Integral/Holistic view & approach to schizophrenia

[i, monster]

Hi, I have schizophrenia and consider myself a lightworker. While I am still on medication and have a mental health team, I study and read tarot as well as having started my undergraduate in psychology, philosophy and a human relations minor. Because of my disability (schizophrenia), my undergraduate might as well take me eight to twelve years, but I am set on finding how I can fuse further understanding of these subjects with a tarot consultation business (or non-profit) for personal and spiritual development including individual and (hopefully) collective transformation, as well as getting certified as a Peer Specialist in order to provide service within the psychiatric institution to others with similar illnesses.

If it were not for my psychotic break six years ago, I would not be on this path and thus consider it an important happenstance within my life. I'd like to think I have successfully fused spiritual, emotional and physical healing in the ways I approach my life. This does not take away my struggle, however, it does give it greater meaning and purpose.

[Being]

Originally Posted by i, monster

Hi, I have schizophrenia and consider myself a lightworker. While I am still on medication and have a mental health team, I study and read tarot as well as having started my undergraduate in psychology, philosophy and a human relations minor. Because of my disability (schizophrenia), my undergraduate might as well take me eight to twelve years, but I am set on finding how I can fuse further understanding of these subjects with a tarot consultation business (or non-profit) for personal and spiritual development including individual and (hopefully) collective transformation, as well as getting certified as a Peer Specialist in order to provide service within the psychiatric institution to others with similar illnesses.

If it were not for my psychotic break six years ago, I would not be on this path and thus consider it an important happenstance within my life. I'd like to think I have successfully fused spiritual, emotional and physical healing in the ways I approach my life. This does not take away my struggle, however, it does give it greater meaning and purpose.

Hi - thanks for sharing.

i have found it all an incredibly difficult path with everything.

i am very much mixed up within what i have experienced, my treatments, symptoms & all the different perspectives on it all.

i find the diagnosis highly debatable & am very critical of current psychiatry.

There very much are very different presentations & prognosis of the condition & experiences that come under it all, & we are all still very much unique human beings with very individual circumstances within everything that goes on.

For the past 14 years there has been a certain stability, but there are ongoing incredibly difficult circumstances & family dynamics in my life. i haven't & don't get appropriate understanding, help & support.

Things fluctuate a lot over the days, weeks, months & years without ever being able to more fully resolve certain things / areas. i find it all so frustrating.

Aspects of my condition have been very severe & extreme. i have also put so much work into trying to more fully heal & resolve things.

i don't like this society / civilisation & have a lot of difficulties with the wider society / culture & with everything that goes on - it seems to very much suit some people & they do very well out of it all, but that comes with a Great cost to the other 'half' of society & the natural world.

i find that i have suffered very deeply in this World, perceiving things in ways that No one else i know does, & having had experiences that No one else i know has had; even within mental health areas. That in part there is a very serious condition, while trying to resolve it all & heal in a society / civilisation that i see as very sick.

[Being]

Underestimating Social Determinants of Health Linked to Right-Wing Authoritarianism

Social determinants have been seen to have an equal, if not greater, influence on health as individual behaviors, yet this evidence is largely ignored. Researchers investigate why this is the case.

https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/01/149805/

[i, monster]

Originally Posted by Being

Hi - thanks for sharing.

i have found it all an incredibly difficult path with everything.

i am very much mixed up within what i have experienced, my treatments, symptoms & all the different perspectives on it all.

i find the diagnosis highly debatable & am very critical of current psychiatry.

There very much are very different presentations & prognosis of the condition & experiences that come under it all, & we are all still very much unique human beings with very individual circumstances within everything that goes on.

For the past 14 years there has been a certain stability, but there are ongoing incredibly difficult circumstances & family dynamics in my life. i haven't & don't get appropriate understanding, help & support.

Things fluctuate a lot over the days, weeks, months & years without ever being able to more fully resolve certain things / areas. i find it all so frustrating.

Aspects of my condition have been very severe & extreme. i have also put so much work into trying to more fully heal & resolve things.

i don't like this society / civilisation & have a lot of difficulties with the wider society / culture & with everything that goes on - it seems to very much suit some people & they do very well out of it all, but that comes with a Great cost to the other 'half' of society & the natural world.

i find that i have suffered very deeply in this World, perceiving things in ways that No one else i know does, & having had experiences that No one else i know has had; even within mental health areas. That in part there is a very serious condition, while trying to resolve it all & heal in a society / civilisation that i see as very sick.

