Anti-Psychiatry (critical psychology) and de-colonizing ADHD care

Rather than assume everyone's good intent, where the PC thing to say is "Now I'm not saying ADHD doesn't exist, and I'm not saying that medication isn't absolutely necessary for those that need it but..."

(which is the ableist, neurotypical version of "I'm not a racist but...")

But I've been getting the runaround so to speak on whether or not the existence of ADHD is a good thing or not. In my experience, I was prescribed Adderall in 2008 without being told it was for ADHD, and then put on an anti-depressant (Wellbutrin) in 2016, and finally an anti-psychotic (Seroquel) to be used off-label to deal with the insomnia which is the only thing I still take maybe once every 2 weeks if I need it.

Previously I was told by my 3rd to most recent therapist that... he's not saying that ADHD doesn't exist, it's just that it's a version of anxiety and depression, unfortunately, as much as he was able to stop my panic attacks, we weren't able to get any further into my learned helplessness because there was this part of me that just couldn't trust how he put my ADHD aside so easily. But he was also backed up by my Kaiser psychiatrist at the time (who was terrible btw that's another story for another day) who said that Sensitive Rejection Dysphoria didn't exist, all I needed was more psychotherapy (and he boosted the amount of meds I was taking to boot.) So I was left to my own devices, learning about the dangers of Seroquel from "The Body Keeps the Score" and put a bunch of ADHD books on my To-Do List.


So that was all of the last 2 - 3 years, where am I now?

Well, I just wanted to show how continuously confusing it is to try to take care into your own hands, it's like disavowing mainstream media and realizing that you need to be able to figure out how to be a journalist because information simply isn't neutral and you have to know how to ask the right questions.

Not to say there's anything wrong with any of the following sources, but just imagine this trifecta of information that's been sitting together in my head, and now I'm starting to see why I'm so muddled even though everyone is kindof rooting for the same team:

So I've got these 3 vantage points (and put in 2 links each so you can get an idea of what exactly I've been catching up on):

1. Jessica McCabe's How To ADHD YouTube Channel: Why Stimulant Medication Helps ADHD -- and How Stigma Can Hurt + How ADHD Treatment is not ADHD Friendly

An informed FUBU movement of ADHD'rs OR is it a cult of well-intentioned mis-informed C.H.A.D.D. members? One thing is for sure, it's incredibly understanding, a resource for many that not only cites its sources but intrinsically places personal experience on an equal footing with the science.

2. Queer Vengeance and their Research Rabbit Holes + ADHD is More Than Deficits.

A guide to how to BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND and re-plant society OR is it one big experimental science fiction novel where we abolish prisons like we did to mental facilities and collectively hold people in power to a level of accountability... only to realize that Instagram was a Trojan horse for their own means of getting and destroying your precious attention? Is anyone else alarmed that the best content is only 1 instagram connection or 1 post away from being THE craziest most ungrounded conspiracy theory... one that gives all the insane but true conspiracy theories a bad name! (i.e. that the Iraq War after 9-11 was a sham, that the government is spying on everyone)

3. Mad in America: Insane Medicine, Chapter 3: The Manufacture of ADHD (Part 2) + Non-Drug Therapies for Adults with Depression (Where I noticed that nothing was listed for ADHD?)

Is this the sources we've always wanted so that we could ground our conspiracy theories in a more robust way or is this just the more academic looking version of it?

So the joke is if you were to get to the bottom of all of the different views on ADHD, you're ripe for a PHD. But that flies in the face of accessibility! Just the other day I wrote in big block letters:
WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

and just to give an example here are 3 real world questions where the rubber hits the road just to contrast 'the research' with the kind of things I think about:

How do I figure out what is actually helping me when I feel like I've been gas lit for years by psychiatrists and parents? For the last six years I've been trying to figure out my 'treatment plan' which includes medications for ADHD, how does one become anti-psychiatry exactly and get help?

What if one therapist says NEVER take hallucinogens you may find out you're the 1/100 that unlocks latent skitzophrenia, another friend says that's BS we'll do acid together, and from personal experience, the only time I did take mushrooms I was pretty emotional but it was an overall meaningful time with friends, so... is it safe?

Lastly, when we talk about being patient with ourselves... how long are things actually supposed to take, like say... writing a blog post? How long are we supposed to wait for people to figure out what people mean by Socialism, Defund the Police, Black Lives Matter?



