"Un-diagnosed" from "Bi Polar disorder"

Freedom

Photo Credit

To be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming

is the only end in life. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

A friend sent me a link to this story of a young woman who had been diagnosed as "Bi Polar" and now lives free of the drugs, the mental health system...and the "diagnosis". 

Here's an excerpt from this celebratory post of her finding freedom from "diagnosis"....


"Dr. R: Wow. That's really interesting. So this bipolar diagnosis we have on here really isn't relevant any more. I'm going to take it off your records."


You can read the rest of this post by clicking here....


You can read about Will Halls approach to safely coming off psychotropic medications from a harm reduction approach. Here's a brief excerpt and description about this guide:


"A 'harm reduction' approach means not being pro- or anti-medication, but supporting people to make their own decisions balancing the risks and benefits involved. Written by Will Hall, with a 14-member health professional Advisory Board providing research assistance and 24 other collaborators involved in developing and editing. The guide has photographs and art throughout, and a beautiful original cover painting by Ashley McNamara."


You can download and read Will's guide here.


You can read my disclaimer about psychotropic drugs  here.

Life Lessons and Zebra's

Zebra Long Wing Butterfly

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Life Lessons from a Butterfly

let go of the past
trust the future
embrace change
come out of your cocoon
unfurl your wings
dare to get off the ground
ride the breezes
savor all the flowers
put on your brightest colors
let your beauty show

— Author Unknown

Over at Zebra Sounds Judy got me thinking about the life lessons that we learn from our life experiences.

You see - in the past I had believed the lie that I was the cause of all things bad in my life...so it was pretty impossible for me to see my life experiences from a positive perspective of life lessons.

So today I wanted to throw out there the idea that when we can begin to see ourselves as separate from others and life circumstances we become free to be that "student who is ready"...

Here are a few life lessons I've been picking up on lately....

1. When I stop trying to figure it out I usually figure it out:)

2. Insomnia is usually caused by #1

3. Eyes really are the window to the soul

4. Every behavior is an expression of an emotion; every emotion is the expression of a thought

5. I don’t have to know it all or do it all when I simply do my best

6. Multitasking is the cause of insanity:)

Q: What are some life lessons you've had lately?

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Taking Time, Living in Wellness

Blue Flowers

May 2010

Part of creating a new paradigm of "Wellness" is living in balance, taking time to look at things, to enjoy the moment intentionally...to truly experience the abundance of life that we can find in one

simple

moment....

leaving "busy" behind and taking a breath.

For just a moment....

find something of natural beauty in your own world...

the sky

a cloud

a rain storm

a puddle

a butterfly

a bird

and watch it in it's natural state of "being"

without judgement

or question.

Just knowing

that it

is.

Experience this moment

observe

the breeze

the color

the texture

the scent.

For a moment

just

be.

Then - if you would be willing to share - I'd like to invite you to come back later and share what you experienced in your moment of "being" and creating that balance in your own day.

Namaste :)

Writing a New Ending to the Trauma Experience

Background photo credit here

This picture hangs on the wall by my front door. I created it as a part of my healing process to exemplify my experience of what it was like for me to "go through" the pain to "get out of" that dark place of shame and claim my "me-ness" which btw - was the exact place where I discovered that in spite of the past, the traumas, I could begin to create my best life each day. This is where I made the mind-shift to lay claim to one of my tag lines...

"No longer a victim and more than a survivor; creating and living my best life!"

Today let's take a look at part of the insight - those "aha!" moments - that led me down this path...

What's the diff between "story" and "story"?

What I've found along the way is that I would often get stuck in "story"...

the "reliving" of the past where nothing good ever came of the situation.

This is that place where I am literally "stuck" in the anger and injustice at the past.

Where I'm focussed on those people who wronged me

the situations and circumstances where I felt powerless and indeed may have been powerless - like a car accident, an abuse situation, or where I trusted someone and was betrayed.

This is "rumination".

This is where I lived in resentment

and grudges.

My anger was often justified at those things - those people places and things that I had put my trust in and in some way I was injured.

But I have since learned to use this anger to propel me through the healing journey.

How?

By recognizing "anger" as part of the natural human healing process

and

with intention

moving from the anger at the injustice and pain

through the emotional healing process

to reach the grief

the tears

the deep inner wounds

and let go

of the idea of finding justice where there may be none

accepting that I was truly powerless in this situation

that ruminating it over and over will not create a different outcome

or give me power to force justice for my pain

and in letting go of the "anger"

and telling the "story" over and over in my head and to anyone who would listen

I was able to get to my "story"

embrace and integrate the pain of the past

into my today

and allow the end to finally be written

in my tears.

