Archive for the ‘Recovery’ Category

Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America was the keynote speaker on February 10, 2011, in Portland Oregon. It was a “Rethinking Psychiatry Event”. Psychiatry must be given more than a second or third thought these days as it is driving itself off a cliff and becoming less and less a viable realistic ethical or trustworthy vehicle to actually treat and help patients. The focus on the “medical model” of psychiatry, known as Biopsychiatry is doing more harm than good prescribing medications that are harmful in many cases without full disclosure of the potential harm of many psychiatric medications and doing so it would seem more to earn Big Pharma money than to actually help people with recovery and getting well.

More than 450 people filled the Unitarian Church in Portland Oregon February 10th for the Rethinking Psychiatry event. Robert Whitaker keynoted the evening, followed by a panel with Beckie Child, Director of the Mental Health America of Oregon; Cindi Fisher, Movement of Mothers Standing – Up – Together: Taking Back Our Children; Chris Gordon, Assistant professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Medical Director of Mental Health Advocacy; Gina Nikkel, Director of the Oregon Association of Community Mental Health Programs; and Will Hall, Director of Portland Hearing Voices.

Listen to the entire evening’s talks here: http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RethinkingPsychiatryPDX2-10-11Complete.mp3

Listen to Robert Whitaker’s talk here: http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RethinkingPsychiatryPDX2-10-11RobertWhitaker.mp3

Listen to Will Hall’s talk here: http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RethinkingPsychiatryPDX2-10-11WillHall.mp3>

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

Borderline Personality Disorder is not a “brain disease”. You can recover from Borderline Personality Disorder like I did. A.J. Mahari has a new audio out that features some of her experience from her own recovery as to what can keep people stuck and blocked from recovery and what is the focus, the way, and the direction to open to the process that makes recovery possible.

While there are many pieces, steps, and elements of what recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder is and means and how it is achieved, central to the process of BPD recovery is finding the middle.

Finding The Middle – BPD Recovery Audio

This 68 minute audio program gives the listener a lot to think about when it comes to “borderline focus” and to what the on-going negative impact is to people with Borderline Personality Disorder continuing to try to compare with each other “what it feels like to have BPD”. A.J. Mahari asks the question, among others, “Why is it that so many with BPD are so focused on comparing with another how it feels to have BPD and also focused on expecting those who do not have BPD to have any way to truly understand what BPD feels like?” What, if anything does this accomplish? What if anything does this help for those with BPD or their loved ones?

To purchase this audio please CLICK HERE

A.J. Mahari recovered from BPD in 1995, she knows what it takes, how it is done, what it means, and how recovery from BPD is a process that unfolds both uniquely for each individual with it and in some universal ways as well because across the individual differences are the main themes of BPD which are shared by those diagnosed with it. Mahari talks about how and why finding the middle is at the center of the process that is recovery from BPD.

This Audio Program includes two tracks:

Track One: The Obsession With How BPD Feels – It adds to suffering and keeps people stuck in BPD
Track Two: Re-Focusing on the Search For the Middle – Opening to what the process of recovery entails

© A.J. Mahari, January 22, 2011 – All rights reserved.

To purchase this audio please CLICK HERE

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Life Coach, BPD and Mental Health Coach, A.J. Mahari has a new Ebook out called, The Power of Gratitude – Healing, Recovery, Wellness and Self Improvement with Coaching exercises and a companion audio available at designed to help you learn more about cultivating an attitude of gratitude and how that can help heal, recover, get unblocked or unstuck and moving forward toward positive healthier and more balanced living. Gratitude is an important cornerstone of getting unblocked, getting and staying healthy, improving relationships, accomplishing goals, finding your purpose and achieving your dreams.

In this video A.J. Mahari talks about Gratitude and its importance in healing and recovery, self improvement and getting unstuck. If you feel isolated, too depressed or for reasons you aren’t even sure about you do not feel much, if any gratitude, you will benefit from Mahari’s coaching. Gratitude has immense healing power and such positive energy it really can make the difference between getting well, self improvement or continuing to suffering and remain blocked by unresolved abandonment and/or pain.

Coaching Sessions

1 Session $80.00 2 Sessions $160.00 6 Sessions $450.00 10 Sessions $750.00

Copyright A.J. Mahari, January 12, 2011 – All rights reserved.

Author, Life Coach, BPD and Mental Health Coach, A.J. Mahari talks about the central paradox at the heart of recovery from BPD. People with BPD have layered defenses against emotional pain that they do not know how to cope with. It is that very pain that must be felt, re-integrated and coped with that is at the heart of the process of recovery from BPD – that’s the paradox. For many with BPD it is a living-paradox experienced as hopelessness and helplessness. Yet, this living-paradox when it comes to BPD and specifically recovery from BPD is really a source of hope but one must first overcome his or her fear of the unknown and open up to learning to cope with their emotions.

People with Borderline Personality Disorder have learned, out of necessity, for psychological survival, to defend against anything and everything that is perceived as or feels, in any way, threatening to them. They are often not consciously aware that this is what they are doing. People with BPD defend against anything, person, situation, that they have concern about being triggered to emotional dysregulation by. When people with BPD are triggered and experience emotional dysregulation they are once again, as they are over and over again, in their lives, faced with this pain – pain that they have been defending against most of their lives – pain that needs addressing, but, pain that feels so overwhelming it feels as though it can and will kill them. Pain that they don’t have any healthy ways of soothing.

The real paradox in recovery from BPD is that it is this very defended against pain that is re-lived when those with BPD are triggered to emotional dysregulation and re-experience what has become repetition-compulsion schema whose purpose is to bring to conscious awareness the very pain being defended against.

People with BPD, at some point in time, usually by late adolescence, early adulthood, have entered rigid patterns of thinking, feeling, and perceiving that reinforce this self-protection in what is the absence of a stable sense of self – in what is a lack of identity and in ways that only perpetuate the pain, traits, and dreaded symptoms of BPD. These pattered defense mechanisms become automatic to people with BPD. Many people with BPD are not consciously aware of the ways in which they defend against their own emotions, others, what others say, etc. This is an awareness that must be sought after and fought for in recovery. Once connected to great progress can be made.

To recover from Borderline Personality Disorder, as I know from having lived through it, and recovered 15 years ago, one must open to the pain and peel back the layers of defense. This pain that is defended against is the pain of a very young child with a deep intrapsychic woundedness. It is a pain that was born inside at a time when a young infant/child cannot defend him or herself and has not yet learned the coping skills necessary to remain open to feeling and experiencing a discomfort, that for those who go on to develop BPD, feels way to intolerable and way too threatening.

© A.J. Mahari – December 1, 2010 – All rights reserved.