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Spiritual and Ancestral Healing
You have a lot of sickness [in the United States] because people are trying to behave in a way that will look "normal," but that's one thing the body wasn't created for: to behave, to be controlled, to live like you are in a prison."
What if "going crazy" was part of a larger process? What if it was a message from your body, your ancestors, or a wisdom larger than yourself? Thabiso, a traditional Swaziland Healer who moved to the U.S. in 2020, shares his story about training as a healer in a context where madness wasn't stopped or something to be fixed, but rather the sign of a bigger calling.

Dr. Jennifer Mullan (Decolonizing Therapy): AKA The Rage Doctor. Check out their offerings!

Dori Midnight:Community-based intuitive healing that weaves plant and stone medicine, ancestral and queer magic, and justice work. Dori also teaches Jewish Protection Magic with Herban Cura.

Susan Raffo: Bodyworker, writer ( Read: Liberated to the Bone), healing justice practitioner. Two of my favorite pieces by Susan are at least two layers of support: an anatomy of collective care and building collective liberation: wondering about a protocol for healers

Marika Heinrichs (Wildbody Somatics): teacher and practitioner of somatics. Offering consultations and mentorship, and a course in Embodied Ancestral Inquiry (an experiential training for white people who want to deepen their capacity for working with other white people to unlearn and heal the embodiment of white supremacy).

Ryn Laurel:Clinical herbalist specializing in mental health and magical consciousness. Tarot, meditation, and energy work. Ryn offers holistic intuitive and healing services, combining their psychic skills, diverse trainings, and intuitive magic to provide a personalized healing experience. @laureltreehealingarts on Instagram. Sign up for a free 1:1 herbal consult Q+A.

Adaku Utah and Harriet's Apothecary: Adaku is a political strategist, social justice facilitator, holistic healer, somatics coach, and ritual artist. Harriet's Apothecary is an intergenerational, healing collective led by the brilliance and wisdom of Black Cis Women, Queer and Trans healers, artists, health professionals, magicians, activists and ancestors.

Camille Sapara Barton: artist, drug policy advocate and embodiment educator who explores creative interventions that sustain life. They authored this incredible ritual-based Grief Toolkit.

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Healing Outside the MIC - Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu

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You have a lot of sickness [in the United States] because people are trying to behave in a way that will look "normal," but that's one thing the body wasn't created for: to behave, to be controlled, to live like you are in a prison." What if "going crazy" was part of a larger process?

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Including a wonderful resource list!

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Reflections, educational resources, and an opportunity to submit artwork
that centers political, community-based, non-medical approaches for tending to grief

IDHA Statement on the Medicalization of Grief

In March 2022, the DSM-5 announced the decision to add "prolonged grief disorder" as a mental health diagnosis, pathologizing experiences of grief that lasts longer than a year. At IDHA, we believe in moving beyond medicalizing frameworks, into understanding the complex individual, collective, and socio-economic layers to our grief.

Grief manifests in many forms of lived experience, and necessitates an expansiveness toward how we tend to ourselves. We honor that grief is a human experience. We honor how much loss has occurred as a result of the pandemic in the last two years, the grief we have experienced throughout the duration of our lives, as well as the grief within our lineages and ancestries. We honor the immense losses from experiences of colonization, incarceration, and oppression. We wish to complicate and push back on the idea that these experiences be labeled "disorders" or "illness", and offer multiple approaches to the topic of grief.

Our response spans a list of community-sourced resources on the topic of grief, a self-paced course on grief and embodiment, and an open call to create art about grief.

Events

Grief, Collectivity, and Oppression

Grief, Ritual, and Transformation

Resources for Tending to Grief

Resources for Supporting Others

Writing and Art

This list is being updated on an ongoing basis. Please email us at contact@idha-nyc.org if you have recommended resources for us to add.

As part of our Crisis as Catalyst training series in 2021, IDHA offered a class called Grounding in Grief: Interrupting Overwhelm with Embodiment and Ritual, co-facilitated by Camille Barton and Marika Heinrichs.

We recently adapted the class into a widely accessible, self-paced course on our community platform Mighty Networks. The class explores how grief can serve as a teacher, an assertion of our collective humanity when allowed acknowledgement and tending. Learn more about the session and enroll here.

On April 11, 2022 IDHA hosted our first-ever Instagram Live for a conversation that sought to uplift different perspectives on the topic of grief, and reflect on its recent medicalization by the APA.
We were joined by Mangda Sengvanhpheng of BACII, and Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu of Project LETS for a discussion (facilitated by IDHA Program Coordinator Noah Gokul) about personal, cultural, and systemic relationships to grief and offer multiple approaches to caring for loss, in order to complicate the biomedical narrative on grief.

In partnership with The Justice Arts Coalition (JAC), IDHA invites our community to create artwork demonstrating the myriad shapes that grief can take, as well as the many ways that we can tend to our grief. The call opens on Friday, March 25, 2022. The deadline to submit artwork is Friday, May 20, 2022.
This project centers the power of creativity to make meaning from and heal through grief, in contrast with medicalized approaches. We invite our wider communities to share experiences of grief through art, in any medium that best captures each individual's experiences. By collecting art around this central theme, our hope is to transmute our collective grief into new narratives that celebrate the power of mutual support and community action. We are launching this project at the two-year mark of COVID-19 with recognition of the ways in which the pandemic has shaped and amplified so much grief, but the project is open to all experiences.

While all are invited to submit original work to this project, JAC and IDHA particularly seek to uplift the voices and experiences of those currently or formerly incarcerated in institutions. This includes, but is not limited to, those held in jails, prisons, psychiatric facilities, nursing homes, and group homes. JAC will coordinate the inclusion of works from incarcerated artists, and IDHA will coordinate the inclusion of works by psychiatric and trauma survivors. We are interested in bridging dialogue about these experiences with other members of our community including activists, artists, family members, advocates, and mental health providers.

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Reflections, educational resources, and an opportunity to submit artworkthat centers political, community-based, non-medical approaches for tending to grief In March 2022, the DSM-5 announced the decision to add "prolonged grief disorder" as a mental health diagnosis, pathologizing experiences of grief that lasts longer than a year.

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Why Prolonged Grief Disorder Doesn't Belong in the DSM | Well+Good

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Why Prolonged Grief Disorder Doesn’t Belong in the DSM

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Why Prolonged Grief Disorder Doesn’t Belong in the DSM

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It is August 2018. We are at a cemetery in New Jersey where some of my ancestors are buried. My father finds his parent's grave, and places two stones on an ever-growing pile of rocks. I never met them in this life. When I place my stones, I am thinking about how sickness and weakened immune systems embeded themselves in the genes of Jewish people, Black people, and other descendents of genocide and trauma. I think about showing up in the mental health system as a kid-mainly due to the consequences of unmitigated trauma and distress-and being told there was something wrong with me.

As we shift to my aunt's grave, I watch as my father prepares to recite the mourner's Kaddish-the prayer for the dead. He does not need to read from a book. He has been reciting these words for 45 years. These are the words that formed the backbone of how he marks time: one more year with his parents gone.

My father holds his hand over his sister's name on her stone, and sobs as he recites the words. In this moment, I am proud of my father, and yet I have never been more devastated. In this moment, I understand exactly why grief hugged him like a tight blanket and never let him go. In this moment, I am angry for the ways his grief stole time, energy, and attention from me and from my family. In this moment, I see the trauma like an umbilical cord, a blood-red string from his belly to mine. I imagine myself severing this stranglehold of trauma that has us both sinking in the same boat, drowning in the same sea. I love you, Dad. I want healing for you. I want healing for me, too.

In a culture that so often defines mental health by our ability to produce, function, work, minimally impact others, and appear as "normal" as possible, however, there is no space for grief. This makes the addition of prolonged grief disorder to the newly updated DSM, short for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (aka the "bible of psychiatry"), even more disturbing and misguided.

Many of us have been conditioned to believe that a mental illness is just like diabetes-a disease that needs to be managed and treated with medication. But my lived experience, my work in the mental health and disability justice world for over a decade, the wisdom of my community members, and research paints a different picture: Social, political, and economic factors are critical in getting at the root of mental distress and suffering.

When we think of the myriad of ways marginalized people are denied dignity, humanity, and justice-how long is the "right" amount of time to grieve? Not one loss, but many? Generations? Thousands? Millions? In one way, I imagine it, grief that doesn't go away is a justified response in a world that doesn't allow us to stop, to rest, or be present. Prolonged grief, like madness, is an act of resistance.

Getting to the root cause of grief

To say that we are ill if we cannot get up and get on with life in the face of a neverending onslaught of trauma, oppression, loss, distress, and chaos is deeply misguided. Even a trauma-informed shift from "what is wrong with you" to "what has happened to you" doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel complete enough because this is not just about me.

Grief that doesn't go away is a justified response in a world that doesn't allow us to stop, to rest, or be present.

I need to ask bigger and deeper questions that get at my roots: What happened to my family? Who were they before capitalism, colonialism, and the invention of whiteness (the greatest sources of distress, suffering, and grief on Earth)? Who did they become because of this violence? What have I (and my soul) lost while upholding these same values? My grief work and healing work lives here. It is ancestral work. For me, my healing will not be found in a therapist's chair. I know I need to start with my family.

I was a senior in college when my aunt died suddenly and unexpectedly. In many ways, her death led me back home-to my Judaism, to (one of) my culture(s), and to my ancestral practices. Her funeral was handled in an Orthodox fashion, and for seven days, we sat shiva. I learned that my people know grief. They knew grief deeply. So deeply that there is an entire process laid out for our mourning. We do not cook or clean. Instead, we receive. We sit, talk, listen, laugh, and eat. We sing our songs and read our prayers. Divesting from the individualistic values that white supremacy enforces allowed me to lean into the magic of rituals and my community. It gave me a container for my mourning as a lifelong process that I did not have to navigate alone.

I did not put my grief down. We dance with each other, early in the morning and late at night, and it isn't always pretty. I hear my aunt's voice in my head, and I talk to her all of the time. I bring her into every room I can and I see her in my dreams. If I am psychotic, I am glad to be because we love each other, still. We know each other, still. When I told my partner, Thabiso Mthimkhulu, (who is a brilliant Afro-Indigenous ancestral healer) about this new diagnosis, he laughed and said, "Grief is a ritual we have the honor of engaging in with ancestors that walk alongside us. It is not something to bury, like we do with the flesh and bones our souls are protected by."

My issue is with an institution, a medical establishment, that believes and upholds the myth that six months is "the correct timeline" for grieving.

Make no mistake: I want us all to heal. I want us all to have access to what we need (whether that is therapy, a somatic healer, pills, herbs, time away from your life, childcare, more money, etc.). If this label, prolonged grief disorder, allows you to access something that brings you comfort, or ease, or relief (and if you made an informed choice), then use the tools you have access to. My issue does not exist here.

My issue is with an institution, a medical establishment, that believes and upholds the myth that six months is "the correct timeline" for grieving, which is the metric the DSM uses to determine what constitutes prolonged grieving. An institution that would rather dig its heels into apathology-based understanding of mental distress, than ask itself why we even need diagnostic codes to get care and support in the first place? My issue is with a country that sees no irony in medicalizing grief when millions of people all over the world have died alone, away from loved ones, in cages, cells, and hospital beds; in corners and on floors (or if they're lucky), with loved ones saying goodbye through an iPad.

During the pandemic, families and communities have been unable to engage in cultural or religious grief and mourning practices, including funeral and burial practices that have deep ancestral and spiritual meaning. These wounds of the spirit and soul will have profound impacts on us, including prolonged mental distress or grief that doesn't go away in six months. Why should it? Grief is sacred. Grief is an honor.

When we have the space to grieve

What becomes possible when we have the space to grieve? What rituals and practices can we tap into to sustain our spirits? Poet Malkia Devich Cyril describes grief as "every response to loss."

When my maternal grandmother was dying, I sat sifting through her photo albums, making collages, smelling her sweaters, trying on her skirts, and immersing myself in her world. I painted her a birdhouse using her brushes and supplies, just like she had painted birdhouses. I placed it on the window sill of her hospice bedroom (the place she took her last breath in), and hung one of her paintings on the wall. Now, her art fills the walls of my home and lives on my left arm as a tattoo. Her clothes fill my closet. Her Josephine necklace sits on my neck. The small memories, items, movements and moments-this is how I process. It is how I make sense and remember. Because if I don't, I worry what I will pass down to my daughter. Grief will demand to make its presence known. It will find somewhere to live, and I don't want it to be inside of her.

These days, I have the honor to work with healers, herbalists, bodyworkers, and care workers who are justice-oriented, and hold space for the full range of what I hold in my bodymind without requiring a diagnosis or label. They know that healing has no timeline, and let me lead the way. Five years later my grief is a palpable heartbeat that courses through me. Let me have it. Let me die with it. My grief tells me I loved. I lived. I had.
Stefanie Lyn Kaufman Mthimkhulu (they/she) is a white, queer and non-binary, disabled, sick, neurodivergent care worker and educator of Ashkenazi Jewish and Puerto Rican ascent. They are rooted in a historical and political lineage of Disability Justice and Mad Liberation; and show up for their communities as an organizer, parent, doula, peer supporter, writer, and conflict intervention facilitator. Their work specializes in building non-carceral, peer-led mental health care systems that exist outside of the state, reimagining everything we've come to learn about mental distress, and supporting care workers to build access-centered, trauma responsive practices that support whole bodymind healing. Stefanie is also the Founding Director of Project LETS, and serves on the Board of IDHA and the Disability Justice Youth Center.

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Why Prolonged Grief Disorder Doesn't Belong in the DSM | Well+Good

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It is August 2018. We are at a cemetery in New Jersey where some of my ancestors are buried. My father finds his parent's grave, and places two stones on an ever-growing pile of rocks. I never met them in this life.

