Just Because
Ascension into Healing and Joy
As a licensed therapist, I realized that our models lacked accurate understanding, resulting in inappropriate treatment. Medication took over the body and the mind and became the way. It changed everything, from how we looked at ourselves and each other to how we saw health and healing. Luckily I went on after graduate school and trained in Holotropic Breathwork with Stan Grof, Core Energetics with John Pierrakos, and I also spent some time learning from Theun Mares. I eventually met Armand Bytton and continued to learn from him. These were terrific teachers for me. I was lucky to be with them. I credit myself for knowing who they were and doing what was necessary to remain in their presence!
However, my point in this blog is not so much about them or me. It is more about what our modern view of mental health lacks. I eventually left the world of Licensed Mental Health Therapy and became a Life Coach. I love being a life coach because it allows me the flexibility to be with and for my clients in new and unlimited ways.
Families and Grief
I am meeting more and more families torn apart by grief. They are someone, and sometimes, it is so wrenching for them or their family, and the system can not handle it without guidance and support. This can show up as someone being suicidal. The mental health field calls this “suicidal ideation” and “intention,” and both of these, together with a “plan,” will get you a pleasant stay in an institution. Once admitted, you will be medicated. You will stay until your medication “stabilizes” you. The team will make sure you have an adequate “support system” and will continue your medications. You are now included in the millions of mental health-diagnosed patients.
Healing Models and Mental Health
All of my life, I avoided that. I worked in that model, with psychiatry, etc., but stayed away from that. Now I realize that just because we do not have a place to “hold” you in your grief does not mean you have a mental illness. We have moved more and more to everyone having to work one or two jobs to maintain life at the standards we now believe we need. To leave work for a suicidal family member struggling with grief is not an option. We are not available for that kind of process. Places for people in need of a longer process of stabilizing from trauma, grief, and overwhelm are not available. Alternative treatments with pure plant medicines often lack the holding and duration needed in recovery. Deep heart rendering and wrenching processes take time. If they are available, they are not legal! But just because something is unavailable does not mean it doesn’t work or won’t work.
Schizophrenia and bi-polar Disorders
It is true; sometimes, there is schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Enough stress from many angles can trigger the illness to the surface. However, an experienced psychiatrist or mental health therapist has seen the real thing and knows exactly when it is present. It is unmistakable. However, since the medications will even out the emotional instability that comes with all kinds of issues, many get the diagnosis as the justification for the drug. The justification does not make it accurate. Instead, the disorder has morphed into instability. However, I believe instability happens in humans as they recalibrate and change. It is natural. In the world of technology, it is unnatural.
ANIMALS
I have not seen a schizophrenic animal, although I guess they may exist. My animals recalibrate all the time. If they are overly stressed, they become different. As the stress is corrected, they stabilize. My dog runs in circles when recalibrating and discharging excess energy. Since there is no frontal lobe involvement, she is very good at stabilizing herself. Sometimes, when we are changing, being deeply challenged, and stabilizing, we can look mentally ill! It takes experience and wisdom to know the difference.
The universe, GOD, this simulation, whatever this is, seems to support us when we fall into a new way of being. That is what grief is. It wrenches away from all we hold accurate and dear. It can be terrifying because we suddenly are open in ways we have possibly not experienced since birth. If you have had similar “splits” in your childhood, this may “trigger” unresolved splits again and overwhelm your energy body. It’s the ability to maintain itself ultimately. On the psychological level, this is experienced as symptoms of being overwhelmed and unable to maintain the status quo of school, work, and family. You may become a person without your filters. When your entire family is grieving, this is an overwhelming situation that brings about conflict, terror, and instability. Children go through this all of the time in their families, and then as adults, when hit with grief again, the whole process surfaces again, seeking a new, more robust way of being.
Stabilizing and RE Stabilizing
It is essential to realize grief questions everything we stand on and hold dear. It challenges us on levels beyond explanation. We lack villages where people are around and able to hold us at their fires and hearths while others around us are grieving, too. We all need a place to land. Those of us like myself who grew up in trauma and loss with no landing places have the most difficulty, it seems. However, we need to prepare better when we are in survival mode to hold ourselves and each other. We intuitively know this, and it scares us. We need support in a world that is increasingly separated and technology-oriented.
Do not accept a “mental health” designation before you are sure you want that road as a recovery road. Some other ways and methods do work. You can find your footing again, even in grief. I did, and it was worth it. For me, it was a seven-year process of complete recalibration. I did not accept a mental health diagnosis from anyone. I knew better, and it served me well. Maybe it took a bit longer, and I am not wealthy. I did not work as much. I had to search for a new way of living that cost a lot less. I became silent and straightforward for a few years. However, It worked, and I found a new way of being. Joy returned. My love for my work returned. I completely changed my way of life in a new home with animals and friends who could accept my change. We are all evolving, and grief is a way of its own and worth it.
Descent and Ascent
Do not be disheartened. Many have made the descent into that unknown, breaking and coming together again in a new way that is stronger and more fluid—a way of mastery. Reach out, but be careful to reach out to those with the time, energy, and attention to give to you as you recalibrate your life. You can do this; it is human, and we have been doing this from the beginning before technology and mental health were here.