Reminder that "suffering from it" is part of the diagnostic criteria for every mental illness, and that people with mental illness are statistically more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.
This is true of ALL mental illness. Yes, including that one.
The truth about mindfulness
Transcript of the post by conducteam
https://healthselfdefense.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-mindfulness
Given that there are currently many different definitions of Mindfulness, and that not all of them align with ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) principles, we assume that Mindfulness is “a set of practices, processes, and characteristics largely defined in relation to the activity of paying full attention and accepting human suffering without moral judgment.”
The origins of Mindfulness are historically rooted in Buddhism, and it gained momentum when the Mind and Life Institute (1987) distributed dialogues between the Dalai Lama and prominent doctors and scientists, eventually becoming an extremely influential practice (2000).
The leading author, Kabat-Zinn, defines Mindfulness as “the awareness that arises from paying attention intentionally to the present moment, without judgment, as the experience unfolds moment by moment.” Unfortunately, there are also many myths and misconceptions surrounding Mindfulness, such as the myth that it is related to Positive Psychology, when in fact Positive Psychology does not prohibit “confronting negative thoughts,” but rather promotes acceptance. Its existence is accepted, just as we accept the existence of well-being.
Nor does it primarily aim to “empty the mind,” nor does it aim for “relaxation” as its ultimate goal, since the purpose of Mindfulness is to be more alert and “aware of the present,” not necessarily more relaxed.
“In Mindfulness, thoughts and emotions are not prohibited: one learns to live with them. Mindfulness is living with the awareness that we are alive.”
DOES MINDFULNESS HAVE EVIDENCE TO JUSTIFY ITS THERAPEUTIC USE?
Frankly, there are as many documents that supposedly “provide evidence” of the effectiveness of using meditation programs to treat behavioral problems as there are studies that demonstrate the opposite.
The most rigorous meta-analysis (Goyal et al., 2014) demonstrated that mindfulness has only moderate evidence for improving anxiety, depression, and physical symptoms, and weak evidence for improving stress, attention, and mood. More robust studies are undoubtedly needed to determine the positive effects of mindfulness.
“No evidence has been found that meditation programs are better than any active treatment, such as behavioral therapy or exercise.”
IS MINDFULNESS A PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC THERAPY?
To answer this question, we need to distinguish between the “representation” (the theoretical basis that attempts to justify its use) and the “practice” (its functioning in practice) of mindfulness.
On the one hand, based on its “representation,” mindfulness would be a pseudoscience. Its raison d’être relies on a single, as yet unproven, mechanism: “full attention to the present as the main way to accept and validate human suffering.” This is a mechanistic approach that possesses a large “belt of protective hypotheses” against potential criticism.
“It has not yet been demonstrated that ‘mindfulness’ (a catch-all concept) is the mechanism of change postulated by Mindfulness therapy.”
On the other hand, based on its “practice,” Mindfulness would be moderately effective and modestly helpful for some people with residual symptoms. Undoubtedly, it is necessary to discover which therapeutic components of Mindfulness it shares with other interventions.
Evidence of the use of mindfulness in clinical settings should be treated with caution until proven otherwise. The fact that something is being researched does not make it “science,” but rather makes it a subject of investigation, since mindfulness may be beneficial for some people but contraindicated for others.
“The concern about pseudoscience is not without its own interests, so our mission should not be to discredit it, but to explain why pseudoscientific practices work as well as scientific ones.
“POSITIVE” CRITICISMS OF MINDFULNESS
1. Although it is a technique that requires a lot of training to apply, we cannot deny that the technique involves useful training in discrimination and sensitization (attentional conditioning). “Focusing on the present” is learning to discriminate the variables that influence your behavior.
2. There is evidence that Mindfulness is effective for preventing and reducing relapses. Integrating it with other interventions in very advanced stages, and recommending it in a follow-up phase, could have some place if it is adapted to the patient’s preferences.
