All I ever was and had to be was sad
Click on the above link to visit Monica Cassani’s site http://www.beyondmeds.com – a hugely valuable resource for anyone interested in well-being, healing from iatrogenic illness caused by psychiatric drugs, and moving away from the ‘mental health’ paradigm.
This piece – tweets from Talya Eidelman – resonated deeply with the writer, both in terms of her personal experience and in terms of her therapeutic work. Sadness and grief are not emotions for which we make much room in our culture, to everyone’s detriment. Yet, we cannot choose not to feel them. Finding ways to flow with our own rivers and oceans of sadness makes space for us to connect with who we are, with now, with love, with presence, with aliveness, with joy….. The tears of sadness welcomed in, instead of resisted, open the heart….
Here’s a taste:-
‘The deeper I felt my sadness the more I saw that it wasn’t sadness at all, but the feeling that I was unable to love the way I wanted to.
Sadness wants to love, anxiety wants to create and anger wants to make a change.’
From this perspective, the human experiences of ‘depression’, anxiety, anger which attract ‘disorder’ labels, toxic drugs and medicalized interpretations are actually about the effects of culturally/relationally/personally thwarted energies. So therapy from a person-centred perspective is about supporting people in uncovering and connecting with their own flow, like a river sweeping away a log jam. After well over a decade in practice, working with people with psychiatric files and diagnoses, this feels a far more useful and accurate working model to the writer than that captured in DSM V.
Palace Gate Counselling Service, Exeter
Counselling Exeter since 1994
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