Paranoia, the Creative Dialectical Method, and Recovery

I present here, from my own experiences, observations, findings, and ideas, and from using paranoia and recovery as an example in this article, the Creative Dialectical Method. This method uses creativity to unite opposing factors, in order to create a synthesis and a new thesis, and by integrating both the subjective and objective experiences of the person, with regard and respect for the person’s privacy and confidentiality.

I don’t claim to have invented this method or approach completely, as it has been used by others up to a point, such as The Hearing Voices Network, but I have built upon that foundation of new knowledge, and added my own contributions to it. The Creative Dialectical Method may not be suitable for everyone, but it does have some overall value and use, for people diagnosed with mental health problems, and it very much describes my own mind, and my own way of thinking, feeling, and healing.

Certain things can induce paranoia deliberately, and then shun the responses, by covering up, denying, or hiding the root cause of it, and then labelling it as mental illness. Paranoia is caused by many factors, but largely by others distorting or misrepresenting reality, usually as part of some bullying, mistreatment, or abuse. Abusers set up different-versions-of-reality, that the person who has been bullied, mistreated, or abused, wanted or deserved the abuse, and this can make the person feel that they are under further attack from others. The way that abusers tell their victims that they are very bad people, can be internalised and projected onto others, in that others are seen as very bad, the way that the person themselves was seen and treated in that way.

Not all paranoia should be prevented, as some paranoia is a good thing. It’s a good thing, if it is something which is wary of violence and extremism, because it’s about protection, care, and concern for ones self and others. It’s also a good thing if there is a process to it, of eventually integrating the facts, with the concerns of ones own and others well-being and welfare. Sometimes the end-factor in this process, can be a political or social critique, or asserting and expressing one’s feelings and thoughts with others, on a more personal or interpersonal level. This is a process of creativity and some recovery, and there are many different ways to achieve this, but it involves flexibility, ordering, structuring, and some randomness, and fluidity with the facts, and both rational and imaginative thinking.

Very rarely, paranoia can lead to the paranoid person threatening or committing violence, but on the whole, paranoid psychiatric-diagnosed people, are not a threat or violent in any way. The so-called sane fear of other people’s paranoia, depends on which way you look at it. So-called sane people are sometimes frightened, that psychiatric-diagnosed people will become arbitrary, irrational, and that some anarchy and violence will resort from this. Some psychiatric diagnosed people, see sane society, and psychiatry as abusive, violent, and arbitrary in its labelling and bad treatment. The paranoid person, fears that harm or violence will be done to them, and sometimes acts in terms of avoidance, or what they see as self-defence.

It may not be a good idea, to label people as paranoid in the first place, although I appreciate that psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals, have to label people up to a point, in order to assess, diagnose, and treat them. I am critical and concerned, about the way we treat people who are labelled as paranoid though. I think we need to get some kind of balance between relating to them, and in a way believing what they say, whilst at the same time, looking for other causes and reasons, why they believe that others, or strange forces, are out to harm them, if this is not always or overall the case. What isn’t helpful, is to militate against the person’s so-called paranoid delusions, by just telling them that it isn’t true, and that they are simply mad, paranoid, and deluded.

This is the crux of the matter here, that we relate to the person’s concerns and fears, with our own experiences, observations, or examples of that, even though their fears may be based upon some false assumptions. This humanises the paranoid person’s fears and concerns, and does not polarise their fears and concerns, as being totally different or opposed to the fears and concerns of people in general. This can involve a process, of not rejecting or denying the paranoid delusions, but of working through their wider meanings, and integrating them with a more rational way of thinking. This is a dialectical process, that leads to more rational thinking, knowledge, and understanding, whilst at the same time, it does not try to totally separate the opposing factors, of delusion and rational reality, but seeks instead to create some kind of synthesis and new thesis.

When I have been deluded, in the throes of a mental breakdown, in psychiatric hospital in the past, the psychiatrists who first assessed me, have acted as if they believed me, and related towards me likewise, and which made me feel a whole lot better, that someone else believed me, or could at least relate in some way to what I was experiencing, believing, and saying. This also helped the whole process, of integrating my so-called delusions with a more rational way of thinking, although after I was first assessed in psychiatric hospital, I found that the further psychiatric, routine, assessments, did not aid or help this process, as the psychiatrist set out to deny, invalidate, and suppress my experiences of my so-called delusions completely, with high dosage psychiatric medication, and with negative remarks and criticisms.

I am not totally anti psychiatric medication, because it has helped me when I have been very unwell in the past, and in small doses I have found it beneficial, towards some kind of wellness or recovery, but I am critical, of using psychiatric medication to suppress the persons experiences, of things like hearing voices completely, because we have to work through their wider meanings, and work towards a creative, integrative, dialectical, and holistic recovery.