3. If we move away from religious practice, doing Mindfulness would be equivalent to doing interoceptive exposures to private responses (thoughts and emotions).
“NEGATIVE” CRITICISMS OF MINDFULNESS
1. The definition of Mindfulness does not It is not at all clear, its studies have an evident crisis in their replication and its findings can hardly be generalized to clinical practice.
2. Among the potential dangers of recommending mindfulness are some unjustified claims of benefits and the possibility that vulnerable patients with severe behavioral problems may be misled.
3. The reality behind “letting internal experiences pass by without examining their content, without prohibiting them, but learning to live with them” is a recommendation and justification for undesirable and dysfunctional avoidance behaviors.
4. Cognitive neuroscience’s attempts to theoretically justify the use of mindfulness have failed to date. They fall into too many simplistic interpretations, and neuroimaging results are subject to many methodological flaws (there are differences in the same individuals with different breathing and heart rates).
5. Its therapeutic use in the workplace adds significant political and ethical controversies. Ultimately, we are focusing the problem on the individual, when the behavioral problem is likely being perpetuated by poor working conditions, lack of workplace flexibility, insufficient sick leave, problems with wage payments, etc. Of course, the problem here wouldn’t be Mindfulness itself, but rather its application.
FINAL CONCLUSIONS ON MINDFULNESS
We find it surprising how few voices have raised a critical perspective on Mindfulness. From an experimental point of view, we are still at a very basic stage, although they are following the “gold standard” in clinical research (RCTs and meta-analyses).
Therapists should offer their clients treatments that we “know” work (empirically validated) rather than treatments that we “think” work. Furthermore, if Mindfulness involves “self-control” procedures or exposures, our opinion is that we should use them directly. First, because we know how to use them, and second, because we have a huge accumulation of evidence regarding their effectiveness.
REFERENCES
Goyal, M., et al. (2014). Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.
Martín, O. M. (2013). ¿Por qué no soy un terapeuta Mindfulness?
Muñoz-Martínez, A. (2017). Mindfulness: ¿proceso, habilidad o estrategia? Un análisis desde el análisis del comportamiento y del contextualismo funcional.
Van Dam, T. N., et al. (2018). Mind The Hype: una evaluación crítica y una agenda prescriptiva para la investigación sobre atención plena y meditación.
Oh ich freu mich so ❤️
Auch dieses Jahr wieder Disability und Mad Pride in #Bonn.
Merkt euch schonmal den Tag vor: 11.07.2025
Mehr Infos:
https://disability-pride-bonn.de/demonstration-11-07-2026
Boosten für Sichtbarkeit erwünscht 😺
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An operational definition of the unconscious: challenging and redefining psychoanalytic approaches
Transcript of the post by conducteam
https://healthselfdefense.substack.com/p/an-operational-definition-of-the
THE UNCONSCIOUS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
FREUD → “The unconscious ‘speaks’ in many ways: in dreams, in neurosis, in symptoms...” / “In the unconscious there is no contradiction whatsoever” / “Everything conscious has a preliminary unconscious stage, while the unconscious can remain at this stage and yet aspire to the full value of a psychic function” / “Receptacle of contents repressed by consciousness because they are incompatible with it”
JUNG → “The psyche presupposes a conscious-unconscious totality” / “Consciousness is knowledge about the emotional value of the ideas we form about the motives for our actions” / “Consciousness comes from an unconscious that is much older than itself” / “The unconscious is a potential reality: the thought we are going to think, the deed we are going to perform, etc.”
LACAN → “The unconscious is structured like language and is language itself” / “Signifiers of a meaning repressed by consciousness, search for meaning through signifiers” / “The signifying structure reveals to me the possibility of using language to signify ‘something else’ from what is said; this being the reason why the signifier has no interpretation except in its relation to another signifier.”
DOES “THE UNCONSCIOUS” EXIST?
