True, a receptive mind is vital, yet sound is mostly absorbed unconsciously—even in sleep—rewiring the nervous system beneath awareness, as the mind softly surrenders, like a newborn baby drifting into a lullaby… The deepest re-wiring unfolds precisely because the mind HAS surrendered.
I’m all for the exploration of the human experience whatever form that takes: literature, philosophy, history, the fine arts, cultural studies, etc.
I just don’t believe matters of the soul—the humanities— should be exposed to the reductionist theories found in “psychology” when humanity has already suffered enough.
What psychiatry did to you and your family is a crime. I just wish there were reliable avenues to pursue some kind of justice for you and your loved ones.
I also wish I could do more for you than just offer my deepest condolences and thank you from THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART for taking the time to share your story here on MIA.
I believe good will come from you telling your story. That it won’t be in vain.
“The psy-disciplines should not exist because they attempt and claim expertise on the human soul… we need to abolish the psy-disciplines because their fundamental existence is anti-soul.” – Dead soul.
Agee 100%. The psy-disciplines are cannibalistic. They chew up suffering with clinical detachment, spit it out as “diagnosis” and call it “care”.
They don’t interpret the soul—they strip-search it.
“Psychology” infiltrating the humanities is a terrible idea. It’s the one discipline that needs protection from those under the influence of psychology’s “clinical gaze”.
The fact that some psychologists see no problem with invading the humanities reveals how blind they are, and their lack of understanding of what’s at stake: independent thought.
Moreover, this article does a good job hiding what’s in plain sight: indoctrination. That it IS happening NOW in the humanities, and students who disagree are silenced. Oppressed. Meaning psychology, i.e. politics, has invaded university classrooms. Full stop.
There’s actually a psychological term for this kind of abuse: reverse discrimination
But here’s the litmus test: the humanities have integrity. Psychology has NONE.
“It’s interesting to me how we have so much emphasis culturally on boundaries when it comes to our bodies but not our minds, in terms of who we give access. Both involve vulnerability, right? So why do we treat them so differently?”
Great question. I think it’s because today’s culture has been quietly overtaken by therapy culture, where therapists—like medical doctors—are granted an almost god-like status.
It’s part of the subtle conditioning we absorb from childhood, where we’re taught to believe we need professional interpreters to make sense of our inner worlds.
It’s gotten worse in recent years, as therapy culture metastasizes through mass media, compounded by more people licensed as “therapists”, the implicit message being that we need “experts”, the kind who keep telling us that mental boundaries can and should be breached in the name of “treatment”, and especially to those who hold more power than we do; the implicit message being that we have no business protecting our own psychic space.
I’m convinced something insidious happens in the so-called “therapeutic relationship”—mainly the power imbalance—which is, in reality, more therapeutic for the therapist than the client.
That’s what the illusion of “insight” does for those who call themselves “healers”.
Just think for a minute. The people who really care about you don’t need letters after their name, nor do they “diagnose” you, nor do they charge you money for “treatment” that excludes equality among “therapist” and “client”—and in the process true authenticity.
“We as readers can reject adhering to the opinion expressed in that small one-sentence part of the piece without rejecting her as a person.”
That’s what I was doing. I was not rejecting the author as a person. I was rejecting her stand on psychiatric diagnoses; one that I find deeply concerning coming from someone speaking critically about her unsatisfactory experience with psychiatric language.
I think my comments were appropriate given the subject of her story, which I took to be about the power of language, or lack thereof, in the psychiatric space—a view shared by many who’ve also experienced psychiatry’s dark side.
“We as readers can reject adhering to the opinion expressed in that small one-sentence part of the piece without rejecting her as a person.”
That’s exactly what I was doing. I was not rejecting the author as a person. I was rejecting her stand on psychiatric diagnoses as she specifically states she’s not opposed to them. To me that’s deeply concerning coming from someone speaking critically about her unfavorable experience with psychiatric language.
I think my comments were appropriate given the subject of her story, which I took to be about the power of language – or lack thereof – in the psychiatric space—a view shared by many who’ve experienced psychiatry’s dark side.
Oh, my god. This proves what I’ve always suspected – that the psychiatric “profession” too often brings out the worst in people who either work in or around it.
Last time I checked, this is supposed to a website for rethinking psychiatry.
How can it claim to be that if commenters feel pressured to speak uncritically, as in not expressing their critical thoughts and feelings about the contents of an article?
The content of this personal story seems to me to be about the power language in the psychiatry space. The author did an amazing job doing just that.
But if commenters feel obliged to not say, “I didn’t like the content of this article, and here’s why” isn’t that taking their power away???
This is what’s wrong with the mental health system: people think they are in a position to tell others not only how they should feel, but also how they should speak.
“How effective is an algorithmic confidant in a context defined by a crisis of human connection, and what happens when its design preys on that vulnerability?”
Why aren’t you asking the same questions about human algorithmic confidants—better known “therapists”?
Not all boomers are bad. Many felt and still feel the way you do. It’s a relatively small number of people who are responsible for enacting laws and policies that have led to the situation that now exists in the economy and environment.
Thank you so much, Diane! I loved reading your article, too 🙂
It was a pleasure hearing from someone who sees how the focus on trauma has gotten so out of whack. Too many people now seem to wear their traumas like badges of honor.
That’s what happens in a world inundated with therapy culture, where too many people no longer know the difference between tough challenges and genuine hardship.
I remember when there a was a big push to call alcoholism a disease. I thought it was bullshit then and I still do. I think the medical community did that so insurance would pay for expensive rehab stays.
And it’s all from psychiatry, the hub of commercialized re-traumatization, the purveyors of the worst kind of identity theft, the kind that steals your agency that only nature knows how to truly restore.
