What's wrong?

As I have explained, my son did indeed manage to escape from psychiatric services. But the harm done to his sense of identity, to how he understands himself because mental health treatment conforms to a medical model, and because there is shame associated with ‘diagnosis’... The harm done, remains one more hurdle for him to jump.

It doesn’t take much imagination to feel how difficult it would be to regain confidence and trust enough in oneself, even the most mentally healthy of us, after life events have shaken the very foundations of our lives. Now imagine - how much harder with a ‘diagnosis’ and the memories of being sectioned, of being treated without one’s consent; the sound of doors locking, the muffled screaming, the atmosphere of anxiety and violence, and the drooling shuffling zombie walk of new-to-Risperidone patients. There is more, there is worse.

In truth, psychiatric services are probably more than happy to see ungrateful people go and I was so, so ungrateful! But their happiness can’t last. The law makes it impossible for them to feel OK about not medicating the people brought in for help. Medication signifies taking it seriously and doing something a court would understand as appropriate treatment. Because if something goes wrong, only acting appropriately regardless of the harm it might really be doing, can protect them from suffering the lot of the ‘service user’ their loss of status, job, money, relationships, friends, safety, their home, their car, their identity...

The other explanation runs like this:

“The indoctrination they have been through as trainees in the pseudoscience of psychiatry is obviously a huge part of the problem...And the enormity of the harm that they have then been involved in is too much for most human beings to face up to..”

So what is wrong, why on earth do good people do bad things?

Because for instance electro-convulsive ‘therapy’ is a bad thing - in any other situation, drugging someone and passing enough electricity through them to create convulsions - doesn’t bear thinking about!

And you could argue that any surgery, or other kinds of medical procedures sound as equally barbaric. But, no one forces you to have it done unless you have been diagnosed as mad. And no one argues about the effectiveness of surgery, no one says that ‘it works but we don’t understand why’.

I rest my case.

The mystery of the re-traumatisation I suffered because of therapy, is small beans comparted to the systematic electrocution that takes place everyday. But as I work in the very distant outskirts of the mental health world as a therapist, I can’t ignore the parallels, the resonances and the similarities. Likewise the phenomenon of grooming and indoctrination into cults. The question about what goes wrong is a burning question for me - it’s personal.

Visit The Black Box for the story of the re-traumatizing therapist.

OK, what causes people to behave like mindless idiots instead of accessing their hearts and souls, their beautiful radiant intelligence and compassion?

Is it ignorance - something lacking in the outer-world?

Are they unaware of their inner malicious nature - something lacking within themselves?

The PTM framework will be my lens for now. The PTM framework is the antidote to the psychiatric assessment. The PTM is about asking people what has happened, what did you have to do to survive, and how are you getting through this? Surely anyone who hasn’t experienced psychiatric services would think that these are the kinds of questions service user would be asked, right?

Wrong.

I am a fan of the PTM, it underpins every dialogue I have with a client. I don’t think that anything is wrong with anyone, and before you think perhaps I’ve never seen anyone who is mentally ill, I’m very aware of the reality of psychosis. I just can’t see how it isn’t obviously the effect of life, rather than the absence or effervescence of neuromodulators - or rather, neuromodulators are affected by life in all it’s teeming, twitching, bubbling chaotic glory, and terrible things happen that break us.

Following a conversation with a colleague who works with couples, about the PTM (power, threat and meaning framework) I realised that power dynamics become a whole mirror-world different and difficult when two people are involved. Both parties - I like the mediation term - see the other as having all the power, themselves as powerless and the other as the threat, themselves as threatened! The meanings both make from this generates anxiety, withdrawing, more anxiety, more withdrawing. The disorganised attachment tail-spin as the need for security is obliterated by fear followed by an even more powerful need for security, followed by terror, rage, and the need for security at any cost! Anyway, I was very aware, from the therapist’s many words, his many hours talking to me and at me, that he had a tendency to think of clients as having more power than himself. I actually thought that he was mad for thinking this way! Because I felt totally powerless...and I was a living, breathing client! In the light of that conversation about couples, I now see something more of the complexity.

But at the time, during my non-therapeutic therapy, it made no sense at all!

As an antidote I suggested to the traumatizing therapist that we talk about autonomy, and he linked that to the power of others, whilst I was thinking of autonomy as the power of oneself and the other to create win // win situations. But, there we go! He was fearful...and I was very curious about that. It felt like walking on egg shells so I didn’t ask, but I certainly listened intently - as he summoned Gottman’s four horsemen...(of the apocalypse).

Anyway, my point. What’s wrong has become, why do people do bad things and not stop it! The answer I’m holding onto right now is, it’s all about the third thing in the PTM equation. The meaning that individuals make of power and threat (the event) which is an effect of how their autonomic nervous system responds, and how practiced they are in recognising panic and letting it just do its thing. Unfortunately what actually happens is, the thinking brain goes offline, and people are practiced in appearing to be intelligent, coherent, functional when they really are not! Functional dissociation. Thinking has clearly been thrown out of the window when kind people are doing unkind things. Meanwhile, while the adrenaline fuelled sympathetic is heading into the dissociative dorsal vagal - and meanwhile the thinking part of the brain that does words and reality - is breaking up! Hit by a wave of cognitive dissonance because its version of reality is shattering.

With most of its resources down, the mind creates a functional reality based on unreality - in other words, the compelling explanation. Compelling explanations can be benign, usually they are not.

And for me, in my case?

The gaslighting husband followed by the re-traumatizing psychotherapist?

Ongoing work - especially that word, indoctrination!