Psychiatric treatment can be limiting.
Are you ready to forge a different path?
If diagnoses and medications no longer feel right for you, it’s time to reclaim your life.
Imagine if you could find answers to your questions about navigating:
psychiatric drug tapering
withdrawal symptoms
life beyond psychiatrization
getting support from friends and family as you stop antidepressants safely
What if you could:
let go of old, limiting stories of self and find your way to a new, truer story
gain strength through connection with others who’ve been where you are
cultivate a sense of clarity, conviction, and hope as you embark on the scary and rewarding journey beyond psychiatric diagnoses and medications
What might life look like beyond depression, ADHD, or other psychiatric diagnoses
and meds?
If you’re on psychiatric medications right now, there’s a good chance that you’ve also been given a diagnosis somewhere along the line: major depression, anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, ADHD, or something else.
Perhaps the meds helped you feel better for a while. Maybe that diagnosis felt clarifying at first—an explanation for why you felt the way you felt—but now it feels smothering.
Whatever brought you here, and however confused or scared you might be feeling, you’re ready to discover who you might be beyond pills and labels. And you’re wise enough to know you’re going to need good information, a practical strategy, and plenty of support. That’s why we created Fortify & Focus.
Feeling alone, invisible, or misunderstood in coming off psychiatric medications?
Have friends and family told you that they’re worried about you? Has your prescriber refused to help you come off your medications, even though you’ve asked for their guidance and support to do so as safely as possible? Does your therapist seem unfamiliar with the possible adverse effects of both taking and coming off psychiatric medications? Do you feel like you’re the only one who sees that your struggles are happening for a reason—that maybe they’re not meaningless symptoms of faulty brain chemistry?
In Fortify & Focus you’ll find empathic, trauma-informed support:
Guidance from mentors who’ve had their own experiences as psychiatric patients.
Mentors and members like you who have been disregarded or made to doubt themselves.
A close-knit community of others who, like you, are walking the path away from psychiatrization.
Empathy: be believed and listened to and encouraged to treat yourself with compassion.
Intimate, safe container to be vulnerable.
Feeling confused, disoriented, or overwhelmed?
Maybe you can’t tell if your struggles are your underlying condition, your “baseline state,” the side effects of your medications, or symptoms of medication withdrawal. Perhaps you’re on multiple drugs that you worry are interacting badly with each other (polypharmacy).
Maybe you’ve been on psych drugs for so long that you have no idea what your true “baseline state” even is—but you’re terrified of finding out, given the likelihood you’re physically dependent on your meds and may well struggle with trying to come off them.
Maybe your doctor, therapist, or family member has said that you’ll be putting yourself in danger if you taper off your meds. Perhaps they’ve tried to convince you that the problem is you, not the effects of your treatment, and that your underlying condition is chronic and incurable.
In Fortify & Focus, you’ll be supported to find your own clarity:
Ask questions at any time about your personal situation.
Access to our always-growing library of video responses and workbooks.
Psych med safe taper methods including calculations and schedules.
Group calls focused on the present: what is present for you right now?
Exercises such as journaling, meditations, group sharing.
Guided to listen for what is true for you.
In Fortify & Focus, you won’t be told what you need to do; you’ll be encouraged to dive into your own truth, clearing away the noise of outside authority figures, influencers or talking heads.
What is stopping you from
getting off psych meds?
Without information, guidance and support we need, we get stuck.
Stuck in fear: fear of withdrawal, fear of the unknown future, fear of disrupting our work, family, or stability.
Stuck in doubt: doubt about your strength, your body’s capacity to heal, your chances at a revitalized, purposeful future.
Stuck in confusion: confusion about your taper, what to share with friends and family about what you’re going through, how to assert your needs with people you depend on and ask for the type of support you need.
What if I do it wrong?
…and I create even worse problems than before?
What if it takes too long?
…and I miss out on having a family or a career?
What if it is too hard?
…and I have to go right back to square one?
What if it’s too painful?
