tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28945149135164713572024-03-13T22:43:49.835-07:00Holistic Recovery from SchizophreniaA Mother and Son JourneyAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.comBlogger854125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-24149702447769393992015-02-14T01:00:00.000-08:002015-02-14T05:15:21.778-08:00My Mysterious Son: A Life-Changing Passage Between Schizophrenia and ShamanismNo, not my (Rossa's) mysterious son, but author Dick Russell's<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mysterious-Son-Life-Changing-Schizophrenia-Shamanism/dp/1629144878/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423903160&sr=8-1&keywords=my+mysterious+son#customerReviews" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: blue;">My Mysterious Son: A Life-Changing Passage Between Schizophrenia and Shamanism.</span></b></a> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I am now confronted for the second time with the repercussions of my dawdling for years with my own shamanism memoir. In the amount of time it's taken me to learn how to "write good," Dick Russell and Rupert Isaacson (The Horse Boy) have beaten me to it. Both authors deserve the highest praise for sharing their fascinating healing journey with their own sons and introducing the world to the shaman's way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>What follows is my Amazon review of My Mysterious Son</b></span>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This is a great book - schizophrenia's long awaited answer to The Horse Boy (autism). The author/father fully "gets" how to understand and work with the life passage that the Western world calls "schizophrenia." As a mother of a gifted young man of 30 who has been given the schizophrenia label, I, like the author, came to adopt a more shamanic understanding of his purpose in life and went to great lengths to find modern day shamans, or guides, if you will, who could help my son.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />To understand schizophrenia and find the right kinds of help, a good place to begin is by suspending disbelief. You'll need plenty of that if you go the shaman route. Shamans can work wonders, especially in tandem with parents who have the right attitude. I admire the author for being willing to stretch his belief system, something that many parents aren't prepared to do. The received wisdom of the past several decades tells us that schizophrenia is an unsolvable problem and the problem is within the brain, not with the weight of ancestry or in finding a spiritual path. "Schizophrenia" is mysterious and mutli-faceted. By definition, treating it must be done with imagination. Humor, too. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The path is long, so why not enjoy it? Both father and son consult the famed African shaman Malidoma, who reminds the father of the upside of schizophrenia. "I mean . . . Being with a person like Frank, there can't be a dull moment." So true, if you enter into the spirit of it, as the author has done.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />The quantum physics view is intrinsically the shamanic view. It's all about shifting energy and outcomes based on the viewpoint of the observer. In this case, the parent, Dick Russell, is the observer who decides to shift his viewpoint about what is normal after having several discussions with the noted psychologist, James Hillman. Accepting a new normal that validates spiritual and extra-sensory experience is the crucial ingredient to gradually pushing your relative toward interesting normalcy, and should be the cornerstone of treatment. This means radically overturning the current medical approach that insists that the delusions are meaningless and not to engage with them.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />In one incident, the author noticed that Franklin's delusional talk grew worse after the family pediatrician was impatient with his ramblings and tried to correct his faulty thinking. Haven't we parents all done that? It doesn't work and is demeaning all around. Had the author not met James Hillman, it may have taken him a number of years to stumble onto a very basic treatment modality -- namely, people in extreme states respond well when others treat them kindly and respectfully and try to engage with, not "correct" their delusions, which are not really so delusional if you pay attention to the content of what is being said and enter into the spirit of engagement. Criticism makes the delusions worse. Why is this simple concept of acceptance and engagement not taught to family members, who are on the front lines of support? My experience tells me that there is a mental illness industry composed of doctors, psychologists, social workers, etc. who do not want to dilute the value of their time and expertise by having families do the work they are paid to do. More people would recover sooner if this information were shared. My son's doctors were adamant that the delusions were to be ignored. The National Alliance on Mental Illness, which began as an understandable reaction to the parent blaming of earlier decades, is also responsible for hiding this recovery tool. Better to blame the brain than blame the family by insinuating that how they interact with their relative can be improved upon. My son spent eighteen months in a day program, was hospitalized for three months on three separate occasions, and yet I had to find out this information by doing my own research.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Getting a solid footing on the recovery path may not just be limited to accepting and engaging in the new normal, especially when it comes to a diagnosis of "schizophrenia." Being non-judgmental in thought, word, and deed may only take you so far. If you believe, as the author does (and I do) that there are genuine paranormal experiences at work in schizophrenia, then feed the beast! Your son or daughter is already dancing in the realm of the spirits so why not go the distance by bringing in guides who speak their language? Warning: Many shamanic practices involve engaging with the spirit of the ancestors. Are you wiling to suspend your disbelief and brave enough to go there yourself?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />There is a wonderful scene in the book when the author's ex-wife (Frank's mother) invokes the spirit of her ancestors, not in a clearing in the middle of the African jungle nor in a far flung corner of Siberia but in an ordinary suburban house in Maryland. Magic can happen anywhere, even in suburbia, it seems.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />My Mysterious Son will have a powerful impact on what is considered acceptable "schizophrenia" treatment in the years to come. Read it. Enjoy it. Learn from it.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Rossa Forbes is a contributing author to <a class="a-link-normal" href="http://www.amazon.com/Goddess-Shift-Women-Leading-Change/dp/1600700675/ref=cm_cr_dp_asin_lnk" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0066c0; text-decoration: none;">Goddess Shift: Women Leading for a Change</a></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-88505984840613489562015-01-30T00:10:00.000-08:002015-01-30T00:10:27.196-08:00Experiencing technical difficultiesUnfortunately, I am no longer able to reply to comments posted on this blog, nor can I post replies on other people's.<br />
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I am in the process of transitioning this blog to a Wordpress blog and the comments function is one of the casualties. If anyone out there knows how to fix this, your help would be most appreciated.<br />
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I hope to announce the new blog in the coming weeks.<br />
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Thanks for your patience!<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-67112748673734393212015-01-19T04:52:00.000-08:002015-01-19T04:54:34.107-08:00A Theological Interpretation of Mental illness-A Focus on “Schizophrenia”<h1 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; font-family: arimo-1, arimo-2, Oswald, arial, serif; font-size: 24px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; line-height: 30px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #666666;">originally posted on the </span><span style="color: #999999;"><a href="http://beyondmeds.com/" target="_blank">Beyond Meds</a> </span><span style="color: #666666;">blog</span></span></h1>
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<span class="date published time" style="background: url(https://s2.wp.com/wp-content/themes/premium/lifestyle/images/icon-time.png) 0% 0% no-repeat; padding: 2px 0px 2px 21px;" title="2015-01-11T00:01:10+00:00">JANUARY 11, 2015</span> BY <span class="author vcard"><span class="fn"><a href="http://beyondmeds.com/author/anotherexperiment/" rel="author" style="color: #666666; text-decoration: none;" title="admin">ADMIN</a></span></span></div>
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by Elahe Hessamfar</h4>
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A book: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1625645546/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1625645546&linkCode=as2&tag=beyondmedsbookstore-20&linkId=XTMP6CY74INL4FZF" style="color: #666666;">In the Fellowship of His Suffering: A Theological Interpretation of Mental Illness – A Focus on ”Schizophrenia”</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=beyondmedsbookstore-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1625645546" height="1" scale="0" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; max-width: 98%;" width="1" /></h4>
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<img alt="fellowship" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-45848" height="300" originalh="300" originalw="200" scale="2" src-orig="https://bipolarblast.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/fellowship.jpg?w=200&h=300" src="https://bipolarblast.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/fellowship.jpg?w=416&h=616" style="border: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); display: inline; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; max-width: none; padding: 4px;" width="200" />My precious daughter, Helia, was diagnosed with “schizophrenia” fourteen years ago at age of 23. Her illness was sudden and shocking to all who knew her. Helia had a good life by all worldly standards. She was stunningly beautiful, with a kind and sweet personality. She had recently graduated from one of the country’s top universities. She had a good job and had recently been promoted. She lived in NYC, the city she loved, was about to be engaged to the man she deeply loved, and was very involved in her local church. She was a devout Christian who had had a major conversion experience while she was in college, and whose life was centered on her faith in God.</div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">Read more </span><a href="http://beyondmeds.com/2015/01/11/theological-interpretation-schizophrenia/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">here</span></a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-81390372448632850172015-01-01T13:19:00.001-08:002015-01-03T02:11:12.538-08:00Interview with Ann Cluver Weinberg, author of The Danny Diaries<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Ann Cluver Weinberg is a South African writer. In this 2013 interview she discusses how the diagnosis and the gloomy attitude of the doctors was an impediment to helping her help her son. I so identify with what she went through:<br />
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"I was frighted and I was frightened by the doctors being so frightened themselves. I thought doctors and psychologists ought to calm you down but these ones were saying "do you know, Mrs.Weinberg, you have got here a very disturbed boy!"<br />
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Read my review of The Danny Diaries <a href="http://holisticschizophrenia.blogspot.ch/2011/10/danny-diaries-mothers-practical-advice.html" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: blue;">here</span></b></a>. There are two parent memoirs about schizophrenia that capture my own understanding of how to help someone transition through psychosis to recovery. The Danny Diaries is one.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-26326668766456413752014-12-29T11:20:00.000-08:002014-12-29T11:20:44.398-08:00Person of the Year - Corinna West<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"If you want to know how young black people overcome adversity, we’ve got over 400 videos up on the Poetry for Personal Power You Tube channel." (Corinna West)<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLePxiZ4YtCeC0OhvrPpWT85owrVIu4aQ1">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLePxiZ4YtCeC0OhvrPpWT85owrVIu4aQ1</a><br />
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Corinna West is the one woman dynamo behind <a href="http://poetryforpersonalpower.com/" target="_blank">Poetry for Personal Power</a>, a mental health social inclusion campaign that encourages young people struggling with mental health issues to get up on stage and communicate. <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.7999992370605px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">She founded Wellness Wordworks in 2008 to show how the recovery </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.7999992370605px; text-align: justify;">community can provide internet skills and business opportunities to their peers.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 16.7999992370605px; text-align: justify;"> </span></span>I've always been impressed with Corinna's entrepreneurial and community leadership skills. She seems to have zillions of "I can do" ideas in her head. Corinna's enthusiasm for social change is infectious, not to mention she's got a master's degree in pharmaceutical chemistry with lived experience, having survived homelessness and 12 psychiatric diagnoses.<br />
