Clyde Dee's Blog, page 22

Towards More Honest Ways to Teach Counseling Theories

I’d like to think that if therapists like me who have been farting around with psychotherapy for twenty years or so, might be able to improve the way counseling theory is taught in graduate school. Ideally, I would like to support the development of theory that address social ills. I have found myself feeling this way when I think of all the different misconceptions that I have endeavored in over the years. Now that I have established my niche and am advocating for new movements and theories that make most sense to me, I am finding myself wanting to help budding therapists learn how to conduct the art of psychotherapy in ways that help solve pressing issues, not just apply a scientifically proven technique or pass a test.

I think psychotherapy has made a break through to some extent that doesn’t get talked about. More and more theory is being constructed that help therapists solve problems rather than exhibiting panacea proclamations. I consider panacea theory to be what I was taught in graduate school: in its most postmodern form it includes narrative and solution focused therapies. Panacea theory was often remiss to really address social ills as they exists in agencies and on the ground. I think the onset of what I would call problem-centered approaches began with movements like DBT and Motivational Interviewing.

 

Problem-Focused Therapy instead of Panacea Therapy:

And I think if we look at what works about the problem-focused therapies that already exist, we can learn a lot about not only about how to solve real social problems, but also how to create theoretical elements that actually help teach other therapists in ways that enhance their art of psychotherapy.

While it is clearly arguable that Evidence Based Practice represents the move in the problem-focused direction, I think that that movement is missing the genuine insight about what works in the art of psychotherapy. This may be due in part to our past of panacea proclamations mixed with big ego and money making desire of theorists that genuinely corrupt the movement towards health. But the idea that a movement must bear scientific proof and create fidelity measures that are imposed on the practitioner oversteps the utility of a theoretical model/movement. Perhaps, I have just seen fidelity measures fail to filter down too often to really understand their genius. However, it seems to me that this runs the risk of leaving community mental health in a state of being constantly and inappropriately experimented on by workers who are taught to listen to an organization or a science more to than their true self and their humanity.

To put it simply, I am only arguing the problem-centered theoretical movement needs to know when to teach and when to leave the psychotherapist alone. I think a good movement needs to create jargon that gets taught and understood in a way that defines and understands the problem and proposes direction for solution.  It needs to be a set of information that once known, enables creative and spontaneous technique to flow from within the practitioner’s character and towards the local circumstance that the individual is dealing with.

In my mind, fidelity focused techniques that are applied may fail to pay regard to both the therapist’s persona and the unique cultural entity that is a participant and the social context that surrounds them. I don’t see this being understood by everyone who follows fidelity techniques and I feel that there are times this can distort real authentic connection. As Evidence Based Practice exists now, many therapists can walk away from an encounter having applied the best practice technique feeling satisfied that they have done their job, without having any idea about how and whether it works; and the blame for failure once science becomes involved, ends up all on the participant, not the therapeutic movement.  It is the reverse of what reality is and it encourages practitioners to burn out.

 

Material that Inspires Spontaneous Techniques verses Scientific Notions:

Consider instead what Marsha Linehan has done in redefining elements of complex trauma and proposing solutions that enable the therapists to be themselves and complement each other in structured ways. This does not mean DBT is always going to be perfectly conveyed to the recipient.  There is plenty of space for there to be Damn Bad Therapy going on by personalities who are not good fits or by a failure to truly validate a subject, but in my mind the material does not claim to have control over this.

Speaking for myself, I have worked up an internalized sense of my own definition of “psychosis” along with complimentary solutions. I have done this based on my own experience in running groups for “psychosis” over eight years.  In doing this I have found that new ways to focus on treatment have started spilling out into my personal work in individual sessions. In doing this I find myself driven to use spontaneous techniques with a clear rationale for how and why they may be helpful to the individuals I work with. If they miss, I try again. I believe that with any kind of redefinition internalized that different people can make different kinds of techniques and interventions. Techniques need not be studied and applied, they need to flow out of authentic moments. And material needs to be created that inspires one to do this.

The more group leaders do what I have done, reconstruct the problem and accompany it with directions toward solutions, the more they will be able to focus on the cultural art of psychotherapy. Original techniques may come up naturally in the creative and spontaneous moment and will be more likely to work. The more that a student studies or is forced to utilize someone else’s technique, trying to apply them in a scientific manner, the more frustration and burnout and bad therapy is likely to result.

 

Supporting Counseling Theories that Address the Real Social Ills:

I am not arguing that the time spent studying panacea therapy is an entire waste of time: it has clearly been utilized in the eclectic approaches in DBT, MI, and the approaches I am developing towards work with “psychosis!”  But still, I think a lot could be done in the teaching of it so that misconceptions do not become institutionalized in a learner’s head.  Thinking that you must scientifically replicate a Minuchin or a Fritz Pearls is a misconception that I was taught on several occasions. Perhaps if I had continued in school, I may have learned this is not a valid contention. But I also think studying yourself as a person is also extremely important in addition to studying a theoretical model. And constantly questioning and reflecting on the errors of what you are doing is likewise necessary, even when they fit the standard of care, is extremely important

But, I’d also like to argue that right now there are major vacuums existing with for which problem-focused theories are desperately needed. Clearly, I feel “psychosis” is one of them, but so too is there a vacuum for OCD: both are highly neglected due to the western worlds institutionalized past. Of course, there are many other problems that could be addressed like psychopathology and socio-pathology if our society was not so influenced by concentration camp businesses like the prison, pharmacological, mental health, and drug war industries. Ultimately, these are some the issues that Counseling Theory most desperately needs to address.

Questions that Have Brought Mad People Together

The following are questions that help people know if they may be influenced by a term I have coined to initiate group therapy, special messages. While I consider special messages to be specific kinds of experiences that may trigger a person into alternate states of reality, the questions below are more complicated. Included in these questions are broad representations of a term I have likewise coined, divergent views. Simply put, divergent views are ideas that may come attached to a number of special messages. These divergent views may deviate from what is often considered the norm and may at times be more correct than the norm. While I would argue that special messages can happen to a person both in and out of crisis, the questions below invite people to reflect on times of crisis and tell stories.  

