Myriam Rahman was on a street corner in Oakland the first time she thought she could be God.
Rahman was having a psychotic break brought on by ten days without sleep. She was in a relationship that was at times abusive, as well as health issues and long-repressed trauma.
Diagnosed as bipolar with psychosis diseases, she could have spent the rest of her life in a mental institution.
But today, Rahman is working in counseling, leads seminars with a non-profit called The Process Work Institute, and presents on mental health internationally.
Rahman doesn’t believe “mental illness” is really an illness at all. In fact, she believes it could be a kind of genius.
“People who have experienced extreme states are some of the most brilliant in the world,” Rahman said. In the community of peers Rahman works with, psychotic episodes like hers are often called “dangerous gifts.”
Rahman knows this genius can manifest itself in ways that are extremely disturbing and challenging, like hers. Rahman’s extreme state had her yelling about healing the world and racial divisiveness. According to Rahman, people who experience extreme states need the right kind of support and care.
What she did and said on that street corner is considered socially unacceptable, and that’s what causes so many to hold in what they’re feeling. Rahman is trying to fight back against that brand of normalcy.
“We’re in a world where we’re told ‘you’re too unusual, you’re too weird, you’re too loud, you’re bringing up too many uncomfortable things,’” Rahman said. “We have this force against us where we’re trying to conform.”
What Rahman was saying that night, about healing racial divides, wasn’t meaningless: To people who knew Rahman’s life story, what she was hallucinating would make sense.
As a child of a French Catholic and Indian Muslim, Rahman was constantly asked “What are you?” by classmates in Connecticut, where she went to a magnet school that integrated students from white wealthier neighborhoods with more diverse students from inner-city neighborhoods. Rahman fit with neither.
“I was the target of extreme bullying,” Rahman said. “Kids were so polarized around race.”
Eventually, the bullying became so severe that Rahman was taken out of school.
To Rahman, what she saw and spoke about in her extreme state had meaning for her life. But society doesn’t see mental health patients as people with stories, and there’s a lot of shame weighing down people with mental illness, according to Rahman.
That’s what Rahman’s work is trying to end, and that’s why she’s coming to University of Oregon.
While Rahman has spoke all around the world, it’s “cutting edge” for a university to want to hear what she has to say. UO’s Accessible Education Center reached out to Rahman and asked her to come present. Her presentation will be Wednesday, February 25, at 6 p.m. in Hedco 220, and the next day she’ll hold a workshop specifically for students at 4 p.m. in Room 202 of the Ford Alumni Center.
Rahman is hoping to change how students at UO approach people with mental illness.
“If you take this story and you tell it to someone else because it affected you, and that causes a paradigm shift…” Rahman said, “We can see these experiences in a new way.”
We look at mental illness the wrong way, “mad pride” advocate says
Scott Greenstone
February 23, 2015
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