Supporting Extreme States, Psychosis & Dissociation

Mad in America Presents a Special Panel Discussion on Saturday, March 9, 2024 at 11am PST, 2pm EST, 7pm GMT, 8pm CET

Mad in America presents a special panel discussion on understanding and supporting those experiencing extreme states, psychosis, and dissociation. Perhaps contrary to popular belief, the main focus will be how engaging and validating these states can serve as a supportive tool for healing. There will be a unique opportunity to explore the topic through the perspectives of survivors, family members, and therapists. Extensive resources will be shared, and the panel will conclude with an open audience Q&A.

Single Ticket: $10 USD. Funds will support Mad in America’s work as a non-profit organization. Not everyone can afford the expense. Please type in the code extremestates for a free ticket as needed.

GET FREE ACCESS TO EVENTS! As an alternative to buying a single ticket, you may opt to become an MIA donor for $5 USD per month or $20 USD per year. All active MIA donors receive free access to MIA events and unrestricted access to our content. Please see the MIA donate page to sign up. Once signed up as a donor, you will receive an automated email with your free event access code. You will enter this code at the Eventbrite checkout instead of a credit card.

About the Guest Speakers

Cindy Marty Hadge is a person who experienced physical, emotional, sexual, and medical trauma as a child. She experienced voices, vision, and thoughts of ending her life growing up as well. As a young adult she turned to alcohol and street drugs in an effort to make life livable. Over time she entered the mental health system, where the street drugs were replaced with prescribed drugs and the result was frequently the same – walking or stumbling through life in a mind-numbing state while continuing to experience voices, visions, and thoughts of ending her life.

Knowing that peer support in the form of 12 Step programs had been helpful while struggling with substance use, she sought out peer support for her emotional distress and experience of extreme states. Cindy discovered that she lived within walking distance of one of the Wildflower Alliance spaces, where one of the very few Hearing Voices Network groups in the US was held. Within this community she found healing and hope. By attending HVN groups she discovered that there were things she could do beyond taking medication to navigate her experience.

Cindy has found the meaning, purpose, and connection that she longed for and has made a way of making sense of the senseless. She is transforming her tragedies into treasures by being healed when creating space for others to heal. Cindy has been recognized by Inter-Voice, the international organization of HVN, for her work as an educator. Cindy is gender non-conforming and has presented both as Cindy and Marty. Cindy is a keynote speaker and a national trainer.

Olga Runcimanis the only psychologist in private practice in Denmark to specialize in extreme states (psychosis). She is an international trainer and speaker, writer, campaigner, and artist. She is a co-founder of the Danish Hearing Voices Network and the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal. She is a board member for a variety of organizations including Intervoice, Mad in America, The Danish Psychosocial Rehabilitation organization, and others. She has taken the three-year Finnish Open Dialogue education in London and works today as a dialogical family therapist and trainer.

For many years prior to her current career, Olga worked as a nurse in neurology and psychiatry. She also knows psychiatry from the inside, having been a patient herself. She was told she was an incurable case. Today she is in the unique position of creating a bridge between patient and professional.

Sam Ruck earned his B.A. in a Christian ministry-related field but set that dream aside when his wife began to display symptoms related to her childhood trauma early in their 35-year marriage. Together, for the past 16 years, they have learned to navigate extreme states and extreme dissociative issues, while embracing her seven “alter” identities in their relationship and family. Sam learned to become the companion his wife needed on their mutual healing journey, using strategies drawn from attachment theories and other pragmatic approaches.

Today, Sam and his wife struggle together, like many others, amidst the upheaval of culture wars and post his cancer diagnosis in 2023. They are still dealing with the remnants of her trauma and dissociation. Though his wife chooses to remain anonymous, she supports Sam sharing their learnings with significant others, family members, and anyone who is interested in a better way to engage someone experiencing mental distress. Please note that for privacy, Sam Ruck is using a pen name.

Sam blogged about their journey for a number of years later, summarizing the experience in a short book offered for free here. Excerpts have been published on MIA.

