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Building Self-Worth with Tavares Garrett

Building Self-Worth with Tavares Garrett Tavares A. Garrett CNC, CPT, BCS is a “Health & Transformation Educator, Motivational Speaker, Mentor, Author, Servant Leader, Energy Giver/Healer, Podcast and TV Host. He's certified by NASM (National Academy Of Sports Medicine) and is the owner of The Body Synthesis.” As you listen you will recognize that Tavares is someone who uses his skill to connect and listen with people to create an environment to help that individual build self-worth.  He comes and chats with Bernadine to talk about what are the ingredients to transform pain and trauma into rediscovering self and building self-worth: necessary for taking action and making change happen.  “He loves to help others re-build & rediscover themselves through nutrient-rich, preventative medicine coaching, behavioral change, fit-nutrition, sobriety support and enlightenment.”  Tavares has published several books including, “Kissed by the Wind” “A book of Poems and Passions” Volumes 1, 2 & 3 and “I Like That” A Book of Inspirational quotes, The Body Synthesis - Guide To A Better Mind, Guide To A Better Body, The P.F.O. Method and is the Host of Living Your Truth w/ Tavares & The Black Love Xperience Podcast.” Music by Shari Ulrich, Ana Clendening, Omar Rudberg

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Judy and I on Dissociative Identities

Judy and I on Dissociative Identities This program comes out of seeing one more untrained therapist postulate that folks with dissociative identities (formerly known as multiple personalities) are rare and dysfunctional or simply do not exist.   Judy and I are here to push back against this assumption that couldn’t be farther from the truth.  If you are a woman in Canada and haven’t heard of Judy Rebick, you haven’t been paying attention.  Judy is a Canadian writer, journalist, political activist, and is considered one of Canada’s leading feminists.  She was the former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) and held the Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy.  She rubbed elbows and engaged with politicians in intense discussions.  She has been the TV host for CBC programs and was the founder and publisher for rabble.ca.  Judy is known as a vocal spokesperson to legalize abortion and taking on a protestor with a pair of garden shears pointed at D. Morgentaler.  She is the author of Heroes in My Head (2018) which outlines not just her political life but that of her personalities.  And while my audience has come to know me over the years, for the purpose of this program it is important that I fill you in a bit more.  I am a graduate of Emily Carr University and an established visual artist, curator, and instructor.  I worked as a film production manager before becoming a peer support worker and consultant for those with childhood trauma and dissociative identities.  For 30 years, I have been an award-winning mental health advocate and am the host of this program which is Canada’s longest-running syndicated show on mental health where we disregard colonial-based ideas about mental health and the DSM.  I am a survivor of human trafficking and spent years speaking out against organized crime.  I currently provide peer support through TELL the Therapy Exploitation Link Line to survivors of therapy abuse and exploitation.  I am a public speaker providing workshops on TAE and facilitating peer support groups for fellow survivors.  And I have, like Judy, authored a memoir, Coming to Voice which chronicles surviving an abuse therapist and the role my dissociative identities played in saving my life. So to dispel the myth that folks with DI are fragile and dysfunctional, Judy and I are here to answer the questions sent into ReThreading Madness listeners of what DI is from our lived experience.

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Connection Salon & Gathering Place, Crisis Centre of BC & Kagan Goh

Connection Salon & Gathering Place, Crisis Centre of BC & Kagan Goh   In today’s program we speak with Pierre Leichner from the Connection Salon here in Vancouver BC and Carrie Campbell from the Gathering Place about their collaboration to ensure that art comes to those who live with mental health challenges.  We also speak with Mark Sheehan, Exec Dir, and Paul Vincent, Volunteer, about the Youth Education projects bringing mental health information to youth through the Crisis Centre of BC.  And then Kagan Goh joins us to talk about his upcoming documentary on mental health entitled Common Law.   Music by Shari Ulrich

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What does Mental Health, Psychiatry, and the Ouija Board have in Common?

