I absolutely agree with all you’ve written here, Julie. Too many souls are desensitised and drugged into a non-existence. If we dare to feel and face the fears we can recognise that anxiety is a normal reaction, as feeling low or high, joyful or depressed can be. Thank you for pointing to the mammoth in the room, A necessary conversation.
So totally agree with you, and Trudi for that matter.
There is no profit to be made from healthy people. So they need you sick and dependant. There’s a pill, powder, potion, capsule for everything. And if it doesn’t work? Take a double dose or another, stronger one. The ‘new normal’.
We all have our fears, highs and lows. Subdueing them with a pill doesn’t help, facing them should become normal again.
Amazing read! And a genuine conversation that needs to be had more, and from the right angle! Which is this one. We need to ask ourselves why so many people are depressed and anxious these days. And when it is being normalized and the narrative circling around society is that it's ok to accept these "healing modalities" the larger question to ask is... What if we're all being manipulated to embrace our weaknesses and take the pill cure? Except... It's not a cure. It's a distraction from the real thing. I love this Julie, and how you write about feeling your feelings and journey of life. These feelings happen to us for a reason. As a guide to let us know that something is out of wack. If we can't feel that, we can't realize our system telling us that there is something going on that needs addressing. And the cycle continues. Thanks for putting this conversation out there, people need to see more types of stuff like this.
“These feelings happen to us for a reason. As a guide to let us know that something is out of wack. If we can't feel that, we can't realize our system telling us that there is something going on that needs addressing”
Yes l feel sad at everything happening in this place .It's going the brainwashing way .We are all just trying to stay alive and have a bit of comfort.You can't do it if you are, homeless and hungry on the streets.I know addiction generational in family.Build more rehabs methadone is addictive too.We had it easy in my youth .Jobs were there.This generation have it so hard.We weren't in world war 3.These governments do not care about people.Its money to help people have a better life thats needed now. Thanks Julie ray of hope 🕊️🦋🙏.
Indeed economic circumstances and housing, are both a lot more difficult to navigate without ready access to a sufficient income -( in the U.K. at least) ...-
for many people, including young people who are trying to create independent lives for themselves,...
than when myself and contemporaries went 'out into the big wide world...
(leaving our school days finally behind us, in 1984).
I just want to clarify that it was not the aim of this post to slate either meds or therapists. Both have their place and one needs to apply discernment there as there are also some highly addictive drugs with terrible side effects and some dangerous charlatans plying ‘therapy’. There are also some excellent ones.
That said, I believe both of these should be short - medium term and not used as a ‘forever-crutch’.
I want to company a friend of mine who is a well-known established hypnotist to the Lakota reservation in South Dakota. He was performing his hypnosis show for him if family weekend tribal event. It was well attended featuring many verbs advertising self-help and references for self improvement.
One of the things at the show was suicidal prevention and getting the word out. In fact it was overwhelming. My friend mentioned to me what he saw there that day was how under the guise of suicide protection, they were actually doing the opposite and promoting it through a mass type of hypnosis. I believe it! Suicide rates are very high among NAs.
It’s not so much as overuse of the word, it’s the tactics they use to get into the subconscious that a normal person wouldn’t notice. Plus they use sound waves and frequencies so much of it is silent.
If you can use tuning forks and sound healing to raise the vibrations of matter, you can also do the opposite- lower the frequencies!
I can attest to this. I’m a hypnotherapist and I know how powerful it can be.
A couple of months ago I saw this hypnotherapist on line who came highly recommended by a celebrity on Joe Rogan.
He was doing a free session.
I like to see other people work and learn from them.,
It was horrifying.
I kid you not, I felt suicidal after it.
I contacted him and told him what he was doing was wrong, I never heard back.
I figured he’d do light fluffy surface stuff but no he went deep into people traumas.
I gave him shit because when you do that, you have to be able to see the individual, you have to watch for reactions that can be detrimental, you have to be there for them to make sure they are ok.
But know that this can be done through media and gaming, as well.
Lots of those subliminal messages are silent or hard to detect.
I used to get so mad at how they normalized autism. Although the Good Doctor was an excellent show, I couldn’t watch it anymore.
