Category: Self-Empowerment (Page 1 of 2)

Not nice people don’t get nicer just because it’ll help you heal.

November 8, 2023 / STS Admin

When someone doesn’t care about harming you they’ll care even less about apologizing for harming you. Waiting around for accountability and justice is as useless as rummaging through the shrapnel trying to piece together a bomb that’s already detonated long ago.

If ever a stronger reason exists for healing oneself, any reason conceived wouldn’t rival healing oneself from the abuse of an emotional bully. The bully erodes confidence, composure, success, joy, stability, identity, strength, and the list goes on and on and on. The list goes on even after removing the bully’s direct influence, and the list never lessens when the goal of treatment and recovery is requiring the bully understand they’re a bully; and accept they’re a bully; and recognize the harm they caused as a bully; and apologize for being a bully.

That’s most likely never going to happen. Yet Americans crave this. And Americans feel entitled to this. Americans have a cliche word for this:

Closure.

Time spent envisioning the relief and satisfaction of the bully being held accountable is time better spent learning to live with the personal trauma. How is it possible to fully heal without the bully owning their consequence? The answer is self-evident and right there.

It’s not possible to fully heal from the trauma of bullying.

In my own experience with a less-than-angelic wife who was supremely creative in her range and escalation of new ways to abuse, I spent many years and went through many therapists who perpetuated that goal of closure. This went as far as encouraging me to write the ex-wife a letter explaining what she did and how it affected me. Because this is empowering, I was told. Because this would help with closure.

Not so. What I often explained to therapists certain I needed to contact the ex-wife – effectively creating communication I purposely spent years actively ignoring and avoiding – was this was in no way empowering because I was just as happy leaving the abuse in the past and instead learn ways to regulate the emotional responses caused by being married to the Queen of the Netherworld. Here is your crown, your majesty. The last time I saw her she was at the Gates of Hell in the midst of a hostile takeover, and I’m better off letting that be the last memory of her to enter my life.

And writing a letter admitting to her she messed me up is just the sort of information she would revel in knowing about me. That her abuse was lasting and still affecting me would be like Christmas morning baked into a pumpkin spice muffin served upon my subjugated back while she sits high upon her throne built of the skulls of her abused and conquered enemies.

Maybe Christmas is the wrong holiday; she was moderately dyslexic and I happened across her “letter to Santa” one year that read, “Dear Santa, You are my Dark Lord. Guide me in my abusive whims, oh Most Unclean One.” In retrospect, perhaps Santa wasn’t the intended recipient.

So here’s the thing. Eventually, after many years, I broke ties with any therapist who promoted “closure.” That’s such an American conceit, really. Will any of the children of the Israel-Hamas War ever be afforded “closure” for the horrors they’ve lived? I’m confident in saying “not likely at all.”

Moving past therapists whose therapy was “closure centric” allowed me to find self-empowering treatments that built skills for me to live with the trauma and residual traumatic responses. I can accept the trauma of abuse but not be held paralyzed by the trauma of abuse.

For me, Dialectrical Behavioral Therapy was the skill set I was looking for.

For another series of articles I’ll be talking about my DBT course, how much it helped, and how it kicked my ass big time and solid because it dredged into the muck and horror of being married to the High Priestess of Agony Desired. DBT was an expedition into emotional realms unknown, and being emotionally, physically, and psychologically prepared for the course work was absolute and essential. If I’d entered DBT soon after the divorce, I would have been messed up in a whole new way. Being prepared for DBT took time and experience.

What did DBT do for me? I like to think of it as emotion regulation. By this my take is DBT built skills where I can feel the strong emotional trauma response while not allowing myself to be adversely affected by the ingrained trauma. My worst trauma response is “freezing” in the fight, flight, or freeze school of study. Through DBT I learned to live with the trauma of abuse and still be able to function in my life and in society.

I can have trauma but I don’t have to be ruled by it.

