Tag Archives: Behavioral Health
The Therapist’s Mirror: How Lack of Self-Awareness Can Dysregulate Clients
A therapist who lacks the capacity for self-awareness and attunement may, at best, provide surface-level support, but they’re also likely to cause harm, especially to trauma survivors. Without the ability to co-regulate and deeply connect with their clients’ internal states, … Continue reading
From Trigger to Transformation: How Creative Acts Can Shift the Nervous System’s Response
This spring, a patch of red sprouts emerged in my garden. To someone else, they might have looked intriguing or even beautiful. But for me, their appearance instantly triggered an unwanted body memory from childhood trauma. At that moment, my … Continue reading
Dear Doctor: I Have Lots of Therapists. Including You.
Your Presence Is the Treatment. Or the Harm. It is striking how many doctors, especially pain specialists, have doubly verified that I have a good therapist. Or a therapist. That I’m “in mental health care.” I understand why they ask. … Continue reading
The “Mental Illness” Frame Is the Problem. Interpersonal Neurobiology Changes Everything
The mental illness industry frames mental health in terms of individual pathology, diagnosis, and personal responsibility. It focuses on what’s wrong with a person: what disorder they might have, what cognitive distortions they carry, what behaviors need changing. It tends … Continue reading
The Most Predatory Systems in America
In America today, several systems are notoriously predatory because they extract resources–money, labor, health, or dignity–from people without providing safety, care, or fairness in return. These systems often target the most vulnerable while shielding those with wealth and power. Here … Continue reading
How SEIU F***** Over Trauma Survivors
Several years ago, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) put up a website saying that they were looking for stories from people who had been gaslit, threatened, and otherwise abused by Universal Health Services (UHS), America’s largest psychiatric hospital chain. … Continue reading
Standard Treatment Is Abuse: What ChristianaCare Taught Me About Mental Health “Care”
It’s been seven years since a ChristianaCare physician lied, gaslit, and coerced me into agreeing to psychiatric hospitalization. Here, I share the grievance I filed with ChristianaCare’s Patient and Family Relations department two years later. As the system continued to … Continue reading
ChristianaCare Funneled Me to the Cuckoo’s Nest
On this day in 2018, I informed ChristianaCare hospital intern Dr. Crystal Kucuk through the patient portal that Lexapro she had prescribed a few weeks earlier, “makes me very drowsy and lethargic. When I take it in the morning, I … Continue reading
The False Claims Of Psychology
Psychology claims to be a science, but much of its methodology does not meet the rigor found in fields that study observable, measurable, and consistently reproducible phenomena. While psychology does use systematic methods, those methods often fail to account for … Continue reading