Anders Sørensen PhD

09/09/2025

Jeg har fået mig et nyhedsbrev!
Det foregår på Substack og er på engelsk.

Her skriver jeg ting, jeg ikke deler andre steder – enten fordi det er for langt og detaljeret til sociale medier, eller fordi aviserne vil redigere for meget i det, inden det når ud.

Du finder refleksioner om psykiatri, psykologi, livet, terapi, traumer og vejen ud af medicin.

I den kommende tid vil jeg være mere aktiv dér end her på LinkedIn, når det gælder det reelle indhold. Hvis du vil følge med, kan du tilmelde dig (gratis) på linket herunder. Jeg håber, vi ses derovre!

I kommentarsporet er i øvrigt en af artiklerne.

Medication-tapering psychologist, Cochrane-trained researcher, PhD in Psychiatry, author of Crossing Zero. Writing about tapering, trauma, mental health and therapy. Click to read Crossing Zero, by Dr Anders Sørensen, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.

04/09/2025

Me: Hey God.
God: Hello.

Me: I’m falling apart. Can you put me back together?
God: I would rather not.

Me: Why?
God: Because you aren’t a puzzle.

Me: What about all of the pieces of my life that are falling down onto the ground?
God: Let them stay there for a while. They fell off for a reason. Take some time and decide if you need any of those pieces back.

Me: You don’t understand! I’m breaking down!
God: No — you don’t understand. You are breaking through. What you are feeling [is] just growing pains. You are shedding the things and the people in your life that are holding you back. You aren’t falling apart. You are falling into place. Relax. Take some deep breaths and allow those things you don’t need anymore to fall off of you. Quit holding onto the pieces that don’t fit you anymore. Let them fall off. Let them go.

Me: Once I start doing that, what will be left of me?
God: Only the very best pieces of you.

Me: I’m scared of changing.
God: I keep telling you — YOU AREN’T CHANGING!! YOU ARE BECOMING!

Me: Becoming who?
God: Becoming who I created you to be! A person of light and love and charity and hope and courage and joy and mercy and grace and compassion. I made you for more than the shallow pieces you have decided to adorn yourself with that you cling to with such greed and fear. Let those things fall off of you. I love you! Don’t change! . . . Become! Become! Become who I made you to be. I’m going to keep telling you this until you remember it.

Me: There goes another piece.
God: Yep. Let it be.

Me: So . . . I’m not broken?
God: Of course not! — but you are breaking like the dawn. It’s a new day.
By: John Roedel

[I felt John’s words were worth sharing again. If they moved you too, consider following and supporting his work on his Facebook, Instagram, and Substack channels.]

03/09/2025

Just wrapped up our very first live Q&A with my Substack community.

We talked about tapering strategies, the technicalities of micro-tapering, navigating protracted withdrawal, managing fear of relapse, understanding trauma reactions, and various psychological strategies for overcoming difficult emotions and overthinking.

The best part? Real questions from real people. Some were shared in advance, others asked spontaneously on the spot – and that’s exactly how I want these sessions to be. No pre-recordings, no scripts – all live. A space to connect in the moment, meet each other, and dive deeper into the topics you care about.

I’m so grateful to everyone who showed up and contributed. Your courage and openness made it a truly meaningful conversation.

If you’d like to join the next one, you can subscribe to the newsletter at: crossingzero . substack . com

03/09/2025

Mine bønner er hørt 🙌
Endelig tager et (rigtigt) parti udtrapning og behovet for en anden psykiatri alvorligt. Alternativet er det første – og indtil videre eneste – parti, der aktivt har taget sagen ind i deres politik.

Det sker, når de lancerer deres nye psykiatriudspil ”MENING, MOD OG MULIGHEDER: Fremtidens psykiatri” - onsdag d. 10. september kl. 14.00 på Christiansborg, hvor jeg er både begejstret og taknemmelig for at have fået taletid.

Jeg har læst hele udspillet på forhånd – og jeg må sige: Det er virkelig godt. I kan godt glæde jer!

Og netop mod er desværre blevet en faktor. Psykiatrien er en supertanker, og ingen – som i ingen – af de øvrige partier tør sige den imod. Og det til trods for, at man har både forskningen og menneskerettighederne i ryggen, hvis man gør det.

Tværtimod har størstedelen af politikerne underskrevet en psykiatriplan, der blot fortsætter den ødelæggende kurs i dansk psykiatri, og som har købt fortællingen om, at den stigende mistrivsel og psykiske lidelse kan løses med en større hospitalspsykiatri, tidligere sygeliggørelse af livskriser, længere indlæggelser, mere tvang (ja, mere) og et endnu mindre fokus på traumer og kontekst.

De to andre M’er rammer også spot on: Enhver behandling skal give mening for personen i lidelse, før den kan virke. Psykiatrisk/psykologisk behandling er ikke noget, der kan påføres et menneske – det er noget, man går ind i sammen. Og muligheder – ja, præcis! Det er jo netop fraværet af muligheder og det ensidige medicinske fokus for snart al lidelse og alle reaktioner på livet, der er problemet. Så – godt set, Alternativet!