“… we keep finding that the conversations that should be about abolishing psychiatry end up being mostly other still-practicing psychiatrists jerking each other about how to ease their consciences by doing as little as possible to actually change the profession in practice because that would JUST be TOO hard.”
Yup. Lip service is psychiatry’s favorite sub-specialty. It lets them say to themselves, “Well, I did MY part.”
The real problem? Psychiatry convinced the public its drugs—yes, drugs—are somehow different from the “illicit” kind. But the chemistry says otherwise.
“I believe there is something important about letting life shape you, about allowing challenges to carve out strength rather than reaching for a quick fix.”
Thank you for speaking out on the value of fully living life’s ups and downs, Diane.
I’m not a big believer in mind over matter, but at the same time I think the saying “a little pain is good for you” can often be true.
It’s great therapy helped you when you needed it, but I also think the therapy culture we now live in can be just as unhelpful as numbing oneself with psych “meds” as both can lead to dependency.
I don’t believe in outsourcing matters of the soul.
It was only after my having read a review of a book called “The Evil Hours” that I began listening more closely to my own lifelong doubts about psychiatry’s medical model. The book was written by David J Morris, a former marine who lives with PTSD. He writes about the limits of psychiatry and the overconfidence of the people who practice it, especially the ones who have no idea what it’s like living in a war zone.
“Rather glum, I leaned back in my chair and took my tarot card deck from the shelf… I shuffled the cards until two cards fell out: the tower and the hanged man… The images in me dropped like stones, sending ripples across me as if I were a black lake. The tower is a card of events. A card of mis-happenings. And the hanged man suggested a state of suspension. Together the cards intimated an unanticipated time of crisis. A period of interruption at the soul level.”
I don’t think this happened solely by chance. Tarot cards have been around for centuries for a reason.
The spirit world has its own way of revealing our inner lives to us.
“I looked at my father in the hope that he might intervene on my behalf. But he just sat there deep in his chair, with a certain air of admiration not for the psychiatrist’s lightening skill, rather for his tact and his methods. I feared my psychiatrist had found a supporter in my father, for both shared in common the vanity that they knew what was best for me.”
Vanity seeks its own reflection.
Sometimes people are seduced by those who mirror them. And gaslighting is contagious when like likes like.
It’s my opinion that the majority of psychiatrists are uniquely gifted in the art of psychological warfare. Couple that with prescriptive power and you’ve got a glut of modern-day Rasputins ruining people’s lives in the name of medicine.
If you find that confusing, just think of folks who thrive on manipulating people’s fears and insecurities, whose aim is having others submit to their illusions of superiority, rather than have them use own powers of discernment to decide what is best for them.
Key word: POWER
Here’s the only remedy for anyone stuck in their orbit:
“Narcissists’ Final Tricks: When a Narcissist Sees You as Too Dangerous to Manipulate, They’ll Try This One Trick | Carl Jung”, a YouTube video from ZeroMind
Many might conjecture that my critique of art and its creators stem from jealousy. But that’s not the case.
My critique is meant to draw attention to the reality that artistic circles contain just as many—if not more—unexamined power dynamics as any other domain.
And often, the negative effects of those dynamics are more deeply felt precisely because art is the conduit of the soul…and often the artist’s ego is placed higher than that…
… in other words, the client’s means and manner of expression is typically used to measure the client’s worth—making “therapy” more of a performance review than an opportunity for the therapist to simply offer their presence.
My years of observing various “mental health” practitioners both on and off the job taught me that the phrase “a manner of speaking” usually seals the client’s fate, diagnostically and otherwise.
The more “artistic” or verbally fluent the client, the more receptive the practitioner. Heaven help you if you happen to be neither.
I thought it most unfortunate the number of therapists who seemed captivated by performative pain: the more eloquent, the more applause.
The adolescents quoted in this excellent article have far more awareness of themselves and their surroundings than most adults. That alone should tell you something.
But what should tell you even more is how often adults prefer the sound of their own voice than hearing what the kids themselves have to say.
It seems worth asking who benefits most from DSM labels of any kind.
Here’s my Not-So-Randomized Controlled Prediction:
Psychiatric drugs will someday be known as The Opiod Crisis, 2.0
It may take another 10 to 20 years, but you can bet there won’t be any signs of it ever happening from psychiatry’s beloved “Randomized Control Trials”.
As the saying goes, past is prelude.
So when the day comes, I wonder how psychiatry’s defenders will attempt to explain away the thousands of lives YET TO BE RUINED from its over-reliance on its so-called “Randomized Control Trials”, here in the U.S. and around the world.
“Controlled trials are not fully transferable to real life, but they are not without some value.”
Value to whom? To the psychiatrists paid to interpret them, or to the patients who are essentially made into guinea pigs by their local psychiatrist???
Psychiatric hedging has become a medical specialty all its own.
And no amount of “nuanced” scientific hindsight can repair the damage psychiatry’s already done and continues to do.
It’s hands down the most scientifically reckless branch of medicine, and it’s continued overreliance on RTC’s continues to harm many.
“Most potential clients are not in a position to take such an assertive stance, nor are most aware that they need to.”
This is EXACTLY why I think seeing a therapist is as risky as seeing a psychiatrist. Too much can go wrong either way because the system’s set up to protect practitioners more than clients. It’s your word against theirs, and people who’ve had the misfortune of being labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis automatically lose their credibility.
On top of that, there seems to be few therapists these days who welcome clients who disagree or even challenge them. So, it essentially becomes a power struggle most clients are bound to lose.
So, when something goes wrong, like what happened with “Eugene”, you’re usually hung out to dry.
