Meet Me
Author and peer support worker, helping people live well with schizophrenia
I was twenty when I had my first stay in a mental health hospital and thirty three when I last left hospital. It took me that long to find a recovery that worked for me, I'm hoping other people won't have to spend thirteen years figuring out how to live well with schizophrenia. Those who have been through the system helping those just coming to terms with the massive change, that is psychosis. I've learnt to integrate the magic and delusion of my psychosis, with a healthy narrative of what my life means. I want to help young people feel less isolated, when people around them are saying 'it's not real', I want to ask, 'what does it really mean'. I've seen heaven and hell and the best phrase I have for it is 'Magic and Delusion'.
My Mission Statement
Schizophrenia has been more than an illness to me, I welcome the term disabled, but my mind has been to places others just cannot see. I've written books about the strange worlds and histories my mind has created and these grand narratives have helped me write philosophy and theology. When it begins and everyone around me is saying it's just not real, not true and dangerous, I'm thinking to myself that it's helping me. Grandiosity doesn't have to be disabling, it doesn't have to create isolation and disrespect, just because it's delusion, doesn't make it meaningless. My personal mission is to take what I've seen, the incredibly spiritual, and turn it into a meaningful philosophy. My social mission is to bring together people with alternative narratives and offer support in making those narratives supportive, to find a healthy reality in the unreal and to find the magic in delusion.
Publications and Videos
The Goals of Magic and Delusion
What support means to us
Community and fighting isolation
All these years I've been in the mental health system, I've seen so much care and support between sufferers. We hope to create a community for people to understand and empower their journeys.
Understanding it's more than just an illness
The idea that there are clear lines between illness and wellness is hard for me to enact. I live with my delusional narrative and experience moments of paranoid psychosis, which I see both angels and demons. For me the illness is revelatory and wellness is just me functioning in society.
Finding that determination to find your best self
After years of being in and out of hospital, my self respect and self esteem had taken a mighty knock. But I believed my best was possible, with the right environment, medication and occupation I could live the life I wanted, not just to reach my goals, but to expand them.
Therapeutic actions and activities
Things like healthy eating, exercise and occupation are clear ways of therapeutic actions. But I've been in situations where just getting out of bed is hard. Supporting each other means helping us get up and get out, when we have good things to do we just feel so much better. The rewards of feeling connected to others and to the world, has been the best therapy for me.
Believing in the power of mutual respect
The feeling that your illness, or disability, makes you less than those with good mental health is a strong feeling. Having people around you who see the great value you bring to the world, those who really believe in you. That is the community I want to create.
Towards Better
Having the belief, determination and ambition that life can be both easy and rewarding, is the struggle we can live with every day. Having the strength to go out in the world and say I can make it better for myself and others, people who have suffered are often those who want the best for others.
Our Services
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Describe your service here. What makes it great? Use short catchy text to tell people what you offer, and the benefits they will receive. A great description gets readers in the mood, and makes them more likely to go ahead and book.
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Describe your service here. What makes it great? Use short catchy text to tell people what you offer, and the benefits they will receive. A great description gets readers in the mood, and makes them more likely to go ahead and book.
Service Name
Describe your service here. What makes it great? Use short catchy text to tell people what you offer, and the benefits they will receive. A great description gets readers in the mood, and makes them more likely to go ahead and book.
Service Name
Describe your service here. What makes it great? Use short catchy text to tell people what you offer, and the benefits they will receive. A great description gets readers in the mood, and makes them more likely to go ahead and book.
Service Name
Describe your service here. What makes it great? Use short catchy text to tell people what you offer, and the benefits they will receive. A great description gets readers in the mood, and makes them more likely to go ahead and book.
My Recovery Journey
At the very beginning I didn't want to believe I had a life changing illness, I wanted to believe an understanding of the universe was being revealed to me. The delusions were telling me that I was the greatest mind on earth, perhaps ever, what I failed to understand was why I wasn't being supported to hold this belief. The anger, the arguments, the time spent on hospital wards, why was my narrative of greatness not being realised. Eventually the narrative did change, one night the voices stopped saying I was the greatest and started accusing me of being the devil, I stayed awake all night, convinced I was the cause of all evil and wishing to die. In the morning I went to the staff and said, 'I'm really ill, aren't I', the first time I really believed I was ill. But rather than integrate this illness with my other narrative, I separated them, I was either the greatest mind of all time or I was a schizophrenic, it was either all true or all delusion, but at least I finally has some sense of the possibility of delusion. What I now call my 'healthy narrative', is a mixture of grandiosity and illness, what I would call, 'Magic and Delusion'. I can see into other realities, I have a feeling of heaven and hell, but I also live in a reality I can share, the normal reality where magic is delusion. I have a personal magic reality where I'm guiding the world, destroying the devil while providing a message of God and Reason. But other people can call it delusion, because I understand that it belongs to uncertainty, my magic reality can be both real and delusional.
Words From Our Community
Get in Touch
Contact Information
Phone
Address
07709 100819
123 Enchantment Road, Wonderland, WD2 4LH