Using Benzo Forums as a Tool: Jennifer Swantkowski, Ph.D.

In this video, Jennifer Swantkowski, Ph.D. draws on her personal experience with benzodiazepine withdrawal and her expertise as a mental health clinician to address the question of how to use online benzodiazepine support communities in a healthy vs unhealthy manner.

I especially like her concept of using online communities to feed our minds a ‘nutritious diet’ rather than ‘junk food’ during benzodiazepine withdrawal and recovery.

This insightful and helpful video is definitely worth a watch!

Using Benzo Forums as a Tool not a Weapon

This is an excellent video, she did of great job of articulating many of my concerns with the benzodiazepine communities and resources available including BenzoBuddies, we can become bad habits. 

We have members who recognize this, they’ll ask the team to ban them for a certain amount of time and we’re happy to oblige but this shows me just how addicted we can become.  I was lucky when I was recovering, the emojis were too much for me so I couldn’t spend too much time here and I think it kept me from going down too many rabbit holes that may have made me even more desperate.

I hope everyone can and will use BenzoBuddies in a healthy way, this process is difficult enough, I don’t want anyone to feel worse for coming here. 

Thank you for watching the video and giving us your take on it, Pamster. I share your hope that members will use the forum in healthy versus unhealthy ways.

Interestingly, I just read a post by a member on another board that echoes several of the points Jennifer makes in the video:

Ok, there's a lot of replies here with some great stuff by GG and others. Just want to clarify a couple of things:

 

I'm not saying that healing is as easy as thinking positively. I'm saying that our thoughts affect our bodies and affect our neurochemicals. That's science. I personally still have plenty of physical symptoms but mentally I feel good because I have revolutionized the way I think. I used to be very negatively oriented and very attached to my suffering. I am NOT naturally a pie-in-the-sky sort of person who always sees the bright side. Trust me. Anyone who knows me knows I tended historically to be very negative. I also have not had an easy go of this process. I'm protracted and I don't get sxs-free windows. So it's not that it's easy for me because I suffer less or anything like that. I just want people to know that it absolutely IS possible for anyone in any condition to begin to change their thinking if they want to. You might start by just noticing your thoughts or even what you post and ask 'what message am I sending myself? Is that message helpful? Would I want to send that message to a friend?

 

It's up to each person to decide what to focus on in [withdrawal and] recovery. It's easy to get attached to suffering in this process because there's plenty of it. I'm just suggesting it's not helpful to do so.

 

I take regular and long breaks from the boards so may not catch up on replies for a bit but if anyone has specific questions or wants help please DM.

 

Cheers All!