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Welcome to the Artists' Grief Deck. There is no correct way to use these cards, but we have these suggestions:

Set aside time for yourself to go through them

Find or make a space for yourself

Look closely at the images

Be open to the feelings that arise

Learn More

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The ARTISTS' GRIEF DECK is a set of 60 medium format 'flashcards' that are individually designed by artists, sometimes in collaboration with grief workers.

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I remember the first time that I learned about the buddy system as a part of organizing. It was during a five-day training held by Training for Change , maybe 12 or 13 years ago. On the first day, they paired us up with someone to be our buddy. Then they asked us to sit down with our buddies, generally share a bit about ourselves, and then to share two specific things: the ways in which we get in our own way and the ways in which our buddy could support us when/if this happened. It was really quite beautiful, and very relieving. The facilitator shared that every one of us, every single one of us, will do things that get in the way of achieving what it is that we want. Along with the truth of systemic or structural barriers, these are the self-created barriers that prevent liberation.

I knew immediately how to answer that question. How do I get in my own way? I stay in my head or I go too fast or I focus on how everyone else is doing rather than attending to what is happening within me. I withdraw and distance, studying things rather than being in them. I contract when scared, isolating myself, rather than extend into risk. I forget to pause and notice what I am learning or experiencing, instead moving quickly on to the next thing. I move away from connection and towards isolation or duty when stressed and overwhelmed. This is pretty typical individualist conditioning. Mine is the flavor that comes from white girl conditioning. Yours might be different.

I willingly told my buddy these things and then told them they could help me check-in during breaks, match breaths with me, remind me to slow down, and help me orient to the present. To pause. My buddy told me theirs, we hugged our consent out, and then mostly forgot how to show up for each other during the rest of the training. Not out of malice, but because we were still learning to hold this layered attention: what is happening in front of us, what is happening within us, and what is happening within the body of the one we are attending. We didn't completely forget. We remembered in stutters. It was clear we both needed more practice.

****

Our first world is a fluid world. Sperm meets egg and then rapidly moves through a series of complete changes before, at about two weeks, forming the home where we will spend the next 36 weeks of life. We emerge, slowly, while suspended in fluid within a sac, the amniotic sac. This amniotic sac, while still inside, is held within a uterus, a womb. This is our first home. This is our first experience of containment, of support. It is a support that has two layers, the amnio sac and womb. The sacredness of our life is held like this, with two kinds of soft containment.*

In general, the body organizes everything this way. How this happens is not the same for all bodies. Some bodies, whether how they have been shaped or how they have been hurt, are glorious in their survival with only single layers in some places and double in others. We are creative and complex. Always.

Two layers, this gift of our ancestors, which is evolution, asserts support as that important, that necessary for life. So important, that there are reinforcements. One balancing the other. From the moment we begin to emerge within our first and fluid world.

The amniotic sac itself; it has two layers. The outer layer, the chorion, is the toughest layer and it is magic. It supports the development of the placenta and it is the tissue that helps the parent's blood nourish the fetus. Lifeblood nourishing lifeblood. The inner layer, the amnion, is a cellular matrix that cuddles, hugs, holds, and most directly supports you, me, all of us as we are moving from egg and sperm to ready-to-be-born.

You can recall this, the feeling of it as an echo across your skin. Trust that feeling you have, even when it doesn't make immediate logic-brain sense.

In the earliest of days, this amnion is right up against your early fetal self, holding you closely, snuggly. Imagine yourself tucked right in, that lovely feeling where all of your shapes merge with all the shapes around you. The amnion slowly expands, giving us more space as we grow, so that we can be feet and head pushing out against womb-wall, flicker kicks against skin. There is fluid between the two layers, there is fluid within and around us as we grow, there is fluid around the entire womb, a mix of fluid and membrane which is the body of the parent.

Our first world is a fluid world, before we emerge into this world, a space of earth and air with fluid and fire woven throughout.

There are two layers of support, right from the beginning. We don't think about it. We expect it - it is who we are. It is what we emerge within. Our ancestors have organized the world in this way. We become within two layers of support: one that connects to the inside, amniotic sac like a second skin, and one that connects to the outside, womb that is the body of our outside world, our first parent, which we leave behind when we emerge.

*****

When I gave birth to my daughter, to our daughter, I felt a lot of things. Silly sentence, of course I did. But one of the things I felt was this: there were going to be more adults than just my partner and I who were keeping track of her. Who knew her. And I prayed that within that tangle of adults paying attention would be someone, at least one, who she felt safe enough with to talk to when no one else felt safe. I wanted to make sure that she did not disappear, not all the way disappear. That if anything horrible was happening to her, that there were enough people watching that, even if she hid it well, someone might track the scent. I know how the tangle of shame and abuse can make the one who is hurt find ways to hide the impact, hide what has happened, and present the front that says all is ok.

I knew that respecting a person's life boundaries means missing some things, honoring sovereignty over control, but there would be enough people listening that something, please god, someone would pick up the scent if it needed to be picked up. And people did, in a hundred small ways. And we missed things. And while all of this was happening, there were always at least two layers of support. Of protection. Because support and protection are largely the same thing: one membrane looks in (support) and one membrane looks out (protection). It's up to my daughter to name if it was enough or too much. Depending on when that question is asked, the answer is likely to change. Just like mine does.

********

Every cell in your body exists with the same two layers of support: the cellular membrane or the "skin" of each cell is made up of two layers. The outer membrane faces the outer world, assessing information, the life that is flowing through the interstitial fluid, the fluid of its out-there universe. This outer membrane says yes this can come in and it shapes itself to let this outside-thing, this protein, or absorbs this oxygen or fluid and lets it come in....or it says no, this can not, and so the membrane stays closed. It also receives that is being out from inside and releases it, bye amino acid, bye unneeded waste, floating out into the interstitial void. The inner membrane assesses what comes in from the outside and receives what has passed through the outer membrane, a final check before letting it move into the inner space of mitochondria and nucleus. It takes what is ready to leave and shapes it so that it can move through and out.

Two layers of support, woven through every single cell of your body, right this second. See if you can feel that, just for a moment. This sense of two kinds of support, containment, protection, and care with a space between and in that space there is fluid. And fluid is about movement and possibility. One of the many reasons why water is life.

Pause. Wait. More than enough, more than enough support.

Trees have an inner and outer bark. A plant has a cuticle, upper epidermis, and palisades, layers of its outside self connected to its inside self. Turtles are protected by skin below their shells and the shell itself has two layers. The inner layer is part of the skeleton and is fused to the ribs. The outer layer is formed from skin tissue and then inside, the soft vulnerability of a body that is more fluid than hard.

And fish have scales and skin layers, the youngest aging and migrating up and out before being shed off into the surrounding ocean or stream. Unlike you and I, their skin is full of mucous membranes that make their outside self slippery, viscous, so they slip through the water rather than push against it when they swim. The fewer scales, the more mucus. The less mucus, the more scales.

Human skin has three layers with again the same principles: the outermost engage with the outer world. It's waterproof, it contains the glory of melanin (whether a lot or a little) and it is part of the immune system, holding those cells that can rush in when there is a break in the skin. The middle layer is where the nerve endings live. It's where our body experiences pain and pleasure. It's where the blood flow is, where we control temperature with sweat, where the skin cares for itself with oil.

It's also where we release pheromones to communicate pleasure and pain to others. One of my favorite things is to put my nose right there, up against the crook where neck meets shoulder on my partner. Right there. It makes her squirm and laugh but it's a testing for me. Even when we are fighting or feeling disconnected, as long as she smells good to me, and she always has, then we are still here. Together.

Below all of these layers of skin is the deeper golden fat layer, this closest inside layer of skin that keeps us warm, keeps us padded, keeps stores of energy for later, and connects our outside-listening skin to our inside body. So many layers of support. So many. Fat is the inside support that is also protection. It's what that layer does.

What does it say about a people who turn this golden fluid, this sweet insulation that creates a single word out of support/protection into something to be eradicated, a sign of shame?

Always, at least two layers of support. At least two layers that provide both protection and connection, a relationship between the community of cells that is your specific body and the community of cells that is life on this earth, that is this earth.

I remember my great aunt telling me, and she had very fierce eye contact when she did, that blood is always thicker than water. You can't trust your friends, she said. They won't stay with you for the long term. It's your family that will stay with you. Always.

I was disrespectful, forgetting that she had probably survived things that made this true. I only looked at her like an old woman who knew nothing about me. She was the first full generation of children born in the US, raised in a family that was sprawling across apartments and last names. By the time things got to my generation, that family was both frayed and assimilating. People were not kind to each other, in fact, many of them were violent. And that big circle fractured into smaller circles, some loved still moved through and others were filled with harm and resentment.

For my family, that inside layer of support did not have a second layer that was focused on love and respect, on dignity and care. The second circle that was there did not support us through economic and cultural struggle, through what it meant to have so many of the sons, my uncles, return from the war without any place to put their rage and grief, through what it meant for a family to lose half of its members in a single moment. Instead, my family moved deeper towards whiteness as the second layer of support, midwestern hardworking whiteness. I think this is why my great aunt told me not to trust anyone outside. She knew that what was outside was trying to suck away the lifeblood of those who were in. She told me this even as she, herself, moved deeper into that overlap between German as culture and German-American as white.

Dominance is a spirit that pretends it is the layer outside, the one to hold us when we don't have enough at home. Dominance says yes, you whose name we don't know or care about, we will protect you as long as you do this and that. Then you will be safe. Dominance is a spirit that is constantly deciding who gets to stay in and who is out and who is punished. Dominance chooses some to be its golden bright children, acting as the visible voice for a spirit that has no heart. Dominance wraps its tight arms around that smallest of inside-circles and says, if you play by my rules, then you will be safe except for you, over there, it doesn't matter how hard you play by my rules, on a daily level, I will change my mind. Dominance doesn't like melanin or traditional ways or gender that does anything except support a binary story of hunt and submit reproduction.

Dominance sucks out the fluid that is between the layers and attaches itself, parasitic, to the inside layer. We know this, even those of us raised to be the most protected. We know this, sometimes if only hidden away inside our bellies.

********

It was from Suzanne River via Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen where I first learned the principle that support precedes movement. Anatomical physical support is what comes before the physical execution of a movement. Bend your arm at the elbow, right now. Even before the muscle fibers begin to bind and stretch, loosening and tightening the ligaments which then move the bone, there is a movement of connective tissue, of muscle and of bone that comes in as a kind of base, a kind of foundation, a support that precedes all movement. And then each of those layers that comes in to support the muscle-ligament-bone movement has their own layers of support... and so on.... and so on... and so on. Everything, always, is about two layers of support and support precedes movement. The same is true for reflexes, for developmental stages. Our ancestors were wise and saw us becoming through a series of steps, each one integrating to form the base for the next. That is what a lifetime is supposed to carry, a series of integrated experiences called wisdom which open up space for the next growth to expand. Awkward, new, shaky but not toppling.

Two layers of support. For movement to move and growth to emerge with ease and purpose, these two layers are a necessity.

Take this moment to pause and honor, with bone-deep respect, the fierce resilience and glory of every single person (name them in your thoughts, whisper their names out loud) who, even as they were targeted and attacked, even after experiencing the violence of what happens when a person or system or belief slices through that support to deeply wound, still claims and remembers the experience of support, the two layers of receiving and of giving, of support and protection.

Who are your teachers and what did they teach you?

I often think this is what eldering is or should be: the memories of those who have lived through so much and who can name it and sense it as it shows up again combined with the ability to also remember and assert the need for these two layers of support and protection; to notice when they are missing and demand that they be erected again. All of this woven through with that place where love and the joyful assertion of survival come together.

*****

I am part of an emerging project in the Twin Cities called . We work from the place of building/supporting two overlapping circles. One circle focuses on honoring, deepening, and building interdependent intimate infrastructures. You can call it pod mapping or collective care or mutual aid. It's the work of moving into community as a concrete commitment. Who do you call when you do not feel safe in your home or when you are scared for reasons that are clear and reasons that are not? When someone you love has passed? When you are ill and can't feed yourself? What skills do you and your people need to support each other more thoroughly and to turn, together, to those outside your circle and show up in moments of crisis or vulnerability? Mental health first aid training? Deescalation training? Living in homes in common? Raising and teaching children together? Growing old together? Caring for those we love who are vulnerable together? Who do you celebrate with, who do you grieve with? Who sits alongside you as you wonder-plan about how climate change will impact your grandchildren and pushes with you as you wonder what you can do for them right now? Who is going to love you hard and hold you accountable when you are sketching on something you said you would do? Who is going to remember you and love you clear when someone else is naming the harm you have caused? Who is going to remember you when you are having a hard time remembering yourself?

Infrastructure like this can show up naturally, organically, when you are part of a community or an experience that is under attack, whether economically or culturally or physically. It doesn't always last when the attack has ended. Sometimes it does. It depends on what kind of culture holds you. Infrastructure like this also doesn't show up as often when families or people are protected enough to have closed off private homes and lives. All systems of dominance depend on a binary brain; those who are safe, those who are not. Those who have, those who don't. Those who are deserving, those who do not. A profit-based system can only have a small group in the most protected category. Some of us have to relearn what it is to trust other people to hold us and remember us in the most intimate of ways. Others of us come from people and experiences who never forgot.

The work of the first circle is making these conversations explicit and direct. Helping create strategies and plans and stories. Consensual. Emergent. Intimate*.

With this first circle we say, here is the membrane that is closest in. With those inside this membrane, we agree to show up at 2am when there is a bat flying around your bedroom, and to stay over time. To be there, even when you are in a crappy mood. To keep learning together. I am 57, still young but oh experiencing the savor of 30 and almost-40 year friendships. I wish for you many years of living with people who keep remembering who you are, even as you change and get lost and come home again.

