Over the last 40 years as a dissident therapist and activist, I’ve known many people who were so negatively impacted by their subjective experience of receiving and indefinitely enduring a psychiatric diagnosis that I’ve come to see such dehumanising labeling as the infliction of what amounts to a medical curse.
We live in troubled times. Prejudice, oppression, poverty, climate change, and nuclear war affect everyone simultaneously thanks to the internet and TV. We see more and yet are more fragmented and powerless. These factors are creating trauma for everyone. Most people are now in a state of dissociation in which their feelings and emotions are severed from their thoughts.
Those of us with lived experience of recovery from trauma through extreme emotional states labelled mental illness are offering a gift. We have learned that our recovery from trauma is helped by three simple phases: emotional connection, emotional empowerment and emotional revitalization. We call this process emotional CPR (eCPR). Read more
I learned that there’s a great divide
And some cross to the other side.
I was seven and a quarter
When they parted mum from daughter,
Separating the ‘sane’ from ‘mad’
Oblivious to love she had.
They came with their blue flashing light
And drugged her forcibly that night.
I learned that lesson. Read more
