Healing from Schizophrenia/Psychosis/Severe MH issues?

I've always had the belief in complete healing from psychosis.

In researching & reading about the subject of mental health; it seems apparent that there are approaches & people that have cured their patients. This fact seems lost on most people - & I'm weary, largely hopeless, & despairing of; & have largely given up in trying to raise awareness of all this.

I did however want to share a few pieces of writing that I have come across over the years that sums things up quite well. There is a lot of things that I've found over the years - books, approaches, Doctors that have healed their patients, articles, web sites etc. Anyway - here is a small excerpt from it all -

__________________________________________________ _

"Those people who, through their expression of pain or confusion, fall into the arms of the 'helping professions', perhaps becoming psychiatrically diagnosed as psychotic or neurotic or 'inadequate personalities', have in my experience almost all arrived at their predicament through an entirely comprehensible, rational and (of course with hindsight) predictable process.

If you run over a pea with a steam roller you don't blame the pea for what happens to it, nor, sensibly, do you treat its injuries as some kind of shortcoming inherent in its internal structure, whether inherited or acquired.

Similarly, if you place the (literally) unimaginably sensitive organisms which human babies are in the kind of social and environmental machinery which we seem bent on 'perfecting', it can be no real surprise that so many of them end up, as adults, as lost, bemused, miserable and crazy as they do.

The only surprise, perhaps, is that so many pass as 'normal',"

David Smail
Taking Care

__________________________________________________ __

"Although outreach and crisis services are needed, without a 24/7 front end system sanctuary like Soteria, CooperRiis, Diabasis House, the Open Dialogue or the sanctuary - folks don't have a chance to avoid having their potentially transformative psychosis being aborted with medications and a Schizophrenic diagnosis being laid on them for the rest of their lives. Loren Mosher on alternative approaches to psychosis, was agreed that all the sanctuaries like Laing's Kingsley Hall, John Weir Perry's Diabasis House, Soteria, Burch House, Windhorse, the Agnews Project. And the med free, no restraints, no diagnosis, open door Ward sanctuary; plus the European and Scandinavian Open Dialogue places- well they ALL basically do the same thing. They provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for a person to go through a psychotic process and come out the other side-'Weller than well'- as Karl Menninger famously said. By being held in the healing crucible of a caring, open hearted setting, the psyche naturally sets it's own course and heals from the early wounds that made a dramatic psychosis renewal necessary in the first place. If instead, a person is labelled as having a diseased brain and medicated into emotional numbness and submission, then the energy and power and symbolic expression of the purposive psychosis simply falls back into the unconscious. Then whenever a loss or trauma happens, the person de-compensates into an ever more amorphous emotional and fragmented daze of so-called chronic psychosis where renewal and healing is far more difficult."

- Anon Forum Poster

_____________________________________________

"I have now, after long practical experience, come to hold the view that the psychogenic causation of the disease is more probable than the toxic [physico-chemical] causation. There are a number of mild and ephemeral but manifestly schizophrenic illnesses - quite apart from the even more common latent psychoses - which begin purely psychogenically, run an equally psychological course (aside from certain presumably toxic nuances) and can be completely cured by a purely psychotherapeutic procedure. I have seen this even in severe cases".

- Carl Jung

Jung & Schizophrenia

Eighty-odd years ago, Jung voiced his deep concern that the powerful, often vivid, chaotic and disturbing psychology of schizophrenia, which he had so painstakingly chartered and honoured throughout the many years he treated and healed schizophrenia sufferers, had not been given the respect and serious attention it deserved. He likewise lamented the appalling lack of knowledge of the psychology of schizophrenia among those of his own profession, a situation which has changed precious little today.

Sadly, however, Jung's vast body of invaluable work has fallen for the most on hostile ground and deaf ears, ironically in psychiatric circles, largely because Jung's respect for 'the reality of the psyche' and its religious, mythic and spiritual needs, dimensions and instincts poses a threat to the materialist bias that underscores drug-based, or biologic psychiatry, but also because his personally demanding and soul-centred approach to psychiatry is radically at odds with the detached 'illusion of expertise' on which biologic psychiatry's mask of authority, presumed sanity, and stagnant wasteland of 'brain chemistry' dogma are shakily grounded.

In place of dry textbook knowledge learned by rote, Jung gives precedence to living primary experience, hence his assertion that we understand nothing psychologically unless we've experienced it. In this sense, the people who know most about schizophrenia are the sufferers themselves, followed closely by those who have 'been there' and have pulled themselves out of a psychosis and so 'know the road'. Such folk, as invaluable 'wounded healers', can therefore often guide others groping along similar roads, or pull people out of the quagmires and tricky labyrinths of psychosis.

