I hear voices across the sea…
Asante sharing with us some ideas of what DECOLONIZEYOURMIND means to him…
DECOLONIZEYOURMIND is a project by MADx, a conversation in a circle around the question:
Q. What does DECOLONIZEYOURMIND mean to you ?
Join us to hear, listen to what others have to say…
Friday 13th October 2017
@ The 519, Church St, Toronto.
#decolonizeyourmind
For more information about MADx and this project…
https://madx.ca/2017/09/13/madx-decolonize-your-mind-fri-13th-oct-2017/
Website: www.MADx.ca
Twitter: @MADX_ca
Powerfully written piece by Glosswitch in The Independent’s VOICES column…
Nothing at all to add about the piece, since there is nothing I could possibly add.
I though add how some respond to such truth-speaking: if you venture into the below-the-line comments then you will find much evidence of how what Glosswitch says about the every-day injurious, casually-traumatising, dystrumpian world we create for all our young – but especially young women – to grow in is, sadly so very real; and also much evidence of how desperately these people too need room to grow and become aware of whatever dark shit lurks inside and us so we can each play our role in creating a bigger space in which to grow.
Glosswitch:
“Being a teenage girl is hard, by which I don’t mean your hormones render you an irrational, weeping mess. I mean the world can start to crush you, just at the point when you’re trying to grow. What’s more, it’s a problem that seems to be getting worse.”
“The history of mental health is littered with shameful tales of female madness being misdiagnosed in order to control outspoken women, while genuine symptoms of mental breakdown have been taken seriously only if and when they present in men. “
“If the past is another country, female adolescence is a war zone. Puberty transforms you into a walking target overnight. If you’re lucky, other girls get there before you and become your shields.”
“Girls need support in getting through this. They need coping methods. But they also need a different society, one which permits them to take up space, to express their fears and passions rather than internalise them.”
“Teenage girls are not weak. They’re on their way to becoming full-grown women in a world that still treats them as inferior, despite demanding more of their bodies and minds than ever.”
“Being shunted into the space between childhood and womanhood, between having a flat-chested, gender neutral, rough-and-tumble body and one which is seen as fit only for objectification or impregnation, can be hugely traumatising. “
“Millions of girls are not born unhappy.
…it’s time we gave all young women the room they need to grow.”
VOICES: Glosswitch
The Independent
20th Sep,2017
Pity the girl who’s wearing a bra before she leaves primary school; already she’s ventured over the top, into a no man’s land of groping, cat calls and adult disapproval
Photo: One in four teenage girls is depressed, a new report says – compared to one in 10 boys. Rex
Even if it were possible, there is nothing on earth that would make me want to go back to being a teenage girl. My early twenties? Possibly. My thirties? Definitely. Anything under the age of 17? Frankly, I’d rather be fast-tracked into old age.
Being a teenage girl is hard, by which I don’t mean your hormones render you an irrational, weeping mess. I mean the world can start to crush you, just at the point when you’re trying to grow. What’s more, it’s a problem that seems to be getting worse.
It doesn’t surprise me in the least that a quarter of 14-year-old girls are showing signs of depression. If anything, I’m surprised that the number isn’t higher.
There will of course be the usual excuses. Perhaps it’s all down to greater openness surrounding mental health issues. Or maybe it’s a symptom of what one might vaguely term “modern life”. Either way, neither of these things explain the growing gap between the mental health of teenage boys and girls (10 per cent of 14-year-old boys report experiencing depression, with parents overestimating symptoms in boys and underestimating them in girls).
If, as we’re so often told, we’re moving towards a more equal, gender-neutral society, why is it that girls are suffering so much? The sexist might argue that this is proof that equality does not make women happy. The feminist, on the other hand, might point out that this shows we don’t yet have equality at all.
I’d say the feminist is correct, and what’s more, that an illusion of equality has itself been used as an excuse to neglect young girls. We’ve grown used to the narrative that says sexism is dying out. If anything, we’ve been ordered to focus our attention on the boys, who apparently lack the communication skills to express themselves in a supposedly “feminised” world. The girls? Well, they can take care of themselves (which is good preparation for later, when they can also take care of everyone else).
Alas, it turns out they can’t. And before this turns into a story of subtle victim-blaming (“Girls with smartphones flirt most with depression and suicide”), fetishisation (“Why do men love sad girls?”) and/or belittlement (“research like this , I think we should take girls at their word. God knows, we’ve spent long enough disbelieving them.
The history of mental health is littered with shameful tales of female madness being misdiagnosed in order to control outspoken women, while genuine symptoms of mental breakdown have been taken seriously only if and when they present in men. Women’s accounts of their inner lives – which ought to be the starting point for any diagnosis – have routinely been neglected, the female of the species being considered an unreliable witness even to her own thoughts and feelings.
