Everything that happens in our lives (and all our encounters with psychiatry) are SITUATIONAL. Always. There is no such thing as a clinical depression without a “situation.” That is a ludicrous and destructive fantasy. The same is true for anyone with any diagnosis. Schizophrenia, bipolar, anxiety, OCD. We all have stories and context. Diagnosis try to strip that away from us. The fact is EVERY single person with a diagnosis has an individual, unique story and context. Everything matters. Diagnosis (as currently most frequently used) are reductionistic lies that try to remove us from the fabric of our lives.
See: Story telling as means for transformative growth
Some different ways to consider some of the psych diagnosis:
- Rethinking bipolar disorder
- Depression and the Call to Adventure
- there is no such thing as a monolithic state called depression
- Rethinking Madness: Towards a Paradigm Shift in our Understanding and Treatment of Psychosis
- Madness as a reckoning of one’s own psyche. Yes.
- World mental health day: empowering ways to consider your experience
More related:
- On belief and believing…
- Holding on to beliefs limits our experience of life
- For the geeks among us: Belief and choice…
- Faith…does not mean the belief in assertions for which there is no evidence
- Beyond belief
- The danger of a single story
- “I wrote a new story for my nervous system” — neurosculpting, neuroplasticity
*it is potentially dangerous to come off medications without careful planning. Please be sure to be well educated before undertaking any sort of discontinuation of medications. If your MD agrees to help you do so, do not assume they know how to do it well even if they claim to have experience. They are generally not trained in discontinuation and may not know how to recognize withdrawal issues. A lot of withdrawal issues are misdiagnosed to be psychiatric problems. This is why it’s good to educate oneself and find a doctor who is willing to learn with you as your partner in care. Really all doctors should always be willing to do this as we are all individuals and need to be treated as such. See: Psychiatric drug withdrawal and protracted withdrawal syndrome round-up
For a multitude of ideas about how to create safe alternatives to psychiatric drugs visit the drop-down menus at the top of this page.
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I have followed your posts for for some time. I celebrate you for some time. I am a psychiatrist who for many years have been of a mind that medicine needs a new paradigm. The old “What is wrong?” distorts new findings and make pathology the primary conversation.
There is a need to shift to a “being, growing, thriving” model.
Diagnoses, big pharma, economic greed have dehumanized the healing professions. This may be a positive as it encourages other disciplines to collaborate about healing. See also