New Rails for the Crazy Train

Trading Diagnoses for Stages & Frameworks in Healing (or, answering the question: Is Jess… you know… “special?” She sure knows a lot about this train…)

note: Jess also knows a lot about grammar: the plural of “diagnosis” is “diagnoses,” pronounced “diagnose-ease”; NOT “diagnosises...es...is” You’re welcome, podcasters.

Foreward | The Pitfalls of Clinical Diagnosis | A New Framework

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For(e)ward

In the middle of drafting this post, Facebook Memories informed me it was the anniversary of getting my Babesia diagnosis confirmed with microscopy, and my doctor telling me he did a double-take because it had such an unusually high percentage of infected red blood cells. I’d already been prescribed the medication (yeah, the yellow stuff and the blue pills) on suspicion of Babesia for seven months and yet still: extreme infection. It would be another 5 years and a vastly different protocol before I was cleared in remission; that was three years ago, and I still have flashbacks if I think too hard about breathing sometimes; COVID was just a big ball of panic attacks. The PTSD of having your blood and brain oxygen being murdered is… very very real.

So I remember what it felt like to be invited to look into that microscope and see the little bastards that the lab said didn’t exist. I remember what it felt like to have an acquaintance say, “Well, I’m a pathologist and I know these things: the Babesia has to be gone by now if it’s been treated,” and I remember what it felt like to say (trying hard not to scream), “I SAW IT WITH MY OWN TWO EYES! (insert silent epithets here).” I remember how it felt trying to get any compassion or accommodations for being sick when all the doctors and labs said I wasn’t sick. I remember how much of my self and my relationships died on the altar of Lyme, and I will never, ever get back the faith in humanity I naively held before they decided I was too crazy to earn respect.

I remember. I thank Memories for helping me remember, and I thank myself for being so vocal on social media, my blog, and my diaries to make sure there will always be a record.

Because that was eight years ago, and the things I needed then are not the things I need now, so sometimes I willingly forget, in order to move on. The messages I have from remission are not the messages people want to hear when they’re sick. I’m on a journey, a process; I keep moving along. I leave my guideposts and trail-markers where I found them – I leave my Lyme blogs for the Lyme pilgrims, I leave my antidepressant blogs for the mental health pilgrims, and I leave my remission and neuroplasticity blogs here for the Nervous System Retraining pilgrims. And I too will move on someday, forget, and have to remember again.

Why I mention this, and why I feel like I always need to “remember where I came from” and mention this in my posts, is because I’m aware the internet isn’t a very good atlas for navigating our way out of a personal crisis; it’s the junkyard where we keep all the bricks and signs and posts and spare parts. Until and unless I devote my life to writing the atlas and paying the editors and publishers and marketers, and in turn charge you money you don’t have in your budget, and invalidate my own story with a paywall, I have no control over who stumbles across my guideposts here. I don’t have a bouncer making sure people in the acute Lyme stage don’t come across my remission stuff that they aren’t ready for. I have no filter other than my own organization system to help make sure people aren’t getting horribly offended, gaslit, invalidated, and discouraged by my own posts about how much I know what it’s like to be horribly offended, gaslit, invalidated, and discouraged and so I’m going to promise not to do that while I’m doing that.

Well, that’s a whole lot of words to say: TRIGGER WARNING (maybe I should just start with that on my blog page?… done). Proper diagnosis and treatment is super, super, super important. Of course, we trust that if we get the right diagnosis, we get the right treatment, and that can save our lives. But also, having someone with socially- and professionally-accepted credentials believe in us, validate our struggle, and stand up for our right to proper care is literally life-saving from a psychological perspective as well. I know this. I’ve felt this. I believe in this. I honor the fight for proper diagnosis and treatment of suffering people. I honor all the warriors staying on the path to teach and advocate. Diagnoses save lives.