The second overlapping circle is the one that asks: what do you do when none of the close-in relationships are available or can hold this moment of crisis or vulnerability? When what is held and known inside the membrane isn't enough to meet this moment? Who can you call who you trust will hold you with love and respect as you move to whatever next step of support is needed? This is where we are working to support and train people who are able to respond to a phone call for help around a specific moment or experience. When you call, it is likely we don't know you, we have never sat inside your home and had coffee, but that doesn't prevent us from showing up with love. It's a different level of intimacy, a different shape of care and respect.

We center this work in Black love and liberation because this Black-led vision knows that if we can guarantee that every single Black person who calls is met with love and respect, then it is likely that the rest of us will be as well. Every single Black person, every single Native person, every single Brown and trans and queer and disabled and poor and struggling person, met with love and moved to the next step. We center this work in ancestral memory because not a thing being created right now is new. The fact that we can sense this at all is about what our ancestors whisper to us in our hearts and bellies and minds, the fact of another world that is possible. And we center this work in radical consent because if we do not honor that your life is sovereign to you, that your cultural community has sovereignty over how its culture is expressed, then we immediately begin eroding the trust that could be there, between us.

These are two circles of support. The first circle is those who know you, who already claim you, who remember your life. This is the circle of looking in. Support. The second circle is the circle of looking out; the circle of calling someone who does not know you, who is not in your life. Protection. This is not an individual thing, it is a collective thing. We, in the biggest sense, we got you. There are different vulnerabilities with each layer of support. There are different needs for supporting each layer of support. Collective safety does not exist without both of them.

I am writing about this here because for the past year, this work has been filling me, lifting me. But we are new. We are still in those early stages where vision and emerging structure are just sending out early tendrils of practice. We look at each other and say, we are here for ten years. Please don't ask us if this "works" or is "effective" until ten years have passed. We claim the right to time..

*******

I need these maps. Something concrete to help get through the middle stages from isolation to abundant connection. If there is nothing else to do, when I am confused about next steps, there is always relationship. I need these maps and when as a community of people we have forgotten them, I look towards the communities of cells, of plants, of birds and crawling things. Two layers of support, how an ant colony emerges, how a nest is built, whales and barnacles.

Two layers of support is the connective tissue between an individual life and a larger collective web of mutual aid. Of community. Not just between and among people, but between and among life. Something connected outside our capacity to name and see it, collective care emerges. Too big to grasp, too much to fit on a single map. So we start with what we can see and what we can touch, this foundation, these two layers of support. One close up and intimate, the other connecting us to everything.

*If this writing was useful to you and you have the capacity, feel free to buy me a cup of coffee (or a meal) as an offering of exchange!

*This is traditional wisdom. I first heard it voiced through a craniosacral training when my teacher was quoting Ray Castellino. When I have shared this with beloveds who are indigenous and raised within tradition, they tell me stories of learning similar things, named differently, as part of regular cultural knowing.

*This work honors the lineages of transformative justice, pod mapping, mutual aid, and many traditional kin practices that have practices without theory. Some of our teachers include the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective, Mia Mingus, Shira Hassan, Mariame Kaba, and a whole bunch of elders, grandparents and aunties.

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At least two layers of support: an anatomy of collective care - Susan Raffo

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I remember the first time that I learned about the buddy system as a part of organizing. It was during a five-day training held by Training for Change , maybe 12 or 13 years ago. On the first day, they paired us up with someone to be our buddy.

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Access Intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice

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Access Intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice

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Are you hydrated?

If not, have a glass of water.

Have you eaten in the past three hours?

If not, get some food - something with protein, not just simple carbs. Perhaps some nuts or hummus?

Have you showered in the past day?

If not, take a shower right now.

If daytime: are you dressed?

If not, put on clean clothes that aren't pajamas. Give yourself permission to wear something special, whether it's a funny t-shirt or a pretty dress.

If nighttime: are you sleepy and fatigued but resisting going to sleep?

Put on pajamas, make yourself cozy in bed with a teddy bear and the sound of falling rain, and close your eyes for fifteen minutes - no electronic screens allowed. If you're still awake after that, you can get up again; no pressure.

Have you stretched your legs in the past day?

If not, do so right now. If you don't have the spoons for a run or trip to the gym, just walk around the block, then keep walking as long as you please. If the weather's crap, drive to a big box store (e.g. Target) and go on a brisk walk through the aisles you normally skip.

Have you said something nice to someone in the past day?

Do so, whether online or in person. Make it genuine; wait until you see something really wonderful about someone, and tell them about it.

Have you moved your body to music in the past day?

If not, do so - jog for the length of an EDM song at your favorite BPM, or just dance around the room for the length of an upbeat song.

Have you cuddled a living being in the past two days?

If not, do so. Don't be afraid to ask for hugs from friends or friends' pets. Most of them will enjoy the cuddles too; you're not imposing on them.

Do you feel ineffective?

Pause right now and get something small completed, whether it's responding to an e-mail, loading up the dishwasher, or packing your gym bag for your next trip. Good job!

Do you feel unattractive?

Take a goddamn selfie. Your friends will remind you how great you look, and you'll fight society's restrictions on what beauty can look like.

Do you feel paralyzed by indecision?

Give yourself ten minutes to sit back and figure out a game plan for the day. If a particular decision or problem is still being a roadblock, simply set it aside for now, and pick something else that seems doable. Right now, the important part is to break through that stasis, even if it means doing something trivial.

Have you seen a therapist in the past few days?

If not, hang on until your next therapy visit and talk through things then.

Have you been over-exerting yourself lately - physically, emotionally, socially, or intellectually?

That can take a toll that lingers for days. Give yourself a break in that area, whether it's physical rest, taking time alone, or relaxing with some silly entertainment.

Have you changed any of your medications in the past couple of weeks, including skipped doses or a change in generic prescription brand?

That may be screwing with your head. Give things a few days, then talk to your doctor if it doesn't settle down.

Have you waited a week?

Sometimes our perception of life is skewed, and we can't even tell that we're not thinking clearly, and there's no obvious external cause. It happens. Keep yourself going for a full week, whatever it takes, and see if you still feel the same way then.

You've made it this far, and you will make it through.

You are stronger than you think.

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Questions to Ask Before Giving Up - Project LETS

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If not, have a glass of water. If not, get some food - something with protein, not just simple carbs. Perhaps some nuts or hummus? If not, take a shower right now. If not, put on clean clothes that aren't pajamas. Give yourself permission to wear something special, whether it's a funny t-shirt or a pretty dress.

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What Stops us From Supporting? Barriers to Intervention

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What Stops us From Supporting? Barriers to Intervention

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I don't know what to do. I don't want to make it worse.

We aren't here to arrive with solutions: We need to arrive in presence (which looks different for different folks). Silence is okay. You don't always have to say something or act in a big way. But doing nothing often feels much worse (even if we are silently caring and loving from afar).

Don't avoid the issue: If there's a reason why talking about something is hard for you, try and share that. Transparency is key. Sitting in our fears leads to inaction. We need to get comfortable making mistakes, and not holding all of the answers or knowledge or pathways.

Do your own research: Look for resources and tools created by directly impacted people, or information shared by credible groups and organizations. We also want to be careful not make general assumptions, and to ask before we assume something is part of their experience.

Ask descriptive questions: For example -- "I know what paranoia feels like to me, but could you share what it feels like for you?" // "You've talked a lot about how you're drinking a lot lately, what do you think has been helpful about it?"

That's a problem for therapy, not friendships.

There is no specific "conversation" that should only be reserved for therapy: Not everything requires a referral: How are we working to hold space for genuine emotional discussions in our relationships?

Therapy is one only option: While many folks have felt supported in therapy, not everyone can access it, not everyone wants to access it, and for some people, it simply hasn't been helpful. Most dominant therapeutic techniques were developed with a white Eurocentric understanding of psychology and trauma, and approaches such as CBT can cause more harm to marginalized people.

Healing happens in community: We are not saying have no boundaries and support everyone 24/7. Rather, have a good sense of your boundaries and capacity, and work to communicate that while also communicating the ways you can be present.

I feel powerless. I can't fix all of their problems.

Put down the coat, we are not here to rescue: People deserve to be supported in making their own choices and decisions. If someone asks for our support with solving a particular problem, we have consent to engage in that conversation. But our goal should be connection, not solving.
Many problems don't have quick fixes:
It can often feel better for us as the supporter to help with a short-term problem, because there can be a sense of closure and next steps. We get to feel like we helped with something concrete. But we have to build our capacity to sit with people who have problems that can't be fixed, cured, or solved.

Offer tangible things: Rather than saying "let me know if you need anything" you could say "I'll be available at [X] times this week if you want to set up some times talk? I can also send food your way so you don't have to worry about making anything. Do either of those options feel good to you?"

Avoid the impulse to find the bright side:Honoring the presence of pain, suffering, grief, etc. is necessary.

I don't want to enable people's "bad" behaviors.

People deserve support whether or not they are engaging in behaviors you consider to be "bad": There is no one image of health or healing. In alignment with the principles of harm reduction, we do not judge people for the choices they make in order to survive

We do not get to make choices for people. But we can be present and use our connection as a supportive tool towards healing. What does it do to threaten people with disconnection for not engaging in our image of healing or recovery? What is gained? What is lost?

People need to know they can talk to someone without them pressuring them to change to stop what they're doing. For example, if someone is self-harming you can say something like: "I'm here if you want to talk about it, how to find some alternatives, or how to take care of wounds/stay safe. But I won't pressure you to stop self-harming because I understand it's serving a purpose for you right now. I just want to support you in reducing potential harm to yourself, and helping you find alternatives if that's what you want."

I don't want to bring it up if they don't want to talk to me about it.

Ask if it's okay to bring up the topic before engaging. Also: just because they're opening up about some things doesn't mean they're ready to talk about everything with you - so approach with caution.

Don't expect that they will want to open up, and respect it if they don't want to talk about it: Nobody owes us their story or their pain, and we may not feel like a safe or supportive person to talk to (for whatever reason).

Focus on specifics rather than broad generalizations: You've been acting weird lately or I don't think you are doing well is vague, unspecific, and not as helpful as naming I've been worried about how little you've been sleeping or when you mentioned wanting to die the past few times, were you talking about suicide? Or just naming the weight of all of this?

I'm not sure I can handle it if they talk about [X].

Don't ask for information you aren't ready or prepared to hold: If we ask someone to open up, we want to be able to hold the appropriate space for them. If you know you only have 1 hour, be clear about that.

Know your activation points: And know what happens in your bodymind when you become triggered. Negotiate what you both need to stay present (including switching topics or taking a pause), without placing blame on the person sharing. If needed, be transparent about any topics you aren't able to discuss at that time: I can talk for the next hour or so, but I'm not able to listen to graphic details of self-injury or sexual abuse. I can support you in finding someone to connect to about that if you'd like, and I will let you know when I'm in a space to listen to those details."

Support collectively, in groups or care teams (when able): Susan Raffo talks about always having two layers of support. It's easy to fall back into harmful thought patterns, become frustrated, or displace our emotions when we're exhausted and have limited access to supportive resources. We want to make sure we access our own tools, support, and guidance so we are able to engage in anti-ableist and anti-sanist care.
Stay tuned for our Anti-Carceral Crisis Response School, starting in April 2022 (and launching soon)!

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We aren't here to arrive with solutions: We need to arrive in presence (which looks different for different folks). Silence is okay. You don't always have to say something or act in a big way. But doing nothing often feels much worse (even if we are silently caring and loving from afar).

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Common Mistakes We Make When Supporting Others

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Common Mistakes We Make When Supporting Others

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Intentional Peer Support Role Play - Boundaries

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Intentional Peer Support Role Play - Boundaries

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So You’re Ready to Choose Love: Workbook

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So You’re Ready to Choose Love: Workbook

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My Letter to an Advocate for Involuntary Treatment

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My Letter to an Advocate for Involuntary Treatment

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My Letter to an Advocate for Involuntary Treatment

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Mental illness is my calling. I began life as an inconsolable wailing infant, became a suicidal toddler, and a taciturn, morbidly depressed teenager until I was catapulted into lunacy as a young adult. I crash-landed in psychiatry, and my diagnosis and orientation as a sick person became the crux of my identity for the next 20 years. I just knew I couldn't survive the way I was, and the doctors were offering me an alternative.

Always haunting me, though, was that I couldn't dismiss my traumatic childhood- which had maybe even begun in the womb of a heavy smoker- or my spiritual experiences as irrelevant or delusional.

Exhausted and ashamed, I often fantasized about living off of medications, but that's what it felt like: a fantasy. Nothing seemed more unattainable. Both for me-as someone who historically ends up on the run from the CIA and KKK-and for our culture, where there is no alternative infrastructure. But the internet is a game-changer. A proliferation of intelligence is exchanged, people are finding and learning from each other, movements are forming, and what seemed inevitable and inescapable before suddenly looks comically antiquated.

But for now, there are a lot of things that I want to say but feel I can't because there would be big consequences for me, so I say them into my phone. You have to be careful whom you tell what and which words and mannerisms you use. With time and experience, I've learned, especially at the doctor's, to speak with utmost calm, using measured speech without interjections and minimal hand gestures, my face relaxed, the intensity of my gaze on low, and say (in a much more articulate way), Yes, I believe in a spirit world.

Sorry. I didn't start out that way. And if my spirits are actually just coming from the corners of my unconscious mind, that's also okay. Doesn't matter, I can handle it now, so could you please just let me have them? Would it be all right if I subscribe to a different belief system? There are many people who do, could I try to be one of them? (And then later, into my phone: "Get your fucking filthy fingers out of my brain, you pompous assholes, you think YOU have a corner on reality?!")

But I don't just unload my anger. I also elaborate on my unbridled and optimistic, and possibly oversimplified and utopian convictions that we are turning a truly beautiful corner in history. The previously oppressed peoples, including the crazies, are rising up. Either the corrupt and outmoded institutions will collapse, or it's game over- and the good guys have the edge. It sounds delusional. And I certainly can't let on that I secretly think I have a (possibly important) role to play in that revolution. Grandiosity.

