Ever since I recovered from pharmaceutical abuse that nearly killed me over a decade ago, I haven’t used mental health services. There were many reasons for this and I can’t say I was always decidedly against them for myself, or entirely convinced I couldn’t be helped by a good therapist. Therapy had benefitted me a lot as a kid, teenager and young adult (not because I had an illness and needed to be fixed, but because I had trauma and needed to be listened to).
There were many obstacles to going to therapy though: lack of therapists I could trust, times of not having health insurance, and times of being so busy that making another appointment sounded more stressful than just taking an extra nap.
There were times I had more social connection and support and therapy seemed superfluous, draining even.
There were times I longed for someone I could talk to in that one sided way, where most of the listening and attention was on me, but I never felt safe with therapists I interviewed who believed in diagnoses or psych drugs, and of course most do.
As for coaches or counselors outside of the mental health system who did not rely on diagnostic criteria for insurance purposes, I often couldn’t afford them, or if I could I was working full time and didn’t have space in my schedule. As an introvert, a few hours alone in my day is essential and I probably wouldn’t be able to give it up and retain my sanity even if I were talking to my favorite person in the world.
So, maybe you’ve figured out the punch line by now. After 10 years of vacillating between not believing in therapy and not having the time or money for it, I found myself in a new town, after dozens of moves, and with almost no social support. I have state health insurance, which covers therapy, and after 10 months of finding only providers who won’t take my insurance or aren’t accepting new clients, I stumbled upon a goldmine.
I’m writing about this publicly not to tout the virtues of the mental health system, which arguably there are few that are often overridden by its shortcomings, but because many psychiatric survivors who don’t have strong social networks or family ties, or money for private services, might be encouraged to keep looking for the needle in the haystack (if they want to).
In my case, I got incredibly lucky. I walked into a clinic in the next town over, where I’d heard the director is relatively anti-psych drugs and for alternative approaches. I filled out the paperwork and the receptionist made me an appointment with “Caren”. I had no choice of providers, though there were interns available if it wasn’t a good fit. She had no information about Caren, who was new to this clinic, except that she was very experienced and “everyone loves her”.
Google had little information about Caren either, so I went in for my first appointment having little idea what to expect, but for some reason the anxiety I’d had in the past about walking into a therapist’s office wasn’t there. After a decade of ambivalence, I was feeling more optimistic (AKA desperate) to see a therapist.
Caren told me she’d need to ask me questions for the insurance paperwork (oh trust me, I knew) to determine my “medical need” and she made quotes with her fingers when she said “medical need”. Phew. I felt at ease right away.
Okay, I felt more than at ease. I felt something like salvation. We quickly established that neither of us believe in diagnoses (she asserted that view first) and after the questions, she let me know she put me down for “adjustment disorder” and explained the things I already knew about how the system requires a diagnosis to pay for therapy.
She also told me she’s anti-drugs, after I mentioned I wasn’t interested in them as part of my answer to one of the insurance questions.
So…once all that was out of the way, she became someone I could talk to each week, someone compassionate and wise, not who would tell me what to do or take any of my agency away, but who would listen and be supportive and occasionally give suggestions, or relate from her own experiences. So far, she has never been intrusive, invasive, assuming or condescending.
I know how rare this is. It took me 10 years to come across such a person, and in this case it was almost sheer luck.
I share this because, yes, we need to fight against the atrocities of the mental health system, and yes we need to be very careful, and yes, many times friends are far more what we want than professionals, AND because there are those of us who, for a time and a reason may need focused support from someone and may not have friends with the time and energy to be that for us consistently.
In theory, I love the idea of the state funding people to provide emotional support, listening, encouragement and kindness. That’s my idea of good therapy. As we say in the psychiatric survivor or “peer” movement, the best way to support someone is often to be authentic and use common sense.
Of course capitalism has its awful flaws and the system has its major problems and I hope someday both will be eradicated in favor of more compassionate and humane systems, but in the meantime, they are basically the systems we have on the material plane.