Aaaaaand… I remember how the prescriptions for Babesiosis cost $1300 a month, and didn’t work after a year of treatment. I remember being put on “necessary” medication at age 14 that wasn’t FDA-tested or approved for children under 18, and then being left for dead with the side effects. I’ve had a lot of improper diagnoses. I’ve had a lot of improper treatments. I’ve had a lot of proper diagnoses with failed treatments, and I’ve had a lot of “idiopathic” diagnoses with no treatments. I’m coming from a very long experience of fighting the battle, in my own body and brain, between germ theory, terrain theory, pathology, and psycho-neuro-endocrin-immunology. I’m living with PTSD and extreme distrust of the diagnostic process itself. While I can learn, grow, cope, and adapt, I can’t unlearn reality: medical science is constantly changing, rewriting guidelines and protocols, and learning that some of its former paradigms are actually deadly; FDA-approved drugs get recalled; fetuses get mortally deformed; people suffer and die from iatrogenic harm.

What I’ve come to think, when dealing with “idiopathic” and “unknown” diagnoses of syndromes like ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, auto-immunity, allergies, ADHD, neurodivergence, Cluster-B’s, etc. etc. is that, since the diagnosis itself offers no real explanation or cure, and/or only pharmaceutical medication that I’m allergic to, why do I even need them? You might need them – for treatment, disability benefits, doctors’ notes, insurance, bureaucracy, cultural and social survival, or just your own peace of mind. There’s plenty of valid reasons to seek a diagnosis. For me, in my life situation, I don’t benefit from what they offer, and I’ve found them more limiting, traumatizing, and dehumanizing than helpful. Chinese Medicine taught me a whole different diagnostic and treatment system; psychoneuroimmunology taught me a whole different paradigm of self-empowerment and healing. Self-love taught me to value myself and others and respect people’s perspectives even when I don’t understand them; sadly, the insurance and benefits departments don’t work that way, I know.

No one believed me or respected me anyway, so why don’t I just believe in myself and follow the paths I feel comfortable with? Not everyone can burn their bridges like I have, and not everyone has those few crucial unconditional supporters. So again: this is my story, and my paradigm, it doesn't have to be yours. I’m just here to drop my trail marker in case you get lost here.

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The Pitfalls of Clinical Diagnosis

Personally, I don’t like diagnoses, labels, and paying “trained professionals” to tell me how to medicate myself out of being myself. It should come as no surprise, after 20 years of mental health treatment, menorrhagia, anemia, chronic allergic rhinitis, hypothyroidism, diabetes- and glaucoma-suspect/risk, post-treatment syndromes, and 10 years of forays into Lyme, Babesiosis, Bartonellosis, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, Fibromyalgia, intestinal permeability, corneal and retinal tears, peripheral neuropathy, vertigo, Sjögren’s Syndrome, high cholesterol, etc. etc. ad nauseum (oh yeah, and Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome!).  Even though I’ve resolved nearly all of those issues and no longer see a doctor or take prescription medication, every time I express my deepest thoughts and try to move on with an authentic life in a society again, someone is still there (thanks, internet!) to tell me I’m probably ADD, bipolar, autistic, repressed, traumatized, a genius, or psychotic. People get confused when they don’t know how to label me, then I get confused about whether or not I should get labeled for the safety of mankind. (I once mentioned in a Zoom meeting that I am a very artistic person, and the next speaker introduced themselves as “also autistic,” and I am far too amused and honored to ever correct them.)

I think the power of labels and diagnoses is self-understanding and the self-empowerment we gain with that understanding. The more you know about the inner workings of your own body and life, the more tools you have to make positive adjustments. If we could all see it that way, I’d have no problem with the DSM-5 and ICD-10, doctors, specialists, therapists, questionnaires, and treatments options. I’m 100% Pro-Know-Thyself, and all the avenues we have to facilitate that. If your diagnoses give you hope and tools to make sense of life (not manipulative power, excuses, or limitations), then I’m all for labeling them and treating accordingly. I find myself exploring communities with neurodivergent diagnoses or preferred psycho-social labels, no longer to find out if I need to identify as one of them, but to learn tremendously helpful universal life skills most people never take the time to think about, and ways to relate to and assist a wide variety of people. We can all teach, and learn from each other, extremely valuable things about humanity, whether we are “one of them” or not. I shouldn’t need a diagnosis to earn respect, learn accommodations, or receive compassion for my human condition. And I can give that to myself, and we can “treat” each other, without ever setting foot in a doctor’s office.

