Sonic Sanity

It’s always struck me as a silly thing to say you’re a fan of music. As though there’s many folk who aren’t. Even hearing impaired friends (little and big D) attest to their love for sound in the varied ways they experience it. We sing in the shower (regardless of talent), we do that comical torso ‘dance’ with our hands on the wheel in the car queuing in traffic. From a neuropsych perspective, music has unique effects on the brain that cannot be duplicated by other stimuli. Our minds, quite truly, come alive with sound.

I go through these fun little phases when I discover (or re-discover) a new artist. I will tend to binge on their entire catalog, including deep-cuts, EP’s, B-sides and everything in-between. I’ll get to know them intimately and develop a deep appreciation for their work. I also experience this phenomenon when I’m stumbling my way through tough times, in my life or in the lives of those around me. There’s been a proper heap of both this past year (I told someone yesterday that 2016 had psychically closelined me right out the gate) and I’ve been spinning some serious sonic solace for months.

I want to give props to some of my favorite artists who do a lovely job depicting mental health and trauma in their music, so here I give you my all-time, desert island top-10 list of proper psych tunes. I hope you savor it whole-headedly and wholeheartedly.

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Let’s start with what’s soaking the interior of my skull for the past few weeks, a recent discovery albeit a well established group of Manchester laddies since 2012-ish. This tune strikes me as a beautifully bare and honest depiction of mental illness, specifically it smacks of the painful Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD.) BPD is a early-life complex trauma/neglect induced (and arguably attachment-based) pervasive disorder that debilitates one’s sense of identity, complicates relationships and often prompts risky, self-harming, ostensibly abusive or impulsive behavior. “Me” by The 1975 is a beautiful story of this sort of struggle.

I’ll lump a couple tunes by these troubadours as I think they’ve got some serious chops and they’ve earned a couple positions in my opinion. This little ditty seems flippant at first blush until the short lyrical litany reaches its endpoint and we’re struck with a sudden empathy for the narrator.

Let’s rewind to some older favorites…

No Jacket Required was an album I was raised on, in the form of cassette tapes in a 1985 Mazda 626. This tune has always tranced me right into deep empathy and recollection of the ease of modern, western privileged life to simply “tune in, turn-on and drop-out” as it were. Thanks Phil and a guest spot by Sting for reminding me to stay aware.

My all-time, favorite act is Depeche Mode. I’m a devotee, from my first besotted moments in the back seat of Mum’s car hearing “Enjoy The Silence” on the radio. I don’t practice religion, but when I see DM in concert I become a faithful member of the congregation in full uniform. Although there’s a mad number of tracks I could laud by my lovers Depeche, from their post-Clarke era to now, I’ll keep it simple:

“Lie to Me” is a curiously apt depiction of codependency and relational enmeshment.

“Walking in My Shoes” is an anthemic, beautiful piece from the dark, drugged, acrimonious days of Songs of Faith & Devotion. This one tells a tale of the burden of fame and unseen complexities of success.

My pal Wally (aka Gotye) will always have my allegiance for reasons that are now years back and funny to say the least. Let’s just say, Wally….if you ever read this, you’re a good egg and I’m glad to support you indefinitely. Here’s Wal’s awesome tune that properly speaks to the tedium and torpor of life, and a great depiction of depression and dysthymia.

This lovely, weird tune by The National is a favorite for the story of delusional disorders (regardless of their cause.)

Another AUS love of mine is Sparkadia, a defunct indie group lead by the brilliant Alex Burnett. This tune depicts anxiety disorders, especially social anxiety, so perfectly. Sparkadia is another band I could bang on about forever with exuberant fangirling. I’ll spare ya.

I miss you, Xander. Bring back the Spark someday, baby.

I’m gonna’ give Xander another nod for China, simply put, a gorgeous tune about losing your shit.

Sia Furler is the paperbag goddess. This song is so obvious but truly a perfect glimpse into the hardened, hypervigilant reality of trauma survivors.