Haiku

Listen in to how I learned to use anger to fuel my healing and find freedom from the pain of the past Empowering Solutions: Letting Go of the Battle

Q: How have you made that shift from "story" to creating the ending, finding closure and creating your best life in spite of past traumas?

Transparency and True "Informed Consent" in Mental Health Care

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Personally I do not advocate "for" or "against' psychiatric medications for anyone. I believe that each individual must come to their own conclusions.

What I DO advocate for is complete and truthful transparency that those who suffer are given all options and accurate information that they can make their own informed and educated decisions regarding their health care with all options provided - including the view that cognitive and emotional distress are not a biological disorder but a normal human response to overwhelming life experiences - and that we can learn the life skills to manage the thoughts that fuel the emotional and cognitive distress called "mental illness".

Below is a quote from and link to an interview between Steve Coe and Robert Whitakre regarding Whitakre's book "Anatomy of an Epidemic"...and the interesting point here is the source of Whitakre's research material.

"And what I'm doing in this book is looking at the research done by the NIMH, the research done by the World Health Organization. And, all I'm doing here is saying, look at what your studies show over time. I'm not doing the research. I'm really only the guy holding up the documents and asking what story do they tell over time." ~ Robert Whitakre Interview with Steve Coe April 2010

"Consumers" of mental health services have been speaking up for years about the issues of overmedicating and available alternatives to the medical management of human distress. But to be anything other than a "compliant" patient is to put oneself at risk of losing what support and resources have been available.

Unfortunately once having been marked with the label of "mental illness" these people are often not heard and frequently dismissed as "disgruntled", "difficult", resistant" and simply "mental", dissidents and troublemakers, who are at risk of being further labeled and experiencing some consequence for having an opinion that differs from that of the mainstream pharmaceutical position.

So thank you, Robert Whitakre, for speaking up for those whose voices have been silenced and dismissed as not worthy of being heard once having been branded as "mentally ill".

Read the entire article here.

Whitakre is scheduled to be a Keynote speaker this fall at the National Conference for the Mental Health Recovery Movement in Anaheim California.

Anatomy of an Epidemic at Amazon.com

Q: Have you had a personal experience that you would like to share - either positive or negative?

Intellect and Insight

"Insight is the light in the darkness"

Photo by Susan 2010

"Intellectualizing" and "insight" are two buzzwords that seem to carry quite a bit of weight in the field of mental health....and are also very vague in application to ones own journey.

So what's the diff?

Well - lets think about it for a minute.

Intellectualizing to me is the shopping for that "nugget of truth"; it's like going to the supermarket and holding up a can of tomatoes and reading the ingredients to determines which brand will be most economical, which variety has the spices that will best serve the recipe I"m putting together.

In the Dictionary:

intellect |ˈintlˌekt|nounthe faculty of reasoning and understanding objectively

It's the taking in of information that will empower me to make the best choice for my purposes.

It's also a term often used in the mental health industry where I was discouraged from doing exactly this - taking in information that I could make my own choices about how my journey would play out...

I saw the providers as the authority - and since I doubted myself so deeply - I had committed to being a malleable "patient" - a "good" patient that was compliant and submissive to their authority, I accepted the labels they offered and their assessment that there was no hope or solution to what they had termed an "illness" and that I was "disordered".

"Intellectualizing" therefore was discouraged in my journey through the mental health system under the (perhaps well intended but harmful) assumption that since I had experienced emotional and cognitive distress that I was therefore incapable of coming to my own conclusions and was "intellectualizing" to avoid the "hard work" of the therapy relationship.

So I was discouraged from finding my own "insight"

my own answers

from finding an understanding that I was not "ill" or "disordered"; an understanding that would free me from dependence on people places and things outside of myself to maintain my "stability"

but that I held the power within myself to develop the awareness that I could learn the life skills and seek the knowledge that would empower me with the wisdom to create and live the life of my choosing

every day.

insight |ˈinˌsīt|nounthe capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person or thing

One of my first "insights"?
Was that coming from a background of abuse that was based on power and control that I was extremely vulnerable to the labels that were presented to me and that I adopted as my "truth" and by which I came to define myself.
And - that in order to begin to define myself and let go of "illness" I had to see myself as a person who had been injured - not a diagnosis - to begin to find "wellness".
Insight then is the application of the truth discovered through the intellectual understanding
the "aha" moments where we see the light in the darkness.

Letting go of Labels is a post I wrote earlier this year.
If you would like more information and resources about creating your own journey from "illness" to one of "wellness" please check the Resources page here.
Q: Have you had your own "aha" moment of insight that changed your journey?

