Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that you’re sneaky, all the ways that you hide out, all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, criticize people, all your weird little ways. You can know all of that with some sense of humor and kindness. By knowing yourself, you’re coming to know humanness altogether. We are all up against these things. We are all in this together.
I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves. - Harriet Tubman
These folks in Finland after decades on the drugs (like myself) attempted to get off the drugs and found they couldn't...I imagine that as soon as they started having anything resembling the kind of physical disability and acute PTSD-like issues I have they were put back on meds...no institution would be in a position to care for a house full of people in my condition.
This was written as a result of a conversation that Daniel Mackler and I had. He revealed that the psychiatric hospital he visited when making his last film, built in the 1950s was mostly empty. They don't need the beds because their success rate is so high! -- I started asking particulars about this issue given that in the United States all we hear about is how there are never enough psychiatric beds in hospitals. The fact is if we were healing people like the Finnish people are, we might end up with mostly empty hospitals too. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
The Red Book "The Years, of Which I have Spoken To You, --when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is derived from this. It began at that time, and later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the... Continue Reading →
Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight. ~ Joan Chittister
"It's about people, and... people. Giving love to people", Therése says in the film about the Family Care Foundation. And it is what the film not only is about, but what it actually does, fearlessly and uncompromisingly with great respect and love allowing people to be who they are. I've watched Healing Homes four times now, each time discovering new, fascinating details. It's a film I'll watch again and again.
This was the promising headline of the cover story from the APA Monitor's October 2010 issue: “Does Marriage Make Us Happy?” The APA Monitor, a monthly publication specifically for mental health professionals, is more popular magazine than scholarly journal. It presents the latest APA-endorsed psychological “research” to practitioners, aiming to improve their service delivery, making it... Continue Reading →
Lovely video and music both: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GEaA6jM3jk
An uplifting talk about pessimism: http://vimeo.com/10601416 In the constant search for happiness, philosopher Alain de Botton believes that we should all learn to be a bit more pessimistic. In this secular sermon, Alain challenges the great bourgeois promise that everyone can find happiness in love and work and suggests that we take on the joys... Continue Reading →
This post is from the website of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry. Once you've read this there is a link at the end where you can go and support this by adding your name to a list of supporters. Click here to go straight to sign your support. Position Paper... Continue Reading →