…and I am not able to bear it anymore?
Imagine having the help and hope you need to move through pharmaceutical trauma and take back your life from the mental health industry.
What if you felt truly seen and heard, had information you could rely on, and had a community designed to hold you as you sink deeper into your own strengths and instincts?
No one can give you a blueprint for tapering off psychiatric medications or healing from pharmaceutical injuries.
What we can do, however, is give you a place—the right environment—in which you have the space, time, perspective, and resources you need to recover yourself. This program is so much more than just safely tapering off antidepressants, antipsychotics, stimulants or other psych meds. It is about cultivating your capacity to be with life as it is now, being present with symptoms and side effects even as you move toward a future in which you have released them.
Introducing
Fortify & Focus
Group Support Program
A Monthly Group Coaching Program for People Looking to Leave Behind Psychiatric Drugs and Diagnoses and Build Lives Beyond the Mental Health Industry.
The Fortify & Focus Group Support Program is a monthly membership program that gives you weekly guidance and coaching, a community of people who “get it,” and personal responses from expert Laura Delano to your questions about tapering, withdrawal, and life post-psychiatry.
Virtual Group Calls and Monthly Circles- each month, attend up to six monthly group coaching calls with the F&F team, and one monthly circle with Laura (scroll down for current call times)
Personal Responses - submit questions you have about your personal circumstances to Laura and receive anonymized video responses published in our growing Resource Library
Shared Experience - get feedback from fellow members and learn from their questions and input
Monthly Newsletter - get additional answers, advice, tools and resources in your inbox.
“After many years of suffering within the mental health system and on a cocktail of different psychiatric medication, I realized that I was being harmed, not helped. I met Laura and Cooper who were able to validate my experience and I decided I wanted to come off the drugs; they helped me set up a safe, harm-reductionist taper plan and provided guidance, support and newfound hope to me AND my family. Laura and Cooper presented my family and I strategies for healing and recovery. Their first hand experience with breaking free from the psychiatric system offers unique understanding and insight about shedding the diagnostic labels and reclaiming power over one’s life.”
Reclaim your mind, body and spirit from the compounding effects of psychiatric medications and diagnoses.
Guidance, support, and clarity for healing from psychiatric treatment
This is a group support experience for those starting, in the midst of, or living life after mental illness diagnoses and coming off psychiatric medication.
Guidance
Become informed about safer psychiatric drug tapering and effective ways of coping with withdrawal symptoms.
Decrease the time, energy, and emotion you expend on thinking about withdrawal.
Learn about what it looks like to withdraw from psychiatric medications using a hyperbolic tapering approach.
Support
Feel more confident that you can and will heal—that your body and brain are resilient, and your spirit is strong enough to endure.
Feel reassured from the knowledge that you have a safe, compassionate community available to you every day who understands you because they’ve “been there.”
Feel validated, recognized, and less alone in your experience.
Clarity
Ease your fear and expand the ways you make sense of withdrawal symptoms.
Learn ways of optimizing the process of healing from psychopharmaceutical trauma.
Communicate and advocate for yourself more effectively with family, friends, and practitioners regarding taper- and withdrawal-related issues.
And Accountability
If you want, you can choose to also make this a place that provides accountability for your own activities and goals related to tapering off and living life beyond meds and pursuing a vibrant life that includes living with both the darkness and the light.
Program Details
When you join Fortify & Focus, you’ll get instant access to the member portal. From there the program is delivered in four primary ways:
Twice-weekly Live Coach-led group support calls, along with a Group Huddle to help you stay connected in between calls
A themed Monthly Circle facilitated by Laura Delano in which you’ll have a chance to go deep and be by the side of others doing the same
The ability to submit personal questions at any time, and receive video responses twice a month from Laura, which are added to a growing list of videos, workbooks, and other resources in our Resource Library
A Monthly Newsletter stockpiled with useful insights, inspiration, and information
Currently, group coaching calls occur from 1-2:30PM EST (NYC) on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Most monthly circles occur from 1-2:15PM EST (NYC) on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays.