Equal Therapeutic Dialogue

In place of the practitioner's mask of fatherly authority, Jung puts the mutual vulnerability, openness, imaginal richness, honesty and trust of the therapeutic dialogue, in which patient and therapist confront one another on equal terms and through which both stand to learn and grow. In place of forced treatment, hasty consultations and toxic psychiatric drugs, Jung puts a trust in nature, unconscious wisdom and the healing which, residing in the 'patient patient', is catalysed and midwifed by the caring therapist. No wonder he poses a threat to those who esteem power, professional detachment, diplomas, diagnostic manuals and drug company profits over the empowerment, equality, freedom, healing and dignity of the patient.

Needless to say, there are other closely related and equally grave moral issues at stake here. For instance, imagine, if you will, that a reputable medical practitioner had come forward with evidence of a safe, natural cure for cancer, but that the medical establishment had ignored the evidence and, worse still, had kept the findings from cancer sufferers for fear of losing income and power through their monopoly over the provision of existing anti-cancer 'treatments', which do not heal. By the same token, Jung - and others who have followed in his wake - cured his schizophrenic patients with psychotherapy alone. The tragedy of the 'mental health crisis' is not only, then, that so many already fragile and wounded people have been damaged and driven to suicide; what is equally tragic is that all along, there have existed natural, re-empowering, healing alternatives to psychiatric drugs; alternatives which biologic psychiatry, the Government, Schizophrenia Fellowships and drug companies have in a morally disgraceful way ignored, or deliberately kept from sufferers and the public."

_________________________________________________

Acknowledging The Survivor: Exclusion, Trivialisation and Denial

Exclusion, Trivialisation and Denial; Society's refusal to Acknowledge, Honour and Integrate the trauma and human rights violations experienced by the psychiatric survivor.

By Grainne Humphrys.

In looking at exclusion I would like to use the systemic lens. That which is excluded creates imbalance and so, I believe, as a society we become imbalanced at a collective level when we refuse to acknowledge difficult and painful truths within our society. Nowhere is this felt more keenly than by the psychiatric survivor. As a so-called `civilised' society we collude in our collective trivialisation of both the violation of human rights of this marginalised minority group and the trauma, pain and silencing of this group. This I believe is our last great civil rights movement.

The `treatment' of distressed individuals with labelling and drugging is simply not acknowledged publicly by society at large, and if it is, it is trivialised and skimmed over. It is given lip-service but it is, by no means, acknowledged at a profound level. In order for survivors to deeply heal they need deep acknowledgement. This has not yet occurred publicly by the mental health professionals (bar a few) or the general public (look, for example, at the recent acknowledgement of abuse survivors in the Ryan Report, and the watershed and paradigm shift that created. This was painful but healing).

The book 'Deprived of Our Humanity' - The Case Against Neuroleptic Drugs, by Lars Martensson; should be compulsory reading for all people going into the psychiatric profession as doctors and nurses – though reading it may raise many questions around whether they want to continue working in that system. What is happening on a daily basis in many hospitals is barbaric and a crime against our humanity and it is simply not acknowledged. Why is this? Why does it feel so threatening for people to acknowledge this truth? By not acknowledging it, we are adding fuel to an unimaginable well of pain and a raging fire of frustration and anger. Perhaps we are experiencing collective guilt at witnessing and knowing about such violations (however much we push this knowledge to the back of our minds, it taps into our own fear about survival). Through our turning a blind eye though, we render the psychiatric survivor invisible. Perhaps it just doesn't feel safe to acknowledge their experience.

I would like to coin a new phrase; `lip-service-providers'. We are all lip-service-providers to the psychiatric survivor. I believe if the deep pain of survivors is truly acknowledged the house of cards will fall, the domino effect will be set in motion. It is not a pain many of us can identify with (though it does tap into our own pain of being human). Neither should it become a pain competition. The pain of the psychiatric survivor is, however, a very particular kind of pain; it is the pain of being silenced over and over again. It is the pain of being erased, tortured, silenced and rendered powerless. It is unimaginable for most of us, a violation of our basic human rights we take for granted. It is just not within our realm of experience and this too has to be acknowledged. In attempting to compare our pain we deny theirs and add fuel to a justified anger, we simply cannot compare or understand or fathom it, because it is not within our range of experience. It is another subtle way of denying their experience.