Influenced  by word of the Hearing Voices Network, I have found that encouraging people to tell stories about message crisis or “psychosis,” leads to having experiences validated and can help a person heal and reduce a sense of isolation. Though it can take some time, I have seen many people realize they are not alone for the first time in treatment hearing stories that others tell. I also believe healing involves being able to pay more attention to the processes that happen so that they can be mindfully let go of.

Thus, emotions associated with special messages can be felt without burning their way permanently into a person’s life. If emotions associated with special messages take over, divergent view thoughts related to higher power conspiracies likewise take over and can misdirect a person’s effort to survive in modern society. Thus, if people are able to be aware of their process enough to separate the special message from the divergent view, and become more aware that associated emotions are driving them in a term I have coined, sleuthing, they may start the process of becoming mindful and breaking out of crisis.

I would argue that an individual who has had special message experiences has a message profile that involves some but not all of these experiences.  I’d also argue that no particular message is more or less pathological than the other.  Each message is put together in different manners like a letter in the alphabet to tell the story of alternate realities and beliefs. Many of us who suffer may have become preoccupied with real issues of war, genocide, torture, apocalyptic fatalities, spirit discernment, metaphysics, social control, truth, good and evil and healing from these dilemmas may help us become very wise and valuable social contributors.

Joining a group that is focused on exploring these experiences can be fun and healing.  I have been leading groups for the past eight years to put together these questions and there are still many experiences that I have heard that aren’t represented here. I also believe that bearing these questions in mind can help helpers improve their ability to connect with those in crisis.  Essentially, I am hoping that these questions may help prepare a person to go down the rabbit hole with someone who is experiencing “psychosis.” People in message crisis need people who are aware of what they are going through to some extent to be with them while they are going through it. Message crisis can be an extremely alienating experience in which everyone wants to correct, rather than support you. I have been able to use these questions along with my lived experience to spark many story sessions.

Consider using the list below to spark your own conversations!

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Are you profoundly affected by dreams that prophesize or reveal truths about yourself or the universe?

 

Do you experience de ja vu occurrences?

 

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

 

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

 

Do people have clear telepathic communication with you intentionally

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Has the sound of a heater starts turning into voices?

 

Have clouds in the sky turn into visual shapes?

 

Have you experienced things that are so strange it seems impossible that beliefs you hold that are unusual have got to be true?

 

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

 

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

 

Can you communicate with spirits or dead people?

 

Do you sense when reincarnated spirits, aliens, or robots machines have entered modern bodies as clones?

Cutting Room Floor – Live & Recorded Episodes: 500, 497

The Cutting Room Floor seeks to help independent filmmakers and other entertainers promote their projects.

Source: Cutting Room Floor – Live & Recorded Episodes: 500

Audio Recording: ‘EP. 497 – Clyde Dee; Aurora de Blas & Jenni Powell’ From ‘Cutting Room Floor’

EP. 497 – Clyde Dee; Aurora de Blas & Jenni Powell

Source: Audio Recording: ‘EP. 497 – Clyde Dee; Aurora de Blas & Jenni Powell’ From ‘Cutting Room Floor’

Viewing Myself through the Healing Voices Documentary

The Healing Voices documentary is a bold collaborative effort to recreate the public perception of people who hear voices or experience altered states. At a private viewing, amid a room of like-minded individuals there is cause for all of us to rejoice. We all sit engaged, excited, and proud as concepts and materials that we all work to share with others on a daily basis surround us booming through the theater. There is laughter, an occasion whoop or coyote cay-cay-cay. The past fifteen years of my recovery and efforts to share my developing health to others flash before my eyes.

The movie tracks three individuals: 1) a well-known leader in the movement and co-producer, Oryx; 2) a peer support leader from a small town setting who is a Mom, Jen; and 3) a youthful and creative outsider from a setting that never becomes clear to me, Dan. As this develops, I start to see three levels of exploration honored.

First, Oryx represents the movement leadership and has connection to all the expert philosophers who are interviewed to back up an alternate way to manage and treat these wide collection of experiences. Robert Whitaker, Bruce Levine, Will Hall, Marcus Romme are interviewed. A clear vision of the indubitable damage that the illness medical model has done, the senseless demand that society imposes that all signs of illness are suppressed and manner in which the western world has over emphasized psychiatric medications. Oryx details his journey with altered states at a safe distance and how it motivated him to found the Freedom Center with Will Hall. There are European cameos of people from the hearing voices movement who I recognize like Rufus May, Jacki Dillion and Rachael Waddington. 

Jen’s experience with voices and her daily struggles are reviewed first with her family and then through the eyes of Oryx who comes out to support her after a crisis she experienced at a national conference. The value of peer support is established for Jen before we learn that she herself is an effective and trendsetting peer counselor.  Later on we learn that she used to be a world class runner as she dignifies through endearing cigarette smoke the way peer support is clearly a step up from standard clinical therapeutics. I am moved as this is something that I believe in strongly and that has caused me to alter my own career path and personal efforts significantly.  Jen wins a national award during the movie and makes so many powerful original comments about peer support

The bravest and closest account of the inner workings of “psychosis” is given by youthful Dan who has clearly been engaged in his alternative world long enough to have significant coping skills: he has healed to the point where he is able to share his world with the camera. He is at times brilliant with his humor and clearly a trend setter. Dan is less established in the adult world and his struggles from an early age are documented with the help of his mother at some point who is self-reflective enough to acknowledge ways she been helpful and ways she hasn’t. There is a clear subtext about how brave Dan has to be as a bi-racial, gay, and voice hearing outsider to reach out and make important peer connections.  Dan is the only of the three who defines the characters behind the voices he hears and it is a clear cinematic achievement to have this documented.

The movie tracks Oryx, Jen and Dan for five years. During this time, surprisingly the leader, Oryx, goes through a traumatic crisis period and the film documents the failed efforts of all his supporters to help him avoid hospitalization and forced medication treatment. While the details of his experience are somewhat concealed, his supports don’t work and after a cross-the-states caper and after a few weeks he is admitted into the worst of the worst in terms of hospitals.  The movie catches up with him as he is safely moved to a peer respite and reflects on his experience in the filthy mental institution. He makes beautiful meaning of the crisis and grows exponentially in spite of the social violence he experienced.

