From Idakatherine

Made It! – Successfully Navigating Both Mainstream and Alternative Treatment for Mental Illness

Idakatherine Graver

March 24, 2014

I’m fifty-seven and have worked with my mental health for forty years. Over that time, both therapy and medication have benefited and harmed me. Even though we know more now, the system of mental health care is much less generous, and much less open to different modalities, than it was when I first entered it. I received a much higher standard of care than I now see patients receiving. I was fortunate to experience my first challenges in the 1970s, before the dollar was the bottom line.

I’ve come to understand that a single-minded focus on either therapy or medication can do great, if unintended, harm. I’m sharing this brief history of my journey, with both my good and bad decisions, to illustrate the importance of conscious care, and of maintaining the ability to change course.

I had my first psychotic break at eighteen, in college.

My parents made a really helpful decision to keep me at home, rather than sending me for the year of hospitalization that was prescribed. On the other hand, I was put on Thorazine for six months, which was not helpful. The Thorazine didn’t take away my suffering; it fogged my thinking and made it impossible to be productive. Once a week I would try to bake cookies, and it would take the entire week to make one batch that weren’t burnt. That was the limit of my functioning on Thorazine. Something that is not helping is probably doing harm, even if you can’t appreciate the harm it is doing while it is happening.

I went to a local psychiatrist who cared for me during this crisis. Both my family and this doctor were generous with their time and care. Although my mental health was not restored, I was encouraged to stay alive and keep trying.

When I reached a plateau, my parents looked for and found a better doctor. They chose a Jungian analyst who saved my life. His skill as a doctor led me to learn that I had a self and was a valuable part of life. Life was mysterious, full of light and dark. He saw me as often as I needed, sometimes three times a week. Each hour with him helped me hang on through many excruciatingly dark times. Because of my experience with Thorazine I steadfastly resisted any medications.

Choosing home over hospital, no medicine over Thorazine, searching for and choosing a more skillful physician – all these choices added to my continued progress. If we had stopped making these new choices anywhere along the line, I believe I would have stopped progressing.

Eventually it became clear that although I had grown, matured, and dealt with childhood issues, I was constantly haunted by dark visions and suicide. I was committed to a hospital after ten years of learning, struggle and suffering. When my doctor suggested I “check out” the hospital, I vividly remember the feeling of the door locking behind me before the next door opened. I had been tricked into going. What I had pictured was a rolling green lawn, pillows, and a cup of tea with someone sitting beside me. Instead, I entered an ugly, sterile space, and was locked in a room with no furniture and no control over anything, not even a light switch. When I was allowed to be with others they were too drugged to connect with. Everyone just sat around. The food was terrible. It was not the healing environment that I had longed for, but it did provide quiet and a shutting-out of the world. Being locked up was a much-needed rest for my mind. Not dealing with the outside world, I was able to gather myself, take stock and see that I had come a long way: I was married, and a mother of three.

But I still had my daily struggle with darkness. I had my warm outer life with family, friends and art. And simultaneously I had constant visions of blood, mayhem and destruction. There was a continual pressure that came to feel like acid burning in my brain, a pressure to destroy myself, to destroy my world. It was incapacitating and exhausting.

After the hospital I went to a psychopharmacologist who prescribed a small dose of Stelazine. I clearly remember the day I began it: I was washing dishes at the kitchen sink, and the world suddenly got quieter. I was not feeling strongly about anything. Everything was just OK. “This is what normal feels like,” I thought.

I had a really good couple of years, until the side effects of Stelazine caught up with me. I became sluggish and poisoned. I couldn’t remember much. Couldn’t drive. Couldn’t function. Still, the gift of my time on Stelazine was that it showed my brain how it might feel to be at rest.

Around that time, I moved and was without my support system. I was hospitalized again – this time it was more like being warehoused. I was shuffled on the hospital’s schedule from room to group meeting to some unknown doctor. I didn’t get to spend enough time with anyone for them to get any sense of my problems or really evaluate me. There was not warmth or care. Many drugs were thrown at me, layer upon layer. Those drug cocktails made everything worse – it turned out antidepressants were terrible for me. When I left I determined I would never go back, and I started looking for alternatives.