Feature 1: “Drop-in” Group Coaching
Attend ANY call, anytime: This program is designed for “drop-in attendance.”
Calls are live and private. No recordings.
Calls are not cohort based—attend any call at your convenience. (We recommend 2-3 calls per month, and offer a minimum of six sessions per month, adding more as we're able).
No curriculum or sequential lessons or homework. This is a coaching experience, not an instructional course, although there certainly is plenty of educational material.
Calls may include: topic discussion, group exercises, writing prompts, and optional sharing and feedback rounds.
The call schedule will be published in your member portal.
Feature 2: Themed Monthly Circles with Laura
Each month, Laura will facilitate a themed call in which you’ll be able to share deeply about the month’s topic and hear others do the same.
Circles are live and private. No recordings.
Circles are theme-based and don’t follow any kind of sequential order, so you can attend as you see fit.
Themes cover a wide range of topics related to psychiatrization: Speaking the Unspeakable, Grief, Anger, Relationships, Being with Pain, etc.
The circle schedule will be published in your member portal.
Feature 3: Resource Library & Personal Responses
Group calls and monthly circles are not the place for more practical or personal questions about tapering and withdrawal, so we’ve designed a question portal that enables Laura to record video responses two times a month that are added to our Resource Library:
Get access to our growing library of videos and workbooks.
Don't see answers to your questions in the library? No problem. Just submit your question to be added to the queue for new video responses.
New responses will be added to the Resource Library two times a month and may also be featured in our Monthly Newsletter.
This is a great way to get more personalized answers that aren’t addressed in group calls and monthly circles.
You’ll also learn a lot just by seeing other video responses to questions from fellow members.
(All video responses are generalized to make them relevant for all members, and anonymized to protect everyone’s privacy.)
Feature 4: Monthly Newsletter
Each month, we’ll release a new issue that shares insights from the team, highlights from the Resource Library, and announcements about upcoming events and offerings.
Tap Into Your Own Capacity to Recover from Pharmaceutical Trauma with Us By Your Side.
“In the midst of a recent crisis during my wife’s tapering journey, Laura Delano proactively reached out to my family on multiple occasions…just to see how we were doing. Laura was not “on the clock” or “just doing her job.” She really cared. Her love and concern for my family was authentic and sincere. Clearly, Laura’s work is more than a vocation…it is a passion and a calling rooted in empathy that could only be born out of her own journey of withdrawal from psychiatric medications. Any family would be blessed to have Laura, along with her encouragement and experience, at their side during what can often be a very difficult season.”
Why choose Fortify & Focus?
How is F&F different from other kinds of taper and withdrawal support out there?
In recent years, psychiatric drug withdrawal forums, Facebook groups, and withdrawal coaches have exploded online. This is a good indicator that important awareness is growing around the issue, but it also means the online withdrawal landscape has become quite chaotic, confusing, and scary. For many people, it’s hard to know what sources you can trust and where to turn for hope.
We created Fortify & Focus to serve as a bright beacon for people seeking a safe haven from the storms of the online psychiatric drug withdrawal community, where risky advice, rigid perspectives, horror stories and hopelessness abound.
Our team has spent a combined three decades working with individuals and families around the world seeking support and guidance for the safest possible taper journey. We’ve connected with thousands more in the midst of tapering and healing from withdrawal. The Fortify & Focus team will:
Create a safe, non-judgmental environment where you can be seen and heard.
Create the opportunity for you to connect with others experiencing something similar.
Support you in creating a clearer vision for your future, along with goals or action steps.
Help you strengthen your capacity to be with your difficult experiences while they’re here.
Help you let go of old, limiting stories about yourself and cultivate new, liberating ones.
Help you see challenges and blindspots that might be preventing change.
Support you in claiming expertise over your body, mind, and life.