If girls say they are depressed, we owe it to them to listen. Furthermore, we can no longer afford to ignore the effect of a highly gendered culture on the mental wellbeing of girls. If we’re able to draw links between masculinity and high suicide rates in men, we can surely do the same with femininity and female despair.
If the past is another country, female adolescence is a war zone. Puberty transforms you into a walking target overnight. If you’re lucky, other girls get there before you and become your shields. Pity the girl who’s wearing a bra before she leaves primary school; already she’s ventured over the top, into a no man’s land of groping, cat calls and adult disapproval.
Girls need support in getting through this. They need coping methods. But they also need a different society, one which permits them to take up space, to express their fears and passions rather than internalise them. It should not be the role of mental health services to patch girls up and arm them to face another onslaught of patriarchal slings and arrows. There has to be a ceasefire. Girls shouldn’t have to be so brave.
Teenage girls are not weak. They’re on their way to becoming full-grown women in a world that still treats them as inferior, despite demanding more of their bodies and minds than ever. It’s heartbreaking that so many of them can’t see a way through to the other side. We can tell them it gets better, and it does, but it’s simply not fair to ask them to wait.
Women’s cognitive abilities are affected by sexism
Being shunted into the space between childhood and womanhood, between having a flat-chested, gender neutral, rough-and-tumble body and one which is seen as fit only for objectification or impregnation, can be hugely traumatising. Thirty years ago I responded by starving myself into a prolonged state of pre-pubescence. Today, when pornified images of young female bodies are more freely available than ever, I might have responded by cutting, binding my breasts or reinventing myself as a disembodied other online.
The opportunities for expressing female self-hatred are always expanding, even as other spaces for self-expression shrink. And yet, it’s not an inevitable development: some unavoidable symptom of living in the smartphone age.
Millions of girls are not born unhappy. Depression and mental illness can be coping mechanisms when all else fails. There’s no simple cure for despair, but it’s time we gave all young women the room they need to grow.
[Verse 1]
When did you change?
Wendy, you’ve aged
I thought you’d never grow up
I thought you’d never
Window closed, Wendy got old
I was too late, I was too late
A shadow of what I once was
[Chorus 2]
‘Cause we don’t do the same drugs no more
We don’t do the, we don’t do the same drugs, do the same drugs no more
She don’t laugh the same way no more
We don’t do the, we don’t do the same drugs, do the same drugs no more
[Verse 2]
Where did you go?
Why would you stay?
You must have lost your marbles
You always were so forgetful
In a hurry, don’t wait up
I was too late, I was too late
A shadow of what I once was
‘Cause we don’t, we don’t do what we say we’re gonna
You were always perfect, and I was only practice
Don’t you miss the days, stranger?
Don’t you miss the days?
Don’t you miss the danger?
[Chorus 3: Chance The Rapper + (Eryn Allen Kane)]
We don’t (we don’t) do the same drugs no more (do the same drugs no more)
We don’t do the, we don’t do the same drugs, do the same drugs no more
We don’t (we don’t) do the same drugs no more (do the same drugs no more)
We don’t do the, we don’t do the same drugs, do the same drugs no more
We don’t do the, we don’t do the same drugs
[Outro: Chance The Rapper + (Eryn Allen Kane)]
(Turn it around
I remember when
This age of pathetics)
Don’t forget the happy thoughts
All you need is happy thoughts
The past tense, past bed time
Way back then when everything we read was real
And everything we said rhymed
Wide eyed kids being kids
Why did you stop?
What did you do to your hair?
Where did you go to end up right back here?
When did you start to forget how to fly?
(It’s so natural
Just like Juicy Fruit
Works like a magic trick
Please give me half of that
We don’t, we don’t, we don’t)
Don’t you color out
Don’t you bleed on out, oh
Stay in the line, stay in the line
Dandelion
(Do the same drugs no more
We don’t do the, we don’t do the same drugs, do the same drugs no more
We don’t, we don’t, we don’t….)
Don’t you color out
Don’t you bleed on out, oh
Stay in the line, stay in the line
Dandelion
I’m An Asshole – Dennis Leary
Folks, I’d like to sing a song about the American Dream
About me, about you, about the way our American hearts beat
Down in the bottom of our chests, about the special feeling
We get in the cockles of our hearts, maybe below the cockles
Maybe in the sub-cockle area, maybe in the liver
Maybe in the kidneys, maybe even in the colon, we don’t know
I’m just a regular Joe with a regular job
I’m your average white suburbanite slob
I like football and porno and books about war
I’ve got an average house with a nice hardwood floor
My wife and my job, my kids and my car
My feet on my table and a Cuban cigar
But sometimes that just ain’t enough
To keep a man like me interested
(Oh no)
No way
(Uh-uh)
It was like a burnt matchbox in the sky.