Behavioral Analysis rejects the existence of the “unconscious” as a physical and real entity. However, the fact that a “behaviorist” declares themselves unconcerned with this type of term does not mean they are not concerned with operationalizing and defining them in a more accurate way, for example, as “unconscious behaviors” and “conscious behaviors.”
A behavioral psychologist can account for unconscious phenomena based on typically psychoanalytic conceptions (Freud, Jung, Lacan, etc.) of unconscious repressions and psychopathology, but translating them into precise scientific terms (laws of learning, functional analysis of behavior).
“CONSCIOUSNESS” IN SKINNER
Skinner (1974) distinguished between two classes or types of “consciousness.” The first type refers to the “knowledge” that organisms have of their environment, as when we say that “we are aware of our surroundings.” People who lose consciousness are no longer under the stimulus control of situations either “inside” or “outside” their bodies, and can “speak without being aware of their effects on the listeners.” Humans and other species would be equally conscious in this respect. “We can perceive, and perceive that we have perceived.”
The second type of consciousness is probably restricted to humans due to their socio-verbal nature. It involves observing what you are doing and putting into words the Reasons that lead you to behave in that way. The verbal community organizes verbal contingencies for “the behavior that describes our behavior,” thus allowing us to determine rules about it and its relationships with the environmental variables that control it. The verbal community provides the necessary contingencies for the self-descriptive behavior that this different kind of awareness allows.
CONTINGENCY AWARENESS
In this post, we will focus on the second type of awareness that Skinner mentioned, which is the type of awareness that largely coincides with psychoanalytic approaches. This type of awareness is academically translated in English as “insight.” Our proposal in Spanish, following Carrasco’s line of thought, is to define and operationalize it as “contingency awareness.”
In this sense, we would distinguish between “conscious behaviors” and “unconscious behaviors.” An unconscious behavior is any response for which we are unaware of the causal variables that provoke it, and we cannot verbally describe that relationship. A conscious behavior is a response whose “contingencies” can be verbally described; that is, we can describe the causal relationship between the behavior and the environmental variables that control it. “Contingency awareness” is the phenomenon in which we are able to verbally describe the contingency (causal relationship) that exists between the behavior and the environmental stimuli. And, of course, if the causes of behaviors are multifactorial, you can get an idea of whether most of the behaviors we exhibit are, in this sense, conscious or unconscious.
When an “undeveloped” organism (in terms of language) responds according to a specific reinforcement schedule, it is not necessary to ask the animal why it behaves as it does (for example, a pigeon pecking for hours in an experimental box). Thus, control over their behavior can be attributed to a history of reinforcement without the possible “obfuscation” of a “present explanation” that may be “deceptive” (accounting for one set of reasons for behaving when the real reasons are different). However, when a human being performs any activity, it is possible to investigate “why you behave the way you do” and evaluate the explanation the subject themselves gives.
The question of the “unconscious” is reduced to a consideration of historical-present behavioral control and the correspondence between verbal behavior and action.
When someone supposedly “neurotic” cannot give an acceptable explanation for their present behavior, attention is directed to its historical sources (their learning history); whereas when someone supposedly “normal” gives an explanation for their present behavior, attention is directed to the supposed control factors present. In one case, behavior is thought to depend on unconscious processes, and in the other, on conscious processes.
But for some behaviorists, all activity is unconsciously controlled; behavior depends on the subject’s reinforcement history, and any verbal behavior used to justify that behavior is thus acquired through its own independent reinforcement history. Freud’s “rationalization mechanisms” and other “defenses” refer to the same thing.
Children often admit to “not knowing the reason for some of their actions,” but as they grow, they learn to explain their behavior when asked, and this is where we can try to sift through explanations that are “acceptable” or not.
“Rational” and “irrational” actions (consciously and unconsciously controlled) differ in that the former can be explained in the present, while the latter cannot. However, they do not differ if their explanations are sought in the history of the behaving organism.
