Psychiatrists Divided on Understandings of Psychosis

Researchers find that UK psychiatrists are at odds with one another and support divergent understandings of psychosis.

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A recent study published in The International Journal of Social Psychiatry analyzes how psychiatrists in the UK understand psychosis. Through interviews, the authors found several prominent “positions” on psychosis. They discovered three dominant positions—a biomedical understanding, a critical perspective focused on social context, and an ambivalent stance. The authors, Therese O’Donoghue and Jon Crossley from the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Leicester, also note several key themes discussed by psychiatrists, such as orthodox medical training, power hierarchies in the field, and the need for psychiatrists to appear invulnerable.

“Recently, there has been support from several influential figures in the field for a broader perspective on psychosis. Jim van Os argued that what are currently regarded as mental illnesses are better framed as vulnerabilities, as they are seldom ‘cured.’ They critiqued the evidence-based symptom reduction model which dominates service organizations because of its disconnection from the needs of patients,” O’Donoghue and Crossley write.
Separately, the prominent psychiatrist Sir Robin Murray publicly stated that he regretted ignoring social factors throughout his research career, and called for more research on environmental factors and epigenetics. He cautioned that those still clinging to a Kraepelinian model were refusing to accept the evidence base to the detriment of their patients.”
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Both service-users and professionals in psychiatry have criticized the orthodox medical understanding of psychosis. Often, it is pointed out that understanding psychosis as a medical or biological problem is inadequate to the reality of the situation, which involves environmental factors.

Likewise, many have pointed to the human rights abuses and forms of discrimination common among bio-medical oriented paradigms of treatment. Previous research found that training in Open Dialogue could assist in transforming the identities of clinicians in these progressive directions.

The current study analyzes how psychiatrists in the UK understand and talk about psychosis, including how they position themselves in relation to different narratives in the field. The authors use a qualitative research method called Critical Narrative Analysis to explore the psychiatrists’ professional self-talk, as well as themes related to orthodox medical training, power, social standing, and other issues.

Twelve individuals were interviewed: four post-graduates considered at a “trainee” level and eight at a “qualified” level. All individuals had a medical degree and at least six months of experience working with psychosis.

The authors identified three different positions on psychosis among the psychiatrists interviewed.

Four psychiatrists who spoke ambivalently about psychosis and the bio-medical model stated that their views were shaped by discussions of genetics as well as hearing speakers from the Critical Psychiatry Network and the Hearing Voices Network. They also discussed the impact of speaking to colleagues with alternative understandings and reflecting on their own experiences.

These psychiatrists noted discrepancies between the orthodox medical narrative and their case experiences with psychosis, as well as issues like collusion between pharmaceutical companies and psychiatry. They were skeptical of the dominant perspective, although they did not identify as critical psychiatrists or endorse a single viewpoint.

“So, you know, quite a lot of my time is spent filling in these silly forms (laughs) that don’t benefit the patient at all. And take time away from the patient, and so, I think there’s that sort of contention as well, that, some of the things that we do, eh, you know, for anyone with psychosis is, you know, not trying to serve them, but some of it is about serving the system and might even be detrimental to them in trying to serve the system.”

Five of the interviewees were identified as biological psychiatrists. The authors describe their tone of speech as “resolute and axiomatic.” Their narratives focused on things like respect for the training they received in medical school and the authoritative voices of older colleagues in the field. They tended to avoid speaking in personal terms, except for one individual, who stated:

“The clarity of what you’re treating and how you’ve got to treat it and what to expect in future, most general adult psychiatrists would tell you – give me psychosis any day.”

The biological psychiatrists were unfamiliar with alternative understandings of psychosis or simply found them unhelpful, given the weight they gave to a biological etiology and method of treatment.

Three individuals were categorized into the third group of critical psychiatrists. These individuals were the most open about their personal experiences and discussed “complications and uncertainties” regarding how to understand psychosis. One participant spoke with a compassionate, reflective tone, while the other two spoke more assertively and dispassionately.

“If you go to a meeting and you declare that you’re a psychiatrist and all of a sudden people start screaming and shouting at you because they’re unhappy with what psychiatrists do, then, you know, you’ve got to be pretty insensitive not to begin to try and understand what that’s all about.”