The problem I have with labels and diagnoses is that a small group of “trained professionals” are the ones who define them, pathologize them, put restrictions on treatment options, and decide for us how we are supposed to proceed with our own lives.  This small group of “trained professionals” (doctors) has the power to take complete control of us, as they are connected to vast networks of other “trained professionals” (institutions, manual writers, insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, employers, corporations, and politicians) who use these labels to determine our options, our value to the economy, whether we deserve fair pay, retirement, assistance, or even life or death. I don’t want to play that game anymore, with my life in someone else’s hands. (Especially when there are billion-dollar industries in those hands, and they're sure as hell not putting any of it back into my hands!)

My personal experience with labels, diagnoses, and prescriptions (physical, mental, and spiritual) is that they got me stuck in one paradigm, one belief, one treatment option, and for me that one path led to destruction, depression, and death. If people had not been brave enough to say “THERE’S ANOTHER WAY,” even though I raged and fought them and screamed at them to “stop judging me,” I would not be here today to be that annoying, offensive, maddening person saying, “THERE’S ANOTHER WAY!” That means “multiple ways” not just “a different way,” or “your way is wrong and mine is right.” You don’t have to give up or distrust your diagnosis in order to look for various alternative treatments. And researching co-infections and co-morbidities doesn’t invalidate your original diagnoses. I deprived myself of incredibly important perspectives and tools for years because I was taught that ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia were somehow “anti-Lyme;” that if I accepted those labels, I was being gaslit and invalidated and wouldn’t get proper anti-microbial treatment. They said those people really just had undetected Lyme. But who cares? (And it’s probably false anyway, and works both ways!) The Lyme treatment wasn’t improving my quality of life, and the ME/CFS community had a ton of self-care hacks and protocols that work for everyone, from Lyme to Long-COVID to POTS to PANDAS to autoimmune to anxiety, depression, and AuDHD. Yes, I had a valid clinical diagnosis of Lyme, Bartonella, and Babesia. But why can’t I learn from everyone else? They say Multiple Sclerosis is just a manifestation of neurological Lyme Disease. I don’t know if that’s true, but who cares? If the anti-inflammatory diet, neuroplasticity, and life skills are healthy parts of MS treatment, why not use them for my Lyme, and vice-versa? Why not do anything to protect my brain, when I can't afford expensive scans, specialists, and experimental drugs? Why do I need a diagnosis to adopt a healthy lifestyle that helps the human body with all medical conditions? To justify to hysterical Great-Aunt Barbara why I won’t eat her famous Gluten Casserole at Christmas anymore? Sorry, Barbie, get therapy and let me get mine!

Labels and diagnoses should free us to explore our options, treatments, and life choices with our given circumstances, not put us in a restrictive box with a prescribed mandate and sealed fate.  If you can’t find value and self-worth, let alone hope for your future, in your label or diagnosis (eg. “I was born this way; there’s no hope/help for me”) you should be allowed to deny deny deny it just as often as the insurance companies do, or “go against the science” to search for alternative answers. This is how cures are found, by believing in the “impossible” against the doctor’s prescribed odds, not by resigning our fate to their limited opinion. I’ve read so many books on cancer and disease remissions, and every single author meets resistance and ridicule from doctors for giving patients “false hope.” A doctor who does not know the value of hope is not a healer. (And if we want to talk about “false hope,” let’s look at the public media about how curable Lyme Disease is with a round or two of antibiotics!)

At the same time, having to face your own vulnerability and mortality, sooner rather than later, is an extremely important process for all human beings; denial and acceptance and every emotion or inquiry in between is part of the crucial stages of grieving (more on that later posts). We don’t have to shame ourselves out of that process. Get a second opinion, third opinion, but most importantly, consult your own opinion and process in your own way.

