"Fear is contagious. You can catch it. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to say that they're scared for the fear to become real. Mo was terrified, and now Nick was too." ― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book -- This is true fear is contagious. It's something worth deeply contemplating. We need not fear, however, because one can also free oneself by recognizing what has happened. Then the contagion comes to an end. Observation is a form of illumination. Fear is a shadow energy and it cannot survive illumination. In other words Franklin D. Roosevelt was right. There is nothing to fear but fear itself. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
The wounds we carry
By Elaine Mansfield -- “They’re all wounded,” I thought as I watched people in the grocery store or on the street, “but I can’t see their scars and they can’t see mine.” … I wished them happiness because I knew their life hurt as mine did, even if we were the lucky ones who had food to eat, a place to sleep, and medical treatment. ... [click on title for the rest of the post]
Everyone is mentally ill
I think that instead of denying mental illness at the individual level (for some good reasons like lack of lab work indicating any sort of markers of any actual disease) it's time to recognize that everyone is mentally ill...and some of those most impacted are psychiatrists and other officials of the state who harm those of us who are more conscious...not less. Our society and world is sick...the individuals who are most sensitive are canaries in the coal mine. We all need help and we all need healing. Everyone on the planet needs to come to consciousness should we wish to save our species as well as a lot of others too. "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti ... [click on title for the rest of the post]
The Still Small Voice is Speaking. Are we sane enough to listen?
By Georgi Y. Johnson, About a decade ago, two psychiatrists and a team of student psychiatrists asked me if I hear voices in my head. “Why, don’t you?” I answered. They looked grandiosely disapproving and all simultaneously ticked something in their notepads. Oh dear. …
Vagus Nerve Hacks: Calm Your Anxiety Naturally
Vagus Nerve Hacks: Calm Your Anxiety Naturally. ~~ I was tickled to get a list of various self-hacks on how to stimulate the vagus nerve. Once the vagus nerve is stimulated we calm down! It's like magic. The vagus nerve is implicated in all sorts of stress.
Attend and Befriend – Healing the Fear Body
I just posted something like this the other day. Tara Brach is always so good it made sense to post yet another on the same theme. Remember fear and anxiety are simply clinical terms for manifestations of fear. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
Befriending fear and anxiety
The practice of being with all that arises within. Fear here can be translated to "anxiety," which is the clinical term for fear which everyone at one time or another experiences with or without a diagnosis of some sort of anxiety "disorder." Psychiatry pathologizes much of the normal human experience and fear and/or anxiety often referred to in Buddhism as such. Normal. There are techniques to learn how to be with these normal feelings, whether they're very intense or not. -- And boy does protracted psych drug withdrawal open the floodgates of fear and terror and trauma, like nothing else. It’s not like anything natural that occurs before drug damage as those of us gravely impacted discover. But even with this sort of iatrogenic damage I’ve found that the best solution is to treat it like all the rest. I’ve decided that in the end, it’s the same thing as though on steroids. … [click on title to read and view more]
How antidepressants (and benzos) ruined my life: Luke Montagu
The UK Times Magazine today publishes a long article describing CEP founder Luke Montagu’s terrible experience with antidepressants and sleeping pills: "When he was first prescribed these drugs at 19, Montagu was not depressed and had never been diagnosed with depression. He was a student at New York University, and had recently undergone a general anaesthetic for a sinus operation that left him with headaches and feeling, as he puts it, “not myself”. Without carrying out any tests, a British GP announced that he had a “chemical imbalance of the limbic system” and prescribed Prozac. Montagu, “impressionable and in awe of doctors”, swallowed them unquestioningly … [click on title to read and view more]
One Nation, Under Sedation
The title from the ProPublica article from the other day was too good to not highlight and share. What does it mean that we are, indeed, a nation under sedation? I think it means we are not awake to what is going on around us in far too many ways and that we'd better take heed. I'm just sharing a link to the article and then cutting and pasting my benzo page below it. The benzodiazepine information page takes a critical look at the prescribing of benzodiazepines and offers suggestions about how one might free themselves if one already takes and is perhaps addicted to the drugs. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
Welcome the fear, the anxiety and thus transform it
Anxiety is basically a clinical term for fear which everyone at one time or another experiences with or without a diagnosis of some sort of anxiety “disorder.” Psychiatry pathologizes much of the normal human experience and in opposing fashion fear and/or anxiety is often referred to in Buddhism and other alternative philosophies as normal. A normal form of human suffering. … [click on title for the rest of the post]

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