Having this support has enabled me to feel less completely alone with my problems, which, yes, are socio-political, economic, rooted in systemic oppression and all the rest, but knowing that can only go so far when a person is lacking the social capital, health and material resources to act on that knowledge in ways that result in change.
It’s not an either or. I’m thrilled for those who have the resources to be completely independent from all of the corporate healthcare systems that are damaging many of our lives.
I share my story, though, because finding the right resources within a corrupt system can be harm reduction that can help someone feel less alone and debilitated. That’s what it has done for me, after 10 years of sifting through hay, or turning away from it, sure there was no needle in there.
The problem with turning to psychotherapists to be listened to is that the therapist is not going to listen. They have their own ideas. The therapist is not your friend, they are not even your ally. The are the allies of the middle-class family, of capitalism, and the state. This is how they accumulate money.
Lobotomy, insulin shock, electro shock, psychiatric drugs, and talk therapy all do the same thing. The weaken your will. They are used to make you believe that you have a problem, and that the problem lies within yourself. They don’t want you to feel that the world in unjust, not unjust in ways that you should be doing anything about.
So there are solar powered airplanes to fly. There are cabarets which need singers. There are disruptive protests which need leaders. There are popular insurgencies which need fighters, and there are children who need the representation of a ferocious attorney.
There are all kinds of things to do for those who no longer accept the middle-class family and have learned to color outside the lines. The only requirement is that they be honest with themselves about their actual experience, instead of continuing to wear holes in the knees of their pants venerating the Holy Family.
But those who have survived the middle-class family, psychiatry, and psychotherapy have been made neurotic. So they will instead be found lying on their therapist’s couch confessing. They will be seen filling their drug prescriptions. They will be seen sitting in circles reading the 12 steps aloud. And they will be seen drunk on 9am New Wine, calling out the name of an idol, hoping that he will finally hear them and get up off the toilet and make it rain on them.
People are using Mad In America to advertise their anti-drug and anti-labels version of psychotherapy. But it is still therapy. These people are not lawyers and they are not revolutionaries. They don’t win lawsuits and judgements for their clients. They don’t get the inheritance laws changed. They are not going to do anything to help people redress the injustices which have shaped their lives. All they do is convince people that the problem and the solution lie entirely within their own heads.
So long as it is between consenting adults, I’m not going to do anything about it, just like I don’t do anything about psychics, fortune tellers, or channelers.
But if it involves children and the child does not have an attorney, and it is not being overseen by CPS and the Family Court, that is going to be an entirely different matter.
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/handled-in-court-t272.html
Nomadic
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“therapy” is not a problem if it is voluntary.
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But therapy practiced on a juvenile is never really voluntary, or is there ever informed consent.
Every time familial child abuse is surfaced, there is always a long list of school teachers, school counselors, and therapists and doctors that are complicit. They have violated mandatory reporting, and often what they are doing with the child should be considered in and of itself a probable flavor of abuse.
I don’t think we should be allowing our government to be issuing licenses to psychotherapists, because this legitimates it. This makes it look as though the licensed psychotherapist can engage in psychological child abuse and that that is not abuse.
I would not try to outlaw psychotherapy between consenting adults, just as I would not try to outlaw Fortune Tellers, Psychics, Channelers, or Life Coaches. It is after all just talk.
But when it comes to children whose lives are still controlled by their parents, and when the premise is that the child someone has some sort of a “problem”, and when this counter culture therapist is marketing themselves to the parents, then you probably have a situation of child abuse.
I am not saying that this poster here is doing this with children. I don’t know that they even work with children. But there are other’s advertising on Mad In America who certainly seem to be doing this.
It is illegal now in some states to try and do sexual orientation reassignment on a juvenile. Why is it not also illegal to do family reconciliation therapy on a juvenile, giving that there is no informed consent, not even any consent at all as the juvenile is being held hostage.