I've tried tackling this before from the view of self-compassion & the known unknowns this is what I published in my Draft of an ADHD Guide for/by artists:



And then today I was able to sit with all of the confusion and tried to map out all of the various sources of information that were whirling around my head, in part because I'm sure there's stuff I'm traumatically procrastinating on, but also it did give me a great sense of comfort and accomplishment, so there's that.

So that's all I was able to get done today, (really all this just shows is how I lose about 6 hours of my life if I realize that I have a slight disagreement with someone/something...)

BUT, I do at least feel slightly less confused about why everything seems so confusing. Now I get to confuse everyone else with my diagram where if you can't tell the ball can go into the square hole and the round hole, but not the triangle hole, and the pyramid can go into the square hole and the triangular hole but can't go into the circular hole, and the cube can only go into the square hole, but technically if you only took like 75% of each shape, you could probably jam it down through the hole anyways...

Guess what I didn't get to? Talking about de-colonizing care, but if you want a good start, I already mentioned the link, but here it is again because it's just an insightful way into what non-researcher researcher looks like: @QueerVengeance RadPsych (A collection of prev. Instagram stories)

Who also produced these great plain text documents:
(Note to self, make plain text versions of my own graphics above...)

- ADHD is more than Deficits
- Things I Learned About ADHD From The Internet (But Never Doctors)

and they also made this meme (that to be honest I haven't done enough HW to understand in its entirety):

What a wonderful time it has been for so many people to be unemployed, it is truly creating the kind of reflection, introspection & protest that everyone WARNED about!

Instructions to self, September flew by, October is almost over... Post ANYTHING. Trying = Starting = Finishing = Relief.

Well, this is strange, it's 4 am, I'm in LA, still pre-divorced but still living with and even still sharing a bed with my parter, it's CoViD times and the election is right around the corner and right now I'm feeling good. 

I'm saying this as this past Tuesday should've been my worst day of the year... I couldn't figure out a why a new used (but expensive) computer wasn't working, and I ended up unintentionally staying up until 5 am then trying to hash it all out. I truly believed that this would fix all of my life's procrastination problems, buuut it turns out you're not supposed to buy electronics during mercury retrograde, so that means it's all my fault.

That all then led me to sleep through a whole morning, missing a therapy appointment and getting a parking ticket because I didn't move my car in time, but I was given the task this week by my therapist to... 'do nothing'... so perhaps ironically, Nailed it.

I have to say, now that 'do nothing' has much more Officially been given to me as homework, (maybe it was only alluded to before?)
there's been more presence in joy, and in being with people, that was all worth the experiment, and I imagine that it's only a hybrid version from here on out... 

I wanted to send out an update... even though it's kind of to no one in particular, and my Time-Blind brain is sayin' let's go with it... so hello.

I think I'm taking advice from my friend Mallory to take motivation when I can, similar to striking when the iron is hot...

 

- I want to write about how I have a new somatic therapist with ADHD!
- I want to talk about how I ended up in another Navel.LA assembly group this time it's all about "Hip Magic"
- and then I've been in a pseudo book club talking about 'The Entreprecariat' (I say pseudo since Solidarity Club isn't always a book club and I've only read like 16 pages before I started getting lost in this authors way of writing...)
- I want to write about what interesting things that seemed to just happen and while attempting to  'do nothing'... that I hadn't really anticipated, one of those things being: a deep level of understanding myself, and the other is my pure spontaneous joy...

I can say that with my new somatic therapist it's serendipitous that they're providing me with a bunch of missing pieces that I had wished I had had for my ADHD guide on:

 - Boundaries (and specifically HOW to set them) it's like the adventure of Consent!
 - What's the medical (or more holistic) take nowadays on Sensitive Rejection Dysphoria?
 - Advocating for oneself in the doctors office
(As I've learned more about ADHD specific gaslighting in the process of getting help for ADHD)

and also strategies for not beating myself up, so instead of things being just general 'self-care' I was given a plethora of information on grounding, but lots of better language all around it, like when I was describing that I have a problem with discipline, they very matter-of-factly said that consistency in ADHD is complicated/contradictory and maybe to:

"try again, when it feels accessible, if you want to."

which was a much more caring kind of balance rather than... a razor's edge.

