End the Madness of Mental Illness: Empower Yourself to Heal Depression and Bipolar Disorder for Good

Copyright © 2017 Marsha L. Hughes.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The information, ideas, and suggestions in this book are not intended as a substitute for professional advice. Before following any suggestions contained in this book, you should consult your personal physician or mental health professional. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising as a consequence of your use or application of any information or suggestions in this book.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-8036-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-8038-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-8037-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017907519

Balboa Press rev. date: 06/13/2017

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Lost in Fear / My Story

2 It’s All in the Quotes

Riptide!

3 The Proactive Patient

The Worst Fear

A Frightening Ride

A Good Patient?

A Waking Nightmare

4 A Gentle Mania

Enlightenment Energy or No Professionals Allowed!

Had I Called a Professional

At Summer’s End

A Godsend, a Lesson

Living Unconsciously

5 Smack-down! or A Not-So-Gentle Mania

A Warning Sign/a Compassionate Lesson

Living the Mind/Heart Split

6 Fear!

Hitting Rock Bottom—Life on the Unit

Medication Side Effects

Back From the Edge

7 Jen’s Story

Fear, the Cultural Norm

8 The Antidote to Fear

What is Energy Medicine?

9 A Step Beyond

The Last Stronghold of Fear

Hey, Wait a Minute …

10 A Rising of Convictions

11 Intuition, Your Link to the Power Within

Serenity, Now!

What Exactly is This Animal Called Intuition?

The Evidence is In

How to Recognize Intuition

Go With Your Flow

Meeting the System

12 The Basics of Empowerment

You Are an Expert

Are We Better Off?

A Time for Simplicity

The Role of Family/Friends

13 You, the DIY Therapist

Conventional Therapy

The Obedient Patient

How Do I Do This?

Helpful Hints for Self-Therapy / Enhancing Intuition

Asking for Guidance

Staying in the Moment

The Origin of Illness/The Third Choice

Crashing Into Allopathy

The Spiritual Aspect

Why Me? Why Now? / Impediments to Healing

You Can Feel Better—Now!

The Fearful Patient

A Family’s Pain/Fear or You Shouldn’t Feel That Way!

A Limit to Miracles?

14 A Theory is Born

Doing the Unthinkable

The Student Advantage

A Worsening Fear

Helplessness vs. Hope / Disease Theory vs. Energy Medicine Theory

Leaving Jen Behind

Wishful Thinking?

An Uphill Battle? Not for You

15 Navigating Emotional Pain

Honor Your Emotions

16 Synchronicity and Divine Intervention

In the Realm of Miracles

17 Basic Tenets of Energy Medicine

18 Steps to Healing

Conclusion

The Madness is Spreading

Wisdom is Beyond the Fear

Bibliography

To my wise, old souls

Ian Hughes

and

Alyx Hughes

and to

Kelsey Hughes

who teaches without words

Neurosis and psychosis are modes of expression for human beings who have lost courage.

        Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

…the only biochemical imbalances that we can identify with certainty in the brains of psychiatric patients are the ones produced by psychiatric treatment itself.

        Peter R. Breggin

I am still more frightened by the fearless power in the eyes of my fellow psychiatrists than by the powerless fear in the eyes of their patients.

        R. D. Laing

There is no stronger tenet in the orthodox creed than that it is better the patient should die under the old remedies than recover under homeopathic treatment.

        1871 New York Times editorial

        in reaction to the persecution of homeopaths

        by the District of Columbia Medical Society

Disclaimer

This book is not meant as a substitute for medical care by a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist. If having symptoms of mental illness, it is a crisis in need of evaluation and treatment as deemed necessary by a mental health professional. When having severe symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, suicidal or homicidal thoughts, seek emergency medical help immediately.

Never discontinue prescribed medication or conventional therapy without consulting your doctor, and never stop any medication abruptly as doing so may have serious consequences to your health. Antipsychotic medications in particular, when withdrawn abruptly, can cause severe withdrawal symptoms, such as medication-induced psychosis, that can be misinterpreted as worsening disease (see Toxic Psychiatry, by Dr. Peter R. Breggin.)