Okay, I’ve built up the ex-wife with allusions to her evil, and I’m not going to leave it hanging without an instance of her evil. And I use the word “evil” with purpose. So here goes:

A stipulation of the divorce was she and I had 50/50 custody of my wonderful son. She wanted full custody or even majority custody so she could move him out of New Mexico and away from me. She didn’t get this because the judge just didn’t like her at all. And my divorce attorney worked extra hard for me because in all her years as a divorce attorney she never truly hated an opposing party as much as she hated the ex-wife. So I had that going for me.

And how was she evil? When she dropped my son off for my 50 percent custody she was fond of saying, “I know how to push all your buttons and then you’ll kill yourself and then I’ll get full custody.”

You see? Evil. Never a doubt.

Reprinted with kind permission of Steve’s Thoughtcrimes.

I have bipolar. Is my life hard? Yes. Is my life harder than other people? Who cares?

November 3, 2023 / Steve Bringe

I have bipolar. Keeping my symptoms in check so I can function in society following the same rules of the same social contract we all agree to is really hard for me. Perhaps it’s harder for me than others who don’t have bipolar. I can’t determine this. I don’t live their life and don’t know their challenges.

What I do know is I’m responsible for my life and how I live my life. I’ll never disempower myself by believing in “their privilege” and “it’s not fair” and “it’s so much harder for me.” All of these things may be true and to that I say “So what?”

If I have fewer opportunities and have more challenges, that’s my life to contend with. What we all share is the social contract implicitly signed by taking part in community, society, and civilization. So I work hard to live up to that, because in the final run through only I have authority over me. Anything less is disempowering and I work too hard to let that happen.

Musing on the quality of suicidal thoughts over the years

October 10, 2023 / STS Admin

With bipolar depression, there’s a sooper sucky quality to suicidal thoughts. The harder I try to quiet the suicidal thoughts the more pronounced the suicidal thoughts become. Why is this?

The reason is easy. Because I’m actively thinking “Shut up, suicidal thoughts” I now have the original suicidal thoughts plus additional thoughts of thinking about suicidal thoughts. It’s doubling down on the suicidal thoughts creating an amplifying Suicidal Thoughts Feedback Loop. Sooper sucky.

This is along the lines of micro-epiphany after many rounds with suicidal thoughts over the years. Wisdom borne of bipolar misery. That’s kind of cool.

The University Interviews: Mental health peers to mental health providers.

October 7, 2023 / STS Admin

In the months to come, STS is interviewing a number of peers pursuing university degrees in the mental health field. The unique challenges of college education for peers are illustrated in their experiences and stories shared, including how existing accommodations must improve to ensure peer success in their studies.

It’s a growing community of mental health peers returning to college to become mental health providers. There is a built-in benefit in this trend: Mental health peers taking primacy in the mental health provider market results in ongoing successful treatment for peers. Peers treating peers just makes sense.

Encouraging enough peers to enter degree programs is difficult, though, because these programs continue to lack properly enforced scholastic accommodation for the unpredictable nature of symptomatic episodes. The “wash out” rate is significant because the structure of degree programs value benchmarks and expected completion scheduling over the individual needs of candidates.

While university accommodation services are more available, the parameters are so ill-defined by administration and repercussions for non-compliance by educators is so inadequate, scholastic accommodations for mental health peers are easier to ignore than honor.

A prime concern is mental health peers aren’t involved in developing scholastic accommodations. Having peers develop mental health degree program scholastic accommodations for successful completion and graduation is critical, and not as an abstract talking point for consideration, this is required right now and going forward.

Given a choice, peers choose providers who implicitly understand with a unique-to-peers lived-experience empathy. And we peers deserve more providers who are peers. The time is right to change things up. Let’s create an ongoing education environment to support mental peer students. The upcoming interviews have lots of excellent insight on just how to do this.

Conspiracy theorists and mental health peers share a strong similarity.

September 22, 2023 / STS Admin

Conspiracy theorists are upset that their views are dismissed and they thesmelves are marginalized. I say this is an excellent dynamic and I’ll tell you why, as a mental health peer advocate.

When I first started this peer advocacy thing – ten years ago – and began attending community behavioral health meetings in New Mexico, I was continuously “complimented” by others for “being so articulate… for a peer.” Yes, this is incredibly ignorant, biased, discriminatory, and just plain mean, and I could have gotten upset and demanded peers be treated with professional and basic human respect.