I could extend this list well beyond these aural beauties but damn…this gives you a solid playlist for now. Support these amazing artists and happy listening!

 

All I Have to Say Today

why the infinite universe soothes me

I want to divert for a moment away from explorations of mental illness and talk about something dear to my heart. I suppose it’s entirely relevant…it is a reality that preserves my own sanity such that I can continue to assist others in maintaining theirs.

I love the cosmos. I love quantum theory and the swirling, spiritual, scientific madness of space. I’ve often found myself in conversations where this concept feels foreign to my comrade. How could something so scary, so dark and so vast be soothing to me?

leave the city, go out to the open land and look skyward. See the loving arm of our mother galaxy wrapped ’round you. Feel loved, absorbed. (whew I just got deep there.)

It goes something like this; in moments when I am bereft of hopefulness and caught-up in the banalities of my daily life, considering the glittering galaxy I exist in grounds me. Each one of us has somewhere in the vicinity of a 1 in 400 trillion statistical likelihood of having come into existence in the nebulous narrative of the universe. How can I possibly let that wholly impressive opportunity be wasted?

One of my favorite concepts that informs this immense sparkling spectrum we float amidst is Quantum Entanglement. In short, this phenomenon is the conduit of connection between subatomic particles across vast-nay prodigious distances of spacetime. I’m not a religious person, but there’s a powerful pull in the feeling of being swayed by the energy of the unseen. I find myself pondering if I am entangled with places...people. It certainly feels

I’m on IG too, and just as weird there

that way at times. I can’t explain why certain faces set themselves like a seal in me. Why certain lands leave a brand in my brain.

There’s something so safe about the thought that perhaps the things I love and hold dear move in concert with me through even achingly inaccessible distances. Maybe we don’t perceive it clearly, maybe we don’t consciously hold the can to our ears and tug the string and concentrate on the sounds of the unseen attachments we carry. I imagine it like the train on a grandiose gown, drafting behind me and gathering a cushion of air as I swiftly scale the steep marble staircase of my story headed towards the pull of a passion I cannot explain.

I think Carl Sagan said it best. At Sagan’s urging, one otherwise usual day in February 1990, engineers turned Voyager 1 through the shafts of the sun’s light rays back towards our home, floating 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away. In a beam of brightness in the dark our tiny planet is seen only 0.12 pixel in size. This moved Sagan so deeply that he penned a poetic love song to the Pale Blue Dot on which we all interact at the conscious and quantum level.

I also love black holes, these monstrous invisible wells of gravitation that meet at a mark we cannot yet understand, perhaps we never will. Around a black hole the arrow of time dilates, and light lenses and warps wildly. At the inconceivable center of the black hole is the singularity; a point of infinite power that confounds the laws of physics. Does it exist? Where does it lead, if anywhere? Only cognitive leaps of faith provide any insight.

Thank you Kip Thorne and his Interstellar consultation team for giving us the most gorgeous imagining of the black hole. Watch the film if you’ve not yet seen it!

One of my favorite sci-fi references is Deep Thought in Douglas Adams’ delightful  Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series. In this brilliant allegory, a set of hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings set upon creating a computer which will provide the answer to “life, the universe and everything.” After eons of computation, the beings return to Deep Thought and ask it excitedly what the answer is. Deep Thought responds, after a brief moment of contemplation with “42.” Naturally this is somewhat vexatious to the beings, as surely they have tight schedules to attend to and are in no mood to trifle. Effectively, Deep Thought challenges the beings that the answer is bent to be meaningless if one does not first attend to the question.

It is in the question that I find great comfort-all I am tasked with seeking are the abundance of questions that hover around me as I wander through my infinitesimally small territory in the cosmos. Paradoxically, as I seek the questions, I often discover my own intricate meanings of “42” along the process.