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An amazing woman.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-55035256467279359332014-12-21T09:41:00.000-08:002014-12-21T09:41:09.189-08:00My Mysterious Son: A Life-Changing Passage Between Schizophrenia and Shamanism<h2 content="Kirkus Book Review" itemprop="name" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Crimson Text', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 20px;">
Rossa's recommendation: Top notch! The best! Can't put it down! Below is a Kirkus Review of Dick Russell's superb memoir. This book should be on every parent's night table and on every therapist's bookshelf. The alternative approach offers great hope even for those who have spent years in hospitals and group homes.</h2>
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KIRKUS REVIEW</h2>
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A memoir about the tight bond between a father and his mentally ill son.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Until his son’s late teens, Russell (<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Life and Ideas of James Hillman: Volume I: The Making of a Psychologist</i>, 2013, etc.) had enjoyed his relationship with Franklin, a smart, handsome, mixed-race child who was a “dreamer” and a perfectionist but showed no traits considered out of the ordinary. At 17, however, Franklin experienced his first mental breakdown. He was hospitalized and diagnosed with schizophrenia; suddenly, Russell didn’t know how to connect with his son. With honesty and grace, the author writes of the maelstrom of feelings that surged in and around him and his son for the next 15 years as Franklin moved in and out of group homes and the hospital as his illness progressed. Some days Franklin was kind and loving, and at other times, he denied Russell was his father, lashing out with rage and frustration. When an unexpected opportunity arose to take Franklin to Africa, where the author had traveled as a young adult, father and son embarked on the trip with both anticipation and trepidation. Although Franklin’s schizophrenia manifested occasionally, the two-week trip led Russell to believe that his son’s disability might actually be evidence of something more profound, a deep connection with the spirit world. Searching for more answers, Russell and Franklin underwent numerous healings with a West African shaman and a Peruvian healer, who both confirmed Russell’s idea that Franklin was not afflicted with an illness but was undergoing vastly different life events than those around him. The author’s candid account of these difficult years shows his deep commitment and love toward his son and offers readers a new concept on how people with mental illnesses should be perceived.</span></div>
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Not all readers will be convinced, but Russell provides an earnest and eye-opening account of the possible thin line between a psychotic disorder and mysticism.</div>
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<span class="meta-label" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Pub Date:</span> <span class="meta-pub-date" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Oct. 7th, 2014</span></div>
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<span class="meta-label" style="box-sizing: border-box;">ISBN:</span> <span class="meta-isbn" style="box-sizing: border-box;">978-1629144870</span></div>
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<span class="meta-label" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Page count:</span> <span class="meta-num-pages" style="box-sizing: border-box;">432pp</span></div>
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<span class="meta-label" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Publisher:</span> <span class="meta-publisher" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Skyhorse Publishing</span></div>
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<span class="meta-label" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Review Posted Online: </span><span class="meta-pub-date" content="2014-09-11" itemprop="datePublished" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Sept. 11th, 2014</span></div>
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<span class="meta-label" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Kirkus Reviews Issue: </span><span class="meta-pub-date" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Oct. 1st, 2014</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-34468169138747887952014-11-27T12:36:00.000-08:002014-11-27T12:36:10.265-08:00Today's Obituary<span style="font-size: large;">P. D. James, Novelist Known as ‘Queen of Crime,’ Dies at 94</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Ms. James gave birth to the first of her two daughters in 1942, during a bombing blitz. She served as a Red Cross nurse during the war. When her husband returned from military service with a severe mental disability, marked by bouts of violence, that kept him virtually confined to hospitals and unable to work, Ms. James was forced to support her family. She went to work for the National Health Service and attended night classes in hospital administration.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;"><span style="color: #333333;">Read more </span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2894514913516471357#editor/target=post;postID=3446816913874788795" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: blue;">here</span></b></a></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-44503249706028204102014-10-23T06:20:00.000-07:002014-10-23T12:27:05.217-07:00I believe I'm 32 again (and it feels wonderful)<h3 class="kicker" style="background-color: white; font-family: nyt-cheltenham, georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 0.75rem; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1rem; margin: 0px 0px 24px; text-transform: uppercase;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">What if Age is Nothing but a Mindset?</span></h2>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">One day in the fall of 1981, eight men in their 70s stepped out of a van in front of a converted monastery in New Hampshire. They shuffled forward, a few of them arthritically stooped, a couple with canes. Then they passed through the door and entered a time warp. Perry Como crooned on a vintage radio. Ed Sullivan welcomed guests on a black-and-white TV. Everything inside — including the books on the shelves and the magazines lying around — were designed to conjure 1959. This was to be the men’s home for five days as they participated in a radical experiment, cooked up by a young psychologist named Ellen Langer.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">The subjects were in good health, but aging had left its mark. “This was before 75 was the new 55,” says Langer, who is 67 and the longest-serving professor of psychology at Harvard. Before arriving, the men were assessed on such measures as dexterity, grip strength, flexibility, hearing and vision, memory and cognition — probably the closest things the gerontologists of the time could come to the testable biomarkers of age. Langer predicted the numbers would be quite different after five days, when the subjects emerged from what was to be a fairly intense psychological intervention.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><span style="line-height: 23px;">……..</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4375rem;">To Langer, this was evidence that the biomedical model of the day — that the mind and the body are on separate tracks — was wrongheaded. The belief was that “the only way to get sick is through the introduction of a pathogen, and the only way to get well is to get rid of it,” she said, when we met at her office in Cambridge in December. She came to think that what people needed to heal themselves was a psychological “prime” — something that triggered the body to take curative measures all by itself. Gathering the older men together in New Hampshire, for what she would later refer to as a counterclockwise study, would be a way to test this premise.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4375rem;">The men in the experimental group were told not merely to reminisce about this earlier era, but to inhabit it — to “make a psychological attempt to</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4375rem;"> </span><em style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4375rem;">be</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4375rem;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4375rem;">the person they were 22 years ago,” she told me. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4375rem;"><span style="color: #333333;">Read the rest of the article </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/magazine/what-if-age-is-nothing-but-a-mind-set.html" style="color: blue;" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;"><b>here</b></span></a>.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-71093431243957949502014-10-17T08:45:00.000-07:002014-10-17T08:45:05.128-07:00New family education course starts soon<h1 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: arimo-1, arimo-2, Oswald, arial, serif; font-size: 24px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; line-height: 30px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;">
Families Healing Together</h1>
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<span class="date published time" style="background-image: url(http://s1.wp.com/wp-content/themes/premium/lifestyle/images/icon-time.png); background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 2px 0px 2px 21px;" title="2014-10-17T00:01:17+00:00">OCTOBER 17, 2014</span> BY <span class="author vcard"><span class="fn"><a href="http://beyondmeds.com/author/anotherexperiment/" rel="author" style="color: #666666; text-decoration: none;" title="admin">ADMIN</a></span></span></div>
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<img alt="families healing" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-44608" height="150" src="https://bipolarblast.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/families-healing.jpg?w=127&h=150" style="border: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); display: inline; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; max-width: none; padding: 4px;" width="127" />By Krista MacKinnon</h4>
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I’ve worked in the mental health system for twelve years now, and prior to that was a patient for three. <span style="font-size: x-small;">My family was educated to believe that I would be sick my whole life, and that they should have very little hope for my future. When I became a family counsellor, I vowed to never “educate” anyone in such a way. Since then, I’ve watched “Recovery” grow from a subversive whisper to a full-blown growing paradigm in mental health services. Countries have adopted Recovery and implemented its model into their health care planning, academics have studied it and written thousands of articles in peer-reviewed journals, organizations have restructured and reorganized their teams to reflect it’s principles, and brave everyday people have told their personal recovery stories to friends, colleagues, conferences, and the media. Recovery is a strong political force, a narrative, a system, a way of life, and a tool. So why then, has this incredible force of “Recovery” not leaked its way over to Family Education? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #444444;">READ MORE </span><a href="http://beyondmeds.com/2014/10/17/families-healing-together/" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: blue;">HERE</span></b></a></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-64952345529914752662014-09-27T10:08:00.002-07:002014-10-01T01:14:27.841-07:00Dr. Ping: Con job or great job?Eighteen months ago, Chris switched medications from Abilify to Respiridone because he didn't like Abilify (I've forgotten why). Three months after switching he began to rapidly put on way more weight than what the Abilify did for him. I got alarmed at his out of control appetite and insisted he get a blood test, which revealed (surprise surprise) high cholesterol, for the first time in his life. So, after discussing all this with Dr. Stern, at the beginning of the year, he went back on Abilify and dropped the Respiridone all in one go. I assumed that his weight would go back to his Abilify weight. Well, it hasn't. Many months later, Chris's weight has not returned to his pre-Respiridone level.<br />
<br />
My Internet pal, Irene, is a nurse who is quite familiar with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). She suggested, based on her understanding, that TCM herbs can help with the metabolic weight gain caused by antipsychotics.<br />
<br />
Dr. Stern, Chris's psychotherapist, wrote him a prescription for ten acupuncture sessions and I located a Dr. Ping, who runs two TCM clinics in our city.<br />
<br />
Part of my thinking (and Dr. Stern's) was that in addition to dealing with metabolic weight gain, acupuncture would also work on Chris's ever elusive body/mind connection. I was hoping that acupuncture could super glue or better yet "weld" Chris's intellectualizing head to the rest of his body to give him a real physical presence and "flow." Dr. Stern had previously taken up my body/mind suggestion by sending Chris to a metamorphic massage therapist. 2014 is the body/mind or bust year for Chris.<br />
<br />