It was everywhere how smart and special they are.
Fuck that!
How about the adult still in a diaper who can’t complete a sentence. The one who has to wear a helmet cause he bangs his head on the wall. The one who wails and screams in pain. The one who is malnourished because his gut is so fucked up he can’t hold food.
No you don’t see them.
Now they have these high function people n social media talking about their struggles with autism.
Hey buddy, there’s people who are non verbal and biting themselves!
Give ‘em a diagnosis, make them feel better now that they have one and put them on meds..
Autism and all the other mental disorders bring dished out are one dis order and it’s called poisoning!
Yes, my son is autistic It annoys me how it’s bigged up as a superpower. On the other hand though I don’t think it should be demonised either but people have to remember the many detrimental co-morbidities than can accompany the quirky stuff.
I also don’t think it’s as simple as putting everything down to vaxes either. The attacks on the human body are multifaceted and as well as medicines/jabs also involve stuff in our food and water supply and possibly from the sky too.
That’s right. I’m probably a little defensive because as a mum of an autistic kid it always gets blamed on vaxes. He was jabbed but I also remember what he was like before the jabs- exactly the same. That said I certainly won’t be giving him any more! And I do know people who have told me that jabs did injure their child.
Hi- you popped up on my feed and I just want to say that I am a mom (of a once suicidally depressed kid who is now a thriving adult). I’m also a therapist, former oncology nurse, yoga & nature lover, etc etc. Foremost beyond my titles, (what do they really say about the heart of us anyway?)- I am a highly feeling human.
I agree with ALOT of what you have shared here- about big Pharma, about the contriving & then mass marketing of what should be considered normal human emotion &/or life experiences, stages etc. into pathology; into something that needs a pill or a sit down.
I share a lot of your thoughts about global & cultural toxicity and isolation (which social media seems to have made worse IMO).
I also wanted to say that I appreciate you acknowledging nuance as a reply to one of your comments. So nice to see that happen so often here. One of the positives IMO, that distinguishes SS from other platforms.
While here, if I May- I also wanted to share that there are more therapists (me 🙋♀️) who do Not advocate for stuffing down your feelings.
In fact, I am all about the exact opposite; about nature; about respecting your own individual body & it’s miraculous neurobiology- how it’s wired to keep you safe & healthy as a default.
I’m also known to say “you are not broken so there is nothing to fix about you.”
I am about fostering real connection & partnership. Im a real human with my own messy, human life. I have experience & information to share that might help someone sure, but mostly I am a trusted witness; someone who sits “with;” and next to, not over or above.
And I’m not selling anything or trying to recruit clients when I share these things . Lol
Just felt called to share this, and one more thing-
while I left the medical model for a variety of reasons-I believe in the “both/and;”
For leaving space for nuance.
That said-Some people Do benefit greatly from meds. For some people, it has saved their lives. (or so they report)
I don’t personally prescribe them or recommend them. Not my role.
At the same time that I agree with you that drugs are pushed at us,
I am also grateful for those who need & benefit from them.
(Of course who’s to say what that would look like were our culture to shape up?)
✨Anyway, I appreciated your share. I think you have invited important dialogue.
I think what has become stigmatized is feeling a whole repertoire of human emotions, including grief.
Yes nuance and reasonable discussion goes a long way doesn’t it?
Certainly I agree that meds and therapies have a place, absolutely. I think when there is an industry attached to something, sadly greed can obscure the picture so I suppose a lot of it is about being mindful of that.
Sounds like you have come a long way on your journey and are able to give a lot back too. How wonderful you do. :)
Wow, you're right yet again many are kept comfortably numb with prescribed drugs, enrich the pharmaceutical companies and more are more likely to comply without question.
In my life I have been in a dark place that some would not make it out of and nearly did not one time. However I have never taken a table to deal with depression, I have addressed why I was depressed and overcame it. As like you I think pharmaceutical tablets merely mask depression and don't help you overcome the reason for depression.
I worked at Mind the mental health organisations for 5 years, teaching art. I loved that job but soon realised the majority of the people suffering with mental illness had tons of drugs and would embrace this state for many years or even a lifetime. Rather than identify the root cause and overcome it.