That is why space is soothing to me; it is the embracing constellation of beautiful questions in which I hover-a tiny creature of no ultimate import-yet made from the same shimmering stardust and improbability.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Luke Cage Falls into the Therapist Seduction Trap

I’m neurons-deep into Marvel’s Luke Cage on Netflix, and I’m loving this brooding, cinematic, contemporary (and socially conscious blaxploitation-style) series. I adore the Harlem/Hell’s Kitchen Marvel universes of Jessica Jones and Daredevil and I was thrilled to hear Power Man would be highlighted in his own series. Not to mention the return of series-linking pseudo-heroine Claire Temple played by the amazing Rosario Dawson. Dawson previously pissed me off as one of ‘the fallen’ therapists who entangles erotically with my favorite onscreen ‘mad-man’ in Danny Boyle’s Trance. However, she’s unarguably uber-talented and I love her in these shows.

My umbrage with Luke Cage ala Netflix is the warping of the character of Reva Connors. In the comics, Reva is one corner of a love triangle between Luke/Lucas and his lifelong frenemy Stryker (there’s a Stryker in every corner of Marvel, they’re like Starbucks.) Reva is set into the role of prison therapist in the Netflix series, responsible for facilitating process groups and working with prisoners. Reva and Carl Lucas (Luke Cage/Power Man’s given name) strike up rapport which quickly becomes unbounded.

This is that achingly overused relational dynamic of client/patient/prisoner and therapist. I’ve prattled-on about this a couple times, but dammit it just keeps coming up! The magic of the confirmation bias is that as soon as you’re looking for proof of your own assumptions you’ll find it in abundance! My bias is that this characterization of therapeutic alliance is tremendously tired at best and harmful at worst. Therapy and mental health treatment is chocked-full of stigma, and popular culture depictions of therapists as sexually predatory and ethically unconscious only fuels that further. I’d love to live in a world that doesn’t fear sitting with someone with legit training and exploring vulnerability as a strength-promoting process. We’re working towards that, and we’ve not arrived. Maybe we never will.

I wonder what lead the Luke Cage Netflix writers to head down this path with Reva Connors. Her importance to Luke could have been entirely retained as she exists in the comics, and the complicated relationship with Stryker would have been all the more developed. What drove those retelling this beloved story to make Reva-the clinician who is ethically responsible for Cage’s mental health-decide to upend her career, break her ethics code and flee with an AWOL prisoner, innocent or not?! It’s a curious question, and it’s ever more curious that I find myself asking this same question over and over again.

 

Kooky Quacks in Marvel & DC: Harley Quinn & Ella Whitby

I’ve previously discussed toxic therapists and the common depiction of mental health professionals as unethical maniacs. This trope transcends film and is reflected in the comic book universes of lifelong rivals Marvel & DC. It can’t be expected that comic characters will be especially vanilla, lest they fail in their primary premise of escape, fantasy and supernatural seductiveness. As a comic appreciator (strongly Marvel-leaning to be transparent) I find the conceit of the crazed psychiatrist especially curious.

Once the shrink now the shrunk, Harley

In realistic film and television formats the transgressive psychiatrist character is especially insidious as it plays upon the common fears of authority and expertise. Those fears, when reinforced, quietly cultivate and perpetuate a culture of avoidance and shame around mental illness. There’s plenty of conversation in my professional orbits regarding the apparent elevated prevalence of PTSD in the US versus other developed countries. This is strongly argued to be a culture-bound phenomenon based in the fear-shame-avoidance cycle. Our forms of storytelling are not immune, and in fact can be argued as the foundation of our social narratives. Mass media is the modern master of narrative, and often the [unfortunate] primary modality of public health education.

