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  • Tools for Change and Employing Forgiveness

    Tools for Change and Employing Forgiveness
    Sep 24 2024
    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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    1 Std.
  • Art and Peer Support at the Coast Mental Health Resource Centre

    Art and Peer Support at the Coast Mental Health Resource Centre
    Sep 20 2024
    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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    1 Std.
  • Pathologizing Trauma

    Pathologizing Trauma
    Sep 4 2024
    Pathologizing Trauma

    Trigger Warning: Description of sexual assaults.

    Andrea takes us on a journey through what her childhood, in the 60s and 70s, was like coping with sexual assaults from several males around her from a very young age both in and outside her family. Like other women growing up in this era, she was assaulted, blamed for it, and then punished for making men do this to her. Andrea fought back. Sexual assaults happened and her family along with the social constructs and institutions, of that time, enabled abusers and covered up their crimes while victims who were disclosing, like Andrea, were made into the problem.
    Her drive to survive made her doggedly save her money so she could escape her family. After graduation, she moved away to college. But physical ailments, again rooted in the sexual abuse she experienced, made her so ill the College sent her home: back to the abusive environment she had worked so hard to break free.

    She always knew that her difficulties were rooted in those assaults but instead of recognizing this truth the mental health industry, from whom she sought help for being unable to eat and being underweight, pathologized what were her normal reactions to trauma. Her disclosures of sexual abuse were dismissed as schizophrenic delusions. It was a diagnosis that gave everyone carte blanche to harm her with impunity. Ultimately, Andrea was put on 58 different forms of psychiatric medications including large doses of anti-psychotic meds and given ECT. Several times, doctors were shocked by the large doses she had been prescribed but didn't change it.

    She received no assistance, no therapy. She wasn’t regularly seen by a psychiatrist or therapist. No one talked to her. No one mentioned the abuse she had endured.

    Andrea broke free. This time from the mental health industry. On her own, over ten years, she weaned herself off of all the psych meds she had been prescribed. She has been med-free now for a year and is focusing her time on working to ensure other people don't go through what she did.

    Music by Shari Ulrich
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    1 Std.
  • Coping with Mental Health Challenges with JaneA Kelley

    Coping with Mental Health Challenges with JaneA Kelley
    Aug 28 2024
    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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    1 Std.
  • Can't Eat Love with Leslie Davis

    Can't Eat Love with Leslie Davis
    Aug 13 2024
    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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    1 Std.
  • Door knobber Diagnosis: Misdiagnosed Borderline Personality

    Door knobber Diagnosis: Misdiagnosed Borderline Personality
    Jul 22 2024
    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”.

    Music by Shari Ulrich, Anna Clendening, Brandi, Carisle
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    1 Std.
  • Dispelling Myths about BC Mental Health Ace with Rob Wipond

    Dispelling Myths about BC Mental Health Ace with Rob Wipond
    Jul 15 2024
    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.
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    1 Std.
  • Mad Pride Cabaret Vancouver 2024

    Mad Pride Cabaret Vancouver 2024
    Jul 11 2024
    Mad Pride Cabaret Vancouver 2024

    Have you ever stepped into a room and had a bunch of mad people celebrating the chance to freely be who they are? Well that is what Mad Pride is. In 2024, Vancouver celebrated Mad Pride through the Connection Salon at the Gathering Place downtown. And this program not only talks with three of the performers at Mad Pride it showcases their work. Kagan Goh, curator and artist, brings us his spoken work, Nothing is Forged without Fire. Sandra Yuen, artisit, and David Xhediku, musician, form the band Beautiful Lizards talk about what they see Mad Pride as and then share a piece of their rock/surf music, Psychopath. And last but not least, iveno, who is a multi-media artist, counselor, and theARTist chats with us about his work in the community and then shares his piece of music, Wala20, and what he calls sound bathing.

    Other music by Shari Ulrich, Henry Moodie, and Fearless Soul
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    1 Std.