You do not need to discontinue any medications or conventional therapy to give self- empowerment a try.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T o Dr. Anton P. Salinski, the only brave soul to tackle my entire manuscript—with good cheer—and offer encouraging feedback and kind words—my first endorsement. It means more than I can tell you. You’re one of the good guys, and your students (me and my son included) are so fortunate to have learned from you in countless ways.

To my son, Ian Hughes, who arranged to have the manuscript read by Dr. Salinski, and continues to offer encouragement and valuable insights into the writing and promotion of this work. You are my heart and my courage.

To my daughter, Alyx Hughes, who has a true writer’s and artist’s soul, offering infinite patience and sound advice as I debated ad nauseum how best to solidify and convey these concepts. You are my boundaries and adventure—endlessly creative—an inspiration.

To my husband, Kevin Hughes, ever the voice of reason, who shouldered the many practical aspects of production, i.e., saving the manuscript from my misguided attempts at fixing conversion errors (I would probably still be at it!) as well as the great financial burden while I created. Thank you for never rolling your eyes in front of me!

To the incredibly brave, pioneering Christiane Northrup, M.D., whose book Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom I devoured like a mystery novel and which sparked it all, showing me the health and healing possible when considering my soul’s guidance. I am not the same, small person since diving into its pages (which I continue to do) and its illuminating effect on all aspects of my life, especially my mental illness crisis, cannot be calculated. Your wise, compassionate and at times amusing words freed me from cultural bias and the influence of fear; and introduced the miracle that is energy medicine—priceless gifts. You continue to inspire and help heal our world, our planet.

To Caroline Myss…for your unique perspective and combining of energy medicine with spirituality, shining through Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom—just incredible—and for all of your mind-opening, inspiring works (I’ve loved them all.) What a revelation: we can indeed trust our bodyminds and our soul’s guidance, and intuit what healing requires—there is no need to waste time in fear—just get to giving our bodyminds what they need to heal.

To Dr. Andrew Weil for your in-depth research, belief in the body’s healing system and the reverence you show the body’s wisdom—your lucky patients—and for writing it all down so I could be your patient too. Your enlightening history of allopathic medicine, simple home remedies and evidence of healing in inspiring patient testimonials are endlessly beneficial—the gift of confidence in our body’s healing potential—important reference works for everyone. You freed me from allopathic pitfalls and guided me to give my body—and then my mind—what it needs to heal.

To Dr. Peter Breggin, author of Toxic Psychiatry and Your Drug May be Your Problem (and many others) who proves every day that mental illness is a healable psychospiritual crisis; and tirelessly fights the good fight for all those most vulnerable. Who knows what physical treatments I might have suffered when hospitalized, if you had not led the charge to conquer psychosurgery. I quite simply owe you my life—my brain’s wholeness and health.

To Robert Whitaker, who wrote Anatomy of an Epidemic and Mad in America, a vital and impressively comprehensive history of the mad doctors so we need never live this history again, fearlessly suffering the rebukes of said doctors—the truth hurts and the truth heals. You have shown an inextinguishable light, and the world is fortunate to have your incredible investigative journalist’s mind, with the ability to collate so much detailed information into an entertaining and inspiring read—it took my breath.

To the incomparable body of work of Carl G. Jung—an incredible blessing with staggering breakthroughs—countless years ahead of his time—with the towering courage to delve directly into the psyche, showing us we could do it too; and for never wavering from the belief that healing from mental illness is possible.

And to my Higher Power, whose protection, guidance and strength is responsible for the entirety of this work; from the events of my life that all came together to present the necessary experience to learn these truths, to the skills and words to put it into readable form. I am more amazed every day by Your Grace that flows when I am simply present and open in gratitude. Thank you for this new day in mental health, and for the courage to simply trust and accept it for ourselves in peace.