I haven't accompanied Chris to his medical appointments for several years. Once he got to the point of remembering he had them and actually getting there on time, there was no need for me to go with him. The missed appointments are a thing of the past for Chris. This time, I made an exception in the name of "research" and went with him. I had a lot of questions that I wanted to put to Dr. Ping himself. Chris had undergone 5 point acupuncture several years ago, at the suggestion of Dr. Erika, his holistic psychiatrist. At the time, I didn't think it did much for him, but he was at at different stage, and maybe being further along in the recovery process would make a difference. I really wanted to grill Dr. Ping on what exactly he might be able to do for Chris. Otherwise, this latest adventure could be a huge waste of Chris's time and our money. I'm mustering less and less enthusiasm to keep suggesting new therapies for Chris. For much of the past two years he has been happy to just get on with his own life, his way. As it should be.<br />
<br />
We sat down with Dr. Ping and his Chinese assistant, and he asked Chris why he was there, which got a rather lengthy philosophical reply, but eventually he got the idea that Chris was there to see if acupuncture could help him lose weight. I kept my mouth shut. Once Chris's pulse testing was done and his tongue examined, I asked about using Chinese herbs.<br />
<br />
"No! said Dr. Ping. "Maybe need for herbals later, but now only acupuncture. He have stagnant liver. He need to express himself more!"<br />
<br />
"Can I see how you do the acupuncture?" I said, thinking that maybe there was something new since the last time Chris had done it. "Research," remember.<br />
<br />
"Okay," said Dr. Ping. "Follow me."<br />
<br />
I followed the two of them into a ward of curtained off cubicles. I noted where Chris's cubical was and then waited down the hallway until Dr. Ping had finished. When I arrived Chris was there on the table, Saint Sebastian in his underwear, his chest stuck full of needles. Dr. Ping had left the room. There was obviously nothing new here from the last time Chris had acupuncture, so I said to Chris "I'll see you at home," and left.<br />
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Chris was a bit shaken when he got home. While I was lying on the table, Dr. Ping leaned over and hissed at me "What's your mother doing here? Be a man!"<br />
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"Well, be a man, Chris! Do what Dr. Ping says. I've been trying for ten long years, since you came back from university, to get you out from under my apron strings. I didn't want this job in the first place. Maybe, Chris, what he's telling you is what I've been telling you, in so many words, since you were a child. You let everyone else decide for you. YOU should start establishing stronger boundaries. If you want to be a man, tell your mother she is no longer needed!"<br />
<br />
"What else did Dr. Ping say?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"He said I need to exercise more and not eat sugar," Chris responded.<br />
<br />
<i>Well, you don't need an acupuncturist to tell you that,</i> I'm thinking.<br />
<br />
Over the course of his treatment (number 8 and only two more to go) Chris's weight has remained more or less the same, despite his increased daily exercise routine. At his last visit, Chris challenged Dr. Ping on the lack of weight loss. "You not exercising enough. "You do MORE!" said Dr. Ping. As a parting gesture, he hammered three pins into Chris right ear. "Twist them at least four times a day," he instructed.<br />
<br />
Dr. Ping. Well done! You are hammering home the body/mind connection by reminding Chris to use his body, to break some sweat. So, YAY! However, my response to this lack of weight loss is: Dr. Ping, then what are we paying YOU for? If we thought Chris could lose the weight by exercising or dieting, there'd be no need for acupuncture. What exactly are you selling here? Everybody knows that antipsychotics produce metabolic weight gain in most people. YOU held out the promise that acupuncture would be different.<br />
<br />
Unless, unless, I say to myself, a great part of TCM is the doctor applying psychological pressure on top of the needle pressure. Dr. Ping may be doing a great job. The acupuncture may simply be a distraction, a side show. What may be more important than the needles is the psychology.<br />
<br />
<i>The Chinese physician, in contrast, directs his or her attention to the complete physiological and psychological individual. All relevant information, including the symptom as well as the patient's other general characteristics, is gathered and woven together until it forms what Chinese medicine calls a "pattern of disharmony." This pattern of disharmony describes a situation of "imbalance" in a patient's body. Oriental diagnostic technique does not turn up a specific disease entity or a precise cause, but renders an almost poetic, yet workable, description of a whole person.*</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Will Chris be able to lose weight caused by metabolic weight gain through acupuncture? I have no idea. It's either a con job or a great job.<br />
<i>_________________</i><br />
Kaptchuk, Ted J., The Web That Has No Weaver, McGraw-Hill, 2000, page 4.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-38762432973292340542014-09-04T01:36:00.001-07:002014-09-04T01:38:36.401-07:00Practical things you can do for anxiety<br />
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Hope for Everyone</h1>
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September 3, 2014</div>
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I am a very optimistic psychologist, but with reason. For 25 years I’ve been working with people who have had psychological problems in every conceivable area. Many psychologists have problems with burnout, especially early in their careers. For me, this has been very different. By using the treatment techniques that I do, I feel anti-burned out. It is so gratifying to see people get out of their serious problems, that I look forward to every day of clinical work.</div>
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The reason why many in the mental health field get burned out may be that they are not able to make changes in people’s lives as they had hoped.</div>
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I often get frustrated when patients come to me after a treatment career with four or five previous psychologists. The clients have been very close to giving up, but they often give it a last try, especially in the anxiety clinic where I work. Having failed in many therapies, having been made very pessimistic, I really admire them for not giving up completely.</div>
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Usually these patients have been to psychologists who are very concerned with childhood experiences. For years they have been talking to the psychologists about all kinds of bad things that have happened to them, in an attempt to find out what may have caused their psychological problems.</div>
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The problem is that even if we could reliably find exactly what caused the problems, this does not give us any direction about how to help cure the problem. The sad fact is that we cannot change people’s childhoods.</div>
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Another sad effect, is that doing psychotherapy that is not working may be very demotivating and give people the feeling that there is no hope for their condition.</div>
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What makes more sense, especially to clients, is to look at their everyday situation, and find out what problems they have within their daily lives. In technical terms, this is called formulation.<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.4444446563721px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/01/more-thinking-about-alternatives-to-psychiatric-diagnosis/" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; color: #005580; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.4444446563721px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Many British psychologists see this as a very useful alternative to diagnosis</a></strong>. The formulation would describe in everyday language what triggers your problems, how you react, what makes the problem worse or better, and eventually what may be done with this in the here and now.</div>
Read this rest of the article <a href="http://www.madinamerica.com/2014/09/hope-everyone/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">here</span></a>. There is a very good video in it for learning to handle the anxiety associated with drug withdrawal.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-23434083966775387572014-09-02T01:42:00.001-07:002014-09-02T01:44:39.697-07:00Life goes onI'm still here. Life goes on at its decidedly slower pace now that Chris is becoming a self. I haven't blogged about him in a while, but recently I've been getting a flurry of e-mails from mothers seeking my advice about what to do about their own sons and daughters who've been recently diagnosed. I can't just tell them to read my blog (all 912 posts) and expect them to get a handle of how to help their relative NOW. Years ago, an Internet pal told me that the best way to be influential is to write a book, so yes, that memoir I've been talking too much about and doing too little to finish, will take precedent over regular blog posts once again, beginning this month.<br />
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I've been looking over some of my earlier posts and wince at how garbled some of them are. What was I possibly thinking when I wrote THAT? I wonder. A future project for me will be to clean up some of the language to make the posts more readable. (Ref. Weird Al Yancovic's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;"><b>Word Crimes</b></span></a>, "Saw your blog post. It was fantastic! (I'm being sarcastic.) Cause you write like a 'spastic.") . . . Better book some quality time with my book editor beginning this month.<br />
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Monica Cassani has started a weekly blog post about psychiatric drug withdrawal called <a href="http://beyondmeds.com/?s=%22it+gets+better%22" style="color: blue;" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;"><b>It Gets </b></span><span style="color: blue;"><b>Better</b></span></a>. Seeing her post today reminded me that an important part of my blog is to also show people from my own experience with Chris, how it does get better. The person you thought you knew at eighteen or twenty, was probably not a personality, not a cohesive self. The person you see ten years later may the person he or she has been struggling to be all along, defining themselves in surprising ways. Given the right conditions, the caterpillar eventually becomes a butterfly, the seedling becomes a plant. The building up of a personality is for patient people. The results are gratifying.<br />
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Chris has been wonderfully productive recently. He's taken two intensive French language courses and passed his language proficiency exam, which he will need to show to a potential employer. One step at a time. He just got back from a week's technical training in sound and light for theater productions. Since he dropped out of university at age twenty, he has not wanted to/not been able to, take a course involving assignments and grades and he hesitated to venture far from the nest. What he has done recently should give anyone struggling under the diagnosis of schizophrenia, cause for hope. I don't see "schizophrenia" anymore. Haven't seen it for a long time. I prefer to talk in terms of spiritual crisis, maturation, and a finding one's self.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-49611157451543151922014-07-21T23:42:00.000-07:002014-07-21T23:42:26.855-07:00Free Online Training Module Using Normalizing Within CBT for Psychosis<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<span style="line-height: 19px;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 21px;"><a href="http://recoveryfromschizophrenia.org/about-ron-unger/" target="_blank"><b>R</b></a></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 21px;"><a href="http://recoveryfromschizophrenia.org/about-ron-unger/" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: blue;">on Unger </span></b></a><span style="color: #333333;">is a licens</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px;">ed cognitive behavioral therapist whose understanding of psychosis I greatly appreciate and admire. His writing has helped me enormously in "normalizing" the way I think about my own relative, calming ME down, and increasing MY hope for my son's recovery. Ron has recently created an online course in</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px;"> "</span><span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">how to</span> talk to people with psychotic experience in a way that allows them to calm down, feel more grounded, access coping skills, and increase hope for recovery."</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">His course was designed with</span></span><span style="color: #111111; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;">professionals in mind, but it is also open to service users, ex service users or survivors, and family members.</span></div>
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<li class="sub_email" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://recoveryfromschizophrenia.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=a9ee7d33c7d1705a18fd5de64&id=e3ab500339" target="_blank"><br /></a></span></li>
<li class="sub_email" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><b><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://recoveryfromschizophrenia.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=a9ee7d33c7d1705a18fd5de64&id=e3ab500339" target="_blank">Free Online Training Module Using Normalizing Within CBT for Psychosis</a></span></b></li>