In comics (and their respective film adaptations) the cuckoo mental health professional can be seen through a more comic, hyperbolic lens. I tend to take slightly less umbrage to this archetype as it occurs within utterly unrealistic alternate universes where effectively everyone is totally batshit mental and the laws of nature are routinely moot. My ‘favorite’ mad mental health professionals occur in the canon of on-again-off-again frenemies Marvel and DC in the forms of Dr. Ella Whitby (Marvel/Deadpool earth 616) and Dr. Harleen Quinzel (DC Batman/Suicide Squad etc.) Of course it’s no secret that these two bitter bedfellows essentially copycat each other decade-after-decade.

you cray Dr. W

I happen to be a well-grounded Feminist who doesn’t spend a great deal of time soapboxing about social justice just to hear the sound of my own fury, and it does smack of a bit a’ the ol’ mysogyny that both these troubled characters are cis-female, blond-bombshelly, gullible and quick to become dangerously smitten with their most acutely crazed clients. It’s almost as though the expert-becomes-submissive is a sexualized fantasy in this format. Then again, based on most media characterizations, female therapists are supposed to be sultry sex-kittens who will whip off their specs, drop their silky hair from its matronly bun and insist on some ‘sexual healing’ as the proper intervention for your emotional malaise. >cue hacky seventies porn riff<

If you’re not familiar with the stories of Harley and Ella I strongly suggest absorbing them into your geek-lexicon whilst simultaneously sucking on a big fat grain of salt regarding their profession. I assure you that I’ll never go rogue for a client and collect their post-regeneration body parts in my freezer. I’ll also never decide to take up ‘whack-a-bat’ as a recreational sport. I will, however, bewitch your mind and incept you to do my more banal bidding such as taking out the rubbish bin and scooping the cat box. >wink<

 

Toxic Therapy: Transgressive treatment and dodgy therapists abound!

Soapbox time.

not just any soapbox…The Soapbox!

I’m a therapist. I spent ten years training to do what I do, many of said hours spent being drilled with ethical awareness and just a sprinkle of spicy terror about the litigious risks of my profession. I know the code, and although I don’t blindly adhere to it without examination, I do not violate the safety of the space I worked hard to carve with my clients. The great, great…..fucking great majority of mental health professionals are conscious folk who want to honor your stories.

Okay I’m cool now…promise.

Let’s chat about therapy depictions in popular culture.

As touching and powerful as the above scene feels, it’s got boundary issues. And it seems such boundary matters….uh…abound in media portrayals of the therapeutic process. Yes, therapy is a weird, unique, radical, unusual, unnerving relational dynamic that clients may not experience anywhere else in their daily lives. The mystery of the process and the motivations of the provider are often convoluted through the lens of the camera.

There’s myriad misapprehensions about therapists/shrinks/psychiatrists/psych nurses but perhaps the most pervasive is of the therapist as a powerful, borderline-abusive authority who will exploit the client sexually, psychologically, financially or otherwise. Here’s a couple infuriating examples:

But here’s a reality check, which is part of what I do, right?!  Power dynamics happen in the therapeutic space, and a solid clinician can choose to even the dynamic and remind the client that ultimately they are the expert. Think about it; who else on the face of the earth knows everything you’ve felt and experienced than you? When that power is equalized, and when we can talk openly about transference and other normal, natural, workable phenomenon in the relationship, we can get the ‘good work’ done. Of equal import, we can avoid harm in the process.

I’ve often framed it this way with clients so I’ll do the same here:

You’re in a cavern, it’s dank, acrid and alarmingly silent. The ground is thick with some unctuous tar that clings to your feet and creeps up your ankles. Moving forward is hard-staying is even harder. It’s fucking dark and you’ve no idea how to navigate this. I entered the cave with you when you called out for help, and I’ve struck a match on a rock somewhere. I’ve lit a lantern and joined at your side. Now we can maneuver our way through this stygian space together, at even pace, with our little light that’s just enough to shine some clarity on the walls of the abyss. We can move forward, and I will be your ally as you journey ahead and back out into the light.

