Recover loudly. That’s a meme I took from elsewhere (the photo). I don’t actually much like the word recover. I started using the word TRANSFORM more often. It’s much more embracing of the mystery. While recovering suggest going back into something known, transforming actually incorporates both the movement back and the mystery of the present moment as we move into the mystery of reality. There is no future but this moment. We live here and watch in order to come to understand.
I wrote the below words for Facebook and then decided to make this post.
“that’s right. I also wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t been the voice of Beyond Meds…an early, now prototype, of all the relentless chatter out there. It’s weird because it brought so much chaos as well. And I’ve had many tell me the words I shared altered their lives for the better. My entire life is paradoxical and I also know without my incessant need to **speak it** I would not be alive. there are no therapists for many on the fringe…hence those who read end up giving as much as they recieve. thank you for those who’ve listened, heard and witnessed the journey. Starting when I did with the advent of the internet means I’ve already been largely forgotten and that too is weird. I am waiting around for act II now. Listening, seeing and waiting to see if there is actually anything left to say or do. Peace out, in surrender. Sister Monica”
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thank you so very much. Im delighted to see current updates on here. especially at my age and with these topics so prevelant today
One of the main ways I’ve been “recovering loudly” has actually been telling my story to anyone who will (or more commonly, won’t) listen, forwarding to people your articles, journalism from Mad in America, books and testimonies critical of the system that offer alternative perspectives and healing possibilities.
Of course in-person accounts of the depredations of Psychiatry Inc will cement your non-credible, unperson status with solid citizens. That used to upset and alienate me; now I don’t care. Better out than in; better to be loyal to the truth than a liar for the tribe.
A credentialed professional middle and upper middle class that have been educated and socialized from a young age to be “maturely” neutral, impartial, objective and scientific is a large part of the problem.
That funnels straight into a “just following orders” banality of evil, to use Hannah Arendt’s apposite phrase. When you amputate empathy and humane fellow feeling in the interests of “professionalism” then that is a direct route, eventually, to institutional malignancy: in a detached, clinical sense of course — so reasonable and evidence-based.
Because evil is occasionally hot, but usually cold. Very cold. Which is why glib, “high functioning” narcissists and psychopaths take up residence in community mental health so enthusiastically: easy, captive supply.
Explain these realities to most people and a tinfoil hat will materialise on your devalued head. People just don’t want an end of innocence, they want full membership in the tarnished theatrical trance.
It’s good to be aware. But if you’re a patient still locked into the system, that awareness can be very, very dangerous. I’ve aways been able to discern the predator behind the mask, the maggots beneath the cream, and they sense it: vampires know when they’ve been spotted. When you signal the slightest hint of autonomy and critical awareness, you become an existential threat, and they’ll fuck you over while covering their tracks.
Thank God my divorce from that dark world got finalized.
Anyway — Merry Christmas! Thank you for all the good work you’ve done, it’s meant a lot to me and many, many others.
I’m so glad I found you years ago, under another name. You helped me know I was not alone with the kind of injury I have. ‘Happy for you that it seems you healed from that kind of injury, although I have not. This post reminds me that perhaps it’s time that I tell more people my story. Love, ~ Linda
sending love to you dear Linda!