There is also the pitfall of our diagnosis or label backfiring, when our hope to be validated and understood ends up being the target for judgment, shame, and ostracization by the community. ("Lyme Loonies," anyone? Federal registries?) Of course, we always have haters. I’m just pointing out that the relief and validation of a diagnosis can be temporary, and is almost always contingent on our own personal self-esteem, mental wellness, and social support. So why spend all my time, money, and energy chasing a diagnosis instead of investing in my own lifestyle choices, mental stability, and universal life hacks for coping with stress and trauma, which will help me no matter what the diagnosis is or isn’t?

Also, if a label or diagnosis is the only reason I feel safe, protected, or worthy of respect (“You can’t judge/hurt/ask anything of me because I have a medical condition!”) there are a few things to consider (stick with me here!):

1) It might be worth exploring how I may be subconsciously limiting/hiding myself with a label as a protective mechanism. (This is not to say the diagnosis is only a psychosomatic excuse, it can be both a literal infection/genetic mutation, and a limiting belief about what that means for me, my abilities, and my life.) I can let a diagnosis teach me about unconditional self-respect, -love, and -compassion, and use it as a springboard to practice inherent self-worth and autonomy. I just might outgrow some of my diagnoses. This is the theory of neuroplasticity and limbic system retraining. AND…

2) Society needs a wake-up call here: why is it we only give respect, grace, and compassion when we know and understand someone’s diagnosis or label?  Prejudice and judgment isn’t harmful only because it ostracizes; it can also prefer and prioritize, and leave millions of people falling between the cracks.

I once met a homeless woman, single, probably in her 50’s. She couldn’t find help anywhere: she was “too young” for retirement and elderly assistance; she kept herself clean, so she “didn’t deserve” services meant for addicts; she couldn’t have children, so she “wasn’t worthy” of assistance for families with children; she’d been abused in churches and homeless shelters, so she had “too much self-respect” and fear to seek charity; she was in remission from cancer (medical bills a huge factor in her homelessness, because this was in America), so she no longer “qualified” for any pink-ribbon funds. The final nail on her coffin was health issues she experienced since getting the COVID vaccine: well, now she’s just a lying conspiracy theorist who can’t be helped. She broke my f*renching heart.

So I can’t judge people for wanting diagnoses and labels and clinging to them despite the many possibilities for healing. They may very well be “doing it all for attention.” But that’s a flaw in our society, not in the person: that simply being human does not automatically qualify us for attention, respect, dignity, and assistance when we need it. That we need diagnoses and labels just to get help is absurd. And it’s taking a toll on our brains. This is a huge hurdle for the chronically ill: I’m not “sick enough” to qualify for assistance but the referral and application process alone is beyond my cognitive abilities. What do you expect from their subconscious mind-body process but to get sicker just to get assistance for survival, or to just die and get it over with? It’s a vicious cycle, 100% at the hands of our social system. I don’t only advocate for the healing of chronically ill people, I demand the healing of a chronically ill socio-political system.

3) We need to be the wake-up call. We’re the ones with the most knowledge about being in our situation down here between the cracks.  Let’s talk about it, even when we feel ashamed to possibly be labeling ourselves “psychosomatic.” Let’s talk about it, even when the doctors yell at us to stop googling our symptoms. Let’s talk about it, even when the “experts” try to silence our questions (science is literally the process of asking challenging questions and searching for answers; we are not being science-deniers, we are literally the scientists!)

So there’s my beef with labels and diagnoses: they can be dehumanizing, restrictive, manipulative, controlling, and literally deadly. They can get you stuck in a mental loop about yourself and your life that is not necessarily true or unchangeable. They can lock you in a prison of your own belief about their limitations. And they often perpetuate and enable a horrifically abusive system.

But I also recognize their utility as crucial validation, gateways to proper treatment, and helpful tools on a journey of self-knowledge, learning critical life skills, and creating vocabulary and experiences to help us relate and cooperate among diverse groups of humanity.

