As a young woman, I believed the story I was told and internalized the language of the psychiatric system. The story it told, the song it sang, was that I was broken, that I had a disease, and that I had no other choice besides medication if I wanted to survive in the world I lived in—the white, patriarchal, imperialist, and commodity-obsessed culture I existed in. But the truth is that this story—a deceptive lullaby—put me so deep into the numbness of sleep, it nearly killed me.
These days, I find myself wondering what particular details of this story made it such a destructive force in my life? Some find this story helpful, even healing. So what made psychiatry’s attempt to “save me,” the language they used, very nearly destroy me instead?
Why did this story become the only thing standing between me and healing?
My goal over the last three years has been to come off all psychiatric medication. Throughout this journey I have always had the grounding intentions of finding my own definition of wellness, what it meant to thrive in my own truth—the truth of who I am—and to reclaim my right to choose my own path. I fought to reclaim my right to choose what kind of help I wanted, which I had lost—in gross as well as subtle ways—at 21 when I was hospitalized and labeled Bipolar.
And I found a path from feeling helpless to heal, to reclaiming the hope of recovery, from the label of disease to describing my difference as diversity, from violence and force to my right to choose—to empowerment and sovereignty over myself.
I fought to choose which of my perceptions and emotions I could or couldn’t face without medication. I also learned the ways the hardships of my past, and the grieving I had yet to do, impacted my ability to cope with these diversities. And I fought to find all this without someone else’s narrative of what was and was not normal being enforced on me. I wanted to choose the why of help, in what form it came, and how it came to me.
I knew, when I saw through the fault lines of the psychiatric song, that only I knew these things, and only I had the key to understanding myself.
The way my life had gone prior to my diagnosis—the culture and family I was born into, my gender identity, my sexuality, the era I lived in, and the nature of my diversity—made this journey what it was: a kind of hell, existing in constant tension with my authentic self. And I am not alone in this kind of existence.
But, looking back now, the most harmful lack, besides all the ways my truths were neglected, was the absence of a language, an absence of story, that could guide me towards a better life. There was a song, a story, that could have shown me how to make it easy, but it had been lost in my time, my culture. All I found was the deafening presence of a language filled with harm and eradication, a language that only knew words that could levy shame onto me.
In this article, I want to share the journey I took to find a new language, a new story, around my experiences and how that journey impacted my survival. I truly believe if I had not done what I did over the last few years, I would be an empty chair at my loved ones’ dinner tables.
The first thing I had to do, once I looked up from the darkness I was in and found my courage to live, was rebel against everything I thought I knew, nearly every thought I had about the world. I had to rebel against the words others around me used. I had to look at everything anew with great scrutiny—even the words I was meant to trust—sometimes especially the ones I was meant to trust—the ones repeated most often. I had to look at the entire language of psychiatry which had become how I spoke about myself and how others in my life spoke about me.
It was a rebellion in its essence and intention because I realized this language had everything to do with power. It was bent on oppressing what it meant to be a human being, naturally diverse (as all human beings are), in pain, and needing the freedom to grieve loss. To find my own freedom, I had to fight for it—to rebel. I had to fight with all my strength to make new, empowering songs live in me; fight to make each new story a reality I could rely on within me. I had to fight really hard, up against people and ideas that felt like real-life monsters in a recurring nightmare. Such prisons of story and song are some of the hardest prisons to escape.
Three Words
I see language as cultural and personal architecture and I see it as generative of our realities day to day. I see art similarly. Language becomes perception and then transforms the spaces we walk in every day. It is generative in that it can create our lives, and even destroy them, and it certainly creates the institutional systems and paradigms of our culture. That’s why I often say how important artists are in the world, because we play with language in a revolutionary way; we change the story. We interrupt the natural progression of cultural ideas because we see where they’re headed. Artists scrutinize the logical conclusion of illogical intentions of society, whether they be political, economic, or social.
But, marketers of capitalist goods know this best: how to create a language like architecture within a consumer’s psyche. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and pharmaceutical companies also all know this idea very well. They all know the language we use to speak to ourselves and to each other can make them a billion—or break their bank if a different song catches on.
Sometimes I think about this dynamic of our world, our ailing culture, and think there are so many to blame that there really is no one to blame. Corrupt languages lead to corrupt hearts, and access to empowering, compassionate narratives is not at all abundant or easy to find. In fact, I think we’ve lost access to these narratives of compassion for suffering and grief in day-to-day life and in institutional structures for so long that even if we heard them now, many would not be able to hear them at all.
