psychiatrists have hustled me through explanation of my psychotherapy; about the numerous presentations I have provided that ended up empty; about leaders of the psychiatric survivors movement who promote those with less experience; about the presentation when I had people finally laughing and listening to me, and the smoke bomb that forced evacuation. There were past company owners who hired me, ignored statistics as I worked sixty hour weeks and demoted me . . .
Indeed, it’s been quite a goddamn week! A person I’ve employed via a grant ended up seeming to capture all the credit in the county’s eyes; other survivors have excluded my contribution on email chains; a boss has seemed to minimize my stats and expected more and more; coworkers have snickered and blamed me, the schizophrenic, for the vermin in our office. This all seems so overwhelming, I think. I am in fear of losing everything.
Save the awards and professional reviews, this feels like precisely the response my writing and existence has always received. It is why I never shared the decades of poetry I puzzled over for hours with anyone. Because each time I did, I walked away more wounded and invisible. Even better-than-expected compliments had their way of backstabbing and reminding me of my invisibility. Therefore, why try?
I have recently witnessed this sense of starving for acknowledgement from other people who, like me, end up feeling scapegoated in their family. I have seen them set themselves up for this same kind of relentless sense of bullying. It’s a pattern that one cannot break out of if they still let themselves hurt.
Bruce Springsteen’s voice sounds in the background as we walk. I recall his voice in his documentary on the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town. Out of the hundred songs he wrote during his most prolific period he says humbly he’s done the best he could in his new album. The desire and pain in his voice tell a part of the story of that period of his life as do his lyrics,”It’s like when the truth has been spoken and it don’t make no difference, something in your heart goes cold . . .”
I think that it is some of that same eternal need for acknowledgement that drives all the pained writers that I most respect.
I think abut Charles Bukowski, who somehow captured the ethos of the drunken of the English majors in the ghetto commuter college that I attended. It would be years until I’d actually get a grasp on how the dirty old man would be a hero to me as well. When I’d see the documentary on Netflix that I’d realize that getting just the bare essential was enough for him to devote himself to the craft that would eventually heal him. Bukowski didn’t write to become famous. In his prison, he wrote to be free and just to get by. That’s what makes someone a real writer.
The music song on my phone shifts and I think of Tom Waits as he writes: “why put a song bird in a cage? Why, why, why, why . . .So the river won’t drown it and the highway won’t take it and the dust won’t settle it and the wind won’t blow it away.” I think of KRS-One who says: “I am going to teach you about MC longevity: secret one, if it ain’t fun your done, and about your career, yo, choose another one.”
It dawns on me that in craving acknowledgement I am giving my power away and hurting terribly for no reason. All this pained rage from being ignored and silenced in my life is really what makes me able to write. It assures me that I will go on writing. It is people keeping me in my cage so I can continue to heal and be me. They need to take what they need for themselves. They play a different role in this life. They are helping me really be a real writer.
“Really I could give a fuck if they call me the roach man at work,” I say to my wife.
“But, Poopee you just admitted that they are hurting you when they are blaming you for the roaches in the office,” my wife says, “they shouldn’t do that!”
“As long as I get my basic needs met, I can write. And that’s good enough for me.” I say, “I get to tell my truth to the computer. I could give a shit if I am their roach man”
I am not needing to give them that power anymore. It is not fair to anyone to continue to continue being a hurting victim when they are trying to make you a writer.