There again politics, schooling, authority, mainstream media, and so much that social conditions, so many worldviews, are blatantly mentally ill. So you are best able to balance yourself and create your own path in life, well that's what I do...
You are a living breathing example of taking back control, using your art and words to empower others by helping them to express their own feelings, by initiating difficult conversations. And your good lady is a fine example of using nature’s lot to its highest power. Love to both of you, Long may your wonderful vocation continue.x
Bravo. When I first started studying mental health, I was big into Anti-Psychiatry - Ronald Laing, Thomas Szasz, David Cooper, Wilhelm Reich - who saw psychosis or other “disorder” as a kind of emotional armour. A really quite sane response to an insane world. I was quite shocked that no other student nurses knew who I was talking about. Psychiatry, nursing and social work have only become more medicalised (or pharma driven) since then. You’re right, this whole “talk about it” stuff is very shallow and doesn’t address the growing crisis of how out of step we are with nature, with each other, with our own drives, plumbing and wiring (to be clear, I’m alluding to endocrinology and neurology there, not housing issues). Toxicity is the problem - in our institutions, our relationships, our food, water, pesticides, microplastics, electromagnetic radiation, air pollution, vaccines etc and it’s getting to the point where you’re not even allowed to talk about it. We’ve fucked around and we’re finding out.
And if you have a serious but temporary stressor they want to put you on long term meds that would not take effect until the crisis passed. White knuckles or dependency is the choice.
Thanks for this succinct summation of a sad industry. Unfortunately G.Ps work under a broken system of exhausting hours with hours of 15minute consults where it has become the norm to throw pills at people. It’s totally fucked and pressures them into mediocrity.
Do you follow Dr Roger McFillin on twitter? He's an American Clinical Psychologist who's very much against both 'labelling' and unnecessary drugs. Worth a look.
The whole 'let's focus on mental health' does my head in. My daughter's friends (late teens/ early 20s) are desperate to have a mental health label and loads of them have 'self-identified' (*snigger!*) after doing an online test which convinces them they have something wrong with them.
'Anxiety' is one of my pet peeves. One of the friends-let's call her Lucy - has 'anxiety': diagnosed by a doctor, my daughter tells me indignantly when I question it. Apparently, one of the reasons is because she suffers before public speaking. Now I taught for 15 years and rose to the lofty heights of Senior Management - but the nights before I had to lead a whole-school Assembly, I was lucky if I got 4 hrs sleep. Primarily because I was worried about making a twat of myself. Being nervous before public speaking is a fairly normal reaction, precisely for that reason.
Another reason why 'Lucy' REALLY has anxiety is because she had a hospital appointment recently and panicked, felt sick and didn't think she could go. This was because her dad had died 'suddenly & unexpectedly' at 52 (yes, another one!) 2 weeks earlier in the same hospital, so a totally reasonable response.
These kids are being taught that any negative emotion is a symptom of a mental health condition, when in reality it's simply the body's natural response to an adverse event.
Some great points there Gill. I’m not on Twitter anymore so only really see tweets we if people post them on other social media.
Yes I completely agree that many natural reactions are being marketed as symptoms of something else. Menopause is a classic example. A completely natural stage of a woman’s life now repackaged and medicalised.
I absolutely agree with all you’ve written here, Julie. Too many souls are desensitised and drugged into a non-existence. If we dare to feel and face the fears we can recognise that anxiety is a normal reaction, as feeling low or high, joyful or depressed can be. Thank you for pointing to the mammoth in the room, A necessary conversation.
The mental health industry is just that. An industry. I’d rather die feeling than a slave to its binding grey.
Instead, I pushback against the machine that spawned it.
So totally agree with you, and Trudi for that matter.
There is no profit to be made from healthy people. So they need you sick and dependant. There’s a pill, powder, potion, capsule for everything. And if it doesn’t work? Take a double dose or another, stronger one. The ‘new normal’.
We all have our fears, highs and lows. Subdueing them with a pill doesn’t help, facing them should become normal again.
