Transcript of our first audio post!

This is the introduction for our first audio post. It is Chelsea Mackey, PsyD.

Hi everyone! Welcome to growing through altered states. Thank you for listening. We cover topics related to altered states in mental health and all the ways that we get through these types of things. But most importantly we are discussing how to invite compassion and caring and connection back into our lives and into the lives of those who have gone through these experiences.

So today is our first audio post. And I thought it would really be great to start with an alternative look at the terms that we frequently hear in mental health. That main one that we are planning on addressing is the term psychosis.

Traditionally you'd mostly hear the term schizophrenia, but recently there's been more of a shift towards using psychosis. There's lots of reasons for that but hopefully the goal is it’s less stigmatizing. However, there are still so many people that that term of psychosis is highly charged with stigma or reminders of traumatic experiences either within the mental health field or in forced hospitalization situations. So I'm offering the idea of being really wary of what wording you use. Of course I’m not saying at all that we should avoid using clinical wording and if that's the right choice for you and the right situation please feel free. I just want people to be aware that the vocabulary that we pick can be very hurtful to people. It can be very harmful. So we just want to be aware of that.

I also wanted to make sure that we are able to look at the term recovery maybe in a different light. So for many people this phrase is a positive expression of hope that their discomfort is going to decrease. But for a lot of people it implies that they are not ok. That they are in an "unrecovered" state. That they need to change before they are able to be acceptable. So the main thing that I want to convey is we are actually looking towards health and healing and how to be in a place we want to be. How to look at quality of life maybe more than we are looking at “recovery.” Also there are a lot of individuals who do not agree that there is something about their life that they need to change. So often individuals who are going through an altered state may have a very spiritual belief or may have a very positive view of these changes in their life. We want to help remind that just because someone else views it in a negative way, maybe puts a label on it or a diagnosis on it, does not mean that individual themselves is in the wrong or is in need of change.

Part of what we want to invite with these audio recordings is to view these types of differences in a different way and to be able to continually connect with the compassion of what someone going through these types of experiences might be going through. Again I want to clarify when I talk about altered states I refer to us or we, and that's a purposeful choice. Because as humans we go through the experience of altered states in similar ways. We go through the situation called “psychosis" or delusional disorder or hallucinations in very similar styles. So we want to understand, as stress comes into our life, certain levels of that we may have those types of experiences. And often as the stress decreases and we work through our experience that can go away. Now again, traditionally it was not believed that things like schizophrenia could go away at a later point in someone's life and newer research shows that's not accurate. It absolutely can go away or can be very brief and not return. So again the goal here is to try to point out that what we thought we knew maybe about mental health related to altered states, especially the negative expectation, could be entirely inaccurate and we really want to invite a new fresh look into that information. That's kind of the point of our discussion or hopefully group of discussions.

So I really want to thank you for promoting compassion in altered states. I really want to invite people to be gentle to themselves and to any individuals in their life who maybe go through altered states. And just very nice to meet you and looking forward to all the discussions we will have. So again this is growing through altered states and please be gentle to yourselves. Take care.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to Growing Through Altered States.

This is a place to find additional information about addressing altered states in mental health with compassion and respect.

Please have a look around the website. In the Blog section you will find summaries of audio discussions that are posted online. There will soon be a link to the audio at the end of the blog. There are also prompts in the Journaling section that might be helpful. The Resource page has links to supports and information. Also we will be adding handouts soon. Thank you for joining our community.

We hope you find something helpful. Take care.