ReThreading Madness

A Chat about Grief… that Morphs into one about Death    Rebecca Coleman joins Bernadine to chat about grief.  Layers of grief the represent what she is experiencing currently in her life.  However, as these things go, one conversation morphs into another and by the end of this program they are looking at the issue of death: facing it, planning for it.  It is a frank, easygoing, and important conve...

Theatre for Living with David Diamond David Diamond joins Bernadine on ReThreading Madness to discuss his Theatre for Living Workshops.  TFL, as the website states, is about empowerment. Taking the living organism, which is a community, and providing a platform for its expression to create “creative, community-based dialogue.”  It sounds esoteric until you are inside the dialogue and then, as you...

Post Traumatic Growth: Joanne Green Style     Joanne R. Green joins Bernadine on ReThreading Madness to talk about what inspired her book: By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go.  Joanne shares her journey through a variety of personal losses: mom, sister, father, brother and struggles like anorexia and cancer.  In the midst of all that it was a car sliding into her, a pedestrian, at an ungodly speed...

Tools for Change and Employing Forgiveness    Rhonda Parker Taylor talks about how she learned how to support herself and cultivate meaning in the relationship she had with herself after the murder of her son.  In that she used writing as a tool for change.  Rhonda tells us about her journey and her fictional book Crossroads and her workbook coming out in December of 2024. Then Katharine Giovanni...

Art and Peer Support at the Coast Mental Health Resource Centre.  Bernadine heads down to Coast Mental Health Resource Centre on Seymour St in downtown Vancouver and speaks with folks about the Art Studio which is open to anyone with a mental health challenge. Betty Yan tells us about the Peer SupportTraining Program that Coast Mental Health has developed and runs.  Shahal  Bozorgzadeh  was traine...

Pathologizing Trauma  Trigger Warning: Description of sexual assaults. Andrea takes us on a journey through what her childhood, in the 60s and 70s, was like coping with sexual assaults from several males around her from a very young age both in and outside her family.  Like other women growing up in this era, she was assaulted, blamed for it, and then punished for making men do this to her.  Andre...

Coping with Mental Health Challenges with JaneA Kelley   JaneA Kelley has throughout her life gathered mental health diagnoses.  She has Bipolar 2, PTSD, and ADHD.  JaneA candidly talks about these diagnoses; what they mean to her; how they complicate or add to her life; and how she copes with them. She talks about finding herself at rock bottom and the things (mostly her cats) who have brought he...

Can't Eat Love with Leslie Davis Leslie Davis’ life moved through a haze that didn’t include her own feelings.  After what she has deemed an Emotional Tsuunami, she developed a means of accessing her feelings, sorting through them, and then accepting them.  For decades now, this process has proven to be a powerful healing tool.  Join us as Leslie describes what this process is and how you can do i...

Door knobber Diagnosis: Misdiagnosed Borderline Personality When a client drops a therapeutic bombshell as they are leaving a session, counselors call this a “door knobber”.  Lynn came to talk with Bernadine about her experience with the Borderline Personality and the door knobber that her therapist laid on her at the tail end of a phone conversation to terminate therapy.  Just before she hung up,...

Dispelling Myths about the BC Mental Health Act with Rob Wipond It is so very often that we hear misinformation about the BC Mental Health Act.  It is so widely held and believed in some of our BC communities, that if you check yourself into a psych ward voluntarily you can leave when you want and you can refused any treatment that you feel won’t work.  Rob Wipond, author of Your Consent is Not Re...

Mad Pride Cabaret Vancouver 2024 Have you ever stepped into a room and had a bunch of mad people celebrating the chance to freely be who they are?  Well that is what Mad Pride is.  In 2024, Vancouver celebrated Mad Pride through the Connection Salon at the Gathering Place downtown.  And this program not only talks with three of the performers at Mad Pride it showcases their work.  Kagan Goh, curat...

Randy Tait on Recovery and Ceremony If you had gone to the 33rd Annual Women’s March it would have been hard for you to miss Randy Tait in his red jacket with matching red John Fluevog shoes.  He circled the crowd bestowing eagle down on the heads of elders, guardians, and organizers.   Randy is from the Nisga’a / Gitksan Nation.  He has made Vancouver his home with few interruptions for many deca...