INTRODUCTION

You Can Choose Healing

T his book is about discovery and new hope—hope of healing where we’ve never dreamed possible—healing from mental illness. (I know this is true because I personally healed from bipolar disorder through self-empowerment. I am at this writing symptom free for 11 years and medication free for 10 years, and know you can do this as well.) In these pages you will discover how to find the light, within, where there is no fear, and to focus there instead of on outer symptoms, diagnosis, frightening prognosis and physical treatments—the physical treatment paradigm dominating most of psychiatry today. You can simply choose to follow your light within (your soul’s wisdom) out of the darkness of mental illness and fear, into the light of healing. All lasting change that has been hard won in our culture, and so within us individually, began with a brave choice to reject fear and retaliation, and follow light. All the fighting in the world has not gained us lasting peace; our focus must change. No light burned brighter than that of Martin Luther King, Jr., who said: Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Our focus has been on disease and fear; we can choose to turn our powerful focus instead to forgiveness and healing. What we focus on becomes true for us. This book will challenge you to reject fear and love yourself enough to give healing a chance. You are infinitely worth it.

We patients are inspiring examples of courage to everyone as to how to defeat their own fears (and everyone has them about something, even those who seem so perfectly together) as mental illness is the worst fear known, and we chose to overcome it through recognition of, and focus on, the light within us. Healing is truly unlimited, even from mental illness.

There is much historical evidence for healing from mental illness as well. Investigative journalist Robert Whitaker’s comprehensive history of psychiatry, Mad in America, tells that the Quakers helped schizophrenic patients to heal using similar methods of self-empowerment over 150 years ago in this country. Why this was not embraced as a breakthrough for public health is due to economic and political factors, discussed later. For now, know for certain that though diagnosed with a mental illness, it is not a physical disease; it is not incurable; your brain is not defective or plagued by biochemical imbalances. After over 200 years of searching, psychiatry has never proven a physical cause for mental illness. (See psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin’s Toxic Psychiatry.) You too can choose to take positive steps to heal, as I did.

I also found healing difficult to imagine while immersed in the complication, fear and hopelessness of hospitalization in the mental health system, but discovered it has been done when looking to psychiatry’s history. There you can plainly see where we got off track in trying to explain and treat mental illness. Patients are not healing because they have been accepting physical diagnosis, and physical treatments, for an illness that is not physical, in an environment of overwhelming fear. This leaves the actual illness (in truth a temporary psychological/spiritual imbalance) essentially untreated, patients accepting the side effects and withdrawal effects of antipsychotic drugs and electroshock as symptoms of worsening disease, leading to further diagnoses and more physical treatment. This environment of overwhelming fear and learned helplessness, along with damaging treatments, are creating an endless cycle on the physical level, worsening and perpetuating an illness that is treatable, but just as the illness is not physical, effective treatment cannot be physical. (Psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin effectively treats patients every day for the gamut of symptoms without diagnosing, medicating or hospitalizing them; and he has never been attacked by a patient or had a patient commit suicide, as he offers them calm and compassion, hope and true help. They come away inwardly empowered, fear neutralized, with the tools to effectively move forward in their lives, leaving mental illness behind. I found I could choose to inwardly empower myself and heal.)

If not a physical disease, then what is mental illness? Mental illness is what Freud said it is, an illness originating in the psyche (the mind) that must be treated there. The great Carl G. Jung went far beyond Freud’s logic-based psychoanalysis with psychotherapy, incorporating the critical importance of the spiritual aspect of mental health. Today, psychiatrists such as Peter Breggin, and like-minded psychologists and therapists, help their patients to heal—medication and fear free—with compassionate (not logic-based) talk therapy, though they are greatly in the minority in their fields. In my case, once stabilized from crisis with hospitalization and medication (at the time I was not aware there were medication-free options) I found I could do my own inner work to empower myself and heal, and that is why I am writing this book. I know you can do the same, once you choose to calm and inwardly empower yourself; when you realize that true, lasting healing is possible; that it has been done before. Then, you will be able to reject the fear that has taken over your life and, not rushing the process, trust your own soul’s wisdom to guide you to healing, simply leaving physical treatments and mental illness behind. There is no need to convince psychiatry of your healing.

In the works of integrative doctor and best-selling author Andrew Weil (in regard to physical illness) you can see that healing on our own seems so foreign and frightening because conventional medicine, by its very nature, gives the definite impression that our bodies and minds are prone to disease, and that we are powerless to recover without complex, often invasive intervention by medical specialists, outer experts. Any damage from the treatments is attributed to disease or considered a necessary price. The mind and soul (our inner expert) are disregarded, not considered important, or relegated to psychiatry.

