Hearing Voices Cafe is open to all – we invite you to join us in a different kind of conversation about what it means to experience being human in this world.
When
We meet monthly – [usually] first monday of the month, 6pm to 8pm.
Note we take a rest in Aug.
See the poster for forthcoming dates. We begin our second year in Sep 2016.
“many social movements have their origins in cafes and coffee shops…”
Here’s a brief segment from CBC Radio’s Metro Morning with Matt Galloway aired on Tue 3rd Nov 2015.
Reporter-Editor Mary Wiens spent time talking with folks at The Hearing Voices Cafe, Toronto. Many thanks to Mary, Matt, at Metro Morning and to Sue and David at Coffee and All that Jazz.
Hearing Voices Cafes in other cities
The first HV Cafe was in Hamburg. Toronto was the second – but the first to become a regular feature in the landscape.
There are now others :
Toronto | Valladolid | Paris | Madrid | London [soon]
Artist Dora Garcia is the cosmos-rocking creative force behind bringing people together this way. For more information check out here… HV Cafe and more links at the foot of this post.
I’ve been putting out fire with gasoline
Putting out fire
With gasoline
Lyrics
See these eyes so green
I can stare for a thousand years
Colder than the moon
Well it’s been so long
Feel my blood enraged
It’s just the fear of losing you
Don’t you know my name
Well, you been so long
And I’ve been putting out the fire with gasoline
See these eyes so red
Red like jungle burning bright
Those who feel me near
Pull the blinds and change their minds
It’s been so long
Still this pulsing night
A plague I call a heartbeat
Just be still with me
But it wouldn’t believe what I’ve been thru
You’ve been so long
Well it’s been so long
See these tears so blue
An ageless heart that can never mend
Tears can never dry
A judgment made can never bend
See these eyes so green
I can stare for a thousand years
Just be still with me
You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been thru
Well you’ve been so long
It’s been so long
And I’ve been putting out fire with gasoline
Putting out a fire with gasoline
Putting out fire
We’ve been putting out fire
Well it’s been so long, so long, so long
Yes it’s been so long so long so long
I’ve been putting out fire (it’s been so long, so long, so long)
I’ve been putting out fire (it’s been so long, so long, so long)
Yeah, yeah putting out fire (been so long, so long, so long)
Been putting out fire (been so long, so long, so long)
Yeah putting out fire (been so long, so long, so long)
Putting out fire (been so long, so long, so long)
It’s been so long (Been so long, so long, so long)
It’s been so long (been so long, so long, so long)
I’ve been putting out fire (been so long, so long, so long)
‘Cause I’d rather stay here
With all the madmen
Than perish with the sad men roaming free
And I’d rather play here
With all the madmen
For I’m quite content they’re all as sane
As me
All the Madmen -lyrics
Day after day
They send my friends away
To mansions cold and grey
To the far side of town
Where the thin men stalk the streets
While the sane stay underground
Day after day
They tell me I can go
They tell me I can blow
To the far side of town
Where it’s pointless to be high
‘Cause it’s such a long way down
So I tell them that
I can fly, I will scream, I will break my arm
I will do me harm
Here I stand, foot in hand, talking to my wall
I’m not quite right at all, am I?
Don’t set me free, I’m as heavy as can be
Just my librium and me
And my E.S.T. makes three
‘Cause I’d rather stay here
With all the madmen
Than perish with the sad men roaming free
And I’d rather play here
With all the madmen
For I’m quite content they’re all as sane
As me
(Where can the horizon lie
When a nation hides
Its organic minds
In a cellar, dark and grim
They must be very dim)
Day after day
They take some brain away
Then turn my face around
To the far side of town
And tell me that it’s real
Then ask me how I feel
Here I stand, foot in hand, talking to my wall
I’m not quite right at all
Don’t set me free, I’m as helpless as can be
My libido’s split on me
Gimme some good ‘ole lobotomy
‘Cause I’d rather stay here
With all the madmen
Than perish with the sad men
Roaming free
And I’d rather play here
With all the madmen
For I’m quite content
They’re all as sane as me
Zane, zane, zane
Ouvre le chien
Zane, zane, zane
Ouvre le chien
Zane, zane, zane (ah ah ah)
Ouvre le chien
Zane, zane, zane (ah ah ah)
Ouvre le chien
Zane, zane, zane (ah ah ah)
Ouvre le chien
Zane, zane, zane (ah ah ah)
Ouvre le chien
Zane, zane, zane (ah ah ah)
Ouvre le chien
Zane, zane, zane (ah ah ah)
Ouvre le chien
Zane, zane, zane (ah ah ah)
Ouvre le chien
Zane, zane, zane (ah ah ah)
Ouvre le chien
From Reductionism to Humanism ISPS-US AGM/ Conference , Boston, 28-30th October 2016
I’m very pleased to be one of the speakers at this conference.