Jeg håber at se mange af jer der, og at du vil dele dette opslag

28/08/2025

Hvad gør man, når man føler sig svigtet af den psykiatri og det system, som skulle hjælpe en?
Alt for mange står i den situation – og netop derfor tager vi på en lille Danmarkstour med vores foredrag.

Kom med, når indefra-perspektivet møder forskningen i spørgsmålet: Er det psykisk sygdom eller psykisk lidelse?

Agnes Marie Frey blev af psykiatrien erklæret kronisk psykisk syg med diagnosen paranoid skizofreni. Ingen spurgte Agnes, hvad det var, hun reagerede på i sit liv: hun var bare syg.

Undertegnede ser som psykolog og ph.d. i psykiatri igen og igen, hvordan de sværeste psykiske lidelser ofte er de mest misforståede. Man stirrer sig blind på symptomer og diagnoser, og mister blikket for, hvad symptomerne er reaktioner på.

Til foredraget fortæller Agnes om sin vej ind i – og ud af – lidelsen, medicinen og psykiatrien. Og jeg fortæller om den traumeinformerede tilgang til psykisk lidelse, som kunne have sparet Agnes for 10 år i systemet, hvis hun var blevet mødt med den fra starten.

Vi glæder os til at komme rundt i landet og håber at se jer!

Læs mere og find billetter via linket i kommentarfeltet ❤️

22/08/2025

"Don't self-publish," they said. "Without a traditional publisher, no one will read it!"
Well… I just proved them wrong.

My book, released July 22, has in its very first month reached:
#1 in Amazon’s Hot New Releases in Psychiatry
#1 in Amazon’s Hot New Releases in Drug Dependency & Recovery
#2 on the U.S. Best Seller list in Psychiatry – right behind the all time classic The Body Keeps the Score
#1 on the Australian Best Seller list in Mental Illness
#2 on the Canadian Best Seller list in Mental Illness.

I trusted my content, and it’s been an incredible journey so far. I just want to pause and say thank you to every single one of you who has bought, read, shared, or supported it so far. This book was years in the making, and seeing it find its way into so many hands around the world means more than I can say.

And please keep those reviews coming

19/08/2025

We’ve all done it: stayed in a job that slowly drains us, held on to a toxic relationship that quietly erodes our sense of self, repeated a pattern of behavior that we know is bad for us. And yet we keep doing it.

We tell ourselves “it’s not that bad” or “maybe it will get better” even as some deeper truth keeps whispering that we’re on the wrong track.

The quote below captures something profound: the longer we postpone that internal reckoning, the harder (and more painful) it becomes to find our way back. Not that the exit ever disappears, but our own orientation may.

In Chapter 3 of my book, I describe how avoidance, at its core, is an attempt to regulate emotion. Whether it’s medication, workaholism, doomscrolling, overeating, distraction, avoiding certain situations, overthinking, or constant busyness, the underlying psychological mechanism is the same: we’re trying to avoid a feeling or a reality we don’t want to confront.

And for a while, it works. It reduces anxiety or fear or grief by distracting us from it.

But over time, two things happen:
One: The emotional cost increases; the more we avoid something, the more threatening it feels.
Two: Our tolerance decreases; we become less and less capable of facing discomfort because we rarely practice doing so.

And when we do make contact with our pain, we often do it with resistance: pain + fighting the pain, pain + trying to make it go away, pain + telling ourselves it shouldn’t be there.

In other words, we’re not actually allowing the pain. We’re battling it. And that combination [...]

[...] You can read the full article for free on my Substack, link below.

13/08/2025

Joining the global conversation on mental health and psychiatry with my book has brought me face-to-face with many of my heroes. Here’s one - and he’s endorsing it! Speechless. Grateful. Moved. Over the moon.

12/08/2025

They told you these medications weren’t dependence-forming. They were wrong.
Psychiatry quietly rewrote the definition of “dependence” - excluding its own drugs - and left millions unprepared for withdrawal. Here’s how it happened, and why words matter more than ever.

Full article link in Comments.

08/08/2025

06/08/2025

We’ve all been there. A thought takes hold - something you said, something you fear, something that might happen - and before you know it, your mind is looping like a broken record.

You try to let it go, but it pulls you back in.

You reason with it, try to be realistic, but your mind keeps one-upping you: what if this, what if that. Worrying. Rumination. Overanalyzing. Playing out worst-case scenarios. And the harder you try to stop, the more entangled you become.

It keeps you up at night. It pulls you out of the moment. It prevents you from falling asleep and from being present.

But here’s the good news: Overthinking isn’t a life sentence. It’s not something that happens to you. It’s a habit; something you do. And habits can change. Neither worry nor rumination is uncontrollable. With the right strategies, they are entirely controllable, and even breakable.

Let me show you - with one of my favourite metacognitive exercises.
Substack link in the description.