Trauma Survivor

Description at YouTube:

"Elemental Ireland
Those termed "psychiatric patients" are in fact trauma survivors. Many who find themselves caught in the net of bio-psychiatry are responding to the abnormal circumstances of a traumatic childhood; the hated child, the abandoned child, the neglected child, the exploited child, the defeated child and the silenced child, to name a few.

Exploring 'The Roots of Violence' by Alice Miller. This video contains quotes by Alice Miller and by Elemental Ireland.

'For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable toll on society - a fact that we are still forbidden to recognise (a fact that is commonly denied). This knowledge concerns every single one of us and - if disseminated widely enough - should lead to fundamental changes in society; above all, to a halt in the blind escalation of violence'. Alice Miller

Having recently discovered Alice Miller, as a parent I found her work a welcome challenge. She has made me think deeply both about the way I parent and society's attitudes to children. It is a matter of urgency for me to heal my own wounded inner-child, so I can parent my children in the best possible way. She has tapped into great truths that I knew deep down but was afraid to voice to myself and in public. A good website exploring Alice Miller's work is Daniel Mackler's iraresoul. Daniel has made an excellent film called 'Take These Broken Wings' about recovery from (so-called) schizophrenia without medication.

Many trauma survivors are terrified and find it difficult to trust. They struggle with repressed rage and anger. Many are further punished for being trauma survivors by coercion and forced 'treatment'. They are further battered and broken by bio-psychiatry.

In most cases, the trauma survivor is silenced three times; firstly by their families, then by society and then by bio-psychiatry.

Wouldn't this make you angry?"

Some time ago, I lent Derrick Jensen's A Language Older Than Words to a friend. Earlier this week, I got it back: "I couldn't read past the first pages. Too painful to read about all this violence and abuse." Yeah. It certainly is a lot less painful to close your eyes to reality. It just won't change anything.

Reply from Kevin Siers

Thanks everyone for your comments on my previous post. In the meantime, I got a reply from Kevin Siers, where he writes, that his intention was not to scapegoat people in emotional distress, and that he didn't design the cartoon "with a professional's understanding of what mental illness is."

Well, that's the big problem here. That there a) is no true understanding of what "mental illness" is, and that b) the only "understanding" that the cartoon reflects, is the misunderstanding, promoted by the mh system, and distributed by the mainstream media - the Charlotte Observer, for instance. The problem is, that, while everybody is busy scapegoating the "mentally ill", they too are kept from becoming aware of the real terror: the terror of our society itself.

So, what we've got here, is Joe Public's ignorance and the consequential prejudice - that inevitably scapegoats, intended or not. How did Albert Camus put it: "The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding." Ignorance, unawareness, unconsciousness... What we've got here, is an excellent example of the evil our unconscious society continuously does, in the name of good.

Now, Kevin Siers also writes, that our letters to him "continue to be food for thought." I certainly do hope so! It truly is time, both for him and society in general, to wake up and face its own violence. Otherwise, we will never be able to prevent the terror from happening, no matter how restrictive gun laws.

Mind-altering drugs, brain damage, meditation and therapy

I came across the video I posted on Tuesday while I actually planned to post the one below. The short excerpt from a talk by Eckhart Tolle (the full talk is here - or well, it was; unfortunately it isn't anymore) seems to me both a good introduction to clarify some unfortunately very common misunderstandings in regard to psychiatric drugs and meditation and its potential to lead to enlightenment - as well as in regard to therapy and its potential to lead to full recovery - and at the same time it sums up the answer to the question whether or not it is possible to recover from emotional distress using drugs, psychiatric prescription drugs, or any other mind-altering drugs.

The concise answer, given in the Eckhart Tolle talk, is no, it is not possible to recover from emotional distress while under the influence of mind-altering drugs. Simply because these drugs prevent the individual, who is under their influence, from getting in touch with his/her true self, from becoming aware and conscious. All mind-altering drugs "work" by enhancing unconsciousness. They stand like an impenetrable wall between the individual and his/her true self.