And also in short order, there was this slow horror reveal that my trauma goes much deeper than I really know, (not get into it too deep before I understand how to talk about it better) but for example, I qualify EVERYTHING that I do as either good or bad quite unconsciously, and quite seriously heavy.

Feel feelings? Doing 'Good' work
Applying for things? Doing 'Good' work
Making 'Bad' art is 'Good'

Post SOMETHING to represent the last two months, something = better than nothing
Doing 'Good' is the bare minimum (as opposed to just being alive which is not Good enough)
etc.

and... I can't really drop the Good / Better / Best or the Bad / Should / Waste without feeling completely disoriented and specifically dissociative.

But I also want to write about a discussion put on by 'The Artists Office' and 'Other Places Art Fair' that ended in talking about strategies to be purposefully, un-Capitalistically, unproductive; and that was sooo nice.

- One artist clears two entire months of their schedule so that there's actually space to just be!
- Tatiana gave her tips on grounding with literal feet on literal dirt, she also inspired me by just describing candidly being talking about deadlines that she totally missed, but then dealing with it all the same, she too ruminates on missed opportunities, AND shit happens.
- The example I wanted to give was going to be about how I've heard of artists sharing the power/opportunities they have by flexing the leverage they have

i. when artists refuse individual awards and share the wealth against scarcity/competition
ii. 'Riders' that performers write into contracts that demand that the rest of the staff be diverse

- and my art piece attempting to visualize anti-FOMO, and asking for help to expand it, but in the end it was better that I just listened, there'll be more discussions on another day, I'm sure.

I'll just give a quick snapshot of where I've told myself it's OK if I can't get around to it (even if I'm not actually trying to say no.)

I've dipped a bit in participating in some other projects where I was previously a bit more active, which I've told myself is okay:
- connecting more with those in the Level Ground Collective,
- Jennifer Moon's Scrooging Missions,
- and I've got a whole 4-hour conversation I'm sitting on with Tatiana Vahan to go over 'Bar-Fund' as a way to lead me into writing an epic piece on Money & Art.

But on top of all of that I have been struggling with finishing the following things in the last 4-8 months:

- Just finish figuring out how to bring Over Over Over Part 3 to a brilliant end...
- Just finish figuring out how to use Unity to complete turning the art into a VR piece...
- Just finish figuring out Medi-Cal and when you can see someone for acupuncture or physical therapy or dental work...
- Just finish up looking at all of your finances since being on unemployment and figure out how long it will be until I've depleted my savings vis-a-vis a complex Excel visual aid
- Just tell people, curators etc. all about my brilliant art practice and post juicy snippets daily and weekly on Instagram
- Just finish figuring out who will write some really good letters of rec for applications deadlines coming up... (I got as far as making a diagram...)

Pandemic aside I just keep expecting to Nike the whole thing (Just do it).

I've also been beating myself up because there's also shame around not being able to be consistent about showing up to a practice whether that's art or yoga... it's the whole 'not waiting for inspiration to strike' deal which I've been seeing versions of this motivational quote seemingly everywhere lately?

 

 

But with Intention-Deficit Disorder and some kind of trauma that throws me into extremes, maybe a nicer, less work-a-holic way of saying that would be phrase it as: 'expect joy to strike at any moment, act on it if that's ideal, or don't act on it if that's actually ideal.' So yeah clunky, but basically reminding myself that things can be quite inexplicably tough for me...

This is me:

And this is me:

 

Then this is me:

Because I really...

And this seems too true...

So uh yeah, this is a real ramble of a post, but basically I just wanted to remind myself that among all of the pretty meh stuff, was a lot of glimpses of a horizon. I don't quite know what's beyond my early coping mechanisms that probably are no longer serving me, but I will say that sometimes I do... get 'round to it.

Is there a phrase for the artistic version of actually starting something that you've been avoiding...

that's akin to "the bark is worse than it's bite?"

all I've come up with is "The Relief of Now AND Later", but surely there's some kind of word play that will just *click* in a much smoother way... I can almost picture this motivation, something that I hang in my bedroom so it's the first thing I see when I wake up.

Right now the message I use is, "just try it for 15 minutes..."
The only problem is well.. right now it's 6 am.

Part 1: Precursor to a Perspicacious Vision Board

I keep thinking about making plans, but some antagonism towards work, as well as participating in some reading groups has also inspired me to find ways that I DO want to work.

