We all dissociate. However, some of us use dissociation as a primary coping skill and create a complex system to deal with what are usually difficult lives. Misinformation about Dissociative Identities (multiple personalities) including stereotypes has been promoted in popular culture complicating the issue even further. Suzanne and Bernadine sit down to unpack what is Dissociative Identities. Every wanted to be a fly on the wall to hear the real goods on dissociation? This is the conversation to hear. Join us for an interview with award winning, recent TEDx speaker, Suzanne Venuta who lives with dissociative identities. (Photo Dan Toulgoet)

Eugene LeBlanc has been the director of the Moncton New Brunswick based self-help center, Groupe de Support Emotionnel inc, the publisher and Editor of Our Voice / Notre Voix and has advocated for the rights of the consumer/survivor and pyschiatric survivor community since 1987. Because of this work he was awarded the New Brunswick Human Rights Award in 2003.

We talk about his work and the current state of human rights for mental health consumers.

Bernadine chats with Amy Lyn Johnson, private practice therapist and TELL Responder, about ethical boundaries in therapy and in this short episode we talk about what are the rules around running into your therapist in a social situation like an AA meeting. Amy provides a good framework about how an ethical therapist would handle this.

Bernadine chats with Amy Lyn Johnson, private practice therapist and TELL Responder, about therapy abuse: what it looks like, boundary transgressions, impact on client. In this podcast, the listener will gain a good preliminary understanding of therapy abuse.

Counselor and mother, Helen Thomas sits down and talks with us about the death of her son, Malachy, at the age of 18 to a fentanyl overdose. We examine our role as parents, the impact on us when we lose our children to an overdose and what could we be doing to change these fatal overdoses.

Charlotte Watson is an AAMET accredited, certified Advanced Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) practitioner. But here on ReThreading Madness, Charlotte describes why and how she estranged from her entire family as a young adult and how this has impacted her life. It is an provocative story of emotional trauma, betrayal, and an eventual visit with her ailing, elderly father which offered both the recognition of loss but the surprising gift of resolution despite his advanced Alzheimers.

Trigger Warning: child sexual assault and child trafficking discussed.

Bernadine engages with Kassandra, a former foster child, about the ongoing and severe child sexual abuse. The importance of Kassandra’s story is not in the details of her trauma – it is in how she emerged from it a strong, resilient young woman.

WARNING: Talking about Abuse of Clients by Therapist. Some of this material may be triggering to folks who have experienced this.”

Three Consequences of Therapy Abuse: Unhealthy Dependence, Betrayal, and Extreme Ambivalence. Amy Avalon, a retired private practice therapist and a passionate advocate for suvivor of sexual and emotional abuse by their therapist and Carolyn Clement, an award winning family photographer, mother of two, and a survivor of therapy, child, and sibling abuse, join Bernadine again to discuss the ways in which unethical therapists develop a profound dependence in their client, followed by a deep all-encompassing betrayal which leaves the client in an ambivalent place of Love vs Hate. If you are struggling to frame what happened to you in an unhealthy therapeutic relationship, this series of podcast will offer some insight and guidance.

The incredible JD Derbyshire who is a writer, comedian, mad activist, performer, playwright, theatre maker, director, inclusive educator and innovator joins Bernadine in RTM. We talk about being mad and the need for individuals who live with mental health challenges to have agency in their lives and to consider coming out. And we laughed… we laughed a lot.