<li class="sub_email" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /></li>
<li class="sub_email" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Use the link above to signup to get access to a free online training in how to talk to people with psychotic experience in a way that allows them to calm down, feel more grounded, access coping skills, and increase hope for recovery. By signing up here, you will also be added to an email list to be notified about upcoming events like the release of the complete online training in CBT for Psychosis, which will include CE credits for US professionals. You can unsubscribe from this list at any time.</span></li>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;">Please read more about the background for this course. I have</span><span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;">r<a href="http://www.madinamerica.com/2014/07/normalizing_psychosis/" target="_blank">eprinted an excerp</a>t</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;"> </span></b></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;">from Ron's </span><a href="http://www.madinamerica.com/" style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;"><b>Mad in America </b></span></a><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;">post below. (If the link above doesn't work, there is further information in the comments section of Ron's post.)</span></div>
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How Can Professionals Learn to Reduce Fears of Psychotic Experiences Rather Than Emphasize Pathology?</h1>
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July 19, 2014</div>
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The kinds of experiences we call psychotic are often incredibly scary: people feel they are being persecuted by strange forces, or that their brains have been invaded by demons or riddled with implants from the CIA . . . the list of possible fears is endless, and often horrifying.</div>
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While standard mental health approaches counter many of these fears, they often create new fears of a different variety. People diagnosed with schizophrenia for example may be led to believe that they will definitely be mentally ill for life, that this illness controls what happens in their brain and not themselves, and that there are few or even no alternatives if drugs don’t work for them.</div>
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This can be extremely demoralizing. <a href="http://www.madinamerica.com/author/ocohen/" style="background-position: 0px 0px; border: 0px; color: #005580; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Oryx Cohen</a> graphically described his own reaction to the standard mental health psychoeducation he received after his first psychotic experience: he reported it made him feel he had lost his membership in the human race! As a result of it, he felt caught up in a pathologized understanding of himself, he lost his expectation of being capable of learning from experience and shaping his future, and he now felt defined by his abnormality rather than by his humanity.</div>
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Despite − rather than because − of what the mental health system taught him to believe, Oryx later discovered other ways of understanding his experience, and he made a full recovery. But wouldn’t it be better if people like Oryx were helped to find a more humanistic understanding of themselves within the mental health system and from the very beginning of treatment?</div>
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Wouldn’t it be helpful if professionals were trained in an approach that could help people shift away from both dangerous psychotic ways of thinking and also away from the sometimes equally terrifying explanations which emphasize pathology?</div>
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Further, what if such an approach could also build a foundation for learning effective coping skills, and also help a person build hope and a road map toward a possible full recovery?</div>
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And wouldn’t it be nice if this approach was already proven to be “evidence based,” so that both people learning the methods, and their supervisors and colleagues could have confidence in its effectiveness and safety?</div>
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Fortunately, at least one such approach exists, and it is called CBT for psychosis. This method allows professionals to collaborate with people in developing understandings of their psychotic experiences that neither minimize problems nor emphasize pathology, but instead help make sense of extreme human experiences in a way that is grounded in more everyday human experience and issues.</div>
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Read the rest <a href="http://www.madinamerica.com/2014/07/normalizing_psychosis/" target="_blank"><b>here</b></a>.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-15847934252931496292014-07-07T13:46:00.000-07:002014-07-07T13:58:33.415-07:00People never change because they are happyTorn from easyJet's latest in-flight magazine issue, <a href="http://traveller.easyjet.com/features/2014/07/master-the-art-of-doing-nothing-all-day-with-marina-abramovic" target="_blank"><b>an interview with Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic:</b></a><br />
<br />
<b>You're known for doing crazy stuff, but your latest piece is just you in a room for eight hours a day, six days a week. What's happening?</b><br />
<br />
"After 40 years of being an artist, I really want to see if I can work with just energy. It could fail, so I guess that's why it's worth doing. I've never been in a space where there is nothing."<br />
<br />
<b>What do you hope to achieve?</b><br />
<br />
"People are so lost these days, there's a need for this transmission of energy at the moment. They are full of so much pain and direct contact with an artist is not there. Artists become celebrities and are untouchable."<br />
<br />
<b>How can you do this by saying and doing nothing?</b><br />
<br />
"We can alert our powers of telepathy. For the past year, Russian and American scientists have measured my brain waves. They have proved that when you're looking at a total stranger, without saying one word, you're sending subconscious information to each other. So you can actually know more about somebody without saying one word than while having a conversation. It's cheaper than a telephone."<br />
<br />
<b>In past performances, you've cut yourself, taken drugs and allowed strangers to hurt you. Why?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
"Terrible events can make tremendous change, like terminal disease, an accident, someone from your family dying. People never change from happiness. I'm not waiting for this kind of event. I'm staging difficult situation in the form of the performance."<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-7933505552785828492014-07-07T07:40:00.000-07:002014-07-08T22:33:35.111-07:00Louise GillettLouise Gillett is a writer and creative talent behind the blog Schizophrenia at the School Gate. No, wait, she's not just a writer, she's an excellent writer and she's got a wonderful way of explaining "schizophrenia" from the point of view of her older and wiser self. She writes about her insecurities in a way that I find delightful and insightful. I got Louise's permission to reprint her latest musings on social anxiety because I think what she's saying can give parents hope in recovery.<br />
<br />
Here's just a snippet:<br />
<span style="background-color: #ffffe5; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.735000610351563px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #ffffe5; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.735000610351563px;">"About me. Well, I am normal (we have established that. Or haven't we?!) but I was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young person and that still affects my perception of myself. I feel quite strongly that this label is wrong - not for me in particular, but for everyone who is afflicted with it. Because anyone can suffer emotional distress for a variety of reasons (there always are reasons) and anyone can break down - and anyone can also recover. But the label of schizophrenia doesn't allow for recovery - even if, like me, you haven't had to take medication for twelve years and you have no symptoms of mental ill-health (social anxiety is not schizophrenia).</span><span style="background-color: #ffffe5; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.735000610351563px;"> </span><br />
<br style="background-color: #ffffe5; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.735000610351563px;" />
<span style="background-color: #ffffe5; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.735000610351563px;">Which means that those people who do recover - which is more than you would think - stay very quiet about the fact that they were ever diagnosed. Which gives the others with the same label - and people are still being given this label today - very little hope for their own futures. " </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #ffffe5; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.735000610351563px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #ffffe5; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.735000610351563px;"><span style="color: #333333;">Read the rest of Louise's post </span><u><a href="http://schizophreniaattheschoolgate.blogspot.de/2014/07/all-about-me.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;"><b>here</b></span></a></u></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-5253917620083434552014-06-23T23:52:00.003-07:002014-06-23T23:52:59.935-07:00Next Recovering Our Families course starts in August<header class="entry-header" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h1 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 36px; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 15px;">
Recovering Our Families</h1>
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“Recovering our Families” introduces families to key recovery principles, leaders, research and resources that are person- and family-centered, trauma-informed and strengths based. This interactive, facilitated online class combines emailed lessons with recovery exercises, videos, online resources and a password-protected website with private facilitated group discussions and peer support. The “Recovering Our Families” course was written by and is facilitated by Krista MacKinnon with the help and support of Family Outreach and Response Program in Toronto Canada, and The Foundation For Excellence in Mental Health in Oregon, USA. If you’re not registered in the class, <a href="http://familieshealingtogether.com/focus/recovering-our-families/" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out; background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #13afdf; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;" title="Recovering Our Families">learn more about it here</a>. <span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Next class begins August 29th, registration will be open soon.</span></div>
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Course Materials</h4>
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Computer with sound. Internet Connection. Heart. Soul. Love. Pen. Paper. Printer. Willingness.</div>
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Course Content</h4>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Lessons</span><span class="right" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: right; text-align: center; width: 53px;">Status</span></div>
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1</div>
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<a class="notcompleted" href="http://familieshealingtogether.com/lessons/week-one-sharing-our-stories/" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out; background: url(http://familieshealingtogether.com/wp-content/plugins/sfwd-lms/templates/images/notcompleted.png) 97.9000015258789% 50% no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5980bb; display: block; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-weight: 100; line-height: 53px; padding: 10px 16.671875px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;">Week One: Sharing Our Stories</a></h4>
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2</div>
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<a class="notcompleted" href="http://familieshealingtogether.com/lessons/exploring-recovery-fundamentals/" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out; background: url(http://familieshealingtogether.com/wp-content/plugins/sfwd-lms/templates/images/notcompleted.png) 97.9000015258789% 50% no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5980bb; display: block; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-weight: 100; line-height: 53px; padding: 10px 16.671875px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;">Week Two: Exploring Recovery Fundamentals</a></h4>
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3</div>
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<a class="notcompleted" href="http://familieshealingtogether.com/lessons/week-three-understanding-mental-health/" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out; background: url(http://familieshealingtogether.com/wp-content/plugins/sfwd-lms/templates/images/notcompleted.png) 97.9000015258789% 50% no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5980bb; display: block; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-weight: 100; line-height: 53px; padding: 10px 16.671875px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;">Week Three: Understanding Mental Health</a></h4>
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4</div>
