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  • Changing your Life with Improv and Speaking out about Therapy Abuse

    Changing your Life with Improv and Speaking out about Therapy Abuse
    2025/07/29
    Cass Freeman is an Improviser, Activist, Journalist and all-round funny person. She joins us to talk about the benefits of Improv theatre for our mental health. She teaches Improv and is setting up class starting in September specifically for folks with mental health challenges. She chats with Bernadine about what Improv is, why its important, and how it can help all of us overcome fear, embrace positivity and learn to inspire others. Classes are open to anyone who self-identifies as living with a mental health challenge and she does not require any disclosures.

    Then Shanice Docksin joins Bernadine for a very serious conversation about her experience with therapy abuse and exploitation. And while that is what we are going to talk about here, that is not the most important thing about Shanice. She is a leading Black businessewoman who has experienced her fair share of failures, challenges, and success. She transformed herself from a broken-home mentality to one of Oklahoma City’s very own published authors whose published works include "Unplugged". Shanice is also a public speaker, coach, and a mental health/domestic violence advocate. Shanice is one of those examples that tells us those who have been victimized by therapy abuse and exploitation are not chosen because they poor fragile, broken people.

    Music by Shari Ulrich, Kelly Clarkson, and Sons of Legions
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    1 時間
  • Courage to Come Back: Theresa Duggan’s Journey and Richard Lett chats about his Art

    Courage to Come Back: Theresa Duggan’s Journey and Richard Lett chats about his Art
    2025/07/23
    Courage to Come Back Winner in Mental Health: Theresa Duggan’s Journey
    From childhood trauma to becoming a beacon of hope for others, Theresa Duggan’s story is one of resilience and transformation. After surviving years of sexual abuse and a suicide attempt 12 years ago, she struggled with undiagnosed bipolar disorder for much of her life — so paralyzed by her condition she couldn’t even brush her teeth or leave the house. Everything began to shift when she was properly diagnosed. Theresa works in hospital psych wards, supporting others facing mental illness. As someone who has walked the same path, she builds trust quickly with clients, offering them something rare: true understanding. Theresa’s journey is a powerful example of how tragedy and healing can exist side by side — and how lived experience can become a lifeline for others. Although winning the award happened 15 years ago, she credits it with changing how she takes on the world.

    And Richard Lett/Comedian and Spoken Word Artist We are then joined by Richard Lett in an interview we did a couple months back – but really wanted to get his voice back out there. He talks about alcoholism and change and growth. He always brings his particular form of comedy and spoken word to whatever stage he is standing on.

    Music by Shari Ulrich and Omar Rudberg
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    1 時間
  • Off the Map (part 2)

    Off the Map (part 2)
    2025/07/01
    Off the Map 2

    In this episode of ReThreading Madness, Bernadine has the joy of talking to four more writers from Off the Map: Vancouver Writers with lived experience of mental health issues. Seema Shah was the powerhouse behind Off the Map. She along with Betsy Warland and Kate Bird compiled and edited 33 different authors to put together this anthology of stories and poems published by Bell Press. Seema is also one of the writers and she joins us today along Quin Martins, Sandra Yuen, and Merle Ginsburg to talk about what inspires them to write these pieces. Each one of them graces us with a reading of their work.

    Music by Shari Ulrich & Jake Banfield
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    1 時間
  • Exploring Transference with Amy Avalon

    Exploring Transference with Amy Avalon
    2025/06/24
    Exploring Transference with Amy Avalon

    Trigger Warning: discusses therapy abuse

    Bernadine sits down (virtually) with Amy Avalon, a retired psychotherapist and passionate advocate for survivors of sexual and emotional abuse by their therapists. Together, they traverse the issue of transference: What is it? How does it play out in our lives, and specifically in therapy? How can we work with it or use it to understand ourselves? When we are experiencing transference with our therapists, how do we talk about it and, most importantly, how should a therapist respond to those disclosures and what they should and should not do? Music by Shari Ulrich
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    1 時間
  • Outsiders and Others with Redrum Sticker Artist

    Outsiders and Others with Redrum Sticker Artist
    2025/06/12
    Art at Outsiders and Others with Redrum the Sticker Artist