That’s what I do…not fucking my clients or fucking them over.

c. Mino (deviantart.com)

 

 

 

 

 

Mad Mac: Why James McAvoy gets my vote for mastery of mentally ill characters

Who wouldn’t?

Okay folks….I’m a McAvoyeur. Let’s just get that on the table straight out. Those of you who know me are acutely aware of this fact. I can own my shit.

I promise there’s a finely-honed set of rationale for my adoration (de-nial aint’ just a river in Egypt.) This guy isn’t merely a masterclass professor in acting, he crafts characters whose hearts (in the far more eloquent words of Frida Kahlo) “bleed something they can smell in the streets.”

Yes, you. Don’t look so damned humble all the time.

This became especially apparent to me after viewing the bombastic Bruce Robertson in Filth. Prior to this film, I’d been impressed by McAvoy’s bright-eyed, sycophantic and sheltered Dr. Nicholas Garrigan in the fantastic film The Last King of Scotland.

But Bruce takes the cake in the Irving Welsh novel adaptation. Filth is a surrealistic lens on trauma, serious mental illness and addiction, but never has an actor more keenly managed the brilliant balancing act of abusive arsehole still deeply worthy of empathy and compassion.

Although a few of the outright manifestations of his illness are hyperbolic (per the Irving Welsh ethos), Bruce’s struggles are acerbically authentic. Notoriously, Filth is a polarizing film-many a viewer has reported to me an intolerable revulsion to the film. I, however, feel an undeniable affection for Bruce. Yes I’m a therapist thus my empathetic radar is especially acute, yet if anyone’s behavior could push one to the precipice it would be a personality like his. In McAvoy’s talented and doting hands, Bruce is simultaneously vulnerable, frightened, bewildered and beastly.

Let’s step away from Bruce for a moment and mention some other my other favorite Mc-characters who grapple with mental health and trauma. Did you like what I did there?…..(cheap puns keep me warm at night):

So here’s the hard part for me; what are my criticisms outside my obvious bias? There’s times when James’ performances trend towards being a wee bit overwrought. Those moments are rare and usually placed within the context of his otherwise impressive skill set. He’s possessed of an elastic facial talent and an inner well of emotional gravitation that can occasionally over-punctuate the flow of a scene. Additionally, his American accent is sometimes atrocious, especially in his earlier works. Suspension of disbelief is a little challenging when an excessively thickset ‘bro’-timbre abounds in films like Wanted (however I’m a massive action flick fan, best believe that shit is in my blu-ray collection.)

MACBETH by Shakespeare, , Writer: William Shakespeare, Director: Jamie Lloyd, Trafalgar Studios, London, UK, 2013,, Credit: Johan Persson – http://www.perssonphotography.com /

Headlining The Ruling Class directed by Jamie Lloyd

Giving the purported performance of a lifetime as MacBeth

I’m waiting with tested patience for 2017’s SPLIT, as it offers-up another opportunity for my favorite “professional pretender” to play trauma with guts and heart. There’s likely to be ever-more glorious force in his upcoming films Submergence and The Coldest City. Next year will be a proper buffet of McAvoy brilliance!

 

 

More fun shit coming soon!

Stay tuned for the following topics to come!

Scare Tactics: the monster of mental illness in horror films

X-Machina: Psychological super powers, trauma & the X men

Mad, Mad Marvel Universe (MCU & Netflix)

LGBTQ mental health in film & television

DC Does Darkness: Harley Quinn, Joker & Batman of the Frank Miller era

Toxic Therapy: tired, transgressive treatment depictions

Mad Mac: James McAvoy, my modern master of onscreen ‘madness’

Drawn That Way: Archer, Futurama, Bob’s Burgers

Space Crazy: star trek, Firefly, Hitchhiker’s, Red Dwarf & beyond!

