Personal Stories
These are personal stories and it is not assumed that ERNI Declaration Signatories will share any opinions expressed in the story.
If you have a story you would like to share with us, please get in touch with us at ernimovement@gmail.com. All stories are subject to the following editorial guidelines; 750 word maximum, people and organisations must not be identifiable, and content must fit with the ERNI declaration.
Jill Kesti
My name is Jill Susan Kesti. I am a 46 year old woman who has been presumptively labelled with “Bipolar” since 1999 and I have been hospitalized 13 times in 23 years.
In 2013 I lost my 12 year job and career due to a hospitalization, went on Social Security Disability, and used the time I gained to research the Consumers, Survivors and Ex-Patients of Psychiatry (CSX) Movement. I began to resist the psychiatric medical model I was being treated with and considered that I may not be ill after all.
On 1st November 2016 I entered a state of extreme emotional distress. I was brought to the ER (Emergency Room) by Police and was forced catheterized (medically raped). I spent two days in the psychiatric ward, extremely traumatized. After my release, my General Practitioner gave me two drugs for the back pain I was experiencing from the catheterization (both of which can cause “psychosis”). I again spiralled into extreme emotional distress, resulting in two more weeks at the psychiatric ward in December 2016. My beautiful disabled three-legged cat, Mazzy, died alone while I was incarcerated.
This led to my first Assisted Outpatient Treatment Court Order (AOT) to take neurotoxic psychiatric drugs against my will from December 2016 to November 2017. I woke daily to delivery people pounding on my door who watched to make sure I swallowed the drugs.
In August 2017, I started to fight back. I created “Coalition To End Forced Psychiatric Drugging” on Facebook, building 1000’s of memes and a safe space for CSX people to get information. I began recording the torturous daily deliveries and posted them to my YouTube Channel.
I was in a terrible relationship and ended up in extreme emotional distress (wanting him gone), and was involuntarily hospitalized in July 2019. An AOT Court Order was once more issued, and I again faced the daily horror of the deliveries and neurotoxic poisoning of my body. It destroyed my chance to have children, and thus completely severed the relationship.
Last year, in June 2021, my doctor lowered me from 3000mg to 750mg of Depakote OVERNIGHT. I again spiralled, was handcuffed and taken 500 miles to a psychiatric ward, and spent 26 days locked up. I lost my eBay business due to banned cell phone use, and my cat, Mr. Larry Lily, alone at home, was unable to be caught and died on 17th July 2021 after I finally rescued him. I am now on a yearlong Court Order until November of 2022 because of this iatrogenic-caused hospitalization.
In hindsight, my story is one of extreme emotional distress (trauma) and of iatrogenic and substance-caused episodes. Discovering the “Emotions Are Not Illnesses Movement” was like a lifesaver to me. Finally, people were agreeing that throwing dangerous neurotoxic substances at emotional distress was causing severe disability and early death. Finally, people were signing a declaration of like-minded believers that the psychiatric medical model is causing more harm than help, and that we must change it. Finally, people of the CSX Movement were being connected.
In closing, I feel I must mention my passion and driving force, which is to end mass/school shootings. I truly believe, after experiencing what I consider to be daily torture for the past six years in the coercive mental health system, and 18 months of severe psychiatric drug withdrawal, that forced drugging, and the drugs themselves, are playing a large role in the shootings.
Maddy Hurd
Listen
Listen,
we’re not asking you to label, judge or scrutinise
to diagnose, deliberate and transform our lives,
into a world of pills, compliance, passivity and lies.
We are people who have tread our own path,
intertwined with trauma, expectations, there’s no going back.
But you can listen to what we have to say,
we have not survived day after day
for our story to be squashed, flattened, reduced down to a name,
a chemical imbalance a ‘scientific’ domain.
There is an alternative you see,
One of inclusivity, understanding, what happened to you? Let me be me
without putting words in my mouth, encouraging me to swallow a truth you know nothing
about.
by Maddy Hurd
Laura Buchenlicht
Restless Heart Syndrome -
Just Hearing About Psychiatry Is Enough
As someone who has Complex Trauma and Dissociative Identity from childhood abuse, it is perhaps surprising that I’ve come so far on my healing journey without having had anything to do with psychiatry. It is only now that I moved from the UK to Germany and am in need of support due to homelessness, that I’m becoming fully aware of just how toxic the mental health system of the western world is.
For some reason our culture has come to see emotions as illnesses. What if we called “clinical depression” grief instead? Or hopelessness? Or emotional numbness? What if we called “anxiety disorder” fear instead? Would people still take their medication or would they maybe be more likely to wonder why they feel so hopeless or scared so often?
The truth is, medication doesn’t make feelings go away. Nor does it take away the cause for whatever you’re feeling. It just numbs out your feelings, muffles them, a bit like dissociation. To dissociate means to disconnect from your emotions and sensations, it’s a natural trauma response to protect you. Of course, having a Dissociative Identity, I struggle with dissociation a lot. So I find it hard to understand why anyone would willingly take the chemical version of dissociation. I’m well acquainted with just how unbearable intense emotions can be. Abused children never learn how to regulate their emotions. But as I know, dissociating from them only makes them more unbearable when they finally come back (which they inevitably do, sooner or later).
A lot of people advertise medication as a temporary solution, calling it “a bit of soothing” or “calming”, until things get better. What gentle descriptions for taking drugs. With the same logic one might propose to give a sedative to a screaming baby. That’s exactly what people’s emotions are. A dysregulated nervous system that’s begging for help (either due to an acute trigger or trauma in the past). As with the baby, that actual soothing would be kind attention...obviously...so how did our society end up so fundamentally disconnected from human nature?