***

Once the film is over I find that sense of yip yip joy and connection that I started out with starts to wane. I notice that I am extremely tired as it is already past my bedtime. I have had a stressful work day. These days the splits in our staff that are based on a differing takes on the medical model, prestige, class and racial divides. They, once again, seem to be amplifying. Not only do I need to survive them, I need to help an intern who is not taking well to them gain a rich learning experience. It had been nice to put those escalating daily wars away for a while and to focus on something more positive.   

There is a community discussion that is to ensue. I sit in the far corner feeling forever on the outside. Though there were small points during the movie when I felt pain pangs, now as the discussion ensues, these feelings hit me like a sledge.

Writing a memoir about all the details of my two and a half year experiences with Madness helped me learn and heal astronomically as I am sure the work on this documentary has done for all of those involved. Reviewing the intricate details helped me grow, and also helped me with the work I do in the secreted dingy recesses of the hospital where I have regularly engaged people to tell their story through sharing details of my own.  When I started doing this eight years ago, it was twice a week through group therapy that I lead; now, it is five days a week both in and outside the community that I work for.

Feeling that odd egotistical pain that isolation and lack of acknowledgment can bring, I notice that I am criticizing these vulnerable feelings. I take some minutes to reflect. I come to a realization that I don’t have anybody who has supported me through all my efforts in the theater to share the good cheer with. It is eight pm and most of my supporters are confined in their board and cares, unable to move freely in the community for fear of stray bullets, harassment, or breaking curfew. I think about how one or two people in the crowd may have cut me down on occasions as I have tried to gain acceptance locally. I still rely on medication and work with people who are institutionalized and perhaps these are reasons for my sense of exclusion from the movement’s local leaders.  I reflect on how some of the faces I saw on the screen had not been able to review my book or accept blogs about my work on their website. I think of the good reviews I have received, the award short-list I made, the many reviews and awards that are still pending, and the fact that I still haven’t sold any books on Amazon.

***

As the party is forced to disperse due to time allotment, I hear my name called as I stand. A face that I barely recognize greets me. She looks different to me because she is not wearing her Fidel Castro hat. She is an intern who befriended me after I did a presentation on my group for the students at the Grand Rounds of the company I work for.  The presentation was about my work with the groups that explore details of “psychosis.”  She identified herself as a comrade and some email contact ensued. 

So I now have someone to talk with as we exit the theater. The two of us catch up regarding our activities. She, who is studying for her psychology license, is close to making it through and appears to have scraped her way through without any fanfare, much as I did. I give her details about my memoir and she is excited to read it and insists on paying for it. She departs to get back to her dog who is in her apartment and I stand and face a crowd that I am admittedly intimidated by.

Up in the theater, I had spoken a little while I was seeped in pain.  I tried to be authentic and had spoken very poorly. I had referenced the people I work with and how I long to make them part of this experience. I had alluded to the power of the work they do sharing stories about their experiences and how intimidating it can be for them to cross that bridge and enter the movement. I had also noted my own struggles to do this.

I think of Oryx’s courage as he publically made meaning of his crisis in a humble way as I unsuccessfully make efforts to mingle with members of the movement who appear to be in the place I was at the start of the show.

I don’t know if it is my pain which may be received as bad energy that prevents me from such social efforts or real overt reactions to my upstairs comments. I think I had essentially highlighted class issues that exist in the movement. That is not a pretty issue to bring up. I struggle to get included in many conversations. This has been common for me.  In work groups others have acknowledged that I have not always been included. One person who doesn’t know me comes over and gives me a chance, which I appreciate. I also get a hug from an elder man one I have imagined has hurt me in the past. He now says he will make a point of getting to my book. The hug is mutually gentle and redemptive. I make a point of saying to a colleague that I want to support a local viewing so many more can experience this film.

After a five minute period when I am unable to talk to anyone, I slip away from the crowd. I am reminded of my college experiences. I never attended a single party. As an acculturated ghetto talking anorexic boy from a suburb I had a lot of nicknames: Where’s Waldo, from the traffic at the crack house across the street; Clyde Dog, from my co-workers at the Korean mobster deli where I worked for three years; Vanilla Ice, from the local YMCA campers and co-workers, and Slim Pickings, from the red-blooded Viet Nam vets I worked with at a carpenters local.  The only other student who really saw me was an older “bipolar” gangster in recovery from drugs and alcohol, who I amused. I made more social efforts in grad school, but there had been all that left over social awkwardness.

Oryx, Jen and Dan’s tale has helped me see a largely neglected part of my own recovery.  I still have not overcome that sense of otherness. I am divided from the people who I see as my brothers because of clinical boundaries and because of their poverty. I am divided by people in the movement because I have not been able to overcome my social awkwardness and have largely neglected the conference circuit due to financial limitations and family and work obligations. At the same time as the movie emphasizes the importance of peer support, I am re-energized to try. 

***

A part of me still wants to show the movement that dirty environments are not all bad.  Sometimes magic can happen there. It was the barely heated State Hospital Chronic ward that both appalled and taught me contain my experiences to the extent where I was able to keep a job.  It was the journey I went through that helped me be better off than I was before I had a psychotic break.

At the same time, I recall how I was so scared of homelessness and shelters, I demonized them in my mind and they ended up in my nightmares. I am reminded that people I have helped, who have survived them balance trying to dignify the experience as they depict their horrors. In a sense, I recognize that I am merely feeling called upon to do the same. So many of us who have been mired in institutions or isolated by a history of ghetto circumstances have a hard time crossing that bridge into the movement. Indeed, I have advantages that enable me to cross that bridge, I need to do that.

I am grateful to Oryx, Jen, Dan, director PJ Moynihan, and many others for their work.  Viewing their world class and groundbreaking work is helping motivate me to cross yet another bridge and I believe it can help others do the same. Their work is a true achievement that can help us unify if we all work together.