Learning to Live Beyond the Pain of the Past

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For the longest time I struggled with doing whatever I had to do to avoid facing the pain of the past. I had learned to "don't think, don't talk, don't feel"...to avoid anything that had anything to do with being "me" or expressing any of my own thoughts, feelings or even making my own choices.

From the recent archives, here is a post about making that mind shift from living in avoidance of the past to learning to embrace it - and finding freedom from it...

And this is the conundrum we seem to face in this discussion. (((Conundrum: a difficult question, a riddle)))

Each of us who is on this journey of healing has their own story, their own pain, their own suffering.

Each of us has found in our journey different ways of coping, surviving, healing.

The one commonality seems to be that most of us agree on what Ellen so eloquently yet simply stated: The first part of healing it - is feeling it.

You can read the entire post here.

And here is a post from the archives about making that mind-shift from coping, managing and surviving to living in freedom from the pain of the past...making that mind-shift from being a victim or surviving day to day by "managing" symptoms to learning to live in freedom....and creating my best life each day...finding my way "though" the pain of the past in order to find my way "out of" the pain of the past...

This is where the knowledge of the emotional healing process came into play. As I gradually moved from talking "story" and on to "processing" emotion - the darkness began to lift. The pain began to subside inside me.

Things that had been horrible triggers for me began to be things I could experience with intention. I began to see how events and situations that in the past would send me off the deep end were identifying opportunities for healing, grieving - that here I could go through to get out of the connected avoidance and pain.

I no longer had to hide from the world because I could now become a part of the world.

You can read the entire article here "I DON'T want to talk about it".

Q: How has avoidance affected your ability to move beyond the past? How have you overcome this to find your way through the pain to get beyond it?

I Ceased To Exist

Photo credit link

"When I accepted "illness" as my chosen paradigm I was rendered a slave, to my genes and my biology. I believed that I was somehow "broken", that my "personality" was "set" and unchangeable. I became dependent on people places and things outside of myself to make me feel "ok" and to manage "me" and all that encompasses being "me"...my thoughts, emotions and behaviors. I ceased to exist as a "being" when I accepted "diagnosis". I became helpless when I accepted "illness" and I became hopeless when I believed there was no solution to be had.

Until I chose to create my own paradigm of "wellness".

~Susan

I wanted to understand this "Paradigm" of "Mental Illness"

Map of Science

(def) paradigm |ˈparəˌdīm|

noun1 technical a typical example or pattern of something; a model : there is a new paradigm for public art in this country. See note at model .• a worldview underlying the theories and methodology of aparticular scientific subject : the discovery of universal gravitation became the paradigm of successful science.

Throughout my journey I have learned to rely more on my own ability to gain an understanding of and make decisions relating to the direction I have chosen to take (learning to fish for a lifetime) vs depending on others to provide me my answers or offer me my solutions (being "fed" for a day).

Today I wanted to introduce just a few of the ideas that I've taken into consideration that has empowered me to take charge of my healing journey and make that shift from dependence on people, places and things to define, label or "fix" me and begin to see myself as my own best resource...and advocate...as I made that shift from viewing myself through the paradigm of "illness" and created my own paradigm of "wellness".

You can read Creating A New Paradigm...For Myself Part 1 here.

At the online Encyclopedia, Wikepedia, Kuhn defines a scientific paradigm as:.

• what is to be observed and scrutinized
• the kind of questions that are supposed to be asked and probed for answers in relation to this subject
• how these questions are to be structured
• how the results of scientific investigations should be interpreted

Below are a few links on the research behind the field of Psychiatry, as we know it...

i.e. the industry and persons charged with constructing, asking and answering those questions that have created the currently accepted paradigm of the last 50 or 60 years about "mental illness", how it is defined, communicated, viewed and ultimately....how it and those given these diagnosis are treated and the therapies used to do so:

• "An SSRI maker flew my entire group to a Caribbean island," remembered a doctor from the East coast who did not want to be identified. Anymore. Source: No free pens....but big pharma influence still felt at Psychiatric meeting

• "After reports that most donations made to the big advocacy group came from drug makers in recent years, NAMI agreed to disclose its funding sources". Source: Read about Senetor Charles Grassley's investigation into the major source of NAMI's funding here.

