I was recently talking with a young man about his anxiety, which he experiences as extreme.  When I asked him what the anxiety was about, he didn’t know.  When I suggested that we become curious about it and explore what it might be about, he told me that it was so extreme, it must be “biochemical.”  This meant to him that the anxiety could not be understood in a psychological way, but had to be dealt with as part of his “illness.”

I acknowledged to him that anxiety certainly involves biochemistry, but suggested that there are also experiences and interpretations of experience that trigger the biochemistry into action.  For example, if he experienced someone pointing a firearm in his direction, he would likely experience an intense biochemical process within his body, but the experience would not be “just biochemical.”

If people are going to understand themselves and work through emotional problems, it is essential that they get curious about their experiences and reflect on what might be triggering them.  Sometimes such curiosity or reflection results in getting valuable messages from those experiences, or at other times, it involves identifying a mistake that triggered the emotional experience, which then allows for resolution.  To use the simple example of the threat perceived from the firearm, one might either take quick action to avoid being shot, or in another situation perhaps observe more carefully and notice a movie is being filmed and that the firearm being pointed is just a prop.

Of course, experiences like anxiety and depression often have their sources in much more complex experiences, and so more complex reflection is necessary to sort out what actions to take or what interpretations to revise.  We live though in a society that does not like complexities or deep reflection, so we already have a bias toward thinking that disturbing emotions that don’t quickly make sense must just be something wrong with us.  This bias makes us think we “shouldn’t have” disturbing emotional states, so we tend to push them away or dissociate from them, which just makes it more difficult for us ever to understand their sources and decide what to do about them.

Those who market psychiatric drugs take advantage of this cultural bias to offer a seductive pseudo explanation, which is that unwanted emotional states that aren’t easily resolved must be the result of a “biochemical imbalance” or some other biological problem.   Our culture has become heavily influenced by this viewpoint, to the point where it seems the majority believe that seriously disturbing emotional states lacking easy explanations must be caused by a fault in biochemistry, rather than being something that can be potentially understood and resolved.

The sad result of this marketing effort has been to dramatically aggravate a cultural tendency to avoid deeply listening to each other, or even to ourselves.  Any mental or emotional problem which does not rapidly resolve must be “biochemical” and not worth even trying to understand; instead we should be trying to drug it away. [continue reading…]

Eleanor Longden was once led to believe she should resign herself to a life of being a “schizophrenic” and that recovery wasn’t something worth considering.  Now she is still a voice hearer, but rather than let that define her as “ill,” she is a practicing psychologist and a leader in bringing new approaches to the voice hearing experience.

Recently, Eleanor was invited to speak at at TEDxLondon.  You can view what she said at http://talentsearch.ted.com/video/Eleanor-Longden-Learning-from-t;TEDLondon.

How you can help:  please consider rating her presentation and leaving some feedback! Talks with the highest ratings will be invited to give extended presentations at TED 2013 in California, so this would be a great opportunity for spreading the word that people can learn how to handle their voices and that we need some new approaches.

You can find out more about Eleanor here or listen to an extended interview of her on Madness Radio.

It looks like a great event:  The Hearing Voices Network 25 Years On: Learning from the PAST, Practicing in the PRESENT, Visioning the FUTURE.  Cardiff, Wales 19-21 September 2012.  Click here to look at the complete brochure .

From the brochure:

This year celebrates the 25th anniversary of the formation of the Hearing Voices Movement. Over the last 25 years the network has helped countless voice hearers gain ascendency over the negative impact of the voice hearing experience. Alongside this, the network has acted as the vehicle for change in professional practice. On the 19th 20th and 21st of September 2012 the Hearing Voices World Congress and the annual Intervoice meeting will be held in the All Nations Conference Center, Cardiff, Wales.