The critical psychiatrists discussed being impacted by “advocacy groups, service-user movements, links to non-psychiatric academia, teaching, admired colleagues, and their own life experience.” They believed the field of psychiatry to be dominated by biological reductionism, which they saw as harmful to service-users.

In addition to these three prominent positions, the authors found several themes that were common to the interviews. These include “orthodoxy, vulnerability, expectation, power, populism, and creativity.”

Orthodoxy related to how aligned the psychiatrists were with conventional biological explanations and modes of treatment. Biological psychiatrists stated, for example, that when they prescribed medication, they saw “instant results.”

The second theme, invulnerability, related to pressures the participants discussed concerning the need to avoid “appearing uncertain or vulnerable.”

“I get presented with someone, and I have to do something, and I have no choice, you know? The system effectively says, ‘you’ve got to do something, it’s your job. You’re the end stop. You’re the catcher’s mitt under this particular system’.”

The third theme, power and populism, discussed a hierarchy within the field of psychiatry, where a powerful older guard in charge of training dictates which perspective is “true” and the correct method of treatment. Some of the psychiatrists noted how difficult it was to think independently of these authoritative figures.

Additionally, they discussed pressure from the public to uphold a medical model, given how psychiatrists are expected to be able to do certain things by those who go to them for services.

Finally, participants discussed a “dampening of creativity” in their bio-medical training and subsequent professional lives:

“My training would teach me that it’s excessive dopamine.”
“We’re much more subject to audit. And I’m not saying that this is bad. To be recklessly doing whatever you like and doing negligent stuff, obviously, that’s not good. But I, you know, I think there’s a risk to sort of imagination and creativity in there somewhere.”

The authors conclude:

“It is apparent that there is no singular way of conceptualizing psychosis, and the complexity and contentiousness of this area will undoubtedly continue. In accepting and overly identifying with one conceptual position, other possibilities become excluded.
Motivation to broaden knowledge and exercise reflexivity is important and might allow for other possibilities to be considered, but is inhibited by the threat it poses to the hierarchy and power of the profession and the dominant technological paradigm.”

 

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O’Donoghue, T., & Crossley, J. (2020). A critical narrative analysis of psychiatrists’ engagement with psychosis as a contentious area. The International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 1-7. (Link)

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Micah Ingle, PhD
Micah is part-time faculty in psychology at Point Park University. He holds a Ph.D. in Psychology: Consciousness and Society from the University of West Georgia. His interests include humanistic, critical, and liberation psychologies. He has published work on empathy, individualism, group therapy, and critical masculinities. Micah has served on the executive boards of Division 32 of the American Psychological Association (Society for Humanistic Psychology) as well as Division 24 (Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology). His current research focuses on critiques of the western individualizing medical model, as well as cultivating alternatives via humanities-oriented group and community work.

29 COMMENTS

  1. “the threat it poses to the hierarchy and power of the profession and the dominant technological paradigm.”

    Yes, it’s all about maintaining the “status quo.” Because we all need to maintain the systemic, primarily child abuse covering up and profiteering, psychological and psychiatric industries, and the power of the globalist “pedophile empire” “elite,” who pay their bills.

    https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/01/23/18820633.php?fbclid=IwAR2-cgZPcEvbz7yFqMuUwneIuaqGleGiOzackY4N2sPeVXolwmEga5iKxdo
    https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/04/heal-for-life/
    https://www.amazon.com/Pedophilia-Empire-Chapter-Introduction-Disorder-ebook/dp/B0773QHGPT
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdW1Jy2aIJI&list=TLGGhwJVdkBNE74wNzA3MjAyMA&index=1

    But I find it difficult to believe that I’m the only person who does not want to live in, or maintain, a globalist NWO “pedophile empire.” I think maintaining such a “status quo” is disgusting.

    As to “psychosis,” since NO “mental health” worker today may EVER bill ANY insurance company for EVER helping ANY child abuse survivor EVER, unless they misdiagnose them all.

