Communicating With Psychosis | Dina Tyler
Are there ways to reach people in states of madness? How do talking with ghosts, hearing voices, and seeing visions — as well as enduring family turmoil — relate to psychotic crisis?
When Dina Tyler discovered the meaning of life in an altered state, the treatment she received only inflicted further trauma. Dina instead embraced her madness as a guiding force for recovery, and found a way to leave labels and medications behind. Today she works as a counselor to youth experiencing psychosis, communicating across different realities with people driven away from traditional care.
Dina is the co-director of the Bay Area Mandala Project, co-founder of Bay Area Hearing Voices, and works with an early psychosis intervention program in Alameda County, California. She was awarded Peer Specialist of the Year by the National Council for Behavioral Health in 2015!
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I wish to add a comment about my Dad. I had a conversation with my father before I did this interview. I was worried he might be hurt by me sharing publicly what our family was like back then. He has considerably changed and has worked hard to form a good relationship with me. Prior to the interview, my dad asked me to tell my story as I saw it, unfiltered. After he listened to it, he saw how he was through my eyes, sharing that he knew how I felt. He too had been beaten as a child. My dad and I are now open to having a more deep and meaningful conversation to help further our growing relationship. Thank you for this gift of sharing my story. It is helping my family to heal.
That’s beautiful to hear Dina – please say hello to your Dad for me.
So great to hear Dina.. I think alternative methods are more effective then meds. There are a lotof sites now talking an activating use of art..writing..yoga..dance an many others. The Red Door an Mind Arcs are two of them an many more activist sites like mindfreedom.org. Thanku for great article..
has any one who have experienced “VOICES ever had an CT of their brain to see if there are microchips implants? This is an old trick please read project MKULTRA please do
hillary email:dfirstlady5@hotmail.com
Scientists also using auora frequency waves to manipulate the neurotransmitter in our brain when this is activated you hear voices
Please do not forget that MKULTRA is alive, blue bird in full flight. If doctors want to know if someone has a mental then they should let them have a CT of their brain. Are doctors doing that? connect with me at:dfirstlady5@hotmail.com. I will send you images of my brain, doctors have been lying to me telling me I have mental issues after their colleague here in Toronto injected serum and other substances in my gum for experimental reasons it causes me to hear voices There is also a loop that looks like a wire behind my ear as well and I also beep when in and out of stores, and I saw several disgusting images illegally implanted in my body while going through the Pearson, International AirPort
Great interview!
Thank you Dina for so courageously telling your story of suffering and hope filled inspiration. It’s a great gift to all of us. It emboldens me to keep trying to be real and open about my life too.
I’m grateful for you being my friend and comrade.
And thank you too Will, for once again being able to help so many of us open up- encouraged by your gentle and wise words, your heartfelt caring.
Best wishes,
Michael Cornwall
Thank you Dina! What an honest and detailed account of your experience with the system. I was able to look back at my experiences and remember things I had forgotten. You captured that moment in madness when the ground seems to fall out from under us. It seems so real to have all the answers. It is like when Wily Coyote runs off the cliff he doesn’t fall until he realizes there is no ground underneath. I also am inspired by your view of recovery as a way of improving health and listening rather than suppressing symptoms (at best). The Bay Area has a gift in you supporting others. Luke @ http://www.balancedlandhealth.com
Dina,
I just came across your radio interview on Mad In America and teared up listening to your story and treatment at the hands of modern psychiatry, and their drug filled methodology of mental straight jackets. Thank God and yourself for surviving and becoming the person that you are today. Congratulations! What an incredible story of perseverance and courage to plow thru on your journey of finding out who you are,the meaning of your life, and overcoming the extreme obstacles that you faced, especially in early childhood. I actually had a eerily similar experience growing up in re the abusive father to siblings.
I am actually a former resident of Soteria House. I first came there from a psyche ward where I had been admitted to by my Dad; after him finding me in an orchard spread eagle 6 AM in the morning, after me not coming for the night. I had an out-of-body experience at that time and felt this super awareness that my Dad found to be abnormal. He took me to a regular hospital emergency ward, who could find nothing wrong with me, but the next day he took me to a clinic who recommended that he take me to the Valley Medical Center Psyche Ward.
I was blessed for sure to somehow end up at Soteria instead of the normal psychiatric facilities. God knows if I would have survived like you did.
I had several episodes thereafter that brought me back to Soteria where I would comfortably go thru the process that I was on. Looking back at these today I would label them Spiritual Awakening processes wherein I was the participant and the observer, and were meant for me to become aware of who I was, the meaning of my life, all life, etc.
Like you, I went back to school after 10 years, and today have had a 28 year career in the Laser field. I am still employed, yet I know that part of my destiny is to get actively involved in helping people like myself. Actually I find it difficult to believe that the Soteria methology that evolved of Being With was not adopted nationwide, and globally for that matter. I do know why now, and unfortunately it came down to the co-dependance of psychiatry and Big Pharm. There was simply too much money invested in drugging people, which in my opinion helps no one, and a methology that came out of the Soteria House research project that worked. But because it didn’t involve psychiatry’s cash cow, drugs, they ignored and probably tried to bury it. I understand today that there is much renewed interest in it rising from the Phoenix ashes. So, at least there is hope.
Then there is the Mandala Project that you are involved with, and I’m very encouraged about what I have discovered about it and you today. You must have learned about Soteria House as you mentioned it and methology that evolved.
Continued Good Luck to you and and your colleagues in helping people in society that so desperately need an alternative to tradition psychiatric methods. Sometimes all one needs is a sympathetic ear to listen and acknowledge the thoughts and words expressed, as we all need validation at times. Pardon the pun, but this the only part of bi-polar that makes sense as this is a 2 pole universe that we survive thru.
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