About the Hosts

Kermit Cole is a licensed Marriage & Family Therapist trained in dialogical therapies and has extensive experience working with people in psychotic states. He is a Mad in America board member and served as editor (2012 – 2014). He also faciliates the MIA US/Canada Parent Support Group.

A former film-maker, he has undergraduate and master’s degrees in psychology from Harvard. He founded the Open Paradigm film project to produce high-quality video of people and projects that question the value and validity of the DSM and its biomedical system of diagnosis. He currently tends a small urban care farm with his partner, Louisa Putnam, in New Mexico.

Louisa Putnam is a licensed family therapist, longtime meditator, and social justice activist. Having lived experience with a beloved family member, she became a Mad in America board member and facilitates its US/Canada Parent Support Group. She and Kermit Cole tend and share a small urban care farm in northern New Mexico with the community; cultivating soil, awareness, relationships, and peace.

LACCC presents: Innovations in Recovery Conference, Monday, June 23rd, 8am – 4pm

The LOS ANGELES COUNTY CLIENT COALITION is putting on the 3rd Annual Innovations in Recovery Conference. The conference will ill take place on Monday, June 23, 2014 at the California Endowment Center (Directions & Innovations Conf 2014.flyer)  located at 1000 N. Alameda Street Los Angeles, CA 90012, from 8:00am to 4:00 pm. 

Please join us!!! The Wildflowers’ Movement will be exhibiting and presenting SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND, an innovative workshop with music, singing and art! Our group is about giving & receiving mindful support while practicing self-awareness, cultivating radical wellness, and celebrating diversity. We meet every 1st and 3rd Sunday at SHARE! in Culver City and out at various events, and in nature, our natural habitat.

 

 

The Global Implications of Self- Care

Heal Yourself, Heal the World: The Global Implications of Self- Care

By Angela Levesque 

We are seeing a crisis in health worldwide; part of the world is still dying from poor conditions, while the other is dying of poor choices. It is time to ask ourselves why?

As we stand here on the edge of expanded human consciousness, we each have the opportunity to choose differently, deliberately. We can choose to embrace this moment with clarity of mind, a healthy body and an open heart or we can stand in resistance. Just as each single celled organism has an effect on the food chain, each person has an effect on the larger environment. This is the truth of our holographic nature.

By using our health as a catalyst, we create the conditions in each one of our hearts, minds and bodies that creates a better world. By appreciating the larger implications of bringing balance to these five areas of self-care, we understand that many of the same things that will heal the body, will also help heal the world.

1. Stress Reduction & Relaxation

Studies will tell you that 60-90% of doctor’s visits are indirectly or directly related to stress. So there is no doubt that stress impacts the body in negative ways. Stress reduction techniques have a couple of things in common, they bring relaxation to the body by eliciting the parasympathetic nervous system and they bring the attention into the present moment. So much of our stress is a product of the mind living in the past or in the future. When we can bring the mind into the present moment, we decrease the stress response. A calm mind leads to a calm body.

A by-product of creating this state is that it helps people to experience our oneness. It moves us from an intellectual ideal to the experience of unity. We live in a culture where stress is often equated with success, but when we can calm the mind and body, our wholeness becomes undeniable. Understanding our oneness is critical to our survival on this planet.

Through such things as meditation and mindfulness, we not only elicit the relaxation response in the body, but we set the conditions within ourselves to experience our connection to one another and the earth.

2. Diet Awareness

Diet awareness is not about going on a diet, but it is understanding and living according to your particular biochemical needs. Though, whether you need a plant-based diet or more protein based, you need to eat whole foods. Processed foods wreak havoc on the body, causing wide spread inflammation and toxicity.

Processed foods also are devastating to the environment. There are many reasons why I don’t eat fast food, but one of the most important to me is the effect that it has on the environment. Nothing has changed our food production and delivery methods more than this industry. We have seen the destruction of our rain forests, the rise in monocultures and the increased use of chemicals in our food as processed foods have become more popular. They are not only nutrient deficient, but create a huge burden on our bodies and our earth.

There is little life force transfer which serves to dampen our consciousness and widens our disconnect between ourselves and our food. Switching to a whole foods diet will not solve all the problems in our food production, but it is a great start in improving our health and the planet.

