Monthly Archives: September 2017

Happiness, Health, Mental Health

13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do

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Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do

BY AMY MORIN

(posted on youbtube by Franque Michele)

 

Mentally strong people have healthy habits. They manage their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in ways that set them up for success in life. Check out these things that mentally strong people don’t do so that you too can become more mentally strong.

 

  1. They Don’t Waste Time Feeling Sorry for Themselves. Mentally strong people don’t sit around feeling sorry about their circumstances or how others have treated them. Instead, they take responsibility for their role in life and understand that life isn’t always easy or fair.

 

  1. They Don’t Give Away Their Power. They don’t allow others to control them, and they don’t give someone else power over them. They don’t say things like, “My boss makes me feel bad,” because they understand that they are in control over their own emotions and they have a choice in how they respond.

 

  1. They Don’t Shy Away from Change. Mentally strong people don’t try to avoid change. Instead, they welcome positive change and are willing to be flexible. They understand that change is inevitable and believe in their abilities to adapt.

 

  1. They Don’t Waste Energy on Things They Can’t Control . You won’t hear a mentally strong person complaining over lost luggage or traffic jams. Instead, they focus on what they can control in their lives. They recognize that sometimes, the only thing they can control is their attitude.

 

  1. They Don’t Worry About Pleasing Everyone. Mentally strong people recognize that they don’t need to please everyone all the time. They’re not afraid to say no or speak up when necessary. They strive to be kind and fair, but can handle other people being upset if they didn’t make them happy.

 

  1. They Don’t Fear Taking Calculated Risks. They don’t take reckless or foolish risks, but don’t mind taking calculated risks. Mentally strong people spend time weighing the risks and benefits before making a big decision, and they’re fully informed of the potential downsides before they take action. You may be interested in this too:

 

14 Things Positive People Don’t Do

 

  1. They Don’t Dwell on the Past. Mentally strong people don’t waste time dwelling on the past and wishing things could be different. They acknowledge their past and can say what they’ve learned from it. However, they don’t constantly relive bad experiences or fantasize about the glory days. Instead, they live for the present and plan for the future.

 

  1. They Don’t Make the Same Mistakes Over and Over. Mentally strong people accept responsibility for their behavior and learn from their past mistakes. As a result, they don’t keep repeating those mistakes over and over. Instead, they move on and make better decisions in the future.

 

  1. They Don’t Resent Other People’s Success. Mentally strong people can appreciate and celebrate other people’s success in life. They don’t grow jealous or feel cheated when others surpass them. Instead, they recognize that success comes with hard work, and they are willing to work hard for their own chance at success.

 

  1. They Don’t Give Up After the First Failure. Mentally strong people don’t view failure as a reason to give up. Instead, they use failure as an opportunity to grow and improve. They are willing to keep trying until they get it right.

 

  1. They Don’t Fear Alone Time. Mentally strong people can tolerate being alone and they don’t fear silence. They aren’t afraid to be alone with their thoughts and they can use downtime to be productive. They enjoy their own company and aren’t dependent on others for companionship and entertainment all the time but instead can be happy alone.

 

  1. They Don’t Feel the World Owes Them Anything. Mentally strong people don’t feel entitled to things in life. They weren’t born with a mentality that others would take care of them or that the world must give them something. Instead, they look for opportunities based on their own merits.

 

  1. They Don’t Expect Immediate Results. Whether they are working on improving their health or getting a new business off the ground, mentally strong people don’t expect immediate results. Instead, they apply their skills and time to the best of their ability and understand that real change takes time

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Now I want to share a website where you can find out more about YOU, and why you are the way you are. This website provides a test and a resulting personality profile, which will give you a clue about your ways of being and how and why your interact with others the way you do, as well as your preferences in life for being and doing. http://16personalities.com The test here is free and may be saved as long as you remember to register by putting in your email. The basic profile is free and you can pay for an indepth one but once you get your test results, which is four letter code, much info is available for free on the internet.