But I didn’t.

Why? Because as long as these minimizing well-wishers underestimate peers, we can get through all sorts of necessary change with little bureaucratic pushback. Being seen as intellectually deficient and less capable is a stigma worth capitalizing upon. So I did and I encourage fellow peer advocates to do the same.

The point is:

Let the world underestimate you for as long as they allow. Being called a conspiracy theorist is a gift to your ambitions and goals.

Now, my conspiracy theorist friends, a number of your ideas seem absolutely whack to me, but that’s a good thing. I take you seriously AND I think you’re nuts (at times). Folks like me are primed to accept your conclusions when we’re shown otherwise and logical proof. And to let you in on an observation, theorists friends. You’re more right that wrong, it just takes most of us longer to catch up.

So being tagged as a conspiracy theorist is a gift, not an insult. Let it ride. And, you can perpetuate their self-constructed myth even further with primely chosen words. For example:

Mental health community stakeholder: “Steve, you’re so articulate FOR A PEER.”

Me: “I’m sorry, I don’t know what half of those words mean.”

Just know going in, invariably the gift is rescinded when they figure you out. This gift to peers hasn’t been available to me for years. In fact, I’m seen as “too functional,” and because of this, mental health colleagues either didn’t recognize or simply ignored that I was falling into a seriously dangerous suicidal episode by volunteering to help the Albuquerque Police Department. But that’s a different tale for another time.

For now, always keep this chestnut cliche firm to the chest, ready at mind, and primed at the fore: Self-care, self-care, self-care! And this is a great number of articles for another time.

And again, let them underestimate you. It’s a great way to get things done with little resistance.

What was funny then is cringe-worthy now thanks to growth, evolution, and wisdom.

August 15, 2023 / STS Admin

Do people change over the course of a decade or more? Let’s explore this with a joke I wrote about recently deceased musician Amy Winehouse in 2011.

When this joke was posted to Facebook in 2011 I laughed myself silly at how clever a comic I was. At the time that iteration of myself had limited experience with co-occuring peers, as in no experience with co-occuring peers at all. I read the post now in 2023 and I cringe reflexively and morally scold myself.

It’s never too soon for a joke and someone being offended by my joke isn’t a mitigating control. What makes this cringe-worthy now is I’ve had many co-occuring friends in my life since 2011, many peers at odds with addiction and mental illness. Five years of presenting Laugh It Off to peers inpatient at Turquoise Lodge Hospital gifted me insight into what it’s like living with addiction, and, yes, while it’s excellent to laugh at the horrible experiences of being a peer (the crux of Laugh It Off, that laughing at the horrible stuff takes back the power the horrible stuff holds over us), it’s simply never acceptable to take joy in a peer losing their life to their addiction.

So I’m morally scolding myself through the lens presentism. This isn’t the same as apologizing for the Amy Winehouse joke because the notion “I should’ve known better back in 2011” holds no weight or relevance. It’s like Disney firing James Gunn (writer and director of Guardians of the Galaxy) for a rape joke he made on Twitter over a decade before. Because he should’ve known better as a younger version of himself that joke would be cringe-inducing a decade later. And he should’ve known he’d be working for Disney. And maybe this isn’t the best example because Disney had to eat racist Dumbo crow and hire Gunn back to do Guardians 3 under threat of boycott by the principle cast. And now Gunn is the head of the DC Cinematic Universe. So he came out great with opportunities never presented had Disney not fired him over a flippant decade old post.

Okay, backtracking out of the rabbit hole, the point to laser in on is people’s attitudes and beliefs evolve over their lifetime, and this is borne of life experiences reshaping bits and pieces of their worldview. And often upon retrospection – in my case here because Facebook Memories remember forever and every year remind me of this – I’ll revisit a prior version of myself and think, “Dude, it’s sure a good thing I don’t think like that anymore, and thank every star above I’ve grown as a person.”