Homoeopathy was my first ray of hope. The regimen really helped, though I was never as steady as I had been on Stelazine. Every step along the way something improved, but life has a way of upping the ante. I would reach a plateau, and be managing well, and then the stress level would increase and the balance would be lost. At one such moment a dear friend rescued me by taking me to hear Julia Ross, the founder of the Nutritional Therapy Institute Clinic, whose approach to treatment looks for alternatives to drugs through a combination of nutritional therapy and traditional counseling. There I learned about diet and supplements that could help me return to balance. It was another reprieve, and yet the old darkness always returned, with a vengeance.

Finally, at fifty, I felt that I could not struggle any more. I had tried everything that came my way, but the pain in my mind was more than I could bear. Another good friend made me promise to see one more doctor before I killed myself. She put me on lithium, and I felt better immediately. Lithium made it impossible for me to think of suicide and despair. It was my miracle.

Of course, down the road it, too, became a challenge to my body. But, carefully titrated, it remains a crucial part of my mental health.

There was no quick fix for me. Care and patience were crucial to my healing. Great psychiatrists who really listened were crucial. Medication was crucial. And I was willing to accept help even if I was unsure of its benefits, maybe because I had some good in my life, or maybe because I’d seen family members with mental health struggles reject aid, and in so doing increase their own suffering and that of everyone around them.

I believe because we know so little about the mind that care, patience, excellent doctors and advisors are critically important. I know that this is not simple to find. But I believe it is worth trying. I love my life, my family and the work that I do. I add to my community. It was worth my suffering through it and my community generously standing by.

In the future we may have the key to healing the mind. But until we do, conscious care is worth

Idakatherine was raised in southeast Texas by her classically-trained artist parents. Art was the family religion. She moved west to Santa Fe for college, and then further west to the Arizona desert with her family. Idakatherine’s classical college education, her love of stories, and the life and death struggles of her mind create the platform from which she views life. Through her paintings and installations she has translated that view into images for the last thirty years. Idakatherine has shown in museums in New Jersey, Texas and Arizona, and in galleries in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. She is devoted to translating the view as she sees it into one that can be experienced by all.

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March 24, 2014

Idakatherine was raised in southeast Texas by her classically-trained artist parents. Art was the family religion. She moved west to Santa Fe for college, and then further west to the Arizona desert with her family. Idakatherine’s classical college education, her love of stories, and the life and death struggles of her mind create the platform from which she views life. Through her paintings and installations she has translated that view into images for the last thirty years. Idakatherine has shown in museums in New Jersey, Texas and Arizona, and in galleries in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. She is devoted to translating the view as she sees it into one that can be experienced by all. You can find her and her art at www.idakatherinegraver.com.

I Love This Woman

 Martha Beck shows us how to handle passive-aggressive people.

"Don't worry, hon," said Theresa's husband, Guy, when she failed to extinguish all her birthday candles in one breath. "A woman your age has to be in shape to make wishes come true. You just don't have the lung capacity." Guy chortled. Theresa's face turned scarlet. The rest of us chuckled nervously. We were used to Guy, to the jocular way he planted and twisted stilettos between his wife's ribs. Like most of Theresa's friends, I'd always found him just charming enough to be tolerable. But as I watched him serve Theresa's cake, something dawned on me: Guy was a mean person. He'd intentionally humiliated his wife, and he did such things often. It was like that moment in a horror movie when you understand that the rogue car, rather than simply straying off course, is actively pursuing children and puppies.

I recall an urge to kick Guy in the throat, which I controlled by reminding myself that it was both illegal and difficult to pull off in heels. I was studying karate at the time, and though it didn't occur to me then, I would eventually realize that the basic principles taught at my dojo could be used to fight evil not just in action but in conversation as well. I think of it as martial arts of the mind, and if you're subject to subtle stabs, deliberate snubs, or cutting remarks, you might find these techniques an effective defense against the Guys of your world.

Principle 1: Find Your Fighting Stance

Every form of martial arts requires a fighting stance that's fluid, flexible, and centered. Standing this way makes you much less likely to lose your balance, and if someone jumps you, you can quickly duck or dodge in any direction without falling.

Physical fighting stances involve balance, alignment, weight distribution, and posture. A psychological fighting stance is all about emotional balance: self-acceptance, abiding by your own moral code (something you're probably doing anyway), forgiving yourself for failing to reach perfection (this is rarer), and, finally, offering yourself as much compassion as you'd give a beloved friend (I suspect some of us need work in this department). Simply put, you must never be mean to yourself.