Why is the child not being represented by an attorney, and the whole matter being overseen by CPS and the Court? How else can we protect children?
1. Parents have a problem in their relationship with the child. This is already psychological child abuse. Maybe not something which mandates prison, but something which mandates intervention.
2. Parents hire a therapist to put child on drugs to make child more compliant.
3. Parents learn of anti-drug therapist who will make child compliant, but without using drugs.
Both therapists are violating mandatory reporting. Both therapists and the parents are engaging in psychological child abuse.
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/protecting-children-from-psychotherapy-t278.html
Nomadic
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It is profitable to cover up child abuse with psychiatric defamation and torture of the victim and / or his family. And according to the medical evidence (such as John Read’s findings) profiteering off of covering up child abuse does seem to be a, or the, primary function of today’s psychiatric industry. And, yes, absolutely, this is illegal. However, there is an enourmous child abuse covering up / profiteering apparatus in the US. I know in Illinois it includes psychologists, psychiatrists, mainstream medical doctors, DCFS, the police, the mainstream religions, the States Attorneys, school social workers, lawyers, judges, and the FBI.
I do so hope some day soon an end can be put to this “dirty little secret” way of profiteering off of covering up the abuse of children, with psychological and chemical abuse of children. The way I see it, psychiatry went from claiming being Jewish is a “mental illness,” to claiming concerns / including medical evidence of child abuse or symptoms of abuse is a “mental illness.” At least this is what the medical evidence does seem to be coming in proving is the reality, too. But it is a very sad statement about the current leaders of our society and the systems they’ve set up.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439×799302
Chaya, I am glad you have found an empathetic ear, and absolutely that’s what the “mental health” industry should actually be in the business of providing.
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”
(such as John Read’s findings) profiteering off of covering up child abuse does seem to be a, or the, primary function of today’s psychiatric industry.
”
I 100% agree with the above!
And there are people on Mad In America who, based on the articles they have submitted, appear to be intentionally doing this and profiting.
As I know, much of the original popularity of Freud and Psychoanalysis is because it rejected religion and made room for our drives and desires. But very soon it also recreated its own version of Original Sin, making our aggression and sexuality wrong.
And this is how it works today, aiding in the repertoire of ideologies used to denigrate and socialize, and largely having made peace with religion.
Do you have any links for this John Read, I want to learn more, and I want to act.
Nomadic
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Of course I agree, children ( under legal age of 18- depending where you live) can not give consent.
How do you get your children to grow up? I have sympathy for the parents of children , children who do not follow the rules.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/no-charges-for-louisiana-mom-who-whipped-sons-after-robbery-schaquana-spears/
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If there is parent v child conflict, then the problem is always with the parent. Alice Miller taught me this, and yes it is true.
So the first thing to do is open a case and let the parents know that the case will be tracked for as long as any of them live. They will not get away with disinheritance and they will likely be required to put all assets into a trust fund, so that they are not squandered. None of their affairs will be private any longer.
The middle-class family was invented to be able to exploit children. This will continue, just as American slavery did, until outside force is used to stop it.
So anyone aiding the parents is already to be suspected of child abuse. Any parent enlisting such persons is already to be suspected of child abuse.
You know of any ongoing parent v child conflicts? Therapists being hired to make the child more compliant? Parent who speak of a child as the scapegoat? Let me know, as I want to act.
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/index.php
Nomadic
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Nomadic
I believe that you’re making some pretty large blanket statements about therapists. There are some truly good people out there who walk in tandem with people so that the people themselves can find the solutions to their problems and issues. After all, its the person in therapy who must do the work and not the therapist. If a therapist starts ordering or pushing or becoming invasive then you move one.
Like Chaya I was lucky enough to find that needle in the haystack of a therapist. He was a young man just starting out and didn’t give a flip about labels or any of that. He didn’t believe in getting people drugged. After all, how can you deal with your issues when you’re drugged like a zombie. He was truly interested in walking with people so that they could find their own answers. It’s s real shame that more therapists are not like this, but there are some and a person usually finds them totally by accident.