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-child-does-not-have-bipolar-disorder/201402/dsm-5-and-child-neglect-and-abuse-1

    Any person who stands against child abuse is considered “psychotic” by the “mental health” industry today. I have proof in my medical records that a Lutheran child abuse covering up psychologist believes all thoughts, gut instincts, and dreams are “psychosis.” That way too loose definition of “psychosis” means all human beings are “psychotic.”

    And if calling all who stand against child abuse “psychotic,” and neurotoxic poisoning them, doesn’t work. The systemic child abuse covering up religions will sick a psychologist onto the person with a BS contract, intended to steal all that person’s money.

    https://books.google.com/books?id=xI01AlxH1uAC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

    I think maintaining the systemic child abuse covering up psychologists’ and psychiatrists’ “pedophile empire” is a stupid idea. I’m sorry so many of the psychologists and psychiatrists seemingly want to maintain, and live in, a “pedophile empire.” If it was your child who was abused, you’d probably feel differently.

    America needs to get rid of our scientifically “invalid,” primarily child abuse covering up, “mental health” industries, and bring back the rule of law, instead.

    https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml

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  2. Thanks Micah, well done.

    “Separately, the prominent psychiatrist Sir Robin Murray publicly stated that he regretted ignoring social factors throughout his research career, and called for more research on environmental factors and epigenetics. He cautioned that those still clinging to a Kraepelinian model were refusing to accept the evidence base to the detriment of their patients.”

    This is just it, isn’t it. They all realize when they get old. THAT is when they come “out”. Psychiatrists are right now in a perfect position, a perfect time to “come out”.
    To publicly state that they “do NOT know” and that the concept of “mental illness” is bogus. That indeed there is human suffering, human variability, human weirdness that we do not understand, that what psychiatry is doing is harmful on many levels on top of being completely false.
    In fact, they could create a unified decision that no longer will people be LABELED. No longer will they participate in this manner. They can be helpful in lobbying governments to implement other helpful social programs to support people, they (psychiatrists) themselves can be helpful in BEING with those in distress. Just being, and being real.
    And to accept that it is part of life for some people to have great difficulty and as humans, we are here to see them through and create the best lives possible.

    They could do so much, but it would be a “radical” about face, and it is indeed the perfect time. To be known as the system that saw the futility and harm, IS the thing that will help most.

    Until that happens, we shall remain anti-psychiatry. Because there is nothing left to fix, unless it completely dismantles itself.
    It’s a shame some older farts in psych school still teach the bio bio draconian concept of something ludicrous as “mental illness” and “dopamine” etc etc.
    I think more and more kids are seeing the light earlier, and really don’t want to become shrinks. It’s way beneath their logic and common sense and insulting.
    They might raise the question of what to do with all their clients. I just described it, and it would be much more perfect than what they have now. Plus a shrink could finally relax and let his own demons come to light.

    It’s really amazing we still talk about this nasty business after all these years. I think it’s been proven that humans are nuts, it just appears in many different forms and situations. Psychiatry is just another form of nuttiness. Most often we see nuts as someone who is not like us. Welcome to our world.

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  3. “Psychiatrists Divided on Understandings of Psychosis”

    This is the funniest title that I’ve seen in a long time.

    Even if they understood anything at all in the first place, how on earth would psychiatrists understand a concept that not even the inventors of the concept, including Freud, understood? How could psychiatrists be anything but divided when it comes to understanding false concepts like “neurosis” or “psychosis”?

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    • LOL. I know, the word “understandings” got me all emotional. But nope, can’t catch me with the constant “researchers”, the constant reminding that psychiatry is a good religion. I wonder how much psych pays “researchers” and “journalists”.
      Geez I’m having to put quotations around every word lately. I think I’m being “paranoid” and “psychiatry” really does want what is best for Mary.

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    • I must confess, Slaying, that “psychosis” does exist. The problem is it is created with the anticholinergic drugs, like the antidepressants and antipsychotics, via anticholinergic toxidrome.

      “Psychosis” can also be created with other legal and illegal drugs, like the ADHD drugs and steroids, as well as by sleep deprivation, perhaps extreme child abuse abuse, although that seems to cause Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) instead.