3. Creative Movement

Our bodies were designed for movement and they need to move every single day. Accumulating 150 minutes per week of moderate physical activity is all that is necessary to decrease your risk factors for most chronic illnesses. Next to our diet and stress reduction there is nothing that affects as many dimensions of wellness than physical activity.

Get out in nature and feel your connection to earth. Get in touch with the seasons and flow of the natural world. We have moved away from the understanding that we are not part of nature- we are nature. Nature has an amazing way of promoting gratitude, balance and harmony. Be mindful in your movement and find your flow. Your body is the vessel that allows your spirit the opportunity for expression. Daily movement calms the body, balances the emotions and invites the spirit to take the driver’s seat. 

4. Right Thinking

Right thinking is the understanding and conscious awareness of our thoughts. It is understanding how our body and mind work together to create our environment. Every thought we have has an emotional and a chemical component. When we have the same thought, for example a negative self-deprecating one, it creates the same emotional response, the same chemical communication that often leads to the same behaviors.

Now what happens when we change the thought? We create new neural networks in the brain, new emotional responses, new chemical communication and perhaps a new action. The more conscious we become with ourselves, the more conscious we become in the world.

So much of the larger societal issues we face happen because there are too many unconscious participators. We have lost our sense of accountability and many are complacent. This leads to a very reactionary model, where we create Band-Aid solutions to problems, without ever questioning the systems themselves. Conscious people create a conscious world.

5. Energetic Awareness

Our bodies need balance mentally, emotionally, physically and energetically. We are energetic beings, living in a vast field of energy. There is no better way to grasp our oneness than to understand the field of consciousness. If we begin to see how consciousness shapes our world than we learn how it also shapes our health and healing potential. Our thoughts, feelings, and actions are all energy.

We cannot force people to see things our way, but we can change our energy around it.

If we change our energy, we can change the action. Just in the way a happy co-worker can spread her enthusiasm, a cranky co-worker can bring everybody down. We can do this globally as well. If you begin to see the world through an energetic lens, we can shift the way we engage in the world energetically. Through this we can change the world, not through force, but through love and connection.

Everything in our universe is interrelated. When we engage in our world with a calm mind and calm body, we begin to see things differently. We can grasp the world in a more balanced way, make choices in alignment with our values and find more purpose and joy in our daily lives. As multi-sensory, aware beings we have a vast untapped potential.

It starts with each one of us. Many of the self-care techniques not only create a calm stable physiology in the body, but they also create a vessel from which expanded consciousness can thrive. This potential is a powerful creative force that can be used for healing the earth and ourselves. It is all connected. Let’s heal the world one body at a time.

About the Author

Angela Levesque is writer, healer and health educator. She is the author of Healing Environment: The Conscious Creation of Health. Angela also hosts On Health & Healing and House of Iris Radio on a2zen.fm. Angela works with clients doing intuitive lifestyle coaching, and teaches several classes on self-care, meditation & weight loss. Visit www.hestiahealth.com for more information. Find her on https://twitter.com/HestiaHealth and http://www.facebook.com/hestiahealth.

Martin Luther King Jr., Jan. 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968

from MindFreedom International, MLK on the International Association for the Advancement of the Creative Maladjustment (IAACM)

In one of his earliest references to creative maladjustment, MLK addressed the 27 June 1956 annual convention of the NAACP in San Francisco to describe the historic victory of the ”Montgomery Story” bus boycott in 1955.

Excerpt:

“There are certain words in the technical vocabulary of every academic discipline that tend after a while to become stereotype and cliches, there is a word in modern psychology which is now probably more familiar than any other words in psychology. It is the word the maladjusted; it is the ringing cry of the new child, psychology — maladjusted.

And as a minister seeing and counseling with people very day concerning their problems and their maladjustment’s, I’m certainly concerned with those who are maladjusted, concerned to see everybody as adjusted as possible.