The Intervoice meeting will be on 19th September, an Open Space event with speakers, followed by our World Congress on the 20th and 21st September.
Contributors over the three days include: Hywel Davies (Wales), Marius Romme, Sandra Escher (Belgium), Joe Calleja (Australia), Lucy Johnstone (Wales), Dirk Corstens (Netherlands), Robin Murray (UK), Rufus May (England), Kellie Comans (Australia), Michaela Amering (Austria), Alan
Leader (England), Paul Baker (Spain/UK), Peter Bullimore (England), Jacqui Dillon (England), Ron Coleman (Scotland), Rachel Waddingham (England), Eleanor Longden (England), Oryx Cohen (USA), Will Hall (USA), Prof Manuel Gonzales de Chavez (Spain),Willa Casstevens (USA), Pino Pini (Italy),
Marcello Macario (Italy), Indigo Daya (Australia)

OK, I know you can’t all make it to Wales.  If you can’t, I encourage you to look into the work of many of the great people listed above, much of which you can find out about on the internet.   For example, you can listen to Will Hall interviewing Eleanor Longden – see Madness Radio: Meaning From Voices Eleanor Longden

First Aired 6-1-2012
Hearing voices is strongly connected with traumatic experiences, but are voices a brain malfunction or a creative strategy for protection? UK psychologist Eleanor Longden survived a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and went on to be a leading researcher around voice hearing, trauma, and dissociation. She is a pioneer in the movement to understand voices as a normal human experience — and truly help people by healing trauma.

Of all the misinformation people report hearing from the mental health system, one of the most outrageous and potentially damaging pieces is the claim that people diagnosed with conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder should expect to have these problems for a lifetime.  This claim is really helpful if one’s goal is to market medications, and to prevent any attempts at discontinuation of the medications, but it is profoundly unhelpful if one’s goal is to create hope and to inspire people to take action on behalf of their own recovery.  Because a person who believes real recovery is impossible is very unlikely to exert effort to accomplish it.

As Rufus May put it, the mental health system typically makes people feel they are “the passive victim of an active illness.”

While no one can guarantee anyone a recover from mental and emotional distress, everyone deserves to hear that such a recovery is possible, and more likely if people do make personal efforts.

Yesterday, MindFreedom International launched a new campaign to fight back against mental health system induced helplessness, and to support the creation of hope and empowerment.  This campaign is called “I Got Better.”

“I Got Better” is an ongoing project defying the all-too-common message that recovery from mental and emotional distress is impossible. The “I Got Better” campaign will make stories of recovery and hope in mental health widely available through a variety of media.

Any and everybody with a stake in mental health in our society is welcome to participate, including people who have used mental health services, psychiatric survivors, as well as their friends, family members, colleagues, and mental health workers.  To get involved, please complete the brief, confidential introductory questionnaire at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/mfi-igb-intro  .  (This will take less than 5 minutes to complete.)

Respondents to the survey wishing to share additional knowledge will be invited to take an optional follow-up survey about impressions of hope and hopelessness in mental health care, and successful strategies for recovery. Some survey respondents will be asked to share their story on video.

David Oaks, Director of MindFreedom International, said, “When I was in psychiatric care in college, I was told it was forever. Your experience of hope and hopelessness in mental health care could help youth and young adults receiving a psychiatric diagnosis for the first time. Hope could save a life.”

The Story Behind “I Got Better”

The title of the campaign is inspired by the successful “It Gets Better” viral media effort led by columnist Dan Savage that “shows LGBT youth the levels of happiness their lives can reach.” While these two campaigns are independent, Dan Savage has enthusiastically endorsed “I Got Better.”

The “I Got Better” campaign is funded by a grant from the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care to MindFreedom International. MFI is an independent nonprofit coalition founded in 1986 to win human rights and alternatives in mental health. For more information contact news@mindfreedom.org, or call the MFI office at 541-345-9106.

To take the brief, confidential introductory “I Got Better” survey, which will be active through 15 October 2012, click here now:   https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/mfi-igb-intro   Also please do share the survey link freely via email, facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.

In the system of mental health “care” which is dominant today, “hearing voices” is conceptualized as an illness, and so the goal is seen to be minimizing such experiences.  Even talking about the voices is usually discouraged.  Mental health practitioners show no interest in the voices other than to find out whether they are still present: if they are, drug dosages are increased or changed in the hopes of dampening or eliminating them.  If the person continues to hear voices despite often massive drugging, then distraction methods are usually the only coping idea that is suggested.  Anything is done to avoid actually listening to, or being curious about, the voices.

