The isolation of "hegemony"

Hello @Fredd50

I was really glad that you posted your beliefs.

I tend to agree with them.

I was more direct about saying those things when I first came on the forum, but have shifted to relate to the posters who are here rather than just be on my soapbox.

I am always glad to see someone on a similar soapbox.

I have a few antipsychiatry texts in my shelves, but also other therapuetic models. I find its best to stick with middle ground ideas rather than get up people's noses, but then I have been reasonably lucky and not had too many restraint moments. Just one when I was 17. I have had to see my loved ones suffer in the system a great deal.

Yes there are some good people and some positive changes over the years, but there is a lot of s%^&t.

I deliberately tried to shift converstaion on the forum to more full discussions, than simply buying into the diagnosis model with kneejerk pharmacological responses and minimal therapuetic input.

Take Care

Sane Australia does try to be careful regarding legal issues and respecting sources of donation.

It's an interesting one, isn't it.

My psychologist experience was a few things:

• I was only able to organise myself enough to attend when I was feeling a bit better, so I wasn't a complete mess. Perhaps I didn't come across as being right on the edge.
• They talked to me for a bit, gave me some handouts, which pretty much repeated what I could find on google.
• It was basically useless.

However, I also accept that a lot of people do get help from these therapists. Maybe just having someone to talk to is a lot for many people.

I have been listening to audiobooks about Zen for the last little while. This has helped me the most out of anything. Not that it's fixed things, but it reminds me from time to time to break out of the circular thought patterns I'm stuck in most of the time.

Hi @Appleblossom

Sorry about the late reply.

I can see the concern over soapboxes but that wasn't where I was coming from with this post.

I had recently gone (after 18 months of life-changing therapy with amazing people) to get support in an interstate ward, expecting the same understanding and open-minded human experience of getting to unwind and understand my real experience and instead got... horror, and came out much, much more damaged than I went in.

So it wasn't a soapbox for me, in a political sense, it was really just a post I had to make to feel like I was in a safe space again. Thankx heaps for your reply.

If you have titles for those alternative models, I'd love to learn them. The whole idea is new to me - I was very schooled in a purely diagnosis-monitor-thoughts-identify-with-illness way for a long time and am slowly trying to unwind that and find/write my real story. Every new way of looking at things feels like manna from heaven 🙂

Hi @IamNotMyMind,

Lol, yes, I have had many a psychologist just like that 😉

I don't find them helpful either - I think they call it "manualised treatment".

I actually work with a psychiatrist who does trauma work now - it's a lot like just having someone to talk to but there's no hand outs, no prescribed, pat answers on anything, just someone that I can trust and talk with who makes me feel safe and helps me make sense and meaning out of my experiences - or sometimes we learn from each other. But nothing gets reinterpreted through a diagnosis lens, rather a personal meaning and understanding of what was going on slowly gets developed. It's been pretty incredible. I get to see her twice a week, usually for 1.5-2 hours per time. She's really warm too, its not a cold and clinical situation and that makes a huge difference. She doesn't pretend to be an expert and is just a really lovely person to explore the meaning and sense of life with. I also get a mentor for day to day life and a psychologist to explore different things with, that I get to choose myself. I've been very blessed these past months.

I've found lots of different meditations helpful too - like open heart, buddhist tonglen, Bonn buddhist, really helpful too but mostly for the groups/people that I gelled and connected with (the best one was a mixed open heart/peer support course with my local consumer rep. group - incredible people and run 100% by people with lived experience for people with lived experience all making sense of things together).

It's been a pretty weird time because a lot of the trauma and confusion I've been unwinding has actually come from 20 years of rebranding myself as a mental health patient (often under some pretty messed up violent forceful circumstances). I got taught to see everything as a symptom and watch every thought, scanning for "early warning signs" or carefully pushing away and sequestering any "unwanted" emotions, thoughts or experiences, but never helped or encouraged to make any personal sense or meaning of my experience or see it as a normal reaction to trauma - sometimes expressed through metaphor or re-experiencing past events. It was all just "signs of some underlying brain disease". Which never felt right to me, but I was terrified to speak up about it because it got punished with some pretty messed up stuff if I ever questioned that way of looking at things.