From an energy perspective, this medical environment of learned powerlessness and fear, leaving us looking desperately outside ourselves for experts to cure us, unconsciously strips much of the inner power needed to heal our illnesses, physical and mental. Luckily, no one can take away our power of choice, and we can always end the madness by choosing to turn within and trust our body’s innate healing ability, and our soul’s role in guiding us to healing. After all, how could we have survived as a species if we did not have a strong, instinctive healing capacity, something we are unknowingly thwarting? This does not, however, happen automatically. Though we are born with the potential to heal, we also have free will, and must first choose to take action to empower ourselves, to pull our power, our energy, back to us in the present time so that our full power is available for healing. (Our power or energy are one and the same; just different names for the life force that sustains and heals us.) With its full energy available in the present time, when our choices no longer stand in the way, when we deal effectively with the issues in which we’ve invested our energy under our awareness, our wise, capable bodymind has what it needs to heal, on its own time schedule. This will take time—but weeks or months, not years. Do not rush healing (that is part of the fear you are leaving behind) but give yourself the gift of listening to your soul and trusting your bodymind, immersing yourself in an environment of maximum energy, and so healing.

It is clear that we set healing in motion through choice, with due reverence for our bodymind’s healing ability, following our soul’s wisdom for the practical steps necessary to pull back more and more of our power, minute by minute, in the absence of fear. Emotions (especially negative ones) are not needless suffering, but valuable cues to where we’ve sent our energy—to past issues that need forgiving; to the future in worry; to seeking approval and experts to fix us; and always to fear. When we are no longer draining ourselves of energy; when we uncover and release the issues to which we have sent our energy, and when we pull energy back from fear to trust in ourselves, our bodymind can then heal as it should. I was desperately avoiding my emotional pain before my breakdown, hospitalization and diagnosis with Bipolar Disorder I with Psychotic Tendencies; the very emotions that, when I chose to reject fear and give them reverence, led to the issues I needed to deal with to release my energy. It was true that my whole life, through my choices, had become engulfed in fear, and I learned to be grateful instead for those emotions I once feared. A focus on gratitude has the power to pull us out of depression and onto a positive course of maximizing energy, where healing is the natural outcome, something we don’t need to force. Our bodyminds have been trying to get our attention through our emotions and then, eventually, by our symptoms; we just haven’t recognized our own soul and its capacity for guidance. Jung taught that we are so fearful because we have gotten completely away from our inborn spiritual nature, throwing it out with religion, in favor of logic alone. This leaves us without grounding and without guidance, when it is as close as our own soul—the light within. Logic can never save us—our logic or anyone else’s—only our souls can guide us to save ourselves, through fearless choice and positive action.

To see this possibility takes much courage, an open mind, and the willingness to consider evidence outside the strict bounds of conventional psychiatry (those focused on diagnosing and physical treatments) a profession that has, in practice, turned its back on the groundbreaking advancements of Freud and Jung in favor of medication and physical treatments alone. These treatments are not only ineffective, but extremely damaging to our delicate, incredibly intricate brains (also from Dr. Breggin’s Toxic Psychiatry.) You need only look to our dismal schizophrenia treatment outcomes in the West (Robert Whitaker’s Mad in America) to see the negative effects of this reversal of Freud. If Freud were here today, he would probably not be surprised, as even he had extreme difficulty convincing psychiatry that mental illness is not a physical disease with physical causes, but rather, as said, an illness originating in the psyche that must be treated in the psyche, not with crude, blunting physical treatments. Carl Jung took us light years beyond, with his compassionate, empowering and individualized psychotherapy, encompassing our true spiritual nature. Finding myself without hospitalization for a time, I struck out on my own, buoyed by the wisdom of Jung and Drs. Weil and Christiane Northrup, and the spiritual teachings of Caroline Myss, trusting my bodymind’s ability to heal, rejecting fear and my dire prognosis (expected progression of a disease) and following my soul’s guidance. Even in the hospital, once calming my logical mind, my soul’s wisdom came through, challenging me to reject fear, that all was well, and I finally chose to believe and act on it. My soul (inner wisdom) was there, perfectly fearless, the whole time; yours is there for you as well. It is comforting and empowering to know that you can never lose that which is an inborn part of you, only turn away from it in fear while unaware, which you need never do again.