Get Schwifty: a love song for Rick & Morty

 

The Girl On The Train & the trope of the barren lunatic

This is a topic near and dear to my heart. I’ve been an open advocate for dialogue about fertility issues as a woman who has suffered the identity-altering trauma of inability to recreate life. So it was with mouth agape that I investigated the novel upon which the October 7 release The Girl On The Train is adapted. Author Paula Hawkins tells the tale of a 30-something divorcee turned drunkard whose life spirals out of control after she discovers her inability to conceive a child. Gladly there’s more to this tale than meets the eye for certain, and it throws into sharp relief a common trope in the narrative of mental illness; the assumed ‘madness’ of a woman who cannot (or chooses not to) have children.

I’m reminded of a moment in the sci-fi missed high-five Prometheus when Noomi Rapace’s character Dr. Shaw queries her partner and fellow scientist regarding her infertility “I can’t create life, what does that say about me?”

Noomi Rapace as Dr. Elizabeth Shaw in 2012’s Promethius (Scott Free)

This is part of a larger narrative of the worth of women, and people of all gender identities, who cannot reproduce in the privileged manner assumed intrinsic to humankind. Frequently characters missing fertility privilege or choosing not to procreate are depicted as jealous, unstable, relationally deficient and emotionally dodgy. Crazy cat lady, anyone?

Black Widow is my spirit animal in this tribe. Natasha Romanov is a clever, tactical, skilled BAMF who busts glass ceilings everywhere she treads. Yet even BW gets treated with tokenizing, devaluing energy when the trauma of her forced sterilization at the hands of her trainers is revealed. We briefly glimpse her as a victim rather than a powerful survivor whose value as a woman isn’t lessened by her loss.

Loss of fertility, child loss, abortion and miscarriage are deep traumas that don’t automatically lead survivors towards mental illness. As with all traumas, healing is possible and sickness is preventable. If we are telling folks that these losses are destined to be their own personal highway to hell, we set people up for investment in defeat and hopelessness. I think we can be a little more clever and creative and not defer to fearmongering about how folks will handle their trauma.

 

Sexualizing (In)Sanity

 

Let’s start with a little note: I use terms like “crazy”, “insane”, “mad” in wholly subversive and challenging fashion. I do not believe people are crazy, and our language is a powerful tool that can liberate or subjugate. My intention is to deconstruct the language of mental illness as part of our narrative. Feel free to comment below.

The trope of the “Fighting Fuck-Toy” is pervasive in 2011’s Sucker Punch (Warner Bros.)

It’s tough to watch any film and not notice the sexual objectification of folks managing mental illness. There’s several layers of bullshit heaped onto this issue that feel important to unpack. Seeking mental health treatment requires a profound vulnerability and courage practiced simultaneously.

The talents of Jennifer Lawrence are overly displayed via her sexpot factor in 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook (The Weinstein Co)

Back in my inpatient treatment days I’d spend many an hour sitting in starkly lit rooms with quivering, traumatized people as they were prodded for their entire history, given scratchy scrubs and slapped with a plastic wristband identifying them via an arbitrary set of numbers. There’s nothing sexy about those moments. Yet we also tend to devalue some struggling individuals based on our assessment of their psychological stability. It’s curious that we swing wildly from objectification to marginalization on this topic.

Film, TV and music videos often insist upon hyper or hypo-sexualizing mentally ill characters, often dependent on the decided disorder or the subjective ‘hotness’ of the actors. Yes, sexual dysfunction and problematic sexual behaviors can be a part of mental illness, and to ruminate on this aspect is ignorant and unkind. Don’t even get me started on the sexual transgressions of mental health professionals in film. That’s another topic for another day, and it will be tackled! As you absorb media representations of mental health matters, ask yourself how characters’ sexuality is sensationalized or minimized, and how that colors your evaluation of their worth and dignity.

Here’s a few examples I recommend digesting, some consider the material with a conscience, others miss the mark:

Sucker Punch

In Treatment

A Dangerous Method

Silver Linings Playbook