Challenging Mainstream Psychiatry with Radically Different Techniques

Eight years ago when I read about the Hearing Voices Network in Europe, I thought it was a dream. There seemed to be no better way to challenge the mainstream myths that psychiatry promotes. I wanted to make it come true but I didn’t know anybody.  Bearing a very contained two and a half year history of madness, I did what I could: I started a professional group in the outpatient program I worked in in St Louis Missouri called Special Messages. Now that the Hearing Voices Network is becoming a local reality, I am excited. However, there are a few things I have learned from my work with Special Messages in St. Louis over the last eight years that I hope might contribute to the vision of making self-help widely available those who have experienced “psychosis.”

 

My Journey Creating the Special Messages Group Therapy Curriculum:

When I started the Special Messages group, I had just become blessed with a forty hour a week schedule for the first time since I got dropped off at a Greyhound Bus Station from out of the State Hospital seven years prior.  With four thousand dollars in the inseam of my jean, and the tendency to look back over my shoulder, I had to work a lot more than forty hours a week to stay housed, off social security, and out of dilapidated barracks.

Finally, I attained my license in 2008. With a sudden new allotment of time, I searched the internet. I discovered the work of National Empowerment Center and Patricia Deegan. Additionally a site called Successful Schizophrenia, administered by Al Siebret, really helped motivate me. I also started the process of getting trained as a WRAP Facilitator. In my free time, I started the writing of my story in memoir form.  I didn’t know anybody in the movement and the one book I sent away for that was about the Hearing Voices Network, never arrived.

In general, the people who helped me create the Special Messages group and curriculum during this time were not very different from me. Whereas I was so privileged as to have had four thousand dollars, a Master’s Degree, and a career in Mental Health to return to when I was released from the hospital, most of them had experienced a sense of social decline, living in oppressive circumstances after a string of hospitalization recidivism. They were fighting enough meaninglessness so as to agree to volunteer their time in a wellness community while I got paid.

I initiated my own deconstructed view of what “psychosis” was and they used it to share their silenced stories and give me feedback. The deconstruction platform also gave me the opportunity to teach social rehabilitation and recovery in ways that helped some get on up out of those white-walled corridors.

I structured the groups in sixteen week segments and re-drafted a curriculum after each run through collecting feedback from participants that greatly changed the intention and focus of what I was doing.  Presently, I became focused not on deconstructing the mainstream paradigm, but reconstructing a new definition of what was going on that could help individuals pay more attention to their internal process and the ways that they are both similar and different from the experiences of others.  What has developed was a safe place where people could use similarities to become part of a sub culture and differences to learn new ways of seeing things.

I have come to believe that with encouragement, but at their own will, participants can increase flexibility and cultural awareness to learn new skills to enhance their experience of recovery.  For some this may include the telling of their story; for others listening and learning; and still others, a sense of being mentors.

Ultimately, having a home base enables individuals to explore entering the hostile community and engage in healthy social integration activities that ultimately can decrease loneliness and suffering.  Replacing isolation with meaning and purpose in this manner can also involve learning to run these kinds of groups.

With this reconstructed view of “psychosis” I have been able to greatly improve my work with individuals. I have been able to develop many techniques that help move individuals forward in terms of individual work in treatment planning.

 

My Own Process of Researching:

I have recently completed an eighteen-month research grant that focused on using my curriculum to implement a training program. The goal was to create peer counselors that could learn to be open with their message process and create local groups that could attract large numbers of participants.  Because I needed to maintain employment during this process and wanted to give myself and others a rich learning experience, I utilized a skilled Program Manager to run the grant program and did what I could to support the experience and write about it.

By the time I got awarded this grant, I had become so disenfranchised by the evidence based practice movement that I did not want to work under what I consider to be its illusions. Thus, I did not believe that I could come out with evidence that could universally be applied to other regions. I wanted to curb the experience to impact the urban catchment area where many of the individuals who helped me create the curriculum dwell.  My feeling was that in addition to starting up groups, we could create a case for creating positions on service teams with individuals who have lived experience with “psychosis.”  I had, in the meantime, done enough work managing peer counselors to feel that we could use this model to transform the local system to be friendlier to our culture and hire specialists onto service teams.

While I was admittedly not really in a position as a part-time manager, an accommodating, therapy-focused character, and an overcommitted author with a memoir contract that was to collapse, to control what transpired, I did the best I could to track it.  The project was a huge success, though a difficult personal endeavor for me due to my sense of being over-committed.

What we found was that we did not attract as many voluntary participants who were able to overcome homeless-vagrancy and transportation issues to make it into group.  In other words, our widely dispersed flyers brought us only a few individuals who we used to train our workers in individual treatment strategies. However, this was a great way to get the buzz starting for treatment into encampments and homeless shelters. With the leadership of our program manager, we took our presentations at agencies and conferences gained us access to conduct groups at established agencies.  The, we were able to take our groups into agencies and reach a large number of individuals with collaborative and effective groups. While we made efforts to measure our success via surveys, the majority of the participants (which included providers and family members,) were much more willing to welcome the work than were willing to complete the survey. The number of people served was very high.  We received a great deal of support and positive testimonies. Our workers also made significant career gains and personal growth.

 

Interactions with the Local Hearing Voices Movement:  

Just before I obtained the before mentioned grant for the Special Messages Project, a local effort to successfully bring the Hearing Voices Network into the Metropolitan Area was successfully spear-headed. I was very pleased that our project was able to collaborate freely in a very collaborative manner with this effort.  I was able to send our workers to an HVN training, a training that sadly, I was too busy to attend.  And some of the leaders from the movement came in and participated in our efforts to train our staff. Together we went through the curriculum normalizing the process of talking about voices and other alternative states. I was extremely impressed by the fact that none of us were territorial and I even got help with the research end of my grant and program evaluation from leaders.

Prior to receiving the grant, I was privileged enough to attend one Hearing Voices Network training. What transpired was ultimately very valuable. Ultimately, I learned that leading a community support group amid the unfiltered public and a professional one like the one I do are different. I learned that I, amid institutional circumstances was able to be far more inclusive and less powerful.

As I listened to the training on that day, I felt threatened as though I was being told that the therapy that I have developed and the role of the therapist that I have constructed for myself with success in the program in which I operate, would not work. I left the training broken-hearted and feeling that void of self-doubt.  Indeed, although being challenged in this way would prove to be extraordinarily helpful to me in the long run, I felt alienated.