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<a class="notcompleted" href="http://familieshealingtogether.com/lessons/week-four-harnessing-the-power-of-hope/" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out; background: url(http://familieshealingtogether.com/wp-content/plugins/sfwd-lms/templates/images/notcompleted.png) 97.9000015258789% 50% no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5980bb; display: block; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-weight: 100; line-height: 53px; padding: 10px 16.671875px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;">Week Four: Harnessing The Power of Hope</a></h4>
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5</div>
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<a class="notcompleted" href="http://familieshealingtogether.com/lessons/week-five-using-a-strengths-based-approach/" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out; background: url(http://familieshealingtogether.com/wp-content/plugins/sfwd-lms/templates/images/notcompleted.png) 97.9000015258789% 50% no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5980bb; display: block; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-weight: 100; line-height: 53px; padding: 10px 16.671875px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;">Week Five: Using A Strengths-Based Approach</a></h4>
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6</div>
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<a class="notcompleted" href="http://familieshealingtogether.com/lessons/week-six-building-relationship-amidst-psychosis/" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out; background: url(http://familieshealingtogether.com/wp-content/plugins/sfwd-lms/templates/images/notcompleted.png) 97.9000015258789% 50% no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5980bb; display: block; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-weight: 100; line-height: 53px; padding: 10px 16.671875px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;">Week Six: Building Relationship Amidst Psychosis</a></h4>
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7</div>
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<a class="notcompleted" href="http://familieshealingtogether.com/lessons/week-seven-creating-healthy-boundaries/" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out; background: url(http://familieshealingtogether.com/wp-content/plugins/sfwd-lms/templates/images/notcompleted.png) 97.9000015258789% 50% no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5980bb; display: block; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-weight: 100; line-height: 53px; padding: 10px 16.671875px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;">Week Seven: Creating Healthy Boundaries</a></h4>
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8</div>
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<a class="notcompleted" href="http://familieshealingtogether.com/lessons/week-eight-celebrating-recovery-stories/" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out; background: url(http://familieshealingtogether.com/wp-content/plugins/sfwd-lms/templates/images/notcompleted.png) 97.9000015258789% 50% no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5980bb; display: block; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-weight: 100; line-height: 53px; padding: 10px 16.671875px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;">Week Eight: Celebrating Recovery Stories</a></h4>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-62904904228656019632014-06-23T05:30:00.003-07:002014-06-23T05:57:42.567-07:00A list of warmlines by state<center style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;">
<img alt="Warmline logo" src="http://www.warmline.org/img/warmlines.jpg" height="187" width="420" /></center>
<div style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;">
A warmline is a peer-run listening line staffed by people in recovery themselves.<br />
Scroll down to see a directory of known warmlines around the US.</div>
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<a href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/WarmLines/info" target="_blank">Sign up for a warmlines electronic mailing list at Yahoo Groups! </a><br />
<a href="http://sign%20up%20for%20a%20peer%20run%20respites%20electronic%20mailing%20list%20at%20yahoo%20groups%21/" target="_blank">Sign up for a peer run respites electronic mailing list at Yahoo Groups!</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://links%20for%20useful%20information%20on%20starting%20a%20warmline%20and%20more./" target="_blank">Links for useful information on starting a warmline and more.</a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;">Information on <a href="http://www.power2u.org/crisis-alternatives.html" target="_blank">peer-run respite nationwide</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;">Other peer-run respite programs to go to:</span><br />
<div style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;">
<a href="http://www.power2u.org/crisis-alternatives.html" target="_blank">http://www.power2u.org/crisis-alternatives.html</a></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;">
Another directory of warmlines:<br />
<a href="http://www.mhselfhelp.org/warmlines-index/" target="_blank">http://www.mhselfhelp.org/warmlines-index/</a></div>
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<strong>Metro Boston Recovery Learning Community</strong> (MBRLC) recent Peer Warmline feature in the <a href="http://www.warmline.org/SAMHSA_highlight_nov_12.pdf" style="color: #660066;">SAMHSA Recovery to Practice weekly newsletter 11/12/10</a>.</div>
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<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/05/noncrisis_line_lends_a_wise_sympathetic_ear_for_troubled_callers/" style="color: #660066;">Warm line featured in the Boston Globe</a> on February 5, 2009! (Article written before our collaboration with NERLC and the expansion from three to six days a week.)<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/05/noncrisis_line_lends_a_wise_sympathetic_ear_for_troubled_callers/" style="color: #660066;">Article about the Metro Boston Recovery Learning Community warmline by Carey Goldberg</a></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;">
The Warmline Guide is now live at:<br />
<a href="http://www.power2u.org/peer-run-warmlines.html" style="color: #660066;">http://www.power2u.org/peer-run-warmlines.html</a></div>
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<h3 style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;">
To search for Warmlines by state, click on a state in the list below.</h3>
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<span style="background-color: white;">(Note: Warmlines listed in </span><span class="red1" style="color: #ff0300;">red</span><span style="background-color: white;"> are nationally accessible and welcome calls from anywhere)</span></div>
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<ul style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;">
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#alabama" style="color: #660066;">Alabama</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#arizona" style="color: #660066;">Arizona</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#california" style="color: #660066;">California</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#connecticut" style="color: #660066;">Connecticut</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#delaware" style="color: #660066;">Delaware</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#georgia" style="color: #660066;">Georgia</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#illinois" style="color: #660066;">Illinois</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#indiana" style="color: #660066;">Indiana</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#kansas" style="color: #660066;">Kansas</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#kentucky" style="color: #660066;">Kentucky</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#Louisiana" style="color: #660066;">Louisiana</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#maine" style="color: #660066;">Maine</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#massachusetts" style="color: #660066;">Massachusetts</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#minnesota" style="color: #660066;">Minnesota</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#missouri" style="color: #660066;">Missouri</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#montana" style="color: #660066;">Montana</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#new-hampshire" style="color: #660066;">New Hampshire</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#nevada" style="color: #660066;">Nevada</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#new-jersey" style="color: #660066;">New Jersey</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#new-york" style="color: #660066;">New York</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#ohio" style="color: #660066;">Ohio</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#oregon" style="color: #660066;">Oregon</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#pennsylvania" style="color: #660066;">Pennsylvania</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#tennesee" style="color: #660066;">Tennesee</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#texas" style="color: #660066;">Texas</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#vermont" style="color: #660066;">Vermont</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#virginia" style="color: #660066;">Virginia</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#westvirginia" style="color: #660066;">West Virginia</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#washington" style="color: #660066;">Washington</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.warmline.org/#wisconsin" style="color: #660066;">Wisconsin</a></li>
</ul>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-63507866886584448612014-06-19T01:47:00.000-07:002014-06-20T01:43:53.996-07:00The Secrets They Kept: The True Story of a Mercy Killing that Shocked a Town and Shamed a Family<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UbcPGUZCxGI/UkscPWYc4UI/AAAAAAAABQQ/AXCeOOFoHmQ/s1600/the_secrets_they_kept.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UbcPGUZCxGI/UkscPWYc4UI/AAAAAAAABQQ/AXCeOOFoHmQ/s1600/the_secrets_they_kept.jpg" height="320" width="214" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">An intriguing quote in this book puts the secrets of the Levin family tragedy in perspective:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"Secrets are like stars. They blaze inside the heart and ultimately could be explosive. But there are two types of secrets. Small secrets, like small stars, will eventually burn out. With time and space they lose their importance and simply vanish. No harm done. But big secrets, like massive stars, with time and constant fear grow stronger, creating a gravitational pull that eventually . . . When they get so big, they become a black hole." (Jennifer Jabalay).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A true story, The Secrets They Kept reminds me very much of the family secrets that author Robertson Davies so brilliantly exploited in his novels like Fifth Business and What's Bred in the Bone.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The central question in this book is what could possibly motivate a man to kill his own daughter? Sixteen year old Sally Levin had recently been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and about to be institutionalized. Sam, her father, told the court that he wanted to relieve her suffering and she had begged him to do it. Sam's granddaughter, Suzanne Handler, leaves no stone unturned considering plausible answers where very little family history is available. Her aim in writing the book is to give Sally her rightful place in the family and to expose the consequences of the stigma surrounding mental illness. What I see when I read this book is all that and more. This is a family psychodrama acted out over multiple generations. At the end of the book, the author writes about how hidden secrets estranged her from her mother (Sam's daughter), reminding me of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung's observation, "Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent."</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">My review of this book draws on shamanistic beliefs that form the basis of Family Constellation Therapy popularized by ex-Jesuit priest Bert Hellinger. My family participated in Family Constellation Therapy that was precipitated by a diagnosis of schizophrenia in my son.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="background-color: white;" /></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Hellinger Institute of Northern California website explains that </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"A Family Constellation is a three-dimensional group process that has the power to shift generations of suffering and unhappiness. Bert Hellinger, the founder of this work, who studied and treated families for more than 50 years, observed that many of us unconsciously "take on" destructive familial patterns of anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, aloneness, alcoholism and even illness as a way of "belonging" in our families. Bonded by a deep love, a child will often sacrifice his own best interests in a vain attempt to ease the suffering of a parent or other family member. Family Constellations allow us to break these patterns so that we can live healthier, happier, more fulfilled lives. In a moment of insight, a new life course can be set in motion. The results can be life-changing." </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">(http://www.hellingerpa.com/constellation.shtml)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">From a Family Constellation Therapy perspective, there are probably two or more tragedies in the Levin family history, one buried in the history before the family immigrated to America, and the one at hand. We suspect this because of Sally's status as a black sheep and her diagnosis of schizophrenia. Sally embodied something about the Levins that they feared about themselves. She was their mirror.