      Although I have no doubt that DID is often misdiagnosed as “psychosis,” since none of the “mental health professionals” may ever bill any insurance company for ever helping any child abuse survivor ever. And there are probably other non-biological causes of “psychosis.”

      But there is absolutely no medical proof of a “biological” or “genetic” etiology of “psychosis,” as the psychiatrists have been fraudulently claiming for decades. And the mainstream pharmaceutical controlled “fake news” has been propagating for decades, with no actual poof.

      Will there ever be a time when the psychiatrists will start to listen to the “experts by experience,” who also have decades of medical research under our belts, and actually have the “genetics” of multiple Phi Beta Kappa members in our family?

      Which the psychiatrists and psychologists may not even know means we have the “genetics” of the intellect of the top 1% of the United States in our family.

      When will the seemingly globalist fraud based educated and bankster worshipping, fiscally irresponsible, never ending war mongering and profiteering, psychiatrists and psychologists actually start to listen to, the well researched, anti-war believing, intelligent American citizens?

      Let’s hope it happens at some point.

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  4. What Neuroleptic drugs do is create conditions of “Indifference”. So a person is not worried about what’s on their minds, or anything else.

    Buddhist Psychology/Philosophy encourages a state of “Equanamity” where a person is aware of their circumstances but accepting of them. From this position problems are not too difficult to deal with.

    Dr Robin Murray towards the end of his career also acknowledged the existence of “Neuroleptic Withdrawal Syndrome”. This condition is IMO, what holds people in “Long Term Severe Mental Illness”.

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  5. Well isn’t it really that it’s a software problem, and since they don’t know how to fix that, all they can do is attack the hardware? And the software can’t be changed just by a new environment, you have to find ways to really reach in and talk to it, since it’s intelligent and has a purpose, even though it’s wrecking people’s lives.

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    • dfk,
      though I don’t accept or use the term ‘psychosis’ because it shows a judgmental ignorance (imo) of what is really happening, I do agree it’s a ‘software’ issue. After walking with my wife for 13 years in this, I think much of non-drug induced ‘pyschosis’ is related to dissociation and overlapping mental realities (past and present). I help her reprogram her software by walking with one foot in her “Matrix” and one foot in the present. I don’t demand that she change, but simply am a safe companion for her, interacting with her where she is and helping her as needed, and slowly she is moving from the past to the present at a rate that she is comfortable changing as she brings those dissociated areas into her general narrative.
      Sam

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  6. I care what they see- but i don’t too- cause i know they’ve got indoctrination in their eyes- and their imagining things- they think, they think, or know-when its all misery see- and highly imaginary- misery imagery- how to see dark from a dark indoctrination- we live and breathe darkness- sell it, and shove it down throats- Psychosis hey- big word-the thing is people get to a place society, with the help of the MH professionals, calls psychotic- on their own- that’s just one small percentage- but the major percentage are people effected by drugs- experiencing temporary drug induced psychosis- bad drug effect- bad trip- bad acid- whatever they’ve taken- whatever it is their effected by- from- is a temporary condition brought about from mind altering substances- that need to eliminate themselves from their bodies via sleep- good food- vitamins- the waylaying of their drug effected thinking- that they just don’t do in bins- their unethically adding drugs to these people who are ultimately sleeping off their street drug conditions- only to have them replaced, or take the place of the leaving condition- as they sleep it away- by their own- going onto a psychotropic, psychotic condition- and you can see the condition they truned up with leave- with the sleep they eventually get- and the new ongoing drugged psychotic condition, arrive- as the street drug condition leaves- so they go from one drug dealer- drug-conditon to anther drug dealers, drug condition, when all they needed was the right kind of waylaying caring nurture, and the sleep they needed to sleep their conditions away by eliminating the offending drugs-and restoring themselves to their normal-not drug effected selves, that they “don’t do” which in my mind and heart, is a criminality- not just a denial of the reality- but a failure to treat people ethically- decently- or properly- according to their condition- their real condition.

