Break Through Tools For The Hearing Voices Experience

An event for mental wellness professionals and social workers – New York City:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/break-through-tools-for-the-hearing-voices-experience-tickets-26131773839?aff=ISPS

Struggling to make progress with your clients who hear voices and experience other hallucinations? The hearing voices experience is characterized by so called unusual beliefs which often lead to unusual behavior. There is a predictable relationship between the features (phenomenology) of hallucinations and the themes of unusual explanations that naturally arise. When you understand this, you can talk the language of your client, build rapport (connect) and help them move forward:

Day 1. Come and learn about a new way to understand the relationship between phenomenon and beliefs:

• The detail of the phenomenology – including the difference between thought, visual and auditory verbal anomalies
• How each feature of the phenomenon leads to particular kinds of unusual explanations and beliefs
• How behaviors can be explained as a natural mind response to unusual inputs to which we give significance

Day 2. Come and learn about six simple, practical tools that help hearers respond to the phenomenology of hallucinations in healthier ways, including:

• How to take the steam out of agressive voices using avatars and caricatures
• How to interrupt the thought train that voices provoke and redirect to something more interesting
• A daily pre-emptive approach to building confidence in your day
• How to coach friends/family in helping you in an emergency

Here is an article about my use of avatars:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/cope-three-unwanted-voices-live-inside-head/

How I cope with the three unwanted voices that live inside my head

I am alone in my New York apartment preparing dinner when I hear the voice of a woman say: “He seems to be OK.” A male voice grunts in response. “He eats better than we do,” she continues. Another grunt.

I look around.  I’m on the second floor of a three-storey apartment block. Who can see me? It has to be someone on the fire escape across the windows, to which only the couple upstairs have access. I’d hurt myself in the kitchen earlier and made a lot of noise – perhaps they heard the commotion and are checking that I am OK. I finish eating and run upstairs to knock on their door. No reply.

Read the full story HERE.

Listening to Schreber’s Voices is a three hour event of readings and performances inspired by Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. It is co-sponsored by Das Unbehagen, Hearing Voices Network NYC, and ISPS-US.  In keeping with the theme of the text (a memoir and judiciary document to support his freedom from the asylum), the event will take place at the Jefferson Market Library, a library with a storied history of also serving as a court house in the 1800s.

Our plan is to solicit different projects based on Schreber’s text and related themes (psychiatric freedom, spirituality, hearing voices, mad pride, psychoanalysis, etc.), including essays, music, dance and straight readings of the Schreber text.  We will have three hours and use of the entire large castle of a library.  Viewers will freely go from room to room to encounter ongoing events as they wish during the three hours of the event.

To date we have about ten wonderful submissions.  As we move to finalize the project, this is a last call to submit your own proposal.  Note that projects will be of varying length as well.  The format of the evening allows for brief performances, visual art, or readings.

PLEASE SUBMIT ANY ENTRIES BY FEB 1. 

PLEASE NOTE THAT YOU MAY OFFER SOMETHING OF ANY LENGTH.  You may read the Schreber text or write an essay or offer an artistic intervention of any kind.

In order to streamline our process, use the following (super brief) form to submit information about your proposal.  Click the link and it will be sent back to us when you are done.  This will help us greatly to program the various events in various rooms. Spread the word! 

https://tccolumbia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cu6gWm5zqaHacSx

When: May 20th 2017, 6-9pm

Where: Jefferson Market Library

425 Ave of the Americas at 10th Street

New York City

“Complex Minds”- A weekly discussion group in a safe space for those seeking to understand their unusual experiences. For people who: see visions, hear voices, have experiences with dissociation, spiritual concerns, paranormal phenomenon, overwhelming fears…

Jefferson Market Library

425 Ave of the Americas (6th ave at 10th street)

Monday nights at 6:30pm starting 1/9

Questions? Contact Tami: [email protected]

For a copy of the flyer, click here: Public Group Flyer 1

The Morningside Heights Support group is on hold during the holidays but will be back in action on 1/18/17. See you then!

We are having a General Interest Meeting on Thursday January 12th, 2017 6-8pm

Jefferson Market Library (6th Ave & 10th Street)

All people interested in furthering the Hearing Voices Movement in NYC are welcome to attend.

