a tourist from the dream dimension
Yes, I’m a proud Werewolves fan! I made a video ad for their Kickstarter project! Go to the link and help them out, you’ll win a super good album with a bunch of other cool stuff!
So last saturday I had the opportunity to go to Philadelphia for Occupy The American Psychiatric Association. Not only did I reunite with my heroes like David Oaks, I also finally met in person with Megan, Jonah, and Sarah whom I worked with for the Mindful Occupation project. I met so many other inspiring people who believe in the same things as I do and fought for the same cause. It was that moment where I felt like a part of a larger something.
I will write more about this in the future, but for now I am sharing the video of my speech and its transcript:
Last September, I launched a website as a mindfreedom project. It was a project that was backed up by David Oaks and later on by Sascha from the Icarus Project. The website is called Life After Labels and it’s a submission-based blog where people can submit stories about their lives after labels, their lives after mental health diagnoses. How they struggled through them, how they found hope. Kind of like the mental health users’ version of It Gets Better.
So why did I do that?
Well, there are two reasons.
The first reason was that I wanted to help people find hope. People might be confused by the mysterious label given to them. With the DSM-5 coming out next year, which has a lower threshold and things like prodromal schizophrenia, people who will be given mental health diagnosis will be larger in number, and younger in age. So with the number growing, I wanted to help people find hope, by sharing each others stories.
The other reason is that I wanted to present a challenge against the DSM, an entity that steals authorship from our own life stories.
So what do I mean by that?
I believe that all of us have stories. Each of us has our own unique story about who we are, about how we came to be the persons that we are.
Sometimes you have a story that is so uncomfortable, so painful, so extreme, that you want to keep it to yourself, but you can’t contain it. You feel alone. So you need to tell someone.
You might tell your parents, teachers, friends, but you freak them out, so you learn to shut up to them. You then see a psychologist or a psychiatrist.
And…if you’re not lucky, your doctor will not listen to your story, and try to see how you can fit into one of the codes in the DSM. If you are lucky, your doctor may listen to your story, and try to see how you can fit into the DSM.*
Suddenly, your story doesn’t matter anymore. You are reduced into symptoms, and consequently into a label. Once you’re a label, you are advised, ordered, or coerced into whatever they see fit for a label to do.
I’m not saying that the label itself is a bad thing. I don’t have a problem if you like your label or you embrace your label, but the problem is that you do not have control over that label. The problem is that you are suddenly slapped on a label without much information, much explanation. You are no longer the author of your story that you don’t know any more.
We live in a time and culture where our experience is not considered ‘real’ until a psychologist or a psychiatrist slaps a name on it, determines how to ‘measure’ it, and decides whether it’s ‘healthy’ or not. And there is something very wrong about that.
It reminds me of a quotation by the blog Son of Baldwin. And it goes like this.
“When I want to know what misogyny is, I don’t ask a man. When I want to know what racism is, I don’t ask a white person. When I want to know what homophobia is, I don’t ask a heterosexual. When I want to know what transphobia is, I don’t ask a cisgender person. When I want to know what ableism is, I don’t ask an able-bodied person. The contours and definitions of oppression are best articulated by the oppressed.”
Likewise, if you want to understand the experience of those with psychological distress, you do not ask people who are NOT experiencing psychological distress. You do not ask people who are trying to categorize personal experiences into cookie cutter definitions. You definitely do not ask people who make money by selling you “normal. ”
And you obviously do not ask a book of contextless codes because we are human beings with a context. We are human beings with a body, we are human beings with a heart. we are human beings with a story. Story with unique ethnicities, personalities, genders and sexualities, home and destinations and you cannot objectify all that into a simple label.
Objectification is so ingrained in our society. It happens in the form of mindless consumption of the environment, sexual exploitation, and consumer manipulation. But there is so much we can take, and when it gets too much, we resist the objectification to reclaim our humanity and community. And we see it in the form of the Occupy movement. Sometimes the Occupy movement itself can become straining, because we are putting our real selves on the line. But together, we will try to overcome even that, as a couple of us made our own book for taking care of each other in resistance. The book is called Mindful Occupation and it contains useful tools to help us take care of each other in protests.
And this is also to make a statement: that we do not need to rely on a hegemonic oppressive system to manage us, but we can take care of each other. To take co-authorship in a movement where we take authorship of our life stories back from the DSM and back into our lives.
That is why I made the website, and that is why I’m here today.
