Alternatives to Psychiatry Consulting with Chaya Grossberg

07/11/2024

Super dsicount sessions this week- 60% off -

https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=13960752&appointmentType=70613853 I hope this will make my consultations more possible for you if you have needed support and could not afford my regular rate. 

04/11/2024

Ok another preachy post about Election Day bc I think a lot about of folks need it. Please share.

Important things to do on Election Day:

Get outside, exercise, go for a walk

Lift weights or do some kind of strengthening

Meditate in some way

Pray in some way

Eat well! Get enough protein and fat to stay emotionally grounded

Do something fun and creative for at least an hour

Hug and cuddle with your loved ones

Do your dishes, clean and organize your home/other spaces

Keep any commitments you have for work if possible, it might be a good distraction

Get good sleep

Express love to yourself and/or others

Sending huge love to everyone no matter what side you are on or none!!

04/11/2024

Reminder: before, during and after an election, your responsibility is to take good care of yourself and what is in your sphere of impact.

If you neglect what you can impact, in favor of focusing on what you can’t, things in your life might go haywire.

Keep it simple, keep tending to the little things. It is the most loving thing you can do for yourself and those around you.

Any political debate type comments will be deleted.

29/10/2024

If you got a text from me about cash app, it’s real, not spam.

Cash app will give you $15 to download the app if you use my link in the next 2 days.

I use cash app to buy bitcoin easily, which has been doubling whatever money I put into it for the past few years.

I also used cash app last year for my taxes, which was the easiest experience I have EVER had doing my taxes! In the end even though self employed, I owed nothing without hiring anyone.

You can also just download the app and get $15 and not do anything else.

If you didn’t get a link from me and want one, let me know!

25/10/2024

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.

And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.

The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions.

It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.

You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ...

No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time.

There is only a q***r divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others

Martha Graham

16/10/2024

https://youtu.be/04LVm9ZOe-8?si=V5JraO7fiutJAnH-

Disgust is a core emotion!! But it's rarely discussed. And it can be a prominent and essential emotion to learn how to recognize, acknowledge, de-shame, and ...

08/10/2024

After a season of feeling discouraged and uncertain regarding my career, I finally got some good news!

I am a semi finalist for the MASSCreative fellowship I applied for.

The fellowship is to advocate for legislation to bring more arts access and opportunities to trauma survivors and as alternatives to the “mental health” system.

Thank you so much to those of you who took the time to nominate me.

When I filled out the application and uploaded my resume, even though it took me almost a whole day to finish, I felt satisfied looking back over what I have done in my career.

As I described ways I have supported people’s creativity, especially those harmed or not fully served by the mental health system, I felt qualified and aligned for this fellowship.

It was one of those things I also felt in my body, after awhile of feeling ambivalent as I knocked on doors and they did not open. This one finally felt like, “This is for me.”

Grateful for the opportunity and to see where it leads. And please send good vibes, I still need to do a final interview.

19/09/2024

The walls of my home are decorated with the smear smears of dead pantry moths, hundreds, even thousands by now I have smashed with the heel of my left fist and a little aim.

In some rooms several of these moths fly around or rest on the ceilings or walls waiting to be smeared.

I like insects. When I see a spider, I speak to it tenderly, “Hi, I love you. You are here because I am writing.” I have never killed a spider on purpose.

My shelves are full of sticky things, zinc lozenges that melted in the summer heat inside their wrappers, then resolidified, stuck to the wood on my desk shelf.

Honey sticks a similar story

I leave these items where they are, it is less messy, less cumbersome that way

though every once in awhile, out of curiosity, or recognition of my own poor patterns, I pull up at something wrapped and sticky, to see if it is truly stuck.

and if I can lift it up, get it unstuck from my shelf, I wonder if I should keep it or throw it away.

Finally I tossed a few stickies and lozenges, somewhere between solid and liquid, wrapped in red plastic, never to harden back to usefulness, to pallet-ability, literally, something I could put in my mouth and suck on, if I were getting a cold.

The honey sticks are another story. They are intact. liquid inside plastic.

My shelf is still sticky where the lozenges leaked through

so those honey sticks will stick down again

and how do I clean melted lozenges off of a shelf?

Truth is I never tried,

not because there is no answer, but because I never took the time, to throw those zinc lozenges away

until today.

I once asked myself if pantry moths are so bad. I looked at one closely and saw a bad sort of spirit.

Everything in my home is here for a reason. a reason I may never know.

Every dead and living plant, every plant that will one day die, every cotton ball, spray bottle, paper shopping bag on the ground.

Every broken door that is hard to close

every pile of papers, unique in its status of usefulness or obsolescence.

every dead moth smear, whether visible or unseen because I smeared it until its trace was gone.