It was black and long and burnt in the sky.
You saw it through the flowering stump of trees.
You saw it beyond the ochre spire of the church.
You saw it in the tears of those who survived.
You saw it through the rage of those who survived.
You saw it past the posters of those who had burnt to ashes.
You saw it past the posters of those who jumped to their deaths.
You saw it through the TV images of flames through windows
Running up the aluminium cladding
You saw it in print images of flames bursting out from the roof.
You heard it in the voices loud in the streets.
You heard it in the cries in the air howling for justice.
You heard it in the pubs the streets the basements the digs.
You heard it in the wailing of women and the silent scream
Of orphans wandering the streets
You saw it in your baby who couldn’t sleep at night
Spooked by the ghosts that wander the area still trying
To escape the fires that came at them black and choking.
You saw it in your dreams of the dead asking if living
Had no meaning being poor in a land
Where the poor die in flames without warning.
But when you saw it with your eyes it seemed what the eyes
Saw did not make sense cannot make sense will not make sense.
You saw it there in the sky, tall and black and burnt.
You counted the windows and counted the floors
And saw the sickly yellow of the half burnt cladding
And what you saw could only be seen in nightmare.
Like a war-zone come to the depths of a fashionable borough.
Like a war-zone planted here in the city.
To see with the eyes that which one only sees
In nightmares turns the day to night, turns the world upside down.
Those who were living now are dead
Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.
If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower.
See the tower, and let a world-changing dream flower.
Residents of the area call it the crematorium.
It has revealed the undercurrents of our age.
The poor who thought voting for the rich would save them.
The poor who believed all that the papers said.
The poor who listened with their fears.
The poor who live in their rooms and dream for their kids.
The poor are you and I, you in your garden of flowers,
In your house of books, who gaze from afar
At a destiny that draws near with another name.
Sometimes it takes an image to wake up a nation
From its secret shame. And here it is every name
Of someone burnt to death, on the stairs or in their room,
Who had no idea what they died for, or how they were betrayed.
They did not die when they died; their deaths happened long
Before. It happened in the minds of people who never saw
Them. It happened in the profit margins.
It happened In the laws.
They died because money could be saved and made.
Those who are living now are dead
Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.
If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower
See the tower, and let a world-changing dream flower.
They called the tower ugly; they named it an eyesore.
All around the beautiful people in their beautiful houses
Didn’t want the ugly tower to ruin their house prices.
Ten million was spent to encase the tower in cladding.
Had it ever been tested before except on this eyesore,
Had it ever been tested for fire, been tried in a blaze?
But it made the tower look pretty, yes it made the tower look pretty.
But in twenty four storeys, not a single sprinkler.
In twenty four storeys not a single alarm that worked.
In twenty four storeys not a single fire escape,
Only a single stairwell designed in hell, waiting
For an inferno. That’s the story of our times.
Make it pretty on the outside, but a death trap
On the inside. Make the hollow sound nice, make
The empty look nice. That’s all they will see,
How it looks, how it sounds, not how it really is, unseen.
But if you really look you can see it, if you really listen
You can hear it. You’ve got to look beneath the cladding.
There’s cladding everywhere. Political cladding,
Economic cladding, intellectual cladding — things that look good
But have no centre, have no heart, only moral padding.
They say the words but the words are hollow.
They make the gestures and the gestures are shallow.
Their bodies come to the burnt tower but their souls don’t follow.
Those who were living are now dead
Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.
If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower
See the tower, and let a world-changing deed flower.
The voices here must speak for the dead.
Speak for the dead. Speak for the dead.
See their pictures line the walls. Poverty is its own Colour,
its own race. They were Muslim and Christian,
Black and white and colours in between.
They were young And old and beautiful and middle aged.
There were girls In their best dresses with hearts open to the future.
There was an old man with his grandchildren;
There was Amaya Tuccu, three years old,
Burnt to ashes before she could see the lies of the world.
There are names who were living beings who dreamt
Of fame or contentment or education or love
Who are now ashes in a burnt out shell of cynicism.
There were two Italians, lovely and young,
Who in the inferno were on their mobile phone to friends
While the smoke of profits suffocated their voices.
There was the baby thrown from many storeys high
By a mother who knew otherwise he would die.
There were those who jumped from their windows
And those who died because they were told to stay
In their burning rooms. There was the little girl on fire
Seen diving out from the twentieth floor.