I recently went (foolishly) to ask for support at an interstate ward, after a lot of stuff came up when I went to visit family, and went through it all again, so I was pretty terrifed and mortified when I wrote that post. It's been good to come home.

@IamNotMyMind "Zen and the art of motor cycle maintenance" was my introduction to Buddhism. I found various mediation styles over the years helpful.

I am one who has needed the face to face with therapists over 30 years, otherwise I would not have survived. It was much more the WORK I PUT IN that mattered, rather than their input. Just having a human being to talk with. I also did my own study so knew what they were supposed to be trying to do with me. With such turbulent life experiences I needed it steadily throughout my life.

Good to see you around the forum.

@Fredd50 I am glad that you have experienced therapy in a positive light. It sounds like you already have great people lined up. Sometimes the strategy does not matter so much as the way it is delivered.

But

Schema Therapy and Narrative Therapy

are 2 I would like to explore more.

I have witnessed a lot of mismanagement in hospitals with both my family and lots of the various patients that were around when I visited over the years (since 1970). I will maintain an alert presence whenever I sense a situation is brewing. Unfortunately the training style in some sectors seem to lean towards heavy escalation, control and restraint rather than therapy. Definitely there should be changes in the system.

Hope things settle a bit for you personally.

@Appleblossom Thanks very much for your lovely and heartwarming posts.

Different wards are different - there's a unique culture in each to some degree. But there are common elements to all of them. There really is only so much that can be done by community visitors, etc. I've been involved in consumer rep/systemic advocacy on and off over the years - the culture is very hard to shift. A lot of the time it's not just the seclusion and restraint that's the problem but also the forcing of the medical model itself, and the MHA's and the involuntary treatment culture - shifting them is unfortunately as much (or more) about political strategy than supportive practice unfortuntately although the latter is incredibly important as there needs to be something to replace the current system with that isn't one size fits all and helps everyone better without the force and torment - tradition and belief systems in the industry can be hard to shift, even in the face of overwhelming evidence unfortunately, which is kind of cheeky-ironic but that's more shop talk than supportive forum talk I suppose ;-).

I've tried schema therapy - it was a piece of my puzzle but again something I ultimately rejected as it was too manualised and so it just couldn't really get to the heart of my individual story. Like many things I think someone took a concept and tried to make a simplified framework out of it as was very fashionable at the time - starting with 'cognitive therapy' and all of it's offshoots I think people thought they could come up with simplified manuals for life. But I got a lot out of the ideas in it. I mostly learned it from a book a psychologist offered called 'reinventing your life' by jeffrey young. Like most self-help books it has a very cheesy cover and promises the moon ;-).

I agree with you about strategy, to some degree, but I think it's more about the person than anything else. I work with three really amazing people but it's really only with my psychiatrist that I get to go into the thick of things. She's 80 years old (literally!) and has led a very rich life. I can't see myself getting to learn the things I have with her with any of the other people I've worked with. There is a sense that she's actually there, it's not just me dealing with someone behind the therapeutic curtain, we talk as much about her life when it fits as mine when it fits the context so it really is like having a wise older person in the community helping me learn and grow and make sense of my life in my own way. It feels a lot more like 'coming of age' (albeit belatedly ;-)) than therapy. It's very human. I think that richness is often really hard to bring to a therapeutic relationship but also really important. But I do like your idea that it can be generated from the client side - i will try that with my other people and see if I can manage it - a good exercise 😉

@Fredd50 It sounds as if your pdoc is very special.

I think some gritty shop talk is appropriate. It had been a long time since anybody posted about the more challenging issues. I was more explaining why, than wanting supportive forum culture.

I was very needy and had to accept the people that came into my orbit. I had studied a bit, and I generated my own "homework", I was told I was a good patient, and felt I had a good pdoc when I was a young mother. I put him on a pedestal, but now, I feel that he did not do enough, and that he should have made more interventions, rather than just collecting the medicare session with back to back patients. It is only recently that I have had any sense of choice or doctor shopping. Or an idea of what a more comfortable life could have been like ....

Could not get any sleep ... never mind.

Feel free to post on the different threads and introduce yourself around. It is better to have a few more males on the forum. Gives more balance on the issues and in the culture.