I'm just a nobody plugging away on art that nobody will ever see, writing essays nobody will ever read, thinking things that won't matter, whose life path is leading nowhere special in a world that won't change. It's actually becoming insulting. It's annoying and belittling coming from the doctors, but it really hurts when it comes from my family.

But what best illustrates my changing relationship to psychiatry and myself is a letter I wrote to Michael Gray. He's an activist attorney who works for a nonprofit called the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC). I started following their work when I was in a very different phase in my life. I was really into D.J. Jaffe, who played an important role at the TAC before his death last year. He was an influential advocate for involuntary treatment, in the form of hospitalization and meds, to be continued into outpatient care. The biggest reasoning behind this approach is the concept of anosognosia, or when a mentally ill person is so deep into their delusions they don't understand they're sick. The intervention that may seem invasive and abusive to them at the time, his argument goes, is actually merciful because it is saving them from a life on the streets, jail, or the grave.

Jaffe was committed to the plight of the most seriously mentally ill, and that's how I was diagnosed and for a long time how I identified. And it's true that, if it weren't for personal privilege, I probably would have ended up in one of those places. I just no longer think that it's because I'm defective or diseased. I believe Jaffe meant well; however, there is a major and distressing possibility that he was buying into a faulty model and with a bit too much self-assurance. After all, there are some serious liberties at stake here.

I still follow the TAC and I recently attended a Zoom course Gray led called "Advocacy 101: The Do's and Don'ts of Lobbying." As he spoke about a revolution in mental health care being less about civil rights and more about stricter laws and enforcement, I cursed at the screen the same way I do into my phone. Right afterward, I wrote this email, employing the same restraint I use elsewhere:

Subject: A question born from personal experience

Hi Michael,

I watched your Zoom presentation, "Advocacy 101," and I want to thank you for being so available and interested in hearing what people who care about this issue have to say and for giving practical advice. It's because of that that I decided to write to you.

I am diagnosed schizoaffective, have been hospitalized ten times in six states in the U.S. and once in Germany, so I am familiar with many levels of care and the variables created by law (I was committed under Kendra's Law in New York and released prematurely in California). Most of the hospitalizations were for psychosis, one was for depression, and one was for a very nearly successful suicide attempt.

I'm on Clozapine (I'm sure you know it was D.J. Jaffe's favorite for the most severely ill) and have taken it for nine years, after many assortments of other meds. Two years ago, I was caring for my sick mother and I wanted to be able to hear her when she woke up, something I would ordinarily sleep through because of the Clozapine. So I reduced it by quite a bit, a third. I was planning on going back up to my previous dose, but I realized I liked not being knocked out and couldn't make myself go back up. I also liked being more alert and communicative. When my mother died and I went home to Germany, I told my psychiatrist about the reduction and he asked me if I wanted to continue to reduce. My response was, Of course not! Do you know how dangerous that is?! I thought about it and decided what the hell, if he's okay with it, I'll try.

Since then, I have been slowly reducing and I can't tell you how much the medication was doing that I wasn't even aware of. Side effects listed on the warning pamphlet, side effects that aren't, but most importantly, side effects that aren't just physical, but profound, intellectual, social, and spiritual.

I have now been stable for considerable time on a minuscule dose of this supposed "lifeline" medication, have found a psychiatrist trained in de-prescribing, and plan on proceeding slowly with reductions (I'm also working on a mood stabilizer and antidepressant) with the overarching idea of seeing for myself if the "biological illness/diabetes" model is right or if recovery off meds is possible. There is quite a bit of evidence that it is, but I'm sure you've already heard it from the anti-psych posse. I will proceed with utmost caution and if I need to go back up, I will face that and accept it.

I always thought that when people like Will Hall and Sean Blackwell talked about life off meds, that they just didn't have it as bad as I did. That mental illness is over-diagnosed and medications are overprescribed, but some people really need them and I'm one of them. Now I question that.

So my question to you is, and I ask in all sincerity...how long would I have to be off meds and stay stable (or as stable as a normal person), safe, and out of the hospital before my story would mean something to you and the advocates for chemical interventions, especially the involuntary ones, to treat states of mind that may not be sick or symptomatic, but simply elsewhere? And would my singular story make you reconsider that model? Because if there are gentler, less invasive and severe, more loving and creative ways of handling minds than with drugs, shouldn't that be the revolution in care?

Thanks again and all the best,

Emily Hochman

I sent the email on April 25. As of now, that was more than a month ago, and I'm really hoping for a response. I can keep you posted. I hope he's thinking about it because if he doesn't respond, I'll be pretty disappointed in him. In the meantime, I've continued my meds reductions and I'm still doing well. Nothing has ever been more important to me than staying that way and I really think I got this. If I'm wrong, I'll eat my words, but I am convinced I'm on the road to recovery, not relapse.

And I've been wondering what taking on the establishment would look like. How many of us and with what kind of documentation of what kind of illnesses, and how long off meds and out of the hospitals, and with what additional evidence of health would we need to become a critical mass and show that recovery is possible? How do you take on a behemoth like psychiatry? A class-action lawsuit? Whom do you sue? Or would it be a friendlier affair? Should we let bygones be bygones and just work on turning the mental health care system into a system that's truly about mental health?

I personally want people held accountable. I'm angry. Angry that for so many years I thought I just needed 13 hours of sleep, that I was just a constipated person, that I thought 25 extra pounds was a small price to pay for sanity, that my hair was falling out because I was getting older. Angry that no doctor ever warned me about akathisia. I'm angry that so few people seem to understand that it's not just a brain, it's a MIND. That shutting down its technical functions also means detaching the subjects from their thoughts, their intellect, their PERSONALITY. That when patients "complain" of brain fog, decreased creativity, sexual disfunction, and flattened emotions, those are not minor imperfections to be included on a peripheral list of side effects, those are their reasons to live.

I'm angry that I thought for so long that my brain was my worst enemy. And I'm angry on behalf of so many others.

When I press them, even my psychiatrists have to acknowledge that the institution is fundamentally flawed. That ultimately and unavoidably, psychiatry boils down to a form of social control. Maybe we should stop seeing this as a pesky drawback to be brushed aside in the interest of more stable lives and start viewing inherent problems as actual problems that urgently need to be addressed. Buildings don't stay solid on rotten foundations. They crumble and fall.

Emily is primarily a visual artist (drawings and paintings) who also writes essays sometimes. Her work is inextricably intertwined with and often directly addresses her extensive psychological and psychiatric experience, which she often refers to as her real career.

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My Letter to an Advocate for Involuntary Treatment

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Mental illness is my calling. I began life as an inconsolable wailing infant, became a suicidal toddler, and a taciturn, morbidly depressed teenager until I was catapulted into lunacy as a young adult. I crash-landed in psychiatry, and my diagnosis and orientation as a sick person became the crux of my identity for the next 20 years.

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This Is What It's Really Like to Experience Psychosis

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This Is What It's Really Like to Experience Psychosis

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Psychosis is not a disorder in and of itself, but rather a symptom that can arise due to a variety of factors, including genetics, trauma, substance abuse, physical illness or injury, or mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Approximately 3 percent of people in the U.S. will experience psychosis at some point in life, per the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Psychosis usually comes on slowly and can cause non-specific changes in a way a person thinks and how they perceive things, NAMI explains. Exactly how psychosis manifests can vary from person to person, but in general, people will often see, hear, or feel things that aren't there, according to NAMI. And people who have experienced a psychotic episode once are at an increased risk of having it again, so it's important to seek treatment (often a combination of psychotherapy interventions and medication, per NAMI), quickly and early. Sometimes seeking treatment for psychosis can be a tricky process. "Despite the relative prevalence of psychotic disorders, many individuals who experience these illnesses struggle to connect with appropriate specialized care," Aubrey Moe, Ph.D., a psychiatrist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, tells SELF. "Some people may be misdiagnosed, and others may struggle to find providers comfortable with treating psychosis." People can actually go months without getting care for psychosis and the longer it lasts, the more difficult it can be to get symptoms under control, Christian Kohler, M.D., clinical director of the Neuropsychiatry/Schizophrenia Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania, tells SELF, and many do end up in the ER. "For a person by themselves, it's really difficult to navigate this," he says. Stefanie Lyn Kaufman, 23, has experienced several episodes of psychosis and knows firsthand the stigma that comes attached to the term. Here, Kaufman-who is the founder of Project LETS, an organization that strives to provide peer-led communities of support, advocacy, and education for people who have experienced mental illness, trauma, disability, or neurodivergence-recalls the details of some of her psychotic episodes and explains why misusing the term "psychotic" is so problematic. Remember: Everyone's experience with psychosis is different. This is one narrative and will not necessarily describe each person's reality of psychosis.
Over the years, I have been diagnosed with a slew of different mental illnesses. Different doctors have had conflicting opinions at various stages of my life. Some have argued over whether I have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and eating disorders. However, after 10 years in the mental health care system, the diagnoses that most accurately describe my lived experiences are autism, ADHD, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and major depressive disorder, prone to symptoms of hypomania and psychosis.

My first experience with psychosis was during my freshman year of college. But I've had four major psychotic episodes in my life, and the most recent one was just a few months ago. The experiences have been slightly different each time, but each one was memorable, to say the least.

My psychotic episodes usually start with mixed moods where I'll be hypomanic, but also irritable and depressed.

I feel bad energy inside of my head and movement that doesn't cease. I begin to have trouble expressing ideas and communicating about what I want or need. I don't want to or feel like I need to speak to other people. I begin to get jumbled, checked out, spaced out, and I turn inwards. I begin to disregard any attempts to maintain a personal hygiene routine. I believe everyone is making fun of me, talking about me, laughing at me.

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Stefanie Lyn Kaufman as told to Korin Miller

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This Is What It's Really Like to Experience Psychosis

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Psychosis is not a disorder in and of itself, but rather a symptom that can arise due to a variety of factors, including genetics, trauma, substance abuse, physical illness or injury, or mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

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Hearing Voices is More Common Than You Think

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Hearing Voices is More Common Than You Think

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Hearing voices is more common than you might think

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Intro to Voices & Vision (friends & family)

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Intro to Voices & Vision (friends & family)

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For some people, the ability to hear or see things other people don't is considered a gift. This page explores some of the ways people find inspiration, meaning and connection in the voices they hear and the visions they see. It is not an exhaustive list, but intended as examples that counter the idea that hearing voices is always difficult.

Spiritual Voices

"I could hear an inner voice saying to me, 'Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world." - Martin Luther King

Some people hear voices as part of their religious and/or spiritual life. Whilst everyone is different, these voices may include hearing spiritual beings that provide comfort, inspiration and/or guidance to the voice-hearer.

"I have been a willing slave to this most exacting Master for more than half a century. His voice has been increasingly audible, as years have rolled by. He has never forsaken me even in my darkest hour. He has saved me often against myself and left me not a vestige of independence. The greater the surrender to Him, the greater has been my joy." - Mahatma Gandhi

For some, such voices issue a call to a greater purpose - a vocation or a path that benefits others. Above, Gandhi describes the importance he found in surrendering his own will to the voice of God. Rather than speaking of this experience as oppressive or malign, he describes a sense of gratitude and appreciation. He talks of joy, not torment.

As scriptures from a range of religions feature people hearing divine voices, it is important to emphasise that this is coupled by an interest in making sense of when a voice is what it claims to be, and when it is not (known as discernment). Most religions advocate a cautious approach, noting that divine voices often leave the hearer with a sense of peace, clarity and warmth.

Shamans from many different cultures also talk about being called to this path, often after a period of crisis. Many describe seeking guidance from spirits who take the form of animals, birds and other creatures from the natural world.

"And again I heard the voice amid the bid sounds, the clicking of beaks, the squeaking and chirping. "You have love for all that has been placed on this earth; not like the love of a mother for her son, or of a son for his mother, but a bigger love which encompasses the whole earth. You are just a human being, afraid, weeping under that blanket, but there is a great space within you to be filled with that love. All of nature can fit in there." I was shivering, pulling the blanket tighter around myself, but the voices repeated themselves over and over again, calling me "Brother, brother, brother." So this is how it is with me. John (Fire) Lame Deer in Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions, p139

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For some people, the ability to hear or see things other people don't is considered a gift. This page explores some of the ways people find inspiration, meaning and connection in the voices they hear and the visions they see. It is not an exhaustive list, but intended as examples that counter the idea that hearing voices is always difficult.

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Grieving for an imaginary baby - the loneliness of psychosis

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Grieving for an imaginary baby - the loneliness of psychosis

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@MiserySquid' s #MadCovidDiaries 23.01.2021
Trigger warning: psychosis, suicidal ideation, self-injury, miscarriage, infanticide.
I was 21 years old when I had my first psychosis. I was picked up by the police in the middle of the night, wandering the streets barefoot, clicking and whistling, tapping and clapping imaginary codes at the cameras in the streetlights. I sat crayoning wedding invitations from psychiatric hospital, delighted, euphoric, using clumsy sign language to talk to celebrities in the television, planning a wedding to a friend that had casually kissed me on a night out. It took a year for the codes to pass, I was not getting married, I had a lifelong illness that every few years would see me stumbling into alternate realities, misreading the map of my life, losing jobs, friends, partners as I chased messages into locked, neon lit rooms.

Before this I thought a psychosis and a psychopath were the same. These words made me think of Hollywood serial killer clichés- pinboards covered in menacing hand scrawled notes and torn newspaper clippings connected by a web of taut red wool. A 'psycho' was a casual slur for erratic behaviour. I learned in hand-outs and support groups about delusions and ideas of reference. I learned that for some people, reality is a term that flexes, there are layers for us that other people don't see. Messages and codes and metaphors, a thin film that sits across day-to-day life. I press down the layers at the edges, slowly pushing out these extra meanings, like covering a schoolbook in sticky back plastic, ease out the air bubbles so reality lies transparent against the surface.