“The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use, and it could only be used if they understood what was happening and how group action could counter violence…” - Ella Jo Baker

Ella Baker had an audacity to dream big, but she also said the following: 

"This may only be a dream of mine, but I think it can be made real.”

And there’s many interesting notes about the kinds of plans made by George Schuyler and Ella Baker from Irvin J. Hunt’s essay “May Things Fall Apart” (Looking at their interest in co-operatives in the 1930s)

"Planning for the collapse of the governing body was thus tantamount to remaking the body of the black public sphere, turning a collectivity organized around charismatic male leaders into one defined by gender-critical societies, each governing itself into ungovernability.”

Dr. Irvin Hunt went on to say that Ella Baker never wanted to be held up as an exceptional individual (like Biden did during his recent DNC speech) because the whole idea was to have each generation get to work in their time, not to rely on each older (usually male-centric) generation, and to be radically horizontal.

Then I looked up “Things Fall Apart” and I stumbled on this...
 

I kindof wanted to see it in inclusive language so I re-wrote it thus:

Visual art/ Literary arts/ Performing art/ Culinary art is one's constant effort to create for oneself a different order of reality from that which is given to you or me or any of us.

“Fugitive Planning” in Fred Moten & Stefano Harney’s terms involves “self-sufficiency at the social level, and it reproduces in its experiment not just what it needs, life, but what it wants, life in difference, in the play of the general antagonism”

(Honestly I have to re-read all that to figure out if I really understand it. I know it’s important somehow...)

So a Vision Board… 

Maybe one can update what it is and how it works? So it can take in consideration:

1. White Supremacy Culture Characteristics
2. Bene Brown & Whole Hearted Living (See workshops based on it)
3. The skepticism from one guy on 'Vision Boards'
   (even though he probably wants to sell you his version of an ‘Action Board’…)
   “Recycle Your ‘Vision Board’ / Positive Thinking is White Junk Pseudoscience
   (the secondary title is mine)

A brief introduction to the Allied Media Conference (Transcript of the opening to 'Queer Astrological Technologies, Live from the 2020 AMC!)

While I was in the labor group with Bene & Emaline [insert website here], I realized that not everyone knows what AMC is (even though I still haven't been?!) but I thought this was a nice intro, I feel like everyone I know would love it, so if you want to hear an intro to it, there's a quick short explanation from Autumn Brown that is accessible either by Podcast OR the clips published on YouTube. I thought it'd be neat if I plugged in links to the references mentioned to see how deep and wide it goes!

Autumn Brown, (Sagittarius Sun, Gemini Rising and Libra Moon) Queer science fiction writer based in Minneapolis, (the epicenter of the uprising) and also a mother of dragons:

"Hello beloved survivors, what you are about to hear is a plenary conversation that Adrienne and I  hosted at the 2020 Allied Media Conference, which is a career highlight for me, but might not make sense for you if you’ve never heard of the Allied Media Conference.

So a bit of background,

 

The Allied Media Conference or "AMC" emerges out of 20 years of relationship building across issues, identities, organizing practices and creative mediums. It started in 1990 as the Midwest Zine Conference in Bowling Green and was really compelled by the concept of Do-It-Yourself or DIY media. Eventually it became the ‘Allied Media Conference' in 2002, that’s when it was re-branded as the AMC, and then in 2007 it moved its home base to Detroit. 

That move has enabled the conference to draw on the lineage of visionary Black organizing models, and the legacy of Detroit as a Black Power and Labor Movement city. The core of the AMC is the theory and practice of media based organizing, or ANY collaborative process that uses art, media, and technology to address the roots of systemic problems, and advance holistic solutions toward a more JUST and CREATIVE world. 

The 2018 AMC was a pivotal moment for the conference itself and after that year, after that year the conference went into chrysalis, took a year off, so there was no AMC in 2019. We were all SO looking forward to coming together again in Detroit for AMC 2020 and then… the pandemic happened... and the AMC had to transform again with a move to virtual conference for the first time. 

Adrienne and I were so honored to be asked to help open the virtual 2020 Allied Media Conference, because the AMC is a space where both of us have built and iterated on key pieces of our work. Adrienne experimented with her first workshops on Octavia Butler, 'Emergent Strategy', and 'Pleasure Activism' at the AMC, I helped to co-host the first ever healing justice practice space at the Allied Media Conference, and it’s also the space where I led some of my first earliest science fiction and social justice workshops, some of my earliest anti-oppression facilitation workshops...