Although any spiritual teacher knows this just as well as Loren Mosher, for instance, knew it, most mental health professionals, psychiatrists, psychologists or other, seem never to have heard about it. How else would it be possible, that, no matter what kind of emotional distress, the combination of psychotropic drugs and therapy, the combination of two treatment measures, whose aims are diametrically opposed to each other, is promoted as the best treatment option by the system? But, well, in contrast to spiritual teachings, that not only acknowledge the possibility of full recovery, or enlightenment, with a spiritual term, but aim at exactly this full recovery or enlightenment with everything they teach, the mental health system often still denies full recovery to be possible at all.

The consequence of this denial of the possibility to achieve a higher level of awareness, consciousness, which in its turn is a consequence of psychiatry's concept of chronic, biological brain diseases, is that the mental health system aims at the very opposite of what a spiritual teacher would aim at, thus trying to reduce the individual in crisis' increased and increasing (or awakening) awareness, consciousness by all means. Not only "back to normal", but, even more sadly, most often to a level far below "normal", and just as often permanently, through "maintenance medication" with highly toxic chemicals, that not only reduce the brain's capacity while the individual is taking the drugs, but that also cause brain damage, thus reducing the brain's capacity permanently and to an increasing extent the longer the drugs are taken.

So, if you are awakening, if you are going through a crisis that is, beware of mind-altering substances, especially of dirty drugs such as all psychiatric drugs, whose brain damaging potential is somewhat greater than that of pure, natural substances (such as the "leaf").

Here is the video by Jane, who gives an answer more detailed and outspokenly related to emotional distress (so-called "mental illness") than Eckhart Tolle does:

"Meditation, spirituality and drug effects"



Related posts at Jane's blog:

"Drugs and meditation"

"Meditation videos, you asked, I delivered"

"Geodon lies"

Related video by Jane:

"Antipsychotics cause brain damage"

"Schizophrenia" - the end of the myths about a sick society?

Groundbreaking news: Once again, science is just about to have found the cause of "schizophrenia". Yesterday, July 30th 2008, the Danish news media tv2 nyhederne could tell that a European group of scientists had found a mutation in certain chromosomes to be very likely to increase the risk for an individual with these mutations to develop "schizophrenia".

The article "Tættere på skizofreniens årsag" (Closer to the causation of schizophrenia) quotes the Danish psychiatrist and researcher Thomas Werge:

"Schizophrenia has been surrounded by many myths, for instance that it was a reaction to a sick society. For 20 - 30 years now we've known, that schizophrenia with great probability is conditioned by genes. But the myths stayed alive. Thus it is very gratifying, that we now finally have documented concrete changes in our gene-pool, that imply a very strong risk for an individual to develop schizophrenia." (my italics)

And why would this be gratifying? Of course, because there's nothing more disastrous for a society, that both regards itself to be infallible, and also wishes to be regarded from the outside as being the best of all imaginable societies, than that the infallibility becomes questioned. For instance by some of the members of this society reacting with "schizophrenia" to the alleged infallibility.

The article further states, that if the new findings prove to hold, this could create a basis for easier diagnosis, better "treatment" and even "preventive treatment for those, who are at high risk to develop the illness".

"Preventive treatment"? I have a hunch, that we're here talking about taking one more step towards a "brave new world".

Yah, we've heard and read it many times before, throughout the past 20 - 30 years, that, hurray! now science has found something. Last time it was about "schizophrenic" mice, just as an example. And, by the way, what happened to those??... Last in the article, Thomas Werge thus hurries to backtrack: "Now we know, that some concrete mutations imply an increased risk for schizophrenia, but this isn't to say, that it can explain all cases of schizophrenia, because it doesn't."

I feel like asking: Well, what of it? Has science found the cause, or hasn't it?

But there's another, quite different aspect to the matter, I will have a closer look at in my next post.

Who's Marian?

This post has moved to a page of its own.