Coming Home: A Psychotherapist's Reflections on Madness and the State of Western Psychosis

Coming Home is a quiet, unflinching account of psychosis-what happens when perception ruptures the shared world, and how a self forms to make sense in the extremes.

Brandon Houston, MA, LPCC, weaves his lived experience of madness, his extensive clinical experience and two decades of training in contemplative traditions to support him in paving a new way of relating to recovery from psychotic experiences.

Part memoir, part clinical reflection, and part philosophical offering, Coming Home introduces:

• A framework for living wholeheartedly post-break
• An account of healing as rhythm, not return
• A quiet challenge to mainstream psychiatric narratives, rooted in lived experience and contemplative care
• A field guide for clinicians who suspect there's more happening than pathology can explain
• A hand extended to those who have been through madness, offering not solutions but companionship

At its heart, Coming Home encourages clinicians, patients, and loved ones to move away from pathological narratives of broken brains, chemical imbalances, and heritable illness; to embrace the reality of recovery from psychosis, and most importantly restoring the possibility of wholehearted living post-break.

Coming Home explores what it means to honor one's unique sensitivities and experiences as well as the training needed to live in the world with a sensitive disposition. The author posits recovery from psychosis as a natural process akin to any other healing, a process that requires gentleness, groundedness, and understanding to take hold.

It's a book about perception, meaning-making, and the slow work of reclaiming a life without denying one's experience.

For those looking for a perspective on madness outside of traditional mental health, Coming Home offers new ways of thinking about madness, recovery, and what it means to be human, ultimately challenging traditional mental health to imagine new stories to support healing from madness.