Need I say more.
Those who are living are now dead
Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.
If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower.
See the tower, and let a world-changing deed flower.
Always there’s that discrepancy
Between what happens and what we are told.
The official figures were stuck at thirty.
Truth in the world is rarer than gold.
Bodies brought out in the dark
Bodies still in the dark. Dark the smoke and dark the head.
Those who were living are now dead.
And while the tower flamed they were tripping
Over bodies at the stairs
Because it was pitch black.
And those that survived
Sleep like refugees on the floor
Of a sports centre. And like creatures scared of the dark,
A figure from on high flits by,
Speaking to the police and brave firefighters,
But avoiding the victims,
Whose hearts must be brimming with dread.
Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.
But if you go to Grenfell Tower, if you can pull
Yourselves from your tennis games and your perfect dinners
If you go there while the black skeleton of that living tower
Still stands unreal in the air, a warning for similar towers to fear,
You will breathe the air thick with grief
With women spontaneously weeping
And children wandering around stunned
And men secretly wiping a tear from the eye
And people unbelieving staring at this sinister form in the sky
You will see the trees with their leaves green and clean
And will inhale the incense meant
To cleanse the air of unhappiness
You will see banks of flowers
And white paper walls sobbing with words
And candles burning for the blessing of the dead
You will see the true meaning of community
Food shared and stories told and volunteers everywhere
You will breathe the air of incinerators
Mixed with the essence of flower.
If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower.
Make sense of these figures if you will
For the spirit lives where truth cannot kill.
Ten million spent on the falsely clad
In a fire where hundreds lost all they had.
Five million offered in relief
Ought to make a nation alter its belief.
An image gives life and an image kills.
The heart reveals itself beyond political skills.
In this age of austerity
The poor die for others’ prosperity.
Nurseries and libraries fade from the land.
A strange time is shaping on the strand.
A sword of fate hangs over the deafness of power.
See the tower, and let a new world-changing thought flower.
Ben Okri
This two-day workshop will give you a practical, “hands-on” introduction to a handful approaches you can use singly or in combination when supporting a person who has asked you to walk alongside them as they begin their work exploring and making sense of their uniquely personal experience with voices visions and whatever other experiences they might live with that can be difficult to live with – made more difficult by such experiences having become mystified, and yet which are surprisingly both very common and very understandable in context of a person’s life.
This is a completely non-diagnostic, non-medical workshop – it is a workshop about being human in this world.
Whether you regard a person hearing voices as an illness or not is, really, a moot point- because either way it is a human experience. This workshop focuses on what we might experience and ways of exploring and making sense of whatever we do experience.
If you have not done so already then you will need to first participate in our Workshop #1 Accepting Voices which provides foundation, language for the work we do together in this workshop.
We currently have two opportunities to participate in Accepting Voices, in Oct and Nov 2017 – see here
This workshop is made possible through community partnership with CMHA Durham, we are grateful for use of their space and for their ability to connect with community in Durham region and beyond.
Fee
Early Bird $300 until 31st Oct.
Standard $400
To register your place NOW,
Either click on the giraffe, or click on / copy-n-paste the link below…
Full Description below the poster, also link to easy print [pdf] version.
Poster
Please feel free to share our poster and any of the information here, we’re always grateful when people do.
Easy print poster [pdf] :
A Two-Day Workshop
This workshop follows on from Workshop #1: Accepting Voices.
If you have been offering yourself as a “one-person-safe-space” and you find yourself privileged by someone taking you up on your offer and asking you to walk alongside them as they do their work, then you might find yourself asking “ok what kind of things might we do together?”.
This workshop is about just that and offers you an introduction and enable you better to:
Includes introduction to and practical hands on experience using : Voice Mapping, Voice Profiling, Maastricht Interview, Voice Dialogue, and Non Violent Communication.
If so, then this workshop might help you further tilt your universe and emancipate yourself with deeper understanding,
This workshop is designed to share useful material but mostly to help you be more open, curious and willing to learn about a person’s own experience – to deepen and broaden your own ability to understand so that you can join us in enacting a world that understands voice hearing, supports the needs of individuals who hear voices and views them as full citizens.
If more of us were able to work with voices then fewer of us would need a career as patients.
Join us in enacting a world that understands…
What we share is not a prescriptive, linear process but a framework for navigating as we walk alongside a person as they embark on their unique “adventure in unveiling” learning to make choices and find what “works for me” and reclaim their power.
We will introduce and practice key approaches that can be thought of as building blocks to be used creatively to extend and deepen the safe space you can co-create together.
