Methods and lines used … |
to force and coerce sexual contact |
to force and coerce psychiatric drugs |
You’ll get used to it…
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the unwanted touch or sexual contact that is upsetting you
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the unwanted, harmful 'medication' you may well be highly allergic to, that is causing you discomfort
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It's about finding the…
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right position
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right medication and dose
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This works for most people…
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sexual position
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type of medication and dose
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If you don’t want it…
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you’re not being a good girlfriend/boyfriend... I won't be your friend if you don't. You want to make me happy don't you?
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you don’t have insight into your illness. You can't give informed consent. You want to get well don't you?
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Ultimatums and threats…
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you must have sex with me or else...
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you must comply with treatment or else...
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Use of force, penetration, violence and violation
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rape
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When threats and intimidation are affective…
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nice and accommodating
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docile and compliant
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Destruction of ability and violation of identity…
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realising her/ his place
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manageable and medicated
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Friday, June 7, 2013
Forced and coerced penetration: it’s not okay
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I enthusiastically support the analogy between rape and coerced medication...having lived that precise analogy as the survivor of a coercive rape and 33 years of medication.
ReplyDeleteDouglas (Dana) Goncz, C.P.S.
Peer Specialist (Certified IRCI 2008)
Replikon Research
PO Box 4394
Seven Corners, VA 22044-0394
DGoncz@Replikon.net
I personally find this comparison both insulting and harmful. I've been on medication for quite a lot of my life and (I'll grant you that I've been VERY lucky in having doctors who care about not over medicating their patients but) I'm also a rape victim and I think the two experiences are totally different. When I was first forced onto medication I was quite resistant especially because the medication was dulling my ability to read my mothers mood, which in turn caused me to accidentally make her more angry when she was already pretty annoyed and thus the abuse got worse....however once I did find the right medication for me I got a lot more stable and honestly the fact that I was on medication at the time of my repetitive sexual assault at the hands of an abusive 'partner' was the only reason that I came out the other side alive.
ReplyDeleteRape was far more destructive, sickening, shameful and generally disgusting then being forced into medication ever was.
I think that you need to give medication a try, I'm not saying you should stay on it if the awful side effects are making things worse but giving it a go is important especially because you might find that it works really well. It's these sort of comparisons that actually create shame and fear around taking medication and that's very damaging. It's like saying "If you're on medication you're getting raped every time you take a pill" which is incorrect and demeaning.
I have finally found a loving relationship that allows me to be myself. I am not ever coerced into sex. If I don’t want it, he doesn’t want it, but I am constantly reminded that he loves me, as I love him. Love is like good healing and for me it has helped enabled me to speak. Speaking out about what has harmed me horribly is neither insulting or harmful, it is my truth. Don’t deny my truth, just because yours is different from mine. Denying another their truth is harmful and insulting.
DeleteI haven’t ever had a loving relationship before this one I’m currently in. I’ve had bullies. I found the forced medication meant that I could not think enough to get out of the abusive relationship, that had catalysed my emotional upheaval and got me diagnosed. It also meant that I was not able to fight back when sleazy men in pubs tried to kiss or grope me and I was left feeling like I was not allowed to speak in case I say something ‘mentally ill’.
I’ve actually found the psychiatric abuse more threatening and harmful because there’s very little public outrage against people being violated in this way. I like having my thinking capacity there. I don’t enjoy having my neurotransmitters shut down and my body enfeebled with shakes and inabilities.
I find it very insulting and scary that you would think I need to ‘try medications’ that I’ve had forced on me over a 14 year period, when there is nothing wrong with me. I have recovered from feeling alienated by my society, mostly through going to peer-support groups, art therapy, getting my writing published and having someone in my life that anchors me in reality through love. I make sense to a great many people. I am not so wrong I need to be chemically restrained.
I’ve learnt to manage my outrage by writing this blog, to let out my anger at what has been done to me and many people I’ve met who feel the same way, many people who fear speaking as I did while I was on a treatment order. I do not find this to be misdirected, but something that has long needed validation and witnessing.
Don’t worry and feel guilty that you have upset me. Just recognise that although I didn’t like the people who sexually abused me, at least they sometimes did nice things for me and gave me good conversation. The psych team never gave me anything nice, they were just violently abusive and very frightening and discombobulating to me, and the worst thing was, their abusive actions were backed up by my society, my government and so much of the world. They did not help me, they harmed me. Recognise my reality, don’t attempt to confuse and deny people who have had my experience, just because you happen to have enjoyed coercive-control. It’s not okay to ask everyone to do what you find has given you some sort of placebo effect, any more than it is for an alcoholic to tell me that swallowing copious amounts of grog at the bar would be a decent life for me. I want to live!