 

Another site, with the official Myers-Briggs test or MBTI, of which the 16 Personalities is a version, and gives much the same results, and this can be found here: https://my-personality-test.com then go to the Personality TYPE test.  Now, some of you may be fearful of being labelled but the thing about the MBTI is that it has nothing to do with labels being IMPOSED but any individual’s personal preferences leading to their type being discovered. I found it quite extraordinary, after taking the test a few times, and getting the same results each time, upon reading my profile with an open mind, just how predictive as well as descriptive of my behavior it was. The one thing it never is was prescriptive. It does not tell you what you HAVE to do only what you are likely to want to do or how you are likely to react in any given situation, given your personal preferences in life, and your personality style. Try it, if you don’t like it or don’t respond to it on a visceral level, disregard it!

 

Cheers, everyone!

Art, Beauty, Health, Music

Artistic Enticements From Marie Abanga!

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Wow! Thats all i can say! One lovely, gutsy, charming lady and my friend. Marie A. Abanga from Cameroon. Brava!!!

Find her blog here: https://marieabanga.wordpress.com marie abanga’s blog

“This little light of mine, am gonna let it shine…

This little love of mine, am gonna let it flow…

This little life of mine, am gonna live it full …

Let it shine, let it flow, live it full…

This little laugh of mine, am gonna laugh it loud…

This little smile of mine, am gonna smile it broad…

This little frown of mine, am gonna frown it all

Laugh it loud, smile it broad, frown it all…

This little dream of mine, am gonna dream it real…

This little tale of mine, am gonna tell it all…

This little cheer of mime, am gonna share it all…

Dream it real, tell it all, share it all…

And when all is said, am gonna say it still…

And when all is done, am gonna do it still…

And when all is lost. Am gonna find it still…

Say it still, do it still, find it still…

And when my light goes dim, am gonna grateful go…

And when my turn is up, am gonna graceful go…

And when my life is nought, am gonna let it go…

Let it go, let it go, let it go”

by Marie A Abanga

 

 

Dreams, Future, Happiness, Life, Money

Everyone Should Have A Guaranteed Basic Income for Life

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I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing for a while, ever since i first came across the notion who knows when. In fact, i always wondered, even as a child, why this was considered so impossible and the answer given was that “people would become lazy…” to which i had not enough life experience to respond adequately or knowledgeably. Now, however, my own life has given my a tiny hint of whether that answer was correct or not. And my answer comes from a life in which i was provided, by virtue of being “on disability” for decades, a poverty-level income, plus shelter and varying levels of food support. I did not become lazy at all. In contrast, as soon as my life stabilized when i no longer was in constant search for housing and had enough to eat for “the forseeable future” at any given time, i could settle down into my life of low but livable income and i taught myself to write poetry. This was a goal that i could accomplish given that it required very little extras in the way of expenditures, beyond a pen and a notebook and eventually an electric tyoewriter, paper, and a few envelopes and stamps. For 25 years i lived and breathed only to read and write poetry, and became an accomplished poet, with hundreds of poems under my belt.

The one thing that my stable if low income did not do was make me lazy, it did deprive me of many other things, but the basic “security” it provided to me of shelter and food and medical care, however basic level they were, permitted me the freedom at least to write my heart out.

Later, when my income doubled due to a a tragedy in the family that had a positive effect on my social security benefit, once again freedom from penury permitted me to become an artist, because i could buy the art supplies that before that time i could never have afforded.

The point is that people will always do what they do, and want to do, when the chains of utter compulsion are taken off. There is plenty of money in this world, enough to fund a system that takes care of all, if we have heart and soul to do this. The question is, Do we dare?

 

Abuse, injustice, Mental Health, Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital

VERMONT PSYCHIATRIC CARE HOSPITAL: Today We Will Name Names of the LIARS…and tell all

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First of all, I need to make clear that I name the guilty not the innocent here. But I mostly remember the guilty, I wonder why?

As the famed WWII poet Henry Read wrote in his poem, The Naming of Parts:

” Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all the neighboring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.”

Well, today we have the naming of the liars, and the guilty parties at VPCH, the Vermont State Hospital in Berlin, Vermont, those who either restrained me in 5-point restraints and kept me there for five hour because I could not speak, or colluded to lie about the incident  these last two years in order to cover it up and not take responsibility for what happened. And now they have decided to accuse of trying to STAB them…,which is so beyond the beyond that I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!!!