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Author Suzanne Handler has stunned me by fearlessly and compassionately shining a light on her own grandfather and his immediate family in order to bring respect and honor to her long dead and forgotten aunt Sally. She leads the way in showing others how compassion and forgiveness are important in even the most awful circumstances. She's done what Family Constellation Therapy would advise her to do for the sake of her own healing and for those of her children and her children's children. She brings Sally to life through this book, she erects a new gravestone bearing the proper spelling of Sally's name, and she forgives her grandfather.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Amongst other things, this book is a truelife crime story so I'll put my own thoughts on the table as to what may have motivated Sam Levin to kill his daughter on August 16, 1937.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It is not axiomatic that all parents love their children equally or at all. Some parents have favorites and some have scapegoats. From what little we know about Sally, it appears that Sally was the one who never quite fit in with the family of seven who lived a cramped existence in a two bedroom house. Her break with reality may have been the final straw for an already stressed family. Anyone who has lived with a family member who is actively psychotic knows how high tensions can run. The psychotic person is alternately feared, criticized and ridiculed by other family members who haven't a clue how to help their relative. Or, in trying to be compassionate, families often project worry and instill learned helplessness in their loved one. (There are books and courses available today that teach people how to diffuse the stress and uplift the person, but this kind of knowledge was little known then and only somewhat better known today.)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This (purely speculative) abuse may also have been a longstanding pattern in the Levin household when it came to Sally who was strikingly different from the others, being two shades darker in complexion. Her family called her "Blackie," underscoring her noticeable difference. Was she the family black sheep or the family "scapegoat"? Shouldn't at least her mother (Sam's wife) have protected her? Surely she must have known something of Sam's plans that day, or at least have had some sort of inkling. Protection is often too big a burden to ask of siblings, who are rivals for their parents' affections. When the deed was done, the family members rallied round their father and perhaps took a vow of silence to not divulge to anyone that Sally was anything other than a beloved sibling. Their shame would have been too great.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Regarding Sam's wife, I thought immediately of the Mrs. Dempster character in Davie's book, Fifth Business. Both were alike in that the townsfolk said they were never right in the head. Mrs. Dempster wandered off one day and took a tumble with a tramp down by the river, to the lasting shame and horror of her pastor husband. Perhaps Sally Levin's complexion gave rise to suspicions on Sam's part that she was not his biological daughter and he treated her accordingly, despite his professed love for her.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">What is a scapegoat? In Family Constellation Therapy a scapegoat is someone on the receiving end of a subconscious family process spanning multiple generations. Like the Biblical animal scapegoat, one family member, as a form of atonement, takes the brunt of the collective sins of the community/family and then is forcefully driven away from them. The family honor is thereby restored and the family can point to the scapegoat as the strange one who is not like them.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If one believes that there is some truth to the intergenerational scapegoat theory, then Sam was sacrificing one child for the good of the many. He was unconsciously carrying out his duty to his ancestors, while problematically creating a new burden for future generations of the family.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Did Sam Levin really intend to kill himself along with Sally? I doubt it. It was Sally's idea for him to join her in death, not his. He needed to live to support the rest of his family. He was a dutiful husband, son, and father. His suicide note cleverly introduced the idea that he was insane himself, and destined to go the local insane asylum if he didn't kill himself first. His suicide note says nothing about loving his daughter, nor anything about his daughter, for that matter, other than signing her name at the bottom. He was sane when he killed her. Not even temporarily insane. And yet, I can also imagine him fearing he was becoming temporarily insane because of stress. I've almost been there myself. The label of schizophrenia was enough to push me into a spiraling psychedelic anxiety that if not checked, could have made me temporarily insane. There is nothing I can tell from the story that leads me to believe that Sam loved his daughter, although the investigators came to the conclusion by interviewing relatives and church leaders (all people who would want to protect Sam) that "the defendant was so obsessed with the love for his child that he himself would lay down his life with her." Except . . . he didn't lay down his life for her. This is a psychic anomaly. It seems that he visited her grave many years later, and that shows a certain amount of contrition and respect for her, but love for Sally may not have been the case while she was alive. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There is another interpretation of Sally's outcast status that comes from Family Constellation Therapy which shows how Sally herself was perhaps sacrificing herself for someone in a previous generation of the Levin family who was denied their right to belong to the family, through an untimely death, a murder, prison or some other form of estrangement. The Levin parents were immigrants from the pogroms of the Ukraine whose known family history was lost along the way. Sally chose to offer herself in atonement for some long forgotten exclusion. She was intuitive to the suffering in the Levin household. She was their mirror.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">According to Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, schizophrenia often has its roots at the fourth (intuitive) level of healing because schizophrenics are particularly sensitive to these familial exclusions or injustices and will act out the role of victim. Dr. Klinghardt maintains that if schizophrenia is not cured at the physical level (level 1), it is usually because the issues lie in the realm of intuition (level 4). According to the Family Constellation theory, the root of schizophrenia is almost always found three or four generations removed from the present. The current family environment isn't directly responsible for the origins of the schizophrenia, but the family is implicated because of the way its members might unconsciously deal in the present with the aftermath of the family event from the past.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On a non-Family Constellation note, I'm of the opinion that it is the original diagnosis of schizophrenia that is a recipe for disaster because it causes people to lose all hope. Sally might well have lived had her doctors not painted such a bleak scenario of her future. This non-medical diagnosis of schizophrenia (there are no biomarkers) and similar mental illness labels should be dropped in favor of empathic treatment of people, not treatment of labels masquerading as diseases.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-They-Kept-Killing-Shocked/dp/0988563908/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403168201&sr=1-1&keywords=the+secrets+they+kept" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: blue;">highly recommend this book</span></b></a> because it shows us how the author explores and attempts to resolve the ominous burdens of her family history.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-75719524302139103852014-04-27T06:43:00.000-07:002014-04-27T06:43:55.530-07:00Justin Bieber: The new face of positive psychiatric labellingI went for a walk today with my youngest son Taylor around our neighborhood. We looked at the Nantucket style houses that were recently built and we agreed that, while charming, the blue shingles didn't quite fit in with the rest of the houses on the street, and we mulled over that was a good thing since they did liven the neighborhood up a bit.<br />
<br />
Taylor spotted a kid buzzing around the street on a bike with a Justin Bieber style hair cut, and we both laughed and agreed how much we like Justin Bieber, hair poof and all, because he is clueless and fun (remember his happy mug shot -Yo, check it out - I can't believe I've been arrested!), he acts like many other clueless twenty-year olds despite his fame and fortune, and he's generally nice to people.<br />
<br />
We eventually got around to to talking about benzos, celebrity deaths, doctors with boring jobs, and psychiatry. "It seems to me that all psychiatrists do is tell people what's wrong with them," said Taylor. "Why don't they instead start describing people by what's right with them?" Taylor began to warm up to his idea. "Take Justin Bieber. Why not call him "wonderfully expressive and enthusiastic (mug shot)? Or, a true risk taker who likes to test his own limits (excessive drunken speeding in a residential neighborhood). How about just plain "boyish"? (Egging of neighbor's house.) This is a whole paradigm shift. I can't even think of what we would call the Bieb's diagnosis because we are so used to negatives."<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-92117668231127825082014-04-22T05:31:00.001-07:002014-04-22T05:33:31.153-07:00The parents' role in a medical setting<span data-reactid=".k.1:3:1:$comment10203619956718135_8162976:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.0:$comment-body.0.0" style="background-color: #fafbfb; color: #4e5665; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.199999809265137px; line-height: 11.263999938964844px;"><span data-reactid=".k.1:3:1:$comment10203619956718135_8162976:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.0:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0"><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; line-height: normal;">This applies to so many parents who insist that their child has a mental illness. </span></span></span><br />
<span data-reactid=".k.1:3:1:$comment10203619956718135_8162976:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.0:$comment-body.0.0" style="background-color: #fafbfb; color: #4e5665; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.199999809265137px; line-height: 11.263999938964844px;"><span data-reactid=".k.1:3:1:$comment10203619956718135_8162976:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.0:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0"><br /></span></span>
<span data-reactid=".k.1:3:1:$comment10203619956718135_8162976:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.0:$comment-body.0.0" style="background-color: #fafbfb; color: #4e5665; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.199999809265137px; line-height: 11.263999938964844px;"><span data-reactid=".k.1:3:1:$comment10203619956718135_8162976:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.0:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">From <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Healing-Paradox-Revolutionary-Approach/dp/1583946160/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398169297&sr=8-1&keywords=the+paradox+of+healing" target="_blank"><b>The Healing Paradox</b></a>, by Steven Goldsmith, MD. </span></span><br />
<span data-reactid=".k.1:3:1:$comment10203619956718135_8162976:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.0:$comment-body.0.0" style="background-color: #fafbfb; color: #4e5665; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.199999809265137px; line-height: 11.263999938964844px;"><span data-reactid=".k.1:3:1:$comment10203619956718135_8162976:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.0:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0"><br /></span></span>
<span data-reactid=".k.1:3:1:$comment10203619956718135_8162976:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.0:$comment-body.0.0" style="background-color: #fafbfb; color: #4e5665; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.199999809265137px; line-height: 11.263999938964844px;"><span data-reactid=".k.1:3:1:$comment10203619956718135_8162976:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.0:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0"><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 8.5pt;">"My agreement of her parents' definition
of it (anorexia nervosa) as an illness would have doomed treatment because
only doctors' definitions of it are supposed to be able to cure illnesses, and
parents are supposed to hover over an ill child. Such a definition (anorexia
nervosa) would have reinforced this family's pathology and provided no leverage
for change. Moreover, the label, like all conventional medical diagnoses, reflects
Medicine's attempt to isolate the disease as a discrete, namable entity as a
thing, rather than a pattern of dysfunction and a disturbance of relationships.