But I want to leave this evening saying to you that there are some things in our social system that I’m proud to be maladjusted to, and I call upon you to be maladjusted to. I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of lynch mobs; I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and discrimination; I never intend to become adjusted to the tragic inequalities of the economic system which will take necessity from the masses to give luxury to the classes; I never intend to become adjusted to the insanity’s of militarism, the self-defeating method of physical violence.

There are some things that I never intend to become adjusted to, and I call upon you to continue to be maladjusted. History still has a choice place for the maladjusted. There is still a call for individuals to be maladjusted. The salvation of our world lies in the hands of the maladjusted.

I call upon you to be maladjusted, maladjusted as the prophet Amos who in the midst of the tragic inequalities of injustice in his day cried out in words that echoes across the generations: ”Let judgment run down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

As maladjusted as Lincoln who confronted a nation divided against itself and had the vision to see that the nation could not exist half free, and half slave.

Maladjusted as the — hundreds and thousands — of Negroes, North and South who are determined now to stand up for freedom, willing to face possible violence and possible death, who are willing to stand up and sacrifice and struggle until segregation is a dead reality and until integration is a fact.

Maladjusted as Jefferson who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery cried out in words of cosmic proportions: ”All men are created equal; they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

I call upon you to follow this maladjustment. It is through such a maladjustment that we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man to the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom, equality and justice.”

Meaningful Minutes: Reinventing the Clinical Visit

By TEDMED, Jan. 13, 2014

Fifteen minutes. That’s about how long the typical patient visit to a primary physician lasts. The result is all too often a frustrated patient who leaves without attentive care or follow-up, and a burned-out doctor who wishes he or she could do more to guide patients towards health.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation – sponsor of the Great Challenges Program – convened a discussion called “Flip the Clinic.”  It’s based on the growing movement to overhaul how class time is spent in schools, switching from time spent passively listening, to actively engaging in issues or problem-solving. Can we similarly overhaul the doctor-patient interaction?  What would have to change – patient communications; payment models? Kick off the conversation today by tweeting your questions and comments to #GreatChallenges and we’ll discuss them on air.

Join here:   Great Challenges, TEDMED

How are you willing to suffer?

By Mark Manson, Entrepreneur, author and world traveler

November 22, 2013  Huff Post, Healthy Living

Everybody wants what feels good. Everyone wants to live a care-free, happy and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when you walk into the room. Everybody wants that — it’s easy to want that.

If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so ubiquitous that it doesn’t even mean anything. Everyone wants that. So what’s the point?

What’s more interesting to me is what pain do you want? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives end up.

Everybody wants to have an amazing job and financial independence — but not everyone is willing to suffer through 60-hour work weeks, long commutes, obnoxious paperwork, to navigate arbitrary corporate hierarchies and the blasé confines of an infinite cubicle hell. People want to be rich without the risk, with the delayed gratification necessary to accumulate wealth.

Everybody wants to have great sex and an awesome relationship — but not everyone is willing to go through the tough communication, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings and the emotional psychodrama to get there. And so they settle. They settle and wonder “What if?” for years and years and until the question morphs from “What if?” into “What for?” And when the lawyers go home and the alimony check is in the mail they say, “What was it all for?” If not for their lowered standards and expectations for themselves 20 years prior, then what for?

Because happiness requires struggle. You can only avoid pain for so long before it comes roaring back to life.  At the core of all human behavior, the good feelings we all want are more or less the same. Therefore what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire but by what bad feelings we’re willing to sustain.

“Nothing good in life comes easy,” we’ve been told that a hundred times before. The good things in life we accomplish are defined by where we enjoy the suffering, where we enjoy the struggle.

People want an amazing physique. But you don’t end up with one unless you legitimately love the pain and physical stress that comes with living inside a gym for hour upon hour, unless you love calculating and calibrating the food you eat, planning your life out in tiny plate-sized portions.

People want to start their own business or become financially independent. But you don’t end up a successful entrepreneur unless you find a way to love the risk, the uncertainty, the repeated failures, and working insane hours on something you have no idea whether will be successful or not. Some people are wired for that sort of pain, and those are the ones who succeed.