What does Mental Health, Psychiatry, and the Ouija Board have in Common?  Dan Nelson, author of Ouija Board and the Skeptic (Mad In America) who holds a BA in Philosophy, MA in Human Resources and Industrial Relations. Through twenty years of working in management systems, he knew that systems were designed to output a particular product or service and that that system was the cause of any and all undesirable results the system outputs. In this article, he states that the mental health systems are responsible for their lack of ability to assist some who live with mental health challenges.  Dan writes, “Psychiatry's practices are so entrenched, its methods so accepted, that skeptics and outsiders are often dismissed as uninformed or unqualified simply because they haven’t undergone the same training that instills confidence in its frameworks. But skepticism, especially from those with lived experience, isn’t just valid—it’s necessary. It forces us to question whether our tools and methods truly serve those they claim to help.” We respond to our lives, our challenges, our struggles.  Too often mental health issues are a normal and nature response to trauma.  As Dan points out if the psych industry isn’t looking at the systems around their clients and changing those systems, and instead they medicate and work with the client to be able to tolerate the difficulties they are dealing with – they aren’t solving the morning.  They are applying a band aid.  A good example of this is how our systems are designed to pathologize the victim is schoolyard bullying.  Too often the victim is expected to learn to develop new skills to deal with the bully.  Often they must be extricated from the school to be protected.  The bully, too often, is not confronted or restricted in ways that would prevent the bullying.  Dan demonstrates how we can take that same example and apply it to the mental health system where victims come forward with mental health challenges caused by environmental factors and yet the industry will medicate the victim instead of looking at how to change the environment.  And it is occurring within another system where the DSM and psychiatry is accepted to often without including the possibility (like with a Ouija Board) that perhaps it is not truth.      Music by Shari Ulrich and Jelly Roll

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How Past Lives and Spiritual Experiences Impact our Mental Health with Kerie Logan

How Past Lives and Spiritual Experiences Impact our Mental Health with Kerie Logan    While there doesn’t seem to be any scientific consensus of past lives, the correlation between them, present-day conflicts, and/or emotional baggage is significant.  And the anecdotal stories include resolving problematic patterns that one has around behaviors, phobias, relationship, relationship difficulties among others.   In addition, we have individuals who when they have spoken about past lives or spiritual experiences are labelled crazy by people around them and professionals in the mental health industry.  Hypnotherapist, Kerie Logan joins Bernadine to explain how our past lives or spiritual experiences may impact on our mental health.  Logan has spent the last 40+ years working with people using meditation, NLP, creative visualization, relaxation, inner child work and hypnosis.  She has won awards for her hypnotherapy work.  ReThreading Madness talks with her about the impact past lives and spiritual experiences has on our mental health and how we might be able to resolve them.    Music by Shari Ulrich and Born

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I Married My Therapist: Ken Schultz talks about the damage he suffered

Trigger Warnng:  This episode includes information about therapy abuse and may be triggering for some folks. I Married my Therapist:   Ken Schultz is an advocate for mental health reform and a survivor of therapy abuse and exploitation.  He is using his personal experience of harm to raise awareness about unethical therapeutic relationships and their lasting impact. Through his story, Ken aims to inspire change in laws and practices to protect others from similar experiences.  If we want to examine the power and authority mental health professionals have over their clients – Ken’s story is a prime example.  He saw this therapist for 3 months and in that time frame, he went from someone who had zero attraction to being sexually exploited by her all the while believing how she defined it as ok.   If we want to examine how the institutions should be assisting us after we have experienced therapy abuse and exploitation, Ken is another prime example.  The therapist he was seeing reported her, then left him to deal with the fallout on his own.  The Texan state licensing board narrowed his complaint down to violating one aspect of the statutes:  the timeline.  His “therapist” dragged out leaving the ‘marriage’ to prevent a complaint based on the allotted time.  But the licensing board ignored another statute that their social workers are not allowed to have sexual contact with a current or former client – of which she clearly had violated and of which had done so within the statute of limitations.   And his church and police believed her statements without any corroboration and victimized him again.     Things must change.  We all need to wake up to harm perpetrated against those who have experienced therapy abuse and exploitation so that we are not inadvertently exacerbating that harm that is already catastrophic in too many cases.   Music by Shari Ulrich and Shawn Mendes

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It's a New Year

It’s a New Year    Today’s program is a slightly different structure.  As we walk into the next year, several people came to share their hopes for themselves, their family and friends - with all of you.  It is an uplifting show that demonstrates the amount of care and generosity that exists all around us.  The program is our personal thank you to all who have been a part of the ReThreading Madness family whether as a guest or behind the scenes making sure the show goes out each week.  This has been a hell of a year – monumental even.  A big part of that was being able to chat with some of the most incredible people from around the world.   As the host of ReThreading Madness, I consider myself blessed because of it.  But also because of you, our listeners, who join us each week.    Today we are joined by Jodi Grey, Charlene Hellson, Kayle Ackerman, Jackie Crowchild, Michelle Oucharek Deo, Peter Morin, Kagan Goh, Alex Sangha and Amy Avalon.  Our inspirational music today was by the Animals, Sara Barielles, Anna Glendening, Rachel Platten, Josh Groban, Kelly Clarkson, Zach Williams, Scott Callum and as always Shari Ulrich sings us into and out of each program each week.  Bernadine’s personal message to our listeners:  So here is wishing you a year full of caring, compassionate and supportive people, safe and gentle havens, along with personal growth, brave new insights, spontaneous, joyful fun and a trust in yourself that grows every day.  But most of all she wishes for you a peace which settles into your heart as though it has always belonged there. 