A lot of parents now hold their kids back a year before kindergarten or first grade. They know that school starts too early in the morning and lets out too late and that the neurotic over-focus on “academic skills” isn’t what a lot of kids need at that age for crying out loud.
I know of someone who was so bored and “inattentive” his parents put him in an experimental school that allowed him to read his HAM radio magazine to his heart’s content. He grew up to be an eye surgeon after training at of some of the world’s most competitive institutions.
Clarification: The author’s seemingly impartial, sing-songy approach is probably the way most psychiatrists lull themselves into believing they know more than they actually do.
I’m not in favor of involuntary “treatment”, but what’s happening now clearly isn’t working—with or without so-called “peers”.
The truth is, not everyone has the resources or emotional wherewithal to live in a relentlessly competitive world. That may be why so many are living on the streets.
FWIW: I think access to affordable housing would make a lot of so-called “mental illness” magically disappear.
Tracey, thank you for the link to your blog on Substack. Reading it was very moving as I identify with what you went through. I’m glad you survived to share your experience.
Things have come a long way, but the fact remains that the psychiatric establishment has yet to fully acknowledge how many people suffer the agonizing reality of psychiatric drug withdrawal.
Clarification: I don’t see people who don’t question psychiatry as victims. I see them as misinformed, but that doesn’t mean psychiatry doesn’t seriously harm (victimize) people—people who deserve a lot of sympathy for what they go through, if that makes any sense.
And I have no sympathy at all for anyone who attacks someone who question psychiatry.
Awais Aftab is dedicated to following the party line, meaning he delights in latching onto anything that supports his biased ideas every chance he gets. He seems unable to entertain the strong possibility that he may be woefully short-sighted, which makes me wonder if he’ll ever come to his senses before having to eat his own words in ten to twenty years’ time…
“According to Ingold, the expert trainer suggested that by noticing and interpreting body language, you can gain insight into what people are really thinking or feeling, as opposed to what they say. For Ingold, this is both intellectually erroneous and deeply unethical:
‘I was furious! What we were being recommended to do was to substitute, for a two-way conversation with a colleague, a form of interrogation in which the niceties of conversation are but a smokescreen for the covert extraction of evidence, which could be used for or against the individual in question in the determination of his or her prospects.'”
You were furious? Join the club.
“For the psy-disciplines, Ingold recommends actually listening to people, taking their own descriptions and explanations seriously, rather than engaging in an interrogation for the hidden meaning of symptoms.”
Almost comical that it takes an entirely different academic discipline to expose the disrespectful attitudes and distancing behaviors routinely practiced by the majority of psychotherapists.
I hope the common courtesy of actually listening to what someone is saying in “therapy” catches on—but I’m not holding my breath as I fear too many therapists are already hopelessly addicted to engaging in covert surveillance.
Thank goodness. It’s awful feeling you might be the only person on MIA willing and able to see the confounding hypocrisy—and idiocy—of both the faux Left and the cultural faux Left.
FWIW, I see the cultural faux Left as far more dangerous than the faux Left. And if anyone wonders why, just talk to any teenager having a hard time finding a safe place to discover their own political beliefs.
In any event, I believe the anti-authoritarian Left of yesteryear bears little resemblance to today’s Left, whether it be faux or cultural faux. And that’s why I call myself independent with a social conscience.
Joanna, it’s wonderful hearing I’m not the only person who sees Western values as oppressive. And I wholeheartedly agree that the emphasis on sex for its own sake is even worse than pursuing the fantasy of romantic love.
I can’t tell you how much I resent the way experts use their expertise to brainwash people into believing that having an “active sex life” is part of being healthy. Don’t they understand that it’s a matter of personal choice??? And that propagating such a narrow-minded view is deeply disrespectful to people who don’t feel the same way??? Yes, once upon a time in the not-so-distant past people were made to feel guilty and ashamed and for having sexual desires, but something seems to have happened in the intervening years that seems to have made the experts devoid of emotional sensitivity and critical thinking—vitally important things that seem to have gone out the window in their pursuit of expertise. Perhaps that’s because respect for other people’s feelings and perspectives isn’t very high on an expert’s over-sexualized agenda.
So thank you Joanna for saying there are so many more important, beautiful and fascinating things in life—things that make “sex” pale in comparison—a reality routinely ignored by a class of professional people whose income depends on making others feel insecure about the choices they themselves know are healthy for them to make.
Joanna I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to gloss over the grim realities forced upon people who’ve experienced psychosis and/or a diagnosis of schizophrenia—specifically the grim reality of being subjected to much more intensive brainwashing and coercive abuses than people diagnosed with other psychiatric diagnoses.
I very much appreciate your explaining in painful detail the devastating ways a schizophrenia diagnosis affects people’s lives namely by describing the specific ways mental health professionals use fear to manipulate (brainwash, coerce) people into “taking their meds” by telling them not taking neuroleptics always leads to a “relapse”—and that deciding not to take them is a sign of willful disobedience (sinfulness).
It’s terrible the way psychosis is not only stigmatized but conveniently associated with marginalized people. It’s a massively cruel way of blaming people who are just responding to hurtful situations they didn’t create.
When I mentioned materialism, I was thinking of the way the psychiatric system uses drugs to make people “functional”, meaning psychiatry wrongly focuses on biology instead of exploring the contexts of people’s lives, contexts that make them unable to function, meaning holding down a job. In other words, psychiatry uses people’s fear of economic destitution and fear of being seen as worthless to society to coerce them into taking psychiatric drugs. In other words, psychiatry ignores people’s feelings about what’s happening in their lives.