We share information and resources that will add to your repertoire of stories, ideas, resources, approaches that you can share, and enrich the work you can offer to do with a person inside that safe space.
Essentially this workshop is designed for workers who spend regular time with individuals who hear voices and struggle with their experience, including doctors, therapists, counsellors, peer-workers community workers – anyone working in the health system, mental health services.
It can also be suitable for anyone who spends time supporting someone who struggles with voices and yet does not get paid for their work – and who wants to deepen and expand their own understanding of the roles voices can play in a person’s life, ways of understanding, key information, and ways of engaging that can support a person working with their voices.
So, if you encounter people who struggle with the voices they hear and feel you need to understand, and you are ready to play your role in enacting a world that understands, then you may decide this workshop is for you.
Working with voices is always a choice that can only be made by the person hearing voices.
We open ourselves to exploring our own experiences using that to connect with others, willing to share our own vulnerabilities, yet always remembering and recognizing that it is the person we support who is doing the hard work.
This is an intensive, highly practical and experiential workshop- a learning circle in which we learn with and from each other.
We will share a number of approaches that can be used singly or in any combination but the real learning comes from how we engage together. For each of the approaches we will…
This is not presented as therapy or a manualized approach but the material and ideas do lend themselves to being integrated into counselling or therapy work; some are structured, some very intuitive, iterative and creative.
This work is not so much with adhering to techniques, or following steps as seeing these approaches as ways to build relationship, explore, learn together, always letting the person you support take the lead, make choices, find and use their power.
We share this map based on work by Dr Marius Romme, as a tool for navigating the landscape as we walk alongside a person who choses to work with their voices.
We spend time sharing key ideas, resources and practice in each of these topics
An Immersive experience
Over the two days we will build practice experiencing the approaches, putting them together and exploring and making sense, and open ourselves to our own inner landscape to inform how we connect and work with a person who might be struggling and chooses us to walk alongside them as they work with their voices.
Presenters
Has been hearing voices for over forty years and for almost ten has played a key role in establishing Hearing Voices Network in Toronto and supporting others do the same where they live in Canada.
Founder and facilitator for the Toronto Hearing Voices group, one of the longest running in N. America.
Collaborating with artist Dora Garcia founded Hearing Voices Café, Toronto – the world’s first as a regular feature in a city landscape, followed by others now in Valladolid and [coming soon], Paris and London.
Privileged to have introduced around 500 people to WRAP – a way of finding answers to questions like “what works for me?” and “what else can I do?” and as a process for taking back our own power. Now coaches, mentors and trains WRAP facilitators.
Led the design, development and delivery of Peer Support Training for a leading MH charity; rooted in human values and simple ideas like “peer means equal” and fully aligned with the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s guidelines and recovery principles.
As a speaker is regularly sought to speak at AGMs, Grand Rounds in major hospitals, conferences, in media: print, radio TV, talking about understanding difficult human experiences; recovery; Hearing Voices and inviting people to a different kind of conversation about what it sometimes means to live as a human in this world.
Dave Umbongo
For years Dave would only say only one word, now he authors articles at http://www.recoverynet.ca and moderates online support groups for voices to talk directly with each other round the world, coaches and co-presents in workshops for approaches like voice dialogue.
Enjoys creating memes: out of things voices say, about living in a universe that mostly comprises what he refers to as The Weird, and sharing his own wry observations on the human obsession with calling each another horrible names, categorizing and crushing each other into boxes that don’t fit.
Voices have stories too His favourite pastime is pretending to be a muppet, next is remarking upon how “voices” and “humans” behave in ways that are often very much alike. “The Dave” doesn’t really have a bio – like other superheroes he has an “Origins Story”, and like “The Truth” some of it is already “Out there”.
Please note. This workshop follows on from Workshop #1 Accepting Voices which provides a foundation for this work. If you have not already attended this we are offering it Fri 14th October 2016.
Wkshp.2-Working With Voices-Jan2018-Full Description-easy print .
Robert Sapolsky on how hierarchy has a destructive force in body and psyche in individuals and community.
He is talking about baboons, the ones he’s observed for decades along with the effects of stress upon health and behaviour.
His observation also applies just as much to the beast that is us.
And the culture of domination and fuck-you-buddy-ism that we have builded for ourselves, for each other and for our children.
He also shows us how, by dint of unfortunate circumstances he was able to observe how such a society can transform completely – when alpha and dominant males were wiped out by infected meat. New males who joined the troop were introduced and assimilated to different more cooperative ways that turned out to bring interesting health outcomes for all the troop …
So, anyone got a big pile o’ meat?
agnotarte
dave umbongo
drkenplacebo
recoverynetwork:Toronto
recovery network: Toronto 
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