How We Make Ourselves Happy

In reply to yours of 7/15 at 11:12pm, charter. For Copy Cat, just in case: I just finished counting a few over 200 breaths, took about 25" is my best guess. I count at least 150 between each visit to the internet, often more. Doing that was my suggestion as a way to control your "internet addiction" and perhaps even get your laundry done. It's my way of controlling my internet addiction. No, it's not listed among the addiction diagnoses in Psych Forums.

Back to you, charter. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the length of your reply to my last to you. I may not be able to respond to all you wrote. Had I written it, it would certainly have been expressing my obsessive compulsive genes which are as strong or stronger than my manic genes. I'm sure I have written as long or longer in Psych Forums.



Hi, I'm hesitant because I'm not sure what precisely the 'anti-psych approach' you're referring to is


Unsure? I thought I described the "approaches I wrote about" quite clearly.

Is that the approach you mean? It doesn't seem necessarily to me to be 'anti-psych', in that one could take meds _and_ do yoga/Zen. To answer your question: do I think it could be helpful? Yes. Do I think it could eradicate most/much mental illness? Well, I'd want to see the data supporting that idea. (But then I always want to see the data supporting any treatments). From a boringly practical view, I wonder if it would be difficult to roll-out a nationwide program that kept the same 'purity' of the method, if it requires a special way of doing things specifically targetted at mental health. Therapies often get 'watered down' or simplified as they are rolled-out on a big scale, and can lose their edge through that. After all, it would be an approach suddenly applied to millions and millions of people.


I found your paragraph on Zen etc. approaches a beautiful exaggeration of anything I had in mind. It demonstrates the lack of clarity in what I write. Zen, etc. can be practiced while taking psych meds. It is anti-psych in that doing it is outside the the limits of standard psych practice of diagnose, medicate, and perhaps some psychotherapy. I hope that communicates better than my last.



I'll try to reply to those questions. I'm not sure what an 'anti-psych' treatment is. Can one do an 'anti-psych' treatment alongside a psych treatment?


Again unsure: Reread above

Already over 500 words. I try to stay under. I've read that over 500 words, the average reader loses interest. Also that 500 is the max of information he/she can absorb and take in in one reading.

Pinkerbelle: So you are a 5th and not as young as the other ladies. I agree with lots of what you write above.

I manage by using 3 all day breathing practices I learned more than 40 years ago. I also have been very happy since then. Have I had any panic attacks? Yes, but more than 40 years ago. I'm 88 in 2 days. In the long process of eventually divorcing my first wife, I recall driving to my office, at night or on weekends, and sitting and trying to recover. Partly it was establishing control of rage, so I wouldn't go home and kill her, which I had strong impulses to do just before I left home.

Thank you. It may be strange, but I enjoy recovering not very repressed memories like the above. I haven't had a panic attack since getting divorced. My second marriage was a good one. It's 2.5 years since she died, perhaps exactly on the winter equinox of 2009.

Tell me about yourself. I think it possible we could have a long and very interesting conversation here

Kid13, You sound more than 13. Manic and unable to sleep. I have manic genes---from an uncle and grandfather. I do have some sleeping meds, but haven't used any for years. My diagnosis is some 40 years back. I'm male and 88. I keep manic urges in control. I have some every day.

The way I control is with breathing practices. All day long, I either count breaths, coordinate verbs ending in "ing" with my breathing, or simply stay aware of each breath without reminders to do so.

Don't know if that'd help you. Should you be interested in trying them, I'll be checking replies here before too long. Let me know.

On patients being forced to accept treatment, charter: It and public safety are separate issues. I would guess no antipsych repliers on this site object to dangerous and violent people being locked up, whether they are called criminals or mentally ill. Both groups should have a right to public trial. In the USA only criminals have that right. There are no public hearings or trials where the presumably mentally ill can prove their being locked up is unjust.

My position is that neither criminals nor presumably mentally ill should be forced to take anti-psych meds, undergo electroshock, psychosurgery or any of the other brain damaging therapies favored by much of the psychiatric profession. There are, I believe, excellent controlled studies demonstrating that both psychosurgery and electroshock are worse for the patient than no treatment. I would assume psychosurgery is a thing of the past, but electroshock is alive, well and frequently used.

Since you, and many others, find psychiatric treatment with medications helpful, I know of no one who talks of abolishing psychiatric treatment. The point is people being forced to take treatments and having no say in the matter. Are you sure you don't set up straw men? How many times have I said re other things you have written, "I know of no one...?"

thanks for getting the word out rusty about holistic healing for the mental health through breathing....there are many ways to get this practice done, I recommend "Shambhala, Sacred Path of the Warrior" for meditation technique more about how proper breathing will align the posture and this is important too....

Unfortunately I don't practice anything on antipsychotics, it has taken away my ability to focus for more then 10seconds and don't do any of the practices I was called deluded in 2011 on my first hospital visit in 7years, paranoia about the hospital etc it was easy for them to lock me up as involuntary...most of all if they want to prove mental illness they will use eastern arts and known therapy in breathing as a delusion believe it or not..i know it helps...

the breathing channels excess energy away from the mind and into the body freedom from the chaos of the mind and puts a guard in place to prevent attachments to nasty forms....

you think its 500words, but nobody probably reads mine even when they are short maybe...