I went on to maintain the role of the therapist that I had developed in the outpatient program. I kept the group safe by staffing my training with those I was paying. In other words, half of the training group was paid and already knew the material.  They used the opportunity to practice opening up and sharing to help teach the material to the individuals who came to volunteer their time.

But the training I had with the HVN had taught me a lot about the heightened demands that are required for facilitation outside the realm of an institutional structure.  Indeed, with other therapists available and a medical model structure, I have been able to develop a style that isn’t necessarily possible in an open community support group.  Now that the grant is over, and I continue running the training alone, I am being faced with some of those same issues that the Hearing Voices Facilitator said I would.  It is forcing me to adapt differing interventions and though I still insist on being inclusive I am grateful for the learning I have done and the connection to the Hearing Voices Network.

 

Contributions to the Movement that I Failed to Make:

In the middle of the grant I was afforded the opportunity to sit on the board of the Hearing Voices Network U.S.A. as it was formulating and getting up and running.  Listening in on a few conference calls and reading the charter that was initiated, I again was struck with that same sense of painful alienation that I was during my first HVN training experience.

As I learned that some members of the group aimed to duplicate the academic work that had been initiated in places like the UK and Australia and New Zealand, and import them. I realized that being an alien voice amidst this group was going to be an uphill battle that I didn’t have time for. While I am well aware that these issues of class, race, gender, and regional issues have been managed by the movement in ways that I have not researched or read about, I realized that I was too overloaded to figure this one out.

Indeed, some email contact I have had with the movement has challenged me. My efforts have been cast by some as not fitting the mold with the HVN because I have chosen to work within the system. Skeptics have been concerned that my groups may not be voluntary. While, my groups have always been built on voluntary participation, this criticism helps me suspect that different facilitators have different target audiences. My groups are dealing with individuals who are facing large institutional obstacles. I also have a luxury of being very inclusive because within the structure of the program unsafe group interactions are contained by a team that addresses unsafe behavior and boundary testing. I can also cross many cultural divides.

Still, as I am prone to argue with Evidence-Based-Practice, I would assert that foreign research cannot easily be translated to an entirely different social system.  For example, I have learned that houses are available to everyone in New Zealand with the social democracy they have there. Though they have the same institutional board and care homes for some, getting voluntary treatment enables many to work towards living independently and housing is a realistic expectation.  The St Louis system of care, it is vastly different. There is more likely to be a significant period of homelessness that adds institutional layers to some individuals’ lives.  Getting an apartment in a city like St. Louis, one may have to wait forty years for senior housing, or, if one doesn’t get lucky, with Section 8, a benefit that is getting increasingly ghettoized with the local rendition of the national housing crisis.

While some might argue the merits of independent support groups, I feel there is a way to build a space for them in a system that is voluntary.  I continue to think it is extremely important to fit the approach to the region instead of fitting the region to the approach.

 

Acknowledging Socio-Cultural Issues and Regional Diversity when Challenging Mainstream Psychiatry:

In the outpatient program that I work in in St. Louis, I would not dare to sell the foreign HVN concept to the communities of color that I work with. Once again superior European research would be initiated into their community. This concept already alienates me and I know it may even be worse amid many of the people I work with. Even many of us minority white people in the urban institution in which I work might take offense to some of those academic presumptions. Growing up I spent a lot of time finding desperately needed acceptance in communities of color and so do many others like me. Europe isn’t always the boat that our community members want to swim on.

Personally, I like the idea that people in different communities create different solutions for different circumstances. The economy of a Midwestern college town is vastly different than the economy of an urban ghetto.  In spite of bias laws, each economy has merit and deserves respect. Each community requires different types of mental health warriors. Just as AA adjusts its leadership to all kinds of diverse communities, so too can the Hearing Voices Network.  And I believe that the HVN movement contains in it the potential to add therapeutic treatment component to the psychiatric paradigm that can radically change things in St. Louis and across the nation if it is managed with cultural sensitivity.  Indeed cutting through the self-stigma and institutional abuse that result from hospital recidivism takes some time in St. Louis. I believe that changing this phenomenon may require using some institutions.

Madness Radio Interview with Clyde Dee

Click to listen:
http://www.madnessradio.net/special-messages-tim-dreby-madness-radio
First Aired: 12-31-2014 — 13 comments | Add comment

What if you were the only one seeing coded messages, covert realities, and elaborate plots all around you? Does that make you out of touch with reality, “paranoid” and “psychotic?” Or is it real — but you are just so upset that everyone thinks the problem is you instead?

Tim Dreby, a psychotherapist and author in the San Francisco Bay Area, endured a life-threatening — and real — encounter with gangsters, police, and political conspiracy. He also survived a schizophrenia diagnosis, and today leads support groups for people facing overwhelming intuitions, coded messages, and conspiracies, helping them heal from trauma and regain control of their lives.

13 comments on “Special MessagesClyde Dee | Madness Radio”




Patricia Lefave says:January 5, 2015 at 11:06 am

I think that what is experienced in altered states, often caused by enough stress to break twenty people, has TRUE meaning on one level or another, is often symbolic, but is also connected in a very real way to the individual’s actual life experience. it is all too often dismissed as meaningless which tends to keep the person trying to get through that in a permanent state, unless he or she can find a listening ear to take it seriously and help the person move THROUGH it.

Good job on this.

Pat

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Tim Dreby says:January 10, 2015 at 6:45 am

Dear Patricia.

Thank you for your history of work and support for this show. I have been inspired by things you’ve had on the internet in the past that helped encourage me to start opening up with my experiences and feel very acknowledged and supported by your comments here. I agree wholeheartedly that once a person can learn to view their experiences symbolically it is a huge tool to help them endure and move forward in their lives. It can help turn trajedy into triumph and can heal a waring perspective into one of respect and tolerance.

Tim

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Patricia Lefave says:January 14, 2015 at 1:46 pm

Absolutely Tim and as you know dealing with them differently can do some pretty great things…keep sharing your experience and your hope as the world changes very often because those who suffer through it make it better for both self AND others. Good work.

Pat

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Marybeth M. says:January 7, 2015 at 7:21 am

Thank you so much for having Tim on, Will & Tim, thank you for being on!