Those who control the language in our lives have power they do not wish to lose, making breaking free from their words feel like a Mt. Everest of a task. The art of constructing stories can be a deeply profound intelligence of gain and greed—or it can be a revolutionary path to freedom.
The cultural systems that we live within, including the mental health care systems and structures, exist as they do because of the stories we choose to tell each other and ourselves—the words we use, the truths those in power bend to their singular aims, and the stories we choose to believe, for whatever reason. And, in the end, what we do not trust about our own stories—our own languages—which are so beautifully diverse, powerful and grounded in our basic knowledge of ourselves, opens the gate for those who gain from oppressing others.
Three words became the foundation of the new architecture of language in my mind, an architecture of empowerment—a cathedral of language towards my own worth.
Recovery, choice and diversity.
Nothing I am going to say about these three words and their impact on me has not been said by other psychiatric survivors, human rights activists, mad liberators, or in study after study. Even the WHO has said as much. But still, there is a void between the truth of this being said and it being heard—without the reactive insecurity of the psychiatric industry, and the resistance to relinquishing any power the current paradigm wields (or the financial gain it offers those who toe the medical model line)—so it gets said over and over again. And honestly, it feels like such an exhausting repetition and an extremely painful helplessness.
“Broken” vs “Recovery”
I started to see so clearly that the story I was told about the “chemical imbalance” in my brain not only was never proven, but—whether there was a seed of truth in it or not—it served most effectively to instill self-blame. Not only for what had happened to me prior to psychiatry, but for the harm that was done to me by psychiatry. “Permanently Broken” meant that I was asked to ignore what was wrong with the world around me and accept that the problem lay within me. This was so effective that I didn’t speak about my psychiatric or family trauma until I was 40 years old. I believed the medical model, and that created silence around everything else that caused my pain.
How can such a model of healing so completely and immediately circumvent, deny, and block—with a sea wall miles high—the actual path we’ve always known leads to real emotional healing? That path has never been to stay silent, ignorant of your truths, and most definitely never involved learning to disdain and try to eradicate them. This has never been how human beings heal from sorrow and suffering. Never.
So, how did I make such a mistake? Fall for something so against our species and my own intuition about the nature of healing? How did I replace the truth with the destroyer of it? At 21, I saw no way out of the confusion that tortured me and I took the only thing that was offered. And, having been encouraged in so many other ways to accept harm as a young woman, even to turn the harms of others against me into self-blame, it was the path of least resistance to believe. The hardest thing to wake from is the trance of a good story, and the medical model is a compelling tale.
For so long I thought this “permanent brokenness” was my fault. Until one day I googled “trauma from mental hospitalizations” and found the Icarus Project (as it was named then). Now it is called Fireweed Collective. My language finally began to include the words “recovery is possible.” Even from what is called Bipolar. Having had spent years suicidal, I was finally able to recognize that I was harmed by psychiatry, which also opened the door to explore the impact of marijuana and alcohol use and an emotionally turbulent childhood.
Slowly, a new language emerged from this root change in the words I used, revealing to me that the word “broken” was between me and the word “beautiful.” For some it is not and I have respect for how each of us find empowerment. But for me, I was so tired of feeling so broken. I didn’t want to keep feeling broken.
“Broken” stopped me from being able to see that there was some way to become free from my pain, even within any limitations that were natural within me. Each of us, I believe, deals with some constellation of limitations—that is human—and I saw how much ability is culturally defined, how the human rights of the disabled and different are slickly denied with languages of “brokenness.”
The trick for me became starting to look at what was broken around me—the economic, cultural, healthcare, educational, and family systems—and how these dysfunctional “broken” things projected their brokenness onto me. I realized I was a kind of patsy. For all these failures of those too frightened to take accountability, I paid the price. And as a white woman, I knew, too, that I got off easy.
And in essence I ripped the fault from my own body and placed it on the table to investigate it. In this process I learned a new way to speak about who I was and what happened to me.
As soon as I started learning a language that included the word “recovery” at the root, I could see the humanity of suffering as I did, perceiving as I did the “normalcy” of pain and extreme reactions to it. I began to see that there was a different way to live, a path to healing. I started seeing clearly that what had happened to me in psychiatric care, down to the words they used, added up to abuse—to violence.
“Disease” vs “Diversity”
Another word that started changing for me was the label of “disease” to describe my experiences, which included voices, altered states, and extreme depressions. “Disease” is a word that lives perhaps on the second floor of the architecture of psychiatric language. A bit less basic to understanding oneself than the more emotionally laden word “broken” that breathes self-blame and self-loathing into all the walls.