Psychiatrists and therapists listen to label, not to get to know who you are and what you value in yourself and in your life. They only listen to pathologize and then pathologize anything about you they either don’t like or can’t identify with or both. They may say they care about you, but the only thing they really care about is getting paid for the nasty, manipulative, hypocritical bullshit they call “work”. THAT was MY experience and I will ALWAYS stand by that. It’s a disgusting, abominable way to treat other human beings just trying to come to terms with a world geared toward those who are, in my opinion, congenitally insensitive. So it’s way, way worse than just being “mechanical”. It is the personification of evil itself.
Psychiatry and its sycophants in my experience feel entitled to tell people who they are. That makes them everyone’s enemy because what happened to me can happen to anyone. And that is not just my opinion, that is a FACT.
… and one more thing, Joanna. I too was deeply affected by the diagnosis I was saddled with: “Moderately Severe Depression, Borderline Manic” which isn’t the most stigmatizing diagnosis, but the doctors still told me I wouldn’t be able to function without medication and had no hope of living a normal life. In other words, psychiatric diagnoses ruin people’s self-concept, based on nothing but psychiatry’s biological lies.
Oh my gosh, Joanna! I once tried telling a “friendly” female therapist how out of place I felt in a society that pressures women to be like men. She went out of her way to make me feel something was wrong with me for not being that excited about having a career outside the home. I respect woman who either choose to do that or have to do that, but pathologizing women like me who’d rather be homemakers is a form of authoritarianism, in my opinion at least.
I relate very much to what you say about how your life would’ve have been so much easier had you not met with psychiatry because I feel the same way. The mental health system made me feel even worse about myself which I now know made me a target for men who take advantage of women who either don’t know to speak up for themselves or are afraid to do so.
And I also believe it’s very likely that most women don’t feel truly free in their marriage as it’s usually the woman who has to make sacrifices to keep the marriage together. This can lead to feeling unsafe as well as unfree, especially with husbands who aren’t interested in making any sacrifices themselves—which makes it hilarious a female therapist thought you should find a husband! 🙂
Many cloistered orders grow some of their own food as a way to be somewhat self-sufficient. Some even make candy or other foods that are sold to the public. But they do live in convents on Church-owned land.
Not as strange as you might think. Humans using some form of mind-altering substance is as old as time… only now the drug pushers call themselves doctors.
I don’t think conscious intent has as much to do with it as institutional brainwashing. The truth is most physicians aren’t monsters; they’re trained to see pharmaceuticals as the cure for everything—and rarely the cause of anything.
Bullshit. What does this have to do with the preponderance clueless dolts already working in modern medicine?
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True, a receptive mind is vital, yet sound is mostly absorbed unconsciously—even in sleep—rewiring the nervous system beneath awareness, as the mind softly surrenders, like a newborn baby drifting into a lullaby… The deepest re-wiring unfolds precisely because the mind HAS surrendered.
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I’m all for the exploration of the human experience whatever form that takes: literature, philosophy, history, the fine arts, cultural studies, etc.
I just don’t believe matters of the soul—the humanities— should be exposed to the reductionist theories found in “psychology” when humanity has already suffered enough.
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What psychiatry did to you and your family is a crime. I just wish there were reliable avenues to pursue some kind of justice for you and your loved ones.
I also wish I could do more for you than just offer my deepest condolences and thank you from THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART for taking the time to share your story here on MIA.
I believe good will come from you telling your story. That it won’t be in vain.
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Co-mingling psychology with the humanities taints what the humanities are all about: the sacred search for meaning in a complex world.
It’s like inviting a wood-chipper to choir practice. It doesn’t harmonize—it annihilates.
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Spiritual maturity and artistic ability are two entirely different things. One does not necessarily indicate the other.
Artists are just as prone to vanity, competition, and self-aggrandizement as any other misguided soul.
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“SCHOOL OF LOVE – RTE – Would You Believe”, GlencairnAbbey, YouTube
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“The psy-disciplines should not exist because they attempt and claim expertise on the human soul… we need to abolish the psy-disciplines because their fundamental existence is anti-soul.” – Dead soul.
Agee 100%. The psy-disciplines are cannibalistic. They chew up suffering with clinical detachment, spit it out as “diagnosis” and call it “care”.
They don’t interpret the soul—they strip-search it.
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“I think maybe we’d all be better off if artists replaced all psych unprofessionals.”
I disagree. Replacing psy-professionals with artists assumes that creativity equals kindness, patience, compassion and insight. It does not.
The truth is artistry can be a tool of healing—or harm.
Souls don’t need new interpreters. They need protection from being interpreted at all.
That’s something worth remembering—especially once you realize that every soul is an artist.
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“Psychology” infiltrating the humanities is a terrible idea. It’s the one discipline that needs protection from those under the influence of psychology’s “clinical gaze”.
The fact that some psychologists see no problem with invading the humanities reveals how blind they are, and their lack of understanding of what’s at stake: independent thought.
Moreover, this article does a good job hiding what’s in plain sight: indoctrination. That it IS happening NOW in the humanities, and students who disagree are silenced. Oppressed. Meaning psychology, i.e. politics, has invaded university classrooms. Full stop.
There’s actually a psychological term for this kind of abuse: reverse discrimination
But here’s the litmus test: the humanities have integrity. Psychology has NONE.
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“It’s interesting to me how we have so much emphasis culturally on boundaries when it comes to our bodies but not our minds, in terms of who we give access. Both involve vulnerability, right? So why do we treat them so differently?”
Great question. I think it’s because today’s culture has been quietly overtaken by therapy culture, where therapists—like medical doctors—are granted an almost god-like status.
It’s part of the subtle conditioning we absorb from childhood, where we’re taught to believe we need professional interpreters to make sense of our inner worlds.
