Author: STS Admin (Page 1 of 15)

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

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.

Musing on the quality of suicidal thoughts over the years

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.

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.

Modern parable: Flattery always gets you somewhere.

You ever have that one someone on Facebook, that one someone you know only as text and don’t recall how they got on your friends list, that one someone who posts a cute comment and smiley reaction to your photos almost every time you share any ol’ thing on your profile, and that one someone guaranteed to give you big hearts on your stories? And then you check out their profile to learn a little more about them, see what they like, check out a few pictures. And then you start wondering:

“I wonder what they’re really like? What are they really like in person? What things do they do? What thoughts do they carry with them through the day? What dreams do they dream? Should I? Do I take the chance? Should I . . .

“Should I just block them?”

And then I block them.

Gawd, how I despise Facebook stalkers. Creepy. Ew. Ick. Blech.

If a parable is to be had here, it’s that social media is a great place to practice setting emotional and mental health boundaries. Grimm Bros, eat your heart out.

Reprinted with kind permission of Steve’s Thoughtcrimes.

After an intrusive pat down by TSA any mammal can fly

A very many years ago at STS Game Night, whilst playing Trivial Pursuit, the question asked was, “What is the only mammal besides bats that can fly?” We’re taught only bats can fly because they propel themselves by flapping their wings, and mammals like a flying squirrel merely glide.

The question was mine to answer and I conceded to, “Weird question, no idea, here’s the die, let’s move on.”

This dude named Dan (who had not one wedge in the contest) proclaimed, “Duh! It’s humans. That question was soooooooo easy. I can’t believe you didn’t get it. Duh!”

A human doesn’t flap its arms and achieve flight. Push enough friends off the Huntington Beach Pier (friends who aren’t the most graceful or successful swimmers) and you learn this. A human can ride in a plane, and a plane is propelled with a mechanism producing thrust, and this thrust allows the plane to take flight, and this human is now considered “a mammal that can fly.”

Okay, then.

So my response was, “As soon as you put a dog or a hamster or a giraffe or a wallaby or a manatee in a plane, and the plane is propelled with a mechanism producing thrust, and the plane lifts off into flight, these are now ‘mammals that can fly’ by your standard. So there are many mammals that can fly other than bats. Shall we play Semantics Pursuit?”

Dan didn’t get any wedges that evening.


Reprinted with kind permission from Steve’s Thoughtcrimes.

Scenes from our AT&SF Steam Locomotive Field Trip – Albuquerque, New Mexico, August 26, 2023.

Stand Up To Stigma had a rippin’ cool time at Tractor Brewery and the AT&SF 2926 event. Later this year the 2926 will be at the Albuquerque Trainyards for a full weekend of events. Yes, we’ll be going to that event, too!

AT&SF Steam Locomotive Event -Albuquerque, New Mexico – Saturday, August 26, 2023

It’s time for another field trip! Do you like trains? This Saturday we’ll be meeting at Tractor Brewery on 4th Street in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to view AT&SF Locomotive 2926 in action!

New Mexico Heritage Rail is having their second outing for the fully restored historic locomotive. STS peers met at the first 2926 event last spring and we had such a stellar experience we’ll be there again!

What:
AT&SF Locomotive 2926 Event

When:

12PM Saturday, August 26, 2023

Where:

Tractor Brewery
1800 4th St NW
Albuquerque, NM 87102
@ 4th & Hannett

We’ll meet at the tour ticket booth (you aren’t required to purchase a tour) at noon. Parking is curbside on 4th St. and adjoining city streets. 4th St. is closed at the train tracks for the event.

For more information:
Text – 505.310.5070
Email – info@standuptostigma.org or sutstigma@gmail.com

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

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, what the hell were you thinking with that joke?”

The COVID-19 lockdown and our children

This post is from August 2021. American history and the fallout for our kids is now manifesting. Over the coming year we’ll have parents sharing their – often heartbreaking – stories of how the COVID-19 lockdown detrimentally affected their children’s mental health. For now, let’s just say it’s good fortune we have as many child therapy providers as we do.


To a five year old child, 1.5 years of forced lockdown is 30% of their life to that point. Extrapolating:

30% of a 10 year old child’s life is 3 years.

30% of a 15 year old teenager’s life is 4.5 years.

30% of a 20 year old adult’s life is 6 years.

30% of a 30 year old adult’s life is 9 years.

30% of a 40 year old adult’s life is 12 years.

30% of a 50 year old adult’s life is 15 years.

30% of a 60 year old adult’s life is 18 years.

30% of a 70 year old adult’s life is 21 years.

30% of an 80 year old adult’s life is 24 years.

Remember how summer vacation seemed to last forever when we were kids? It’s because as kids three months of our lives was a very large percentage of our living experience. Recognize this when in a few years we have the result of socially crippled kids needing tons of psych services for missing out on 30% of their social lives because of forced lockdowns.

And consider how we would turn out if we – as adults – were forced to stay at home for a decade or more. How socially crippled would we adults be a

Why I didn’t and won’t watch Breaking Bad

It’s appreciated just how excellent a program Breaking Bad is. I didn’t watch it and I won’t watch it for this very simple and singular reason:

It’s a show that dramatizes drug culture.

The stuff I do in peer co-occuring advocacy gifts me with friends whose lives are severely and significantly damaged by illicit drugs like meth. Dramatizing drug culture isn’t necessarily condoning, glorifying, or celebrating drug culture. However, it’s impossible for me to watch a show like Breaking Bad without reflecting on the horrible life stories my friends shared with me. This negates anything pleasurable and enjoyable about watching the show. So I didn’t and I won’t.

And that Breaking Bad was filmed in Albuquerque makes it even more tangible, the literal recognizable physical setting of my friends’ life experiences.

I have an irritated good friend insisting I watch Breaking Bad, pointing out it’s about more than meth culture, that it’s about character development and character interaction. He insists if I give the show a chance I would understand this.

I asked him a single question: Does the show utilize meth production and sales as a central plot point throughout the series? The answer is of course “yes.” Returning to my first principle reason for not watching the show, because it is based upon dramatizing drug culture I won’t watch Breaking Bad. Flatly and immutably.

Call me stubborn if need be. I don’t feel my personally earned principles are open for debate. And I appreciate just how excellent a program Breaking Bad is.

« Older posts