While your particular circumstances and symptoms may be vastly different from mine, our fear is the same, draining our power in the same devastating way. This fear is understandable. A hospitalization in the mental health system is uniquely frightening and disempowering, something I will never forget. Once I began to heal, I was tempted to blame my doctor, but realized it was pointless and detrimental to my healing. After all, he was a kind, sincere man with full faith in his education, his medical system. He was just doing as he was taught. (I smiled to see a bust of Freud behind him on the bookcase!) He approached me with pure logic, simply observing my symptoms, and his thoughts, like mine at first, went straight to disease. It was logical that since I was acting so bizarrely, there must be something terribly wrong with my brain. I finally realized that since logic was only contributing to the fear and, as Jung taught, fear is never compatible with wisdom, I had to set logic aside for a time. I had to stop worrying into the future and regretting the past, and turn to my soul to find the answers I needed to move forward. Logic just couldn’t help me; it is not a source of guidance, and as said, only contributes to the fear. Nor could I lash out at my doctor for taking a purely physical approach, which would be a focus on negativity that would only reinforce the false belief that I was hopelessly diseased with no control over myself, a danger to everyone. I vowed instead to forgive him and his system, and focus on making positive choices for myself from then on, not seeking to prove anything to psychiatry. My healing had to be most important, the only focus of my vital energy going forward. Now that I have healed, my focus is on sharing what I learned so that others can choose to empower themselves and heal; and how to empower families and friends to reject their own fear and support their loved ones as they heal.

Although hospitalization was a harrowing experience, it was true that all was not lost. Even in my darkest hours, my soul had not given up on me, and my intuitive thought that healing was possible would not be silenced. I had a fundamental choice—stay powerless, deny personal responsibility in fear and just do what the doctor said, or trust my intuitive thoughts that this was not my only choice. While it was true that my mind was temporarily out of control, my intuitive thoughts were calm and positive, always coming through when I managed to calm my mind, leading me out of fear and illness when I finally chose to act on my inner wisdom. As said, I recognized this as guidance from my Higher Soul and my Higher Power, something of which logic simply isn’t capable. We cling to logic out of a need to control, yet another manifestation of fear. I had to trust that I was more than my body and my logical mind, something most of psychiatry and our culture does not think is important, but it speaks to empowerment. We simply cannot be empowered, and so cannot heal, without trust in our soul, our inner wisdom—the light within. All of us, as human beings, have a soul; it is our essence, what makes us alive. Our bodymind/soul (a soul not subject to fear or illness) while whole and interconnected, cannot override our free will, and so it must be our choice to do what healing requires. We must consciously choose to bring our mind back in line with our soul, and take action based on our soul’s wisdom. Otherwise, we fall easily into fear, where choices are then made for us. That is truly frightening; and completely unnecessary when we choose to take action to inwardly empower ourselves, to follow our light.

And so, psychiatry based in diagnosis, medication and other physical treatments (biopsychiatry, according to Dr. Breggin) is not your only option. You, too, can choose to consult a psychologist or psychiatrist who practices compassionate (not purely logic-based) psychotherapy, like Dr. Breggin, for the crisis; and/or calm your mind with a deep breathing exercise (see Chapter 12 for the steps of Andrew Weil’s Relaxing Breath) reject fearful thoughts and follow your own inner wisdom, empowering yourself to heal. Healing can only happen in the absence of fear. The basic question is whether you are willing to consider that Freud and Jung may have been right, and if you can venture to forego fear, and trust yourself long enough to give healing a try. To do this, you must also overcome the human tendency to fear blame, seeing the experiences of life as crime and punishment. Difficult experiences are not punishments, but part of a compassionate education, made necessary when we refuse to hear our inner wisdom any other way. If you can put aside dependence on logic for a time, and seek the guidance of your soul instead, healing will happen. Give yourself the great gift of this chance to leave mental illness behind for good. After all, there are no negative side effects to self-empowerment, you don’t need anyone’s approval, and it costs you nothing but time to try.

