Category: trauma

An inclusive approach to mental health: Not all in the brain

submitted to Beyond Meds by Oxford University Press - By Michelle Maiese -- For many years, the prevailing view among both cognitive scientists and philosophers has been that the brain is sufficient for cognition, and that once we discover its secrets, we will be able to unravel the mysteries of the mind. Recently however, a growing number of thinkers have begun to challenge this prevailing view that mentality is a purely neural phenomenon. They emphasize, instead, that we are conscious in and through our living bodies. Mentality is not something that happens passively within our brains, but something that we do through dynamic bodily engagement with our surroundings. This shift in perspective has incredibly important implications for the way we treat mental health –

That Awful Dread

dark forest living with suicidal feelings

By Georgi Y. Johnson - Dread is a fusion of anger and fear, in a cloud of threatening horror, that moves between and through people. In the social field, it is channeled through hidden agendas of entities that have lost connection with a deeper truth and purpose. - Firmly rooted in the belief of either-or, or kill or be killed, the agenda of dread is mostly occupied with possession: the possession of another human; the possession of things; the possession of truth; or the possession of status.

The aftermath: polypharmacology — protracted psychiatric drug withdrawal syndrome

This was first published on David Healy's site, RxIsk: Making Medicine's Safer for All of Us, about 4 years ago. I've never published it on this site and thought I'd do so now so that it will be part of the archives here as well. It's a memoir of sorts up to that point 4 years ago.

Healing via Mistakes: Mindful Awareness

lotus on water healing via mistakes

Messing up (again and again) is part of the healing process. Every time one realizes and processes a misstep is a victory in mindful awareness. (and yes, in this framework, we find that there really are no mistakes, but instead simply opportunities to become aware and thus grow and heal)

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Facing Life Unarmed

By MATTHEW PURINTON, LCSW -- When I was born, everyone was expecting me to have arms. My father was perched outside the delivery room in front of a circular window framed in 70s seafoam green, and his view was blocked as I was brought into the world. The doctor's mind raced: how am I going to tell this mother and father that their son has hands but not arms? ...

Have you been harmed by MDs and western medicine? It’s not uncommon

I have a long history of being gravely harmed by MDs and western medicine. It started in early childhood with multiple courses of unnecessary antibiotics which primed my immune system and gut for later auto-immune disease. Later, as a teenager, my pediatrician told my mother I could only have gotten crabs by sexual transmission. I was a virgin.

After Klonopin: Renée’s Healing

cover from Psychiatrized the book After Klonopin

update 2024: Renée now has a book out. Psychiatrized: Waking up after a decade of bad medicine.After Klonopin: Renée's Healing: It’s been thirty months since I took my last bit of Klonopin, a dangerously addictive medication that a doctor prescribed for me when I was suffered from insomnia. Thirty months since my world flipped upside down. As you’ll recall, back in August 2013, I began to experience extreme withdrawal symptoms after a 1-year controlled taper, despite the fact that my wean was (mostly) supervised by a medical professional. At that time, I suffered from thousands of side effects, too numerous to list here. Unable feed myself, I couldn’t watch television, speak on the telephone, get on the computer, read a book or listen to the radio. I lived in solitary confinement, too sick to leave the house. I suffered irrational fears and believed people were trying to kill me. And I endured a depression so crushing that I considered killing myself multiple times.

On being a compost pile

As I think about waste in my life, not just material waste like trash and plastic, but also psychological waste, I enter this thought stream to investigate if natural intelligence sustainable and efficient in the same way nature is? Is there such a thing as psychological waste or are we actually busy composting inside? ...

Happy New Year (and healing happens!)

Thanks to all my many readers all over the world for your ongoing support and for your commitment to becoming who you are meant to be in a world that makes it very difficult for us to do that. We all need each other to do that. That we might heal not just ourselves but our families, communities and our planet.

Trust your body: key to healing

Trust your body: learning to heal flower

"The important thing for you is to never give up and trust your body: your body knows what it needs at any moment. You need to develop a real connection with your body, to learn to listen to it and have a deep love and respect for it. Because it is your body that is doing the healing, not the diet or supplements or anything else!" ...

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Top 10 posts from Beyond Meds 2015 (and the top ten from all time too)

I continue to be pleased to know this blog is being used as the resource I’d hoped it would become.

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