We want the psychiatric survivor's raw pain to be packaged into a more easily digestible form, a socially acceptable and `appropriate' way. It follows that we don't allow the sheer depth and range of their experience. It is not because the survivor doesn't have a voice, they do, but they are just not allowed to really use it in whatever way they so choose or wish to, or we will reject it. In effect, we cannot hold or contain their pain as a society or as a group. We collectively repress their experience due to our difficulty in facing and acknowledging this truth about our capacity for man's inhumanity to man. We re-package their experience and present it in a `safe' and `politically correct' form, brushing over it and side-stepping past it. We are repelled by their anger, it upsets our civilised sensibilities. It infringes on our safe bubbles of imagined democracy that we have created.

At a deeper level it is our failure to acknowledge the original trauma before people experiencing distress and overwhelm enter the psychiatric services that hurts vulnerable people the most though. We hurt them three times; by ignoring the original trauma and then by labelling and drugging (in effect, denying) the trauma. We then hurt them again by not allowing them to express their anger at this violation of both their human rights and their right to their trauma. We label the layers and I believe it is that is what we feel most guilt around because we collude with psychiatry. We all know collectively deep down and subconsciously that there is no such thing as `chemical imbalance' but trauma is taboo in our culture. This really taps into our victim/ perpetrator energy, our inherent fragility as humans, our fear of the unknown, our primal instincts. Our hiding behind a veneer of `respectability' separates us from those experiencing crisis and overwhelm. We don't want to look trauma in the eye. But acknowledging this trauma truth holds enormous power and depth of healing if we can do it. We do an enormous disservice to the psychiatric survivor in not revering and honouring their experience.

We need to search deep inside ourselves and our hearts as to why we feel so threatened by the psychiatric survivor's pain. This is not an easy emotional task, it requires deep and difficult work. Survivor's anger can be as much about not having their pain and experience acknowledged by us, as about the abuse of their human rights within the psychiatric system. This, to my mind, is the crux of why change and deep healing cannot occur because;

(1) We cannot fathom their pain
(2) We feel threatened in some way by this pain
(3) We deny it and put it into shadow

The facts are there, the recovery stories are there but we barely give the facts lip-service. We need to wake up to these facts. We get distracted by frameworks and models and politics and language and all the trappings of our minds. We have one set of rules for us and another for the psychiatric survivor. We skirt around the issues that really count (like acknowledging feelings). I believe this is because we are afraid of that depth of emotion. Indeed as a culture we trivialise our emotions and are afraid of them. We are governed by logic and rationale which moves us away from our hearts and the language of our souls.

Psychiatric survivors are not acknowledged. In fact, my feeling is that they are put into collective shadow and their pain is trivialised and even patronised. In order for us all to integrate as a society, we need to open our hearts and create a space for all those who have been excluded, put aside our own pain, to acknowledge their pain (that we cannot even begin to imagine because, quite simply, our human rights have never been violated to such an extent. This is a fact we need to acknowledge. This is our work, not the survivor's). I believe our difficulty in acknowledging the survivor stems from our fear of acknowledging our collective perpetrator energy. The survivor is a precious reminder of our ability to deny our perpetrator and how blocking this aspect off, we prevent integration and deep healing. The survivor has much to teach us, their lessons are gifts, but like all difficult lessons, many of us turn away and resist the challenge for true growth.

Labelling, forced drugging, coercion, incarceration is a barbaric violation of what we hold most dear, our human rights, our right to be human. The fact that it is then called `care' is a denial of what it really is. I stand in awe of people who survive this system. The way it is then glossed over and trivialised by people further adds to that denial. This actually fuels and reinforces anger (is it any wonder?) It excludes the survivor and their experience. It is a culture of covert abuse.

We should not pretend that we can understand or fathom this pain, be it lost years, chemical damage or unimaginable trauma, just as we cannot understand what it is to be in a concentration camp or to be a victim of war. We need to allow survivors their pain, we need to acknowledge it and bow down to honour it. This movement (of the soul) towards acknowledging a difficult and painful truth will ultimately heal us at a societal level and allow psychiatric survivors the journey home to their rightful place within society.

_______________________________________________

I cried when I read back over all that...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRyLmpOc8QM

You may benefit from working on the self esteem as you note you have ‘very low self esteem & confidence.’ This affects our brain chemistry powerfully.

Sometimes when other things don’t seem to work an overgrowth of unfriendly organisms can be an issue. This is much more widespread than thought & can cause a plethora of physical & psychological symptoms. There are some useful internal cleanses such as RenewLife’s First Cleanse, followed by CleanseSmart.
This isn’t medical advice or a diagnosis.

some people, especially women but men as well, have their schizophrenia 'disappear' once they remove gluten and lactose from the diet.

google it!

-dale

Did either of you read what is written above? Did any of it register?