It certainly is true that listening too much to voices can cause extreme problems.  Voices can order people to harm themselves or others, or say things which could crush, or conversely cause a grandiose inflation of, self esteem.  If the person obeys the voices or believes them, or even if the person just gets pre-occupied by them or caught up in them enough to be distressed by them, damage can result.

But sometimes the opposite of one mistake is just another kind of mistake:  it is becoming obvious that the avoidance of voices is just as much a mistake as is listening too much to them.

One problem that occurs when people chronically avoid the voice hearing experience is that they never learn how to handle it.  An even more serious problem is that the methods people use to avoid the voice hearing experience actually weaken the person, so that they become less able to handle the voice when they encounter it anyway despite their best efforts at avoidance.

Consider the effect of chronic use of antipsychotic medications.  These drugs do sometimes cause voices to disappear, or at least become less prominent.  But they do so by weakening a person’s ability to care about things:  they are essentially indifference drugs.  They weaken a person’s ability to have strong opinions, a strong personal voice.  They induce a kind of passivity, and it has long been noted that a person under their influence has fewer spontaneous interests, but is still capable of responding to the ideas or suggestions of others.

The problem with the above is that if a person is ever going to face the voices and work things out, the person needs personal strength, or the very thing being dampened by the drugs, in order to do so.  If a voice orders a person to kill themselves, it is very important that the person have strong ideas about the importance of continuing to live, so that the person can reject the suggestion.  A person made passive by a drug is actually less capable of resisting suggestions made by voices that persist despite the drug.  Unfortunately, this passivity is currently usually seen as just an aspect of the person’s “mental illness” and as proof the person cannot handle hearing voices, and the need for even more medication to try and suppress the voice.

(This is not to say that cautious use of medication can never be helpful, for example when a person does not yet have skills needed to face voices and when “listening too much’ would lead to disaster.  But such use should be sparing, and as temporary as possible, if the person is to get a chance to really learn to face the voices and the issues behind them.) [continue reading…]

While the mental health system identifies psychosis as being about suffering, or “hellish” experiences, if you actually listen to individual stories, it is obvious that intensely positive or “heavenly” experiences occur as well.  What we need is a better understanding of how and why these experiences occur so often together, and what to do about it that could be more helpful than providing mind numbing drugs.

I think some insight into this can be found in the master’s thesis of Paris Williams, which is
posted online at http://rethinkingmadness.com/#/author-bio/4558919736.  In particular, there is an autobiographical portion of this paper, which describes a really profound healing, from a state of deep terror and conflict to a state of deep peace, as a result of something that happened within a dream.

It shows what can happen when a person simply changes perspective on really fundamental issues. The shift Paris describes is from a hellish experience to a heavenly one:

An Existential Crisis

Several years ago, I had fallen into a deep existential and spiritual crisis, and I found myself grappling with the theme of organismic wisdom in what felt like a fight for my own existence. While several paradigm-shattering epiphanies led me into the depths of this crisis (the details of which fall outside the scope of this paper), the final epiphany that ripped the carpet out from under my feet was a deep experiential realization of the fact that my perception of the world is seriously distorted by my own cognitive constructs. This epiphany put me into a space in which I felt I had very little to cling to as a way to make sense of the world, and I found myself perpetually on the verge of being overwhelmed by powerful emotions and other anomalous experiences for many months. I was fortunate to have developed the resource of a mindfulness meditation practice (in which I made the effort to remain aware and equanimous of the sensations within my body), and this provided me with a means to find at least some semblance of stability in the midst of these storms. I was also fortunate that, due to the nature of my work and lifestyle, I had a lot of time to deeply explore these storms and work on finding some peace and understanding of them. In the initial stages, I recognized these many storms as long-suppressed emotions, finally free to flow to the surface, seeking new balance as my previous defenses had now become so seriously undermined. As time passed and I explored more deeply into these emotions, however, I realized that a more fundamentally existential struggle that lay beneath that of my personal history was taking place. [continue reading…]

For anyone who might be interested, you can view past webinars, as well as get copies of slides and handouts associated with them, but going to the store.  While there is a charge, it is on a sliding scale that goes as low as $1 to make them affordable.