You can’t paint all therapists and all therapy with a big, brush full of black paint. You must take each and every one individually and make your determinations about how they deal with you. One of the best therapists I ever dealt with was a Wiccan, what many people want to refer to as witches. If she was a witch then give me more witches!
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You might want to consult with Jeffrey Masson, former curator of the Sigmund Freud archives. His conclusion is, “The practice of psychotherapy is wrong because it is profiting off of other people’s misery.”
He says this in particular because psychotherapy offers NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING except at the critical junction to try and make people forgive and forget, and tell them that they just have to solve their own problems because they and their stubbornness are the source of the problems.
https://www.amazon.com/Against-Therapy-Emotional-Tyranny-Psychological-ebook/dp/B008KPZRDW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467748322&sr=8-1&keywords=jeffrey+masson#navbar
The psychotherapist does not share your interests, they are collaborators with injustice. They only thing they do is try and make you into a collaborator as well.
Now having said this, there are lots of people who have been trained as psychotherapists and who are licensed as psychotherapists, who do things which are way out side the envelope of psychotherapy. And anyone can hang up a shingle and put out whatever they want. So long as they are not claiming to have a license they don’t have, they aren’t breaking any law.
But what would be better would be if people could be involved in activist groups and a program of individual study and reflection, and exposed to a variety of doctrines and various types of counselors and teachers. So rather than just someone being offered in that therapist and fee for hour model, someone you could work with, and coming out of a social context in which you are already embedded.
You talk about Wicca, so are you getting involved in Wicca and with Wiccan’s, that would probably be much better than just paying per hour for care and concern from someone you don’t even know.
People being made to feel that they need a therapist because there is something wrong with them?
Solving this problem is going to take more than just brushes full of black paint.
People who have been abused never getting any chance at justice, and then being told that they have ‘mental problems’ and need therapy?
Solving this problem is going to take more than just brushes full of black paint.
People using therapists to break their children?
Solving this problem is going to take more than just brushes full of black paint.
Our government legitimating all this by issuing licenses?
Solving this problem is going to take more than just brushes full of black paint.
Many of these therapists helping parents break their children and disregarding the Mandatory Reporting Law?
Solving this problem is going to take more than just brushes full of black paint.
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/index.php
Nomadic
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When I engaged the services of that young therapist I never once went to his office with the idea that something was wrong with me. I needed someone to listen to me as I talked out the issues I was experiencing. This is all that I want from a therapist; I want you to sit and listen. I will do the talking and the work and in the talking I discover what it is that I need to know about myself and the issues I’m dealing with. I need an interested person and at the time didn’t have access to friends. And he was interested and he did care and you can’t say that he didn’t because you were not there and you know nothing about the situation. I believe that you’re making big general statements.
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Agreed, Steve Gilbert. If therapy works for someone I can’t knock that person’s personal experience with that therapist nor say it isn’t genuine, nor can anyone else conclude anything about what happens between me and any person I hire in a private discussion in an office, unless they are present as witnesses. Unfortunately, this means we have no recourse in cases of therapy abuse. The therapist wins, claiming we’re crazy. It takes a huge effort for a patient to win such cases. I am scared to go back to one, frankly, because of what happened to me. After Sandy Hook my gut instinct told me the kid had been abused by his therapist. I wanted to cry and cry and cry for that kid, and all my friends called me “dangerous” because they claimed this abused kid was a “monster” and then they called me that, too. Meanwhile these therapists get off, and keep on abusing and there’s NO RECOURSE. That’s why, frankly, I won’t shut up till something’s done about it.
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” I needed someone to listen to me as I talked out the issues I was experiencing. ”
Okay fine, between consenting adults I’m not going to say anything about it. FWIW, with my last therapist I did severely restrict her, she was a listener, not a talker, she was not to give other interpretations or offer outside information. In insisting on this I was inspired by Alice Miller.