It’s gotten worse in recent years, as therapy culture metastasizes through mass media, compounded by more people licensed as “therapists”, the implicit message being that we need “experts”, the kind who keep telling us that mental boundaries can and should be breached in the name of “treatment”, and especially to those who hold more power than we do; the implicit message being that we have no business protecting our own psychic space.
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“That’s because that’s what professionals do. They look down on suffering people, believing their suffering to be something innately wrong with them.”
Ain’t that the truth. The opportunity to look down on people is the real reason (unconscious) so many become professionals.
“‘You’re awfully articulate’… hiding the silent, ‘for a psych patient'”.
Dead giveaway of the patronizing attitudes that pervades their training.
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Thank you! Therapy held me back in EVERY way.
I’m convinced something insidious happens in the so-called “therapeutic relationship”—mainly the power imbalance—which is, in reality, more therapeutic for the therapist than the client.
That’s what the illusion of “insight” does for those who call themselves “healers”.
Just think for a minute. The people who really care about you don’t need letters after their name, nor do they “diagnose” you, nor do they charge you money for “treatment” that excludes equality among “therapist” and “client”—and in the process true authenticity.
All in the name of “mental health”.
Bottom line: real heals, phony steals.
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If there’s a missed opportunity for “mentalizing class”, a psychologist’s own supposedly “neutral stance” IS THE REASON FOR THAT.
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Yes, but it’s a mistake to blame capitalism.
Blame psychiatry and psychology for using it.
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“This is the heaviest truth that people will not recognize until it’s already too late. It already is.”
I hope not. But you may be right.
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Because bloated egos and greed are what run the circus called “psychiatry”.
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Agree 100%
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“We as readers can reject adhering to the opinion expressed in that small one-sentence part of the piece without rejecting her as a person.”
That’s what I was doing. I was not rejecting the author as a person. I was rejecting her stand on psychiatric diagnoses; one that I find deeply concerning coming from someone speaking critically about her unsatisfactory experience with psychiatric language.
I think my comments were appropriate given the subject of her story, which I took to be about the power of language, or lack thereof, in the psychiatric space—a view shared by many who’ve also experienced psychiatry’s dark side.
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“We as readers can reject adhering to the opinion expressed in that small one-sentence part of the piece without rejecting her as a person.”
That’s exactly what I was doing. I was not rejecting the author as a person. I was rejecting her stand on psychiatric diagnoses as she specifically states she’s not opposed to them. To me that’s deeply concerning coming from someone speaking critically about her unfavorable experience with psychiatric language.
I think my comments were appropriate given the subject of her story, which I took to be about the power of language – or lack thereof – in the psychiatric space—a view shared by many who’ve experienced psychiatry’s dark side.
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I hope it stays that way.
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Oh, my god. This proves what I’ve always suspected – that the psychiatric “profession” too often brings out the worst in people who either work in or around it.
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“Every comment contributes valuable data and perspectives to Mad in America.”
Yes. Even comments others don’t like.
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Last time I checked, this is supposed to a website for rethinking psychiatry.
How can it claim to be that if commenters feel pressured to speak uncritically, as in not expressing their critical thoughts and feelings about the contents of an article?
The content of this personal story seems to me to be about the power language in the psychiatry space. The author did an amazing job doing just that.
But if commenters feel obliged to not say, “I didn’t like the content of this article, and here’s why” isn’t that taking their power away???
This is what’s wrong with the mental health system: people think they are in a position to tell others not only how they should feel, but also how they should speak.
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The real horror story is the “mental health system”.
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Thank you, Dogworld.
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Dead soul has as much right as anyone to express their views in ways that make sense to them.
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You don’t sound very accepting of Dead soul’s journey. Ever thought about that?
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“How effective is an algorithmic confidant in a context defined by a crisis of human connection, and what happens when its design preys on that vulnerability?”
Why aren’t you asking the same questions about human algorithmic confidants—better known “therapists”?
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Gotta get the word out. Psychiatry has played the world for fools for far too long.
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Not all boomers are bad. Many felt and still feel the way you do. It’s a relatively small number of people who are responsible for enacting laws and policies that have led to the situation that now exists in the economy and environment.
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Amen.
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CORRECTION:
Too many people now seem to wear their woes like badges of honor.
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Oh, my. Can’t have that. It would take too much money away from psychiatric “research”!
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Psychiatrists medicalized the DSM because they were losing patients to non-medically trained therapists who charged less.
They believed a medicalized doctrine of “disorders” would save their dwindling practices.
Did they have any credible evidence/research to back up their so-called “diagnoses”?
Nope.
They hired a public relations firm to manipulate the public’s perception of psychiatry.
Their medicalized sleight-of-hand seems to have worked.
For them.
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… nor is “talk therapy”, contrary to popular opinion.
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Thank you so much, Diane! I loved reading your article, too 🙂
It was a pleasure hearing from someone who sees how the focus on trauma has gotten so out of whack. Too many people now seem to wear their traumas like badges of honor.
That’s what happens in a world inundated with therapy culture, where too many people no longer know the difference between tough challenges and genuine hardship.
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Thank you for pointing that out. Not all nature is safe.
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I remember when there a was a big push to call alcoholism a disease. I thought it was bullshit then and I still do. I think the medical community did that so insurance would pay for expensive rehab stays.
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CLARIFICATION:
And it’s all from psychiatry, the hub of commercialized re-traumatization, the purveyors of the worst kind of identity theft, the kind that steals your agency that only nature knows how to truly restore.
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“… we keep finding that the conversations that should be about abolishing psychiatry end up being mostly other still-practicing psychiatrists jerking each other about how to ease their consciences by doing as little as possible to actually change the profession in practice because that would JUST be TOO hard.”
Yup. Lip service is psychiatry’s favorite sub-specialty. It lets them say to themselves, “Well, I did MY part.”