Almost all activities are “irrational” in this sense, since the origins of everyday behavior can rarely be specified. Most people couldn’t say when they first learned to wash their face, brush their teeth, or eat the way they do, and yet they offer socially acceptable explanations for these behaviors. Freud was right to call some behaviors “rationalized” rather than “rational,” but the truth of his observation doesn’t require invoking an “unconscious mind.”
Because they contribute so much to human unhappiness, the origins of dysfunctional behavior have been extensively explored, but the sources of functional, everyday behavior don’t attract nearly as much interest. Consequently, explanations for the former don’t usually apply to the latter, although the division is rather arbitrary. Explaining a phobia in terms of “repressed antisocial desires” has a certain literary appeal; explaining face-washing in the same way does not. But there’s no reason to think that these two types of behavior are governed by different laws; in neither case can the origins of the behavior be verbalized. There is no need to imply an “unconscious” in one case and not in the other, and there is no need for the behaviorist to deny their interest in both cases.
THERAPEUTIC MECHANISMS OF “CONTINGENCY AWARENESS”
In a good number of studies (Aafjes-Van Doorn, 2017; Jennissen, 2018; Brien, 2018; Lovgren, 2019; Sohtorik and Halfon, 2019; Hoglend and Hangtvet, 2019; Hill, 2020; Deppermann, 2020; Front, 2021; Firmansyah, 2021; Mantilla and Traverso, 2021) moderate evidence has been obtained that “insight” (independent variable-cause) produced favorable changes in the clients in terms of their behaviors and emotions (dependent variable-effect).
The hypotheses about the “therapeutic mechanisms” that would be behind becoming aware of the contingency that controls your behavior (why what works works) are the following: (1) Knowing “why you do what you do” helps to escape the emotional discomfort caused by your own helplessness prior to not knowing how to verbalize those “whys” or “functions” of your behaviors; (2) These dysfunctional behaviors are “punished”, their frequency of emission is reduced, because the person, from now on, when they perform them, already knows that they are undesirable behaviors for them; (3) The person acquires a “sense of control” by being aware of the variables that control their behavior; they are “able” to better identify them in order to make it more likely that they will not be repeated.
“Most of the behaviors we perform are ‘unconscious,’ in the sense that we are unable to verbally describe the environmental contingencies that control them” - B. F. Skinner (1974).
“As the science of behavior advances and a more effective and precise vocabulary is developed, we will also expand this type of awareness: the average person will be able to increase their understanding of themselves” - B. F. Skinner (1957).
Are we meant to carry or regulate our emotions by ourselves?
https://wokescientist.substack.com/p/heavy-difficult-emotions-are-important
Self-discipline, self-regulation, self-help, self-reliance, self-optimization, self-care — THIS is how capitalism encourages isolation & conformity
The concept of emotional self-regulation is part of hustle & grind culture. The popularized mental health & “self-help” wave has glorified independence and reliance on the self as the ultimate indicator of success, maturity & wellness. From mindfulness & manifestation podcasts to the endless garbage self-help & self-care influencers- we’re convinced that we are the problem, not the brutal system or our isolation & disconnection from community. To achieve & succeed, we have to turn our lives into an eternal self-improvement, self-optimization journey. I thought I was hurting because I was a failure who didn’t have enough self-discipline. So I tried to regulate, manage, cure, control, push, exploit, overwork myself until I collapsed. Today, I realize I was manipulated into forcing myself to conform to these violent systems. I was doing their work for them.
Self-regulation is defined as ‘the ability to modify or control your thoughts, behavior, emotions, actions, and words in pursuit of long-term goals’. We are told to individually practice & master this skill. I get that it’s important to be aware of, understand, identify & process our emotions in healthy, transformative ways. I get that it’s not cool to lash out in anger or project our jealousy & resentment onto others in unjust ways or act without thinking & reflection. But if you think about HOW we can do that— it’s through practice & co-regulation in community and THAT is the piece that is missing in the framework of individualistic, depoliticized, mainstream mental health.
