Parallels With My Anti-Psychiatry Peers

I have come upon the anti-psychiatry movement late.  I've only just started reading some blogs about it.  There's a lot of outcry about the perils of being medicated, some of which I certainly sympathize with, but what I was really looking for was a list of alternatives to taking the medications.  I just found one large site with lots and lots of information on it, it's called Beyond Meds: Alternatives to Psychiatry.  I've only read a bit of it, but plan to return and continue my research.  I was fascinated to find that I have been going on a parallel course because some of the alternatives that are suggested are Mindfulness, Meditation, Yoga and viewing one's illness as actually a psycho-spiritual journey.  On one of the sites that I stopped at they even were pushing books by Adyashanti!  I also read an article by a woman who suffered from Bi-Polar disorder who came to embrace Tibetan Buddhism and mind training, while working in a peer-run support group and not taking the medications.

In terms of spiritual orientation these anti-psychiatry people appear to by "my" people.  I certainly do accept them as such because we have been to the same hard places.  And I am all for exploring alternatives to the medications.  If people don't explore, they will never find ways to develop better treatments to complex psychotic illnesses.  And without exploration, there's not even the possibility of discovering a cure.  It seems more and more likely that community outreach programs and peer run support groups will be the wave of the future.  God, I hope so.  I know I was meant to be a part of a mental health support group.  The great thing about support groups is that everyone is welcome from the acutely ill to those in partial recovery to those in full recovery.  There's so much we can learn from one another, but we have to get into each other's hearts and minds and learn how to be there for each other.

I want to believe that following a spiritual path of being Mindful and training the mind to study itself without judgment could help to treat acute psychosis.  I want to believe the same for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and peer run support groups and diet, nutrition and exercise programs, but I honestly don't know yet.  Maybe individualized combinations of treatments could really address the core symptoms enough to treat acute psychosis without medication or with medication at a very small dosage.  All I know is that people need to get organized and that's what the anti-psychiatry movement appears to be doing, working both in communities and online.  I know I need the help in my community;  medication and individual therapy have not been enough for me -- I need to meet peers face to face.  I've felt frustration about this for so long and disappointment in myself for not having the courage and stamina to start up a support group in my town.  I'm hoping this will change this year. I talk a good game about peer support because I got so much out of going to the Al-Anon group, but the group is just not appropriate from people with psychotic disorders.

And I do use the word "psychotic" and "disorders" as well as the word "schizophrenia" because I do see the phenomenon of psychosis as an expression of imbalance and illness, though I know it can be a means to personal growth; it can also lead to suicide.  As I wrote in my last post, it is the people in the thrall of acute psychosis who most concern me and that is why I still believe that medication should be an option at least for a period of time.  At the same time, I'm all for engaging individuals in various forms of treatment in addition to the medications.  Build a support network, and work on your own, too, while taking advantage of what the medications can do for you and then decide whether to continue with the medications or not.  The medications are imperfect; there's no doubt about that, but it's important to use as many options as you can, especially when you are suffering so much.

If I find that there are viable alternatives to medications, ones that really work to treat psychosis, I think I might consider reducing my medications, mainly because I'm on high doses and have been for 10 years and I don't know if that's good for me or not.  I'm still afraid of falling back into acute illness.  Most of my days have challenges in them.  I am not recovered, but I will continue to wave the flag of RECOVERY for any newcomers.  Recovery, in all its forms and gradations, is possible.  That's very important to realize.  No matter how bad it gets, and it can get pretty bad, you will not be stuck in a hellish place indefinitely, but you do need to motivate yourself to reach out to others, to share your story and to do what you need to do in order to take care of yourself.

The most important point I can make here is that we, who have suffered from psychotic disorders, are all peers regardless of whether we take the medications or try an alternative route.  We need to stand united or at least make bridges to meet each other across the sometimes great divide.  I deeply appreciate people on both sides, but really, we are the same with similar stuggles and successes.  Today I read a blog entry by Charles on his blog Mental Health Recovery and in it he writes about how you have to let go of blaming in order to recover and to "be positive in the face of negativity".  I think we've got to work to understand each other better and learn to be extremely tolerant of just those people who cause us to feel self-protective and defensive.  Check yourself out and see what you find.  I find the problem is usually within my own self and that I have a lot to learn from different people and points of view.