It was when I started moving towards “diversity” instead of “disease” that I became free to ask myself, “Can I be me in this world without medication?” Really wonder if that could happen. Can I see beauty instead of disease in my experiences and find other ways to manage what others deemed inadmissible?
And I found that with this intention, my symptoms became more and more manageable, changeable, and influenceable. I was no longer afraid of them, no longer helpless to change them, merely because the language of permanent dysfunction, permanent damage no longer made sense. What started to make more sense was that because of the pain, neglect and trauma I had experienced, I had a hard time coping, but could learn how to heal.
“Difference is not disease” became my motto and I sought out ways I could learn to adapt to my diversity without medication, which meant several things. Practical things like earplugs when I was overwhelmed by sound; peer support; speaking my truth; as well as other soul-sustaining things like seeking out the stories of others, the successes of others, the poetry, art, and myths of the past that held the experiences of altered states and suffering with honor instead of disdain, that let sorrow teach instead of terrorize, let altered states have meaning beyond science and disease, far, far beyond it. Absolutely beyond its reach.
And with my own art practice, I began to write my own song, create my own language—rewrite the story.
“Powerless” to “Choice”
So many missing pieces of care lead to the acuteness of my altered states at 21 (and the year and a half before that, and then the 20 years after). The missing piece of language, the more positive stories from elders, the missing wisdom and validation, the missing pieces of all the things that happened to me that were shrouded in silence and shame all added up to powerlessness to choose or to change.
In another world, another culture, another life, I may have gotten the language, the stories, and the support I needed to deal with voices hearing and altered states before I collapsed into the isolation, chaos, and confusion that led me to psychiatry. Perhaps I could have lived without psychiatric medication. But as I write this today, it seems not in this life, not in this culture, not in this world. Although, that may change as I further build the architecture of support and wisdom in my life.
About three years after I began my journey coming off psychiatric medication, the honest to god cruelest and most dangerous missing piece was not having medical support as I did this. When I realized the withdrawal, which means the dependence my body had acquired to a chemical I no longer needed, became too much for me to bear, having been diagnosed with disabling chronic vestibular migraines and chronic fatigue syndrome—I was confronted with the fact that I had to, in order to survive, go back on a small amount of Vraylar for a bit. It took me an entire year to get down to being off it, and a month and a half to realize the withdrawal was killing me and ruining my life.
I had always said my goal was wellness, and I was no longer well enough to even get well.
But, the most important thing about this part of my journey in changing the language of my life was that in this moment I regained the power to choose, regained the meaning of sovereignty over my own mind and body. And in the end, it became a realization that I had to use my oppressors’ tool, my abusers’ weapon, to cope with the harm they had done to me. For months I had been working with removing the baggage of harm that came with those pills, and somehow the night I decided to take them again I had turned harm into healing. It felt like a necessary choice, even if I knew what it meant and all the risks that I knew came with it. I made that choice. I put that pill into my body and no one forced or coerced me. That was my key to healing.
I was a survivor of the violence of psychiatry, and I had to accept that my body itself was not the same. I even had to accept that I had to take a small amount of a ‘cure’ that almost killed me, just to survive the withdrawal again when I’m stronger. Or perhaps I’ll need to stay on them—the damage done might be too great. I always knew that I was not returning to the Karin before psychiatry. I was returning to a Karin mangled by involuntary and irresponsible psychiatric care and that was something I might have to accept.
That it was my choice was what made it healing. I deserved life. I had fought so hard for it. And only I could figure out how to feel good about the choice I made, feel happy about using my oppressors’ tool to survive my oppressors’ harm. And that was my choice. I couldn’t sing my song at all if I could not forgive, if I let resentment kill the bird within. All that would have been left was the prison of a song that was not mine.
When I looked up from the darkness three years ago and found the courage to live my authentic truth, I waged a rebellion against the song of psychiatry. I had to do everything I had done, the hell of withdrawal, the lost relationships and the tension with my world, to get to that moment where I transmuted harm into healing, and I don’t regret one moment of it. Discovering all of this at 42 feels like I’m quite late for my appointment with life, but I will do whatever it takes to live what’s left with heart and with courage.
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There is no change in the world, or inside ourselves, unless the story changes, the song takes on a different melody. And the only way to change a story is to change the language.
