"I’d much rather be with a raving loony who was directly confronting their bullshit than someone who spends all their energy repressing it. The cloaking thing always strikes a tinny note that would register as jarring and discordant to anyone able to “hear” it." -Jed McKenna .....
the minute someone tells me how I should feel, think or act is when they lose me.... we're all told how we should feel...if it's not explicit it's implicit...people feel wrong all the time solely because they don't fit into socially accepted norms about how they should feel...many are pathologized and drugged because they don't... Continue Reading →
When people are “mad,” they are often insisting that certain things are so, and frequently seem unwilling or incapable of appreciating or learning from other perspectives. Yet when the supposedly “sane” mental health system approaches those who are mad, it typically does the same thing ...
By Ron Unger, LCSW -- Unfortunately, the typical interaction between professionals and clients seen as psychotic in our current mental health system has characteristics which make a positive human relationship almost impossible. To start with, rather than starting from a place of equality, where two people negotiate to see each other and to define reality, the professional holds onto a position of assumed superiority and declares himself or herself as able to define both the other person and the overall nature of reality, without any need to reconcile that view with the viewpoint of the “psychotic” person. This makes sense within the standard paradigm, as once a person’s mental process is defined as “psychotic” it is understood to be determined by illness, and to be senseless, with nothing of any value to offer. Under such circumstances, true dialogue, in which the experience of the professional meets the full experience of the other, is impossible. … [click on title to read and view more]
THIS IS HAPPENING NOW...it's day 3...I've listened to a few of the interviews...they're all really good and this is truly an important and cutting edge event...you can still listen for free now and there is an option to buy the whole series. It’s so exciting to see the huge positive response as we bring together these cutting edge thought leaders for 3 days of informative and inspirational interviews covering a range of topics on spiritual emergency, consciousness, and de-stigmatizing mental illness. … [click on title to read and view more]
by Paris Williams -- Over the years of my explorations into psychosis and human evolution a very interesting irony became increasingly apparent. It is well-known that people who fall into those deeply transformative and chaotic states typically referred to as “psychosis” often feel, at different points throughout their journeys, that they have received a special calling ...
In the diverse array of terms now used - extreme states, madness, spiritual crisis, kundalini, psychosis, crazy, shamanic initiation - I see my own experience in all of them. To me, they’re all expressions of what I call Shades of Awakening. Each one with it’s own flavor, meaning and transformational path to recovery. -- After over a decade of soul searching, a new question emerged. How can I support others who are integrating to find their own truths, their own narratives and their own answers? (Be sure to visit the Shades of Awakening series page to learn about Dabney's free series of interviews with many folks who've moved through spiritual emergence (which often otherwise gets pathologized by psychiatry) and are now thriving.) … [click on title for the rest of the post]
By Ron Unger As we struggle to invent a humane approach to the extreme states that get called “psychosis” or “madness” or “schizophrenia,” it may be helpful to investigate some of the better approaches developed in the past. While these approaches are not without their flaws, they are often surprisingly insightful. (It can also of... Continue Reading →
by Ron Unger When people are seeing the world really different than we do, it’s often reassuring to think that there must be something wrong with them – because if they are completely wrong, or ill, then we don’t have to rethink our own sense of reality, we can instead be confident about that own understandings encompass all that we need to know. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
REPOST: last chance to enroll in this online course. The conference will closing down to new registrations December 31st at Midnight. CEU's are included and folks can use them for this year or next year. Thanks to the work of those who have recovered from extreme states of all sorts and also to those who have assisted them on their journeys, there now exists an ever growing resource of humane and humanizing strategies that can allow us to help folks who often have psych labels in ways that bring all of their uniqueness and personhood into the world – without stigma and without pathologizing. … [click on title to read and view more]
Everything Matters 
You must be logged in to post a comment.