First I will name the Unit D doctor. JOHN MALLOY Jr MD who worked on Unit D at VPCH and who was singlehandedly responsible for a large sheet of paper placed at the front of my chart from the third day I was in the hospital  — that is from the the first day he met me, and after he had consulted with the Brattleboro Retreat’s  doctor — against my express wishes — by phone only but had not received any official records. This paper had in HUGE LETTERS  these words: HOW TO DEAL  WITH  BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER…now I do not and did not at any time have symptoms that would have made him think I had such a disorder, except that he had spoken with this monster psychiatrist, Marc McGee from the Brattleboro Retreat, who had diagnosed that secondary Axis II diagnosis within FIVE MINUTES of my — get this! —  being forcibly brought into the Adult Low Stimulation Unit by two sheriffs who had not bothered to get a wheelchair but took me by the armpits and dragged me, trussed up like Hannibal Lecter,  in leg irons and waist chain and handcuffs and full HOOD over my head and face, across a large parking lot  down  into the Retreat Basement and up to the second floor where they publicly hauled my helpless body down two long corridors to the ALSA unit before unshackling me…But did Marc McGee ask me why this angered me, I who had been completely compliant on the ride from Springfield and had been hooded the entire time to boot? NO he decided that I SHOULD NOT BE ANGRY so i must have Borderline Personality Disorder…Why? Because HE HATED ME, and his hatred of me meant that I  could be abused by him with impunity…

But the thing is, he lied to me, and told me he had not diagnosed this, and it was only later when I found out that he HAD done so right then and there, that I threatened to sue him and to tell the Retreat CEO what he was  in the habit of doing to patients he did not like, if he did not remove this designation from my official diagnosis. So he did, he did! When I left, it was not on my discharge summary!

But when Dr Malloy Jr spoke to Dr McGee, did Marc Mc Gee, who ran both Tyler 2 and Tyler 4 units at the Brattleboro Retreat  inform him that I was not diagnosed with BPD? No, not at all, he told him the exact opposite, that I had a “long history of BPD” which is utter BULLSHIT and he knows it,  Marc told John Malloy Jr  that to cover up his own incompetence and John Malloy without bothering to do his own intake and history that VPCH requires him to do, and any thinking on his part, just took that as gospel.

Anyhow, I believe  that nothing  of what later happened at VPCH would have occurred if the staff had not been primed to abuse me by this sheet of paper that  John Malloy Jr MD placed in my chart,  instructing them to dismiss me as manipulative and devious and to treat me as a hated patient who needed to be disciplined.

That said, Today we have the naming of names, largely because I just heard from the Vermont  Nursing Board that they will not take any measures against the nurse who instigated the Nov 18, 2015 incident of torture.  And why? Because the nurse ANNETTE BRENNAN RN,  who grabbed me, and had me restrained out of vengeance  and kept me in restraints for 5 hours because  “she is not to be released until she speaks aloud” (which never happened)  was ANNETTE BRENNAN, and she and JENNIFER MANUKHANI  RN both know that what they told the  nursing board was nothing but a  LIE,  yet because the nursing board did not know this , and colluded with them, they got away with inventing after the fact something that is not in any part of any chart or debriefing or investigation by the Department of Adult Protective Services, when they investigated the same incident last year, no, nothing was mentioned but suddenly SUDDENLY both nurses manage to remember that I “tried to stab Annette Brennan”?!! Oh, what a load of absolute crap, and if the investigators were anything but idiots who wanted sinecures and not to have to bother to work, they would have done an investigation rather than sitting on their asses. They would have read through  the incident in the chart enough to see this. I mean, NOWHERE NOWHERE is this rather critical “event” of my supposedly trying to stab a nurse with a pen ever mentioned (because it never happened)  but suddenly it looms as THE ONLY AND PRIME reason why ANNETTE BRENNAN RN that fucking cunt was justified in restraining AND molesting me? Using Dr Joseph LASEK to write the order…

I would have said it took some  nerve of those two LYING nurses to collude to make this up out of whole cloth, but they must have known the investigators would not even bother to look to see whether the chart says  a word to corroborate this, no of course not. The whole thing was RIGGED to make me look like a assaultive FIEND from the first, when all I ever did was slam doors, NOTHING else, and ANNETTE BRENNAN RN had a hissy fit about it and GRABBED ME because she lost her temper, and Jennifer Mansukhani RN even at the time said, to HER, “WE DON’T GO HANDS ON HERE AT VPCH”, but she had and they did and they TORTURED ME for 5 hours that I cannot forget and will NEVER FORGIVE…

But they got away with LIEs, so I will name names.  Annette Brennan, RN and Jennifer Mansukhani, RN TORTURED me  and ANNETTE MOLESTED  me a helpless patient in 5-point restraints  on Unit D at the  Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital on November 18, 2015 with collusion by Drs Joseph Lasek and JOHN MALLOY Jr..

