The day came yesterday. I was lying in bed actually, deciding whether it was worth getting up early or not when the phone rang. It was the doctors surgery. The medical records I requested from 1987 had arrived and were ready for collection. 1987 was my final year at college in Liverpool and the year I was diagnosed schizophrenic.
I had asked to see them because before I started talking about my past too publicly. I wanted to make sure I had the ‘facts’ that the doctors were working with at the time. I don’t have my full record, just my transfer letters from one hospital to another which were filed with my GP.
Who I used to be
Reading the letters sent me on a journey to another time where other people defined my reality for me, assuming they knew what was going on in my head and my heart. It sent me back to a time where I struggled to define my own reality because nothing had prepared me for being isolated  in my life and alone with my higher education ambitions. Inside my head and heart was my family’s calling to stay small, deny my larger self  and quash my ambitions. And yet a part of me felt so suffocated that despite the existential discomfort, I had to break away from my roots. The breaking away left me with internal contradictions, a tortured heart, and a desperate need to explore my inner world, to gain mastery over it and to find peace and equilibrium. It feels somehow now like I had to plunge into a dark and terrifying world of ‘schizophrenia’: I had to meet my darkest fears, in order to see what I was up against.
Did anyone really know who I was?
Some of the facts of my life are wrong in the letters. The assumptions that have been made about my life and background are superficial snapshots of me with no depth of insight. It’s sobering to realise that such big decisions should be made about my health and welfare and big socially dangerous labels used without knowing who I am.  In the early stages of my loss of contact with concensus reality at least, my reality, my history and circumstances had to be reported by parents and other people who also didn’t know me.  I can see how those opinions of others could come to be internalized by less fortunate individuals who fail to go deep enough to find their true selves. And therein lies the dissonance: head versus heart, external versus internal realities.
I’d been up to that point on a journey of self discovery all my life. For some curious reason, even when a child I was always sensitive to having others attempt to scramble my reality. Â And even as I lay writhing around in a living hell of my own confused fabrication in my early 20’s, my parents apparently believed it was just pressure of exams. Â I grew up deeply contemplative, curious and angry when my reality couldn’t be heard. Â Although I don’t ‘do’ past life stuff, it’s interesting to muse why I sensed injustice and contradiction so keenly. Â I see that thread from the present to the past so clearly now. It’s what drives me today to continue to seek my authenticity and to resonate with others who are seeking theirs.
Seeing the real person inside
I still react strongly to incongruency, to artifice and to insincerity. To me they are like enormous neon signs plastered across a persons identity. I can detect it from a 100 paces. I don’t care for it. I can’t take it seriously. I want to know YOU not a substitute or understudy. For many that’s scary. Seeing into someone’s life and looking at their real selves can threaten to dismantle the false self they’ve carefully constructed to survive an outside in existence.  And people will fight to maintain their right to their false self.  And of course, they can do what they wish. Yet our capacity to witness our own true selves and to see others clearly is the key to developing real human intimacy and to healing hearts and souls of slights and hurts.  Having xray vision can be both a blessing and a curse.
The gift is my personal journey to the core of my being
I have crossed over a precipice more than once in my life. Â Once traversed one can never return. Â Each milestone takes you through a new portal, a one way gateway forward and the rules that used to guide you and govern your thoughts crumble behind you. There is no going back. Â There is only forward. Â And as you step into the new comfort of knowing and trusting yourself instead of the rules, your faith in life expands and incorporates others. Â As it expands it senses rather than thinks. Â It tends to check our experience against our inner reality instead of outwards appearances or social conformity. Â And it brings great fortitude and groundedness on the one hand and great human fragility on the other.
I see this insight now as a gift I have invested in over 30 years and more and one that I want to share with as many people as possible. With clients and supervisees alike, it is my desire only to show you your own heart, so that you can come to trust yourself, and know that whatever else happens out there, your unique human expression is your greatest and most valuable possession.
So I’ve decided to start writing. I have a book in my head that describes how we therapists, as the uninvited mentors of society, need to come home to ourselves if we are to help other people come home to their true selves. And despite all academic or intellectual pursuit, there is one fact we can never deny:Â We are healers of the human soul and spirit and no amount of intellectualising about that will make it any different. Find mentors who can help you on your inner journey of awakening.
Our experiences in life, however adverse or tragic, are never wasted. All experience, can be used for the awakening of our fellow human beings.
My message today? Seek mentors in life who are seeking their own authenticity. The soul of our world needs it. And if you resonate with me, I’d love you to join me.  Click on the links  to join my mentorship group or my telephone mentorship and supervision service.
Jenny Lynn your words resonate deeply with my own personal experience and truth.
It is only when we can shed the labels and boxes that others (no matter how well intended) have created for us that we can truly begin the love affair with ourselves. Peeling back the layers isn’t always easy but the effort pays enormous dividends and paves the way for exciting discovery and purposeful choice.
I encourage you to transform your thoughts into letters on a page . . . I’ll be in line to buy your book!
Hi Jenny
Love your shared journey. I been following your various posts and the odd podcasty things/seminars for sometime. I find your honesty heartening and brave. Isn’t it a pity so much of our learning is at the expense of our comfort. Perhaps it somehow adds meaning and relevance of what we call life. The pain of birth of new things. We can take heart in the fourth noble truth, rather than delving on the first:-) I would like to chat about the outcome of your medically given label as mentioned above. Are you still on med’s, if not, how do you or have you managed to change the diagnosis etc.
I have a feeling we’ll meet sometime and look forward to it. I’m still in the process of learning to do groups, so please have patience and who know I could become a golden heart:-)
Take care and keep the faith!