Thought that I'd add this; that I wrote a few years ago about some of my experiences -

Posted by me on a Forum on 14-09-08

http://www.mentalhealthforum.net/for...us-deus-aderit

I am going out on a bit of a limb here. I wanted to share on this site my experiences of “psychosis” or the content of ASC’s (Altered states of Consciousness). I totally disagree with orthodox psychiatry that it is unhealthy to discuss this stuff; in fact I think it is about the most healthy thing you can do, in relation to working through such things, & gaining insight, perspective, & recovery. It is through discussing such things with other people within an environment of trust, that I have been able to get some kind of framework of understanding. I have described the experiences from the perspective of when I was in them, & I haven’t gone into a lot of detail, just a basic outline really. Below is what I have posted on another site. It is personal, but if it can help someone get some identification, that they are not alone, & help them get some insight into their own experience, then that is a good thing.


Interestingly, the people I have found to be of most therapeutic help by far, has been other sufferers; initially when I started discussing such things with other “patients” in the hospital, & found two other people who had experienced things very similar, & later on when I have been lucky enough to find survivors within the community & with on-line interactions.
Of course all this could be described in terms of the delusional & as meaningless nonsense with no intrinsic value; there are other ways of seeing such things, & as a method of recovery I have formed a kind of map or framework for the “psychotic” experiences I have gone through. I have found a personal meaning & way of integrating & processing such things. The last time I was severely ill was over 4 years ago, & I feel like I have only now gained some closure or integration on what went on. There are aspects to these experiences that I will never resolve in this lifetime & recovery is an ongoing & continuing thing. I have not been able to relegate such things only to the past & move on in the same way as I once tried. It is almost like two realities or lives; that of the “other” – the one in which I am in ASC’s & my “normal” or sane life. Each life has had its own progression.


I will start at around the beginning; however, to truly try to impart some of these experiences would take a book or a series of them. I started writing a book last year about these things, but it is shelved for the time being.


17 – After a period of time of reading a practising the occult & taking a lot of different drugs this happened. One evening I became very euphoric, I had smoked a joint but I was not out of it. I was convinced that I was on the verge of discovering the meaning of life & we were all going to Heaven. I sat late at night with some books I had been reading & turned my conscious mind inward to the perfect power within. I heard as clear as spoken a disappearing scream inside of me & was convinced that was my soul leaving me for Hell & I had lost it to the Devil. It was like being transported into another World, like I had been turned inside out, my body vibrated, the room vibrated, the moon through the window danced around. I was in a state many, many more times more powerful than any hallucinogen that I had previously taken. I knew the future – the World had been taken over by highly technologically advanced Aliens who had turned most of the population of the planet into Zombies, if I slept I would become one too, now I knew the truth. By all means I had to not sleep. This whole scenario was being run by the Devil, I had to find the true Christian underground. Over a week later with still having not slept, numerous arrests, & much of the same I was sectioned.
Despite how the above sounds, it is difficult to impart just how believable all that was at the time. There was no question that any of it wasn’t true. I wasn’t mad in any way shape or form, the thought that I was never entered my mind. The state I was in, was to me; utterly horrific & so terrifying that I could not imagine at the time anything being worse.


21 – I had died & was in the afterlife, it was much the same as here, we carry on the same. There was detailed content connected to this experience, mainly concerning very serious crime; there was no distinction between what was part of the subjective experience & objective “reality”. I was in the state of believing I was dead & in the afterlife for around 4 months after which time I became convinced of some very paranoid ideas, including believing I was the devil, which ended in a suicide attempt & another admission in a psych hospital. There was also around the time of the admission the realisation that I was God – literally the creator of the Universe incarnate, & I had a Holy family on Earth; we were part of a grand scheme to initiate an all out nuclear detonation, in which I would press the button to bring into existence, or reveal the spiritual reality behind material existence; which was an illusion anyway. (Be thankful I wasn’t working for NORAD at the time. LOL)


25 – There was a definite progression with the content of the ideas, & the complexity of the experiences, although they followed from the previous two episodes. My environment was filled with very high & hidden advanced technology. I had been around since the creation of the Earth, & my life which I was aware, my physical form, was the projection of another life in which I was an immortal, living in multiple forms on the earth, which would come alive when all the pieces of that existence would come together. This involved things like tombs with relics & the like.


The last three episodes have involved similar themes but were progressively more complex. I think you get the idea. Themes which developed were “Light” & “dark” Alien races battling in secret on the Earth & throughout Space. Religious themes, themes centring around immortality & parallel Worlds, dimensions & realities existing alongside our own, often in which they coincided or I was jumping between, they were mixed up & usually involved one which was real & one illusionary, like there was two of everyone & everything.