This works because cruelty, to be effective, has to land on a welcoming spot in the victim's belief system. Guy mocked Theresa's age and lack of physical fitness because he knew she hated those things about herself. If she hadn't already believed his insults, they would have left her feeling puzzled but not devastated—the way I was when I learned that calling someone a "turtle's egg" is a horrific insult in China. She would have seen Guy as the pathetic head case he was. And that may have led her to our second principle.

Principle 2: Practice the Art of Invisibility

I once purchased a book that promised to teach the ninja's fabled "art of invisibility." I was crestfallen to read that the first step in a technique called vanishing was "Wait until your opponent is asleep." The whole book was like that: Get your enemy drunk, throw dust in his eyes, thump him on the head with a wok, then tiptoe away, forever. Well, I could've told you that.

Nevertheless, I recommend these ninja techniques for dealing with mean people. Get away from them, full stop. Sound extreme? It's not. Cruelty, whether physical or emotional, isn't normal. It may signal what psychologists call the dark triad of psychopathic, narcissistic, and Machiavellian personality disorders. One out of about every 25 individuals has an antisocial personality disorder. Their prognosis for recovery is zero, their potential for hurting you about 100 percent. So don't assume that a vicious person just had a difficult childhood or a terrible day; most people with awful childhoods end up being empathetic, and most people, even on their worst days, don't seek satisfaction by inflicting pain. When you witness evil, if only the tawdry evil of a conversational stiletto twist, use your ninjutsu. Wait for a distraction, then disappear.

"But," you may be thinking, "what if you're stuck with a mean family member, co-worker, or neighbor? What's poor Theresa supposed to do?" Well, Grasshopper, that's when the martial arts of the mind really come in handy.

Principle 3: Master Defensive Techniques

All martial arts teach strategies to deflect different attacks. For instance, I was taught to defend against a lapel grab with a punching combination called Crouching Falcon, follow that with a multiple-kick series known as Returning Viper, and finish with the charmingly titled technique Die Forever. (I prefer my own techniques, such as Silent Sea Slug, which entails lying down and hoping things improve, or Disgruntled Panda, which is mostly curling up and refusing to mate.)

I also learned this closely guarded martial arts secret: Although there are countless techniques, most fighters need only a few. For instance, judo star Ronda Rousey has clobbered numberless opponents using the Arm Bar technique. Her opponents know she’s going to do it, but that doesn’t keep her from snapping their elbows like dry spaghetti. Each good technique goes a long, long way. The following are a few that I highly recommend, in order of degree of difficulty.

Yellow Belt Technique: Trumpet Melodiously

I’m a lifelong fan of “Japlish,” English prose translated from the Japanese by someone whose sole qualification is owning a Japanese-to-English dictionary. One classic Japlish instruction, which I picked up from a car rental company, advised: “When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor.”

I borrowed the phrase “trumpet him melodiously” for your first anti-meanness technique. It’s meant to nip hurtful behavior in the bud. Use it when someone—say a small child or an engineer—makes a remark that may or may not be intentionally cruel: “You smell like medicine,” “I can see through your pants,” “Why don’t you have a neck?”... You can trumpet him melodiously by saying, “Hey, dude, that’s kind of mean. Back off, okay?” If the behavior continues, tootle him with vigor by saying, “I’m serious. You’re out of line. Stop it.”

Practice these lines until you’re saying them in your sleep, with clear delivery, calm energy. Then, when you use them in real life, a normal person will react by immediately ceasing all hurtful behavior, and even mean people will be taken aback by your directness. They may even begin to behave themselves. Mission accomplished.

Brown Belt Technique: Zig-Zig

As a martial artist, you’ll need to get used to doing the opposite of whatever your enemies expect. For example, if someone were to push you backward, you might push back for a few seconds, then abruptly reverse, and pull your assailant in the direction he’s pushing. He’d be toppled by his own momentum.

This is zig-zigging. It works beautifully on mean people. They expect a fight-or-flight reaction from their victims—either angry pushback or slinking away. The one thing they don’t anticipate is relaxed discernment. Scuttle their plans by zigging instead of zagging, cheerfully accepting any accurate statement they might make while ignoring their malicious energy.

