Interviewing ‘Experience’ : Amanda

By Patricia Lefave, Labelled D.D. (P)

With Amanda

Please Click on Link to see Amanda's Interview Videos 1 thru 10

The series of embedded videos above is a collaborative effort between myself and a long term psychiatrized woman who lives in Britain . I write about these problems of the current mental illness system, and she has developed a talent for producing videos of her experiences and feelings. So having come into contact with her recently, a light went on in my head. Why not try doing a little interviewing on the net which would allow us to combine our talents and points of view in an effort to bring a lot of unheard truths, and our mutual desire for massive reform, out into the open where others can tune in to our perspective on it as well.

So I decided to proceed by asking her some of the questions we all ask our psychiatrists, (or wish we could) questions we ask each other, questions we ask friends and relatives, and questions we would also like to BE asked and given the opportunity to really answer, in a genuine and direct way, if anyone was interested enough in us as people to bother asking us. More importantly of course, such people would also have to really listen to our answers in a way that was human of them, rather than listening for the ‘crazy’ noises we are all supposedly making, as they are all so well trained to do now. We all have our own take on the reality of our individual experience though most of us are silenced regarding it. There is nothing more isolating and invalidating to human beings then being silenced, ignored, denied, ridiculed and then being defined as fundamentally and inherently ‘different’ from ‘normal’ people. If people had set out to find the best way to break people, and make the traps we are forced into fully escape proof, they could not have come up with a better method for doing so.

So we are now connecting together as part of a new solution for ourselves and being forced out of ‘normal’ life, we are creating global community amongst ourselves. For some of us, this is the only real community we have, and it is an important one as it breaks the psychological isolation which is often imposed upon us by those around us in their well intentioned, yet misguided, attempts at ‘behaviourist’ tactics (manipulations) designed to get us to agree to be who they want us to be. In structuring for ourselves another kind of community, we are learning how to take our own power and Self control back from others, which in itself, is part of a real psycho-spiritual healing process. The acceptance of our being forced out of ‘normal’ life, instead of arguing with those who cannot hear us anyway, CAN be used to create new life where those ‘normal’ people believed there was no ‘real’ life possible.

That said, I will take on the role of interviewer and Amanda has graciously agreed to be the one being interviewed. It is our hope that both psychiatrists, and our fellow labelled ‘experiencers’ of the system, will get some feelings of real community from this process, a human connection that we often do not experience from inside the system as it is something that is very hard to find. We will take one or two questions at a time, at most, and offer some really thoughtful input to anyone who may still see us all as human enough to bother reading and listening to what we have to say here.

The Questions

1. How old were you Amanda when you started your career as a ‘madwoman’ or ‘mad child,’ and what was it in your own personal opinion that started you down this long and difficult road? Did you have any ideas about what was happening to you and why, which differed from what others were telling you was the case?

2. Well I actually think that these changes in consciousness are very often due to stress in one form or another so your answer did not really surprise me. My own cause was also unrelenting stress in mid life. You needed comforting as a child and your voices fulfilled your need. As to the 'daydreams' of childhood, did you ever think that once you had been seen as 'different' people started looking for MORE 'differences' where perhaps there were none? The other question I would like to ask you for this second video is:
Did the experience itself of being in the hospital and of being ‘sectioned’ (as they call commitment in a psych ward in Britain) frighten you terribly? I ask because I found the experience of being forced into that position very traumatizing in, and of, itself.

3. Have you experienced, in your own opinion, the altered state of consciousness commonly called psychosis and if so, how would you describe it to those who have not experienced it personally? (I ask this because I believe it would help enormously if others could stop seeing all of us as fundamentally different and I think they might if they would stop defining us amongst themselves while leaving us out of it. I believe that would change somewhat if started listening to us talking to them as one human being to another.)

4. Did you find anything in your altered state of consciousness helpful to you, even if you could not see how it could be at the time you were in it? You seem to experience it almost as a kind of companionship. I know that is not true of everyone’s experience of course.
(I personally found my own very accurate, in a symbolic sense, and this was useful to me after I was out of it and realized the symbolism of much of it was right on target as a description of my own personal concrete experience of, and with, others.)

5. I have often thought that many of us would actually become well again and much faster if we could have had the assistance of someone who basically just related to us in terms of active listening without judgement or all the ‘interpretations’ used by the system now. Can you tell me if you feel anything the same as that?


6. When I was in hospital myself, I felt pretty much like I was talking to automatons (a.k.a: nurses, psychiatrists, social workers) that had robot-like responses to what I said and felt, at the ready, before I even opened my mouth to tell them anything. It was part of the reason I did not feel really seen and heard as the person I actually am. Did you find hospital staff was/is pretty much programmed to respond in automatic ways to what patients say? If so, did you find that distressing, frustrating or feel invisible as a human being as I did?

7. If you could talk directly and honestly to psychiatry, knowing they were really listening and not just patronizing you, or ‘humouring’ you, what would you like them to know about THEM, and their belief system, which has harmed you and what would you like to tell them you would really like them to do for you, if anything that would really have helped and supported you in your distress?

8. Do you believe real recovery and wellness is possible under the right conditions and what could ‘normal’ people around you do (or NOT do) to help you achieve your own goal under your own terms?

9.What are your own hopes for the future and do you think there is anything you can do personally from your own point of view to help to bring real change to the mental illness system itself ?

10. Well I want to thank you for sharing this with us all this way and I do hope that you got something out of it as well. I think it was a good collaborative effort. I hope you got something out of it too. I really appreciate your taking the time to make the videos and they will be included next month in a permanent post of the Hear All the Voices page of my website. Can we expect any more of your talented ''impressions'' 'in the future?