It was such a wonderful and refreshing episode to listen to. I’m someone (from the east coast, too – represent :)) who has “altered states” moments when fully present and to be honest, tend to not be, to avoid them.

Hearing stories from folks like Tim, help remind me it’s OK to experience a saturated life and it also helps fuel me to be the mental health advocate I know I am.

Thanks again.

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Tim Dreby says:January 10, 2015 at 6:55 am

Thank you Marybeth for your support:

I too am relieved to be reminded it’s okay. Today, I needed to be reminded. So much of what we see in the system can make us forget this. It’s okay and it can be beautiful if we can just be free to just be.

Tim

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Michael E. says:January 30, 2015 at 5:51 pm

There’s a saying that many may be familiar with “keep on keeping on”. For me this interview/dialogue was one of the more ‘off beat’ ones I’ve heard so far. Off beat in the sense of fascinating, informative, occasionally on the slightly bizarre side [mainly because of my conditioning about ‘reality’, vulnerable, respectful, inclusive and ultimately oh so humnan. Thank you Tim for sharing, the contribution you offer to other lives, and for your choice to ‘keep on keeping on’. Will, I so appreciate your honest willingness to connect with others in a direct, respectful and inclusive way.

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Tim Dreby says:March 8, 2015 at 10:04 am

Thank you Michael, I really appreciate being appreciated for being vulnerable, true to myself, off-beat and supported by you.

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Tim Dreby says:March 8, 2015 at 10:00 am

Dear Will,

This comment is a little late; I’ve been very busy finishing up edits of my memoir, Fighting for Freedom in America which is due to be released by Hidden Thoughts Press as soon as the end of the month. In fact I wrote a response to your comments and accidentally erased it, so this is an effort to recapture that and address some of the ponderings that your work has left with me.

In terms of reality checking alternative realities, in my work with Special Messages one of the eight components I suggest might be universal, I call Tricksters. Tricksters are essentially ideas that come from Special Messages that could be true or could be false. Even if they diverge from mainstream thought, they may be more accurate or just accurate in a sense if they are believed in. This is essentially a magical or spiritual reality that can either work for you or against you until you learn how to make it always work for you.

If this sounds complicated, it’s not, it’s a concept that is as old as Methuselah in the bible. We all know how Babe Ruth pointed to the place where he hit the famous home run and how Muhammad Ali said, “I told you I was going to do it told you. I’m a Bad Bad Man.” Both icons said they were going to do something and then did it. Just like the little engine that could did, they told themselves they were going to do it, they believed in themselves and then their vision became reality.

The same is true of realities that become real via Special Messages; they become so believed in that they become realities in a sense. Thus in my case, the belief that I am being followed by the mafia comes from so many different sources that make my beliefs such that my reality becomes true in a very strong way. Thus, I thought my mafia family was trying to follow me and put me in the hospital and they did. I thought I was a political hostage and I became one. I thought that mafia people at work were harassing me, and they ended up harassing me.

Thus if I am trying to reality test I like to do what Will did for me in the interview: validate validate validate. Then when I come across something that may not be entirely accurate, I don’t check it, I ask if it is possible that that reality could become a Trickster.

I recall some of my wildest realities, that I could read California license plates through number and letter associations and tell what the government thought about the driver. This was linked of course to the associations of the sandwich specials at the Italian Deli I worked in and associations validated through music and folklore stories.

Then out of intense Message Crisis, ten years later, I read an article in the news paper that reveals that in Cuba this is actually a reality.

Thus, all the time I was right in a sense; yet the more focused I became on the alternative reality, the more I communicated about it (which I did not!) the less likely I was to obtain anything in this social world we call America.

By the way, since I have recovered and stabilized, the government has given me better and better license plates according to my magical association skills.

So am I right? Do I really work with real gangsters at my job?

It doesn’t matter.

But what I can say is that daily I am blessed with beautiful people who surrender their wide variety of beautiful cultures and come together in an effort to be vulnerable and voluntarily give to each other to mutually endure conditions and realities that aren’t known widely in mainstream culture. Indeed, when I lived under those conditions, I found them to be torturous. I called them concentration camps. I could see real genocide everywhere I went.

Thus, the world that my “gangster” partners live in is so inspiring, I decided to be like them in the interview. Every nook and cranny of their silenced stories need to be told so we can all see our world better for what it really is and so they can heal and we all can be better to each other.

Everyday I get to learn more about their real experiences and their real lives and their real beauty.

Ultimately that make me the greedy carpetbagging charleton. I am so thankful for all the lessons and the life that my family, my mafias, and my “gangster” heroes have given me. I do pray for peace serenity and health for all.

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SAFETY!!! says:May 9, 2015 at 8:26 am

You speak of experiences that many people have, but cannot talk about. I never had these experiences until I was put into the psychiatric system. How Ironic, that the very thing they tried to break from me–that hadn’t yet developed, this intuition or insight–basically–I realized due to their violence and assault on my mental and emotional existence.

I sense that you can see what I’m going through, and that is also true of me, I have had premonitions since I was 17 the last time I was hospitalized, and it started then—with the medications I was forced to take. I sort of let it roll away, the pain or trauma. I had no prior substance or self-harm issues when I was seventeen, and then I began waking up.

To the reality of reality itself! Maybe bravery is a beautiful thing, even when agents of darkness threaten to tear the truth from us, just simple ordinary citizens–who see things others can’t or refuse to because society has conditioned us to be fearful and submissive to deceit and control or whatever it is, they want us to kneel to the republic, and we stand for human freedom, so what? Call me a freedom fighter, well I’m not fighting or resisting–I am able to experience freedom, now I’m under some sort of investigation related to stuff I had no real involvement In, basically I’m screwed. Basically Im at odds with everything I hate, slavery…but wait, I don’t even know what I am considered? So what?

I’m not scared. Fuck em’

So what I have experienced? Hmmmmmmmmm……I would hesitate to call this reality the matrix, more like the creatrix–more like the multiverse, more like infinite possibilities layered over layers of realities, infinite loops, infinite dimensions of existence!!!

Maya, illusion, delusions, whatever. This is what AMERICA IS FACING!! We are facing a lot of secrecy.