One of the most healing ideas I’ve ever learned is “both/and.” Both can be true; separately, together, different times, and all at once. No one has to be right or wrong. This is diversity. This is acceptance. This is reality.

Now to answer the burning question: I have never sought any other clinical diagnoses since being cleared of Lyme, tick-borne diseases, and major depressive disorder. I find spending that kind of time and money on medical inquiries to be triggering/traumatizing, degrading, and useless. I have a terrible history of adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals, so if the main treatment option is drugs, I’m not interested. I don’t need a diagnosis to learn tools to help myself live better. For serious physical ailments, I will go to a Doctor of Oriental Medicine and get acupuncture and/or herbal formulas. I am more sensitive than many people, and more easily fatigued, but as time goes on, these are less pronounced and less disruptive of my daily life.

I have self-diagnosed with C-PTSD as a helpful and extremely effective framework to process and transform the way my past experiences affect my current life and future. Since learning of this categorization and using the tools to treat it, I have healed exponentially. It also explains just about any “neurodivergence” in my personality. At the same time, I don’t necessarily need to say “I have C-PTSD” because I don’t have anything – I’ve experienced complex trauma. And as for being a “disorder,” that just means with some conscious re-order, it will no longer be diagnosable.

I will acknowledge the reality of neurodiversity; I think humanity itself is a spectrum, and simply to exist is to be somewhere on that vast spectrum of neurological and biological (and cultural and sexual and spiritual...) function. For myself, I would accept the condition of what I have learned is called “acquired neurodivergence” – I have “atypical” thoughts, reactions, and lifestyle habits as a cumulative result of my life experiences, not as an idiopathic, genetic, innate, or incurable “defect.” And I simply disagree with many of the foundational tenets and values of the prevailing world systems, which causes a lot of frustration for all of us. I reserve the right to change my mind in the future. I am fascinated by the “social model of disability” versus the “medical model of disability” and realize it’s far too diverse and nuanced a subject to claim an opinion, though I would love to hear the discussion.

So to be frank, because the internet/algorithm won’t shut up about it: no, I don’t need an autism or ADD diagnosis. C-PTSD, with or without chronic Lyme, and limbic system dysregulation, causes the exact same presentation of symptoms and “disorders” and coping mechanisms. The sheer amount of distress and confusion this social media algorithm seems to be causing myself and others about "getting diagnosed" prompted this post. AI is only going to make it worse. Proceed with caution when you use these tools: they can save your life, and they can destroy it.

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Off the Rails on the Crazy Train

Now because of all that, I am often lost. Without a clinical label, without a “trained professional,” treatment plan, guru, mentor, culture, or religious authority to make my life decisions for me about what I have to do next to survive, I have had a disproportionate amount of my life dedicated (or lost) to indecision, uncertainty, task paralysis, “ADD,” “PTSD,” “adjustment disorder,” “anxiety disorder,” etc. etc. ad nauseum. But all of this is a perfectly normal and reasonable response to having my entire worldview and paradigm – the scaffolding of my existence – pulled out from under me. Feel familiar? Ever lost a parent? Ever move to a new place after graduating, or immigrate? Ever flunk out of school or lose a job? Ever get married, divorced, or have an empty nest? Ever been betrayed by someone you trusted? Ever had a mid-life crisis or a sudden terminal diagnosis? Ever grow up without a computer and suddenly find yourself as an adult trying to survive in an entire economy and society run on computers?! Major life change is neurodivergence. Your brain and body were geared toward one paradigm of existence, and now they suddenly have to function and survive in a totally new paradigm of existence, which may or may not exist for anyone else!

So first, I think: let’s not pathologize it. I love the phrase, “You make sense.” (which I first heard from Yolanda Renteria). My "neurodivergence" is not a flaw; it’s survival, it’s transformation, it’s growth, and it’s necessary because the entire circumstances of my existence have just diverged. Natürlich! – so must my neurological and biological function diverge to adapt!