In 2011, a celebrity succumbing to substance addiction didn’t register in any real way. It was an abstract to riff upon as something jokey and fun. Twelve years later in 2023, I’ve witnessed too many friends and their lives impacted by addiction to ever find mirth in their pain. Growth and evolution of attitudes and beliefs is the core of the human experience. Poking fun at addiction isn’t acceptable joke fodder for me any longer, because my life experiences over twelve years are now wisdom unavailable when Amy Winehouse lost her life to her addiction.

Proof positive: The majority of Hunter Biden memes fall flat with me. Good on you, Steve. Here’s a self-earned self-administered pat on the back. Keep up the good work and I’ll see you in twelve years for the next round of “Dude, wh

“Reasons to Live” by Feti’a

July 13, 2019 / STS Admin

Stars, especially shooting stars

That weightless second on a swing that makes you think you might actually fly

Warm baths

The smell of petrichor and wet concrete

Rainbows

Thunder storms

Waterfalls

Greenery

Fascinating things to learn from any/every subject

Laughing until it hurts

Running until I’m drenched in sweat

How my body feels after yoga

Cool textures

Songs that change my brain chemistry (aka: of the classical sort)

Writing

Creating weird worlds in my head

Silence

Deep breaths that fill my whole lungs

Fog over mountains or in valleys

The taste of the smell of rain

Feeling thankful

Colors, especially natural

Pleasant words like equidistant or bubbling or soliloquy

Protected: Stand Up To Stigma Podcast: The uncomfortable truth about MHRAC and APD

January 27, 2019 / STS Admin

Accomplishment is Measured in Effort

January 22, 2019 / STS Admin

Having been attending STS support groups (formerly DBSA Albuquerque) since October 14, 2010, I’ve heard said, “All I could do today was take a shower. I was exhausted. I feel like such a failure.”

I’ve heard similar words out of my own mouth, although mine was more akin to “All I could do today was make it halfway to the toilet from my bed, decided I wouldn’t have the strength to lift the toilet seat if traversing the entire remaining distance, so I moistened the carpeted floor over which I stood, and then my knees buckled from the exertion of urinating, never making it back to bed, and lightly moistened myself. Big win!”

Thing is, that was all the strength I had that day. Every. Last. Ounce. Of. Strength. Getting halfway to the bathroom took all the effort I had that day.

Contrast that with a few months on, and I’m training for a marathon. Truly. And that was the strength I had that day. Every. Last. Ounce. Of. Strength. Training for a marathon took all the effort I had that day.

Let’s say it together.

There’s a HUGE difference betwixt peeing on the floor (and collapsing into said puddle of pee) and training for a marathon.

And let’s have me counter immediately this fallacy.

Nothing a peer accomplishes is a “pathetic small thing” and a “monumental huge thing.”

Why, that makes no sense, says some. How can I make such a claim?

This is because, as a peer, I measure my accomplishments in terms of “effort.” If all the effort I have gets me halfway to the bathroom from the bed, it is EXACTLY equivalent of all the effort I have to train for a marathon. It’s the magnitude of the effort, not a qualitative “that is so much more than this” stigma.

Where I’m going to with this is to say to my fellow peers, pat yourself on the back, on the front, on the arse, wherever, because any accomplishment that expends all your effort for the day is HUGE!

HUGE!!!

I don’t beat myself up any longer, with “Geesh, I’m pathetic and weak. Why am I so exhausted?” I’m exhausted because I put every last bit of effort I have in me into whatever supposedly pathetic, weak task I accomplished. Some days, it’s making it to the toilet and back into bed. Some days, it’s pushing hard so I can beat a three hour finish time on the marathon.

Give yourself credit, peers. You didn’t ask for this life, with a brain condition that determines how your effort can be expended that day. Give yourself credit because you accomplished something amazing.

Self-disclosure. Before losing Clare, I felt I had unlimited reserves of effort. Nowadays, just making it to STS support group takes everything I have not to stay home and isolate instead.

Measure your deeds in the amount of effort you put into it. It’s that magnitude of effort that defines your accomplishment. Such as, reading through this entire article wondering if my meds are working properly. I know how much effort this takes. I’ve been told so very many times.