Creating Collective Order from Your "Psychotic Disorder"

Who is this space for?

This space is for persons whose manic and psychotic states have been pathologized, and who wish to have their experiences in such states validated instead of dismissed. 

What is the aim of this session?

This gathering is intended to provide the space for people who identify as Mad, neurodivergent, and/or mentally ill to assign meaning to their altered states beyond the confines of the pathology paradigm. It also serves as a forum for community-building, self-understanding, self-acceptance, and empowerment to take place.

Please note that the session will not be recorded, and is being hosted on the encrypted platform Jitsi Meet in order to ensure attendees feel safe enough to participate if they wish to. 

About the Facilitator

Laurel is a Jamaican psycho-spiritual practitioner who has lived experience with altered states such as OCD, depression, suicidal ideation, dissociation and psychosis. Her teachings are informed by her Afro-Caribbean Indigenous spirituality (Obeah), as well as her academic background in biology and psychology (BSc). 

She was diagnosed with bipolar I disorder after experiencing her first acute psychotic episode in 2020, and during hospitalization for her third in 2022, she received a schizophrenia diagnosis. Due to her refusal to allow anyone but herself define her experience—especially knowing that the brain retains its neuroplasticity throughout a person’s lifetime—she found a way to embrace her madness as a source of wisdom and free herself from the psychiatric system. She seeks to help others who experience manic and psychotic altered states to deconstruct colonial conditioning and embrace these states as their body-minds’ means of guiding them towards co-creating a liberated future and living in right relationship with the Earth.