Karin
Great blog – a truly powerful story of recovery from psychiatry and their oppressive Medical Model. Yes, the language in the “Song of Psychiatry” does severely oppress people, but the language of other songs can point towards struggle and liberation.
I hope you consider these two songs as representing the important struggle of overcoming psychiatric oppression: (“How Long a Time”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmpfq0b7tLA and (“Benzo Blue”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYuhNEn2OKw
Richard
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Richard, These are absolutely great. What wonderful songs, thank you so much for sharing the links and your awesome work!
It would be so, so wonderful if whoever comments here, contributes a link to a song they feel is liberating from the “song of psychiatry”. Mad in America is considering highlighting songs like this weekly, so it would be wonderful to mine everyones music stores! Original works included, Like these from Richard. Thank you so much! Do you have a website for your work?
Many thanks and solidarity,
Karin
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Beautifully written, Karin. I agree with so much of what you’ve said, as one who was also misdiagnosed as “bipolar.” As one who is also an artist, and used many song lyrics to help me regain my hope and heal. And as one who also escaped psychiatry (initially) at the (always my lucky number) age of 42.
“There is no change in the world, or inside ourselves, unless the story changes,….” And our stories are every bit as relevant to society, actually more relevant – given the scientific fraud of psychiatry – than are psychiatry’s lies / “song.”
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I am leaving the comments section so I do not want to start up a new thread but I just wanted to say that I find it odd that there is a notion that if a person has any disability they cannot critique the world. You seem to imply that you were landeed a diagnosis almost to stop you finding fault with the world. My friend with the disability of epilepsy does critique the world. Even more than most, such is the quirky blessing in any form of abject suffering. It clarifies the mind about social injustice.
But again there seems to be a confusion generally about a diagnosis always being the injustice. I feel for me that is just not true. I have a diagnosis and it does not “have to” come with stigma if I choose to educate people not to. See leprousy. See HIV. See syphillus.
What your article is is a lovely story of recovery Karin. So I am not saying these things “to you”. I am merely going with tangents brought up in reaponse to what you made me aware of.
Too many are wrongly diagnosed of bipolar. And other conditions. That needs to stop. Radically so.
One in a hundred have schizophrenia, or thereabouts. That is a vast population globally. I would have thought that if all those people were not ill at all that scchizophrenia would no longer exist. Everyone would have already protested like ten years ago and it would have ceased. The fact there are still many people who claim to feel ill in that utterly miserable way says something to me.
Anyway I just wanted to say I am happy with my own schizophrenia diagnosis as no psychiatrist ever bullied me into having it. All my psychiatrists ever wanted for me was for me to lead a normal life. None of them ever focused me on my illness. It “is” an illness to me since I feel “ill” all day every, day with it, for decades. It is not caused by trauma. It is not caused by propaganda from “the world” as far as I can deduce. The world has more than enough to deal with, what with needing to be feeding starving babies in Somalia than bothering about personally stigmatizing little ol me. Much as my ego would like to think the world “sees” me. I think that would be paranoia or wishful thinking on my part. An over inflation of my significance is often brought about by feeling meaningless. But I believe much of life is meaningless. I think it is meant to be weirdly so in that way.
Obviously things have been drastically different for you. I am glad you got out of your wrong diagnosis. I respect that your experiences are “your experiences” and my experiences are “my experiences” and I do not think we need “fear” the “difference”. Because if we start to fear the “difference” of each others “experience” it is a short step away from us all “fearing the differ-ent”, and that nightmare, so often in the ambitions of king makers and puppet masters and political pundits, leads to the gas chamber.
Instead we ought to CELEBRATE the DIFFERENT.
Ah, but that means giving up celebrating the arguement, the arguement, the arguement, the arguement, the arguement, the arguement…
In this era “The Arguement” is “God”.
Not LOVE.
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Daiphanous, thank you for this thoughtful reply. I just wonder if there is a difference between some psychiatric diagnosis’ being blanket ‘medical’ diagnosis’ for diversity and suffering that is directly in reaction to what the world does to not admit or allow about being a diverse human?
I understand and totally agree that disabilities make you very keenly aware of the injustices of the world, and often more outspoken about them. I’m not sure my point was to dispute that but to point it out? I also want to say, I’m not sure “recovery” as it is understood in a psychiatric sense would be what this story is about, even if I used the word myself. I’m sure if I was honest about how I experience the world (emotions, perceptions, experiences) I would immediately be re-misdiagnosed. I am in any psychiatric sense still ill. Still hearing voices here, still struggling in ways that if I expressed to a medical professional, I would be absolutely still considered Bipolar. So, mis-diagnosis (although several commentors on my articles have used this to frame my experiences) isn’t actually accurate. The only thing I feel recovered from is the stigma (self and like you said by educating others) of my original and persistent diversity (as I understand it) of mind which still could very easily fit into the DSM if I wanted it to.