There also developed over these experiences, the ideas of underground cities, high speed underground roadways, & complex underground passageways systems; which were interconnected into many houses.


The last time I was ill I saw a vision that stayed with me for many days & was so tangible it was more real than anything else. It was terrifying to me at the time.


Throughout all these states I have found that I have entered into these ASC’s quickly, & come out of them quickly (a period of usually 3 months, sometimes shorter, & sometimes longer). After I have come out of them; I have good insight into them, I can challenge, question & rationalise what has happened, & see many angles, including the orthodox, although that bores me. But I can view these things as entirely subjective experiences which happened “inside my head” & do not necessarily relate to anything “objective”. In a way these things are real at the time; they are to all intents & purposes happening to me. I do of course entertain many ideas & different theories & angles to what may be “True” about such things in an objective sense, but more importantly from the point of view of a psychological mechanism.


When I have been “well” I have lived a productive life, & reasonable full considering. As I said; it is like the “other” life is not real in the same way as it is when I am ill; then that other life becomes the one which is real.
I hope you find that as interesting as I did writing it. I find it therapeutic, almost cathartic to put this stuff down in words & to discuss it.


Foot note; After the first “psychotic” break, I took a literal interpretation from what I had experienced; & spent around 4 years practising a personnel Christianity, & looking for answers by obsessively reading & re reading the Bible. After which time I started to gain other perspectives & to view the whole experience differently. I no longer see such things from the point of view of a Christian paradigm. Although I do think the original “break” was connected to the influence of a “Dark Spirit” – what resonates with me as more of an explanation is from a Jungian sense – that my ego self, or conscious mind was overwhelmed by my Unconsciousness, “ego death” or the dissolution of the ego occurred. This raises different questions & viewpoints. There are other explanations & angles I have to these things now too.

Originally Posted by spiritualized

I've always had the belief in complete healing from psychosis.

In researching & reading about the subject of mental health; it seems apparent that there are approaches & people that have cured their patients. This fact seems lost on most people - & I'm weary, largely hopeless, & despairing of; & have largely given up in trying to raise awareness of all this.

I did however want to share a few pieces of writing that I have come across over the years that sums things up quite well. There is a lot of things that I've found over the years - books, approaches, Doctors that have healed their patients, articles, web sites etc. Anyway - here is a small excerpt from it all -

__________________________________________________ _

"Those people who, through their expression of pain or confusion, fall into the arms of the 'helping professions', perhaps becoming psychiatrically diagnosed as psychotic or neurotic or 'inadequate personalities', have in my experience almost all arrived at their predicament through an entirely comprehensible, rational and (of course with hindsight) predictable process.

If you run over a pea with a steam roller you don't blame the pea for what happens to it, nor, sensibly, do you treat its injuries as some kind of shortcoming inherent in its internal structure, whether inherited or acquired.

Similarly, if you place the (literally) unimaginably sensitive organisms which human babies are in the kind of social and environmental machinery which we seem bent on 'perfecting', it can be no real surprise that so many of them end up, as adults, as lost, bemused, miserable and crazy as they do.

The only surprise, perhaps, is that so many pass as 'normal',"

David Smail
Taking Care

__________________________________________________ __

"Although outreach and crisis services are needed, without a 24/7 front end system sanctuary like Soteria, CooperRiis, Diabasis House, the Open Dialogue or the sanctuary - folks don't have a chance to avoid having their potentially transformative psychosis being aborted with medications and a Schizophrenic diagnosis being laid on them for the rest of their lives. Loren Mosher on alternative approaches to psychosis, was agreed that all the sanctuaries like Laing's Kingsley Hall, John Weir Perry's Diabasis House, Soteria, Burch House, Windhorse, the Agnews Project. And the med free, no restraints, no diagnosis, open door Ward sanctuary; plus the European and Scandinavian Open Dialogue places- well they ALL basically do the same thing. They provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for a person to go through a psychotic process and come out the other side-'Weller than well'- as Karl Menninger famously said. By being held in the healing crucible of a caring, open hearted setting, the psyche naturally sets it's own course and heals from the early wounds that made a dramatic psychosis renewal necessary in the first place. If instead, a person is labelled as having a diseased brain and medicated into emotional numbness and submission, then the energy and power and symbolic expression of the purposive psychosis simply falls back into the unconscious. Then whenever a loss or trauma happens, the person de-compensates into an ever more amorphous emotional and fragmented daze of so-called chronic psychosis where renewal and healing is far more difficult."