I’ll be talking about some of the themes you may recognise from recoverynet.ca and others that run through our trainings and workshops as well as some new work we’ve been doing, especially around understanding and healing trauma.
Mostly I’ll be sharing ideas and showing some ways we might remember that in-midst all our theories about what is wrong, what is needed and all the efforts to fix that are urged and thrust upon us, at the centre of any “mental illness” story is a person- a human being- in who is in pain and who is struggling to find their place in the world – and that it is they who do the real work, and that everyone of us shapes the landscape in which that takes place.
The conference is called “From Reductionism to Humanism” – and we certainly have a long ways to go in that journey but ISPS is trying to bring folks together so we can make a start in that. I joined to play a role in that – come join us.
And besides, it’s Boston!
More information and registration here
Full conference program is here………….program Abstracts for all the talks here……………abstracts
Register online here……………………….register
The “abstract” description for my talk is below.
Including
What do we mean by “Expert by Experience” and how might we get there? Kevin Healey
Introductory
What limits our freedom is the stories and myths we tell ourselves and tell each other. We fear experiences our stories tell us that we cannot understand and doubly fear those from which our myths extinguish any hope of return.
Reduction-ism would have us fear ourselves and each other and put our lives in the hands of “experts” and adopt their words for us. That limited map of understanding is embedded throughout society, governs who we are, who we can be, and reduces us to grim, alienated lives. That story says: “life sucks”.
A humanist approach would have us regard whatever we might experience as an adventure from which we can learn, grow and become more resilient and more connected with what it means to be alive. We can endure and find new strengths for future encounters.
What if we don’t “come-back” but instead come-through, different and somehow renewed?
What if we told ourselves and each other that story?
I will introduce a simple framework we might choose to build our own maps of understanding, name our world in our own words. Drawing on different ways of knowing old, new, and renewed, we can regard every experience as one from which we can learn – including those we fear the most. This approach integrates three simple models: one highly original, one as old as the ages and one from systems thinking but with an original twist. Endlessly adaptable, it sets no limits to the different sources and ways of knowing we can plug-in, play with and draw wisdom from to help us make sense of our world and keep adding to our map so it remains as alive as we can be.
At the conclusion of this activity, participants should be able to:
1. Cast aside a diagnostic framework and imposed words to name their experiences using simple, everyday language.
2. Redefine experiences that get called “psychosis” as states of being: intimately connected with reality and also intensely personal, confusing and painful yet having essential qualities in common with their own.
3. Frame experiences – even and especially the most difficult ones we fear most – as something we might learn from to continually renew our map of how we understand the world.
Trauma means Wound
The word “trauma” means “wound”.
Trauma is not the thing that happened but the effect left within us by our experiences of what happened.
It can, though leave us experiencing life as if the thing that did happen is happening right now.
Thorns in the Spirit The term “psychological traumata” was first used in this way by William James in 1894 in making sense of ideas emerging from Charcot and others: “the shock”and reminiscences of that shock he likened to “thorns in the spirit”.
If you’ve had a thorn in you then you will know how painful that can be. You also know that if you can pull it out then the pain can go away. You might also know how if you don’t it will burrow deep, you might not feel it much of the time but every now and then you will. Amazing how a tiny thing can cause so much pain, even prevent us using that finger, foot, leg.
Sometimes we think we’ve pulled it out only for a tiny fragment to remind us.
Trauma is like that- but the thorn is not just in our flesh [and it is stored in the body more than the brain] but also in our spirit- our soul, our psyche, our sense of self.
Trauma affects every aspect of who we are and how we might experience the world.
And it manifests in many ways, including all those ways that get called “symptoms” not only of “mental disorders” but also pretty much every chronic illness that is current and rife in society today. There are the many and various ways that trauma sits lurking within us, subdued then, when we least, expect pierces through the surface to remind us “I’m still here”.
Trauma forges survivors out of flesh. It can also harden us so we become so defensive, unyielding we lash out on the world or coach, coerce and control others til they become as numbed or hardened as we.
It can also forge us in compassion and that is the only route to the healing we can find.
It can exhaust us – wear us down so much we break down and reveal our pain to the world.