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  7. Does what psychiatry says psychosis is have much to do with it? Funny, you know someone that’s actually, I don’t know, learned a language, and can speak it with the natives, or has learned to swim, or has been to a country or a city and knows the layout, the map; it gets awfully strange when those people (the ones that have been psychotic, and namely the ones that have been through it and are over it, understand it) they have to depend on people that haven’t been to the country, that can’t speak the language, that can’t move around in it, that HAVEN’T been psychotic and recovered. You depend on those people to have anything you say be considered valid. That’s pretty strange. Added to this on is talking about something that you can’t just simply go to and map out, speak the language or move around in, because you have to have gone through it, otherwise it remains sort of invisible beyond what the psychiatrists make out of it, and then while really not having the experience to know what’s going on, they call you non-reality-based. And they really can’t know without having been there, and they’d have to really instead listen to those that have, it doesn’t at all work any other way.

    What is a paranoid schizophrenic supposed to be when the person labeling him is paranoid to see it for what allows it to heal, or exist at all to lead towards healing or insight or anything at all that’s worth mentioning (that it’s not a permanent chemical imbalance), and refuses to be realistic about this, and then dowses the person’s response with “medications” (said to be treating a chemical imbalance but scientifically causing one) which prevents them (the “patient”) from having a healthy enough brain to figure it out; thus not only preventing the psychiatrist from knowing what’s on, but the “patient” from figuring it out themselves!?!?!?!?!?

    I’ve had years, or lives trying to figure this out, to let it be and have enough room for it.

    Just my own “stuff.” I had found out that cigarettes, that when I started smoking, I’d end up in an “episode,” something I knew was non violent, but scared other people, and I knew that psychiatric drugs wouldn’t help. So I stopped smoking, but was quite shocked to see that I got more unsettled in an “episode,” and years went by, lots of social betrayal and attempts to exploit me while I wasn’t “psychotic,” which pretty much explained the “psychosis,” or the need to be in a place where people wouldn’t find me fit for their society. And then I noticed that I would have started drinking a copious amount of coffee when “psychotic,” and knew this, and stopped. But there was this weird switch going on that after awhile I’d just start drinking coffee again, and have an “episode.” I mean I had kept myself from drinking coffee, and would be fine, and then….. But then I ran into the teachings of how much we take on habits to disassociate from feelings, and in my case I found they were really just the feelings, the instincts, the insights, the instincts I had as a child but was never allowed to express, and when they would re-emerge needing leg room after awhile, the discomfort, the feelings of being oppressed would get me to start drinking too much coffee, too much to be “sane” anyhow. And it worked actually.

    It’s a language, when “psychotic” it’s your unconscious speaking to you however it can, symbolism, scenarios possibly called non reality based rather than fictional, which might still be what it is, which is a human need, given the amount of it in novels, myths etc., or however it expresses itself, because sometimes because of the dis-inhibition quite otherwise impossible things happen, even metaphysical or miraculous things. And so even when I could have been called non reality based in my thinking, this was beyond objective reality, because it involved my reflexes, and thus the future. The future not being something that’s EVER objective in such a fashion, and only exists in context to your reflexes. And so there are emotional wounds, and trauma, but the psychosis is REALLY just trying to show you that there is a language that can help you understand that, understand your reflexes and change your life, and so it’s not really so much about trauma, as about the miracle that it is to be human, and that we all can transcend, and even forgive trauma, that there’s a language teaching us that. Who we really are.

    I wouldn’t ever turn towards coffee like I did, I didn’t even know why when I had. But the simple knowledge – Charlie Goldsmith in his mygoodhabits.com site helped with this – that I had feelings I was pushing to the side, this helped me understand why I had such a reaction, so instead I give legroom to those feelings. They really before that were just sort of blank space. And it’s amazing how much control we really have over our lives when we simply switch to something a little bit more subtle, a little more detached, show a little non attachment, and just allow things, even when at first it felt uncomfortable.

