Alternatives to psychiatry
Illness is a monastery with its own rules, asceticism, silence, and inspiration. — Albert Camus
I have so often said that my plight was one of forced monasticism…one that bore much good fruit even if also painful. So that is the positive spin on all this. Dark nights of the soul do bear fruit. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
Anyway…this is someone that while I was here in NC was one of my closer friends…I hadn’t lived here long so these were not long-term or developed friendships and when I got sick EVERY SINGLE ONE OF these people fell away…and quickly….(but) Things do change. I’ve reconnected with a few of these friends now. I’ve also reconnected with my sister. Some of the relationships though are simply and clearly ruptured as well. I’ve learned that this is all okay. Moving forward with the relationships that have survived can be tricky and time is needed for healing with some of them too. Clarity does come. [click on title for the rest of the post]
YES
This was a song I loved as a younger woman, but I have to say I never heard it and really GOT it until a good decade later. She must have been way ahead of me. The lovely and profound lyrics are below the video.
Thank you.
I’m reposting the below post from about a year and a half ago and then following it with a collection of links to other posts from the Beyond Meds archives that look at that which gets labeled “bipolar disorder” from different perspective. That diagnosis did me nothing but harm and it tragically results in similar iatrogenic injury for far too many others. There are other ways to view whatever phenomena is getting labeled bipolar and likewise much safer ways of healing. Indeed within the psychiatric model people are told to expect to manage being ill until they die. Many of us have discovered this is simply not true. It’s possible to get well and it seems the psych drugs can seriously impede that process if used for long-term maintenance. Also, it’s clear that the collection of phenomena that is labeled bipolar varies from individual to individual and they have many different etiologies. Labeling them as if they are all the same monolithic thing only serves to muddy the waters and often serves to trap the individual in a toxic prison of confusion. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
My friend Leela Maria Middleton shared this with me and some of her other friends yesterday. I got permission to post her words along with the video. Not everyone has an uncomplicated father’s days. This is for everyone out there that deals with a difficult day today.
Years ago I showed a film to a group of men who were newly bereaved about how Tibetans once – maybe still – cared for their dying and their dead. When the film ended, the long silence was finally broken when one of the men said, “I feel like I come from nowhere.” And that seems to be what happens inside most of us when we see or hear of a people wholly at home where and how and who they are: we feel the shadowed hollow of our immigrant, refugee history, and our lack of ceremonial instinct and experience, or we try to fill it up by stealing something from those people who are miraculously still deeply, ancestrally, ceremonially alive. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
A timelapse ode to clouds and their atmospheric beauty. Sit back, relax and watch the sky move.
I don’t know Who — or what — put the question, I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone — or Something — and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
More and more people are developing serious food allergies and sensitivities, both children and adults. I know from my own experience how we can be disbelieved and harassed even as adults. I see it everywhere on the net and twitter and facebook too. People with food sensitivities being mocked. It’s hard for us adults, imagine how difficult it is for children. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
I think you have to follow the kharmic rule — that any action taken in anxiety, creates more anxiety. Any action taken in anger, spreads anger. Any action taken in violence, spreads violence. Any action taken in calm, spreads calm. Any action taken in equanimity, spreads equanimity. Any action taken gently, spreads gentility. To call […]
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Monica Cassani
Will Hall