I don’t think we’re meant to carry or regulate our emotions by ourselves- the self isn’t enough. It really isn’t. & even taking a walk in the park to be amongst the wildflowers, bees, birds & weeds is a form of co-regulation if you honor the integral contribution of other beings. We’re more than capable of feeling deeply & processing our emotions in a healthy manner when we know we’re supported by the soil beneath us & the people around us.
I don’t want us to dissociate & numb ourselves into detachment. I don’t want us to run from the sorrow that comes with living under oppression. We can only experience contentment, serenity & joy when we carry them together alongside sorrow, regret & despair. All of it is important. I want us to carry the boulders & the flowers together because that is always how our communities were meant to live. I want us to give each other the communal safety net that allows us to feel deeply. I want us to mourn the suffering around us… together. I want us to grieve for the land beneath us because she is hurting. I want us to ache because none of us can float in endless bliss while the rest of us are suffering. These so-called “negative” emotions are a sign that our soul is intact & affected by our environment. I don’t want us to escape our sadness because that means we’re not fully alive at all. Creating room for our sadness expands our ability to experience happiness.
Growing up, most of us aren’t taught how to navigate emotions. Emotional maturity & vulnerability takes intentional practice in relationships.
The pursuit of happiness is glorified in our society. But we’re not given specific details or guidance on how we can get there or are misled and misdirected. We’re told that achieving certain milestones (degrees, career, power, wealth, the nuclear family) is the recipe to happiness. So it’s not just sadness, we’re not taught how to truly be happy either. & all of it can feel terrifying. We conflate familiarity with safety and even some amount of liberation (like feeling our feelings in community, even the messy ones) can feel unsafe, merely because it is unfamiliar, not because it is truly dangerous.
The Lies of Psychoanalysis
Transcript of the post by conducteam
https://healthselfdefense.substack.com/p/the-lies-of-psychoanalysis
FREUD NEVER “CURED” HIS FIRST PATIENT
Whether we like it or not, Freud was a notorious liar who meticulously crafted his own legend and destroyed much of his correspondence.
Interestingly, in one of these letters to his close collaborator Fliess, he reveals that on the very day he presented the “complete cure” of his first patient, Anna O. (Bertha), as a great success and proof of the validity of his theory before a conference, he wrote to Fliess that he was desperate because Anna O.’s condition was steadily deteriorating (understandable, since Bertha had tuberculous meningitis, not “hysteria” as Freud claimed).
This correspondence revealed a Freud who was an adept (and addicted) to completely extravagant theories, from numerology to occultism, including telepathy, and who was always careful to eliminate such incriminating evidence.
FREUD BECAME A MILLIONAIRE WITH PSYCHOANALYTIC THERAPY
Without a doubt, Freud discovered psychoanalytic therapy for the wealthy, especially wealthy women. His patients were members of the Viennese bourgeoisie, drawn by the “fashionable therapy everyone’s talking about.” Adjusting the session fees to today’s standards, and converted to 2010 euros,
Freud charged approximately 415 euros per session.
Freud himself confessed that he saw between eight and ten patients daily. A simple calculation reveals that, at the end of the day, he was taking home around €3,300 in cash (tax-free, of course).
There is evidence that Freud only rested on Sundays. Multiplying this amount by six, we arrive at €19,800 per week, or €79,200 per month, which represents almost one million euros per year. Thus, before the First World War, he had already amassed a personal fortune of around... eight million euros!
Freud acknowledged in several private correspondence that he was an ambitious man who pursued only two typically linked goals: fame and wealth. His goal of making a fortune was largely achieved, and, evidently, this data debunks the legend of a stubbornly selfless Freud, who only sought the truth and the well-being of his patients.
WHAT A STORY YOU’VE CREATED!
Freud even referred to his patients as “golden fish,” or simply, his “infinite source of income.” Everything suggests that “curing his patients” was never his objective. His concern was not the patient’s recovery, but rather to delve deeper into his theory, as he himself wrote on several occasions.