AMC for both of us and for many other people who have gone over the course of the last decade or so, we’ve experienced it as one of the few national conferences where new work is actually developed and iterated, not just a place where people are dropping in to present on the work they’re doing somewhere else. It’s also a space that over the last decade has shifted to center Black, and Indigenous and POC and queer folx, so sometimes when we’re there it feels like we’re walking into the world that we want to live in?

It’s a really magical place. 

So the conversation you're about to hear is the opening plenary of the Allied Media Conference 2020, where 'How to Survive the End of the World' brought back one of our earliest guests, the queer astrologer, Chani Nicholas. Chani as you probably remember is the author of the NYT bestseller, 'You Were Born for This' (get it here?), and she’s a hardworking astrologer whose work has offered a new kind of consciousness for our social movements in terms of our broader purpose and our practice. 

So we talk about this in the plenary, we talk about the role of the Allied Media Conference inside our movements, and we talk about how to work with 'Hard Astrology' of which there is quite a lot coming our way over the course of the rest of this first year. This 90-minute conversation that we had really helped set the tone of the rest of the virtual conference, we hope that you enjoy our giddy, love filled talk with Chani as much as we enjoyed having it…

Welcome to the AMC 2020..."

+AMC Video Here

+FULL Transcript Here

Simone DeSousa Gallery to close its exhibition space, another small business closes during COVID

Images above include a shot of me n Simone in 2014 at my second solo show in the space that’s closing

I know it’s just high ceiling white walls, and @SimoneDeSousaGallery can be proud of being at this spot for a decade, but in the context of ppl talking about trying to support Black owned businesses I can’t not think about Simone DeSousa Gallery as being run by an immigrant, a woman of color (Do we have another word for POC that’s not white-centric yet?) and the difference/disparity of connections and wealth that other galleries enjoy that will weather this COVID storm.

I vividly think about #SimoneDeSousa working so hard to get publications made, international connections, things that those with deeper pockets, bigger names, wouldn’t bat an eye at being able to produce on a whim.

Anyone else hear about the gallery that refused approved PPE loans because their rich family refused such handouts, so... instead the director fired all of the staff who made the gallery run? What if that gallery could’ve taken the loan and their privilege to pay the staff that would be hit the hardest and have THAT go forward as the gallery’s image...

Getting help from artists Karianne Spens-Hanna and Alissa R Lamarre, but also a shout out to the help me and my art has gotten from artist Virginia Torrence too!

Anyways,

it reminds me that #SpiralCollective also used to be on this block with #Goodwells (RIP vegan pocket sandwich) and even longer ago there was Willis Gallery, and of course before that, a place of trade for Indian/Indigenous people, the ‘Three Fires People’ (Ojibwe, Odawa and Botawatami.) There’s a quote I came across that was chilling, look up its context some time: “I had an elder tell me one time that we were conquered by our own love. And I believe that.” - Sue Franklin

I feel lucky to have been represented by Simone who is more concerned about trying to figure out how to support more artists of color than how the gallery might look after posting Black Lives Matter to all of the gallery’s followers…

So I do think that this is kindof a big deal that Simone DeSousa's exhibition space is coming to a close because without loans/support/a flush backer, it simply can't survive the pandemic, when other newer galleries will have benefited from galleries run by POC making something ‘a cool place to be’… 

What if these galleries were to take this time and reflect on the loss of Simone DeSousa’s space and with intention function less competitively, y'know kindof like the artists we know in Detroit? (To show support for how prior to her success maybe ya’ll didn’t think it was safe to open a contemporary gallery in the city...)

Thank Simone for her vision by giving the kind of support that you get automatically. Offer the grant writer or banker you pay that may know of an opportunity for small businesses that she wasn’t able to land, help to partially fund upcoming projects so she doesn’t shoulder that burden on her own funds, have information about ‘Editions’ at your own counter and tell people that Simone DeSousa Gallery had to close down the main gallery space and that is that spaces/projects run by people of color of too few and far between in this city with these demographics.

Kindof my 4th show that I put on with the gallery, was curating 'Over Over Over', this is an image of one of many banners by Ross Sinclair

wonky mini concrete pillars I imagined for future fundraisers for Simone, still available at Editions!