So my therapist went along with this because I insisted. And at the end of our sessions she started saying, “Good work you are doing.”
So yes, it was okay, but just okay.
But why not set up other solutions. Like for one thing, although I did talk about lots and lots of stuff with this therapist and it was good for me. But there were also things I decided that it would be better not to take the risk of talking about with this therapist.
Okay, this is as good as therapy gets. This is not how it typically is.
But there were other issues I came to see. Really what the therapist is trying to do is let you talk yourself out.
Like what do police do when they find someone behaving suspiciously? They take them to an interrogation room and handcuff them to a table and start interrogating them. I think they can usually do this for a maximum of 3 hours before having to charge them or release them.
Well basically the therapist is doing the same thing, getting people to talk themselves out, and making sure that they are not dangerous. They are required to report people they think may be a harm to themselves or another. So if you feel angry enough that you think such things could be warranted, then you might as well just go down to the police station and confess, instead of confessing in your therapists office.
People who want to take action, stop talking. If you want results, the first thing you do is start maintaining operational security, a privacy wall.
The therapist always has their own interest, usually it is in preventing any radical actions and in exonerating parents. They won’t say that the parent is 100% correct, but they always want to make excuses for and provide justifications for the actions and views of the parent. The therapist always has their own social investments. If they did not, they would not be a therapist. If they did not go with the flow, they would have to be a revolutionary. And most of the things people go in to their office to deal with are not going to be solved by something other than revolution.
A therapist might try to make excuses for a parent by saying, “Well they are just concerned that their child be able to earn a living.”
This is an endorsement for the view that children need to be broken to be socialized. It is patently wrong because just that the child can speak at all, or can understand at all means that they basically live in the same world the parent does.
But Capitalism depends upon overcoding, and so the Middle-Class Family has it’s pedagogies, and the therapist is kind of like a remedial parenting.
So Jeffrey Masson says that the therapist has their own interest and that what is handled in their office should be handled elsewhere, some other venue.
So rather than looking in the Yellow Pages so you can find someone to pay to listen to you, what if people were involved in political activism groups already, with people they already know? And of course much of this gets to the failure of religion.
Is your therapist going to help you shut down the other therapists who are covering up child abuse?
Ask your therapist, how many parents have you put into jail? How much money have you recovered from them via lawsuits?
As the answer will be zero, they are just letting their clients talk themselves out.
The therapist operates on the premise that inaction is better than political action. If they did not believe this, they could not be therapists.
Underneath psychological distress and those behaviors taken as mental illness there is always legitimate conflict and injustice. Your therapist is not committed to helping you see this and win, they are committed to helping you stop being angry about it.
Nomadic
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Thanks for this article Chaya.
I agree that a therapist who does not believe in diagnosis and does not (over)focus on drugs can be very valuable; it has been for me.
Many traumatized people have great difficulty trusting and forming sustaining relationships outside a structured environment – at least at first – and so for them a therapist can be a valuable ally in getting them to the point where they can satisfy more of their own needs in non-professional relationships. In my view diagnosis and drugs basically get in the way of this process, or at least do nothing to address these basic needs or whatever life trauma/neglect that caused them not to be met.
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But the interests of the therapist and of the client are usually quite different. The therapist has made their own peace with The System. They aren’t fighting it. Their entire professional vocation consists of going with the flow and not fighting back.
Whereas the client is likely someone who has survived familial abuses, exactly those kinds of abuses which are not aberrational, but rather are those which parents are expected to engage in because of the false premise that children need to be broken.
And also the middle-class family is rooted in bad-faith, in people acting as though they do not have choices, and putting the responsibility for this onto their children, children who never asked to be born.
The psychotherapist would not be a psychotherapist unless they had long ago giving up on challenging this.