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Importance of Lived Experience in Mental Health Issues: A Conversation with Matthew Jackmanman

Importance of Lived Experience in Mental Health Issues: A Conversation with Matthew Jackman    Matthew Jackman has an intense conversation with Bernadine about the importance of the recognizing the immense value of those with lived experience as we examine mental health challenges.   Matthew Jackman is a mental health advocate promoting human rights, social justice …  he is activist from an academic science from a public health and mad studies knowledge base. He trained as social worker and has partnered with different marginalized and disadvantaged communities which focus on mental health. Matthew is a representative, ambassador or advisor with the Global Mental Health Peer Network, the World Economic Forum, the Australian Association of Social Workers, Generation Mental Health, and the World Health Organisation on key global mental health documents requiring lived experience perspective.  He is a certified peer specialist and a visiting scholar in Psychiatry at Yale and Harvard University. He focuses on alternatives to psychiatry.   Most recently he has accepted the role of Commissioner on Lived Experience in Mental Health Research for the Lancet Psychiatry.  For those of who do not know the Lancet is one of the oldest peer-reviewed medical journals. 

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A Conversation grief... that morphs into one about death

A Chat about Grief… that Morphs into one about Death    Rebecca Coleman joins Bernadine to chat about grief.  Layers of grief the represent what she is experiencing currently in her life.  However, as these things go, one conversation morphs into another and by the end of this program they are looking at the issue of death: facing it, planning for it.  It is a frank, easygoing, and important conversation.     Music by Shari Ulrich

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Theatre for Living with David Diamond

Theatre for Living with David Diamond David Diamond joins Bernadine on ReThreading Madness to discuss his Theatre for Living Workshops.  TFL, as the website states, is about empowerment. Taking the living organism, which is a community, and providing a platform for its expression to create “creative, community-based dialogue.”  It sounds esoteric until you are inside the dialogue and then, as you will hear David describe, it becomes a natural process for learning, listening, healing, and recovering.  As Gina Beltran commented, “The Theatre for Living workshop was a wonderful and profound experience for me.  It allowed me to realize the potential of people coming together and connecting in genuine and honest ways that build meaningful and lasting relationships. In other words, it allowed me to see what a strong   community can look like.”  David facilitates these workshops for all sorts of groups including indigenous, recovery,

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Post Traumatic Growth with Joanne R. Green

Post Traumatic Growth: Joanne Green Style     Joanne R. Green joins Bernadine on ReThreading Madness to talk about what inspired her book: By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go.  Joanne shares her journey through a variety of personal losses: mom, sister, father, brother and struggles like anorexia and cancer.  In the midst of all that it was a car sliding into her, a pedestrian, at an ungodly speed that brought her to the place where she embraced stillness and learned to let go. Joanne talks about transforming the negative self-take we all experience, how to use gratitude in the moment, and how to turn adversity into an opportunity and that into strength.  

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Rhonda Parker Taylor on Tools for Change and Katharine Giovanit talks about employing Forgiveness Write Up: Rhonda Parker Taylor talks

Tools for Change and Employing Forgiveness    Rhonda Parker Taylor talks about how she learned how to support herself and cultivate meaning in the relationship she had with herself after the murder of her son.  In that she used writing as a tool for change.  Rhonda tells us about her journey and her fictional book Crossroads and her workbook coming out in December of 2024. Then Katharine Giovanni talks about her book, “The Ultimate Path to Forgiveness: Unlocking Your Power “giving us insight into the process of forgiveness and why it might be important for some of us to look at it.     

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Art and Peer Support at the Coast Mental Health Resource Centre

Art and Peer Support at the Coast Mental Health Resource Centre.  Bernadine heads down to Coast Mental Health Resource Centre on Seymour St in downtown Vancouver and speaks with folks about the Art Studio which is open to anyone with a mental health challenge. Betty Yan tells us about the Peer SupportTraining Program that Coast Mental Health has developed and runs.  Shahal  Bozorgzadeh  was trained here as a Peer Support Worker and she describes why this job is so vital to her and those she works with.  Shawna Butterwick is a volunteer at the Art Studio and fills us in on the day to day activities there and then artist, Leef Evans, talks a bit about his process, his depression and Margaret, the “spider” inside him (represents his depression) and how he has come to resolve that Margaret needs to get out every once and a while.      Music by Shari Ulrich, Jack Harris, and Milanda 

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Coping with Mental Health Challenges with JaneA Kelley