- Anon Forum Poster

_____________________________________________

"I have now, after long practical experience, come to hold the view that the psychogenic causation of the disease is more probable than the toxic [physico-chemical] causation. There are a number of mild and ephemeral but manifestly schizophrenic illnesses - quite apart from the even more common latent psychoses - which begin purely psychogenically, run an equally psychological course (aside from certain presumably toxic nuances) and can be completely cured by a purely psychotherapeutic procedure. I have seen this even in severe cases".

- Carl Jung

Jung & Schizophrenia

Eighty-odd years ago, Jung voiced his deep concern that the powerful, often vivid, chaotic and disturbing psychology of schizophrenia, which he had so painstakingly chartered and honoured throughout the many years he treated and healed schizophrenia sufferers, had not been given the respect and serious attention it deserved. He likewise lamented the appalling lack of knowledge of the psychology of schizophrenia among those of his own profession, a situation which has changed precious little today.

Sadly, however, Jung's vast body of invaluable work has fallen for the most on hostile ground and deaf ears, ironically in psychiatric circles, largely because Jung's respect for 'the reality of the psyche' and its religious, mythic and spiritual needs, dimensions and instincts poses a threat to the materialist bias that underscores drug-based, or biologic psychiatry, but also because his personally demanding and soul-centred approach to psychiatry is radically at odds with the detached 'illusion of expertise' on which biologic psychiatry's mask of authority, presumed sanity, and stagnant wasteland of 'brain chemistry' dogma are shakily grounded.

In place of dry textbook knowledge learned by rote, Jung gives precedence to living primary experience, hence his assertion that we understand nothing psychologically unless we've experienced it. In this sense, the people who know most about schizophrenia are the sufferers themselves, followed closely by those who have 'been there' and have pulled themselves out of a psychosis and so 'know the road'. Such folk, as invaluable 'wounded healers', can therefore often guide others groping along similar roads, or pull people out of the quagmires and tricky labyrinths of psychosis.

Equal Therapeutic Dialogue

In place of the practitioner's mask of fatherly authority, Jung puts the mutual vulnerability, openness, imaginal richness, honesty and trust of the therapeutic dialogue, in which patient and therapist confront one another on equal terms and through which both stand to learn and grow. In place of forced treatment, hasty consultations and toxic psychiatric drugs, Jung puts a trust in nature, unconscious wisdom and the healing which, residing in the 'patient patient', is catalysed and midwifed by the caring therapist. No wonder he poses a threat to those who esteem power, professional detachment, diplomas, diagnostic manuals and drug company profits over the empowerment, equality, freedom, healing and dignity of the patient.

Needless to say, there are other closely related and equally grave moral issues at stake here. For instance, imagine, if you will, that a reputable medical practitioner had come forward with evidence of a safe, natural cure for cancer, but that the medical establishment had ignored the evidence and, worse still, had kept the findings from cancer sufferers for fear of losing income and power through their monopoly over the provision of existing anti-cancer 'treatments', which do not heal. By the same token, Jung - and others who have followed in his wake - cured his schizophrenic patients with psychotherapy alone. The tragedy of the 'mental health crisis' is not only, then, that so many already fragile and wounded people have been damaged and driven to suicide; what is equally tragic is that all along, there have existed natural, re-empowering, healing alternatives to psychiatric drugs; alternatives which biologic psychiatry, the Government, Schizophrenia Fellowships and drug companies have in a morally disgraceful way ignored, or deliberately kept from sufferers and the public."

_________________________________________________

Acknowledging The Survivor: Exclusion, Trivialisation and Denial

Exclusion, Trivialisation and Denial; Society's refusal to Acknowledge, Honour and Integrate the trauma and human rights violations experienced by the psychiatric survivor.

By Grainne Humphrys.

In looking at exclusion I would like to use the systemic lens. That which is excluded creates imbalance and so, I believe, as a society we become imbalanced at a collective level when we refuse to acknowledge difficult and painful truths within our society. Nowhere is this felt more keenly than by the psychiatric survivor. As a so-called `civilised' society we collude in our collective trivialisation of both the violation of human rights of this marginalised minority group and the trauma, pain and silencing of this group. This I believe is our last great civil rights movement.

The `treatment' of distressed individuals with labelling and drugging is simply not acknowledged publicly by society at large, and if it is, it is trivialised and skimmed over. It is given lip-service but it is, by no means, acknowledged at a profound level. In order for survivors to deeply heal they need deep acknowledgement. This has not yet occurred publicly by the mental health professionals (bar a few) or the general public (look, for example, at the recent acknowledgement of abuse survivors in the Ryan Report, and the watershed and paradigm shift that created. This was painful but healing).