Tomorrow I will post the entire event as I wrote  it to the Board, which refused to permit me to testify or to interview me. I wrote it in utter and complete honesty…But they never wanted honesty, they only want to LIE and DECEIVE AND FUCK ME OVER….but REVENGE IS MINE saith the lord as they will learn, and you had better know it!

I also plan to post the pages of my chart and the APS report…I don’t care anymore about MY privacy. FUCK those liars!

 

 

anti-psychiatry, Art, Health, Michael E Balkunas MD

What Really Happened On W-1 in New Britain Hospital’s Psychiatric Unit in 2014…

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I remember names…some of them. For instance, the short, chubby, blond nurse, who was worried about her weight and who was so instrumental in torturing me? Her name was Debra. And the head nurse who seemed so oblivious to the fact that her policies were indeed torture, even though she admitted that she expected the guards to inflict pain on patients when “escorting” them to seclusion in order to “subdue them faster” as she put it to me, openly. Her name was Barbara, and even though I was horrified by things she told me, I believe that she was innocently deluded and believed in her job, did not mean to be mean, not the way Debra seemed to, and honestly wanted the best for her patients. But let me start at some beginning which is to say, anywhere at all, and give you an idea of what I am talking about.

How very similiar Michael and Charlie look…and and no wonder, since they share the same sadism genes!

I have written in multiple places and on many occasions about what happened to me at New Britain Hospital (aka  Hospital of Central Connecticut on Grand Street in New Britain) and I do not want to go into the whole thing here. All you need to do is search on the subject of Michael E Balkunas at this blog and you will get most of the gory details. That said, much that happened has never been told not even here. For instance, that Debra was the nurse who in a sadistic impulse and in an apparent fit of frustration, decided to have the security guards strip me naked when she was secluding me for some unknown (and always unnecessary) reason yet again…as they did nearly daily at W-1 in New Britain Hospital in May 2014….that  it was Debra who was directly responsible for this I have never stated. But I remember her name clearly, and her face….And the fact that after she did this the second or third time she went on leave for several days, and when she came back told me she had almost quit her job.

I was momentarily cheered because I thought perhaps she had had some serious regrets about what she’d done to me. I asked her, Was it because of me? I thought she would tell me yes. She looked at me, and nodded, then said, “Because you are such a challenging patient.”  Huh? I looked at her, and saw no remorse, no regrets only residual anger and scorn…and a certain unrepentant rancor that I had “made her do what she did.” Clearly she felt that I was to blame for her behavior, that I was to blame in general and that it was all justified.

Hospital Seclusion Room

But to get back to what happened. After she had me stripped naked by four male guards, after I loudly and vociferously protested being left alone in that freezing seclusion cell for I never knew how long, I began mildly hitting my head on the wall in protest. They threatened to four-point me and then they came barreling back in and threw me onto a restraint bed. The thing is, I knew, completely naked, I could not take the cold in that seclusion cell. But if they restrained me they would HAVE to cover me with something, and at the very least I would not freeze to death in that  frigid cell for an indefinite number of hours…But when they came for me, they grabbed me and angrily threw me onto a gurney, even though I put up no resistance,  spread-eagled my legs, deliberately exposing my private parts, and shackled them to the corners of the gurney with my arms pinioned above my head until I shrieked in pain even as  they laughed. Then they held me down,  gratuitously I might add, since I was already restrained, compressing my neck and chest, in order to give me the usual three-injection cocktail of punishment drugs — Haldol, Ativan and Benadryl — forcibly slammed into my buttocks. All of this done to me while I was  naked  and immobilized in four point restraints. Then fearing that they would leave me alone there, freezing cold, I screamed  for them to cover me. With a look of disgust, someone threw a draw sheet over me, but no more.