    “Outsiders and Others is a non-profit art Society with a focus on bringing non-traditional artists to the forefront. Their artists identify as outsider, folk, self-taught, visionary, intuitive, and artists with disabilities.” Outsiders and Others defines outsider art as the work of those who have no formal training, create art for themselves to record their life experiences or document historical events (not necessarily for an audience), and use non-traditional materials (like found objects). In May, Mental Health Awareness month, Outsiders and Others presented Brain Child featuring artworks from Caro Embling, REDRUM, and Gabriel Ostapchuk. We had the opportunity to speak with Yuri Ajars. Artistic Director and Curator, about this exhibit and the gallery. We also chatted with Redrum, the sticker artist (@redrum_ays_crew). Redrum describes the different neurodiverse and disability issues he copes with daily but also how important art has been to his process specifically in inspiration around images and topic. You can find Outsiders and Others In Vancouver and at

    https://www.outsidersandothers.com/

    Music by Shari Ulrich
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    1 時間
  • Off the Map and its Writers

    Off the Map and its Writers
    2025/06/11
    Off the Map with writers Angela J. Gray, Venge Dixon, Mary O’Toole with music by Ren

    Trigger Warning: Song by Ren Gill includes foul language

    May 1st 2025 saw the release of Off the Map an anthology of prose and poetry that has to do with mental health. ReThreading Madness had privilege of speaking to 3 of the writers included in this publication. Venge Dixon is a nonbinary lesbian who writes, creates art (and comic books) and make music. She wraps a heart-warming story about a very difficult time in her life around a cat named Linus who showed up and put a wrench in her plan’s to die. Angela J. Gray is an emerging black writer who writes about the “impact of colonization on children of African/Caribbean Diaspora who were adopted into white homes” in what, in her case, looks just like 60s Scoop. Mary Phyllis O’Toole says “ she writes, not only for emotional catharsis, but to shine a light on schizophrenia.” All of them share a portion of their writing with us during this hour. In addition, we have included a song entitled “Hi Ren” by Ren Gill, a musician from the UK who used music to have a conversation with himself about his current state of mental health and in, so doing, gives us an incredible inside view of what his world is like while leaving us all inspired and hopeful.

    Music by Shari Ulrich & Ren Gill
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    1 時間
  • The 2017 and 2025 Winners of the Courage to Come Back Award in Mental Health: Rachel Fehr and David Chalk

    The 2017 and 2025 Winners of the Courage to Come Back Award in Mental Health: Rachel Fehr and David Chalk
    2025/06/11
    Courage to Come Back: Rachel Fehr (2017) and David Chalk (2025)

    The most obvious thing about Rachel Fehr and David Chalk is that they are not defined by diagnoses and for both of them they have carried several labels. All of which are important only in that they defied them all. Rachel is the 2017 Courage to Come Back award winner in mental health. In the years since then, she has gone from teaching marital arts to attending classes and using what she learned to parse out which of the psychiatric diagnoses she was given were accurate and which were misdiagnoses -and then realizing as is so usual her autism had been misdiagnosed as borderline. From this she created new and positive life skills and taken her life that much farther. Now she wants to use her skills to create a traditional medicine farm as 2nd stage housing for men coming out of prison. David won the Courage to Come Back award this year (2025) has defied every assumption adults had about him as a child. He created his own businesses and was a millionaire at 28 years despite being told graduating from high school that the only life he could hope for was welfare, jail, or a psych ward. Despite his success he held a burdensome reality. His ADHD messed with his focus. His Dyslexia messed with his ability to read. And his pragnuh… meant he had a difficult time just recognizing faces – any faces. But clearly David is not someone his accepts what others might consider fate. At 62 years he participated in a program which led to him being able to read in 11 hours. Now, he is developing an educational program that can be used around the world to help others to do the same.

    Music by Shari Ulrich
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    1 時間
  • Therapy Harm Resistance Project with Natalie Russ

    Therapy Harm Resistance Project with Natalie Russ
    2025/05/26
    Therapy Harm Resistance Project with Natalie Russ

    Natalie Russ is a psychologist and psychotherapist, with a background in dialogue and deliberation, training pedagogy, and community organizing. She was harmed in a twelve-year psychodynamic therapy beginning in adolescence, as well as in post-harm therapies with well-meaning therapists who, like most in the mental health industry are not trained to support therapy harm survivors. In addition to content creation, she writes and publishes poetry on her therapy harm and post-abuse therapy experiences. Her particular areas of interest include post-abuse therapies and therapist education on working with therapy harm survivors. (taken from https://www.natalierusspsyd.com/therapy-harm)

    Natalie Russ joins us to discuss her recent work establishing the Therapy Harm Resistance Project (THRP), an advocacy and support endeavor to address therapy harm as a disavowed reality in the mental health field. We are creating content and resources for survivors, clients, and therapists, hoping to support a broader and ever-growing therapy harm resistance movement. We seek to join others within the therapy harm resistance space to build conversation and capacity. This movement needs a thriving ecosystem of activism, advocacy, scholarship, training, and victim/survivor support infrastructure.

    Music by Shari Ulrich, Jann Arden,
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    1 時間