Nomadic
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/survivors-of-the-middle-class-family-t243.html
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I guess I have to disagree with you on this point. There are dissident psychotherapists/counselors in any system, just like there are dissident teachers in public schools and dissident doctors at mainstream hospitals. Such folks may be hard to find, but as Chaya has so clearly laid out, it can be a goldmine if you manage to get connected with one. I say this because 1) I did luck out and find a very competent and helpful therapist when I was in my 20s, and 2) I was one of those dissidents who gave people what I think most would report was great service that was respectful and empowering. Eventually, working in the crazy system did drive me out, but while I was there, people were, in fact, very fortunate to find me, because I believed neither in diagnoses nor in drugs, and I was able to truly listen and care about the people I interacted with and focus on empowering them rather than telling them what to do or forcing them to do anything.
It doesn’t sound like you’ve ever had that experience, and I agree that the system is set up to suppress such behavior by any therapist, but some are able to resist and can maintain their integrity even in the mess of the “mental health system”, at least for a while.
—- Steve
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“It doesn’t sound like you’ve ever had that experience”
Steve if you are speaking to me you are already way off base in what you are trying to do. Maybe some people would pretend not to notice, but not I.
Yes there are dissident therapists and they can be interesting. But this is not ever going to be a substitute for finding people you can actually work with to achieve political solutions.
Psychotherapy and its entire format is a denial system. We learn best via action, balanced with reflection. But this is not what therapy is. Psychotherapy is extremely similar to religion in how it denigrates and stigmatizes action.
All knowing is doing and all doing is knowing.
http://www.enolagaia.com/AT.html
Nomadic
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And one of the principle modes of psychotherapy is to tell anyone who doesn’t go along with it, that obviously they need more therapy. It is by its very nature abusive.
Adult to consenting adult, I’m not every going to do anything about it. But when there is not consent or with children, or when someone feels that they have been coned or abused, very different story.
Nomadic
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Psychotherapy is always second rape, because they want to hear your private stuff and probe you, but they still want to make you believe that the problem and the solution lie in your own head, in how fast you can stop being angry. They have ZERO commitment to helping you achieve justice.
So I really encourage everyone to look at psychotherapy as second rape. I mean like when a woman goes to a police station to report a rape and she is questioned about how she might have caused it, and then told about how there are therapists who can help her with her problem, but not that police are going to arrest the perpetrator.
We who have survived injustices and who are aware of this, should have ZERO TOLERANCE for Psychotherapists. They are routine perpetrators of second rape.
Nomadic
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Thanks for reading and commenting. BPDTransformation. I completely agree.
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Thank you, Chaya, for your thoughtful article. So happy that you had a good experience with therapy. Therapy is supposed to be a place for personal growth and development. It takes courage and maturity to admit one needs some extra support. We all need extra supports at times especially at times of a life change. Great that your therapist was transparent with you about the unfortunate realities of managed care insurance needs and told you the “diagnosis” that she needed to use to get reimbursed. The dilemma for therapists is that we either use insurance and play the game and it in a DSM V diagnosis or charge out of pocket which gets expensive. Necessary evil we call it. Much health and wellness to you!
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So obviously we need other institutions, other than psychotherapy or other things which resemble it.
Nomadic
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We have enough in our communities to care for each other. Let’s start with what we already have and not create more “institutions”. My advice: Help yourself and your own loved ones first especially if you have children, then your neighbors, be a person who has integrity and cares about others, get involved in an organization, and know what is going on in your own backyard, volunteer, give money if do not have time. We are such a society of disconnection. We all can make a difference, small or large.
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I said we need other institutions. I mean places to go and engage with people, which are not set up like psychotherapy. And by this I mean not fee per hour, so they aren’t Life Coaching either. People you can be involved with in the struggle towards justice. Because all of these so called mental problems or psychological problems are really just the completely rational experience of living in an unjust work and being told that you have to accept it passively.