• Read the article from the New York Times reporting that NAMI is funded largely by "Big Pharma" as exposed by Senator Grassley in 2009

• A video by Robert Whitaker on "Rethinking Psychiatric Care"

• Visit the National Empowerment Center and read about Daniel Fisher who became a psychiatrist after recovering from "Schizophrenia"

• At Amazon you can find the work of Dr. Colin Ross who as a psychiatrist is able to tell us the good, the bad and the truly ugly secrets behind psychiatry as it has become known. "Trauma Model: A solution to the problem of Co Morbidity in psychiatry" and his personal story and frustrations with the industry of psychiatry in "The Great Psychiatry Scam"

• Read recovery stories from those who've found their way out of the cycle of dependence on drugs to manage their mental wellness at the Blog rated #3 as "Top Health Blog" among numerous other awards as related to health and mental health issues. Source: Beyond Meds by Gianna Kali

• Read the post "A Tale Of Two Boys" that causes me to consider not only what we do to ourselves as adults, but the plight of the children who suffer and struggle.

• Read my personal story of how I was "groomed" to enter and participate in the "mental health system" here. "A bit of a rant, part of my story...how I became "suicidal".
• 
  
• And again...take a look at Robert Whitakers book that methodically and systematically reveals the Psychiatric industry as a huge marketing machine....

• And the DSM V; the "Bible" of psychiatric diagnosis - 68% of those charged with this newest version - the "DSM V" - reveal that they have ties to the Pharmaceutical Industry.

So here I've laid out for you some of the information that has influenced how I view the paradigm of "mental illness" and how I began to make that mind-shift to claiming this new paradigm of "wellness" for myself...

And hopefully I have reassured you that I didn't go off the "deep end" or a "witch hunt" against the millions of Doctors, Therapists and other helpers who have oftentimes affected and changed our lives for the better...and sometimes saved them.

In fact, this understanding has empowered me to understand these relationships better and made me a better advocate for myself and freeing me from that dependence to be "fed for a day".

I hope you'll join me here again as I continue to unravel this idea of "paradigm" and making that mind-shift from dependence on others for my answers to finding and creating my own paradigm of "wellness" based on my personal belief that with new information I could make the choice to find "wellness".

I hope you'll check the June 2010 archives and read more in the series "Claiming A New Paradigm For Myself".

Claiming A New Paradigm...For Myself

So back to the idea of "can we shift from a mindset of "illness" to one of "wellness"...

Part of making that shift from "illness" to "wellness" mindset was choosing to see "diagnosis" and "symptoms" as something I can learn to change vs. seeing these labels as something I "have"...and I have no control over or power to change.

In talking with others I've noticed how they, like me in the past, talk about their mental wellness - or lack of it - as though it is a "thing".

And while it's true that this is the message we've been getting since Bill W. called alcoholism a "disease of the mind"...I found that in owning this message I was left feeling very dis-empowered. Or if you've been around for awhile, you may notice this is an idea that falls under that concept of "feeling powerless" (click to listen to what I said about "powerless" on BTR)

I felt powerless to change because I viewed my coping mechanisms of "acting out"; irritability, anger, aggression, hyper-vigilance ie the "lashing out" at the world and others - as well as the "acting in"; depression, dissociation, insomnia aka the "self harming" behaviors -as related to this "diagnosis" that told me that I had some "genetic" mutation in my genes that made it impossible to change"it" or the behaviors related to it.

By "buying into" the idea that my emotional and cognitive distress was something I "had" ie "I HAVE (fill in the blank with whatever your "diagnosis" or "symptom" is)..."

I was left feeling as though I had no power to change my life because that is what I had been told by the providers of...and is the "standard of care" in the biological, genetic, medical, disease model of mental health issues.

It was hard letting go of this paradigm of "care"...

I mean....come on; these guys are the "doctors", the "providers".....

Yes; but they are not "god".

And I gave them 15 years of my life to "fix me"....

But I found "wellness" when I gave up "illness" as my chosen "paradigm".

Next time....a look at what is a "paradigm" in the sciences....

Q: How have you claimed your own power recently?

You're Bi Polar...Wait, No; Your "Borderline". Wait No...PTSd and Misdiagnosis

When we hone in on "diagnosis" as our source of hope and solution to our issues, we might be giving up some of our own power and find ourselves clinging to "diagnosis" as it becomes who we are instead of as an identifier that can guide us to the light.

Shifting from managing an "illness" to discovering "wellness" began for me when I was able to recognize that I clung so desperately to "diagnosis" and the related labels because without it....I had no other hope.

Michele Rosenthal of Heal My PTSD at Blog Talk Radio talks about PTSD from the perspective of the family that supported her...as well as the too frequent misdiagnosis of PTSd as "Bi Polar Disorder" and even "Borderline Personality Disorder" as well as the stress related issues of "Fibromyalgia" and other "psychosomatic" disorders.

Click here to listen to this amazing and insightful segment.