Psychosis

Whose reality matters?

Is There Purpose in Psychosis?

Many people who’ve experienced psychosis describe it not merely as a set of symptoms, but as a profound signal—of unmet needs, of creative insight, or even of spiritual calling. Below are four ways to understand potential “purpose” in psychosis, while honouring the real distress it also brings.

  1. Psychosis as a Signal of Unmet Needs
    • Trauma alarm
    Psychotic experiences often emerge when past harms—abuse, neglect or systemic injustice—have never been fully addressed. The mind uses striking imagery or voices to demand our attention.
    • Call for deeper support
    Hallucinations and beliefs can point to gaps in care: lack of connection, absence of safety or insufficient peer-led alternatives.

Implication: Responding with trauma-informed listening and genuine choice (not just medication) can transform crisis into invitation—for healing, for community, for rights-based care.

  1. Psychosis as a Portal to Meaning
    • Spiritual or transpersonal experiences
    Some people describe visions and altered states as encounters with deeper truths, ancestral guidance or creative inspiration—not just pathology.
    • Existential exploration
    Questions posed by psychotic content (“Who am I?” “What is reality?”) can spur profound personal growth when held in safe, compassionate dialogue.

Implication: Integrating spiritual-care frameworks or peer-supported reflective spaces can allow these experiences to enrich one’s sense of purpose rather than be simply “managed.”

  1. Psychosis as a Creative Catalyst
    • Artistic expression
    Voices and visions often find voice in music, painting, writing or performance—unlocking original ideas that might never surface through ordinary cognition.
    • Innovation springboard
    Unusual patterns of thought can generate solutions outside conventional problem-solving frameworks, benefitting fields from the arts to social justice.

Implication: Valuing co-designed, peer-led creative workshops can harness these gifts—turning what’s often labelled “disorder” into community benefit.

  1. Psychosis as a Driver for Systemic Change
    • Living critique
    First-person accounts of psychosis expose failings in mental-health systems—how coercion, stigma and lack of rights-based options compound suffering.
    • Movement fuel
    Many consumer-survivor advocates trace their activism back to their own psychotic episodes, using their stories to demand reforms under UNCRPD and OPCAT standards.

Implication: Ensuring that people with extra needs lead policy-making and service design prevents their experiences from being merely “treated” and instead leverages them to reshape systems.

Bottom Line: Psychosis can feel like chaos—or it can be heard as a message.
The challenge is not to romanticise distress, but to create spaces that truly listen: spaces that offer choice, respect dignity, and welcome the gifts hidden within crisis.

🙌💯 When we shift from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What’s your experience telling us?” we honour both the pain and the profound potential of psychosis—and move closer to a world where no one is left behind.

Abuse in the Family – Charlie McCready

In Abuse in the Family, Alan Kemp defines domestic violence as “a form of maltreatment perpetrated by a person with whom the victim has or had a close personal relationship” (Kemp, p. 36). I believe that using terminology that accurately describes parental alienation as a form of abuse is crucial. Those of us who have experienced it understand that it transcends the label of ‘parental alienation’—a term that is often misunderstood and misused. It encompasses child psychological abuse, spousal psychological abuse, and constitutes a form of violence within the domestic environment.⁠

Kemp’s book serves as an excellent resource for anyone seeking to understand psychological maltreatment, which, in essence, includes parental alienation. The same categories apply: rejecting (spurning), terrorising, corrupting, denying essential stimulation, emotional unavailability, unreliable parenting, neglect in mental health, medical, or educational contexts, degrading or devaluing, isolating, and exploiting.⁠

The alienating parent manipulates and exploits the children, isolating them from a nurturing parent and their family, including grandparents, step-parents, step-children. They deny the children their fundamental needs for love and belonging from the targeted parent, thereby neglecting their mental welfare. This parent dismisses the children’s and the targeted parent’s expressions of love and need for one another. The alienating parent not only terrorises and corrupts the children but also prioritises their own desires above the needs of everyone else, including their own children.⁠

Kemp employs an ecological approach to explore the pervasive issue of family maltreatment, analysing the complex relationships at macro, meso, and micro levels. By addressing questions such as “Why does family maltreatment occur?” “What do its victims experience?” “How do they recover?” “What can we do to help them?” “How can we understand the perpetrators?” and “How might we reduce or prevent family abuse?”, we can better equip ourselves to combat this significant social problem.

The definition of domestic violence presented in Kemp’s work applies aptly to parental alienation, wherein one parent manipulates a child to turn against the other parent, constituting emotional and psychological abuse. My posts are here not to alarm or upset but to spread awareness about what’s known as ‘parental alienation’ and to provide guidance to those who are going through it, as I did myself. Apart from these daily posts, which I hope help you know you’re not alone, and to better understand it’s an attachment disorder, a pathology, it’s not you; please reach out if I can help with the coaching I offer.

#charliemccready

#parentalalienationcoach

#pathogenicparent

#coercivecontrol

Good Woman

Every man hopes to have a good woman by his side, but many don’t realize that women with genuine hearts come with real, powerful emotions.

They feel everything deeply, love with intensity, and give their whole heart to the people they care about.

A good woman is loyal to the core, but her tender heart means she can also become frustrated, hurt,

or emotional when something doesn’t feel right.

This isn’t a sign of weakness

it’s simply because she cares so deeply.

Sure, she might have her moody days, but one thing is certain: when a good woman loves you, it’s a rare, precious kind of love.

It’s a love you won’t find anywhere else.

Value it.

“All men are created equal” reality

This is amazing 🤩

www.facebook.com/share/v/19yPq34itw/

Women have more brain cells in the grey area 🤩💯 than men

Totally makes sense 😉 There are exceptions , guys 😘

www.facebook.com/share/r/1AsX7FunEa/

Creating insanity in a spiritual awakening

This is a comment I made on my friend, Sean Blackwell’s page.
“At the heart of both spiritual awakening and bipolar mania lies a significant surge of energy, often marked by an ego collapse. As the sense of self dissolves, the soul feels liberated for the first time, inviting a range of sensory experiences and heightened perceptions. The phenomena experienced during these states could reflect deeper levels of reality, unveiling intrinsic truths about our existence.
In exploring my own mystical experiences, I’ve felt a profound oneness with the universe—a dissolution of boundaries, whereby everything feels interconnected. Imagine this radical shift in perspective: seeing life as interconnected threads weaving the grand tapestry of existence. Such a transformation often defies normal communication, necessitating metaphors to convey the intensity of these insights.” Sean Blackwell
Why would we call this kind of experience a disorder? It is not a beautiful human experience like when we deeply feel music and art and fall in love. Also, there is no evidence that ‘bipolar disorder exists but there is plenty of evidence that psychotropic drugs cause brain damage which can deny us our humanity and make life and living very difficult.

Mary Maddock