But I admit, I’m not functioning very smoothly these days, and it’s gotten me stuck in a very difficult chapter of life. I have a massive mess of tangled wires in my brain which makes it difficult for me to focus, both physically and mentally. So here I am, being pressured to get diagnosed and treated, but instead choosing to frame it in my own terms which make sense and mean dignity for me: I don’t consider it “Attention-Deficit Disorder,” I consider it “Super-Connected Phenomenon.” Each neuron in my brain seems to have an unusually large number of connected network pathways it can choose to fire down at any given moment (which makes sense, because I’ve had a long and diverse life full of various inputs into my memory!), and there’s no manual – no trusted doctors, mentors, or parents in my culture, paradigm, or environment, and I have no employer or deadlines – guiding me to which neural path (thought or action) is the most useful for the moment. Remember, my whole paradigm, worldview, and life purpose changed when I lost the American, Western medical, Evangelical Christian illusions that did me harm; I don’t know how I’m supposed to think anymore – I can choose my own adventure, and there are so many options!  And 20 critical years of my brain development were done on prescription pharmaceuticals that are no longer circulating in my brain. How could I not be confused and indecisive?!

It’s like I have a super dense railway network up there that makes it possible to travel great distances and understand a vast landscape of different topics, interests, and even boring bureaucratic junk that I need to survive. I’ve hoarded railroad tracks my whole life because there’s just so many interesting things to learn, and much more I had to learn whether I wanted to or not, for survival. But the curse of personal growth, transformation, and immigration is that the changing of my life path, purpose, identity, and worldview completely obliterated the timetable of that railway network. My trains – the electrical impulses in my brain that decide which track to run at which time – are in complete disarray. Since I lost the entire structure of my life and beliefs, I have no idea which destination I’m supposed to set out for and which ones to avoid; I have too many choices now.

From the relative safety of the chronic illness label, unemployment, and being a secure and “kept” housewife, with no social responsibility, I can run whatever the hell train I want! Laundry-dishes-cleaning-OOOHSHINY!-gardening-writing-art-project-deepthought-reading-studying-meditating-BOOKSALE!!!-doctor-cooking-sleeping-ICECREAM!-walking-biking-napping-guitar-SHIT-I-FORGOT-THE-LAUNDRY is kind of a crazy train, but it runs, I survive, and I get the thrill of enjoying all these amazing destinations I’ve forgotten were on my map. Destinations that were once forbidden, judged, shamed, medicated, locked up, or abandoned for the need for money, cultural norms, social expectations, religion, or Lyme Disease survival. This weird little world is my oyster now.

It’s a circus up there, but at least the clowns are funny. I don’t want to pathologize my neural destinations, or the beautiful, thrilling diversity of my brain. A big part of healing my nervous system, I believe, was to accept the weirdness, love it, and give myself the freedom to explore it without judgment, without labels, without diagnoses, treatments, or suppression. I let myself drive the crazy train for as long as I need to.

Until one day…

I discovered a destination in my brain that lit up my entire life, body, and soul: safe social connection. Human communication. Being heard, understood, and loved. Hearing, understanding, and loving others. Realizing that just telling my raw, authentic story could heal someone, as other people’s raw, authentic stories began to heal my own great scars. I found a line on my crazy train network that I wanted to travel again and again: Purpose! Meaning in life! A destination discovered and prescribed by my self, not some manipulative engineer with ulterior motives!

But I was not used to having a timetable.  Literally, I haven’t kept a regular schedule in 15 years. My mind used freedom, acceptance, and non-judgment to heal itself, which meant not pushing or shaming myself into routines, goals, milestones, or expectations.  I learned to love myself unconditionally, a practice for which I needed to remove conditions of productivity, achievement, labels, and fulfilling social roles. I became what might be labeled as complacent or lazy, what might be diagnosed as depression, ADD, or psychosomatic.

But I have my own name for it: healing. I have my own framework: stages of growth. I have my own prognosis: it’s working; I have more energy, focus, and productivity now that I know where I want to drive the crazy train.