Razael! It's good to see you around. I was wondering where you went off to.

I disagree. I think to be fully or even more than halfway happy in this world, you have to ignore the cruelty of it, which requires numbing a part of your soul, altering your true nature. Like pain is a response to physical damage, sadness is a response to injustice.

I will never be happy, but I will live on and fight.

Rusty9 wrote:On patients being forced to accept treatment, charter: It and public safety are separate issues. I would guess no antipsych repliers on this site object to dangerous and violent people being locked up, whether they are called criminals or mentally ill. Both groups should have a right to public trial. In the USA only criminals have that right. There are no public hearings or trials where the presumably mentally ill can prove their being locked up is unjust.

I agree service users should have more rights. I still don't know what my position is re: locking people up. If (to make the debate simpler) we take psychiatry out of the equation, and put everything in the hands of psychologists, it seems to me that there's still the problem of defining 'dangerous' -- the state is making decisions about what I might do in the future, based on the opinion of an imperfect science. I don't know what the solution is. I agree with people having more rights.

Rusty9 wrote:My position is that neither criminals nor presumably mentally ill should be forced to take anti-psych meds, undergo electroshock, psychosurgery or any of the other brain damaging therapies favored by much of the psychiatric profession.

I would just tweak that to say: people should have the right to formally state in advance if they _do_ want to be forcibly treated with medication if they become unwell.

Rusty9 wrote:Since you, and many others, find psychiatric treatment with medications helpful, I know of no one who talks of abolishing psychiatric treatment. The point is people being forced to take treatments and having no say in the matter. Are you sure you don't set up straw men? How many times have I said re other things you have written, "I know of no one...?"

I try not to set up straw men. I hope it is fair to say that some organisations are campaigning to abolish psychiatry. If one starts from the position that mental illness is a myth, and psychiatry is a total fraud, there's not much left of psychiatry to keep! Just to be clear, I'm not saying this is your position.

re: Zen, I do see your point that it is totally outside the 'diagnose-treat' model. I do think such practice could be helpful.

As with many internet discussions, a lot rests on trying to establish what each side is referring to, when they use a given term. 'Anti-psychiatry', it seems to me, is one such term that is apt to have different meanings for different people. Thank you for taking the time to clarify what you mean by it.

Continuing a 88 year old, bipolar manic male's reply of 7/16 at 2:10pm

Since age, genes, sex and diagnosis do make a difference in how I or anyone will understand replies here, I hope all who reply here will specify as I have above.

My last workshop at Esalen Institute was in 1971. It took place and I roomed and boarded at Jim Simkin's house adjacent to Esalen. All 6 in the workshop were free to make use of Esalen's hot tubs and other facilities.

Jim was a clinical psychologist who previously worked for the Veteran's Administration in New Jersey. He and his wife bought and moved to the property next to Esalen after he retired. He used Esalen encounter group techniques in his workshop. He also used Fiitz Perl's gestalt therapy technique of waiting for volunteers to take the "hot seat" and then working with them individually.

I was really turned on in the workshop. My manic genes were working overtime. This resulted in my getting very little to no sleep from arrival on Sunday after noon until Saturday. Saturday morning Ann Simkin prepared a big breakfast. The workshop was over. We were celebrating before leaving. Wine with breakfast, and I recall drinking a very large after dinner drink when I finished eating. What happened next has made me be very careful to get enough sleep, to never go more than one night without sleeping. I have sleeping pills and a tranquilizer available to insure my sleeping after one sleepless night. I haven't used them for several or even more years.

I recall walking down the wooden stairs to enjoy being on the rock shore watching the Pacific roll in. I climbed back up and have a very vague recall of trying to get the other 7 people into feeling as high, good, on top of the world as I was feeling. I am sure my behavior was totally wildly psychotic, manic plus.

My next memory is of lying on my stomach in the back of a California Highway Patrol car with my hands handcuffed together behind my back. I sobered and came down from my high extremely rapidly during the ride to Monerrey County Hospital in Monterrey, CA.

466 words. Almost too long. To be continued in my next regular reply. Now, there are 3 replies for me to reply to. But first, I'll count more breaths, at least 150. 1, 2, 3...200+

Razael: I read yours of 7/17 at 1:57am. I'm quite sure I read Shambala: Sacred Path of the Warrior and some of it, the parts I found useful, is stored in the hodgepodge of my old and decaying memory.

Apparently you are locked up, committed, and are forced to take anti-psychotic medications. The effects you mention are the same I got from an anti-psychotic now partially banned in the USA because it killed too many people. That was way back in 1971. Fortunately I was released and stopped taking that killer medication of last resort for psychosis.

Are you in a for profit hospital or one financed by the government or charities? I find it easier to believe that breathing practices are proof of delusions if it's for profit. The conflict of interest leads to a use any excuse to keep people hospitalized mentality, that may not exist in not for profit mental institutions.

Sorry I can't offer any help other than I will read and reply if you post in this topic again.