*

I'm so tired and the A&E is so noisy, there is a fraying at the edges, a beeping machine distracts me. I haven't slept in days. Through a curtain I can hear a baby crying. A nurse walks past pushing a monitor, beige wires tangle around the wheels, plastic jellyfish tendrils.

'Whose is that baby? Can you hear that?' I ask the passing nurse.

'Sorry?' he says, confused.

'The baby, whose is the baby?'

'I think they're watching a video' he shrugs and continues on, the wires dragging along the floor behind him.

I sit on the edge of the high metal bed, listening to the ragged crying and my quickening heartbeat. The new-born howling seems to get louder, punctuated by the incessant high-pitched beeping. Something about this crying causes a sharp-edged panic in my chest. Why are they leaving this baby to cry? The desperation of its repetitive shrieks feels terrifying. The messages are confusing. I pace up and down the corridor, trying to find the source of the crying.

A nurse comes out from behind the desk.

'Please sit back in your bay,' she says.

'I haven't had a baby' I say to the nurse, wide eyed,

'Please sit back in your bay', she repeats walking with me down the windowless corridor, past a woman curled up on a bed, the curtain only partially pulled across. I have to trust the project, there is no baby, I need to sleep.

*

I'm in the shared garden of our flat, overlooked by the block behind, a large man is leaning out of his window smoking a cigarette in the spring morning. I spent the last two nights cataloguing codes, making piles of belongings by their colour, writing tiny pencil notes in paperback books to mark the subtext, the secret messages that the project has left for me. I can't work out what the point is, what the crux of this unravelling mystery is. My tablets are sugar pills, I know I don't need them. The power of placebo. There's a gnawing anxious dread that has sat across my stomach for days now, I can't eat. What are they trying to tell me? What would be too difficult to know?

What would be the worst-case scenario? I remember a story an old acquaintance told me about a toddler who drowned in a pond, it was a boy and he drowned. I think I'm going to be sick. What have I done? I never wanted a boy, I have a flash back, it feels like a memory. I drowned him in the bath, I remember, I left him unattended and when I came back, he was dead. I remember an old episode of Black Mirror- a woman is trapped in a virtual reality as punishment for killing a child. They've been filming me for years; spectating my anguish as reality television. My punishment is to continually relive the memory of my baby, realise my terrible crime, then they call Derren Brown to hypnotise me to forget, and it all starts over again. I fall on the grass and begin to scream. It's an hour before the crisis team arrive, I've torn up handfuls of earth, pulled at my hair, there are angry red bite marks along both my arms. When the crisis team arrive, they approach me warily holding out medication at arms-length, gently repeating my name. I lay in a ball on the grass sobbing, exhausted. They put the small blue pills in my hand, and I wipe the snot and tears from my face and push the tablets into my mouth one after the other, hollowed out by grief and ready to forget again.

*

I've been in the hospital for three months now, we sit in the side room for my one to one. My allocated staff member today is a student nurse called Emily. She has her hair tied back; her glasses sit on top of her mask. The afternoon sun casts a rich light across the colourful padded chairs. Today, I'm nearly too sad to speak.

'I think I had a baby who died' I say, staring at the floor; tears spill down my face, I feel them slide down my pale cheeks one by one. I wait for her to 'thought challenge', to tell me what many other family members, professionals, and friends have tried to tell me over the past weeks. That I'm not a mother and I have no children, alive or dead. She reaches for the box of tissues.

'I imagine that must be very difficult' she says,

I nod

'I don't know what's real' I say quietly.

She moves forward in her chair, adjusts her posture to sit upright, looking as if she's deciding whether to say something.

'I can see that what you're experiencing is real for you,' she says so gently. I raise my head to look at her. There's such warmth and compassion in her eyes. We sit in silence for a while as I try to concentrate on my breathing. There is a wailing in me, that pulls at the edges and threatens to overwhelm me. On bad days the staff have to intervene to stop me banging my head against floors and walls, pulling at cables, desperate for an ending. I try to gain control of the well of grief, focusing on my breath, the rising and falling of my chest.

'I feel like I had a baby who died, but no one believes me' I start to cry again, balling up tissues in my hands, shoulders hunched forwards.

The nurse pauses for a minute. She moves the wastepaper basket towards me. I drop in the used tissues and pull fresh ones from the box slowly, one after the other. She sits in silence. She seems to be thinking about what she's going to say,

'They say we should be careful what we tell patients, but I want to share this with you. I have a son, but before he was born, I had a miscarriage.' I look up at her and there is a rawness to her, a vulnerability I haven't seen before. I wait for her to continue.

'It was devasting. No one really wanted to talk about it. I wasn't very far along, but to me that was a baby. And we lost her.' She turns her face away, towards the window. We sit in silence, both looking at the sun on the long grass, the white daisies scattered across the green. 'I had to find a way to mark the fact she had died. It helped me, to say goodbye to her.' I sit staring at her for a moment. Suddenly she is more than her badge, she's a young woman, who has experienced a terrible loss. Aside from the codes and the messages and the cameras, this feels real.

'Perhaps that's something that might be helpful, to find a way to mark what's happened, and to properly say goodbye. We could do that together if you wanted to.' She says gently, turning to face me again.

'I'm sorry you lost your baby.' I say, holding the crumpled tissues in my hands, seeing the sadness in her eyes. She pauses for a moment and then looks me in the eyes and says,

'I'm sorry you lost yours.' This is the first time anyone has acknowledged my loss instead of my illness. I break down and sob, desperate with loss. She puts her hand gently on my arm as I cry and sits with me until the wave of grief passes.

*

The worst thing for me, is not the horrors of the delusions, the terrifying worst-case scenarios, dead children and lost limbs and acid attacks, that I'm dead, that I'm in a coma, in a virtual reality dimension. The worst thing is not the nightmarish hours that grip and twist, the waves of confusion that follow, the lack of stability, the isolation, the desperation of friends and family watching you travel between parallel universes of chaos and despair, shrieking at the sky, inconsolable, disbelieving, accusing. The worst thing for me, about having long term psychosis is a more complicated and deeper grief. When you've taken the tablets, when you're back at home, in the weeks and months that follow an acute episode, when the volume of the codes reduces so you can follow a conversation. That grief is for my sanity, for the fact I will never 100% be able to trust my own judgement. Once you've had a psychosis, once you've lost your mind, you can never really trust yourself again. I live with a level of unknowing, that at times feels intolerable. Regularly at the moment, I'm not sure, what my own name is, what year it is, if my friends are actors paid to talk to me; I don't know which experiences are mine, where I fit, what horrors exactly I have lived through. It's impossible to describe what it feels like to not be able to trust your own memory. I get lost weeping, remembering things that never happened. There are no support groups for imaginary delusional grief, I carry that alone, and it is so lonely. I rely on other people to simply and without shame, without pity, answer questions about reality again and again - what year is it, how did we meet and most often at the moment - 'No Jen, you have never had any children'.

Even if it's a one-off psychosis you're forever a discredited witness. I went mad. Society labels me unstable, unreliable and not to be trusted. I'm a woman who doesn't know what's real. At any point someone can call my judgement into question, invalidating me. This fear of being called out made me smaller for years, afraid to speak up, folded in on myself, frightened to say how I felt, knowing how easily I could be dismissed.

What keeps me tethered to reality at the moment is the crisis line who pick up the phone and talk me through why stepping in front of a car is not the way to end the filming project. My care-coordinator who calls me up every Wednesday morning to take long deep breaths with me down the phone, to settle me back in my own skin, in the sensations I can see and feel, the sound of next door's radio through the wall, the feel of the fabric of the sofa under my legs. What keeps me anchored day to day is the kindness in my friend's voice as I sob down the phone. They gently repeat the facts, a memory only we would know, the night we drove to the seaside wearing our swimming costumes under our clothes, delighted to have arrived just as the sun was setting at the edge of the horizon, the feel of surprising wide patches of water that were still warm from the heat of the August afternoon. I write these out in detail as evidence. My friends patiently and without judgement, talk with me late into the night, gently laying out private memories that stand strong as tender landmarks of how we know each other, using our shared histories as breadcrumbs to guide me back to them again and again.

Each day I try to remind myself that the intensity of this episode will pass and with time, the psychosis will tuck itself under layers of medication and the emotions will lessen. I'm holding on that at some point the cameras will be turned off, the curfews will be lifted, and we'll drive down to the sea, singing along to the radio with no masks, to music with no secret messages and we'll go night swimming again. I'll float under the wideness of an enormous black sky, looking up at the stars, held by an ocean still warm from the heat of a burning star 93 million miles away, and it won't matter what's real and what's not real. That will feel real enough.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. We ask that you seek our permission before you use any of our material - this includes researchers who want to harvest our data for analysis!

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Grieving for an imaginary baby - the loneliness of psychosis

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@MiserySquid's #MadCovidDiaries 23.01.2021 Trigger warning: psychosis, suicidal ideation, self-injury, miscarriage, infanticide. I was 21 years old when I had my first psychosis. I was picked up by the police in the middle of the night, wandering the streets barefoot, clicking and whistling, tapping and clapping imaginary codes at the cameras in the streetlights.

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Staying out of the hospital: a guide to surviving psychosis 

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Staying out of the hospital: a guide to surviving psychosis 

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Intentional Peer Support Role Play - Negotiating Reality

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Intentional Peer Support Role Play - Negotiating Reality

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I help people end cycles of violence by building accountability skills with body-centered somatic coaching and Transformative Justice

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Building Accountable Communities: A Video Series

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Kiyomi Fujikawa works within movements to end gender-based violence, organizing with Queer and Trans communities of color around preventing and responding to intimate partner violence and towards racial, gender and economic justice.

Shannon Perez-Darby has spent 12 years as a community advocate working within LGBTQ communities and communities of color to support survivors of domestic and sexual violence. She is a queer, mixed Latina writer, survivor, community activist and author of the piece "The Secret Joy of Accountability: Self-accountability as a Building Block for Change" in the seminal book The Revolution Starts at Home. Shannon's passion lies in supporting communities to actualize our dreams in our day-to-day lives.

Mariame Kaba is an organizer and an abolitionist, the founder of Project NIA, co-founder several organizations including of Survived and Punished, and a current BCRW activist in residence.
Details and Accessibility
This event is free and open to the public. RSVP is preferred but not required. This is an online event. Please contact BCRW for additional accessibility needs.

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Building Accountable Communities: A Video Series

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Kiyomi Fujikawa works within movements to end gender-based violence, organizing with Queer and Trans communities of color around preventing and responding to intimate partner violence and towards racial, gender and economic justice. Shannon Perez-Darby has spent 12 years as a community advocate working within LGBTQ communities and communities of color to support survivors of domestic and sexual violence.

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Accountability FAQ - Accountable Communities Consortium

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Shannon Perez-Darby

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These are just some of the frequently asked questions when it comes to accountability. Many of these questions arose in the context of larger trainings, workshops and discussions about accountability and as such are built upon a basic foundation that accountability is taking responsibility for our choices and the consequences of those choices. The foundation for accountability in communities and relationships is self-accountability, that is first doing our own work to be in alignment with our own values and actions on a day to day basis and if/when we are out of alignment figuring out what happened, what was going on for us and what we are going to do about it. The responses below are meant to be a jumping off point not the last word. Question 1: How can I hold someone else accountable?
For better or worse, you cannot hold other people accountable. The foundation for accountability in relationships is self-accountability. This means focusing on being responsible to ourselves and to the people in our lives for our choices and the consequences of those choices. We can't control the choices that others make, and we can't force anyone to be responsible in the exact way we think they should. Ultimately, we focus on being responsible for our own behaviors and choices because that's what's most readily in our control.
Question 2: Does accountability apply to abusive relationships?
Agency is essential in maintaining equity in relationships. Accountability requires agency. Agency is our sense of ourselves as people who can act powerfully and make choices about our own lives. Abuse, violence and exploitation erode agency. Domestic violence attempts to turn a person-who can act powerfully on their own behalf-into a thing -someone who is acted upon. Accountability relies on people who are able to be responsible for their choices and the consequences of those choices. Violence, abuse and exploitation limits survivors' ability to do this and undermines everyone's ability to do the work of accountability. The work of accountability requires that all parties are working to be accountable to their own values. Each person's agency is essential in creating this process.
Question 3: Doesn't self-accountability conflict with the notion of intent vs effect? I've learned that intent does not matter as much as the effect on others. Your approach seems to get you off the hook with yourself if you didn't intend the harm and had no idea you were causing it.
The definition of accountability is taking responsibility for our actions and the consequences of those actions(emphasis added). Self-accountability isn't about getting off the hook. It's about getting to know yourself and your patterns. It's about getting grounded in your values. This foundation is the building block of accountability with others. Self-accountability can work in helping us to get more grounded and clear so that we can deal with the impacts of our behaviors.

People can struggle in seeing the impact of their behaviors often because they believe themselves to be good people and they "understand" why they did what they did. Self-accountability asks us to go beyond the question of whether or not we are good or bad people and to look at:

1. What happened (what was the action and impact),

2. what was going on for me (context and getting clear) and

3. what am I going to do about it (action).

Self-accountability is about reflection and action. The action is centered on getting clear about our own behaviors and "getting right" when we've acted outside of values. This is the skill building for scaling up and doing the work of accountability with each other and in our movements.

Self-accountability is the starting point, not the end point. We have to start where we are. So much of our accountability work with each other goes off the rails because we haven't practiced this fundamental skill. This process of getting clear can help us to slow down and look at the impact of our actions and where and when our effect does not align with our intent.

The harm we do to each other and the work of accountability for that harm are fundamentally intertwined with structural oppression. We can't opt out of structural oppression and it's always at play in our relationships. The question is, how is oppression showing up here, not if it is at play. For people and communities who are being crushed by this oppression figuring out how to be in relationship with the impacts of structural oppression within our own groups and communities is one of the preverbal walls we continue to hit our heads against.