*I acknowledge that there are therapists who do not center their service around the use of a label and do tremendous work with the clients. I have one, and have worked with some. At the same time, I believe this hyperbole is justified, given that there are so many who have been abused, neglected and traumatized by their mental health professionals and their voices have not been heard nearly enough.
This speech was influenced by friends and figures who inspire me by not being afraid to struggle as human beings, such as Joe Diaz, Wyatt Strother, Kat Hayes, Bruce Levine, Gail Hornstein, Derrick Jensen, Martin Buber, and others.
Art by Amy Smith.
Tomorrow I’m driving 10+ hours to Philadelphia for this event on Saturday.
I will be giving a small talk, along with so many inspirational speakers, such as Laura Tenney, David Oaks, Laura Delano and others! This will be the biggest demonstration for and by mental health users in recent years. Check out more at Boycott Normal.
The new Werewolves album just came out.
Many people know my obsession with this band, but may not know why. Not only do their songs have the most melodic sounds, they are also a personal critique of the institutionalized mental health paradigm, a protest against the exploitation of nature at large, and a manifesto for a community where friends can love one another with all of the flaws that everyone has inherently. My friendship with the band was essential in getting more connected with the DIY music community and in realizing that I should not be discouraged from believing in my values, for there are others who believe in the same things as I do.
Reblogged from paulbaribeau
Promotional video for the 2012 Super Bobby, Busman’s Holiday, Paul Baribeau Florida Tour. We have been having rehearsals all week long. Feels like this tour will be something special. Please reblog to help us promote the tour.
Here are the dates.
Columbus OH May 16th! Looks like I’ll be seeing my Columbus friends very soon!
Reblogged from affairofthepoisons
(via newwavefeminism)
Reblogged from affairofthepoisons
The diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder leads to a lifetime full of self fulfilling prophecies and feigned helplessness. That’s one of the reasons why I’m going to try to get it taken out of the DSM once I get my…
What makes someone a terrible person is making blanket statements about people based solely upon a diagnosis they have.
I don’t have BPD, and it is not my experience. But you cannot possibly invalidate an entire group of people and call them terrible because you know ONE THING ABOUT THEM. That is fuckery and it is wrong and it is bullshit.
The argument this person is using is, btw, exactly the same argument people have used against my autism. Which is clearly a crock of shit.
PEOPLE HAVE VALID STRUGGLES AND EVEN IF THE BPD DIAGNOSIS WAS TOTAL BULLSHIT IT WOULD NOT MAKE THOSE STRUGGLES LESS VALID. THAT PAIN IS NO LESS REAL. THAT EXPERIENCE IS NO LEAS EXISTENT. THAT EXPERIENCE IS NOT GROUNDS TO CALL SOMEONE A TERRIBLE PERSON.
Ok I don’t know where to start here…but this is exactly why mental health professionals/students give themselves a bad rep. Yes, it is the case that people who receive the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder often do report history of trauma, quite commonly in the form of child abuse. So, from this fact already, the point that needs to be raised is whether the label of borderline personality disorder itself is a form of blaming the victim. If someone is socialized to act in specific ways because he/she was abused, why is it the victim who receives the label of a psychiatric disorder?
Judith Herman talks about how psychologists and psychiatrists often presume that they would have the resilience to resist the perpetrator if they were put in terrorizing situations. Hence, they often seek to account for the victims/survivors’ behaviors by seeking a defect in the victims’ personality. The diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder is one example of such sexism (75% of people who receive BPD diagnoses are women), as it was developed in such a background where psychiatrists, mostly white males, tried to account for trauma survivors who presented behaviors that were incomprehensible to them.
Too frequently do people fail to notice that BPD “symptoms” such as “inappropriate” anger and identity disturbance are reasonable responses that one develops if they suffer through intense trauma. Instead, too often do people judge clients with BPD diagnoses as difficult and manipulative, or “self-centered” and “sadistic,” resulting in a huge prejudice against people who receive BPD diagnosis.
Now, especially in a broken mental health system with a sexist diagnostic system (like the one we have), mental health professionals must take extra care not to judge the clients that they interact with. We have to make the utmost effort to understand and validate the pain and suffering of people with BPD and other mental health diagnoses. We must not spread misleading prejudiced stereotypes of mental health diagnoses, and we definitely should not call clients “terrible people.” It’s about time we realize that that’s a horrible thing to do, and how obvious that is.
(Source: brokage)