People want a boyfriend or girlfriend. But you don’t end up attracting amazing people without loving the emotional turbulence that comes with weathering rejections, building the sexual tension that never gets released, and staring blankly at a phone that never rings. It’s part of the game of love. You can’t win if you don’t play.

What determines your success is “What pain do you want to sustain?”

I wrote in an article last week that I’ve always loved the idea of being a surfer, yet I’ve never made consistent effort to surf regularly. Truth is: I don’t enjoy the pain that comes with paddling until my arms go numb and having water shot up my nose repeatedly. It’s not for me. The cost outweighs the benefit. And that’s fine.

On the other hand, I am willing to live out of a suitcase for months on end, to stammer around in a foreign language for hours with people who speak no English to try and buy a cell phone, to get lost in new cities over and over and over again. Because that’s the sort of pain and stress I enjoy sustaining. That’s where my passion lies, my not just in the pleasures, but in the stress and pain.

There’s a lot of self development advice out there that says, “You’ve just got to want it enough!”

That’s only partly true. Everybody wants something. And everybody wants something badly enough. They just aren’t being honest with themselves about what they actually want that bad.

If you want the benefits of something in life, you have to also want the costs. If you want the six pack, you have to want the sweat, the soreness, the early mornings, and the hunger pangs. If you want the yacht, you have to also want the late nights, the risky business moves, and the possibility of pissing off a person or ten.

If you find yourself wanting something month after month, year after year, yet nothing happens and you never come any closer to it, then maybe what you actually want is a fantasy, an idealization, an image and a false promise. Maybe you don’t actually want it at all.

So I ask you, “How are you willing to suffer?” Because you have to choose something. You can’t have a pain-free life. It can’t all be roses and unicorns. Choose how you are willing to suffer.

Because that’s the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have the same answer. The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain that you want to sustain?

Because that answer will actually get you somewhere. It’s the question that can change your life. It’s what makes me me and you you. It’s what defines us and separates us and ultimately brings us together.

So what’s it going to be?

 

Lao-Tzu’s Four Cardinal Virtues

from the Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu and transcribed by Wayne Dyer

According to the teachings of Lao-tzu, the four cardinal virtues represent the surest way to leave habits and excuses behind and reconnect to your original nature. The more your life is harmonized with the four virtues, the less you’re controlled by the uncompromising ego.

The First Cardinal Virtue: Reverence for All Life

The first cardinal virtue manifests in your daily life as unconditional love and respect for all beings in creation. This includes making a conscious effort to love and respect yourself, as well as to remove all judgments and criticisms.

The Second Cardinal Virtue: Natural Sincerity

This virtue manifests itself as honesty, simplicity, and faithfulness; and it’s summed up by the popular reminder to be true to yourself. Using an excuse to explain why your life isn’t working at the level you prefer isn’t being true to yourself—when you’re completely honest and sincere, excuses don’t even enter into the picture.

The Third Cardinal Virtue: Gentleness

This virtue personifies one of my favorite and most frequently employed maxims: “When you have the choice to be right or to be kind, always pick kind.”  This virtue manifests as kindness, consideration for others, and sensitivity to spiritual truth. Gentleness means accepting life and people as they are, rather than insisting that they be as you are. As you practice living this way, blame disappears and you enjoy a peaceful world.

The Fourth Cardinal Virtue: Supportiveness

This virtue manifests in your life as service to others without any expectation of reward. Once again, this is when you extend yourself in a spirit of giving, helping, or loving. As you consider the many excuses that have dominated your life, look carefully at them—you’ll see that they’re all focused on the ego: I can’t do this. I’m too busy or too scared. I’m unworthy. No one will help me. I’m too old. I’m too tired.  Now imagine shifting your attention off of yourself and asking the universal mind How may I serve? When you do so, the message you’re sending is: I’m not thinking about myself and what I can or can’t have. Your attention is on making someone else feel better.

The greatest joy comes from giving and serving, so replace your habit of focusing exclusively on yourself and what’s in it for you. When you make the shift to supporting others in your life, without expecting anything in return, you’ll think less about what you want and find comfort and joy in the act of giving and serving.