sharing some thoughts on topic that have been shared on social media in the last week…these are various musings posted in different places that have been strung together for this post:
Discovering Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine (the theory, not necessarily as practiced by folks who don’t get it DEEPLY) has allowed me to realize I was trying to reinvent the wheel. It’s all there already…it just all goes by different names and perspectives. I am beyond happy. These systems know what healing is truly about and that extends to just about all conditions. Anyway, I know this won’t mean anything to anyone unless one is resonant, like right now, because it sure as hell didn’t mean anything to me for far too long.
Healing is not always curing. People need to understand that. In the end these bodies die. So don’t misunderstand when I say they know how to heal everything. Healing is not the same as curing. What is nice about profound healing, however, is that transformation of body/mind and spirit is possible in ways that most western modern human beings aren’t even aware of.
Books for further understanding:
- Between Heaven and Earth: A Guide to Chinese Medicine
- The Web That Has No Weaver : Understanding Chinese Medicine
This is the one I’m working with that’s helping with pragmatic, in the moment help, with healing. It’s like an encyclopedia and I look particulars up and then am inspired to integrate the information into my process: Healing With Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition. Two posts in which I talk about my experience are here and here.
To be clear: I’ve been harmed by these sorts of practitioners too. Those who didn’t understand the nature of the psychiatric drug iatrogenic injury…or, more significantly, didn’t understand what Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine both are pointing too profoundly enough. Understanding the foundational aspects of being this human animal is what they achieve at their best…not everyone knows how to translate that to all particular individuals. So this isn’t a blanket suggestion to go out and see any Chinese or Ayurvedic practitioner. And I, in fact, am learning this theory to apply to my own life. It’s a process and doesn’t happen overnight. For me it’s involved a decade of carefully observing my healing process. Mindfulness is of utmost importance in this process. I simply consider it paying attention or the process of learning to observe that which is going on around us and in us.
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From this perspective it doesn’t matter how our bodies are out of balance and thus became very ill, the general theories works in any case…both Chinese and Ayurveda are totally holistic and we (the iatrogenically drug injured) do fit into the whole picture. As much as it feels like we’re beyond the fringe (because in some ways we are). Anyway, that’s why I can work with the information that both schools of thought supply…And Paul Pitchford the author of Healing With Whole Foods gets it because he can see that my body is simply grossly out of whack…from the drugs, yes…but that again, is secondary to it simply being grossly out of whack…and human bodies get out of whack on a foundational level in certain consistent ways (with lots of variables, of course, for the individual).
Balancing is balancing, healing is healing…you do what you can at any given moment during the healing process and move forward from there…
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everything is on a continuum and spectrum so believe it or not, our radical experience is too.
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one moment at a time…a day is far too long
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The stuff I’ve been reading in Healing with Whole Foods ties together almost a decade of what I’ve been observing in my body…it gives me a brand new vocabulary as well which is wonderful and it offers suggestions for continued and deeper healing that I can actually benefit from…because I’m already deep in a similar process of understanding and healing. No one has been able to give me effective or safe suggestions since the beginning of this. So that’s new and really wonderful.
What I’m learning is how to utilize these theories to heal myself…I still don’t expect anyone else to do the job at this point, though it’s always nice when we can find folks who can understand and help us in deeply meaningful ways and at this point that happens far more often than it used to because the more I understand the easier it is to discern who can truly be helpful and avoid those who would be harmful.
By the way, I’ve stopped thinking in terms of mast cell dysregulation and histamine intolerance. The foundational issues go deeper. I actually mention that in the previous post I wrote about this book … it’s been liberating and led me to bigger healing to do that. Certainly it’s not a necessary departure but I found that hanging out with a diagnosis for which people don’t expect recovery is not helpful to me. That said, at one time the histamine framework was a critically important part of my undertstanding and healing journey.
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When we are healing from long-term chronic serious illnesses, including protracted psychiatric drug withdrawal syndromes, some misery is to be expected. It has become clear to me that accepting this reality as much as possible rather than fighting it is the preferable way to move through what is undeniably and unavoidably a very difficult process much of the time. Hence practicing surrender also becomes very helpful.
Video: 6 yrs psych drug free: How I made it through the darkest times of protracted withdrawal syndrome
For a multitude of ideas about how to create a life filled with safe alternatives to psychiatric drugs visit the drop-down menus at the top of this page.
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