By doing so, Medicine minimizes its chances of effectively altering those
relationships and curing the dysfunction."</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background: #FAFBFB; color: #4e5665; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: FR; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><br /></span>
<span data-reactid=".k.1:3:1:$comment10203619956718135_8162976:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.0:$comment-body.0.3" style="background-color: #fafbfb; color: #4e5665; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.199999809265137px; line-height: 11.263999938964844px;"><span data-reactid=".k.1:3:1:$comment10203619956718135_8162976:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.0:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".k.1:3:1:$comment10203619956718135_8162976:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.0:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 19px;">STEVEN GOLDSMITH received his MD at the Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons. In the last forty years he has practiced medicine, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and homeopathy and has held faculty and staff positions at the Boston University, Tufts University, and New York University Schools of Medicine. He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he maintains a practice that emphasizes natural solutions for mental and physical illness.</span></span></span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-26880239479210860922014-04-06T23:32:00.005-07:002014-04-06T23:34:10.213-07:00Leonard Cohen's 1970 European tour: "I want to play mental asylums"<span style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Excerpt from </span><b style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/04/06/leonard_cohens_worst_tour_ever_i_want_to_play_mental_asylums/" target="_blank">Salon</a> </b><br />
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The politics, the police, and the frenzy exhausted Cohen. When the whole world was going mad, where did you go for shelter?</div>
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“I want to play mental asylums,” Cohen told Bob Johnston. The producer was no stranger to such requests; just two years earlier, Johnny Cash had approached him with the task of arranging a gig at Folsom Prison. But Cash had intended for his prison concert to be recorded and released as an album. Cohen seemed drawn to asylums for entirely personal reasons. He never explained them to Johnston or to the other members of his band. Four years later, speaking to a reporter, he recalled his request and suggested that the “experience of a lot of people in mental hospitals would especially qualify them to be a receptive audience for my work.”</div>
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In a sense, he continued, “when someone consents to go into a mental hospital or is committed he has already acknowledged a tremendous defeat. To put it another way, he has already made a choice. And it was my feeling that the elements to this choice, and the elements of this choice, and the elements of this defeat, corresponded with certain elements that produced my songs, and that there would be an empathy between the people who had this experience and the experience as documented in my songs.”</div>
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On August 28, the Army drove up to the Henderson Hospital, just south of London; “it was all talking therapy,” a former nurse at the hospital told Cohen biographer Sylvie Simmons, “no medication, no ‘zombies.’” Cohen was led up to the institution’s imposing and narrow tower, where his impromptu performance would take place. “Oh boy,” he told Johnston as they made their way in, “I hope they like ‘So Long, Marianne.’” Most of those in attendance were young, and many were Leonard Cohen fans. The band quickly set up, and Cohen took his place at the front of the makeshift stage, underneath one of the “tall, narrow windows that gave the room the feel of a chapel.” He looked at the audience. “There was a fellow I spoke to last night,” he said, “a doctor. I told him I was coming out here. He said, ‘They are a tough bunch of young nuts.’” There was some applause, and Cohen started playing “Bird on the Wire.” But then he stopped. “I feel like talking,” he said. “Someone warned me downstairs that all you do here is talk. That’s psychotic, it’s contagious.”</div>
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During 80 minutes, he played only 11 songs. The rest of the time, he told the audience about his relationship with Marianne and how it had dissipated, about how “You Know Who I Am” was written after taking 300 acid trips and “One of Us Cannot Be Wrong” was composed while coming down from amphetamine, about the Chelsea Hotel and life in New York and making love and sharing lovers and feeling inconsolably sad. Each time he finished a song or a speech, the audience applauded rapturously.</div>
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And then it was time to leave. “I really wanted to say that this is the audience that we’ve been looking for,” Cohen said as the Army was packing up to go. “I’ve never felt so good playing before people.”</div>
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<em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Adapted from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393082059/?tag=saloncom08-20" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: red; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“A Broken Hallelujah: Rock n Roll, Redemption and the Life of Leonard Cohen”</a> by Liel Leibovitz. Published by W.W. Norton and Company. Copyright 2014 by Liel Leibowitz. All rights reserved.</em></div>
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<em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">See </em></div>
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<a class="toggle-group toggleOnScroll trigger remember refreshAds gaTrackPageEvent on" data-delay="15" data-toggle-group="story-13641243" href="http://www.salon.com/2014/04/06/leonard_cohens_worst_tour_ever_i_want_to_play_mental_asylums/" id="yui_3_11_0_11_1396851022729_901" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: red; font-size: 14px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-43337908769227009652014-02-05T03:09:00.000-08:002014-02-07T01:21:17.507-08:00Temporary shut downThis is my last blog post for the foreseeable future. I'm winding down the blog after nearly five years. It's time for me to let go, to move on, for Chris to move on so that he can challenge himself to fulfill his potential. Amongst other reasons for leaving, I really need to finish my book by writing that final chapter. The blog will remain, and I do respond to comments. If you wish to contact me, you can always e-mail me at recoverymodel@gmail.com <br />
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Have I broken any new ground in the last five years? Perhaps at the beginning, but not recently. Apart from writing from the perspective as a mother who is skeptical of standard treatment for schizophrenia and who has explored lots of non-traditional options, there are plenty of other people out there who are openly questioning the mainstream and are not hard to find. I have written countless recent comments in response to articles and have started many blog posts that I have abandoned and not posted. There just isn't much more that I can say that hasn't been said before. There is still lots to <u>act</u> upon, and I would love to see a more militant movement develop around civil rights and access to better, more humane treatment. <br />
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Before I go, I thought I would leave you with several thoughts about what I believe about schizophrenia and recovery and, as an aside, why I see merit in many sides of the political debates raging around mental health. Unfortunately, the debate is usually centered around the drugs. I think the no drugs at any cost position is as misguided as the drugs are necessary for life position.<br />
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This broad mindedness when it comes to seeing that even people with a viewpoint different than mine have a point, is part of the reason why I don't want to invest too heavily in the emotionally draining game of defending one viewpoint to the exclusion of others, when most of the time there is more than a kernel of truth in what the opposing side is saying. That being said, I am excited by how much the mental health community is beginning to question the effectiveness of the medications, to uplift the role of alternative therapies, to explore how important the family environment is to outcomes, etc.<br />
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My experience has taught me to have a foot in both camps when considering what causes schizophrenia. Is it a medical condition, or a psychospiritual one? I like what blogger Monica Cassani wrote recently:<br />
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<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;">There is no reason to assume that the medical and the spiritual causes are mutually exclusive.</span><strong style="background-color: whitesmoke; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"> As deeply holistic beings they are almos</strong><strong style="background-color: whitesmoke; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;">t </strong><strong style="background-color: whitesmoke; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;">always intertwined.</strong><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"> The spiritual experience often needing support and attention from a physical/medical stance as well. What is dangerous is to assume that psychiatrists actually know a damn thing about true medical causes when it comes to psychiatric distress. All sorts of things can contribute to the creation of psychosis in an individual…what it is not caused by is </span><strong style="background-color: whitesmoke; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://beyondmeds.com/chemical-imbalance-myth/" target="_blank">an imaginary chemical imbalance</a></strong><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"> made popular by pharma, then medicated by said neurotoxic pharma. Such medications may dull the symptoms and even help people function in the short term but they poison and sicken the body in the long term and heal nothing at all. Psychotic symptoms can be, at least in part caused, by autoimmune disorders, celiac and other gluten intolerances, other food sensitivities, nutritional deficiencies, thyroid problems and the list goes on and on…it’s a very rare and unusual MD that looks for such causes or knows anything at all about how to treat them. </span><strong style="background-color: whitesmoke; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://beyondmeds.com/2010/08/11/illness-as-sacred%C2%A0journey%E2%80%A6/" target="_blank">Sacred illness</a></strong><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"> may be both deeply physical/medical and spiritual both.</span><br />
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My experience has taught me not to underrate the effectiveness of medications in a <u>crisis</u> situation. They generally stop hallucinations, calm the person down, and very importantly, calm the relatives down. Some psychiatric survivors blame their relatives for insisting that they take meds, or for hospitalizing them. Fair enough, if that is your truth, but please don't dismiss the traumatic impact of a psychotic break on family members. Relatives cannot be a reliable source of help if they are worried and scared. They can become traumatized in the presence of psychosis and thus make recovery harder to achieve for themselves and for others. Their needs count, too. Patients blaming the parents or parents blaming the patient helps nobody. I also believe that if more empathic help is available before, during, and after a crisis, maybe medications wouldn't be needed, but that's a "maybe" and that scenario is still quite far in the future. They can be a quick fix in an emergency but should never have become enshrined as a life long panacea. And, yes, I agree with people who say that we need more rigorous scientific research and therefore better medications with fewer life threatening side effects. Yes, we need that, too, but we also should not presume that science based remedies are always better. Keep in mind that today's science if often tomorrow's discredited science.<br />
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Broadly speaking, medications are not as good as doctors and industry say they are, but they do work well enough for some people. If someone says the medication helps them, and they are not in a conflict of interest position with the pharmaceutical industry, then I'm willing to take their word for it.<br />
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My experience tells me how important it is to have family members understand and appreciate what their relative is going through and learn to work together as equal partners in recovery, starting from day 1. Although this sounds like a motherhood issue (seems everybody's at least on the surface is in favor of a collaborative approach), what has been missing up until quite recently is to approach recovery through the lens of STUDIED optimism and hope. (Understanding what hope is and how to sustain it can be taught and learned! That's a relatively recent and revolutionary development in mental health.) The routine prescribing of drugs to treat a "brain disease" does not demonstrate optimism if that is all that is being tried. Family members who insist that their relative lacks insight lack insight themselves. Their attitude destroys hope. Everybody, relatives included, needs access to good patient centered education that takes the optimistic view that people can and do recover.<br />
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My experience has brought me full circle as to the nomenclature of psychiatric labels. I like to be able to write freely and not worry constantly that I have irritated someone else's view of what is correct and acceptable. I could review this post and substitute the word drugs for medications or put quotation marks around schizophrenia. I know the objections to the word medication and what quotation marks signal, and I get it and even subscribe to the viewpoint, but I don't want to get bogged down in semantics when there are bigger projects to tackle, like building communication bridges to others.<br />
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The best approach to overcoming schizophrenia is still the basket of eggs approach. Keep an open mind to trying different things. Unlike prescription medications most alternative approaches do no harm. Don't wait for double blind studies on alternatives. Alternative therapies work for some people and not for others, just like "real" medicine. Find the therapies that work for you and ignore what others may say. But, on the other hand, don't get too caught up chasing alternatives treatments. There is nothing like paying attention to what your relative is saying, and respecting their right to say it. It's so important to be on their side.<br />
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Chris is now thirty, and I'm bowing out of his life as much as possible. He's generally up and running, he has friends, a girlfriend, and a social life that revolves around singing, amateur theater, and community volunteer work. He's still living at home because he doesn't yet have an income that would allow him to live elsewhere. His future is in his hands. This realization has taken years for him to come to grips with. Recently he has taken the first step on the way to a B.A. in Theater and Performance by enrolling in and sticking with a night course. Getting a job is also high on his wish list this year. He recently switched his medication back to Abilify (5 mg) from Respiridone (1 mg). I'm still looking for ways that may eventually allow him to live drug free. I haven't given up that hope.<br />