It may seem preferable to give over responsibility to conventional experts, as I did at first, and it might comfort you temporarily, but leaves you stuck in the cycle of remission/relapse—lifelong mental illness, and more physical treatments. On the other hand, a choice to accept personal responsibility and oversee your care (with or without a professional) a courageous stand, enhances the inner power you need to heal. Only you can make this choice, to step off the gerbil wheel of fear and incurable disease and turn toward trust and healing. When you do, you will see fear for what it is, a waste of your life, a drain of your talents, your personal power, your energy. A choice of fear is literally keeping you sick. This is what your wise soul has been attempting to tell you through the means of symptoms. When you turn away from fear and toward your soul, listening in reverence, when you take positive action to bring yourself back into balance, there will be no further need of symptoms. You will then be in a place to learn through awareness, staying out of fear and actively seeking (and acting on) your soul’s guidance, no longer needing to learn from harsh physical experience.

As said, our personal power is one and the same with our energy. The word energy is much maligned in our society. People automatically think of deluded individuals who focus on their chakras and avoid medical treatment until it is too late. But energy is a fact of our make-up as human beings, something conventional medicine and biopsychiatry tend to ignore, but we cannot heal without also considering it. Energy simply must be maximized in the present time for true healing to take place. We just don’t recognize its role when we heal, giving all the credit to the physical treatments received from the experts. However, enlightened physicians such as Andrew Weil and Christiane Northrup recognize its importance in healing physical illness, teaching their patients that the treatments alone never result in healing. (Dr. Christiane Northrup is a board-certified ob/gyn of broad scope and knowledge; an internationally known New York Times best-selling author and speaker; and co-founder of a progressive clinic, Women to Women, in Yarmouth, Maine.)

Our ancestors knew the importance of honoring their souls, and used every advantage to heal. We would be wise to look back and learn from them, and other cultures, like the ancient Chinese, whose treatments were founded in energy, rather than setting aside all of their knowledge as antiquated in favor of modern medicine. After all, as Andrew Weil states, conventional medicine has a dismal track record in mental illness and in viral, autoimmune and degenerative physical illnesses (heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc.). We have been accepting this in mental illness as we thought (under the teachings of biopsychiatry) we had no choice, but we always have a choice.

Had I known of Peter Breggin’s non-drug approach when suffering my mental illness crisis, I would not have agreed to take lithium or the antipsychotic drug. Once at the hospital, I would have instead asked my family to research Dr. Breggin’s website, www.breggin.com, to find a recommendation for a psychologist or psychiatrist who would treat me without starting me on psychiatric drugs, someone who would not have focused on diagnosing me, but assure me my brain was not diseased. This would have cut down on the fear considerably, a large part of calming my symptoms and turning my focus to healing. Dr. Breggin states in Toxic Psychiatry that even for a patient labeled schizophrenic (he does not attach diagnostic labels to his patients) it is much easier to help them with compassionate psychotherapy if they have not been medicated with psychiatric drugs, or psychologically crushed by a conventional inpatient experience. Although Breggin recognizes that patients are suffering from overwhelming helplessness and disordered thinking, this is not evidence of disease, but a need for compassion and calm, consistent talk therapy. They need real help—caring psychosocial approaches—not physical treatment. In hindsight, had I known that my repeated choices in fear and unawareness were the underlying culprits of my symptoms, and had I taken action to empower myself, the situation would not have devolved into a full-blown crisis in the first place.

Psychiatric drugs, electroshock and psychosurgery are not only not helpful, but extremely damaging to patients physically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually, the effects of which can sometimes be permanent. I feel extremely lucky to have come out of my experience with the conventional system relatively unscathed, and owe this to Dr. Breggin’s heroic championing of patients in the courts and before Congress. (Dr. Breggin will prescribe medication if patients want it, if they are already taking it, but advises them of the full risks of medications and other physical treatments, and encourages them to slowly wean the drugs with expert help. Unfortunately, some side effects after prolonged treatment can make complete withdrawal from the medications impossible.)

Note: If having acute (sudden, severe and/or life-threatening) symptoms of mental illness, it is a crisis in need of stabilizing by evaluation and treatment as deemed necessary by a mental health professional. When having severe symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, suicidal or homicidal thoughts, seek emergency medical help immediately. You do not need to discontinue medications or conventional therapy to give healing a try. If you choose to wean medications, be aware that after long term use, some of the effects of the drugs can be persistent or permanent and can mimic symptoms of mental illness crisis. For help in these cases, consult a psychologist or psychiatrist, such as Dr. Breggin, who fully believes in the effectiveness of drug-free, psychosocial approaches to psychiatric treatment.

