Trauma-Informed Marketing I Helping Somatic, EMDR, IFS, Psychedelic Providers Formalize & Launch Their Creative Offerings I Founder @ Flourish Your Practice
Terms that I (personally) try to stay away from: 🚫 CRAZY, INSANE, ILLNESS The first two might be obvious. "Illness", to me, communicates a malfunction, something viral or inherently sick. My belief around mental health is that certain "conditions" or even "disorders" arise in response to traumatic events in life, paired with a genetic predisposition to receive these events more intensely. It can be argued that a mental "illness" is actually an adaptive pattern of behaviors created in response to a proportionally radical and challenging set of circumstances. My position is that mental conditions are signs of radical resilience, not illness. Healing individuals from the original trauma or source should be the work, not demonizing or hyper fixating on the behaviors or symptoms. Instead of illness", I use "condition" or "disorder", or just reference the behaviors in question. At the end of the day, a mental "illness" diagnosis is just a collection of behaviors. 🚫 DRUG This is in reference to psychedelic medicine. Drug vs Medicine is based on one's intention. Anytime I refer to a psychedelic substance in this space, I refer to it as a 'medicine'. I am showing respect to it and referring to it in a healing capacity. Anything can be made into a drug. Love, sex, food, etc. 'Drug' is not a concrete thing - it is the intention behind the use of something. 🚫 BAD TRIP I try to not refer to challenging and even scary experiences in the spiritual realm as 'bad trips.' I certainly have had moments of extreme discomfort and perpetual fear during experiences. And I'm sure there are many cases that are similar and have gone far deeper. "Bad trip" reduces and strips an experience of it's potency, and does not acknowledge the surrounding factors that might have contributed to the discomfort during the experience. I have found the greatest meaning and lessons from my darkest moments in medicine - it would cheapen them so much to call them a broad, dull word like 'bad.' --- Let me know if you agree or push back on these sentiments 🙏 ❔ #onewayforward #behavioralhealth #holisticmedicine #psychedelictherapy #psychedelicmedicine #mentalhealth #businessdevelopment #consulting
I say “wild” instead of “crazy” a lot. Like, “that’s wild.” I tend to say “mental health challenges” where some might say illness. And that’s when people experience hardship due to their mental health. A lot goes into our health and mental health of course. The latter two terms aren’t really my realm, but interesting to hear your thoughts.
Counselor, Career Coach, & Psychedelic Guide
10moGreat points here Ryan! I certainly find other terms more helpful than “Bad Trip”, which to me has an all-or-nothing connotation. “Challenging Experience” seems to me to encompass the moments of intensity or discomfort that can arise. Sometimes these are the pivotal moments of the journey too. I actually avoid the term “medicine” and stick to “substance” or “drug” in most contexts. Two reasons for me. #1 Some individuals have found traditional psychiatric pharmaceuticals (and maybe much more of the medical system) extremely unhelpful and psychedelics are seen as an alternative. #2 I personally subscribe to the end-the-drug-war approach and try to normalize the term “drug”. To my coffee-drinking friends’ chagrin, I will semi-jokingly refer to their morning caffeine as a “drug” to draw attention to the subjectivity of our labels. Note: best to make these comments, if you make them at all, AFTER they’ve gotten their cup of joe!