Our expertise doesn’t come from degrees or accreditations, but from taking, coming off, and healing from psychiatric drugs ourselves and helping countless others do the same. The support we offer is not prescriptive or directive; we will not tell you what to do. Rather, we’re by your side as you find your way to your own right next step, offering the ideas and information that we think will be most useful to you, and holding up a mirror for you to remember who you truly are each step of the way.
If you are here, you are not only getting our support in changing your life, you are offering your support to the group, who are all doing the same.
Hello. I’m Laura.
It took them four years, but by the time I turned 18 years old, the mental health industry had finally convinced me I was “mentally ill”—bipolar disorder—and would be for the rest of my life.
Over the ten years to follow, I took nineteen different psychiatric drugs. I accumulated a long list of other diagnoses, including “major depression,” “eating disorder NOS,” “substance abuse disorder,” and “borderline personality disorder.” I sought help from countless therapists, outpatient programs, partial hospital programs and hospitalization—and still, I never seemed to “get better.”
Finally, I came to the realization that this system of “help”—the mental health system—was not only unhelpful, but actually making my problems far worse.
With almost no help or guidance available, I came off my five medications (lithium, Lamictal, Abilify, Effexor, and Ativan); it was, for me, a rocky road. But, I knew with conviction that if I stood a chance at reconnecting meaningfully with myself, I needed to forge ahead to a future beyond my fourteen-year psychiatrization.
For 13 years now, I’ve been working to provide people with all the information and guidance I never received about how to taper off psychiatric medications as safely and successfully as possible, so that they can find their way back to trusting in their instincts, and knowing their next right step.
I’ve worked within the mental health system: providing support to and advocating for the rights of individuals in emergency rooms, psychiatric hospitals, and institutional “group home” settings.
And I’ve worked outside the traditional system: consulting with individuals and families seeking help during the psychiatric drug withdrawal process.
I’ve given talks, interviews and workshops internationally, facilitated mutual-aid groups for people in withdrawal, organized various conferences and public events, and founded a non-profit organization called Inner Compass Initiative.
I also educate psychiatrists and mental health professionals about safer tapering protocols, and regularly consult with professional organizations looking to implement withdrawal support and resources.
I launched Fortify & Focus as a way to expand my ability to reach and support more people in a way that is still intimate and personal—and true to my belief that the best support for coming off meds and recovering oneself from psychiatrization comes from the real experts on tapering and building a life after psychiatric drugs: those of us who’ve lived it for ourselves.
Tap Into Your Own Capacity to Recover from Pharmaceutical Trauma with Us By Your Side.
“At times during withdrawal and tapering, I’ve felt like I’m under water, out of air but no sense of which way is up. Laura’s been an invaluable guide for me, not just sharing her wisdom and experience, but helping me to trust myself to know which way to swim to the surface. She’s helped immensely with planning my taper and, more importantly, finding meaning in overcoming what psychiatry thrust upon me.”
Join Fortify & Focus for
$595/month
“In the midst of a recent crisis during my wife’s tapering journey, Laura Delano proactively reached out to my family on multiple occasions…just to see how we were doing. Laura was not “on the clock” or “just doing her job.” She really cared. Her love and concern for my family was authentic and sincere. Clearly, Laura’s work is more than a vocation…it is a passion and a calling rooted in empathy that could only be born out of her own journey of withdrawal from psychiatric medications. Any family would be blessed to have Laura, along with her encouragement and experience, at their side during what can often be a very difficult season.”
Start Building a More
Vibrant Life Today.
Your investment: $595/month
Frequently Asked Questions
I can’t make all the group coaching calls - will they be offered at different times?
The good news is you don’t need to attend them all. We recommend attending at least two per month. Right now, all calls are taking place from 1-2:30PM EST (NYC time) on Tuesdays and Thursdays given the availability of our current members. However, we have recently grown our coaching team in order to be able to add new calls at different times when the need arises. If you wish to join F&F but are unable to make this time, please let us know by writing Farah at membership@lauradelano.com.
Will my privacy in group coaching calls and monthly circles be protected?