Every small spider in a corner always in a corner,

except as I write this

one crawls along my notebook paper, then disappears back under the desk.

03/09/2024

This is not a fully fleshed out idea, yet one I have had on my mind for years in different forms.

I no longer want to focus on my online business, yet what I have built has SO much potential for the right person.

That person would be someone who has a lot of my skills at supporting people coming off psych meds, even if not as much professional experience. Some would be good.

They would also be super into working online, doing online marketing, developing group programs and other formats to make the support accessible to more people.

And be business savvy to eventually hire a team.

And have some resources to invest. I have done many years of work and it would be a lot more work to transfer. Respect and reciprocity for that would be necessary.

It is not a job for most people, yet I only need one. I have a good sized mailing list, elaborate website with blog that needs to be maintained, and people from all over the world who reach out and need what I am offering in a more accessible way (less expensive group programs etc).

Also interested in talking to people who have successfully done something like this, transfered a business to someone else.

Please feel free to comment or email me about this, no dms!

Thanks for reading.

03/09/2024

I need a title for my next poetry book. Anyone who has read or heard my poetry have any ideas?

02/09/2024

What the Wind Tells Me

It excites me,
when I write;
I’m on the edge of my own seat as to what I’ll write next

and it can feel like listening to a great song.

Today the sun shines down on me and I’m up and outside writing more and earlier than usual.

The wind gently blows grass blades which are still wet with morning dew
and my hair still wet from my morning shower,
and when the wind settles,
the sun settles on me,
warming my legs and cheek and the back of my ear.

It’s like the winds blow through my ear, telling me things,
telling you things,
knowing what’s next, what to worry about, what not to.

It’s my earth and air and fire and water,
my blue sky and garden flowers,
hawks squawking whenever they want to,
breeze blowing the heat of the sun off my cheek and shoulder,
as if to remove the weights that have been put on me,
or that I’ve held onto.

It’s been this way from a young age.

This pen, this notebook,
the spiders web weaving around me,
only seen when the wind blows it from the shade into the sunlight,
and then it disappears again,
and smaller birds are tweeting,
nibbling out their sounds just like they do every morning.

This is where I sit between worlds,
my favorite place to be,
singing like a canary,
smelling like a rose,
swimming while only moving one hand,
breathing so much air while the peckers have their own tunes.

How do we know,
how are we so sure
we aren’t here to wake up each day and make music,
and listen for our songs
and be still sometimes like tomato vines,

and exist like the rest of creation,
flying in circles and spirals,

singing out in spurts?
How are we so sure?
How are we so sure?

31/08/2024

Windstorm


Maybe the wind can wash away our stories.
That’s what I want because
Even the stories I tell you aren’t true
And I know that
Despite that I’m being honest

But as the wind gusts
And tinkers with small leaves
I know the story I told you would be better off dead,
Like those leaves will die soon:
Dry, crinkle up, fall to the ground
And each season have the chance
To let the past years’ story
Of birth, growth, and changing colors
die off,
fall to the ground, blow away
and get rained on
to compost and rot

so new stories can eventually
tell themselves
all wet with anticipation
and Spring
so many months away.

Rot, rot, rot,
That’s all stories ever do.
They sink into the ground, all wet
And having lived too long already,
Told in all their forms
(except all the others).

But even as they rot
They were once tiny leaflets,
All thin and delicate with hope and beginning.
We didn’t know for sure they’d rot,
Though of course we should have.
How is it we didn’t know?
After all these years living alongside creation,
Pretending we are other
And our stories last forever.

Only the strongest of winds can remind us
How thin and frail they are,
How little we even know of their past,
Their processes, their origins,
And projected futures.

So sturdy we are though
So sturdy in our telling
Of all the things that have happened to us,
Of all the ways we’ve known color, shape
and decay

All the ways we’ve been pretty,
All the ways we’ve smelled rot,
Been blown off,
Been taken to and from where we belong.

Life is like that, whatever you are,
Wherever you go
And each time around
You know it less
In the telling
But more
In the blowing away.

25/08/2024

Lie down, close your eyes and give your eyeballs a gentle massage.

10/08/2024

Some research shows high cholesterol is linked to longevity. Doing our own research after getting lab results.

28/07/2024

Screen to Screen

We’re all sitting in front of computers
sitting in front of each other

We’re all here at once
sharing with one another

my screen, your screen
our hearts beat as one

What does it mean to sit
screen to screen?

We can screen anything now
And so we do

screening out the impossible
screening out the loveable

screening out all we do
for to do is to die and

have to do it all over again
Have to love all over again

the screen removed

Love came in between
me and my screen

and took me away from the screen I used.

Love came and removed the screen
forever.

Welcome back.

-Chaya Grossberg 2011

09/07/2024

As I get older, I still want art to be my primary medicine.