Description
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WEBINAR DESCRIPTION
Suppression is often inadequate: learn how people can instead “work through” extreme or psychotic experiences, resulting in personal growth Mainstream mental health treatment for “psychosis” in the US focuses on the suppression of non-ordinary experiences, which are framed as symptoms of illness. But is this the most helpful approach? Using drugs, denial, and distraction to suppress experiences does seem to help some people some of the time; but many find these methods don’t work at all, or they may seem to work for a time but then cause troublesome experiences to re-emerge with more intensity later. Unfortunately, as many therapists have noted, when we resist something in our mind, “it goes to the basement and lifts weights!” But what else is possible? Often, it may seem that the only alternative to suppression of “mad” experience is to be consumed by madness, and to have one’s life be ruined by it! In this webinar, Gogo Ekhaya Esima and Emma Goude will discuss the very different possibility of “working through.” Instead of suppressing them, Gogo and Emma have found ways to engage with their extreme experiences, to find constructive meaning in them, and then to rebuild their lives in ways that are enriched by all that they have gone through.
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
Gogo Ekhaya is an ancestral medicine healer connected to the traditions of Southern Africa, Sangoma practices. Her experience with mental health crises profoundly shifted into a beautiful journey of growth and initiations that eventually led her to supporting others with spiritual ascension symptoms. Her ancestral calling helped to ignite a life saving, deep remembrance, of the ancient ways within her that were forgotten but not lost. She is an author and a mentor with a global practice rooted in the concepts of ubuntu. Gogo is a founding partner of the Makhosi Foundation, where she teaches African Shamanism. More information is available at sangomahealing.com and at makhosifoundation.org.
Emma Goude is an international award winning documentary filmmaker and author of My Beautiful Psychosis https://amzn.to/3yYNkBB , a memoir published by Aeon Books. She has a Bachelors degree in Psychology and English and began her career at the BBC. She went on to set up an award winning production company, Green Lane Films, which makes documentaries that inspire change. Her most recent commission is a film about Open Dialogue, a new system of mental health care being introduced into the NHS. Alongside her storytelling, Emma spent ten years as a shiatsu therapist but she put that aside to write. Having had six psychiatric admissions, one of them under a sectioning (i.e. involuntary commitment), she is keen to change the perception of psychosis as a devastating and stigmatizing illness. She helped co-found the Spiritual Crisis Network in the UK and is mental health campaigner and advocate for spiritual approaches to psychosis.