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I'll be back in time. Thanks for your support and encouragement and good luck with your journeys!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-56617685892418253992013-12-30T11:54:00.000-08:002013-12-30T11:54:44.971-08:00Random jumbled thoughts on cold remedies and antipsychoticsI've been cooped up at home for the past few days with a runny nose and chest that feels like it's winched to the point where a rib bone might break. A friend suggested that I take an over-the-counter remedy, which, at first, I chose not to do, since I rarely buy the non-prescription medication that doctors usually add on to their prescriptions, considering it mostly a waste of money. Either a prescription will do the trick, or it won't.<br />
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But, I reconsidered my friend's suggestion because I want to be in good shape for an unusually festive New Year's Eve, and was hoping against hope that the non-prescription stuff worked.<br />
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Here's the verdict. Since I am still coughing up a lung and the nose continues to run, and I had no sleep last night, it's hard to imagine that the non-prescription stuff works better than just letting nature take its course. I believe I am no further ahead cold-wise. As I lay on top of my bed and stared at the ceiling this afternoon while sneezing, coughing and blowing my nose, I began to think about - what else? - antipsychotics. If we compare psychosis to a long running and miserable cold, are we better off with the prescription than we would be with "over-the-counter remedies," e.g. the therapies, strategies, and attitudes that I discuss in my blog.<br />
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Putting aside the very real concerns about antipsychotic side effects, the best one can say about them is that they sedate in emergency situations. and can be useful in the very short run. "But antipsychotics are <i>prescribed</i>," some will say, "and these prescriptions work," and they might go on to say that everybody knows that there is no cure for the common cold. To which I would answer, and there is no "cure" as such for schizophrenia. Should we believe the pharmaceutical companies when they say that people are better off long term on prescription antipsychotics than they would be using non-pharmaceutical, non-prescription remedies?<br />
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Going through the thought processes that I did while lying in bed this afternoon, I can't help but reach the conclusion that the public has been suckered into a willingness to pay for non-prescription cold remedies and prescription antipsychotics. The common cold is short and psychosis is long, but where is the proof that taking cold remedies or antipsychotics gets a person back on their feet any sooner than they would have if they had just taken normal precautions and sweated it out with e.g. chicken soup, a box of kleenex, psychotherapy or tender loving care from someone who believes that this, too, shall pass.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-23165363105225156812013-12-30T06:29:00.002-08:002013-12-30T06:32:16.010-08:00End of year thoughtsI haven't done a post for quite a while, and I'm not adding my two cents worth much on other blogs and sites for a number of reasons. I'm disengaging more and more from the intense and too often ugly online debates surrounding mental health issues. I feel that after ten years of searching and questioning, I know what I know about about how to help my son work through "schizophrenia," and I no longer have the mental energy or the patience to convert others to my way of thinking. All I can offer are my own opinions based on my experience with Chris, and if I don't put quotation marks around the word schizophrenia, is the world going to end? Apparently for some people it will. I think an intense debate about the validity of schizophrenia and the drugs given to treat it is a welcome change from the past and is forcing needed change. I applaud the many good people willing to go to bat for those changes, but now I think it's time to stop focusing on the often minute differences of opinion between people we perceive as our enemies; there is a huge risk of marginalizing our growing base of support if we don't reign in the rhetoric. We are attacking people over words and I'm looking for more useful ways for me to contribute. Even though I feel I have a message of hope about recovery that can be practiced to some degree of success by others, at the same time I feel that I'm not adding anything terribly new to the schizophrenia knowledge bank that I haven't said many times before.<br />
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Another reason I haven't posted much is that Chris is almost thirty, and really, it's time I bowed out of publicly recording the latest events as if I were the proud mother of a toddler or grade school student. Why I'll most likely continue blogging is because I like writing personal stories and I like reading personal stories because I think that they have the greatest reader interest and impact. But, by the time my" baby" reaches 30 next month, maybe it's time to NOT to document his every achievement and struggle.<br />
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We are living in narcissistic times. Anyone who blogs about or uploads Youtube videos of themselves or their close relatives (check out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHWYXkVVrFo" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: blue;">Holderness family Christmas video</span></b></a>) can be accused of being narcissistic, but the trick is to manage to avoid the label by claiming a greater altruism (smiley face goes here). I'm blogging about Chris and me as a public service (and here) of hope to all those families who are struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel. If it has to be the two of us to bring this message of hope, I'll risk being called a narcissist. There just aren't a lot of blogs right now written by relatives and targeted to families who are uncomfortable with the medical model of the "disease." It is through personal anecdotes from other mothers and fathers where many of us strengthen our hope. I would love to have some competition here in the blogosphere from the hope crowd to counteract all the crowded field of parental scare mongerers.<br />
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To end 2013 on an upbeat note, here is a summary of the good things that have happened to Chris and me on our journey this year.<br />
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Chris - got girlfriend, broke up with GF, seems to be back with GF, appeared in several theatrical choruses, attended an out of country course in musical theatre production, enrolled in a Monday night acting course, continues to be a member of several choirs, has gained greater ability to stand up for himself and voice his opinions (Note: All of this did not happen overnight. It has taken several years for him to get to this level of confidence, and he and I both know that there is still work to be done.)<br />
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Me - learning that it is never to late to learn something new, enrolled in two online courses about how to practice recovery and sustain hope.<br />
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Happy New Year everyone. May 2014 bring you peace, good health, and hope.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894514913516471357.post-55369326396558835352013-12-03T00:49:00.000-08:002013-12-03T00:49:38.902-08:00A message of hope from Jen Maurer, Managing Director, Mother Bear; Families for Mental Health<div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Rossa's note: I'm on the Advisory Group of Mother Bear and have taken two of its online courses on practicing recovery and sustaining hope. I am so grateful to Mother Bear for filling a huge gap in the recovery movement -- helping <u>families </u>to understand and appreciate the human side of psychosis and mental distress. Mother Bear's online courses and Help Hotline, is a godsend. A few months ago my son, Chris, called the hotline when he needed an empathic someone to help him work through his emotional state. He keeps the SOS phone number handy and knows he can be listened to with empathy when he calls.</span></div>
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I've made my donation to keeping the Hope Light brighter and I urge you to consider donating, too. </div>
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<a href="https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-prn1/23187_100001066345309_617055001_q.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Jen Maurer" border="0" src="https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-prn1/23187_100001066345309_617055001_q.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></div>
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Dear friends,</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">As many of you know, for the past two years I have been working for a labor of love-literally and figuratively-as Managing Director of a new nonprofit, Mother Bear: Families for Mental Health ( </span><a href="http://www.facebook.com/l/9AQHkteVYAQFyM06tzKWpwmutkPIFhY0PAcBmW1oNCX2G9Q/www.motherbearcan.org" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/l/<wbr></wbr>9AQHkteVYAQFyM06tzKWpwmutkPIFh<wbr></wbr>Y0PAcBmW1oNCX2G9Q/www.<wbr></wbr>motherbearcan.org</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">), which is dedicated to helping families heal from intense emotional distress.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The traditional medical system, friends and other family members have often given up all hope for these families. Not surprisingly, families come to us with barely a flicker of hope left that their loved one will ever recover or that they will recover from the exhaustion and worry that comes from caring for someone who is in chronic distress.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">That is what is heartbreaking about my work. Seeing how deeply families are struggling without support.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">What is heartwarming is being able to share with families that with support and education, we can help them reduce relapse rates by as much as 75%. Fact. Decades of research to prove it.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Recovery from even severe emotional challenges is not only possible, it should be EXPECTED… with the right support, of which there is precious little.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">That’s where we come in. Mother Bear is, quite literally, a light in the darkness for families. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I am asking you to consider helping us burn our Hope Light brighter by making a contribution of any kind to Mother Bear today (Dec. 3rd), otherwise known as #GivingTuesday.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">#GivingTuesday is a movement that encourages people to take collaborative action and harnesses the power of social media to create an international Day of Giving that thrives on the spirit of generosity and amplifies small acts of kindness in the service of changing our world for the better.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Here are just a few of the ways you can help Mother Bear transform lives:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* “Like” us on Facebook (</span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/MotherBearCAN" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/<wbr></wbr>MotherBearCAN</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">) to spread the word that recovery is possible and to share our healing resources. We are ALL touched by mental health challenges (yes, 1 in 4 of us at any given time!). You may not know whose life you are helping by sharing. Rest assured, you are.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">*Post our #GivingTuesday link on your Timeline and ask your friends and networks to do the same.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">( </span><a href="http://www.facebook.com/l/dAQFbdTBdAQHs9rNC-boU-5zOIYnx2tXMJm3IxatQPVpwzQ/givingtuesday.org/partner/mother-bear-families-for-mental-health/" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/l/<wbr></wbr>dAQFbdTBdAQHs9rNC-boU-<wbr></wbr>5zOIYnx2tXMJm3IxatQPVpwzQ/<wbr></wbr>givingtuesday.org/partner/<wbr></wbr>mother-bear-families-for-<wbr></wbr>mental-health/</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">*Call our Hope Line at 1-855-I HOPE 4 U between </span><span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1064119918" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">midnight</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> tonight through</span><span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1064119919" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">tomorrow</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> Dec. 3 (ending at </span><span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1064119920" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">11:59 pm</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">) and tell us what brings YOU hope. We’ll share it with our growing network of families on Facebook and Twitter! (I’ll be taking calls from </span><span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1064119921" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">8 am to 3 pm tomorrow</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> if you want to call and tell me your hope story personally!)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">*Make a financial gift in any amount. If you contribute before </span><span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1064119922" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">11:59 pm on Dec. 3</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">, your gift (and your friends’) will be matched up to $150K! (That is a lot of HOPE!)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">( </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/l/tAQGrQpNyAQGcNugK26MJo6I7u13EWjMs-gm8qDRbwkVYhQ/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.paypal.com%2Fcgi-bin%2Fwebscr%3Fcmd%3D_s-xclick%26hosted_button_id%3DQNGYF76RFWAHC" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/l/<wbr></wbr>tAQGrQpNyAQGcNugK26MJo6I7u13EW<wbr></wbr>jMs-gm8qDRbwkVYhQ/https%3A%2F%<wbr></wbr>2Fwww.paypal.com%2Fcgi-bin%<wbr></wbr>2Fwebscr%3Fcmd%3D_s-xclick%<wbr></wbr>26hosted_button_id%<wbr></wbr>3DQNGYF76RFWAHC</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Our special goal for this campaign is to secure the resources and staff necessary to increase our Hope Line hours in 2014 so more families can get support when they need it. We are currently the only toll-free Family Mental Health support line in the country.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I'm grateful for your friendship, your support and all the healing work you do in your own ways!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Wishing you all Hope- and Love-Filled, Healthy Holidays!</span><div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Jen</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06700295858497275586noreply@blogger.com0