You can observe this technique in the movie Spanglish, when a young wife, played by Téa Leoni, lashes out at her mother, “You were an alcoholic and wildly promiscuous woman during my formative years, so I’m in this fix because of you!” As the mother, Cloris Leachman nods and says pleasantly, “You have a solid point, dear. But right now the lessons of my life are coming in handy for you.” This response stops the daughter cold, partly because it’s true and partly because it contains not a whiff of pushback. The mother zigs when the daughter expects her to zag. The result is peace.

Black Belt Anti-Meanness Technique: Wicked-Kind Parent

If you keep a balanced stance and surround yourself with normal people, you'll eventually master the black belt skill I've named Wicked-Kind Parent. Mean people are adept at adopting the tone of a critical parent, making others unconsciously regress into weak, worried children. To use this defense, refuse to be infantilized. Instead, use the only thing that trumps the emotional power of a bad parent: the emotional power of a good one. This is what happened at Theresa's birthday party. As Guy served cake and cruelty, Theresa's older sister Wendy spoke up.

"Now, Guy," she said, in precisely the tone Supernanny uses with kids on TV, "that kind of petty meanness doesn't become you. Show us all you can do better." Guy tried to laugh, but a glance around the room silenced him. Wendy had called on her good-parent energy to tap a great resource: normal people. Kind people. Outplayed and outnumbered, Guy slunk away, leaving Theresa to enjoy her birthday. This is virtually always the outcome when a mental martial artist encounters a Mean Guy. If you choose the way of the warrior, it will happen for you.

Principle 4: Walk the Way of the Warrior

Being a martial artist is a way of life. You can't use your skills in an emergency unless you practice them every day. And such daily practice may lead to unexpected adventures. You’ll no longer watch helplessly as some Mean Guy emotionally abuses his wife—even if you happen to be the wife in question. Where your prewarrior self would've simply wilted, your warrior self will speak up or, if you&'re the wife, walk away.

This may require drastic changes in your life. Are you ready for that? Well, you are if meanness has pushed you to the point of anger or despair. You are if you want to be the change you wish to see in the world. You can begin today. Adopt the stance of dauntless self-acceptance, avoid combat when possible, and practice your techniques until they become second nature. Though it might be helpful to remember that it really does help to wait until your opponent is asleep.

Thanks Again Martha!

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"Imagine this: You’re putting together a nifty jigsaw puzzle—say, your favorite Elvis montage painting on black velvet—when one of the pieces suddenly morphs into an entirely different shape. Aside from the unnerving quantum-mechanical implications of this event, you’ve got a problem—the surrounding pieces no longer fit. You could try to alter those pieces (a troubling prospect, since it will require distorting all the ones around them) or give up on the puzzle entirely—unless, of course, you could get the little sucker to resume its former shape and size.

This sort of situation arises in every human life. We live in social systems—families and neighborhoods, offices and nations—that call for continuous, complex interconnection. Any person who undergoes a dramatic shift creates a ripple effect, requiring change from others around her. The fact that you’re reading this suggests that you’re inclined toward personal growth. I’m guessing you’ve been this way for years, whether it’s a trait you celebrate every day or a dirty secret you ruminate over while churning butter with your Amish kinfolk. The problem, as you may have noticed, is that not everyone you know, love, or work with is overjoyed to tread the path of change along with you.
Because we are a species that fears the unknown, most people reject the continuous transformation that is human reality and try to lock others into predictable behavior. “Promise me that you’ll never change,” lovers whisper to one another, though only a model from Madame Tussauds Wax Museum could keep such an enormous promise. In short, anyone who thinks new thoughts or does new deeds is likely to garner disapproval and criticism from someone.

How to Handle a Change-Back Attack

Women who are undergoing changes are likely to experience “change back” messages from their nearest and dearest. The messages come in many forms: sabotage, cold silence, shouted insults, refusal to cooperate. But all convey just one idea: “I don’t like what you’ve done. Go back to being the way you were.” This might seem baffling in the face of positive achievements like losing weight, falling in love, or learning new ideas.
But change-back attackers aren’t really thinking about the person they’re pressuring. They’re fighting for their lives—or at least life as they know it. These people are motivated not only by their own fear of change but by the pressure of other “puzzle pieces” that surround them. The force of a change-back attack has the weight of all those relationships. Resist successfully, and you may end up affecting people you’ll never meet.