    It’s really insane, there’s supposed to be all of this “guilt,” for behaving a certain way that doesn’t fit in with social norms. The most ridiculous rules, and the rub is that everyone (well not “everyone” just the mob) they believe that adhering to those rules gives them pride, and without that they think they’d fall apart, and so they wouldn’t even know what they’re thinking anymore, they become so programmed. Run around outside naked, and feel the air against your skin, and the sun, and you’re a maniac that gets arrested and drugged up, because of it. Oh, but the whole arsenal of social control tactics, all the way to torture methods and how to blow up all human life on the planet at least 20 times with nuclear weapons to make sure the enemy is dead, this is all highly funded. EXTREMELY frustrating. And then there’s all of this privilege to be violent, to have a whole policing system when you obey the rules, as if that works to create a society. All of it was so confusing to me, that a completely “non reality based” voice had to turn me away from who knows what, like someone so confused they don’t end up being hit by a car for want of not seeing what they are doing, or where they are going. That I would believe ANY of it makes any sense, or is a means to any end at all.

    An African Violet had just blossomed, the color magenta that’s actually not in our color spectrum https://www.biotele.com/magenta.html our mind fills it in. Whether it was the color of the violet or the blossoming, but the MOMENT I saw it I heard a voice: “SHUTUP we’re praying,” and it was so apparent, like a spring that had been let lose, that I argued with it. But it did get me to change course, and even a physical healing took place, something I’m still getting to know, because you can feel the difference of letting yourself get riled up or letting go, of actually forgiving, not buying into guilt. But I argued with the voice, thought it was Jesus, told him that he might have stayed around a bit longer, since he said that the flowers that are thrown on the compost heap to be burned are more splendid than Solomon’s robe, and yet we are worth more than that. Making such a remark when one sees a beautiful flower. He had friends in the Mediterranean he could have gone to visit rather than sticking around with the end we all know was the result. And who’s to say he doesn’t agree with me, since that’s PAST history. And he’s been with me at a level of intimacy I think that gave him another place to surrender to, but that’s all psychotic. Crazy. How dare I say such things. A voice popping out of nowhere because I saw a flower.

    I don’t know, psychosis, fiction, imagination. Why do we have fiction? I had gone to a miracle crusade, years ago, with someone who took me there that I didn’t know was so paranoid. Since has become a social worker, anyone surprised? And during the “crusade” I found myself, my mind placed me that is, in a movie where there’s love making going on at the end of the scene. How does this happen that after seeing a movie you end up inside of it, which I think is the idea the whole time upon watching it, a place to give subjunctive place, to gain perspective, to go beyond your limitations, physical or conceptual. AT first it was just someone that ends up as a ghost later on getting the other person not to be so serious. Something I’ve found out since, being that with creativity you have to, you can’t keep at something without letting it go, and then it speaks for itself. Going through my day I would find whatever I’d been working on take a new turn. Working on a musical composition a light would go on in my head, just like the voice, and I’d hear the music take a new turn, but that was when I’d stopped trying to do anything consciously. I might be making good in the kitchen. So here I am, with what I feel is Jesus trying to make love to me, and I didn’t know you can’t just tell another person that, and made the mistake of telling someone who then called up my father trying to convince him I was going crazy because I was talking about making love to Jesus. Mind you this same person (now a social worker) bragged about coming down to the living room of where she was staying in college, and being greeted with a whole assortment of guys who she says she had all made dates with, not caring the amount, but no, one can’t talk about anything as decent as Jesus making love to you.

    Years pass, I had to get away from that person and her “spiritualist,” channeling friends, and turned to a few true healers, got to know that better, studied A Course in Miracles a lot at times, and then actually had the new miracle, thanks to his voice, and found that no that wasn’t crazy at all from the beginning of back then, that perhaps Jesus really DID need a place he could go and simply surrender and completely be himself, and that was part of the miracle. REALLY! Because I had had a whole shift, physical healing, but then had to actually look at how it happened, that it was me taking a turn away from responding to frustration, and then, the “physical problem” slightly coming back, I had to surrender to everything that I thought would happen if I wasn’t “vigilant” in warding away what would happen if I wasn’t, and the physical problem went away, because I wasn’t trying to defend myself from it. Instead surrendering, and even then finding I could give Jesus a place to surrender to….