People tend to falsely equate experiences of marginalization/structural oppression with interpersonal power. You can experience structural oppression, be a person of color, be queer, be trans, have a disability (and so on) but none of these experiences prevent us from doing harm to the people around us. Self-accountability asks us to understand the harm caused to marginalized communities through structural oppression and the harm we do to each other within our own communities. There is no identity that prevents us from causing harm.

Question 4: Any recommendations for helping someone recognize the harm they've caused when they themselves have experienced massive amounts of trauma throughout their lives?

This is one of the hardest questions when it comes to the work of accountability. We can't make others be accountable but we can help create the conditions for them to do their own accountability work. This is community work, society work, work we need movements to help us practice and sustain. It's often too much for just one or two people to try and overcome the massive number of barriers to creating these conditions. The short version is to get help and to be gentle with yourself.

In my personal experience I've had limited success in trying to convince loved ones to act differently when they are deep in their trauma responses. When I have made reasonable efforts that do not seem to be producing any change the most loving thing to do, for myself and the other person, is to get grounded and focus on what is in my control. Whether or not someone else does their own trauma work is not in my control. What is in my control are my own boundaries, actions and behaviors. If someone is acting in a harmful and destructive way sometimes the most loving thing to do is to let them experience the consequence of their own behaviors. I say this truly knowing how hard it is to love someone, see them struggling and not be able to change the conditions of their struggling.
Question 5: I love this language of "Come collect me." Can you say more about that?
Sometimes when we're broken open it literally feels like we're spilling over (I sometimes use the phrase "spewing trauma") and having people who can "collect us," who can help us get grounded and reoriented, is essential. We are designed to see ourselves as the protagonist in our own stories and as such we tend to understand our actions as "justified" and "right." It's hard to see our own stuff, we're so close to it. Having support from loved ones who will let us know when we are acting outside our values is an important part of the accountability puzzle. I do this by having explicit conversations with loved ones about how and why I want them to support me in my commitment to self-accountability. For me this is 2-3 people (my mom, my partner, several close friends) who can reflect back to me when I'm acting bad. These are people I trust, have practiced conflict with and with whom I have a solid foundation.

I have never once enjoyed receiving this feedback. My first reaction is always "But..." It's scary to both give and receive these reflections. Through practice, I've gotten more familiar with what it feels like to receive this feedback and how to humbly receive it and use it for reflection and action. At first this was in hindsight, a loved one would tell me something they were worried about and I would dismiss it only to realize months later that the feedback they were offering was exactly on point. Through this practice I've gotten better (but not perfect!) at recognizing this invitation into reflection and accountability.
Question 6: So are you saying it's my fault if I was abused? As a survivor of abuse, I don't understand how to apply accountability to my relationship.
Domestic violence is a pattern of power and control that attempts to turn a person who can act powerfully on their own behalf into someone who is acted upon. In the mainstream domestic violence movement, survivors are often framed as people who do whatever they have to do to survive. In response to the constant victim blaming by abusive partners and society at large, many advocates have told survivors, "Anything you had to do to survive is justifiable." This message has been inconsistent with what many survivors feel about what they've done to resist patterns of power and control. Many survivors find a sense of relief and healing in being able to talk about and take responsibility for things they did in the process of resisting abuse that they may not feel good about. This is one of the many reasons we focus primarily on self-accountability, a process you can do with yourself and for yourself. In self-accountability, you can be responsible for your past behaviors by thinking about what you did, why you did it, and what you need in order to act more in accord with your values now and in the future.

For survivors of domestic violence, engaging in a process of self-accountability increases in direct relationship to our ability to access safety, support and agency. This process can be a powerful healing tool. Figuring out how accountability and domestic violence connect is confusing in many ways. One dynamic many survivors have experienced is a process of gaslighting in which abusers distort basic facts and information in their relationship. Many people who are abusive use a false premise of accountability to further perpetuate a pattern of power and control. When survivors attempt to live up to their abusers' false concepts of accountability, the misinformation, manipulation and gaslighting behavior can be overwhelming. In this context, understanding what it means to be responsible for their choices and the consequences of their choices is extremely difficult. That is one of the many reasons we engage in accountability as a process and not an outcome and support people in fostering a feeling of grace and compassion for themselves and others.
Question 7: I feel more confused than when we started. What do I do now?
This accountability discussion is intended to be a jumping off point. Accountability is a hefty and often overwhelming subject. This is life long work. We encourage a spirit of engagement and invite everyone to explore the places where they still have questions. This conversation reflects the best thinking we have to date about accountability, and there is still much space to learn and grow. These skills, especially self-accountability, are a basic toolkit meant to expand and grow as your learning and exploration does. Talk to others interested in exploring these ideas, and always feel free to ask more questions.

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Accountability FAQ - Accountable Communities Consortium

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These are just some of the frequently asked questions when it comes to accountability. Many of these questions arose in the context of larger trainings, workshops and discussions about accountability and as such are built upon a basic foundation that accountability is taking responsibility for our choices and the consequences of those choices.

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Shannon Perez-Darby

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Centered Self-Accounability

By Shannon Perez-Darby*

Centered self-accountability requires getting to that grounded, rooted and balanced place from which to make observations about what you did so you can make decisions about what you will do in response to the situation, what you will take responsibility for and how. It's about asking yourself these questions:

We all want so badly to do it perfectly, to be people who will never mess up so that we would never have to be the ones who were wrong, we want people to apologize to us but we often struggle in being the ones who need to apologize. Doing the work of accountability is hard, it can be uncomfortable and scary to do the work of looking at yourself. To avoid this work people want to figure out how they can be so perfect that they'll never have to mess up and be the ones who have to apologize. They want the magic equation of accountability, where if they are always doing the "right" thing they will never have to be accountable. Perfectionism is a trap, overly focusing on perfection does not allow us do the grounded work of looking at our own actions and behaviors and figuring out what we did, was it aligned with our values and if not, what we are going to do about it. We don't need perfection, we need humility, practice and skills.

Centered accountability is more than just "being wrong" and apologizing for it, it's also proactively doing our work, it's the building blocks to connection with others, to joy and excitement, to building equitable relationships and to having the skills where violence and abuse are obsolete and where we all have built the conditions to support loving equitable relationships and communities.

Zero to 1000

When building our skills towards centered accountability it can sometimes help to start with what accountability isn't. Think about a scale from zero to 10. That scale is all of the ways, when you are grounded and clear, that accountability is possible and likely. First is what we will call "Zero" being at your zero is when you are taking zero responsibility for your actions and their impact. This can sound like "I don't know what you're talking about," "that has nothing to do with me," " you're blowing things out of proportion." "Zero" is all of the ways that we cannot or will not take responsibility for our actions and behaviors. This is what most people think of when they think of not being accountable.

Next we have "1,000." Remembering that our scale is 0-10, being at your 1,000 is taking far more than your fair share of responsibility. It's going above and beyond what is reasonable or even possible for you to be responsible for, it's taking 1000% of the responsibility. Being at "1,000" is another way of avoiding responsibility. It involves an overexaggeration of your role and it's impact. Being at your "1,000" often looks like, "Oh my god, I'm so soooo sorry. You must haaaate me, I'm a terrible person. I can't believe I was late again. You hate me don't you? Of course you hate me, I'm the worst."

This is not accountability. The "1,000" can be deceptive because it is filled with words like "I'm sorry" and "It's all my fault" but without a grounded and proportional sense of your actions and their impact.

When our loved ones say things like "I'm a terrible person, you must hate me" especially for something as common as being late or not doing the dishes, it is natural to respond by comforting them, by relieving them of the guilt of "being a terrible person." What the "1,000" does is keep the focus on the person doing the harm. It's a way to keep the focus on you and not the impact of your actions. Rarely do we live in just the "zero" or just the "1,000." It's common for people to jump back and forth between the two.; between shame, guilt and denial.

Finding Your Six

Returning to the 0-10 scale, we call this processes of grounded, personal accountability, finding your six. The number 6 is not arbitrary. If 10 is the most possible effort you can put in the six reminds us to be humbled and right-sized about where we are and what is possible. It's to remind us that perfection is not the goal or even a possibility. We do this to honor our imperfections, knowing that the perfect 10 is unlikely and even desirable. Centered accountability is not defending yourself or taking on more than your share of responsibility. Accountability means figuring out what you did, why you did it, and what you are going to do about it.

Finding people who can support you to "find your 6" and can support you in holding yourself accountable to your values is an essential part of centered accountability. Some people who are close to you might be very loving and supportive towards you but won't necessarily help you find your honest truth in a situation. It is tricky because often your friends can actually keep you bouncing from your "0" to your "1000" rather than helping you take responsibility for your part in the situation. Friends may hear you at your "1000" and want to save you from what they see as self-blame and self-deprecation by releasing you from all responsibility, thereby bringing you back to your "0." It's rare that a friend will say, "You know, you're not a terrible person, but you do have a pattern of doing [that thing] and you might want to look at it." It is helpful to have people in your life who are willing to challenge you, people who can help you identify when to let things go, and people who will be proud of you for doing something hard. Having many support people can be helpful because different people will bring different types of support. A broad support system can help counteract the myth that just one person should be able to do it all.

For more resources on how to locate the skills of centered self-accountability in your body check out Accountability Mapping's Centered Accountability course.

* This tool was built over many years in collaboration and relationship with a number of people including Danica Bornstein, DeAnn Alcantara Thompson and Connie Burk.

Centered Self-Accounability

By Shannon Perez-Darby*

Centered self-accountability requires getting to that grounded, rooted and balanced place from which to make observations about what you did so you can make decisions about what you will do in response to the situation, what you will take responsibility for and how. It's about asking yourself these questions:

We all want so badly to do it perfectly, to be people who will never mess up so that we would never have to be the ones who were wrong, we want people to apologize to us but we often struggle in being the ones who need to apologize. Doing the work of accountability is hard, it can be uncomfortable and scary to do the work of looking at yourself. To avoid this work people want to figure out how they can be so perfect that they'll never have to mess up and be the ones who have to apologize. They want the magic equation of accountability, where if they are always doing the "right" thing they will never have to be accountable. Perfectionism is a trap, overly focusing on perfection does not allow us do the grounded work of looking at our own actions and behaviors and figuring out what we did, was it aligned with our values and if not, what we are going to do about it. We don't need perfection, we need humility, practice and skills.

Centered accountability is more than just "being wrong" and apologizing for it, it's also proactively doing our work, it's the building blocks to connection with others, to joy and excitement, to building equitable relationships and to having the skills where violence and abuse are obsolete and where we all have built the conditions to support loving equitable relationships and communities.

Zero to 1000

When building our skills towards centered accountability it can sometimes help to start with what accountability isn't. Think about a scale from zero to 10. That scale is all of the ways, when you are grounded and clear, that accountability is possible and likely. First is what we will call "Zero" being at your zero is when you are taking zero responsibility for your actions and their impact. This can sound like "I don't know what you're talking about," "that has nothing to do with me," " you're blowing things out of proportion." "Zero" is all of the ways that we cannot or will not take responsibility for our actions and behaviors. This is what most people think of when they think of not being accountable.

Next we have "1,000." Remembering that our scale is 0-10, being at your 1,000 is taking far more than your fair share of responsibility. It's going above and beyond what is reasonable or even possible for you to be responsible for, it's taking 1000% of the responsibility. Being at "1,000" is another way of avoiding responsibility. It involves an overexaggeration of your role and it's impact. Being at your "1,000" often looks like, "Oh my god, I'm so soooo sorry. You must haaaate me, I'm a terrible person. I can't believe I was late again. You hate me don't you? Of course you hate me, I'm the worst."

This is not accountability. The "1,000" can be deceptive because it is filled with words like "I'm sorry" and "It's all my fault" but without a grounded and proportional sense of your actions and their impact.

When our loved ones say things like "I'm a terrible person, you must hate me" especially for something as common as being late or not doing the dishes, it is natural to respond by comforting them, by relieving them of the guilt of "being a terrible person." What the "1,000" does is keep the focus on the person doing the harm. It's a way to keep the focus on you and not the impact of your actions. Rarely do we live in just the "zero" or just the "1,000." It's common for people to jump back and forth between the two.; between shame, guilt and denial.

Finding Your Six

Returning to the 0-10 scale, we call this processes of grounded, personal accountability, finding your six. The number 6 is not arbitrary. If 10 is the most possible effort you can put in the six reminds us to be humbled and right-sized about where we are and what is possible. It's to remind us that perfection is not the goal or even a possibility. We do this to honor our imperfections, knowing that the perfect 10 is unlikely and even desirable. Centered accountability is not defending yourself or taking on more than your share of responsibility. Accountability means figuring out what you did, why you did it, and what you are going to do about it.

Finding people who can support you to "find your 6" and can support you in holding yourself accountable to your values is an essential part of centered accountability. Some people who are close to you might be very loving and supportive towards you but won't necessarily help you find your honest truth in a situation. It is tricky because often your friends can actually keep you bouncing from your "0" to your "1000" rather than helping you take responsibility for your part in the situation. Friends may hear you at your "1000" and want to save you from what they see as self-blame and self-deprecation by releasing you from all responsibility, thereby bringing you back to your "0." It's rare that a friend will say, "You know, you're not a terrible person, but you do have a pattern of doing [that thing] and you might want to look at it." It is helpful to have people in your life who are willing to challenge you, people who can help you identify when to let things go, and people who will be proud of you for doing something hard. Having many support people can be helpful because different people will bring different types of support. A broad support system can help counteract the myth that just one person should be able to do it all.

For more resources on how to locate the skills of centered self-accountability in your body check out Accountability Mapping's Centered Accountability course.

* This tool was built over many years in collaboration and relationship with a number of people including Danica Bornstein, DeAnn Alcantara Thompson and Connie Burk.

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Centered self-accountability requires getting to that grounded, rooted and balanced place from which to make observations about what you did so you can make decisions about what you will do in response to the situation, what you will take responsibility for and how.

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What is a Warm Line and What Should I Expect When I Call One?

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What is a Warm Line and What Should I Expect When I Call One?