When it is a Therapist who Experiences Therapy Abuse and Exploitation She came on RTM to talk about her own experience of therapy abuse and exploitation at the hands of her psychologist.  But she is unable yet to do so using her name.  Why?  Because she is also a psychologist who fears retribution for speaking out.  She chats with Bernadine about her experience of therapy abuse, how her husband so...

Decolonizing mental health:  What is it?  Norman Leech, is currently the Executive Director for the Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House, and was the Executive Director for Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre from 2016-2023. He still works to change the fact that Indigenous people are “over-represented in most negative social health indicators, whether homelessness, incarceration, crime vict...

Retirement with Jake   Jake is 64 years old. He is retiring in one month.  As he is reaching what is what some called the golden age, his life blows up.  He is evicted from an affordable residences so that his landlord’s parents can move in.  He is in the middle of moving from a disability pension to a regular pension and is not really sure what his income will be.  He is drowning in paperwork and...

Jason Fareas on Addiction and Recovery From his website , Jason describes himself as having an unstable childhood although he is very clear that he was a loved child by the adults in his life.  He talks about the development of his addiction and then his involvement in the drug trade.  On his podcast, he shares his "journey from addiction to recovery". Jason has his own podcast, My Madness METHod...

Forced Committals with Barbara Phillips Barbara has had several forced commitals and a long history of taking psychiatric meds.  She opens up with Bernadine about those commitals what worked, what didn't, what left lasting scars and physical impairments.   Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support . www.rethreadingmadness.ca

The Correlation between Weight and Child Sexual Abuse with Patty Cabot Patty Cabot joins us to talk about her experience of weight loss via coming to terms with the sexual abuse in her childhood. She is the author of "Not That Girl". Music by DG Adams, Robbie Robertson, Meaghan Trainer, and Shari Ulrich Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--56753...

Coping with Grief during the Holidays and Anniversaries Jennifer O’Brien is grief-experienced. What does that mean? For starters, she has experienced several of her immediate family, including parents, siblings, and husband dying. In working through her grief she created a journal. That journal was published: The Hospice Drs Widow and won numerous prestigious awards. She speaks with Bernadine abou...

Gifts of Madness with Kagan Goh, Stand Up for Mental Health with David Granirer, and Forgiveness with Katharine Giovanni Today’s program includes interviews with Kagan Goh about a multi-media exhibition he is curating called the Gifts of Madness. As the Penticton Art Gallery states, "Gifts of Madness" is an upcoming mental-health themed exhibition at the gallery run by Ignite the Arts, part of a p...

Haida Storytelling with Giihlgiigaa. Todd DeVries, Giihlgiigaa, invites us in to hear about indigenous storytelling: how and where it is told, how it is learned and passed on, and its importance in the Haida culture. He tells us about the Raven, in the beginning and gives us a Haida Prayer. He explains the Haida concept of time and the seven time periods that are referenced that reach from the pre...

When Yes Isn’t Consent: Unpacking Coercion, Power, and Therapy Abuse TRIGGER WARNING: Talk about Therapy Abuse, Sexual assault, and what is consent. Some of this material may be very difficult and we ask that you do what you need to take care of yourself in this hours. In this episode of Re-Threading Madness, we take a deeper look at consent between adults in the context of therapy abuse and ask a...

Rape Culture and the Long Road to Healing Trigger Warning: This hour includes descriptions of sexual assault, rape, and victim-blaming. Lenny Gagnon’s whole world turned up-side-down when her father died in a mill accident when she was 6 years old. At 7 she was groomed and then sexually assaulted by the neighborhood pedophile. And she was raped again at 15. When she reported the last one, the cop...

988, Forced Committals, and Suicide assessments With the new 988 suicide hotline being launched, Rob Wipond cautions us on some of the pitfalls that can occur with traumatizing impacts on people. Barbara Phillips talks with us about her experience of being forceably committed and then Bernadine Fox walks us through the usual type of Suicide Assessment Questions that mental health professionals and...

Charlene Hellson/Unpacking the Backpack, Stacy Ashton from Crisis Intervention, and Fraser McKenzie from Coast Mental Health. Bernadine brings you information on several opportunities for education and support. Grandmother, performer, writer, and Indigenous Mental Health Advocate, Charlene Hellson from the Siksika Nation (Blackfoot Confederacy) talks about her one-woman performance “Unpacking the...