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I am very impressed with your response to me. You and Sam Ruck are ambassadors of compassion.
I have been immersed in art books for the past five hours and the convolution of my brain that wrote my comment is a complete stranger to me now. What was I saying anyway?
I shall be honest and say I am not upset about the DSM palmistry book. There is ALWAYS going to be a book. If there are people to oppress there will always be a book of handy “logic” to turn to to excuse it. But a book is not a bully. A book is used by a bully. The problem as I see it is not that illnesses or characteristics are described…Wuthering Heights has many descriptive words of its craven characters. Descriptions are all around in human nitpicking civilizations. But it is when any book is taken seriously by a bullying regime that things gets murky. The DSM has words like Bipolar and Schizophrenia but most of the people I know who know those words are not bullies.
It takes something “extra” beyond the physical inanimate object of a book to go to town on persecuting someone. To fail to make that distinction means the “sickness” at the centre of bullying is seldom studied. Instead time is wasted on shredding or burning a mere book with bland words in it. How is that going to help to solve the riddle of bullying? It is a riddle that really needs great care taken in the examination of “why” other people who also read the book and its apparently damning words do not bully anyone at all. Think of the bible during the inquisition. Many good people read the DSM and do not rush out into the streets and try to catch the one in a hundred who has the misfortune to hear voices. Plenty do of course find themselves despicably treated by bullies who “use” the book that is the DSM to oppress. But it seems naive to me for people to have wishful thinking that merely by clearing the book shelves of that book that bullies will not simply jump ship onto the next book, and the next, and the next. And the same may be said for words. By shredding the rather inanimate objects that are certain words is there hope that bullying will no more set foot on the world? Won’t bullies just pick up a new book on how everyone should oppress someone who does not “talk proper” or use the “correct” new language?
The DSM is full of three things. One is descriptions of how “ill” sufferers themselves say they feel. I see nothing wrong with that. If people “feel” ill and say so then who is to doubt it. It is like testimony in church. The second aspect in the book is that of “observing” the illnesses. Observing anything in life can be done with compassion, as when an ecologist observes how many geese are migrating and are landing in a lake that year. But an oppressor can do observations that are creepy and calculating. The observing is a neutral act but the meaning and purpose motivating it can be warm and caring or devious and chilling. The attempt to get rid of any book that has been borrowed by oppressors can get confused with a wish to stop all forms of hearing the accounts of the “suffering” and can also be a wish to stop the free and neutral act of “observing” life. As if merely observing a skein of geese passing in the sky is indicative of being uncaring. The third thing the DSM does is advise on prognosis and treatment. A bit like how the bible advises on afflictions of a spiritual sort. This area, prognosis and treatment, is a welcome mat to any oppressor. It is folly to think it would not be a risk. But to believe that in getting rid of mere paper and ink advice there will be an end to bullying is again naive. If paper and ink were so goddam powerful the millions of peace advancing books would have caused heaven on Earth.
The bullying is way beyond any book. To lose track of that allows bullies in the back door of new pristine paradigms, whose shiny bestseller books will doubtless also be used by oppressors, to add layer upon layer to originally straightforward plans of how “treat” people of their suffering.
My guess is history will repeat itself endlessly so, over another tide of tiumphant book pulping. Until people realise that the cure for oppression is to put love into the sickness that causes a bully to be a bully.
No newborn is born an oppressor.
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Daiphanous Weeping,
There is something that troubles me.
I read Karin as saying she was oppressed by psychiatry and that in internalising its words, she unwittingly colluded in this.
If I read you correctly, you are saying that it is not the words that oppress, but people, and that you have not felt oppressed by such words, that they have no inherent capacity to harm.
Yet there can be no words without people. They are not neutral, people define and categorise with words. In this case the words are chosen and expressed by people considered to be authorities on human distress, and who society has invested with great deal of legal authority to coerce, and with moral authority to explain and treat such distress. Such words are not neutral to that authority, it is based in words.
At the same time I felt a judgement in the idea that she was worrying about mere words while there is ‘real’ tragedy and oppression in the world. For example this line: ”The world has more than enough to deal with, what with needing to be feeding starving babies in Somalia than bothering about personally stigmatizing little ol me.”