But I had to let it run in its own time and trust the process, as long as I had the luxury. Now, what if I had shamed myself into getting a diagnosis and medication for a normal stage of human development? What if I had rushed my healing journey into conformity and productivity, something that looks good on my resume, something that makes a good hook for my coaching business or self-help book? What if I gave into the pressure of needing a label for the sake of relating to and pleasing others? Maybe I’d be more successful, faster? But honestly, I think that’s what made me sickest in the first place – needing outward validation from a society that wouldn't give it, needing to make sense, needing to justify my existence, needing to qualify my right to assistance, and only having the vocabulary, diagnoses, and labels of the “trained professionals” and institutions to work with, instead of embarking on my own self-discovery. Why would I do that again? I already rode that line all the way to the end station, and it literally went to hell for me. I understand why diagnoses and labels may feel safe and be beneficial for others; but they are not for me.

I love my brain’s crazy trains. I love exploring what makes every engine run, when every track was first laid, where it goes, and how to demolish, repair, and re-route anything that goes to a destination I don’t want it to. I love knowing I have friends and helpers on some of the difficult but necessary tracks, and I love knowing when I want to ride alone and just observe the scenery. Don’t you dare pathologize and medicate my crazy train. I’m sorry no CEO is going to get rich off exploiting it or suppressing it, but that’s a first-world problem, not a “me” problem. The only difference between being a genius getting my Ph.D. in cognitive psychology and being “what’s-her-name? Jess?” is money and physical stamina; for all their expectations, no one has ever offered to pay for either – why is that my fault?

Building the Train Stations

What I will accept for my crazy-train brain is train stations. Places to rest and refuel, travel guides, maintenance manuals, ideas and space to explore whether or not I want to adopt a timetable, or start building a new set of tracks to a new destination. In practical terms, as I reject labels, diagnoses, strict treatment protocols, and pushy programs, I find a lot of value in frameworks and identifying stages to explore, navigate, and help me get my bearings in life. I love people, healers, therapists, and “trained professionals” who teach me to make sense of how my brain works, who encourage me to love being my authentic self, and give me tools to follow my own path, not theirs, not the ones that just so happen to make them wealthy.

This website is a collection of personal experiences, of how I navigate my way out of chronic illness, diagnoses, labels, and harmful medications. It’s how I keep myself alive and out of psychosis and self-harm in a world that is constantly trying to smother me in self-doubt, shame, and ridicule. And it’s the best way, I feel, that I can authentically share what I’ve learned, to help people, without pushing an agenda or violating trust.

This is my introduction to the helpful “frameworks” and “stages” ideas that I want to share, rather than checklists, programs, agendas, or The Steps You MUST Take To Heal Or You’re A Lazy Piece Of Crap Who Deserves to Suffer.^TM  I’ve been through that mess and confusion myself, and it was gross. I want to help, while fully recognizing your autonomy and integrity to choose when, where, and how you want help. I have found that professionals who outline categories, stages, milestones, and general ideas into frameworks of healing or growth, rather than selling their own particular program, to be the most trustworthy and helpful. They allow me to identify myself in a category that feels right and safe for me in the moment, provide insight and suggestions to help me move and grow through my current stage of life, and give me full autonomy to decide if, when, and how I want to proceed to and explore other stages when I’m ready.

I’m glad you found my station. Welcome aboard!

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Books that inform some of the opinions presented in this post:

“The Myth of Normal” by Gábor Máté, M.D.

“Emergence: Labeled Autistic” by Temple Grandin, Ph.D.

“Radical Remission” by Dr. Kelly A. Turner, Ph.D.

“My Stroke of Insight” by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.

“A Mind of Your Own” by Kelly Brogan, M.D

“Mind Over Medicine” by Lissa Rankin, M.D.

“You Are the Placebo” by Dr. Joe Dispenza

“The Road Less Traveled” and “Further Along the Road Less Traveled” by M. Scott Peck, M.D.