NO I praise your balance; so well written. I personally know many people under coercive-control and they seem to display the same sentiments as Mandy. The thing that impresses me (with all of them) about their 'alleged-trust' in these toxic poisons is they seem to be more enormously fearful about waving goodbye to these zombifying chemicals than finding out if there are really good and effective alternatives. ALL of them display two profound characteristics:
Delete1. They have never experienced to profound deep UNCONDITIONAL love you have found that is the only thing in life that brings heaven on earth, THE ONLY THING!!
2. They ALL display a physiologically compromised demeanor; they all show deep, strong physical, emotional, nervous conditions (some major, some minor) but they ALL are affected by these toxic poisons; these are powerful toxic poisons
The most compelling thing I see with them all is their fear of stopping the medication is not driven by the alleged stability they think these zombifying toxins provide, it's driven by their DEEP FEAR they might relapse if they stop taking them.
This is the worst type of fear there is; finding deep unconditional love is the viable sustainable alternative.
Go Well
Glenn
Thanks Glenn, while I appreciate Mandy making an effort to comment on my blog, my body actually got quite upset over Mandy’s comment and started to feel like it had 3 cups of coffee in it. So, I did over an hour of automatic drumming, before going to a poetry reading I go to most Saturday afternoons. I have very healthy coping methods these days and lots of supportive people around me who encourage that.
DeleteThinking about the trigger lines that upset my body while I drummed, reminded me of a few things I thought I should put into a reply…
Similar techniques used to indoctrinate a person into allowing other abuse… The technique a sexual abuser would use would be something like, ‘You’ll get used to it… You need to give it a try… What are you, frigid?’
And the psychiatrists and nurses, social-workers are taught to say, ‘I think you need to give medication a try’ and ‘giving medication a go is important’ and Mandy, the general public and broadcasting media parrot this, along with the warning that it is ‘harmful’ to say you suffered on psychiatric drugs, harmful and ‘insulting’ to the reputations of psychiatrists no doubt.
This parroting of psychiatrists’ coercive control techniques, reminds me of how a past girlfriend, made me feel I should put up with sexual abuse. She was quite happy to have my listening ear when she talked of how she got raped in the first year of her teens and the upsets in her current relationships (which involved forms of non-chargeable sexual abuse, coercion, persuasion etc). When I wanted to broach a subject of the sexual abuse in the relationship I was in at the time with her, she cut me down with, ‘Hurry up and get used to it, or you’ll end up a fat lonely old lesbian.’ Which at the time, I didn’t have a reply to, and meant that I had no girlfriend support. My mouth has since grown big and has the ability to see how I could easily have put a stop to her insulting nasty line, so she would not use it on others, as it had quite obviously been used to made her agree to what was disagreeable.
Mandy said, ‘It's like saying "If you're on medication you're getting raped every time you take a pill" which is incorrect and demeaning.’
DeleteI’ve found being on the depo injection, that’s very like rape. The use of force in holding people down to inject them, often retraumatises rape victims. Not only me.
For me, being forced to take a pill, is like being forced to agree to rape and not put up a fight, have everyone tell you it’s ‘good for you’ that you should ‘give it a try’ that you only complain because you ‘don’t have insight’. When I have agreed to take pills I didn’t get a prick in my butt-cheek and because I was never violent but very vocal that I didn’t want electro-shock, and agreed to their demand to take the pills, I wasn’t forced to submit to that.
The parallel? there are sexual things a person might do that aren’t as offensive as others. It is a huge compromise. It often means a person has to somewhat dissociate.
When I have to repeatedly agree to something detestable, upsetting and harmful, I find that’s the point where I get brainwashed into thinking perhaps I need it because I’m a malfunction and may well be all the horrible thing the psychiatrist/sexual abuser has said I am.
But it is worse with psychiatric abuse. I am drugged. I am therefore not even able to think like myself anymore. I look in the mirror and see dull eyes, I can hardly read anymore and exercise becomes physically painful and exhausting.
When I got the gumption, I decided to lower the dose without approval of the doctor and felt better, so I lowered it a bit more. I learnt from previous times, I cannot ever go cold turkey, the withdrawal effects are so horrible. I had to take it down very, very slowly. Eventually I felt better, able to think, exercise and like myself again.
When I’m in crisis, I need a healer, not a drug-dealer. I need love, not labels and accusations. I need support to become all of who I am meant to be, especially when I have difficult things to communicate that have become discombobulated in my mind.