Taking responsibility for your health can seem daunting, but you cannot move toward healing until you choose to empower yourself, to take action per your soul’s wisdom. A lack of personal power and the fear that fills that void is at the core of your illness. That is why physical treatments cannot keep symptoms at bay for long, and only work, Dr. Breggin tells us, by producing general brain dysfunction. They keep us in a holding pattern, fearing the next relapse, in an unending search for outside experts to save us, prey to medication side effects that make it seem as though our illness is getting worse. How can we expect to heal from this fearful, powerless place? Once you give in to fear, it literally consumes your power, your healing energy. Haven’t you had enough of all the fear? The worry of how bad your future might be? I found it exhausting, and totally unnecessary. Fear, after all, is the ultimate threat to health, physical and mental.

It is an energy investment in fear, in the extreme, that results in the vast majority of mental illness, where fear literally takes over, leaving us critically low on energy. This is called psychosis in conventional theory—random disease—but what if, as in my case, our consistent choices of fear, under our awareness, have led to our fate? No one chooses to be psychotic, but we do choose fear, investing our considerable energy in fear, which when continued long enough, leads to psychosis. Though it might be difficult to see right now, this is good news; this is the beginning of real hope, for with awareness we find that we always have a choice of where we direct our energy, and that choice can set us free. As we are the ones who sent our energy away from us into fear, it is also true that only we have the power to pull it back. Once the bodymind has sufficient energy in the present time, it is fully capable of healing, from anything. Dr. Weil tells us that there is evidence of healing from every (physical) illness, and every stage of illness, once our inner healing potential is unlocked. I simply applied this truth to mental illness.

No doctor and certainly no medication can maximize our energy for us. No one can heal for us. We must venture to trust our bodymind’s healing ability, our ability to recognize truth intuitively and our soul’s (inner) wisdom to keep fear at bay, realizing the truth in the statement that, right now, in this moment, all is well. We must not allow fear to continue to consume us, to drain our power/energy. As said, we must also not lose energy to blaming psychiatrists. They are simply practicing as they were taught, as most in the system have believed since Freud and Jung left the scene; and the fact that we, as a society (our doctors included) have been conditioned to believe more and more in the absolute necessity of medications and physical treatments. Again, after I healed I did not confront my doctor or try to change his mind. Ultimately it was enough for me to simply leave psychiatry behind. After all, my healing energy had more important work. I needed to focus on the positive to stay out of victimhood.

Facing these truths was, of course, not easy. As Gloria Steinem famously said, The truth will set you free, but first it’s going to piss you off. The trick, I found, was to cultivate a sense of humor, no matter how dire things got, and redirect the considerable energy invested in fear and anger to my healing. I had to be gentle with myself; it was alright that the humor was slow in coming. As you begin your healing course, just know that you will return to joy, to great meaning in your life, finally moving forward in trust, fear far behind you, grateful for the strength and wisdom gained from your experience, well worth the sting of taking responsibility now.

I can see, looking back, that all of this was possible for me because, as said, I went into my experience of mental illness fortified with the wisdom of Jung and Drs. Christiane Northrup and Andrew Weil and their faith that the bodymind can heal and, on Northrup’s recommendation, the insights of Caroline Myss. Myss is the pioneer of energy medicine in this country (a type of energy psychology). She teaches in Anatomy of the Spirit, and her many other works, that we are responsible for the creation of (our) health. The very act of taking responsibility empowers us, as we take action to free our energy for healing, healing that our bodymind then does by itself. We simply remove the obstacles we bring to healing, wisdom that early medical practitioners clearly embraced.

To reiterate, we are each responsible for the keeping and maximizing of our own energy and, so, the state of our health. This is an empowering realization once out of the influence of fear. Fear would have us believe that we are not capable of taking responsibility for our health, and that doing so puts the blame for illness on us. Dr. Northrup’s answer (from an interview by Jessica Ortner for the Tapping Summit): "You are