That’s a question too big for this short article, but of course the (simplified) answer is capitalism. Psychiatry, health insurances, and the pharmaceutical industry came up with the whole disorder concept and the idea that “disorders” (extreme emotions) were caused by “chemical imbalances” in the brain. And coincidentally, these “chemical imbalances” can be fixed by taking medication, or so they say. In other words, it’s just another way in which capitalism managed to make even more money by harming people.
I am shocked when I read people’s accounts of having been abused by psychiatry. With all of that awareness, I was further shocked by how often and casually people have recommended or tried to persuade me to go to the hospital and take medication here in Germany. I told a social worker (who’s not my social worker any more) that I’ve been feeling suicidal, and she proposed the hospital (what’s more, she was present at least two times when I firmly told another person that I won’t have anything to do with that!). “Why, will the people there make me feel loved?” I would have liked to reply to her.
Worst was a “social” worker at a psychiatric service, who was a full-fledged abuser on the narcissistic spectrum (they are more common than anyone thinks). She was clearly triggered by the expanse of my desperate situation and told me off for being in need as forcefully as any abusive parent. When I reacted to that abuse by nearly fainting, of course it was clear to her that I needed to go to emergency straight away, because I was extremely unstable and “was just waltzing around town”, like a dangerous mad woman.
This is the classical upside-down “wonderland” of abusers that I know so well from my narcissistic family – they think you are wrong in all the ways in which they are wrong. Just like Alice, I’m really sick of these mad people that I never wanted to go among, and I wish I could just find a path that leads home.
But the madness never seems to stop. When I vented about this retraumatising experience in an online group for people with “DID”, one of the commenters said: “You should really overthink your attitude towards medication”. Dear reader, I hope you feel like screaming as much as me.
And now I feel like it again, as – after months of repressing the trauma of that experience – I have dared to reach out to a victim’s support service, telling the story of my emotional abuse via email, only to have another “social” worker tell me that “She’s sorry to hear that I wasn’t content with the behaviour of the colleague”. I wrote back at once that her belittling of my experience was insolent and respectless. But once again I am left with that horrid feeling of not being taken serious, which is so retraumatising for victims.
So what is one to do against all of this huge conspiracy? I wish I had a vast network of like-minded people with whom I could talk and engage in anti-psychiatric activism with. But like so many survivors, I suffer from social isolation. So far, talking to my therapist and writing poetry and articles have been my only outlets for this. I’m well aware of how important gaining a sense of agency and thereby power is for victims, which is why I feel the need to do more. I’ve just embarked on a new project with a YouTube channel called “DI Without The Disorder”, which hopefully will help me to reach more people and build a network. There is something tremendously empowering about using your voice – literally –, especially when it’s to raise awareness about the sickness and injustice of the system, and to express your emotions.
Let me finish by saying that I’m a big fan of the ERNI declaration. It stands for “Emotions aRe Not Illnesses” and it’s a human rights declaration, making a clear statement against the current concept of pathologising emotions and suffering. Anyone can sign it (anonymously, if wished), and I’m proud that I could help a tiny bit by translating it into two more languages (any multilinguals: there are still a lot more languages that can be added to the list!).
By the way, the title of this article is a reference to a song by Green Day, which, I think, describes the mess we’re in quite well, except that they sing “You’re your own worst enemy”, where I beg to differ and think that the worst enemy is clearly the external system.
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Author bio: Laura is from Germany, but has lived several years in the UK. She developed a Dissociative Identity as a result of childhood emotional neglect and abuse. Her greatest achievements were to survive, leave her family, become aware of her trauma, and to start (and stick with) therapy. Her survivor's mission is to raise awareness about her non-disorders and how trauma is interlinked with other social oppression. She discusses these topics on her blog “FemVegTrauma” and YouTube channel “DI Without The Disorder”. She is also an artist, poet, singer, musician, historical linguist, archaeologist, and lover of nature.
Laura Buchenlicht
I Am Not Ill
I am traumatised. I am abused. I am dissociating. I am scared. I am angry. I am grieving. I am lonely.
I am not ill.
I want respect. I want kindness. I want understanding. I want open-mindedness. I want compassion. I want love.
I don’t want medication.
I am overwhelmed. I am triggered. I am exhausted. I am despairing. I am hopeless. I am suffering.
I am not disordered.
I want to tell you that I’m dissociating. I want to tell you that I’m triggered. I want you to know that you’re talking to a child right now. I want you to understand that I have 12 personality parts and I can’t control switching.
I don’t want to go to psychiatry.
I self-harm. Sometimes I want to kill myself.
I’m not crazy.
I deserve to be listened to. I deserve to be asked how I feel and what I need. I deserve what I need. I deserve that you have enough time for me. I deserve that you take the time to learn more about my conditions. I deserve to be cared for.
I do not deserve to be ignored, accused, and discriminated.
Sometimes I can’t speak. Sometimes I can’t remember. Sometimes I can’t think. Sometimes I can’t feel. Sometimes I can’t go out. Sometimes I can’t move.
I can always be human.
I am poor. I am jobless. I am homeless. I am disabled.
I am not useless.
I am creative. I am passionate. I am funny. I am loving. I am considerate. I am intelligent. I am strong. I am resilient. I am brave. I am observant. I am learning. I am doing my best.
I am not super-human.
I am a child who has been born into a family of monsters. I am a teenager who’s scrambling for her identity among the shards of torture. I am an adult who’s trying to navigate an abusive world.
Most of all, I am myself. Despite them.
So please. Drop the disorder.
I am not ill
Laura Buchenlicht