When you go to someone’s office and have therapy sessions or therapy like sessions, you are already accepting a confessional model, coming their from the position that the problems are of your own creation and exist only inside of your own head.
Nomadic
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Thank you Knowledgeispower! Interesting you say, “therapy is supposed to be a place for personal growth and development”. Makes me think of how in general people go to therapy out of a desperation of some kind…like you say, in times of a big life change. But many people have been going through constant big life changes for pretty much ever, which often results in overwhelm. So, while the result may be growth and development, I think the initial motivation is usually overwhelm.
I think it’s great when therapists are transparent, especially because more and more people know how the system works so clients are assessing the therapist’s ability to be honest and aware, both with us, and themselves. At least that is my hope. I realize many still go into therapy without this awareness.
The dilemma and necessary evil mentality you describe is only true of some therapists. Many actually believe in diagnoses and drugs, in fact I would say the majority do, since that is how they are trained. They would need to actively go against their schooling and industry to see it as a necessary evil. I’m glad there are those out there who do, though, and it sounds like you are one of them.
Thanks!
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People need to be exposed to a variety of sources, and be engaging in ongoing education and self-examination.
But to get someone to the point where they are willing to shell out therapy style fees, and expose their private matters to someone who probably has their own ideas, something has got to be seriously wrong. So I go with Jeffrey Masson here, “Psychotherapy is wrong because it is profiting off of other people’s misery.” Anything you disclose to such persons is at great risk of invalidation.
How much better to read books or listen to some lectures where the so called expert lays their views out to you right in the open. And then if you want you can write or journal and discuss in some kind of a peer group. And best of all, to be able to be involved in a group of activists, people who are committed to working to remedy the causes of psychological distress, rather than to collecting money off of those who have experienced injustice.
Nomadic
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You’re fortunate, I think my therapist believes in a lifetime of drugs as the Holy Grail of recovery (my words, not hers. I could be wrong about her stance on drugs, which is why I’m going to discuss this topic with her soon). I don’t want to run away from my therapist and psychiatrist, I want to face my fear of telling them the complete truth… and the truth is, I want to stop my drugs, stop labeling myself with a harmful diagnosis and focus on alternative treatments! Most of all, though, I want to tell ONLY the truth, because how can I expect to RECEIVE the truth if I don’t GIVE the truth myself? I believe if I’m 100% truthful with them, the truth will set me free!
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regarding “stop my drugs”. This is their faith, the magical molecule. You should not confront it because YOU are not in a position of power. The only thing you can do ( if you and your helper have opposite opinions) is divorce.
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I have to agree, it’s best to find another therapist because doctors who drug people don’t like to admit their drugs do not work for all. In part, possibly because this is somewhat proof they misdiagnosed you in the first place, which is malpractice. And doctors can and do turn into dangerous paranoid “schizophrenics” when trying to cover up malpractice.
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If you feel that you are being mistreated by a psychotherapist, lets see if we can put them out of business. Mostly it just comes down to exposing what their therapy amounts to, which usually is just b. s.
Nomadic
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That’s great Victoria. Thanks for reading and commenting. My .02 is that it is important to be as honest as we can with ourselves and then choose our battles as to who else is worth investing in the truth with. I don’t believe we owe it to medical professionals to share our truth with them unless we want to, because it can be draining and distract us from taking care of ourselves if we feel we are responsible for telling everyone everything we have learned. But it is a personal choice.
In your journey to stop drugs, I would offer that it’s okay to put yourself first and find practitioners who will support you, if at all possible. Trying to convince doctors to take you seriously or respect you when they don’t naturally do so can be a very frustrating process.
Wishing you the best!
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Your reply means a lot to me, Chaya, you’re very insightful. You’re right, we should invest the truth in people who respect our truth. My plan, though, is NOT to convince them I’m right. My REAL plan is to ask them questions, then expose their answers on this website. I believe that when we discover their version of the truth, we also discover a new plan of action in which to improve the mental “health” system…
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Sounds like a good idea 🙂
I appreciate that you are thinking about how to get the message out to a wider audience. That helped me get through the coming off process in a way that was inspiring and not purely tedious. Sending good wishes!