As a group of members, meeting live, we will all agree to a set of ‘rules’ - including respecting each other’s privacy. What is shared here, stays here. Group calls will not be recorded or transcribed for your privacy, but you will be there with others, and we encourage you to take advantage of those connections. There is a healing power in being together, sharing, being open and present in the group calls. That is part of what makes group coaching valuable. You are, of course, not required to share anything you don’t feel comfortable sharing.
How many questions can I submit for video responses from Laura?
As many as you want– but we respectfully request that you keep them succinct and clear so that Laura is able to give a meaningful, relevant response. Laura will answer all questions as her time permits. In the event that you submit a question that has already been answered and added to the video library, we'll let you know to review that response first.
Do I have to be off all my meds– or in the process of coming off all my meds– to join?
Most certainly not! We are not “anti-drug;” we are pro-informed choice. We all have our own unique risks and benefits, pros and cons, life circumstances, resources, supports, and stressors, and what’s “right” for one person might be “wrong” for someone else. All are welcome here.
Can family members and caregivers join Fortify & Focus?
Right now, Focus & Fortify is open to people who are on/coming off/off psychiatric drugs. However, we are offering a special Family and Friends Support call led by Laura in late March, where members of this program can invite any of the people in their support network to attend! Laura will discuss important issues related to helping your family and friends better navigate their roles as caregivers and supporters to you. Sign up now as a member and watch your email for the invitation.
Lastly, if you’re a family member looking for support and coaching around caring for someone who is tapering off meds, however, please let us know: if we see a large enough need, we will explore adding in offerings for family members and caregivers!
Do you help people with tapering?
Group coaching calls are designed to help you explore your personal “why” and stay connected with your own goals and motivations, while the option to submit personal questions asynchronously to Laura is meant to help you address your more specific questions about the “how” of tapering and withdrawal, along with anything else on your mind.
What happens if I join in the middle of the month-- will I pay for calls that have already happened?
Members are billed on a 30-day cycle, as opposed to month-to-month cycle, so no matter when you join, you won't pay for anything that’s already happened.
Is there a long-term commitment?
We believe that the most benefit to you will be found by sticking around for at least three months, so that you can get to know the coaches and other members. And you can stick around for as long as you want. However, there is no long term commitment. You simply must pay for a full month at a time, as there is no prorating. In fact, you can join, drop and join again later if you feel like you need a little extra support again. We offer the ability to “pause” your membership for up to three months at a time, twice a year, if the need arises, which means you can re-join at whatever your previous rate was three months after you drop, after which point you’re welcome to re-join at whatever the current rate is.
What is your refund policy?
We are confident that if you engage in the program and commit to participation, you will notice meaningful, even profound shifts in how you’re making sense of yourself and your circumstances, and living your life. If, after 30 days, you feel like it is not a fit for you, you will have a grace period of 10 days after being billed your second month to cancel and still get your second monthly payment refunded. Your first month’s payment is non-refundable.
After month two, as a monthly program, you are free to cancel at any time. When you cancel, you’ll have access through the end of that paid month, and will not be billed again the following month.
What technology do I need to access the group coaching sessions?
Group coaching sessions happen on Zoom, but great news: you don’t need your own Zoom account to join, just the URL link that you’ll find in each event within the Group Coaching calendar. You do, however, need to have the Zoom app downloaded on your device or use Zoom through a web browser to access the event.
Do I need a computer to log into Fortify & Focus?
You can use a computer OR your phone to log in and access our online community and all calls– and even better, you can download the Mighty Networks app on your phone to have an even more optimized mobile experience! If you haven’t yet done that, go to your Welcome Checklist (once you're logged into your F&F account; you can find it in the Discover section of the Global Features in the top left) for step-by-step instructions.
If I’m already a member of another Mighty Networks community, can I use the same email address?
Yes, you sure can! Since each Mighty Networks community is its own standalone entity, you can use the same address multiple times with no issue– and even better, you can toggle back and forth between your different communities by clicking ‘Switch Networks.’