Facing them with the gentle cushion of a supportive government and health industry IF we need them, not one that wants to keep us sick and dependent.
Exactly!
Amazing read! And a genuine conversation that needs to be had more, and from the right angle! Which is this one. We need to ask ourselves why so many people are depressed and anxious these days. And when it is being normalized and the narrative circling around society is that it's ok to accept these "healing modalities" the larger question to ask is... What if we're all being manipulated to embrace our weaknesses and take the pill cure? Except... It's not a cure. It's a distraction from the real thing. I love this Julie, and how you write about feeling your feelings and journey of life. These feelings happen to us for a reason. As a guide to let us know that something is out of wack. If we can't feel that, we can't realize our system telling us that there is something going on that needs addressing. And the cycle continues. Thanks for putting this conversation out there, people need to see more types of stuff like this.
“These feelings happen to us for a reason. As a guide to let us know that something is out of wack. If we can't feel that, we can't realize our system telling us that there is something going on that needs addressing”
Yes 🙌 💯 rhat
They are our compass, why blur it.
Thanks for this perceptive comment.
Excellent analogy
Thank you
Yes l feel sad at everything happening in this place .It's going the brainwashing way .We are all just trying to stay alive and have a bit of comfort.You can't do it if you are, homeless and hungry on the streets.I know addiction generational in family.Build more rehabs methadone is addictive too.We had it easy in my youth .Jobs were there.This generation have it so hard.We weren't in world war 3.These governments do not care about people.Its money to help people have a better life thats needed now. Thanks Julie ray of hope 🕊️🦋🙏.
There has always been depression, throughout the ages. The difference is, now it is seeded and propagated. They hope for growth.
No!!!!
Indeed economic circumstances and housing, are both a lot more difficult to navigate without ready access to a sufficient income -( in the U.K. at least) ...-
for many people, including young people who are trying to create independent lives for themselves,...
than when myself and contemporaries went 'out into the big wide world...
(leaving our school days finally behind us, in 1984).
👀👋🌎💫
I just want to clarify that it was not the aim of this post to slate either meds or therapists. Both have their place and one needs to apply discernment there as there are also some highly addictive drugs with terrible side effects and some dangerous charlatans plying ‘therapy’. There are also some excellent ones.
That said, I believe both of these should be short - medium term and not used as a ‘forever-crutch’.
I want to company a friend of mine who is a well-known established hypnotist to the Lakota reservation in South Dakota. He was performing his hypnosis show for him if family weekend tribal event. It was well attended featuring many verbs advertising self-help and references for self improvement.
One of the things at the show was suicidal prevention and getting the word out. In fact it was overwhelming. My friend mentioned to me what he saw there that day was how under the guise of suicide protection, they were actually doing the opposite and promoting it through a mass type of hypnosis. I believe it! Suicide rates are very high among NAs.
Yes I see this kind of thing a lot too. Overuse of the words has the opposite effect. Just horrible. We must protect our energy.
It’s not so much as overuse of the word, it’s the tactics they use to get into the subconscious that a normal person wouldn’t notice. Plus they use sound waves and frequencies so much of it is silent.
If you can use tuning forks and sound healing to raise the vibrations of matter, you can also do the opposite- lower the frequencies!
I can attest to this. I’m a hypnotherapist and I know how powerful it can be.
A couple of months ago I saw this hypnotherapist on line who came highly recommended by a celebrity on Joe Rogan.
He was doing a free session.
I like to see other people work and learn from them.,
It was horrifying.
I kid you not, I felt suicidal after it.
I contacted him and told him what he was doing was wrong, I never heard back.
I figured he’d do light fluffy surface stuff but no he went deep into people traumas.
I gave him shit because when you do that, you have to be able to see the individual, you have to watch for reactions that can be detrimental, you have to be there for them to make sure they are ok.
But know that this can be done through media and gaming, as well.
Lots of those subliminal messages are silent or hard to detect.
We have to protect our energy. Not all of those out there have good intentions sadly.
It’s like a hypnotic suggestion. Especially when there is no resolution offered.
Jesus, that stuff sounds like the Jonestown cool aid in Guyana, was it, like mass mesmerism. Not nice. Cultist in fact.