    And I wonder if this is crazy enough, to talk about being put inside a movie (what actually is imagination or fiction, or why do we have movies, and what’s acting), to hear a voice (and no I didn’t read it in the bible or even A Course in Miracles) and have it have meaning rather than it’s a hallucination, and at that a really earthy voice from someone that is supposed to be a holy icon, and physical healing, and everything beyond formalism (I’m male by the way, not that I was during the time Jesus was on the earth, I understand, and he had seen me then too)….

    But this changes everything, when the space to give legroom to emotions turns into a whole other kind of healing, something that’s been suppressed when it doesn’t follow social constructs of control, when it doesn’t feed those controlling the economic system, when it doesn’t give authority to those worshiping what they can control of the physical and try to indoctrinate people to be fearful of anything else a bit less tangible to their controls. Giving a “psychotic” person space to know what their mind is trying to express might create such havoc for “society,” that it’s basic tenets might have to be questioned, is why whoever has been through it, which is the only way one can find out by listening to them, that it’s made out to be something else by those that can lock you up and force drug you!?

    It might just be “crazy” like the rest of life, was anyone paying any attention at all to it. They might notice it’s not quite following their rules.

    JESUS!

    CHRIST!

    Thank God it’s not following their rules.

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    • Just to summarize this post.

      When a person hasn’t been given the environment to get in touch with their own instincts, their own feelings, their own insights especially when they were supposed to see thing differently, and often were forced to not express themselves or met with derision and chastising along with other methods of traumatizing someone into not expressing themselves; when those feelings come back up, which they are meant to, then it has already become a conditioned reflex to push them away. And the real discomfort from the feelings come from that, not from the feelings themselves. This can be the same way with feelings in general that we don’t like and want to go away. Most of the discomfort could be from not feelings those feelings. Much, and too much of our whole society also is based on pushing those feelings away, the whole economic, consumer oriented and social setup, as well as what’s even called entertainment seems to often mostly be to give means for people to have a way to push those feelings to the side. And then there’s the anger, the depression and the feelings of inadequacy when we don’t have the means to push those feelings, feelings we need to feel, to the side. It could just be the feeling not to have to take sides. A more quite mindset.
      And it’s really quite a simple thing to help a person realize when they are doing this, rather than to strengthen whatever image they are supposed to have of themselves, and what’s running them. Simple anxiety for example, is treated in a way as if one should get rid of it, and yet what happens when you just allow yourself to feel it without responding to it? What if when you allow yourself to process it that it then goes away?
      I think there are a whole array of inner voices that are meant to give guidance that can help us would we just allow ourselves the space to feel stuff we think we need to push to the side. And there’s no loss in not being part of a world that would make us out to be crazy would we not push those insights to the side. There’s lots of stuff that happens, amazing stuff that otherwise wouldn’t be allowed to, would we expect life to be sane.

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    • I’m still puzzling about this, how to have made such a statement and to be clear about it, while changing the whole concept of Jesus. If one believes in reincarnation, which isn’t linear no one reincarnates in a body: there would be no reason to reincarnate were there not a multiplicity going on, was it instead linear. That’s like saying you can build a house without looking for the materials, in this case what gives time meaning, but if one believes in reincarnation then during the time Jesus had his short tragic life, he did see me, although I was a woman then, and there’s still a resonance there transcending the limitations of “THAT” time. That also alleviates Jesus of having to be an institution. He can simply be human.

      And why isn’t this allowed?

      There IS a whole other dimension to what it is to be human, and that’s so innate to what it is to be human that it doesn’t really allow people to be anything else, doesn’t make them one of the assembly of parts that go to make up what’s made out to be necessary to safeguard a territory (physical or mental); you can’t limit yourself to such a territory to begin with, you would never find the parts for the house, the house beyond time, the one that gives you space for life to have meaning.

      Why you have a soul.