Some will tell you that you have an illness, a faulty brain, faulty genes, a “chemical imbalance” and call you any number of dehumanizing names – and it is absolutely your right to choose to believe their story.
Or you can choose any other, so choose yours…
I got thorns in my spirit...
References
James, W. Psychological Review, Volume 1. 1894, p199
It’s become a commonplace to talk of trauma as bad shit done by evil persons with evil intent. Yet trauma is much simpler to understand, and simpler to talk about.
In western medicine we incorrectly categorise trauma by the events that happened- when in fact, trauma is the effect left within us by our experience .
-Dr Robert Scaer, The Trauma Spectrum
Trauma is not the thing that happened, it is the effect left within us by our experiences.
That effect is very real, and in every way: physiological, psychological, sociological, it affects every aspect of our mind, our body, our relationships with ourselves, with others and how we experience and move in this world.
Every experience changes us, changes our brain, even our DNA. To be traumatised is to be left wounded by our experiences in ways that can leave us stuck in a response pattern that makes like overwhelming, painful and prevent us from moving forward.
Trauma is not something we remember it is something that we relive.
To be “triggered” is to have those painful moments flood over us in a great tsunami of emotion, pain, confusion and disconnectedness and powerlessness.
Trauma is not the thing that happened it is the effect left within us from our experiences.
That we are still here means that we have survived, that we are surviving – that we are are survivor!
We can also learn to heal, and we can learn to support others as they heal.
If you are interested going beyond categorising, diagnoses and disorders to a deeper understanding of the very human experience of living with and healing the wounds of life they you may be interested in our new workshop Healing Our Woundedness.
These days there’s a lot of talk about trauma, and a lot of talking that regards trauma mistakenly as the thing that happened… bad shit done by evil persons with evil intent.
We’ve also come to use that understanding to classify trauma- and so traumatised persons themselves – into categories of how bad was the shit [done by evil persons with evil intent] that happened specifically to them.
This means that many are being denied access to support.
This talk of trauma as bad shit done by evil people with evil intent holds us back from having grown-up conversations about what it means to be wounded by life, and how we learn to support people in healing their wounds.
It is time for different conversations about trauma, that instead of trapping us as helpless victims help us heal and learn, find our power and move forward .
‘Trauma” means “Wound”. That’s it, no shit.
If you’ve been wounded by your experiences then you have already demonstrated just how how resilient you are.
They – you know who – will tell you you are a victim of “brain disease” and “chemical imbalance” and call you names and leave you feeling powerless.
Yet we get to choose what we call ourself so why not choose something cool that defies their shit and signifies there is much more to us than what has happened to us and who they say we are…
Wonder how the “voice inside your head” finished off that sentence…
Some straight talking…
Here’s some data:
A person who has been given a diagnosis of psychosis is three times more likely to have been abused as a child than a person with other psychiatric diagnoses.
A person who has a diagnosis of psychosis is fifteen times more likely to have been abused as a child than a person with no psychiatric diagnosis. [1]
A person with a psychiatric diagnosis is more likely to be victim of violence than perpetrator – and four times more likely to be the victim of violence than a person with no diagnosis. [2]
You and I are 1,100 time more likely to be killed by an absent minded driver than by a stranger in psychosis. [3]
[1] Bebbington, P., Bhugra, D., Brugha, T., Singleton, M., Farrell, M. & Jenkins, R. (2004). Psychosis, victimisation and childhood disadvantage: Evidence from the second British National Survey of Psychiatric Morbidity. British Journal of Psychiatry, 185, 220 6.
[2] Mentally ill” at high risk of violence. at risk
[3] Risk of death in traffic accident 1.100 times greater than by a stranger with psychosis 1,100 times greater.
Beware of the flowers
‘Cause I’m sure they’re gonna get you
Yeah!
Look out baby
Look out Pet
Here’s the kid
Who’s gonna get the Blues
When you go away
I’m on fire
Cause I’m in love
With a girl who’s not the girl she was
When I was out with her
I saw you in the garden baby
You looked so debonair
Beware of the flowers
‘Cause I’m sure they’re gonna get you
Yeah!
I won’t try to say goodbye
Maybe I’ll just kick myself inside
I really want to go home
You might say that today
Was the very last time you walked this way
You’ll tell him on your own
Well I’d tell him where to go to baby
But you know I wouldn’t dare
Beware of the flowers
‘Cause I’m sure they’re gonna get you
Yeah!