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What is a Warm Line and What Should I Expect When I Call One?

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A warm line is an alternative to a crisis line that is run by “peers,” generally those who have had their own experiences of trauma that they are willing to speak of and acknowledge. Unlike a crisis line, a warm line operator is unlikely to call the police or have someone locked up if they talk abou…

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Episode 1: Managing a Mental Health Emergency (Project LETS)

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In Episode 1 of our suicide prevention video series, "Managing a Mental Health Emergency," volunteers from Project LETS define imminent risk & introduce some de-escalation skills-- because calling 911 should never be the default response.

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Episode 1: Managing a Mental Health Emergency

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We're so glad you found us. When you or someone close to you goes into crisis, it can be the scariest thing to ever happen. You don't know what to do, but it seems like someone's life might be at stake or they might get locked up, and everyone around is getting stressed and panicked. Most people have either been there themselves or know a friend who has been there. Someone's personality starts to make strange changes, they're not sleeping or sleeping all day, they lose touch with the people around them, they disappear into their room for days, they have wild energy and outlandish plans, they start to dwell on suicide and hopelessness, they stop eating or taking care of themselves, or they start taking risks and being reckless. They become a different person. They're in crisis.

This page offers an assortment of resources that may provide perspective, comfort, and/or tools that could be of assistance to people experiencing various sorts of tough times.

Here is a really useful set of ideas and strategies that's written for folks who are dealing with a mental health crisis Navigating Crisis:

Navigating Crisis (as a printable PDF in English)

Online Peer Support (Fireweed Facebook group and Drop-in Support Circles - These online spaces are meant to offer each other support within an anti-oppressive and social justice framework. It also comes with its own set of problems including issues of privacy and risk of being reported. Please respect that this space is closed to providers and family members and is designed for those with lived experience only.)

NAVIGATING CRISIS

SUICIDES

HOTLINES AND WARMLINES

PSYCHOSIS/ HEARING VOICES

PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS

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We're so glad you found us. When you or someone close to you goes into crisis, it can be the scariest thing to ever happen. You don't know what to do, but it seems like someone's life might be at stake or they might get locked up, and everyone around is getting stressed and panicked.

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EMERGENCY ACTION FOR PANIC ATTACKS

Helping Yourself

A panic attack is often a reaction to fear (either conscious or unconscious), and some of the strange physical reactions you experience during one are the result of your body reacting to this fear. Common catalysts of panic attacks include:

Anticipatory anxiety. You become mentally anxious over a past, traumatic event, and your body responds as if it will happen again right away. Catalysts can include photographs, conversations, or anything that triggers the bad memory.

Self-defeating visualization. You may not only picture yourself re-experiencing a traumatic event, but you may also fear losing control of a current situation and not being able to handle it. You interpret the situation as potentially dangerous, and your body secretes adrenaline to prepare for crisis.

Right away: Look around you. Find 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.

Understanding how your body and mind work during these episodes can help you develop a healthier response to frightening situations. Although there are innumerable variations, common reactions to panic include:

Your body goes on alert. Your brain sends a message to your body to protect it against the perceived danger, and your body prepares for the pseudo-emergency. For instance, the eyes may dilate to improve vision, your heart rate quickens to circulate blood faster to vital organs, breathing increases to get more oxygen to the circulating blood, and your muscles tense in case you have to move quickly.

Your mind remains stuck on fearful thoughts. Instead of reacting to either solve the problem or remove yourself from the situation (which you'd likely do in a real emergency), you get stuck on the perceived threat and remain unable to let go of the fear.

Your breathing becomes more rapid. Inhaled oxygen reacts with your cells to produce carbon dioxide, which is then exhaled. During a panic attack, breathing rates increase so your body can absorb oxygen more quickly in preparation for any necessary action. During rapid, heavy breathing (also called hyperventilation), your lungs exhale more carbon dioxide than your cells produce, causing the level of carbon dioxide in your blood and brain to fall. The results (which may include dizziness and heart palpitations) can cause some people to panic further, thereby increasing breathing even more.

Relax Your Breathing and Muscles

If you feel an attack coming on, simple breathing and relaxation techniques can help you feel more in control. But don't wait until you're having a panic attack to perfect the techniques. Practicing them twice a day for just 10 minutes at a time may make your panic attacks less frequent and easier to conquer.

Relax your breathing. Put one hand on your upper-chest, and the other over your diaphragm (where your rib cage meets your stomach).

Take in a slow, deep breath through your nose while counting to five. The hand on the chest should stay still, while the one over your diaphragm should raise with your breath. This is how you know the breath is deep enough.

When you reach the count of five, let the breath out slowly (through your nose) at the same rate. Concentrating on your hands and the counting will help focus you and calm you down. Continue these breaths until you feel relaxed.

Relax your muscles. Find a comfortable position to sit in (or lie down).

Close your eyes and begin to focus solely on your toes. Curl them under tightly for a count of five, squeezing the muscles together as hard as you can, then relax.

Next, concentrate on your feet. Contract all of their muscles tightly for a count of five, then relax.

Continue up your body, isolating each muscle group (calves, thighs, buttocks, stomach, chest, shoulders, neck, fingers, hands, and arms) all the way up to your face.

By the time you contract and relax your face muscles, you should feel much more calm.

If you're with someone currently having a panic attack:

1. Be calm

2. Be patient

3. Don't be condescending

4. Remind us that we're not crazy

5. Sit with us

6. Ask us to tighten and relax our muscles one by one

7. Remind us that we are breathing

8. Engage us in a discussion (if we can talk, then we can breathe)

9. If we are having trouble breathing, try getting us to exhale slowly

10. Or breathe through our nose

11. Or have us put our hands on our stomach to feel each breath

12. Ask us what needs to change in our environment in order for us to feel safe

13. Help us change it

14. Usually, just knowing that we have someone on our side willing to fight our scary monsters with us is enough to calm us down

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Emergency Action for Panic Attacks - Project LETS

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A panic attack is often a reaction to fear (either conscious or unconscious), and some of the strange physical reactions you experience during one are the result of your body reacting to this fear. Common catalysts of panic attacks include: Anticipatory anxiety.

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Will Hall on suicide feelings sub English

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Will Hall on suicide feelings sub English

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Crisis as an Opportunity for Growth and Change

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Crisis as an Opportunity for Growth and Change

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Crisis as an Opportunity for Growth and Change

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The important part of helping a peer or loved one is to understand that you are there to offer support, guidance, resources, and care - but it is up to them to decide how and when they access support, and what type of support to access.

Who determined the crisis? Many times, our own lack of skills, fears, internalized ableism & sanism can contribute to situations where we perceive to be a crisis. Be direct and transparent.

Create a sanctuary and help meet basic needs: Has this person slept? Eaten? Taken drugs or new medications? Has something happened recently in their life? What kind of environment will be supportive?

Honor resistance: If your friend or loved one does not want help, then be patient. Perhaps remind them of their options now and then, but try not to pressure them. If you are worried about their safety or that they are going to hurt themselves somehow, partner with them towards a collaborative response.

Find a method of communication that works: Don't force verbal communication or speaking.

POLICE & WELLNESS CHECKS:

Involuntary hospitalization has been shown to increase the risk of suicide.

Many community members who experience involuntary hospitalization view it as incarceration. Wellness checks and police involvement can be deadly, particularly for Black and Indigenous Disabled and Mad folks.

OTHER RESOURCES:

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The important part of helping a peer or loved one is to understand that you are there to offer support, guidance, resources, and care - but it is up to them to decide how and when they access support, and what type of support to access. Who determined the crisis?

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ALTERNATIVES TO SELF-HARM

Snap a rubber band around your wrist.

Find a thick rubber band and put it around your wrist. When you feel the need to cut snap the rubber band until the urge subsides.

Draw on yourself with sharpie/draw pretend wounds where you want to cut.

It's a physiological thing. Your mind sees red where you want to cut, and sometimes the urge goes away. Or, instead of cutting you can buy brand new sharpies with semi sharp edges and draw on the undersides of your arms. It can also be fun and artistic.

When you want to cut, go outside and distract yourself, or pick up a hobby.

If possible, go on a walk. It's a good idea to get some fresh air where these thought's don't seem to trap you. Exercise is a natural way of releasing endorphins, a similar reaction to harming oneself. Good hobbies to pick up are painting, or writing in a journal. You don't have to be good at it; nobody will be critiquing your work. It's a healthy way to express emotion, which is highly beneficial. Sit and draw, or read a book. Whatever you're comfortable with works!

A very simple one, blast music.

One of my various mottos: Headphones in, world out. Just get some music, somewhat cheerful preferably, and tune out the world. Embrace music, and embrace yourself. Feel free to dance like a hooligan as well.

For every cut you have, you have to wait one day to cut again.

Let's say you've cut 5 times. 5 cuts. Wait 5 days to cut again. See if you can do it. It's an alternative to driving yourself crazy by trying to stop cold turkey. Because, you're not stoppingcompletely. This is also a pact you can make with someone who desires you to stop SI. Or for burns/bruises etc, you can wait until it heals to 'X' point before doing it again.

Practice Mindfulness (Meditate):

Put on some light music or find a quiet place and try to clear your mind. Take deep breaths and try to control your heart beat. Try to observe everything that is going on around you in the moment. (You don't even have to sit in the stupid pretzel position!) If you're going to cry, then let the tears flow. This is your personal time to relax and do whatever you want. A piece of advice, it is better to focus on something that's NOT stress or trigger related.

Other Ideas:

Please keep in mind that unfortunately, not everything on this list will work for everyone.

So, if you try something and it doesn't work for you, don't get discouraged! Remember, sometimes the point of trying things is to prove they don't work. Some of these choices are complicated, and you might want to utilize the help of a therapist or trusted friend when undertaking them. Recovery is not a process that can be walked through alone, so don't be afraid to reach out for help.

Alternatives for when you're feeling angry or restless:

Alternatives that will give you a sensation (other than pain) without harming yourself:

Alternatives that will distract you or take up time:

Alternatives that are completely bizarre. At the least, you'll have a laugh:

Alternatives for when you're feeling guilty, sad, or lonely:

Alternatives for when you're feeling panicky or scared:

Alternatives that will hopefully make you think twice about harming yourself:

Alternatives that give the illusion of seeing something similar to blood:

Draw on yourself with a red pen or body paint, or go to a site such as this, where you 'cut' the screen (be aware that some users may find this triggering, so view with caution)

Cover yourself with plasters where you want to cut

Give yourself a henna or fake tattoo

Make "wounds" with makeup, like lipstick

Take a small bottle of liquid red food coloring and warm it slightly by dropping it into a cup of hot water for a few minutes. Uncap the bottle and press its tip against the place you want to cut. Draw the bottle in a cutting motion while squeezing it slightly to let the food color trickle out.

Draw on the areas you want to cut using ice that you've made by dropping six or seven drops of red food color into each of the ice-cube tray wells.

Paint yourself with red tempera paint.

'Cut' your skin with nail polish (it feels cold, but it's hard to get off)

Use red food colouring on your skin

Alternatives to help you sort through your feelings:

Books:

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Alternatives to Self-Harm - Project LETS

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Find a thick rubber band and put it around your wrist. When you feel the need to cut snap the rubber band until the urge subsides. It's a physiological thing. Your mind sees red where you want to cut, and sometimes the urge goes away.

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Intentional Peer Support Role Play - Self Injury

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Intentional Peer Support Role Play - Self Injury

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How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity

Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly.
So begins La Marr Jurelle Bruce's urgent provocation and poignant meditation on madness in black radical art. Bruce theorizes four overlapping meanings of madness: the lived experience of an unruly mind, the psychiatric category of serious mental illness, the emotional state also known as "rage," and any drastic deviation from psychosocial norms. With care and verve, he explores the mad in the literature of Amiri Baraka, Gayl Jones, and Ntozake Shange; in the jazz repertoires of Buddy Bolden, Sun Ra, and Charles Mingus; in the comedic performances of Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle; in the protest music of Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill, and Kendrick Lamar, and beyond.

These artists activate madness as content, form, aesthetic, strategy, philosophy, and energy in an enduring black radical tradition. Joining this tradition, Bruce mobilizes a set of interpretive practices, affective dispositions, political principles, and existential orientations that he calls "mad methodology." Ultimately, How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind is both a study and an act of critical, ethical, radical madness.

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How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity

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Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly. So begins La Marr Jurelle Bruce's urgent provocation and poignant meditation on madness in black radical art.

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We are looking for a Operations Manager

The Operations Manager is a leader and project manager in the areas of Operations, Safety & Digital Security, HR, and Finance with a talent for implementing sustainable and values-aligned practices that scale the impact of TEI's mission. This position will work closely with the Operations Director in developing new systems and improving existing ones, leveraging their strong technology and relational skills within an organization that is scaling and changing to meet the needs of this moment. The Operations Manager joins a dynamic, motivated team of creative and embodied practitioners collaborating virtually across the country. Read the full job description here.

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The Operations Manager is a leader and project manager in the areas of Operations, Safety & Digital Security, HR, and Finance with a talent for implementing sustainable and values-aligned practices that scale the impact of TEI's mission.

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Much of trauma healing is helping the nervous system become more "resilient." Rather than spend a few hours or even days drowning in a state of terror, tension and nervousness after getting triggered, doing one or more of these exercises can help the nervous system shift into a different state sooner.

Each time you do an activity or exercise like the ones below, this teaches the nervous system to be more flexible and rebound from activation sooner.

Take Your Nervous System to the Gym

After some type of physical injury that leaves some of your muscles weak or atrophied, you may need to go to physical therapy and exercise the muscles to strengthen them again. After trauma, the nervous system is completely out of whack and the resiliency muscles, so to speak, are very weak. Practicing resiliency exercises on a regular basis is like going to a "Nervous System Gym" and exercising the healthy functions of your nervous system until they become strong once again.