Karlijn Roex, a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, will present her paper “Stigma against people who are presumed to be mentally ill: causes and potential action.” at a free event organized by The New York Branch of ISPS-US

Saturday December 17th
NYU Silver Center, 31 Washington Place, Room 408,
4-6pm 

Reservations are not required and there is no fee. Contact Brian Koehler if you need more information at [email protected] or 212.533.5687. Please bring photo ID if possible for NYU Security.
Read more about the talk Karlijn:
Stigma against people who are presumed to be mentally ill: causes and potential action
Abstract It is well-known that people who are presumed to be mentally ill are highly stigmatized. They are considered to be more prone to violence, unpredictable and less capable. This stigma has been shown to be present worldwide. Moreover, being stigmatized has severe consequences for one’s well-being, subsequent mental health and can even have fatal consequences as we see in fatal police encounters. In the current presentation, Karlijn Roex explores the roots of this stigma from a sociological perspective, using Goffman’s symbolic interactionism. If behavior does not meet our common expectations, it is unpredictable and therefore stigmatized as potentially dangerous. Unpredictability, however, can be dealt with in other ways than merely stigma. This is shown by insights from assimilation theory. Conflict theory, as deployed by Bruce Link on stigma, shows how the current stigmatizing response to people presumed mentally ill is a choice of societies that emphasize and exploit inequalities. This elaboration on the roots of stigma will be followed by an interactive discussion of what social actions we can take to combat stigma. Because stigma is a social fact that exists independently from the individual, it can only be addressed on a social level.

Karlijn Roex is a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (Germany), currently visiting at Columbia University, and a human rights activist. Before, she has studied at the University of Oxford. Since April 2016, she is a member of MindFreedom International, advocating for the rights of people with extreme mental states/ distress. Besides her dissertation on the social causes of suicide, she currently works on a project studying the precarious freedoms of people with extreme mental states/ distress.

New Online Hearing Voices Group Set to Begin!

Hearing Voices Network-USA is pleased to announce a new ONLINE opportunity to connect, share experiences, and find mutual support!

WHEN: First and Third Wednesday of every month starting December 7th

7PM Eastern / 4PM Pacific

HOW: The group will use the ZOOM meeting platform which is free to download on computers and Smartphones. Call-in option is also available.

WHO: This group is for those with personal lived experience with hearing voices, seeing visions, and/or negotiating alternative realities.

With further questions and for details on how to access the group please email Caroline at [email protected].

Consider donating to Hearing Voices USA this holiday season! Here’s the website.

HVN USA is part of an international collaboration between voice hearers, family members, professionals, and other allies toward developing an alternative approach to coping with emotional and mental distress that is empowering and useful to people, and does not start from the assumption that they have a chronic illness.
Although originating around the phenomenon of hearing voices, HVN USA also welcomes and includes people who see visions, or have other unusual experiences.
The Hearing Voices movement, and all that it entails (groups, events, training, etc.), has changed many lives and supported hundreds of thousands of people to make meaning of their experiences and begin to integrate them into full lives.

Specifically, HVN USA is charged with developing national standards for Hearing Voices groups, offering resources both on-line and in person, and increasing access to Hearing Voices-related supports, information and training.

We are also super excited to share that we will be hosting the next World Hearing Voices Congress in Boston, Massachusetts in August of 2017.

Raising funds to host this conference is our main focus for fundraising at this time.
HVN USA operates primarily as a volunteer organization.  It is guided largely by an active Board of Directors made up of a mix of voice hearers, allies, family members and providers (alongside two European consultants who share the wisdom of their experience doing similar work in the United Kingdom).  The Board includes representatives from 11 different states across the country.

Your help (in giving and/or sharing!) is invaluable toward ensuring that HVN USA is able to reach across our country, share information, and create opportunities for everyone to get involved.

All gifts are fully tax deductible!

Come join us at Community Access  Located at 2 Washington Street 9th Floor Conference Room for a workshop with Tami Gatta. The presentation will be about using the creative arts when talk doesn’t seem to capture the experiences of voices, visions and other extreme or unusual experiences. Tami will discuss her own reasonings for eschewing classic “talk therapy” methods, and will speak about using the arts to externalize and concretize the voice hearing experience. The workshop will be experimental and will be an opportunity for people to try out techniques for themselves.

December 8th at 6pm

ALL WELCOME. FREE!

Questions? Contact us.