One very important person is missing from this review: Josepha Groner, the young and immensely talented filmmaker who directed Being in a Film with so much love, sensitivity and care. A huge thank-you to Josepha for telling my story and bringing it to the screen so beautifully.
Thank you so much for this powerful and deeply respectful piece. It touched me more than I can easily put into words.
I am a psychiatric survivor myself. I was involuntarily hospitalized in Manhattan simply for dancing in a public park — an act of expression that was interpreted as pathology. That experience, and the coercion that followed, has stayed with me ever since.
Over the years, I’ve tried to speak about that harm in different ways: through written testimony (including a statement to the United Nations), through public storytelling (I shared this story at a The Moth event in London), and now through building RECASAS — a non-clinical, community-based initiative centered on autonomy, language, and re-authoring one’s own story. I live in Berlin now, and I may move back to New York City one day, which makes transatlantic conversations like yours feel especially important to me.
Reading your article, I felt deeply seen — especially in the clarity with which you name coercion not as care, but as violence that is still too often normalized.
If you are ever interested in connecting — for research, conversation, or simple exchange — I would very much welcome that. My contact information is available on my website(s).
Thank you again for your work and for creating space where survivor voices matter.
Thank you for this deeply affirming piece. You name something many of us have lived but rarely see articulated so clearly: that a full life is not a stable one, and that being protected from risk often means being protected from possibility.
I was especially struck by your insistence on dignity of risk and your refusal to accept “staying small” as a therapeutic success. So much harm is done when people are not trusted with their own choices or allowed to live lives that can be messy and still meaningful.
This essay contributes something essential to the conversation about recovery — not as symptom reduction, but as participation in life itself. Thank you for writing it.
One very important person is missing from this review: Josepha Groner, the young and immensely talented filmmaker who directed Being in a Film with so much love, sensitivity and care. A huge thank-you to Josepha for telling my story and bringing it to the screen so beautifully.
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Thank you so much for this powerful and deeply respectful piece. It touched me more than I can easily put into words.
I am a psychiatric survivor myself. I was involuntarily hospitalized in Manhattan simply for dancing in a public park — an act of expression that was interpreted as pathology. That experience, and the coercion that followed, has stayed with me ever since.
Over the years, I’ve tried to speak about that harm in different ways: through written testimony (including a statement to the United Nations), through public storytelling (I shared this story at a The Moth event in London), and now through building RECASAS — a non-clinical, community-based initiative centered on autonomy, language, and re-authoring one’s own story. I live in Berlin now, and I may move back to New York City one day, which makes transatlantic conversations like yours feel especially important to me.
Reading your article, I felt deeply seen — especially in the clarity with which you name coercion not as care, but as violence that is still too often normalized.
If you are ever interested in connecting — for research, conversation, or simple exchange — I would very much welcome that. My contact information is available on my website(s).
Thank you again for your work and for creating space where survivor voices matter.
For anyone interested, I’ve written and spoken publicly about this experience here:
– Testimony on freedom of expression in public space: https://ingridejohnson.com/freedom-of-expression-in-public-space
– Testimony to the United Nations on psychiatric harm: https://ingridejohnson.com/speaking-out-my-testimony-to-the-united-nations-on-psychiatric-harm
– The Moth StorySLAM (London): https://ingridejohnson.com/the-moth-storyslam-bold
– RECASAS (community-based, non-clinical alternative): https://recasas.org/en/
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Thank you for this deeply affirming piece. You name something many of us have lived but rarely see articulated so clearly: that a full life is not a stable one, and that being protected from risk often means being protected from possibility.
I was especially struck by your insistence on dignity of risk and your refusal to accept “staying small” as a therapeutic success. So much harm is done when people are not trusted with their own choices or allowed to live lives that can be messy and still meaningful.
This essay contributes something essential to the conversation about recovery — not as symptom reduction, but as participation in life itself. Thank you for writing it.
Ingrid e Johnson
Founder of RECASAS (in Berlin)
https://recasas.org/en/
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