So far, there are just two: one with Paris Williams on Rethinking Madness, and one by myself on including talk about spiritual issues within treatment for psychosis.  But I am hoping to put together many more webinars, including some offering CEUs, so that education about recovery  oriented psychological approaches becomes much more widely available.

I believe the question of whether to medicate or not cannot be kept separate from the question of whether or not to consider individuals responsible for their own state of mind, as well as their behavior.  That in turn cannot be kept separate from the related question of what it really means for a human being to be “responsible,” and the question of how something that looks like “free will” emerges out of biological systems.

At this point in our culture, the majority of both the general culture and of the mental health industry have endorsed a paradigm that says that mentally healthy individuals are responsible for their mental activity, but that those who are “mentally ill” or who have a “biochemical imbalance” are not.  The latter are advised to try drugs to correct the “imbalance” and to try more drugs if the first ones don’t work.

What is missing in this perspective is any sense that people can take responsibility for their own mental wellbeing and behavior, even after they have been overwhelmed by serious problems of some kind.

I would argue that this abdication of responsibility occurs not so much because we are a weak and lazy society, but because we have misunderstood what it means to be responsible in the first place.  Because of this misunderstanding, when we try to be responsible, we are likely to do it in a way that makes us vulnerable to becoming overwhelmed, and then once we become overwhelmed we think this must be due to something wrong with us.  This follows from our cultural belief that being responsible for oneself should be easy and simple, and not require contact with anything deep.  The resulting sense of “something wrong with us” is then interpreted to be something chemically wrong, fixable by a pill, or perhaps by a dozen pills in an ever changing “cocktail.”

Simple systems operate in a linear, consistent and predictable manner. Many people associate “science” with boiling everything down to that which is simple and predictable.  Our culture tends to assume that things operate in this fashion.  But it turns out that only linear systems are consistently predictable, and non-linear systems, of which humans are an example, are not.  Humans become even more unpredictable when they have been perturbed by major events such as trauma, or if they have genes that facilitate creativity, or when they are going through certain developmental stages.

If we ourselves are a non-linear, unpredictable system, how can we take responsibility for controlling ourselves?  Certainly we cannot do this by applying any consistent formula, as any such formula could only work part of the time.  If our nature is to be fundamentally mysterious, then how can we know for sure what it is inside ourselves we are encountering at any given time, and  if we don’t even know what we are encountering, how can we respond to it in a way that allows us to be in control?

[continue reading…]

Note:  this is a review I wrote for the Mad in America blog, and also for Amazon.com.

“Rethinking Madness: Towards a Paradigm Shift In Our Understanding and Treatment of Psychosis” by Paris Williams, Ph.D., describes how our current mental health system fails not only in devising treatments for psychosis, but also in even thinking clearly about such experiences , and describes what is needed as a replacement.

If madness, or psychosis, is just a result of a physical defect in the brain, then it makes sense to devote little effort to understanding the experiences of mad people, and to focus instead on suppressing such experiences as much as possible.  That’s what our vast “mental health” industry has been doing for decades, without success.  In this book, Williams outlines a very different approach, one that prioritizes understanding and valuing personal experiences.

Before writing this book, Williams spent time as a hang glider pilot, winning one world championship and several national awards.  He then experienced a mental crisis that could have been labeled psychosis, but he avoided getting diagnosed or “helped” by psychiatry, and instead worked through his experiences on his own.  This caused him to get interested in helping others, and he became a psychologist and also a researcher interested in detailed exploration of the experiences of people who underwent psychosis and then full recovery.   It seems clear that the depth of understanding in the book emerges out of his personal experiences and his interest in the experiences of others, while it may be that his experiences as a glider pilot helped him develop a habit of forming a clear overview of areas to be explored.  In any case, the view of madness that emerges appears to be a profound integration which has breadth and well as depth. [continue reading…]