I used to get so mad at how they normalized autism. Although the Good Doctor was an excellent show, I couldn’t watch it anymore.
It was everywhere how smart and special they are.
Fuck that!
How about the adult still in a diaper who can’t complete a sentence. The one who has to wear a helmet cause he bangs his head on the wall. The one who wails and screams in pain. The one who is malnourished because his gut is so fucked up he can’t hold food.
No you don’t see them.
Now they have these high function people n social media talking about their struggles with autism.
Hey buddy, there’s people who are non verbal and biting themselves!
Give ‘em a diagnosis, make them feel better now that they have one and put them on meds..
Autism and all the other mental disorders bring dished out are one dis order and it’s called poisoning!
Yes, my son is autistic It annoys me how it’s bigged up as a superpower. On the other hand though I don’t think it should be demonised either but people have to remember the many detrimental co-morbidities than can accompany the quirky stuff.
I also don’t think it’s as simple as putting everything down to vaxes either. The attacks on the human body are multifaceted and as well as medicines/jabs also involve stuff in our food and water supply and possibly from the sky too.
I said poison. I didn’t say vaccines- it’s all poison.
That’s right. I’m probably a little defensive because as a mum of an autistic kid it always gets blamed on vaxes. He was jabbed but I also remember what he was like before the jabs- exactly the same. That said I certainly won’t be giving him any more! And I do know people who have told me that jabs did injure their child.
Hi- you popped up on my feed and I just want to say that I am a mom (of a once suicidally depressed kid who is now a thriving adult). I’m also a therapist, former oncology nurse, yoga & nature lover, etc etc. Foremost beyond my titles, (what do they really say about the heart of us anyway?)- I am a highly feeling human.
I agree with ALOT of what you have shared here- about big Pharma, about the contriving & then mass marketing of what should be considered normal human emotion &/or life experiences, stages etc. into pathology; into something that needs a pill or a sit down.
I share a lot of your thoughts about global & cultural toxicity and isolation (which social media seems to have made worse IMO).
I also wanted to say that I appreciate you acknowledging nuance as a reply to one of your comments. So nice to see that happen so often here. One of the positives IMO, that distinguishes SS from other platforms.
While here, if I May- I also wanted to share that there are more therapists (me 🙋♀️) who do Not advocate for stuffing down your feelings.
In fact, I am all about the exact opposite; about nature; about respecting your own individual body & it’s miraculous neurobiology- how it’s wired to keep you safe & healthy as a default.
I’m also known to say “you are not broken so there is nothing to fix about you.”
I am about fostering real connection & partnership. Im a real human with my own messy, human life. I have experience & information to share that might help someone sure, but mostly I am a trusted witness; someone who sits “with;” and next to, not over or above.
And I’m not selling anything or trying to recruit clients when I share these things . Lol
Just felt called to share this, and one more thing-
while I left the medical model for a variety of reasons-I believe in the “both/and;”
For leaving space for nuance.
That said-Some people Do benefit greatly from meds. For some people, it has saved their lives. (or so they report)
I don’t personally prescribe them or recommend them. Not my role.
At the same time that I agree with you that drugs are pushed at us,
I am also grateful for those who need & benefit from them.
(Of course who’s to say what that would look like were our culture to shape up?)
✨Anyway, I appreciated your share. I think you have invited important dialogue.
I think what has become stigmatized is feeling a whole repertoire of human emotions, including grief.
Thanks for allowing me to share some thoughts.
Yes nuance and reasonable discussion goes a long way doesn’t it?
Certainly I agree that meds and therapies have a place, absolutely. I think when there is an industry attached to something, sadly greed can obscure the picture so I suppose a lot of it is about being mindful of that.
Sounds like you have come a long way on your journey and are able to give a lot back too. How wonderful you do. :)
Indeed, yes to nuance and discussion.☺️ Greed does obscure. And power too.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts & for your kind feedback.
Wow, you're right yet again many are kept comfortably numb with prescribed drugs, enrich the pharmaceutical companies and more are more likely to comply without question.