Coping with Mental Health Challenges with JaneA Kelley  JaneA Kelley has throughout her life gathered mental health diagnoses.  She has Bipolar 2, PTSD, and ADHD.  JaneA candidly talks about these diagnoses; what they mean to her; how they complicate or add to her life; and how she copes with them. She talks about finding herself at rock bottom and the things (mostly her cats) who have brought her back forward.  She talks of betrayals and of stigma that originate out of misunderstandings and the impact of her challenges.  As a writer, it is no wonder she uses writing to work through these issues and find herself again.    Music by Shari Ulrich, Jann Arden, Brandi Carisle

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Can't Eat Love with Leslie Davis

Can't Eat Love with Leslie Davis Leslie Davis’ life moved through a haze that didn’t include her own feelings.  After what she has deemed an Emotional Tsuunami, she developed a means of accessing her feelings, sorting through them, and then accepting them.  For decades now, this process has proven to be a powerful healing tool.  Join us as Leslie describes what this process is and how you can do it as well. music by Shari Ulrich

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Door knobber Diagnosis: Misdiagnosed Borderline Personality

Door knobber Diagnosis: Misdiagnosed Borderline Personality When a client drops a therapeutic bombshell as they are leaving a session, counselors call this a “door knobber”.  Lynn came to talk with Bernadine about her experience with the Borderline Personality and the door knobber that her therapist laid on her at the tail end of a phone conversation to terminate therapy.  Just before she hung up, Lynn was shocked to hear the therapist say she should consider getting a therapist who works with borderline personality.  After working together for 2-years where this was never mentioned, it was a casual, quick comment at the end of therapy.  This is a door knobber done by the therapist.    My ex-therapist told me at one point that she didn’t believe borderline existed and that therapists only give it to the clients they don’t like.  And certainly, in therapy abuse it has become cliche.  One after another, survivors are describing being labelled borderline after confronting an abusive therapist.  Why would therapists employ borderline so often?  Because one of the things people believe about those who are borderline is that they lie and make up things:  ergo, victims won’t be believed that the abusive therapist did harm or sexual assault them.    And once you have that label it is a sticky thing – even if it is wrong.  Worse, professionals make assumptions about folks with that label  – even when it is a misdiagnosis.  Like Lynn’s experience, people have described being told they are borderline after the first 15- to 20-minute session.  Given the level of stigma that is attached to diagnoses like this, applying them should be done with the utmost care. In fact, according to the DSM, a BPD diagnosis must be based on assessing the functioning and behaviour of the patient over a length of time AND after other diagnoses have been ruled out.  What they mandate for this diagnosis is a “thorough evaluation” that provides a “comprehensive assessment” which “considers multiple sources of information, including personal history, collateral information, and a mental status examination.” Clearly this is not possible in an initial 20-min session or during a first consultation.  But nonetheless, we hear of it over and over where this diagnosis is being applied all too quickly.  And those who have been misdiagnosed with BPD, in particular, suffer even more from the stigma the medical and mental health community. We all need to be more careful about our professional work and our attitudes.    Lynn wrote an article on this issue.  It is on Medium.com and entitled “Dear Therapists:  This is what BPD Stigma looks like”.   

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Dispelling Myths about BC Mental Health Ace with Rob Wipond

Dispelling Myths about the BC Mental Health Act with Rob Wipond It is so very often that we hear misinformation about the BC Mental Health Act.  It is so widely held and believed in some of our BC communities, that if you check yourself into a psych ward voluntarily you can leave when you want and you can refused any treatment that you feel won’t work.  Rob Wipond, author of Your Consent is Not Required: The Rise in Psychiatric Detentions, Forced Treatment, and Abusive Guardianships joins Bernadine Fox to discuss the BC Mental Health Act and how what we have been led to believe or told is true and what actually plays out in the psych ward are not the same.   Voluntary can become involuntary just because you refuse the treatment they tell you to take.  And once you are committed, here in BC, you essentially lose all human rights to advocate for your own welfare.  And while you can appeal a commitment, you can be forced to take treatments for the 3 weeks it takes to actually have that hearing.  And, by then whatever you were forced to take may in fact leave you unable to fully comprehend what is occurring in that hearing leaving the judge to perceive you as incompetent.  After finding a pamphlet that repeated the myths to a vulnerable population, it was important to dispel these myths most likely being produced in other places across the province by well-meaning individuals.  In comparison to the rest of Canada and many places in the world, BC has what many consider to be the harshest mental health system: one that eliminates the human rights of the patient.  If not living in BC, we suggest that If you are someone who accesses or relies on the mental health system, it is advisable to research what is true about your mental health system when it comes to commitments (voluntary or involuntary), forced treatments, and the appeal processes so that you can better advocate for yourself or your loved ones where you live.