First, a basic attitude adjustment: Most people who are on the receiving end of change-back messages go into fits of guilt or defensiveness, then revert to familiar behaviors. This, of course, is exactly what the disgruntled party wants. Part of every personal evolution strategy should be a determination to greet these messages with pride and joy, as a sure sign you’re making progress. Call a friend, a therapist, a fellow self-improvement devotee, and report the good news: “Guess what? I just got six blowbacks in one conversation! I must really be making progress!” Once you’ve made this attitudinal shift, you’re ready for a systematic defense.

Begin Your Systematic Defense

Step 1: Pay respectful attention.When someone launches a change-back attack against you, refrain from resisting or submitting; just pay attention. Remember that whether you realize it or not, your actions may be forcing this friend to either make personal alterations or give up on “fitting” with you. Noticing their fear may calm you, and this may go a long way toward calming them.

If someone comes at you with a direct, obstreperous argument, try these unexpected, attentive responses: “Tell me.” “I’m listening.” “I hear you.” “Say a little bit more on that.” Attentiveness is a mobile, fluid stance that allows you to observe and respond without sustaining much damage. As Mark Twain said about doing right, it will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Step 2: Take time to find your truth.
So you’ve paid attention. You know that the bag of bacon cheeseburgers on the table is just evidence that your loving husband is afraid he’ll lose you. You’ve listened calmly as your angry teenager or judgmental parent lambasted you for your new achievements. Find a private moment for yourself. Now breathe and relax. Recall the chain of events that motivated your metamorphosis in the first place: the fat, the loneliness, the illumination. Honestly consider the feedback you’ve just received. Maybe it feels absolutely right; if so, reverse course. Maybe it’s partly right. Fine, alter your direction. Or maybe the complaint is just plain wrong. In that case, you must keep going, trusting that the best gift you can offer others is the resolute embrace of your own truth.

Step 3: State your position for the record.
If your change-back attacker is sober and in a reasonably receptive frame of mind, you may want to respond to her argument. Even when you’re dealing with a nasty, non-communicative person, stating your position may be a powerful step in your own development. It may not make the slightest impression on your unrelenting foes, but hearing the truth spoken in your own voice can clear your head and buoy your heart, at which point you’ll have won the battle.

Vanquish Your Change-Back Attackers

Step 4: Unconditional LoveThere’s a secret weapon in the change wars, one that can fill the gaps and soften the edges of our constantly morphing identities—and I don’t mean leaving your whole social system or forcing others to conform to you at every moment in time. The answer is unconditional love, and I encourage you to use it with ruthless abandon.

You’ll know you’ve vanquished your change-back attackers when you can love them completely without agreeing with them at all. You can’t force this feeling—it will happen naturally when you’re ready—but when it strikes, express it, without acquiescing to others’ verbal jabs. Doing this cheerfully and unabashedly will confound your average saboteurs by giving them nothing to oppose.

At best, this approach will cause your adversaries to stop, ponder, and perhaps feel less scared of making their own improvements. At worst, it will render you flexible, able to fit in with many people and social systems without getting stuck in any one position. The more you claim your own destiny, the easier it will be to love unconditionally. The more you love, the more comfortably you’ll fit in with all sorts of people. Ultimately, situations that once brought on horrendous change-back attacks, that once appeared to you as utterly unworkable puzzles, may end up barely fazing you at all.

Through The Archway

For The Mother Of The Bride: Letting Go Gracefully

"Your daughter is getting married! This is a momentous time in your life, a beautiful and awe-inspiring occasion for both of you. You are witnessing your little girl step into the full bloom of her womanhood, watching her as she stands on the precipice of an extraordinary transformation. Where has the time gone? Wasn't it just yesterday that she was taking her first steps, then trotting off to school, going on her first date, graduating from high school, and finally leaving home? The beauty and challenge of motherhood is that as tightly as you would like to hold on to your precious one, you continually need to let go. And with each letting go, you watch her step further into the unique woman that she is, embracing her strengths, challenging her weaknesses, learning what it is to be human. And now she is getting married.
More than anything, you want to support her and help launch her into the mystery and challenge of marriage. Yet, at times, you find yourself engaging in arguments about trivial topics like seating arrangements or napkin colors. Do you know how common it is to argue about these inanities? And do you know that these arguments are a way to displace the difficult, out of control feelings you are experiencing onto something tangible, something concrete? Because the truth, the painful, inevitable truth, is that you are in a process of letting go. You are letting go of your little girl. You are letting go of your beautiful daughter, watching her loosen ties to her family of origin so that she can begin a family of her own. And letting go is difficult. You want to hold on. You want to keep her safe and protected in your loving embrace. Or at least a part of you does. Change is difficult, and while you fully recognize the necessity of change and you support your daughter's decision to marry, the painful feelings linger. 