I will admit that I feel that my schizophrenia has been pretty manageable since my psychotic break, which I don't actually remember but was pretty severe according to my mother. Although, I do remember being delusional for some months, a large part of my success has been the support I have from people around me.

I feel I can relate when you talk about issues with the psychiatric institutions. I have, for a long time, believed that my schizophrenia would be better treated under some sort of spiritual healer, and if that I were put on a healer path. Part of my break included me screaming about how I couldn't be "me" anymore, and I believe if I'd had spiritual guidance it would have been revealed as a transformation or ego death.

But that is why I have chosen to follow tarot, depth psychology, a general understanding of the human condition (e.g. existentialism) and a pursuance of a broad understanding of spiritual paths as a way for healing and finding ways I can aid others with similar instances of mental health.

I do believe it's part of a larger illness within society, and because I have had such luck with my own diagnoses, I feel like I can make some sort of difference by pursuing the path that I am. It was a very dark part of my life, and although I know others who have more extreme hallucinations, problems and such, I feel like I can understand a part of it because I, too, have gone through what hardly any other person has.

I think finding support within blood-related family or found family, and even institutions, is a very important factor in recovery. It's a very delicate dance between finding the unique path of healing for oneself and dealing with institutionalized ways of treating mental illness.

I agree that the world has been built to suit only a few, to the detriment of most people and the environment, and again, that is why I insist on using my experiences to help transform it. Part of it is wrapped up in my own politics, but it very much stems from a knowledge of our own shared humanity.

[i, monster]

Originally Posted by Being

Underestimating Social Determinants of Health Linked to Right-Wing Authoritarianism

Social determinants have been seen to have an equal, if not greater, influence on health as individual behaviors, yet this evidence is largely ignored. Researchers investigate why this is the case.

https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/01/149805/

Thank you for posting this, I very much agree and that is why I pursue a social justice slant per my studies. I hope that by understanding the standing institutions and social norms, I can have a greater impact in helping others' recovery.

[Being]

Thank you for sharing i, monster. Yes i pretty much agree with your own position as well.

Individual presentations / prognosis vary a lot - i went through 8 major psychotic episodes, 4 hospitalisations. It's taken it's toll.

i do feel that the great range of unique individuals & individual experiences needs to be taken into account.

[Being]

Soteria Israel: A Vision from the Past is a Blueprint for the Future
By
Robert Whitaker -
February 10, 2018

https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/02...or-the-future/

[Jorian]

Hey there, I've led a successful spiritual life and worked as a proffessional psychic, but due to child abuse early in my life, sometimes I'd have full fledged dellusional hallucinations, that I was only able to heal once I recalled how bad I felt when I was being abused.

Teal Swan is a well respected spiritualist who suffered extensive rape and is quite open about the experiences she goes through.

[Being]

Human Spirituality & Mental Illness: Barriers Lost
Posted on 2011 March 13

https://macyafterlife.com/2011/03/13...barriers-lost/

[OmonRa]

Originally Posted by i, monster

Thank you for posting this, I very much agree and that is why I pursue a social justice slant per my studies. I hope that by understanding the standing institutions and social norms, I can have a greater impact in helping others' recovery.

Have you read much on Marx's ideas on capitalism and alienation? It's been a while since I really read, or studied Marxist ideologies (and since then my world-view and perspective is a bit wider in scope/scale), but a recent opinion piece on Al-Jazeera titled '150 years of 'Das Kapital': How relevant is Marx today?' by Jayati Ghosh (I still can't post links, sorry!) brought up some stuff I hadn't really thought about since college. 'Alienation' (in relation to capitalism) is summed up nicely by Ghosh with this:

Most simply put, it can be expressed as the loss of control by workers over their own work. This alienation of the workers means that they effectively cease to be autonomous human beings, because they cannot control their workplace, the products they produce, or even the way they relate to each other. Because this fundamentally defines their conditions of existence, this means that workers can never become autonomous and self-realised human and social beings under capitalism.

This alienation, combined with commodity fetishism, creates a peculiar kind of unfreedom - which is often not even widely noticed, because individual emancipation appears to result from "universal saleability". So every living creature is effectively transformed into property and all social relations become transactionary.