To stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path. Getting the knack... Continue Reading →
Hello Gianna- I was put on meds at 15 for "depression", and was on a laundry list of antidepressants and benzos, and later mood stabilizers and antipsychotics for the next 15 years. So from 15-30 I was medicated. I eventually decided to come off, and took myself through the over 1 year process of weaning off meds. Your blog and your resources were so amazingly helpful - thank you....
Peer Respite Centers -- Clearly a much more humane and healing way to go! And it saves money too. It does not fill the pockets of pharma and psychiatrists though. Wow, yes, a healing refuge for the psyche with NO psychiatrists. And they work...better than hospitals.
...amazing and wondrous universe...
The commonsense understanding that accompanied this wisdom was that nonpharmacological treatments for schizophrenia were useless. But recently a new grassroots movement has emerged. It argues that if patients learn to address their voices directly and appropriately, as if each voice had intention and agency, the voices will become less hostile and eventually go away. From the perspective of modern psychiatry, this assertion is radical, even dangerous. But it is being taken seriously by an increasing number of patients and psychiatrists.
Mindfulness meditation, the act of intentionally paying attention to the present moment while putting aside our snap judgments has been shown to alleviate stress, anxiety, depression, trauma and open us up to wonders, happy moments, and a sense of grace in life. But make no mistake, the longest of practitioners will tell you that they still experience the downturns, getting hooked by the inevitable frustrations of life, and anticipatory anxiety. So it’s not a cure, but it gives us something that a cure can’t....
Of course there is ruthlessness throughout history and you can't blame any one people for it: a peculiar thing about all our various mythologies - each of them horizon bound - is that love is reserved for the in-group and disdain, hatred, and brutality for the out-group. "So with this breaking of horizons as we... Continue Reading →
A recent study on antidepressants has shown that the drugs have some serious side effects: those taking certain prescriptions could lose their sex drive. It sounds like the whole nation's sexuality is under a threat as, according to the statistics, one in ten Americans takes antidepressants. And it's not only libido people are losing -... Continue Reading →
I was recently talking with a young man about his anxiety, which he experiences as extreme. When I asked him what the anxiety was about, he didn’t know. When I suggested that we become curious about it and explore what it might be about, he told me that it was so extreme, it must be “biochemical.” This meant to him that the anxiety could not be understood in a psychological way, but had to be dealt with as part of his “illness.”
I acknowledged to him that anxiety certainly involves biochemistry, but suggested that there are also experiences and interpretations of experience that trigger the biochemistry into action. For example, if he experienced someone pointing a firearm in his direction, he would likely experience an intense biochemical process within his body, but the experience would not be “just biochemical.”
If people are going to understand themselves and work through emotional problems, it is essential that they get curious about their experiences and reflect on what might be triggering them. Sometimes such curiosity or reflection results in getting valuable messages from those experiences, or at other times, it involves identifying a mistake that triggered the emotional experience, which then allows for resolution. To use the simple example of the threat perceived from the firearm, one might either take quick action to avoid being shot, or in another situation perhaps observe more carefully and notice a movie is being filmed and that the firearm being pointed is just a prop.
The government in Portugal has no plans to back down. Although the Netherlands is the European country most associated with liberal drug laws, it has already been ten years since Portugal became the first European nation to take the brave step of decriminalizing possession of all drugs within its borders—from marijuana to heroin, and everything in between. This controversial move went into effect in June of 2001, in response to the country's spiraling HIV/AIDS statistics. While many critics in the poor and largely conservative country attacked the sea change in drug policy, fearing it would lead to drug tourism while simultaneously worsening the country's already shockingly high rate of hard drug use, a report published in 2009 by the Cato Institute tells a different story. Glenn Greenwald, the attorney and author who conducted the research, told Time: "Judging by every metric, drug decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success. It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country.
