Those who have read some of my blog, will recognise I do
carry a fair whack of anger about certain issues relevant to the mental health
system as it currently is. I put all that aside, when I think about love, when
I listen to another’s poetry, and, when I’m at work.
There
are definite systems that allow us to exist, while getting us to focus on
building things like recovery, hope for the future, alternatives, as well as
established, recognised workable therapies. My work place fits well with my ideology,
my training as a Transpersonal Art Therapist and also makes my writing and
editing diploma relevant. It also makes me think beyond the wrecking-ball, towards building. It is a workplace, that I’m very happy to be in. One
of the few work places that see my lived-experience as a skill and insight, rather than a problem.
I’m
delivering a talk, with a colleague, on: Anger turned inward, grief and voices. This topic is something I’ve been working
on since January, but have thought a lot about before.
A memoir of mine, Naked ladies, looks at how grief and
anger denied and suppressed can lead to voices and unusual belief systems that
end up with hospitalisations and psychiatric labels. It also shows how anger
and grief can be intertwined. I have, developed my ideas a lot further, though,
since writing this action based memoir. I also have a lot better coping strategies.
I’ll mostly be talking about
established ways of coping and paradigms of thinking towards being all you're meant to be. There is a lot new material,
but it’s not something I’ve done on my own, it’s something I’ve developed
alongside many others who have similar experiences. This talk is relevant to health professionals, social workers, carers, as well as voice-hearers and those who want to understand unusual percipience, their own thoughts, theories of mind etc
Bookings are essential and can be made HERE on the Voices Vic website. The talk will be an all day session, held on Wednesday 24th of July 2013 at 211 Chapel Street, Prahran.
I no longer refer to myself as a Psychiatric Nurse, but as a Life coach, as this is my most recent Qualification. I struggle with the former title, as I do not truly believe These guys have an illness.
ReplyDeleteYou're right. Perception isn't an illness and attempting to talk about things that are upsetting in raw symbolic terms, is not delusional. Thank you. When I think back to my first crisis that ended up being medicalised, all I really needed was someone to go through my art, my writing and ideas, to witness, encourage and enable me to work on them to a point where I could say what society didn't understand, in a way that would mean reaching enough people to make my existence and life-work valid, as well as validating transgenerational protests that had been met with denial and violation. Humans are social animals, it is difficult when we are attempting to say what may unsettle established economics.
DeleteInitially NO, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1981 when I was 28. I had the delusions and voices associated with so called psychosis. I felt sure they were associated with my taking of LSD and chronic marihuana taking between the ages 20-24.I was striving to follow a spiritual path indicated by a contemporary writer in his books, that was both authentic and genuine and this was my basis for healing, but diagnosis and subsequent medication dramatically conflicted with this. To cut a long story very short; I choose after some initial struggles to completely walk away from psychiatric medicine and any and all form of medication. I had conflict with psychiatrists etc. who for quite some years viewed my non medication as a symptom. I have been so far away from that system and my life is so harmonious and happy and healthy and natural that all such people, systems and 'expert' authority can no longer dare to make any diagnosis against me or be critical of my choices; quite the contrary. If I have for more 20 years been free of any voices or similarly delusory phenomena and live a very 'normal' integrated and harmonious life totally divorced from the mental health system, then what does that say about a system and authority that told me that my condition was genetic and that I would HAVE TO live the rest of my life on psychiatric medication? I wrote a very long description of my actual experiences here just now, but I hit the wrong button and closed the window accidentally. I just want to say that the one thing I found of value in that system was the occupational health aspect. Your standpoint I fully agree with. i did not know we had began to progress away from the barbarity of drugging the brain en masse. As such your viewpoint and your professional work is of the utmost importance for our contemporary society.
ReplyDeleteThank you Michael. What book was it that inspired you originally?
DeleteI apologize, i gave the wrong link in the above.
ReplyDeleteoops...shall try again.
ReplyDeleteI'm a voice hearer and I'm blogging right now. It's all very heavy, but come and read and add me and all that junk. I've walked away from psychiatry too. www.manyironsinthefire.wordpress.com
ReplyDelete