Disagree, Disapprove
Baby they all said that it was me
Who went out in the nude
How can you be so sure
Baby when the love shines it is pure
It’s a light that shines on us
Well I know someone who loves you baby
And I know he really cares
Beware of the flowers
‘Cause I’m sure they’re gonna get you
What if, instead of fearing it as a place we never come back from and seeking to control anyone who comes near it, we choose to embrace madness as a state of being that is not only understandable, but – every now and then at least – a necessary part of “a wise and good life”?
A short film [4mins] from The School of Life on the importance , nay, necessity and sanity of insanity.
The sane world is so demanding and, well, “sane” durr, that mad moments are not only understandable but also a necessity. They are also a gateway to figuring what we actually need.
We we can continue our doctrine of fear and control [ and how’s that working out for ya?] or we can choose to learn, and embrace mad moments as renewing, rejuvenating and generative – connecting us with what’s most important.
The Sanity of Insanity
images & text below are from The School of Life – though we did de-should it.
Life requires us to be very sane, and pretty much all the time.
On a daily basis we have to be responsible, polite, productive, thoughtful, patient, logical, reliable and dazzlingly successful too.
These obligations slowly crept up on us as we were growing up. . . Now, they are our constant reality. . . .
No one can really keep going like this over a whole lifetime.
the burdens are too great, our minds too delicate. . . Unfortunately society doesn’t give us much room to fall apart. . . . . . . . . . It wants us at the desk, every day, at nine am sharp, with a powerpoint, ready to go. . . . . . .
And the pressure doesn’t let up until . . . . . . .
we’re finally released to sleep after eleven at night. so we have no option but to keep going. . , . . .
While, on the side, we may be drinking too much, waking up at odd times of the night, addicted to the internet, calming ourselves down with sedatives and developing all kinds of twitches and ailments. . . .
But, in truth, no good life can go by without a few open incidents of breakdown: moments when we pull up a white flag and declare ourselves to be unable to cope or able to fulfill any of our normal “functions” for a time. . .
Rather than seeing this as an illness… . . , , . . . We could choose instead, to interpreted as evidence of normality, and even helpful. . . . .
.
. .
In our “crazy” moments we might be… . . . . . . .
lying in bed staring at the ceiling for long periods, . . . .
seeming to make no sense,
.
.
.
wearing strange clothing sitting on the porch all day doing nothing . . . . . shouting . . . .
singing . . .
dancing . . . .
cavorting . . .
being silly in a way one hasn’t been for decades . . . .
making some unusual new friends . . . . taking off to strange places. , , ,
Naturally, such phases won’t be easy for those around us, but we could, collectively , know how to tolerate these phases without panic, as just part of ordinary life. . . . .
We allow our bodies to have moments of breakdown and rest
we could allow similar moments for our minds. . . . . . . . . . . .
In any case the so called “sane world is pretty disturbed too..
Its apparently in “mental health” that we set ourselves the tasks of… . . . .
energetically destroying the planet . . . . . .
work to meet punishing but arbitrary economic targets . . . .
leave our selves no time for anything but work . . . .
drown in toxic media, develop unrealistic expectations about our bodies, relationships and families . . .
no wonder we need periods of true madness as corrective. , . . . .
A Good mental breakdown
A good one is where we allow ourselves . . . . . . . . to connect with valuable truths that we’ve lost sight of, . . . .
emotions and insights that we’ve lost sight of or that ordinary life has prevented us from investigating. . . . . .
perhaps, sexual exploration, creativity, heedlessness, . . . . . . .
contact with our bodies,
empathy, ecstasy, . . . a new kind of self-knowledge. . . . . The idea is that we retur
n from the land of madness . .
and plant in the fields of apparent sanity . . . . a lot of valuable seeds that can bear fruit and sustain us in the periods ahead. . . . . .
We can, at a collective level, give ourselves unfrightened accounts of what mad episodes mean . . . . .
confident that a reconciliation with the demands of the world
will eventually re-emerge . .
We are not automatons
but highly complicated, volatile collections of proteins that needs careful and sympathetic administration. , , , , We can choose to expect that periods of madness do belong to every wise and good life.
For more information see this pamphlet:
ased to sleep after eleven at night. so we have no option but to 
ather than seeing this as an illness…
our “crazy” moments we might be…
shouting
o wonder we need periods of true madness as corrective.
We are not automatons
agnotarte
dave umbongo
drkenplacebo
highfellow
recoverynetwork:Toronto
recovery network: Toronto 
You must be logged in to post a comment.