Graeme
Jenny A Lynn,
very well written
shivers running happily through my mind, body & soul as I so relate to what you are presenting here as I travel back into my own former lifetimes as a child & young adult seeking to make sense of the insanity of my thoughts / memories
I also have a book inside that so want to go into the world and share my blessings and horrors of growing up – {okay – perhaps better stated as the many challenges of my reality vs theirs}
perhaps I should work with you so I can finally unearth who I am and what my next mission in life is … perhaps
namaste’
thank you for being you and willing to share yourself so deeply with others đ
larry
You’re all very welcome. It’s time I wrote about it. Graeme I’m not on meds. Haven’t been since 1987. Medical records show I was off them by the October so I was drugged for around 6 months. I never needed to change the diagnosis. That would give them to power to define me yet again. I simply moved on and left them behind and never looked back. There was a brief spell in my late 20’s where the pressure of my then experiences threatened to take me back into schizophrenia but I snapped out of it quickly without going near a doctor. And quickly on the heels of that came another profound shift of consciousness that moved me into my heart centre where I could at last, start to get to know myself.
If I can help shed light on anyone’s journey, and reveal your true mission, I’m always happy to be available. That’s what I’m here to do.
Very intersting Jenny . It always good to have a label . I was statmented autistic at 13 18 and 37 Im now 47 and still unsure what to do with the title . I even thought of having it engraved on my door sign Doctor Andrew J Wells AUTISTIC Consultant Forensic Psychologist but seems a bit of a mouthful though what do you think ? Thats the problem with our profession we like to hand out labels willy nilly so we can dish out mind altering drugs which make us feel in control . See im still a maverick ANDREW X
I would expect nothing less of you Andrew! And indeed, Consultant Forensic psychologist is a proper mouthful! đ
Hi Jenny. I find there are two types of these kinds of mental illnesses. Those who are so deteriorated and degenerated, that therapy is only of minimal help, and meds are useful. The processing machinery seems to have become broken, so little intelligable thought or emotion is workable. Then there are those who would have been described in the past as having a breakdown, or nervous breakdown, seen more as a transient situation, rather than a permanent illness, even if “psychosis” has ensued. The second category I have worked with to the extent of getting rid of newly arrived “voices” in one session of hypnotherapy, many others off of or hugely reduced medications in a few sessions. In a book by Rollo May, author of “Love and Will.” (though I am not sure if it is mentioned in that work), he describes being a counselor at a University, who has students coming to him hearing voices, “schitzophrenic.” He states that when he talked to them about these life issues that you mention, away from home first time, isolation, “current stressors” etc., and that they recovered. And R.D Laing, Psychiatrist author of “The Divided Self.” began proposing that this condition could be a journey of attempted integration, back in the sixties.
But it takes a big person to be of assistance to these kinds of persons, and many therapists find it easier to avoid their own development, the enlargement that is necessary to encompass these issues, by recommending medication as the solution. This is reinforced by the current professional and cultural ethos of American culture, compounded with an ignorance that your, (and my own), experiences have informed us differently. When I came to the US to enter Primal Therapy some 30 years ago, at the outset they wanted me on anti-psychotic meds, which I declined. I have only recently realized that they were correct. I was an “Ambulatory Psychotic” as they were termed. Best wishes. Hypnohotshot.
Your authenticity draws people towards you Jenny. When people are open and authentic with us, there is something inside that says âit is safe, reciprocate and open up a little yourselfâ.
So, there were these conflicts between your âstay smallâ manufactured self, and your true self, which wanted to fly out, explore and see what you were capable of. This is true of many young people, and, for whatever reasons, some feel the conflicts more than others. My guess is that many continue to be diagnosed and labelled wrongly. You write so well, and your book could help so many people, Jenny; not just those who experiencing something similar, but mental health workers and doctors too. I am sure that you would shed a tear or two in writing it, which would prove cathartic and might be the final piece in your journey.
Steve my partner of 3 years looked at my letters yesterday evening for the first time. As a doctor he was intrigued to see what they’d said about me too. He said that the trail seems to go cold after a few months and it’s like I’ve confounded them.
I think all so called mental health diagnoses are errors of modern scientific interpretation. These phenomena have a hugely spiritual significance that medical science simply cannot conceive of nor measure. And because the very system seeks to define the reality of the patients it treats it again conspires against the patient learning some existential lesson from their experience.
I believe in many cases, modern psychiatry arrests the natural healing of hearts and minds from perfectly sane reactions to an insane world.
There were circumstances that I’ll detail another time, that conspired to help me escape from their hold over me. Because of that I was never defined by them for any length of time. This was my saving grace.
Hi Jenny. I felt so moved by your blog, and your journey. I so much distrust the idea of medical professionals handing out Labels, particularly when it comes to mental health. Also what you write about, this constructed self, that we as humans reduce ourself to, yes it resonates with me. I recall a former partner saying to me, on more than one occasion, ‘John, stop making yourself small’. She was right and I see it now. For me, it was the combination of my father undermining me, my mother wrapping me up in a protective ‘cotton wool’warmth, that cut me off from others, being dyslexic and being bullied at school, this toxic combination lead in me to a terrible self hatred, that has taken me years to untangle. And I have still not arrived there, I am still on that journey.Your journey has been tough as well, and it sounds like you have come such a long way, and are still travelling. Thanks for your honesty and candour in this. We must catch up some time and complete that conversation. đ
Hi Jenny,
Thanks for sharing your story. Just in case you might not be aware of his work, Daniel Mackler has made some very good films and written books about how psychosis is treated in other countries without medication. Here is a link to his website.
http://www.iraresoul.com/
Thank you Tania. His site looks interesting. I haven’t had time to delve into his references on schizophrenia but he sounds like a kindred spirit. Be interesting to talk to him. Many thanks for the referral.