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I agree, getting the message out gives me great hope that we CAN reform the system… together! One person alone can’t win this peaceful fight against oppression, that’s why I want to join this movement. Best wishes to you, too! 🙂
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Chaya I have always admired you. You can call any of us, you know. Or at least you can call me. Or write. I have left comments on your website hoping you would respond. It’s too bad you had to resort to paying for friendship. Yes, I was tempted to do the same thing, having been in the same position for far too long.
Social isolation is different from solitude, which is a blessing. I was so desperate, begging people, “Can’t we talk not text?” but no one would budge on that one, insisting on pushing me away. So I was going to hire a friend in an office. I am way, way too tired for the needle search, though. I am sure it won’t be worth the headache.
Just be persistent. You will find friends. You don’t have to pay for one. We’re always here at MIA, after all, and we do not charge taxpayers and insurance in the name of your loneliness.
Julie
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Chaya – I am so happy you found a helpful therapist. We are out there. . .
I am a psychotherapist who very strongly does NOT NOT NOT believe in stigmatizing DSM labels, the “disease model,” and psychiatric drugs. In fact, my website, blog and YouTube channel outline this very clearly.
Go to http://www.SelfAcceptancePsychology.com And I tell my clients in the first meeting about my beliefs to reduce stigma and help them feel more comfortable that I am not judging them. As I outline in “Self-Acceptance Psychology” problems of thinking, feeling, and behaving (“mental disorders”) are due to Five Causative Factors that are normal and understandable: trauma or attachment trauma, fear (“fight-or-flight”), shame, and the natural fear of social exclusion.
I believe, and have been told by my many happy clients, that I am a compassionate, accepting therapist who is not just out to make money or promote my own agendas onto my clients. In fact, I gave up a lucrative corporate career in midlife to go to graduate school to become a clinical psychologist — and make LESS money.
So since I do not arbitrarily and blindly label others as “mentally ill,” I would appreciate that all of us in the mental health profession were also not labeled as somehow, due solely to our professional titles, as morally bankrupt, worthless, corrupt, etc etc. Many of us would love to change the psychiatric-based system and make it more focused on client-center, accepting, compassionate, helpful, productive therapy, not drugs and more drugs.
Oh, and I, too, was very, very lucky to have stumbled upon an excellent therapist (in a bar!) at a point in my life when I was absolutely in need of one and didn’t even know it. Her help was life-changing and actually led to me becoming a psychologist. There are good therapists out there…
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People say they want to end coercive psychiatry, but they keep playing footsie under the table with psychotherapists.
“Please don’t subject us to forced medication and psychiatric treatment. We have already been rendered non-violent. Have pity on us. Give us a chance to try psychotherapy and recovery.”
So given that the reason that we have psychiatry and psychotherapy is to legitimate child abuse and to perpetuate an underclass using eugenic arguments, the anti-psychiatry movement is not being very effective.
Nomadic
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/therapy-is-no-answer-t280.html
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People seem to feel that they have to go along with the concept of Mental Illness, and the idea that some people Need Therapy. So they take a passive, compliant, and pity seeking attitude in the face of such.
Bunch of Uncle Toms!
Nomadic
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The people at the bottom of our society, usually being the scapegoats of the middle class family, need to band together and act. We must reject alcohol, drugs, tobacco, christianity, motivationalism, life coaching, psychotherapy, psychiatry, and psychiatric medication, and instead fight for some concrete political gains, and to protect those children being scapegoated by the middle class family today. And this means seeing to it that the parents have to pay legal consequences, along with all the doctors who help them.
And we need to set up our own Foster Care Group Homes, as otherwise it is very hard to protect children.
Nomadic
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/index.php
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