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“Labeling coping mechanisms as brain diseases is just plain evil. I can’t even say much else on that.”
I sure can. Labeling coping mechanisms as “disorders” is just as evil, if not more so—which makes the DSM the very definition of evil.
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The real problem? Psychiatry convinced the public its drugs—yes, drugs—are somehow different from the “illicit” kind. But the chemistry says otherwise.
The only difference is one pusher has a license.
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“I believe there is something important about letting life shape you, about allowing challenges to carve out strength rather than reaching for a quick fix.”
Thank you for speaking out on the value of fully living life’s ups and downs, Diane.
I’m not a big believer in mind over matter, but at the same time I think the saying “a little pain is good for you” can often be true.
It’s great therapy helped you when you needed it, but I also think the therapy culture we now live in can be just as unhelpful as numbing oneself with psych “meds” as both can lead to dependency.
I don’t believe in outsourcing matters of the soul.
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You’re welcome, Yishay. I loved what you wrote.
It was only after my having read a review of a book called “The Evil Hours” that I began listening more closely to my own lifelong doubts about psychiatry’s medical model. The book was written by David J Morris, a former marine who lives with PTSD. He writes about the limits of psychiatry and the overconfidence of the people who practice it, especially the ones who have no idea what it’s like living in a war zone.
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The artist’s hunger for admiration has always escaped me.
Connection? Yes. Admiration? No.
Art that centers the artist’s ego loses its power.
Their depiction of emotional pain too often feels like my own has been cannibalized.
The canonization of art feeds egos, not hearts.
It’s no substitute for genuine connection with the Self.
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Rituparna, there’s life beyond your psychiatrist’s gaze—and even that of your father’s… but I suspect you already sense that…
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Desperate longing leads to anxiety. Calm surrender can loosen its grip—especially out of sight of psychiatrists.
No need to tighten the knot when psychiatrists do that for you.
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The side effects of being manipulated by two people in the same way and at the same time are worse than that of the drugs alone.
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“Rather glum, I leaned back in my chair and took my tarot card deck from the shelf… I shuffled the cards until two cards fell out: the tower and the hanged man… The images in me dropped like stones, sending ripples across me as if I were a black lake. The tower is a card of events. A card of mis-happenings. And the hanged man suggested a state of suspension. Together the cards intimated an unanticipated time of crisis. A period of interruption at the soul level.”
I don’t think this happened solely by chance. Tarot cards have been around for centuries for a reason.
The spirit world has its own way of revealing our inner lives to us.
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“I looked at my father in the hope that he might intervene on my behalf. But he just sat there deep in his chair, with a certain air of admiration not for the psychiatrist’s lightening skill, rather for his tact and his methods. I feared my psychiatrist had found a supporter in my father, for both shared in common the vanity that they knew what was best for me.”
Vanity seeks its own reflection.
Sometimes people are seduced by those who mirror them. And gaslighting is contagious when like likes like.
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It’s my opinion that the majority of psychiatrists are uniquely gifted in the art of psychological warfare. Couple that with prescriptive power and you’ve got a glut of modern-day Rasputins ruining people’s lives in the name of medicine.
If you find that confusing, just think of folks who thrive on manipulating people’s fears and insecurities, whose aim is having others submit to their illusions of superiority, rather than have them use own powers of discernment to decide what is best for them.
Key word: POWER
Here’s the only remedy for anyone stuck in their orbit:
“Narcissists’ Final Tricks: When a Narcissist Sees You as Too Dangerous to Manipulate, They’ll Try This One Trick | Carl Jung”, a YouTube video from ZeroMind
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The mind thinks, the heart knows.
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“Merchants of Light — The Consciousness That Is Changing The World”, Anthony Chene Productions
“Samadhi Movie, 2018 – Part 2 (It’s Not What You Think)”, AwakenTheWorldFilm
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… or re-discover things you already knew before psychiatric “medications” made you into a semi-functional zombie.
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Likewise 🙂
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Thank you for letting people know that psychotherapy isn’t the only option.
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Many might conjecture that my critique of art and its creators stem from jealousy. But that’s not the case.
My critique is meant to draw attention to the reality that artistic circles contain just as many—if not more—unexamined power dynamics as any other domain.
And often, the negative effects of those dynamics are more deeply felt precisely because art is the conduit of the soul…and often the artist’s ego is placed higher than that…
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This just goes to show how all the degrees and prestige in the world can’t make you immune to magical thinking.
Because that’s what it takes to believe that SSRIs act differently than any other synthetic substance on the unborn.
Which is why the high and mighty are never the ones to say the quiet part out loud. They’ve too much too lose.
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🙂
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… in other words, the client’s means and manner of expression is typically used to measure the client’s worth—making “therapy” more of a performance review than an opportunity for the therapist to simply offer their presence.
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My years of observing various “mental health” practitioners both on and off the job taught me that the phrase “a manner of speaking” usually seals the client’s fate, diagnostically and otherwise.
The more “artistic” or verbally fluent the client, the more receptive the practitioner. Heaven help you if you happen to be neither.
I thought it most unfortunate the number of therapists who seemed captivated by performative pain: the more eloquent, the more applause.
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Agree 1000%
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Why is it so many “educated” adults have no idea how isolating it is for youngsters to be given a negative label?
Could it be because it gives “educated” adults the chance to label themselves positively?
I don’t think “neurodiversity” is as diverse as we’re led to believe.
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Stupidity and cowardice explain most of it—along with a good amount of mediocrity and hypocrisy.
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The adolescents quoted in this excellent article have far more awareness of themselves and their surroundings than most adults. That alone should tell you something.
But what should tell you even more is how often adults prefer the sound of their own voice than hearing what the kids themselves have to say.