In fact, going to a Trauma Resiliency Model or Somatic Experiencing therapist is kind of like seeing a Nervous System Physical Therapist or Nervous System Personal Trainer. When you see a regular Physical Therapist or Personal Trainer, they will give you homework to do in the gym or at home before the next week's session. In the same way, if you go to therapy for trauma once a week, it's good to also practice these things on your own between sessions to get those muscles worked out enough to improve your functionality over time.

10 Resiliency Building Skills to Practice to Make Progress in Trauma Recovery

Feel your feet on the ground. Feel gravity. Feel the pressure of your body on what is supporting it. Feel the texture of objects with your fingers. Name details of what you touch, see, hear, smell and taste. Place your attention on sensations in the body and monitor them for a period of time. Describe them and notice when they change. Stay with yourself even if something very uncomfortable comes up; be like Velcro. Challenge yourself to stay present and in the moment.
3. Slowing / Titration
Deliberately slow down your emotions and disturbing body sensations, like slowing down the tempo of music. Separate out and work on only a small bit of the emotions or sensations and leave the rest for later, like taking only one bite of the pie.
4. Resourcing
Create an imaginary Safe Place, or recall a safe, calming, comforting experience you had in your life. Imagine you're there and notice what you feel. Know that you can always go to this place in your imagination if you need to calm yourself down.
5. Pendulation
Be deeply present with an area of your body feeling activation, such as terror, anger, panic, tension. Then move your attention to a place of neutrality or calm in your body. Very slowly go back and forth. Build your capacity to stay with the negative. Also build your capacity to feel positive things again and to stay with the positive.
6. Contact / Self-Holding Exercises
Put your hands on the parts of your body that feel difficult sensations (tension, discomfort). Notice how the hands feel when on the body. Notice how the body feels under the hands. Notice how the space in the body located between the hands feels.
7. Community
Socialize and participate in your community. Human connection builds resilience.
8. Presence
Practice placing your awareness on any emotion or sensation coming up inside you. Say towards it, "You are welcome here." Stay with it in a loving, compassionate way.
9. Self-Acceptance
Work on reducing "should" thoughts about yourself. Allow yourself the space and time for your body, emotions and mind to embrace and pass through the processes they need to.
10. Self-Empathy
Practice being gentle with yourself. Practice self-empathy.
***

Recently, I created an online store for my blog (yay!).

Every project like this is a huge ordeal with PTSD and takes forever due to the limited energy, frequent down time to contend with symptoms, dealing with states of anxiety and panic, getting triggered, physical issues (body pains, stress related health problems, injury related issues and panicking about them) and sheer exhaustion - but I finally got it done 🙂 🙂 🙂

The first seven items in the above list of resiliency building skills are also part of an art print I created for my online store. It's kind of challenging to take the subject of trauma and make wall art and posters but the process is calming in a way so I've created a handful so far:

The above descriptions are very simple. The lived experience, however, of working with these internal states is actually more complex. Here is a more in-depth explanation of the above skills (and a few more skills):

Trauma Resiliency Model Teaches 9 Skills:

Skill #1 Tracking

Tracking involves placing awareness / presence on your sensations and finding words to describe them that are part of the language of sensation rather than the language of emotion or thought (such as "bubbling and tingling" as opposed to "happy and excited"). As these internal sensations shift and change, you continue to watch and be with them as witness, describing the changes as they happen. Tracking is an important skill to learn because tracking the sensations happening inside oneself is used while doing every other skill of TRM.

"Tracking" of TRM is very similar to the "Felt Sense" of Somatic Experiencing and Focusing of the International Focusing Institute.

Skill #2 Resourcing

The term Resourcing is very broad and pretty much all self-therapy somatic exercises act as Resources.

"Resourcing" from TRM specifically is a technique in which you first briefly focus on naming the sensations you are experiencing related with being dysregulated (highly stressed and amped up or shut down and checked out). Then you change focus and spend a little time thinking of a good resource for yourself. The resource should be anything that, when you experience it within your active imagination, brings forth in your body a better state (even just a little better will work) than the challenging state you have been stuck in. So, the resource brings about either "neutral" or "positive" sensations. This stretches your system, helping it to become more flexible and less fixed and stuck in one state. This stretching creates resiliency.

I am most familiar with the imaginary Safe Place and a memory of a settling experience, but there are many possible things you can use for this including: The moment any kind of danger or stressor went away and safety was restored, the moment help arrived, an object like a special possession, a pet, a person like a friend or relative, a special place like a park or room, an imaginary figure like a wizard, a mythical or literary character, an imaginary setting, a life experience, or an inner strength you possess like wisdom, open-heartedness, strength or determination.

When searching for a resource, it's good to allow your mind to kind of free associate without censorship and see what comes up, and just speak about whatever happens to be there even if it doesn't seem like a resource. Even if it feels too chaotic to find anything, mention whatever is there. The mind may be presenting something that has some resource in it and you just have to start talking about it to realize there is one tiny moment or some object that the body feels settled by remembering.

I think it's nice that a resource doesn't have to be positive but can be neutral. It can be such simple things like: a feeling of relief upon arriving home safe from driving, getting a moment to rest like the first moment in bed, a neutral feeling like sitting watching ducks on water, feeling settled when hanging out with a friend, a still feeling when looking at trees or plants, or just a basically OK feeling about life when talking on the phone or playing a game or brushing your hair or finding a nice sale item or just opening up your favorite snack.

Note that if you bring up a resource that's too positive for you to handle at the moment, such as the idea of winning the lottery or anything that would overwhelm you, this is called "over-resourcing," and can cause dysregulation/ the inability to assimilate or "grok." (just something to be aware of).

Bringing up a memory from the past as a resource is actually one of the more complicated skills to learn because some memories are huge multi-faceted collections of both positive and negative things. When a "split resource" like this comes up, the TRM guide will help hone in on the most resourceful aspects of the memory and contain the others to potentially work on later if needed (without repressing them). Because of this complexity, resourcing using a memory of a past event is best learned with some guidance from someone experienced in the technique.

So, back to the skill: When you settle on a resource, then you imagine being in that place and time and deepen your body's experience of it. You name many details about the experience, such as weather, colors, names of people, textures, sounds and actions you took, which help to bring it into your body more and more. It takes a full 20 seconds of focusing into the felt experience of the internal sensations brought up in the resourced or resilient state for the nervous system to "reset" itself.

The goal of resourcing is to briefly open up the negative responses and then reset the nervous system by deepening the more resourced neural pathways. Simply doing this in sequence - noticing the stress and then immediately bringing the resourced state online - demonstrates to the nervous system a new direction to take, new pathways to travel, that it had not had access to when stuck in stress. Once it resets it also brings online parts of the higher brain that were inaccessible while stressed.

Everything about this resourcing process - from the greater presence placed around the stressful sensations prior to invoking the resource, to the new neural pathways brought online by deeply experiencing all the sensations of the resource as well as all the higher parts of the brain coming alive and accessible - actually change the internal stance or response to the original stressful situation that was causing trouble. As the brain shifts and develops resiliency in neural pathways, perceptions and higher cognition/neocortex access, this slowly creates more options.

The last step of this skill is noticing this change: you describe what has changed about how your body responds to the stressful situation you had focused on in the beginning.

(This is optional) You can also pick 3 details that represent the experience of your resource best and memorize them. When you are stressed. you may experiment with bringing the 3 details back to mind and see if you can reset your nervous system this way.

Note that it's important not to unconsciously begin to invoke resources in order to try to escape, deny or gloss over bad things rather than to retrain neural pathways. It's easy to try to use positive things to repress negative things if this has already been a coping mechanism.

Skill #3: Grounding

Grounding includes processes to deepen your felt sense connection to the earth, gravity, your body, your sense of weight, location, place and 5 senses.

Skill #4: Gesturing

Gesturing is a process of bringing awareness to spontaneous gestures/movements that are self-soothing in order to use them consciously and deliberately to reduce activation.

Skill #5: Help Now!

The skills taught for Help Now! are quick, simple and practical (and easy to remember) strategies to get back into the Resilient Zone if experiencing emergency, extreme or very stuck states in which you find yourself completely overwhelmed and unable to get out of the trauma vortex. These emergency states include such things as: panic attack, meltdown, shock, "losing it," going off the deep end, mental breakdown (due to trauma), utter paralysis, completely zoned out. (Article on Help Now Skills)

Skill #6: Shift and Stay

Shift and Stay involves shifting into the Resilient Zone and challenging yourself to stay there. This is basically exercising a muscle that has gotten weak during the extreme stress of PTSD - the muscle being the capacity to remain in your Resilient Zone.

The 6 skills above are taught to the general public in Community Resiliency Training(CRM). The next 3 Skills are only part of TRM:

Skill #7 Titration

Slowing down and taking small bites of emotions and bodily sensations creates resiliency - also part of SE. Article on Titration

Skill #8 Pendulation

Gently guiding the nervous system to remember its natural process of going between being settled/calm alert (parasympathetic) and being activated (sympathetic). Pendulation is a technique to help the nervous system become more flexible, and to restore its natural rhythm and flow after it has been badly injured/disabled/harmed by trauma, Pendulation creates a little bit more resiliency within the nervous system and brain every time it is used. - also part of SE. Visit the Pendulation Category.

Skill #9 Completion of Survival Responses

This involves allowing the energies of flight (running jumping, walking) and fight (pushing away, holding off, fighting) that were never able to express themselves during the trauma work their way out of the body tissues within a safe space held by a therapist. - also part of SE

I added in these Skills as well:

Contact/Self-Holding Exercises I included Contact/Self-Holding Exercises from Somatic Experiencing in my list because of how much those exercises have helped me. They are my emergency go-to exercises. Peter Levine refers to them as "Contact" exercises because they involve placing attention on areas where you make contact with your body using your hands.

Community I added Community because connecting with people, when ready and able, can be very healing for trauma recovery. There are numerous ways social engagement, with psychologically safe (accepting, non-judgmental, present) people, bring a person out of activation/survival and stimulate other parts of the nervous system (polyvagal theory covers this thoroughly).

Presence, Self-Acceptance and Self-Empathy are all positive postures to take towards one's own process of recovery. Recovery is a real process that needs to take place. Recovery really can be something you need to make some extra time for. It can cause limitations in life for a while. Sometimes it's hard for me to accept the reality of the needs of the recovery process, like time, rest, therapy, relaxation exercises, so many things! - but I think accepting that this is part of my life right now will help me make more progress with it. Acceptance and Empathy are the exact opposite of patterns of abuse that may have gone on for years. Therefore, self-acceptance and self-empathy comprise a huge stretch internally. Anytime they are practiced, this contributes to more inner resiliency.

Actually, if a therapist can train their client (or one can train themselves through self-therapy techniques) to maintain this stance of nonjudgement, self-acceptance and even appreciation for one's own body's capability to respond to trauma in protective ways - even if this is now causing problems - this actually does many things to promote healing. Here is a quote on the importance of a trauma survivor experiencing psychologically safe environments and then learning how to make their internal environment safe as well:

"...if we are able to create safe environments,' starting with clinicians who make us feel respected and safe, 'we have access to neural circuits that enable us to be social, to learn, and to feel good.'

"Once the professionals accept reality, next traumatees can start to respect themselves, and stop judging and evaluating themselves negatively - usually for the first time since the trauma hit them.

"That creates a 'mammal to mammal' social engagement state inside the traumatized person, where their internal voices are kind and compassionate to them, rather than self-condemning as is the norm in traumatees." The quote is from the article Stephen Porges: Social Engagement Heals

The iChill Ap.

You can learn resiliency by practicing the first 6 Skills of TRM using the iChill ap.

They are described in detail here: iChill Ap 6 Skills

I just tried out the iChill ap and here are my impressions:
My Review of iChill:
In the iChill ap for Android there are 4 Skills - Tracking, Resourcing, Grounding and Shift & Stay (perhaps the iPhone/iPad ap has all 6 I'm not sure).

I found the ap very good as a way to learn the skills but didn't find it quite as useful as a way to practice them.

For Tracking, Resourcing and Shift and Stay, rather than just starting the exercise when you click on the skill, the narrator gives a bunch of preamble that I would rather not have to wait through each time I want to practice the skill. It would be nice if they had two buttons: "Learn all about how to do (Skill)" and "Practice (Skill)," rather than have them both mixed together.

I do think that iChill is a great way to initially learn the skills because you're getting the lesson narrated to you rather than reading it yourself. This makes it easier to concentrate on doing the exercise.

And one skill - the Grounding Skill - begins very soon without much preamble and can therefore be used to practice whenever you feel you need to ground.

In conclusion, I really like the fact that the iChill ap makes these resiliency building exercises available for anyone to learn for free. The iChill ap for Android can be used to learn Tracking, Resourcing, Shift&Stay and Grounding.

***

Here are another 2 prints I designed that have the Resilience building reminders:

I actually took the photo of the stream in this image 🙂

__________________

Heidi Hanson is an artist and writer in Asheville, North Carolina currently working on an illustrated book chronicling her journey healing from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

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10 Resiliency Building Skills to Practice to Make Progress in Trauma Recovery - The Art of Healing Trauma

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Much of trauma healing is helping the nervous system become more "resilient." Rather than spend a few hours or even days drowning in a state of terror, tension and nervousness after getting triggered, doing one or more of these exercises can help the nervous system shift into a different state sooner.

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How Magic Helps Me Live With Pain and Trauma

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How Magic Helps Me Live With Pain and Trauma

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I will do the best with what I've been given.

I love my cane, but I rarely hold onto it without rage. I was naive and nervous the day I bought it, the cheapest one at the drugstore. I was excited to finally do this - I'd needed a cane for a long time, but resisted finding one, my feelings all tangled up with internalized ableism and fears about pain (will...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Magic Helps Me Live With Pain And Trauma

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I love my cane, but I rarely hold onto it without rage. I was naive and nervous the day I bought it, the cheapest one at the drugstore. I was excited to finally do this - I'd needed a cane for a long...