I take medication, I comply with this system, and yet—covert reality is a nice term for it– a sweet way of saying the world is more than it appears. And God bless you! God is on my side too. On the side of the true Americans, unafraid and unashamed to show what they believe, no we aren’t what you would call prophets or ministers or whatever…

Simply being honest. I can’t even describe it. Reality itself. They’ll look back and say, 2015 Earth—What a joke! This is where the journey ends, and for me/I wished it to begin again.

My book is called SERENITY!

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Tim Dreby says:November 4, 2015 at 7:31 am

Wow, I really love this comment! I have been busy getting my book published and am just embarking on a marketing process. I am struck with how difficult this is and how difficult it is to get readers. I am very interested in your book and would love to collaborate with you in a marketing project to get our work and visions out. I am currently waiting for reviewers to get back to me and awards to review my work and it is not comfortable. I apologize for not responding sooner but maybe we can work together. The web page for my book is

Please feel free to visit my linked in page and contact me via this. I am going to look up your book. Maybe working together we can get the word out.

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Jenny Westberg says:April 25, 2015 at 5:41 pm

(Originally an email to Will Hall)

I just listened to one of your shows, and it was so full of amazing things, one after another, it may be the best one I’ve heard! Of course, it could be overtaken when I listen to another one – I should get to your site more! Well, I may not get there often, but when I do, it’s always a feast of awesome.

Tim Dreby, what a story! So many things rang true with me. Many, many experiences I’ve dealt with too. Listening to him, what he’s gone through, how much he’s accomplished, his experiences, his morality and work ethic, he is someone I admire. Perhaps even more than that, I was impressed by his attitude of complete acceptance — wow. Acceptance, that’s something I could use more of!! (AA, as you may know, is all about acceptance. So am I!…as far as they know, heh heh heh)

I seriously did not expect to get that much inspiration, hopefulness and just basic good cheer from a single radio show. Stunning! In a good way!

[I attempted here to say something about paranoia. I actually had a story I think you’d like, but it will have to wait, because instead I got off on a rant about the DSM, e-books, a herpes-infested tapeworm, and other vile and/or exciting topics. Upon reflection, I cut it mercilessly from the document and beat it into a tranquil permanent coma.]

Back to the radio show….

You too were outstanding. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a better interview – on Madness Radio or anywhere else. You always come across as insightful, calm, knowledgeable and well-prepared (to name just a few). This time, in addition, I noticed how you can respond to the interviewee in such a way that your response both restates and clarifies – or, if needed, explains – what they just said. I seriously don’t know how you do it.

Further, sometimes when responding you also give it a little tweak, and presto, different topic! So, in the same response, you can restate, clarify and/or explain, plus you can alter the topic a little or a lot. It’s kind of subtle, perhaps, but it’s there – and it’s remarkable,

Also I loved the way you brought in, more than once, how experiencing extreme states wasn’t just a problem, it had added to his life, helped him, given him new ideas, made him laugh or otherwise enriched his life. It was great you kept going back to that – I needed to hear it, and I’m sure I’m not the only one!

Really, overall, you surpassed yourself – I think it’s the best Will Hall I’ve ever heard – i.e. you are getting better and better!

[There was more but I had to delete it. Don’t worry, it was a quick deletion and the doctor assured us there was no pain. That paragraph was ready to be deleted. In a way, I think it WANTED deletion. So let’s all–Ahhhh screw it! Whatever, am I right? Let’s go back to my place, get drunk and read the will!]

Wow, today I’m deleting as much as I’m writing. It’s too bad after my death no one can publish a huge volume of my compiled deletions. All my “fans” and my “Facebook friends” would be lining up around the block. Literary gold – gone in a click!

And darn if I didn’t just think of something I’ve been meaning to email you about. Oh well, it’ll just have wait for a nice fresh email later! :-0

Jenny

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SAFETY!!! says:May 9, 2015 at 8:26 am

You speak of experiences that many people have, but cannot talk about. I never had these experiences until I was put into the psychiatric system. How Ironic, that the very thing they tried to break from me–that hadn’t yet developed, this intuition or insight–basically–I realized due to their violence and assault on my mental and emotional existence.

I sense that you can see what I’m going through, and that is also true of me, I have had premonitions since I was 17 the last time I was hospitalized, and it started then—with the medications I was forced to take. I sort of let it roll away, the pain or trauma. I had no prior substance or self-harm issues when I was seventeen, and then I began waking up.

To the reality of reality itself! Maybe bravery is a beautiful thing, even when agents of darkness threaten to tear the truth from us, just simple ordinary citizens–who see things others can’t or refuse to because society has conditioned us to be fearful and submissive to deceit and control or whatever it is, they want us to kneel to the republic, and we stand for human freedom, so what? Call me a freedom fighter, well I’m not fighting or resisting–I am able to experience freedom, now I’m under some sort of investigation related to stuff I had no real involvement In, basically I’m screwed. Basically Im at odds with everything I hate, slavery…but wait, I don’t even know what I am considered? So what?

I’m not scared. Fuck em’

So what I have experienced? Hmmmmmmmmm……I would hesitate to call this reality the matrix, more like the creatrix–more like the multiverse, more like infinite possibilities layered over layers of realities, infinite loops, infinite dimensions of existence!!!

Maya, illusion, delusions, whatever. This is what AMERICA IS FACING!! We are facing a lot of secrecy.

I take medication, I comply with this system, and yet—covert reality is a nice term for it– a sweet way of saying the world is more than it appears. And God bless you! God is on my side too. On the side of the true Americans, unafraid and unashamed to show what they believe, no we aren’t what you would call prophets or ministers or whatever…

Simply being honest. I can’t even describe it. Reality itself. They’ll look back and say, 2015 Earth—What a joke! This is where the journey ends, and for me/I wished it to begin again.

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2015 Book Awards

http://bookviral.com/shortlisted-for-2015-bookviral/4591767508

Healing the phenomena of mass shootings is possible!

As a Nation we need to learn about how to heal from mass shootings, not exacerbate them. Learning to learn from those who remain in backwards instead of further discriminating and devaluing them may help. So can groups that examine “psychosis!”

 

So often the public goes to catastrophes in order to learn its lessons, not to more average stories of resilience. Healing from the man from Kalamazoo who terrorized the city while driving for Uber killing seven and injuring one, can happen.