Reconsidering Adyashanti

At the suggestion of the Anonymous commentator on my last blog post, I downloaded Adyashanti's book "Falling Into Grace" and have been reading it; I'm almost halfway through it.  Adyashanti is a good, clear writer and I found myself drawn into considering his ideas about the nature of suffering and how to alleviate it.  One of the Tibetan mind training slogans is - "Regard all dharmas as dreams."  This essentially translates into regarding life as a dream.  Adyashanti writes about this as well.  Basically he is saying that because we attach so strongly to our thoughts, seeing them as solidly real and rather blindly following them, we misguide ourselves and often we suffer.  He asserts that thoughts are neither real nor the truth about our essential selves.

By holding firm to our thoughts and fueling those thoughts with feelings, we go through life ignoring that we are much more than our thoughts.  How can you sense that you are more than your thinking mind?  You sense it by sitting with your present moment experience and studying what happens when there are gaps in your thinking.  When I did this, I quickly discovered that without any words in my mind, while sitting still and looking and listening, I was still fully alive, actually more alive than when I was struggling with my thoughts.  I realized that this is the essence of mindfulness.

This silent, spacious place you find yourself in without thoughts is receptive yet energized and keenly, delicately aware.  It's a beautiful, peaceful, kind hearted place and though thoughts return to take us away from it, it is always present.  It doesn't ebb and flow, it just is, very present, very steady, very available.  For the most part I am caught in the common, human delusion that we are what we think, but even I know I can just exist in a peaceful way when I stop thinking and doing and rest in being whoever or whatever I am.  It's so simple: just stop.  Look around.  Breath.  This is Awareness with a capital A.  This is much larger than the small, tight circle of the thinking mind.  If we have the ability to see at all it's due to this spacious awareness and not due to thinking thoughts.  Thoughts are contained inside Awareness, and not the other way around.

It comes down to asking yourself who or what you are.  I've been asking myself this question.  When I ask myself what is really real my attention immediately turns to what is right in front of me, the space I'm in, what I can see and hear and feel and smell.  When I stop to think if my thoughts are real, I hesitate.  My thoughts are all over the place and because of this lack of steadiness they feel unreal.  But somehow, through all their shifting movements, I feel tied to them.  On a closer look, perhaps even chained to them like an active addict.  Adyashanti says they are not real and therefore not the truth about us.  I'm hoping that he's right; I know I suffer because of the things I think about and if they are not real then I can keep returning my focus to the larger Awareness and learn to re-train myself to experience life on a more elemental level.  We are, after all, animals and the animals we interact with can teach us a lot about living in the moment, fully aware.  I'm in love with my cats, even when they are hunting mice in the house.  If a cat can be wondrous to me, how much more myself and other humans?

So are thoughts bad?  They can be, especially when we continually over emphasize them and reinforce them with repetition.  Then they mislead us, cause us to stay stuck in the dream of life.  But once we realize that we're imbalanced, we can learn to step back and see the broader picture.  In stepping back, we detach and take away some of the emphasis on the thoughts that continue to arise, while returning some attention to the space and silence in the present moment.  What we consider our natural state is most likely an unnatural state and our natural state is one we tend to ignore.  We're too busy in what Adyashanti calls an egoic trance.  Too much of the time we have blinders on, like the kind you see on city horses to keep them focused ahead and not distracted, but our blinders keep us focused on distraction after distraction and not on what is really going on in and around us.

It's strange to me that I could listen to over 7 hours of Adyashanti talking on the audiobook called "Spontaneous Awakening" and not get a feel for his message, but after reading 90 pages of his book "Falling Into Grace", where his emphasis is on suffering and alleviating suffering, his message is starting to get to me and with no psychotic overtones.  Little by little I'm going to apply his ideas to my approach towards myself and my life just to see where it takes me.  First I'm going to finish reading the book and then I'm going to read it again and take notes.  And I'll listen again to Adyashanti's audiobook to see if I can hear him more truly.  His book is providing a foundation for me to do that.  If I can hear, I can learn.  As for Nirmala, I will learn from him too.

Just to let you know, I will be away visiting my parents in Florida for a week and won't be online very much, but I'm taking my Kindle with me and am excited about opening to what could almost be seen as an adventure.