The language of “mental health” makes difficult talking about human experiences and just that – human experiences.

There’s a whole pile of clever-sounding language imposed on us – words and terms and ways of thinking we’re led to believe we’re supposed to use and indoctrinated into.
and it is everywhere.

Whether or not you believe that people have a thing, an “illness” that causes them to struggle is moot – because what the person experiences is still a human experience.

It’s time to drop the language that makes stuff we can all experience and difficult to talk about even more difficult to talk about.

Time to drop the language that’s more concerned with categorizing us than helping us express our pain and heal.

Time to drop the language that’s more concerned with allowing a few to tell themselves how right they are in diagnosing what’s wrong with us

Time to drop the language that is more concerned with the needs of those who manage huge administrative systems behind “healthcare”.

Time to drop the language that fragments us and disconnects us from our experiences and from each other.

Time to drop the language that would have us believe that we are all disordered.

Time to drop the language that dehumanizes those of us it us used by and those of us it is used against.

Time to use ordinary language that lets us just talk about what we are experiencing, and especially when we are struggling with finding words to talk about.

Making it hard to talk about makes it hard to talk about.
It’s time to make it easier.

It is,  after all, just weird shit that’s difficult to talk about.
And we all have some of that.

Time to get real.

We had a great time last evening in downtown Oshawa , southern Ontario, at the first gathering of a new Hearing Voices cafe hosted at very cool place Cocoa and Joe .
Southern Ontario now has two hearing Voices Cafes.

The hearing voices cafe is based in a very simple premise, that:

We can talk about difficult experiences
in ordinary ways
and in ordinary spaces.
So we do.