Extreme States of Mind

This article shares an empowering, relationship based approach towards supporting autistic and developmentally different persons.

There is a need to gain a better awareness of non-western therapies for emotional healing.

We need to create a place of sanctuary for those in distress. We need to enter their world, validate their experience, and understand the dynamics that shape who and what they have become.

The mental health system today often only reinforces the powerlessness that many already feel. We need a system of understanding, compassion, and liberation.

Often when I have challenged the bio-psychiatric model, I have been asked if I am 'anti-psychiatry', so it is necessary to clarify my vision of a humane mental health system.

There is use of the puzzle piece as a symbol for autism, but the implications of this symbol may cause some dilemmas.

There are two approaches to autism, one to eradicate even if by force and coercion, and the other to embrace and seek to understand the person and help them navigate through the mainstream.

There have been encouraging developments showing that the bio-psychiatric paradigm is unraveling.

In Northeastern Pennsylvania, consultation is being offered in regards to one of the few programs to offer a relational/existential approach to autism. This article explains this more dignified way of supporting autistic persons.

The patterns of familial communication and dynamics are explored in regards to their impact on emotional distress.

Many programs are based on seeking to alter autistic persons rather than accepting and understanding.

Often the mental health system has failed to pay attention to the experience of individuals and has become locked into a reductionist medical model. We need a model that promotes self determination, dignity, and acceptance of autistic persons and those in distress.

Society itself is sick, yet it seeks to pathologize those who would react to this sick society, and it offers them its technologies, it offers them its drugs, to numb them into accepting things as they are rather than to actively protest and change the injustices that exist.

With many technologies at our disposal, sometimes we fail to simply embrace our common humanity.

There is a need for relational and existential approaches to autism that respect the self-autonomy and dignity of the person.

We can find a connection to those in distress and autistic persons simply by seeking to accept, understand, and realize our common humanity.

There are patterns of mystification and seeking to change narratives that lead people to serious emotional distress.

The medical model is mechanical and reductionist. We need a model of compassion and true human understanding.

Those who experience extreme states of mind often experience existential death and are trapped in infantile mindsets. They are unable to exist the realm between which we call life and are dependent. But it is possible for breakdown to be transformed to breakthrough.

We need to explore the social factors that lead to emotional distress and have the courage to address them and find recovery in relationship between us.