An insider exploration of Yoga and Nonduality, and the intersection of spirituality and experiences labeled psychosis or prodromal. Mental health integrates evidence from all disciplines and does not ignore inconvenient truth. Look within and find the direct path to your own truth.
I am now a clinical mental health student intern counselor at GETME: Gestalt / Experiential Therapy of Maine. I will see clients at GETME until May, 2021. I work with adult individuals and couples who reside in Maine. I receive regular extensive supervision and training as I learn the evidence-based treatment modality of Emotion-Focused Therapy. To explore working with me, contact my supervisor Tom Kubasik, LCPC at getme.org.
In the Hearing Voices Movement, people are experiencing profound and substantial recovery after experiences that usually get labeled psychosis in clinical settings. Experiences such as having visions, experiencing different realities, and hearing voices. It felt so important to bring awareness of this world-wide established and growing approach to wellness to clinicians, so I wrote an article specifically for the American Counseling Association that was published by them as an online exclusive last month and is available here.
Yes you read correctly. I have published a piece on male breastfeeding. I thank my wife for giving assent to publish such a peephole into our private home life conversation that inspired the writing. I wrote specifically for Rebelle Society a platform for “creatively maladjusted rebels with a cause.” My heart sobs regularly for so many treated by the mental health system by force or without information given regarding the consequences of treatment and alternatives to wellness. I sat on the edited article for many months. Then, while with my family at the nearby river on one of the hottest days of the summer I noticed a lone topless woman among the crowd enjoying the river. My 8-year-old daughter had been complaining for days about having to wear shirts when it was so hot, and yes she was quite right. It is just plain wrong that only males are privileged to go topless in public. It was time to do my miniscule part to confront sexism by airing the topic of male breastfeeding. If males bodies have the potential to grow breasts and produce milk, then why should one gender be expected to cover them and another not?
Check out the article here.
Update:
2-months after I published this piece in Rebelle Society, 2 related pieces were published in the New York Times.
First was an opinion piece by a professor at Stockholm University regarding if society is ready for the breastfeeding father and explores historical evidence of male breastfeeding that I had touched on available here.
Second, and part of my motivation for my writing to get information out that has been minimized is an article about an $8 billion jury award against Johnson & Johnson for a boy who grew breasts when given risperdal at 9 years of age available here.
What Johnson & Johnson has done to children is criminal and the article points out that in 2013 they settled for $2.2 billion in criminal and civil fines related to illegal marketing that has harmed children. Of course the fines do nothing to change criminal business practices as the article points out about $82 billion in revenue came in to Johnson & Johnson in 2018 alone.