It seems to me the ”world” is quite capable of both.
Most of medicine is concerned with far less critical problems than babies starving to death. Most of our everyday care and compassion is freely given to others with lesser claims and many of us would never be entitled to compassion if our pain and need of others had to meet such a high bar of importance.
This was a personal account of overcoming suffering in which psychiatric words were personalised, not a narcissistic over-inflation and imagined personalisation. Words were used to define her. She wrote of the detrimental effects they had.
I appreciate that you have not felt oppressed by your diagnosis, but there is a way that both of these approaches seem to express a negation of Karin’s experiences. An argument against her suffering and of her understanding of it.
I don’t question your compassion and I value your perspective. It made me think. Most of all of how I use words and how I’m affected by others’ words. And about the nature of blame.
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I am tired my friend. Really tired. So I cannot sparkle to your sparkling riposte right now. I really DO HAVE SCHIZOPHRENIA and it makes me too ill to sleep. So please forgive me if I skip a diligent answer to this.
When you live in a world where words are demons then everyone who uses words can be demonised.
If I have to suffer blame for not wanting to assist in the creation of that nightmare world then I consider such blame a compliment.
I am NOT RESPONSIBLE for how another human chooses to interpret my language, turns of phrase, witty one liners said in affectionate jest.
Nobody “has to” love me.
To force love destroys love. Love must always be free to become “no longer love” and then “back to being love” and then “no longer love” and then “back to being love”, because love is A FEELING and ALL FEELINGS are the sole private basic human right of the individual who FEELS them. All feelins ARE FLOWS. They are NOT static.
RULES, so keenly lionized by cold LOGIC, DEMAND that your private interior FEELINGS be held hostage to “consensus opinion”, those “thought excercises” that pass as social improvement. Logic finds ways to tell you how you OUGHT to FEEL because logic insists there are ONLY “correct” feelings or ideal feelings or perfect feelings or saintly feelings or “therapeutic-for-everyone” feelings.
And these days what logic is busy doing is saying you cannot LOVE yourself in ways that are not “correct”. And you cannot choose to LOVE anyone else in ways that the improving society or “consensus opinon” says are not “correct”.
The fastest way to destroy the FEELING of flowing LOVE is to give people preachy “lessons” on how to LOVE properly, like how to “talk proper” using only Queen’s English.
As for dying babies I lay in bed last night utterly horrified that I am wasting all my TIME in any comment section sparring back at the vanity of twisted logic rather than sending my sleeping bag to any country that needs it.
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Diaphanous, all I really want to say in response is that my words are not worth any upset. You should take care of yourself first. We have different stories, like you mentioned, and that’s ok. The words I’ve offered in this article are my words, my truth, and they certainly are not meant to serve to invalidate or erradicate anyone else’s truths. And they can be interpreted any way in your mind as they can in someone else’s mind. But, your truth is your power, I believe that for you and for me. That’s why I wrote this story, to share my own truth and what helped me survive what I went through, that’s all. I send a lot of strength your way, and sleep! Oy. I’m sorry you’re not sleeping, that is never good and torturous.
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A deeply insightful and wise blog from a heroic journey by any definition. As someone who discovered the power of words through journaling, I’m privileged to read your story and your personal dance with language as one particular tool for transformation. Lastly….In my experience, this “process shift” in language is (or can be) the means to purge the internalized political (powerlessness) psychiatric diagnosis often imposes, and then, over time, take back our (stolen) Subjective Being from a psychiatric diagnosis. To me your story is a wonderful example of what that process can look like for others…. Best to you going forward Karin…
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You say “some have found it Psych helpful”.
But you speak from the here and now. Perhaps in 10 years that same person will realize that what they thought was “helpful” was not at all helpful.
We can live in a marriage for 30 years and think it’s “good” and realize that in fact it completely changed who you were, or if you were indeed relatively happy.
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Honestly, I do think there is such a thing as “good therapy.” The problem is, there is no guarantee nor even probability that anyone advertising as a “therapist” has any clue how to do it. And there are any number of non-licensed, non-trained people who are quite capable of assuming an effective helping role. I think we need to respect folks who say they had a good experience (I did, 40 years ago, and I can still see how it was very important to my growth), but it appears that such experiences may be the exception rather than the rule. And it’s certainly not wrong to say that being randomly assigned to “a therapist” is potentially quite dangerous!
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