It seems worth asking who benefits most from DSM labels of any kind.
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Here’s my Not-So-Randomized Controlled Prediction:
Psychiatric drugs will someday be known as The Opiod Crisis, 2.0
It may take another 10 to 20 years, but you can bet there won’t be any signs of it ever happening from psychiatry’s beloved “Randomized Control Trials”.
As the saying goes, past is prelude.
So when the day comes, I wonder how psychiatry’s defenders will attempt to explain away the thousands of lives YET TO BE RUINED from its over-reliance on its so-called “Randomized Control Trials”, here in the U.S. and around the world.
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“Controlled trials are not fully transferable to real life, but they are not without some value.”
Value to whom? To the psychiatrists paid to interpret them, or to the patients who are essentially made into guinea pigs by their local psychiatrist???
Psychiatric hedging has become a medical specialty all its own.
And no amount of “nuanced” scientific hindsight can repair the damage psychiatry’s already done and continues to do.
It’s hands down the most scientifically reckless branch of medicine, and it’s continued overreliance on RTC’s continues to harm many.
Psychiatry’s day of reckoning is long overdue.
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“Most potential clients are not in a position to take such an assertive stance, nor are most aware that they need to.”
This is EXACTLY why I think seeing a therapist is as risky as seeing a psychiatrist. Too much can go wrong either way because the system’s set up to protect practitioners more than clients. It’s your word against theirs, and people who’ve had the misfortune of being labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis automatically lose their credibility.
On top of that, there seems to be few therapists these days who welcome clients who disagree or even challenge them. So, it essentially becomes a power struggle most clients are bound to lose.
So, when something goes wrong, like what happened with “Eugene”, you’re usually hung out to dry.
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5) “Open Dialogue Approach Reduces Future Need for Mental Health Services”, Mad in America
6) “The Struggles and Promise of Open Dialogue in U.S. Mental Health Care”, Mad in America
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Mohamed, thank you for your extraordinary courage.
People need to know how abusive psychiatry can be in the wrong hands.
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Very true. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater has led to more suffering for a lot of people.
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Things might be a lot different for a lot of people—if weren’t for that cultural albatross.
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A lot of parents now hold their kids back a year before kindergarten or first grade. They know that school starts too early in the morning and lets out too late and that the neurotic over-focus on “academic skills” isn’t what a lot of kids need at that age for crying out loud.
I know of someone who was so bored and “inattentive” his parents put him in an experimental school that allowed him to read his HAM radio magazine to his heart’s content. He grew up to be an eye surgeon after training at of some of the world’s most competitive institutions.
Good thing this happened before the ADHD craze.
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Clarification: The author’s seemingly impartial, sing-songy approach is probably the way most psychiatrists lull themselves into believing they know more than they actually do.
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Psychiatric coercion begins imperceptibly with the use of the DSM.
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“Probably not a bad thing to bring back asylums.”
You could be right.
I’m not in favor of involuntary “treatment”, but what’s happening now clearly isn’t working—with or without so-called “peers”.
The truth is, not everyone has the resources or emotional wherewithal to live in a relentlessly competitive world. That may be why so many are living on the streets.
FWIW: I think access to affordable housing would make a lot of so-called “mental illness” magically disappear.
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Tracey, thank you for the link to your blog on Substack. Reading it was very moving as I identify with what you went through. I’m glad you survived to share your experience.
Things have come a long way, but the fact remains that the psychiatric establishment has yet to fully acknowledge how many people suffer the agonizing reality of psychiatric drug withdrawal.
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Clarification: I don’t see people who don’t question psychiatry as victims. I see them as misinformed, but that doesn’t mean psychiatry doesn’t seriously harm (victimize) people—people who deserve a lot of sympathy for what they go through, if that makes any sense.
And I have no sympathy at all for anyone who attacks someone who question psychiatry.
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Awais Aftab is dedicated to following the party line, meaning he delights in latching onto anything that supports his biased ideas every chance he gets. He seems unable to entertain the strong possibility that he may be woefully short-sighted, which makes me wonder if he’ll ever come to his senses before having to eat his own words in ten to twenty years’ time…
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“According to Ingold, the expert trainer suggested that by noticing and interpreting body language, you can gain insight into what people are really thinking or feeling, as opposed to what they say. For Ingold, this is both intellectually erroneous and deeply unethical:
‘I was furious! What we were being recommended to do was to substitute, for a two-way conversation with a colleague, a form of interrogation in which the niceties of conversation are but a smokescreen for the covert extraction of evidence, which could be used for or against the individual in question in the determination of his or her prospects.'”
You were furious? Join the club.
“For the psy-disciplines, Ingold recommends actually listening to people, taking their own descriptions and explanations seriously, rather than engaging in an interrogation for the hidden meaning of symptoms.”
Almost comical that it takes an entirely different academic discipline to expose the disrespectful attitudes and distancing behaviors routinely practiced by the majority of psychotherapists.
I hope the common courtesy of actually listening to what someone is saying in “therapy” catches on—but I’m not holding my breath as I fear too many therapists are already hopelessly addicted to engaging in covert surveillance.
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Thank goodness. It’s awful feeling you might be the only person on MIA willing and able to see the confounding hypocrisy—and idiocy—of both the faux Left and the cultural faux Left.
FWIW, I see the cultural faux Left as far more dangerous than the faux Left. And if anyone wonders why, just talk to any teenager having a hard time finding a safe place to discover their own political beliefs.
In any event, I believe the anti-authoritarian Left of yesteryear bears little resemblance to today’s Left, whether it be faux or cultural faux. And that’s why I call myself independent with a social conscience.
IMHO.
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Joanna, it’s wonderful hearing I’m not the only person who sees Western values as oppressive. And I wholeheartedly agree that the emphasis on sex for its own sake is even worse than pursuing the fantasy of romantic love.