      ALL of the non-reality-based stuff going on with “psychosis,” taps into that innate part of being human. When it tries to depict something the mind hasn’t quite grasped, whether it’s memories the conscious mind doesn’t know is effecting it emerging in supposedly non real scenarios trying to make a safe connection to realizing the memory, or the spiritual concepts that come out of transcending such trauma actually showing what’s real about life rather than defending something you could never be, or the imaginative insights that have to come in from the edge of the Universe or what’s called left field, or simply the need to dis-inhibit oneself beyond silly pretentious rules everyone follows just because everyone does (for their ego) rather than they truly make any sense, or instincts trying to emerge giving guidance for life involving everything I’ve already listed… all of that goes on with “psychosis.” There isn’t a time when I got “psychotic,” that something didn’t happen that might be called impossible, or metaphysical, a miracle, or supernatural, exactly because my lack of worldly “reason,” allowed it. Had I been sane it wouldn’t have had the legroom.

      There IS a whole other part of being human, so human that it’s not going to adapt to such limitations as “sanity” says it needs. And what’s really insane is trying to be that, something that can survive in such limitations. Because you’re making yourself out to be something impossible, and you’re not. What’s impossible is that such limitations exist, what’s called impossible: non-reality-based.

      There’s no need to be scared of it, just because if you stop pushing it away it will make sense.

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  8. Thank you for sharing your story. If you feel that Jesus is madly in love with you, the Pope would agree. He recently said something along the lines of, “Jesus is madly in love with us.” Personally, I want to believe that Jesus is madly in love with me, but usually find myself thinking, If God really loved me, He wouldn’t have let X,Y, and Z happen to me. I guess I am making myself God’s judge, which you probably shouldn’t do!

    There is this saying in Catholicism that “God meets us where we’re at.” Maybe everybody’s understanding or disbelief in God is uniquely tailored to each individual. Anyway, having a romantic relationship with Jesus is a much nicer vision than so much of the hostility that exists in the world.

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    • Yes, I think we all think that, why has God done X, Y and Z to us, but maybe that’s the illusion. Maybe we’re more in control, and when we practice what I found in A Course in Miracles to help, that it’s really just shifting to something else that was there the whole time, and we were in control, and that’s how we learn.

      It’s really just a friendship with Jesus, understanding what he went through rather than making an object out of him, which is what I think the Catholic Church does too much, and I don’t think that’s completely fair to him. I can not agree with their stance on homosexuality, for example, or a list of other things in that category. There is a wonderful lady who was, and probably still is, Catholic her whole life. She had miracles start to happen after she visited Fatima, an itching in her fingers that when she touched people miracles would happen. People from all over the world came to see her, she was on Television, and yet the Catholic Church didn’t even acknowledge what was happening or let her give a healing get together in their church.Here is a wonderful blog her friend and facilitator has written, he passed away a few years ago http://leaholof.blogspot.com/ The Catholics left this nasty superstitious denial of her abilities https://www.catholicdoors.com/isit/isit05.htm I think Leaholof has retired now, though.

      I’m just trying to show how much there is of healing, and of stuff that the institutions as they are, and the powers that be, deny. And when a person has been forced to conform to all of that, and they start to wake up finding themselves in no man’s land, the psychiatric system would often sooner find them “psychotic,” then even have interest in finding out what’s truly going on, and what that has to do with an innate beautiful part of being human that’s trying to express itself.

      Psychiatry might say that Jesus had any of a number of things wrong with him. And would he try to express how difficult his life was, because of his nature, because of how he was persecuted, because miracles happened around him and people either denied it or wanted to exploit him mostly; I really don’t think psychiatry would understand hardly any of that. I don’t think he needed anti-depressants for example. And I don’t think he needed to be on dopamine antagonists because he thought he talked to God. And because he could sooth the minds and heal many of the people psychiatry says it has the right to treat, they would further more have problems with him.

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      • “There is a wonderful lady who was, and probably still is, Catholic her whole life. She had miracles start to happen after she visited Fatima, an itching in her fingers that when she touched people miracles would happen. People from all over the world came to see her, she was on Television, and yet the Catholic Church didn’t even acknowledge what was happening or let her give a healing get together in their church.”

        Najinski, this sounds familiar.
        There is another group that likes to cling to old foundations and “treat” sins, yet if one of their clients tells them they’ve been cured, they do not acknowledge it 🙂 That group is psychiatry.
        They believe in their “diagnosis” and “treatments” so little or not at all, but need to remain as a “structure”.

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