The charge nurse came in for my “face to face” interview to see that all was “proper”  and she visibly and audibly shivered, but refused me a warm blanket, or any at all, due to “safety concerns.” Then she left with the rest of them and  turned off the intercom, so “we won’t have to listen to her scream.” They closed the door behind them, leaving me all alone behind a metal cell door that did not even have an observation window in it.

I screamed from the base of my lungs as deeply and as loudly as I could for as long as I could last. No one took mercy on me or brought me water or a blanket or spoke to me the entire time. Only when, exhausted, I finally lapsed  did they relent and ask, from outside the door,  “can we turn the intercom back on? She is quiet now…” And apparently got assent for that… Because eventually I heard someone flip a switch but nothing more.

After I was  released, the next day, I told the unit director, Dr Michael E Balkunas what they had done to me, and he must have recognized the egregious nature of it because his response is telling. Instead of dismissing it as not so terrible, he said: “They would NEVER do such a thing as that in my hospital. You are a liar!” So he saw how awful it had been, what they had done to me, he just refused to acknowledge it had happened, and that he did not in fact  what his staff  were  up to. But I was never in fact the liar he believed me to be. His stock answer to everything he did not want to see or believe was  routinely that I was lying, but this was not true, and he was so sickeningly dismissive of the truth that I did not wait to listen to  more this time. I was so wiped off the map by his response that I got up and walked out of the interview room  and did not bother with him from then on…I KNEW I  was never a liar, and that in actuality it was the STAFF who lied all the time, but telling Balkunas that would have done no good. He wanted to believe what he wanted to believe and nothing i said got through to him from day one…So I thought, so why bother ?  WHY BOTHER. Balkunas wanted to murder  my body and my spirit, and I could not let him succeed. He could imprison my body in his hospital, but i was damned if i would let him get my spirit. FUCK HIM!

But Dr Balkunas, Michael, you did not in point of fact know what went on at W-1 ever, nor at the ER, when you were there. Abuse was rampant because you encouraged it to be…and you never cared much what they did to achieve “order” so long as it was “quiet” when you were around. So you gave tacit assent to the tortures that they inflicted, and you likewise tacitly approved the very behaviors that you told me  would “never happen on your watch”…Yeah? Well, I feel certain that if they behaved as they did towards me, they had done it before me, and did so to others after I left as well…and they continue to inflict these things on patients to this day.

I will leave it there. Your unit staff and you too, Balkie, are Out of control, and deserve, as my Obama post notes, to be CLOSED down for good.

The other day I made this little polymer clay figure to illustrate what Debra did to me.

Pam in Restraints in New Britain Hospital In May 2014

It blew me away and I could not sleep all night the night I made her….Until Wendy and I decided to heal her, and perhaps heal me,  from the experience, First, talking to the figure in the little bed calmly and with compassion,  we covered her with a thick cotton blanket. That brought me some relief as I no longer felt chilled.  Then we took off the restraints, which despite being made of polymer clay actually slipped right off, and we brought her arms down to her sides so she could sleep in comfort. By the time we were through I felt immensely better.

Neither of us could even imagine treating another human being as Balkunas had had me treated on numerous occasions by routine.

 

anti-psychiatry, Mental Health, Poems, Schizophrenia

Julie Mad Blogger Interview Recorded at Link Here…

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//percolate.blogtalkradio.com/offsiteplayer?hostId=790983&episodeId=10265659“>http:////percolate.blogtalkradio.com/offsiteplayer?hostId=790983&episodeId=10265659

Poetry, Schizophrenia, Writing

Listen to Live Interview With Pamela Spiro Wagner on Wednesday Sept 13, 2017

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http://www.blogtalkradio.com/juliemadblogger/2017/09/13/an-evening-with-pamela-spiro-wagner

6:30pm this coming Wednesday evening Sept 13, 2017.

Please join us to listen and participate!

Art, Psychiatry, Schizophrenia

TAKING THE MASK OFF INTERVIEWS PAMELA SPIRO WAGNER

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Taking the Mask Off Podcast Ep 004: Unmasking Schizophrenia with Pamela Spiro Wagner

Please listen to this. You will find Cortland Pfeffers intro fascinating, and of course pamela as usual has much to say!

Here is a little new art to entice, just a small drawing i did while at fhe hostel in Boston during the Hearing Voices Congress. I hope to post that power point soon.

Drawing of eyes with tears, exercise

 

 

Hostel visitors in Boston (3″ by 5″)