Acting like a “nice, compliant” individual has seriously harmed me for most of my 67 years. Due to my economic privilege, I received the best medical and psychiatric treatment available and, for most of those years, I accepted the “official” narrative, the dominant explanation for my ongoing suffering. That narrative is a limiting belief that harmed me and continues to damage all of us—not just we who have been diagnosed, but entire societies.
Many people identify the proliferation of psychiatric drugs as the root of our harm. I see neuroleptic drug use not as the root but as the fruit of the destructive narrative upon which most of our industrialized, “developed,” societies depend. And without deep transformative change, the damage from that dependence may be irreparable.
The people I depended on as an infant and young child did and said things that both helped and harmed me. My early life felt confusing and terrifying, and it was my connection with animals that sustained me. I lacked basic trust and hid my vulnerability.
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