Quoted from a letter Freud sent to Fliess:
“Very few patients are worthy of the efforts we devote to them; so our position should not be therapeutic, but rather we should consider ourselves satisfied to have learned something new in each case.”
THE CENSORSHIP OF FREUD’S UNDESTRUCTED ARCHIVES
It is curious how the Library of Congress in the U.S. holds containers with Freud’s likely rewritten, manipulated, and falsified files (those he himself did not manage to destroy) that cannot be opened until 2057 (it seems unbelievable, but it’s true).
They cannot be opened until that date because the International Psychoanalytical Association pays the Library of Congress for the rental of those containers, even though we know that Freud blatantly falsified the results of his treatments, invented patients who never existed to inflate his statistics, claimed to base his demonstrations on clinical cases for which no trace has been found, and subsequently tried to destroy the evidence.
These archives could demonstrate that the famous “five foundational psychoanalyses” of his Freudian doctrine, always presented as archetypal cases, did not improve the patients in question at all, and even worsened the condition of some of them.
One of the five cases, the infamous “Wolf Man” (Sergei Pankejeff), was identified and located before his death in a psychiatric hospital outside Vienna. He recounted the long ordeal he had endured during 70 years of psychoanalysis performed by a total of ten different psychoanalysts, which had only intensified his suffering.
This information was manipulated through his close friend Ernest Jones, whom he asked to write his official biography, the “Bible” that would disseminate the Freudian legend. Jones was tasked with ensuring that no document existed that could contradict his fabrications and with investigating whether such a witness was still alive or had already died, to avoid any complications.
FREUD PREVENTED ANYONE FROM KILLING PSYCHOANALYSIS
Freud protected himself with a vast institutional apparatus. By 1902, Freud had already gathered around him a circle of followers who met regularly to discuss and reinforce his ideas and will, since he only admitted those who accepted his opinions. He refused to allow “dangerous” doctors and psychiatrists to attend his congresses and created the famous “didactic analysis” to train psychoanalysts in succession.
The triumph of psychoanalysis was not due to any supposed therapeutic or theoretical superiority. Not at all. It was due to the particular mode of institutional organization it adopted. Without this system, the Freudian legend would have been ineffective. It was the effectiveness of psychoanalysis’s institutional structures that gave it such notoriety that, since then, most cultural debates in psychology have been formulated in psychoanalytic language.
No one could compete with Freud in the realm of storytelling. The founder of psychoanalysis was a true literary figure who knew how to construct a plot, animate his characters, and bring his concepts to life.
First, the fact that Freud brought sexuality into Western thought, for the first time, through the front door. Second, the fact that psychoanalysis takes on all the characteristics of a religion, providing a comprehensive worldview and offering answers for everything, thus transforming itself into a new religion in an era post-traditional religions. This, coupled with the fact that psychoanalysis became a revolutionary ideology of replacement after the disappointment of the French May ‘68 and the birth of Freudo-Marxism, meant that at that time psychoanalysis became an immortal social movement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
• Borch-Jacobsen, M. & Shamdasaní, S. S. (2011). The Freud Files: An Inquiry into the History of Psychoanalysis.
• Freixa i Baqué, E. (2023). La impostura del psicoanálisis y la leyenda freudiana.
• Meyer, C., et al. (2005). El libro negro del psicoanálisis; vivir, pensar y sentirse mejor sin Freud.
Spicy Mango Matcha Latte ist schon ziemlich geil.
Genau diesen Vibe brauche ich gerade, denn ich habe beschlossen, es bis Anfang Mai etwas ruhiger angehen zu lassen.⬇️
#CripTime #Ableism #Selfcare #MadPride #Widerstand #Intersektionalität #Leistungsdruck #SpoonieLife #CommunityCare #SlowLife #Drinks
Research shows that coercion in psychiatry is common, with some experts calling it a near universal standard practice. Both academic literature and the A new Japanese study finds that informal coercion applied during psychiatric hospitalization resulted in less autonomy for people diagnosed with schizophrenia.
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