In my life I have been in a dark place that some would not make it out of and nearly did not one time. However I have never taken a table to deal with depression, I have addressed why I was depressed and overcame it. As like you I think pharmaceutical tablets merely mask depression and don't help you overcome the reason for depression.
I worked at Mind the mental health organisations for 5 years, teaching art. I loved that job but soon realised the majority of the people suffering with mental illness had tons of drugs and would embrace this state for many years or even a lifetime. Rather than identify the root cause and overcome it.
There again politics, schooling, authority, mainstream media, and so much that social conditions, so many worldviews, are blatantly mentally ill. So you are best able to balance yourself and create your own path in life, well that's what I do...
You are a living breathing example of taking back control, using your art and words to empower others by helping them to express their own feelings, by initiating difficult conversations. And your good lady is a fine example of using nature’s lot to its highest power. Love to both of you, Long may your wonderful vocation continue.x
That is lovely of you to say Julie, thank you ... x
Bravo. When I first started studying mental health, I was big into Anti-Psychiatry - Ronald Laing, Thomas Szasz, David Cooper, Wilhelm Reich - who saw psychosis or other “disorder” as a kind of emotional armour. A really quite sane response to an insane world. I was quite shocked that no other student nurses knew who I was talking about. Psychiatry, nursing and social work have only become more medicalised (or pharma driven) since then. You’re right, this whole “talk about it” stuff is very shallow and doesn’t address the growing crisis of how out of step we are with nature, with each other, with our own drives, plumbing and wiring (to be clear, I’m alluding to endocrinology and neurology there, not housing issues). Toxicity is the problem - in our institutions, our relationships, our food, water, pesticides, microplastics, electromagnetic radiation, air pollution, vaccines etc and it’s getting to the point where you’re not even allowed to talk about it. We’ve fucked around and we’re finding out.
You nailed it in your post, Julie. I can't add to it. I totally agree with you.
Cheers. Stay sane 🤞
And if you have a serious but temporary stressor they want to put you on long term meds that would not take effect until the crisis passed. White knuckles or dependency is the choice.
When you see the long game for what it is, the stages become clearer.
Thank you.
Thanks for this succinct summation of a sad industry. Unfortunately G.Ps work under a broken system of exhausting hours with hours of 15minute consults where it has become the norm to throw pills at people. It’s totally fucked and pressures them into mediocrity.
Yes - yet another contributing factor. I completely agree. They are overworked and working in the confines of these same systems.
Do you follow Dr Roger McFillin on twitter? He's an American Clinical Psychologist who's very much against both 'labelling' and unnecessary drugs. Worth a look.
The whole 'let's focus on mental health' does my head in. My daughter's friends (late teens/ early 20s) are desperate to have a mental health label and loads of them have 'self-identified' (*snigger!*) after doing an online test which convinces them they have something wrong with them.
'Anxiety' is one of my pet peeves. One of the friends-let's call her Lucy - has 'anxiety': diagnosed by a doctor, my daughter tells me indignantly when I question it. Apparently, one of the reasons is because she suffers before public speaking. Now I taught for 15 years and rose to the lofty heights of Senior Management - but the nights before I had to lead a whole-school Assembly, I was lucky if I got 4 hrs sleep. Primarily because I was worried about making a twat of myself. Being nervous before public speaking is a fairly normal reaction, precisely for that reason.
Another reason why 'Lucy' REALLY has anxiety is because she had a hospital appointment recently and panicked, felt sick and didn't think she could go. This was because her dad had died 'suddenly & unexpectedly' at 52 (yes, another one!) 2 weeks earlier in the same hospital, so a totally reasonable response.
These kids are being taught that any negative emotion is a symptom of a mental health condition, when in reality it's simply the body's natural response to an adverse event.
Some great points there Gill. I’m not on Twitter anymore so only really see tweets we if people post them on other social media.
Yes I completely agree that many natural reactions are being marketed as symptoms of something else. Menopause is a classic example. A completely natural stage of a woman’s life now repackaged and medicalised.
What times we live in!
Oh yes, agree with the whole menopause thing as well.
Nice one 👍💪😺💯Well said.