The book 'Deprived of Our Humanity' - The Case Against Neuroleptic Drugs, by Lars Martensson; should be compulsory reading for all people going into the psychiatric profession as doctors and nurses – though reading it may raise many questions around whether they want to continue working in that system. What is happening on a daily basis in many hospitals is barbaric and a crime against our humanity and it is simply not acknowledged. Why is this? Why does it feel so threatening for people to acknowledge this truth? By not acknowledging it, we are adding fuel to an unimaginable well of pain and a raging fire of frustration and anger. Perhaps we are experiencing collective guilt at witnessing and knowing about such violations (however much we push this knowledge to the back of our minds, it taps into our own fear about survival). Through our turning a blind eye though, we render the psychiatric survivor invisible. Perhaps it just doesn't feel safe to acknowledge their experience.

I would like to coin a new phrase; `lip-service-providers'. We are all lip-service-providers to the psychiatric survivor. I believe if the deep pain of survivors is truly acknowledged the house of cards will fall, the domino effect will be set in motion. It is not a pain many of us can identify with (though it does tap into our own pain of being human). Neither should it become a pain competition. The pain of the psychiatric survivor is, however, a very particular kind of pain; it is the pain of being silenced over and over again. It is the pain of being erased, tortured, silenced and rendered powerless. It is unimaginable for most of us, a violation of our basic human rights we take for granted. It is just not within our realm of experience and this too has to be acknowledged. In attempting to compare our pain we deny theirs and add fuel to a justified anger, we simply cannot compare or understand or fathom it, because it is not within our range of experience. It is another subtle way of denying their experience.

We want the psychiatric survivor's raw pain to be packaged into a more easily digestible form, a socially acceptable and `appropriate' way. It follows that we don't allow the sheer depth and range of their experience. It is not because the survivor doesn't have a voice, they do, but they are just not allowed to really use it in whatever way they so choose or wish to, or we will reject it. In effect, we cannot hold or contain their pain as a society or as a group. We collectively repress their experience due to our difficulty in facing and acknowledging this truth about our capacity for man's inhumanity to man. We re-package their experience and present it in a `safe' and `politically correct' form, brushing over it and side-stepping past it. We are repelled by their anger, it upsets our civilised sensibilities. It infringes on our safe bubbles of imagined democracy that we have created.

At a deeper level it is our failure to acknowledge the original trauma before people experiencing distress and overwhelm enter the psychiatric services that hurts vulnerable people the most though. We hurt them three times; by ignoring the original trauma and then by labelling and drugging (in effect, denying) the trauma. We then hurt them again by not allowing them to express their anger at this violation of both their human rights and their right to their trauma. We label the layers and I believe it is that is what we feel most guilt around because we collude with psychiatry. We all know collectively deep down and subconsciously that there is no such thing as `chemical imbalance' but trauma is taboo in our culture. This really taps into our victim/ perpetrator energy, our inherent fragility as humans, our fear of the unknown, our primal instincts. Our hiding behind a veneer of `respectability' separates us from those experiencing crisis and overwhelm. We don't want to look trauma in the eye. But acknowledging this trauma truth holds enormous power and depth of healing if we can do it. We do an enormous disservice to the psychiatric survivor in not revering and honouring their experience.

We need to search deep inside ourselves and our hearts as to why we feel so threatened by the psychiatric survivor's pain. This is not an easy emotional task, it requires deep and difficult work. Survivor's anger can be as much about not having their pain and experience acknowledged by us, as about the abuse of their human rights within the psychiatric system. This, to my mind, is the crux of why change and deep healing cannot occur because;

(1) We cannot fathom their pain
(2) We feel threatened in some way by this pain
(3) We deny it and put it into shadow

The facts are there, the recovery stories are there but we barely give the facts lip-service. We need to wake up to these facts. We get distracted by frameworks and models and politics and language and all the trappings of our minds. We have one set of rules for us and another for the psychiatric survivor. We skirt around the issues that really count (like acknowledging feelings). I believe this is because we are afraid of that depth of emotion. Indeed as a culture we trivialise our emotions and are afraid of them. We are governed by logic and rationale which moves us away from our hearts and the language of our souls.

Psychiatric survivors are not acknowledged. In fact, my feeling is that they are put into collective shadow and their pain is trivialised and even patronised. In order for us all to integrate as a society, we need to open our hearts and create a space for all those who have been excluded, put aside our own pain, to acknowledge their pain (that we cannot even begin to imagine because, quite simply, our human rights have never been violated to such an extent. This is a fact we need to acknowledge. This is our work, not the survivor's). I believe our difficulty in acknowledging the survivor stems from our fear of acknowledging our collective perpetrator energy. The survivor is a precious reminder of our ability to deny our perpetrator and how blocking this aspect off, we prevent integration and deep healing. The survivor has much to teach us, their lessons are gifts, but like all difficult lessons, many of us turn away and resist the challenge for true growth.