I work in the far reaches of a city hospital: in the historical section of a sizable complex; back at the entrance where the trash compacter sits; next to the morgue; where the old steam heaters spew. Here, I have started a particular group that explores the innards of “psychosis.” I seek to compartmentalize experiences that participants have suffered. We look at experiences we have in common and teach each other about the diversity of experiences and explanations for those experiences that cause trauma and distress. I have become adept at obtaining disclosures about experiences that have been secreted for years and years, even during organized treatment.

Even though none of my clients in the group, for all their traumatic experiences, have ever acted out via mass shootings, I know that they are high up on the list of scapegoats who will be further discriminated against due to the incident in Kalamazoo.

Indeed, witnessing the true stories of human torture that are shared in the room in the back ward might help someone understand why someone might be compelled to act in this manner. However, on the whole, as a social group, people who’ve experienced “psychosis” usually don’t act violent. Individuals who experience “psychosis” are less likely to act violent than the general public and are far more likely to be the recipient of abuse.

Back when I was six years into my career and working in what seemed like very dangerous and violent street contexts, this happened to me. One day I had someone say that I advocated too much for client rights and five days later I was taken from a ditch that I collapsed in and, like a snitch, admitted to a back ward in a state hospital. I had been beaten by cops during an effort to exit the country and driven eighty miles from my car. I lost everything and no-body believed my story.

Imagine losing everything and enduring what seems like never-ending depravity and torture and having it blamed on your biology and then being treated like you are dangerous!

The tally of mass shootings in America for 2016 numbers forty-nine as the days that remain in February dwindle. The rhetoric of public officials heard spinning off the radio dial is divided into two camps. Experts who are familiar with the criminology of such acts and law enforcement differentiate the motives so we all know how to respond: which scapegoat to blame; which side of the political spectrum to support. But in this process, are we coming close to considering that what we are doing is paving the way for more incidents?

I think the more we indulge in legal entitlement, rage and revenge in our grieving process as a people, the more we will exacerbate the conflict. We all need to be able to feel our feelings in order to heal. Furthermore, I believe that the more we use threats of eternal institutionalization and ignorance to gain compliance, the more we encourage people to isolate and keep mental health issues out of the mainstream, the more we will encourage and accelerate of the social phenomenon of mass murder.

If we want to learn how to handle things differently, we need to study those of us devalued on the backwards who not only endure tragedy, but also dream of healing the world. Groups that examine “psychosis” help! I support the Bay Area Hearing Voices Network and am available for interview.

 

How We Cope with the Tragedy of Mass Shootings!

This looks at how American Society deals with the issue of mass shootings by further scapegoating the mentally ill and dares to ask if the high level of stigma that results may at least in part be responsible for the escalation of these violent incidents

 

The tally of mass shootings in America for 2016 numbers forty-nine as the days that remain in February dwindle. The rhetoric of public officials heard spinning off the radio dial is divided into two camps. Experts who are familiar with the criminology of such acts and law enforcement differentiate the motives so we all know how to respond: which scapegoat to blame; which side of the political spectrum to support. Ultimately, a lot of attention is paid to the mental health of the perpetrator so that judgments can be passed, justice can be attained and grief and healing can ensue.

When I heard the story about the man from Kalamazoo who terrorized the city while driving for Uber killing seven and injuring one, I was extremely distressed. It’s true I, perhaps more than the average citizen, could imagine a host of scenarios that could have led to such random violence. I work in the far reaches of a city hospital: in the historical section of a sizable complex; back at the entrance where the trash compacter sits; next to the morgue; where the old steam heaters spew. Here, I have started a particular group that explores the innards of “psychosis.” I seek to compartmentalize experiences that participants have suffered. We look at experiences we have in common and teach each other about the diversity of experiences and explanations for those experiences that cause trauma and distress. I have become adept at obtaining disclosures about experiences that have been secreted for years and years, even during organized treatment.

Even though none of my clients in the group, for all their traumatic experiences, have ever acted out via mass shootings, I know that they are high up on the list of scapegoats who will be blamed for this incident. In my mind, they, with their stories of homelessness, abuse, and poverty will be the ones that face even more oppression and depravity as a result. Indeed, witnessing the true stories of human torture that are shared in the room in the back ward might help someone understand why someone might be compelled to act in this manner. However, on the whole, as a social group, people who’ve experienced “psychosis” usually don’t act violent. Individuals who experience “psychosis” are less likely to act violent than the general public and are far more likely to be the recipient of abuse.

But it is acts like the mass murder in Kalamazoo that cause the well documented danger stigma that make those with “psychosis” so likely to have danger projected on to them. Imagine losing everything and enduring what seems like never-ending depravity and torture and having it blamed on your biology and then being treated like you are dangerous: that can lead someone to act out violently.

Back when I was six years into my career and working in what seemed like very dangerous and violent street contexts, this happened to me. One day I had someone say that I advocated too much for client rights and five days later I was taken from a ditch that I collapsed in and, like a snitch, admitted to a back ward in a state hospital. I had been beaten by cops during an effort to exit the country and driven eighty miles from my car. I lost everything and no-body believed my story. Though I am far from being violent, ever, I could understand how someone who wasn’t accustomed to being bullied the way I always have been might respond to the ridicule and abuse by cop and the years of ridicule and abuse that would follow, through violence.

I have written a memoir that goes through many of the specifics of what happened to me during that five day period and the years that followed. I wrote the book to help explain to the public some of the dilemmas that people with “psychosis” face. It has received almost all five star reviews and already has made at least one short-list for an award. I have had three radio interviews, but still few book sales. So often the public goes to catastrophes in order to learn its lessons, not to more average stories of resilience.

I think the more we indulge in legal entitlement, rage and revenge in our grieving process as a people, the more we will exacerbate the conflict. We all need to be able to feel our feelings in order to heal. Furthermore, I believe that the more we use threats of eternal institutionalization and ignorance to gain compliance, the more we encourage people to isolate and keep mental health issues out of the mainstream, the more we will encourage and accelerate of the social phenomenon of mass murder. In the press, a mass murder does more to accelerate stigma than a story of resilience decreases it. I am available for interview.