Some weekend reading for you, with commentary too...the most trafficked posts of Beyond Meds for 2011... Top posts...lifted straight off my stats page:
Top posts for 2011 (see the stats and revisit what’s hot!)
Crazy: Saturday (not-so) mellow
wow! what a great song! just rocked out a bit....(I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind...)
Notes on trauma, PTSD and finally healing
Trauma is about broken connections. Connection is broken with the body/self, family, friends, community, nature, and spirit, perpetuating the downward spiral of traumatic dislocation. Healing trauma is about restoring these connections.
What is the single best thing we can do for our health?
Start with this and then slowly make other changes if and when you can...
On pain
Kahlil Gibran Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not... Continue Reading →
Changing Brain Chemistry, Changing Paradigms
We are beginning to emerge from a dark age when the dominant paradigm explained everything, from difficulty paying attention to emotional pain, as a medical disease necessitating pharmaceutical intervention. There is a certain comfort in this paradigm. If difficult emotions and behaviors are “diseases” then perhaps blame is not an issue. But what if we moved away from a culture of blame toward a culture of acceptance and non-judgmental problem-solving instead?
Membrane of Now: Acceptance and Healing
By Will Meecham -- Acceptance underlies most of my recovery from what was once diagnosed as bipolar disorder. As earlier posts have made clear, I no longer buy into the concept of ‘mental illness’ because the phrase refers to putative brain disorders that are viewed as irreversible. My recovery demonstrates that my formerly intense moodiness did not result from a structural or genetic neurologic condition, but rather from errors in relating to the chaotic vicissitudes of life. My instability resolved once I learned to accept my experience, no matter how painful.
Cat yoga
I meditate with my cat regularly as I shared in my tool box post yesterday: If you’re a cat lover, I found a nice way to meditate when in a lot of pain is to hold my cat to my chest and meditate to her purring and/or her breathing. It’s very soothing. The purring and... Continue Reading →
The Complexity of Stopping Psychiatric Drugs
I came across some comments that Stuart Shipko MD, a practicing psychiatrist, made on a forum and thought discussing what he's saying could be helpful. Below the excerpt from his piece, I too, discuss the complexity of stopping psychiatric drugs.
Tool box for Wellness During Psych Drug Withdrawal
This is a tool box, where there are many tools that help support wellness. It’s not an exhaustive list, but at this point it’s a very long post! It’s a good collection of what I use most frequently and often daily. We all come up with different combinations of things to weather the journey through chronic illness. Perhaps some of my tools will be helpful for you too. If this post is helpful please feel free to copy it and share it broadly.
Mindfully Taming the Anger Within
I like how she differentiates between anger and aggressiveness/hostility. Also in the article, but not in the excerpt below she talks about how anger can be a creative and important motivator. It's not a bad or wrong emotion. The only thing bad about anger is if it's expressed in a way that ends up being destructive rather than creative.