Labelling, forced drugging, coercion, incarceration is a barbaric violation of what we hold most dear, our human rights, our right to be human. The fact that it is then called `care' is a denial of what it really is. I stand in awe of people who survive this system. The way it is then glossed over and trivialised by people further adds to that denial. This actually fuels and reinforces anger (is it any wonder?) It excludes the survivor and their experience. It is a culture of covert abuse.

We should not pretend that we can understand or fathom this pain, be it lost years, chemical damage or unimaginable trauma, just as we cannot understand what it is to be in a concentration camp or to be a victim of war. We need to allow survivors their pain, we need to acknowledge it and bow down to honour it. This movement (of the soul) towards acknowledging a difficult and painful truth will ultimately heal us at a societal level and allow psychiatric survivors the journey home to their rightful place within society.

_______________________________________________

I cried when I read back over all that...

If you are resonating with the deep TRUTH of what this is saying.....


You are already in the minority of those with True Sight....... Insight!



I move you are not ill at all. I move you have been lied to and misunderstood.



Many a wise man/woman have had to pack up and leave all they new because of the sheer weight of stupidity around them.


Personally ...... I would sell off everything and disappear to an organic farm and tell no-one if ever such fools tried to dictate their delusions onto my life.



Ask yourself TRULY and DEEPLY "AM I ILL? or DID SOMEONE CONVINCE ME I WAS?"


If you have been drugged your body will go through a detox phase which may last a year...... should you decide to quit the drugs. Living on an organic farm or even a Indian Reservation(one which returned to the old ways) is far preferable even going through detox then remaining bound be fools!



I promise only Truth...... no more~

I wish it all were as 'easy & simple' as you make it all sound.

But I do appreciate where your coming from; & the sentiments.

I'm not ill in the sense that psychiatry says that I am; no.

But I am really struggling honestly with a lot of genuinely difficult problems - both personal and psychological - (at my best). & without a lot of help & support (which I don't have in the ways that I need) - I don't know what I am meant to do?

I feel hopelessly addicted to neuroleptic drugs - I go catatonic when I stop them (even taking a 2 year tapered withdrawal at the last attempt).

Where does this help that I need come from? & it's not some b*ll**** in my diet before anyone else posts another moronic post about supplements, food allergies or any of the other similar half baked nonsense replies in this thread.

Originally Posted by spiritualized

I wish it all were as 'easy & simple' as you make it all sound.

But I do appreciate where your coming from; & the sentiments.

I'm not ill in the sense that psychiatry says that I am; no.

But I am really struggling honestly with a lot of genuinely difficult problems - both personal and psychological - (at my best).

Yes..... everyone does but most HIDE it~! If you knew the problems the people you relied on for help..... you would find others and leave them.

& without a lot of help & support (which I don't have in the ways that I need)

Are you truly getting help from anyone or are you being empowered to remain ill only to boost there EGOs?

- I don't know what I am meant to do?

Of course you don't ...... or you would do it!

I feel hopelessly addicted to neuroleptic drugs - I go catatonic when I stop them (even taking a 2 year tapered withdrawal at the last attempt).

Yes, I understand that ..... the catatonic state is due to the body no longer producing its own balanced neurotransmitters because it has been taught to rely on the drugs. No way around that except by Divine Miracle ~ You will have to find YOUR answers WITHIN and they are there. I make it sound easy because I am already through it. It was by no means easy to get through......it was its own kind of hell. I suggest you simply make it a daily priority to make your own DIVINE connection and be quiet about it. Go into a state of DIVINE SILENCE ...... and if a miracle happens do not be quick to discuss it among those close to you, they will not understand and out of ignorance they will try to drown you again. Make that inner connection and you will be directed out as I was..... then persist until it is achieved.

Where does this help that I need come from?

INSIDE! You have looked in every other direction but not traveled far enough inside!

& it's not some b*ll**** in my diet before anyone else posts another moronic post about supplements, food allergies or any of the other similar half baked nonsense replies in this thread.

Rule out nothing.......... but do not accept everything either. Learn to Discern through trial and error....... the more errors, the more you can eliminate; the more you eliminate the closer you are to the cure~

Originally Posted by Racer X

Rule out nothing.......... but do not accept everything either. Learn to Discern through trial and error....... the more errors, the more you can eliminate; the more you eliminate the closer you are to the cure~

Thanks.

I know what would help - the problem is accessing it all.