Throughout my life, from an early age, like Mandy, I’ve tried to understand what angers and upsets others, so I can negotiate, so I can help people ameliorate the abuse they’re suffering in emotional flash-backs, causing them to misdirect their anger. I realise now, that therapists need supervision to help them talk things through after seeing a client who is very upset. I think it would’ve been nice if Mandy had had that, if I had had that as a child, or at least a girlfriend when I was older, who would’ve listened and given me validation, I was willing to give her.
Lines that are used to coerce, control and force physical abuse, really upset me. That includes the popular psychiatrisms, because they trigger the memory of the repeated assaults.
DeleteIn response to Mandy-
Deleteperhaps the author isn't against Psychiatric medicine per say,but rather that she didn't get to participate in her own treatment choices.
It would have been that she was treated with force and without dignity and no respect for her autonomy.
This might have been done out of nurses stress or from good intentions but either way it was very wrong and Psychiatry needs to stop being practiced in this aggressive way as it's often traumatic and very detrimental to psychological health instead of the opposite.
I could imagine that she felt afraid,humiliated,violated,disrespected etc.
Then on top of that,to not feel that the public or government care about the injustices done to her would make her feel even more upset.
Initially NO-please get in touch with the mental health commission and tell them your story,the trauma you've experienced,the feelings that the public is indifferent to mistreatment of the mentally ill due to the nature of their illness,and state what you want changed.
All people deserve to be treated with kindness,dignity and have their wishes and needs respected,including people who's perceptions or emotions are faulty.
Put a STOP PSYCHIATRIC ABUSE awareness ribbon on the Mental Health Commission's website and I'll think you're serious about listening to what I have to say.
DeleteLet me provide a little more detail:
ReplyDelete4 males cooperated in my rape by 1 of those males, on June 23rd, 1980.
I was 20 years old.
I said I felt Damaged and Different in my interview with Providers.
They didn't ask if I had an unwanted sexual experience.
27 years later, when I initiated a Rape Report, my Providers confirmed, Yes, it was a Rape, but refused to convey the report to the Police, advising me not to prosecute for fear of a counter-charge.
8 years after that, when I Reported to the Police, I was given a Victim Services card and told a Detective would contact me.
No Detective contacted me.
Victim Services refused to call me back.
3 years after that, when I was diagnosed with Polypharmacy, Long Term Exposure to Antipsychotics, Osteopenia, Hypogoandism, Hyperprolactinemia, Depression, Erectile Dysfunction, Anorgasmia, Anhedonia, and PTSD, and more, I was prescribed:
20 mg Abilify,
450 mg Wellbutrin,
60 mg Buspirone,
8 mg Rozerem, and occasionally,
Clonopin to sleep.
I developed Restless Legs and Tardive Dynskenesia. I was over-medicated. The prescription was cut by half. It did no good. I could barely walk. I cut the medication to the minimum on my own initiative, with good results, and was told "I am not satisfied with our partnership. You are taking too much control. I don't feel I am included." by the prescriber.
And then I got better. It was just a few weeks ago.
I now take
5 mg Abilify,
300 mg Wellbutrin,
Buspirone PRN at about 15 mg/day 2 or 3 days / week,
no Rozerem,
and a host of drugs designed for one purpose and one purpose only:
to prevent Laser Trans-Urethral Resection of my Prostate (LTURP). It has swollen from the drugs these 33 years to 45 grams or more, nearly completely obstructing the vital flow of urine from my body.
That is where I drew the line. I will modify my lifestyle, I will risk everything in therapy to overcome my PTSD, and I will comply with a medication regimen, but I will do these things on my initiative and my own responsiblity. I will not comply with anyone's coercion about anything, to the best of my ability. In brief, I will stop taking bullshit as currency and giving pocket change for it.
I am here to fight for my life, and so are you, and that makes us equal.
By coincidence, my post appears to reply to Mandy's. It doesn't.
DeleteIt does respond to some issues she raised, without even knowing she raised them. Another coincidence.
Mandy, where you read "you", please read "you all", or "one".
The rest of you probably can ignore than instruction and just take note of the coincidence and this note in context and do fine.
Mandy, I am sorry you were raped, and I am glad you lived through your rape. I know it was not your fault you were raped. And medication may have helped you survive. I'd like to here more about how medication helped you survive repeated assault, and whether it helped you eventually leave the situation, or helped you tolerate it until it was over.
Cheers,
Doug
You give a lot of people courage Doug, thank you. Medication meant I stayed in an abusive relationship, because I was doubly beaten up. I was 'wrong' in the eyes of psychiatrists and government, even though it was my abuser that was criminal. I needed to be shut down and shut up. I became a doormat after being forcefully drugged. This pleased my abuser, because to him I was more 'manageable' and 'grateful' and did as I was told, for fear of worse, that being shut up in a psych ward again on higher doses of the drugs that I found intolerably harmful.
Delete