I can’t tell you how much I resent the way experts use their expertise to brainwash people into believing that having an “active sex life” is part of being healthy. Don’t they understand that it’s a matter of personal choice??? And that propagating such a narrow-minded view is deeply disrespectful to people who don’t feel the same way??? Yes, once upon a time in the not-so-distant past people were made to feel guilty and ashamed and for having sexual desires, but something seems to have happened in the intervening years that seems to have made the experts devoid of emotional sensitivity and critical thinking—vitally important things that seem to have gone out the window in their pursuit of expertise. Perhaps that’s because respect for other people’s feelings and perspectives isn’t very high on an expert’s over-sexualized agenda.
So thank you Joanna for saying there are so many more important, beautiful and fascinating things in life—things that make “sex” pale in comparison—a reality routinely ignored by a class of professional people whose income depends on making others feel insecure about the choices they themselves know are healthy for them to make.
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Joanna I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to gloss over the grim realities forced upon people who’ve experienced psychosis and/or a diagnosis of schizophrenia—specifically the grim reality of being subjected to much more intensive brainwashing and coercive abuses than people diagnosed with other psychiatric diagnoses.
I very much appreciate your explaining in painful detail the devastating ways a schizophrenia diagnosis affects people’s lives namely by describing the specific ways mental health professionals use fear to manipulate (brainwash, coerce) people into “taking their meds” by telling them not taking neuroleptics always leads to a “relapse”—and that deciding not to take them is a sign of willful disobedience (sinfulness).
It’s terrible the way psychosis is not only stigmatized but conveniently associated with marginalized people. It’s a massively cruel way of blaming people who are just responding to hurtful situations they didn’t create.
When I mentioned materialism, I was thinking of the way the psychiatric system uses drugs to make people “functional”, meaning psychiatry wrongly focuses on biology instead of exploring the contexts of people’s lives, contexts that make them unable to function, meaning holding down a job. In other words, psychiatry uses people’s fear of economic destitution and fear of being seen as worthless to society to coerce them into taking psychiatric drugs. In other words, psychiatry ignores people’s feelings about what’s happening in their lives.
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I appreciate you! 🙂
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Psychiatrists and therapists listen to label, not to get to know who you are and what you value in yourself and in your life. They only listen to pathologize and then pathologize anything about you they either don’t like or can’t identify with or both. They may say they care about you, but the only thing they really care about is getting paid for the nasty, manipulative, hypocritical bullshit they call “work”. THAT was MY experience and I will ALWAYS stand by that. It’s a disgusting, abominable way to treat other human beings just trying to come to terms with a world geared toward those who are, in my opinion, congenitally insensitive. So it’s way, way worse than just being “mechanical”. It is the personification of evil itself.
Psychiatry and its sycophants in my experience feel entitled to tell people who they are. That makes them everyone’s enemy because what happened to me can happen to anyone. And that is not just my opinion, that is a FACT.
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… and one more thing, Joanna. I too was deeply affected by the diagnosis I was saddled with: “Moderately Severe Depression, Borderline Manic” which isn’t the most stigmatizing diagnosis, but the doctors still told me I wouldn’t be able to function without medication and had no hope of living a normal life. In other words, psychiatric diagnoses ruin people’s self-concept, based on nothing but psychiatry’s biological lies.
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Oh my gosh, Joanna! I once tried telling a “friendly” female therapist how out of place I felt in a society that pressures women to be like men. She went out of her way to make me feel something was wrong with me for not being that excited about having a career outside the home. I respect woman who either choose to do that or have to do that, but pathologizing women like me who’d rather be homemakers is a form of authoritarianism, in my opinion at least.
I relate very much to what you say about how your life would’ve have been so much easier had you not met with psychiatry because I feel the same way. The mental health system made me feel even worse about myself which I now know made me a target for men who take advantage of women who either don’t know to speak up for themselves or are afraid to do so.
And I also believe it’s very likely that most women don’t feel truly free in their marriage as it’s usually the woman who has to make sacrifices to keep the marriage together. This can lead to feeling unsafe as well as unfree, especially with husbands who aren’t interested in making any sacrifices themselves—which makes it hilarious a female therapist thought you should find a husband! 🙂
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Even crazier is them believing they alone know what ‘illness’ looks like.
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Professional settings intentionally blur relational ethics—all in the name of “recovery”.
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In theory it could, but theory isn’t reality.
Emotional autonomy honors personhood—both yours and theirs.
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Defining “recovery” implicitly undermines another’s ability to define it for themselves, in their way and time
The solution: Avoid those who confuse imposition with support—especially when they’re paid to do it.
Why? Because belief shapes recovery and doubt distorts it.
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There’s nothing shameful about self-harm, but publicizing makes it impossible to forget—or worse, someone co-opting it.
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I have deep reservations about curated presence, whether grounded in theory, theology—or curation of any kind.
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Formatted grace loses its grace—no matter how well-intentioned.
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Many cloistered orders grow some of their own food as a way to be somewhat self-sufficient. Some even make candy or other foods that are sold to the public. But they do live in convents on Church-owned land.
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I hate the way psychologists monetize common sense.
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Not as strange as you might think. Humans using some form of mind-altering substance is as old as time… only now the drug pushers call themselves doctors.
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I don’t think conscious intent has as much to do with it as institutional brainwashing. The truth is most physicians aren’t monsters; they’re trained to see pharmaceuticals as the cure for everything—and rarely the cause of anything.
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“The government isn’t going to listen, though …appealing to them is pointless.”
Not the way the veterans are doing it. Legislators can’t afford to ignore veterans—voices too politically risky to dismiss.
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