Today we continued our indigenous approaches to hearing
voices workshop. We began with a
worker's question about how to approach the question of asking people about
their voices. People in the room
responded with descriptions of traumatic experiences with the mental health
system when they acknowledged hearing voices.
One person told the story of his 13 year old niece who told a school
counselor that she was hearing voices and was immediately admitted to the psychiatric
ward. It turned out that some mean girls
had been teasing her at a school outing and she kept hearing in her mind the
mean things that they had said. She knew
that she was remembering what they had said and that they weren't there
actually speaking to her but no one had taken the trouble to find out what she
meant by hearing voices. Others talked
about the scared look in counselors' and psychologists' eyes when the voices
conversation occurred. A woman mentioned
that when she was in the height of her voices and was hearing thousands of
independent voices from every which direction (clouds, stars, mountains, even
buses), so much so that she was mute, that it was only aboriginal people who
noticed that she was going through an unusual experience and would sit with her
and ask her to talk story with them.
These were random aboriginal people in bus stations, train stations,
cafes, and bars. Thus, the consensus was
that one had to make people feel safe in order to talk about voices. People needed to feel that they weren't going
to be carted away to the psychiatric hospital or involuntarily medicated. This led us to a discussion of how medication
rarely took away the voices and that the side effects rarely made the effort
worth the trouble. This was the
consensus of all those present who had tried medication for suppressing
voices. We talked about the idea that
one could suppress voices and the consensus of everyone present was that this
didn't work so well. The harder people
tried to make the voice go away, the more powerful it became. A better strategy was to put the voice in
context, to hear it in the context of all the other potential voices that could
be heard, and cultivate other voices to counter the disturbing voices. Once one knew that it wasn't all powerful or
even powerful at all, just annoying and bothersome, it was easier to ignore it
and do something else.
After this discussion, we went forward with the talking
circle. We encouraged people to speak to
what they had gotten from the day before, to tell any dreams remembered, and to
speak to what they wanted from the rest of the day. The common theme to reported dreams was
selling and buying products that people needed -- furniture, computers, the
Hamptons (an area at the Eastern end of Long Island in the United States), and
more. A sub-theme was making sure there was
no illicit contraband in the articles being bought and sold. People wanted to hear more about Native North
American practices and communities.
Another man wanted to know better strategies for closing down the work
after it was completed.
At the conclusion of the break, I introduced a mind map
exercise. In this exercise we list the
prominent voices or thoughts we are hearing in our minds. I suggested imagining a board room table and
putting each of those voices or thoughts around the table. The next step is to wonder who is verbalizing
this voice or thought. Then we go after
stories about the experiences that led to this character making the conclusions
stated in the thought or voice. We gave
everyone large pieces of paper to make these drawings. After people had worked for long enough, I
asked for a volunteer to present his drawing.
Quinn stepped forward and showed me his map. We started working on his voices. One said, "Why would you do this to me?" I asked Quinn who was the character who said
this.
"Me at nine years old," he said.
"Tell me a story about how nine-year-old you came to think
this way," I said. Quinn responded with
a story of being bullied at school and at home and no one protecting him.
"That nine year old version of you feels hurt at not being
protected and feels a sense of injustice about the whole mess, eh?" I asked.
"Exactly," he responded.
We drew him as a nine-year old in cartoon stick figure form below the
words, saying the words. We labeled it
"nine year old Quinn". Then we found a
voice that said, "I'm scared and afraid."
"Who's that?" I asked.
"Who says that?"
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Lewis Mehl-Madrona graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed residencies in family medicine and in psychiatry at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, Coyote Wisdom, and (
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