Sometimes focusing on the externals -- the napkins, the dress, the food -- can temporarily abate the grief, fear, and sense of feeling out of control. In fact, we live in a culture that encourages you to focus on the tangible elements of the big day, helping your daughter plan the "perfect" wedding with the illusory belief that mastering the right details will lead to a meaningful and joyous occasion. This is a false belief because no amount of outer planning will create an atmosphere of support, a secure launching pad, from which your daughter can enter marriage. And this is the point of the wedding: to stand as witness as your daughter and her beloved are wed and to celebrate their new and beautiful union. You are there to hold the space, to support her transformation, and to ensure that the ties are adequately loosened so that she can begin her new life and her new family. This may be easier said than done, especially if your own feelings are not being consciously addressed. For in order to support her, you need to first support yourself. One way to do this is to take some time to ask yourself important questions.

Hopefully, your daughter has been attending to her own transformation by addressing the various emotions that this rite of passage has activated. Similarly, the more time you take to become a "conscious mother of the bride," the better prepared you will be to guide her into this next phase of life. To become conscious does not mean that you cease to feel loss or sadness around this time; on the contrary, it means that instead of deflecting these emotions onto the planning, you let them in, make room for them in your life, and find the support that you need so that you can be a support for your daughter. 


Becoming conscious also means that you recognize the tendency to displace your feelings onto the planning. For example, one mother dreamed three weeks before the wedding that she had "lost her puppy." Another held onto her daughter's wedding dress until that last possible moment, refusing to return it to her until just moments before the wedding. Another refused to send the invitations. These mothers recognized after the event that the external objects were symbolic of the loss -- that holding onto the dress was like holding onto her daughter. They wished they had had the awareness during the engagement to place their feelings in an appropriate place, as it would have saved them a lot of needless arguing. Are you aware of how elements of the planning have come to represent ways of holding onto your daughter? 



Furthermore, becoming conscious means that you recognize that not only is the wedding clearly a rite of passage for the bride, but it is also a rite of passage for the mother of bride. A daughter's wedding is often a time when the mother faces her own mortality and realizes that she is moving into the next phase of life. Jungian psychoanalyst Marion Woodman talks about the three phases of a woman's life: maiden, mother, elder. When a woman marries, she is letting go of her identity of maiden and moving toward mother. When a daughter marries, her mother is letting go of her identity of mother and moving toward the next identity. How do these statements resonate for you? Are you aware that you may be moving into a new phase of life? What feelings does this elicit?



It takes courage and wisdom to become a conscious mother of the bride. It requires going against the grain of our culture that tells you that the good mother is one who attends to the external details of the wedding with grace, exquisite taste, and equanimity. While it may be important to your daughter that you help her with the planning, I assure you that it is infinitely more important to her that you are a source of emotional support during this time. And sometimes being supportive means stepping back and watching your daughter develop wings of her own. Just as you had to let go and watch her fall when she learned to walk, so now you must let go and watch her begin a new life, knowing she will fall, knowing that this represents a goodbye of sorts, and also knowing that nothing in this world can sever the bond between mother and daughter.

You are both on a profound journey. You can either alienate each other by arguing about trivial details and engaging in power struggles, or you can strengthen your bond by acknowledging your separateness and grieving the loss, thereby allowing the unique beauty of your relationship to shine through during one of the highest times of a human life. Many blessings to you on your journey."

Wedding Week

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

e.e.cummings

Depth Psychology

"I think about the way we are spiraling out of ecological control and the concomitant disturbance in the way we are entwined in the imaginal fabric of our home communities, an invisible rending of human-nature bindings. I feel this rent reverberate in my own body like the sound of a deadening rush of footsteps going nowhere or an oncoming army, a speeded sense of urgency in a void. I began wondering how the landscape and habitat of a home community inform the collective identity, and how this tear in ecological viability affects us, and what new frameworks of thinking can bring such events into our ken."

– Laura Mitchell, art therapist and depth psychologist