#as someone whos actual medically diagnosed delusions made me feel this way | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

disabilityhealth · 2 years

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This is a bit weird but I just… kinda want to get something out of my brain to someone who may have some kind of understanding. Sorry if I’m a bother. The short of it is that recently I started to suspect I might have a chronic condition, because some of the things I’ve been experiencing were alarmingly specific to this and in one case, something I didn’t even know wasn’t a normal thing that happens to everyone. I thought about it for a few weeks and then made a doctor’s appointment with my regular doctor. That doctor referred me to a specialist, who told me to get a series of tests and specifically mentioned testing for something that I happened to see later could sometimes cause similar symptoms or be mistaken for what I kinda suspected (which I haven’t brought up to anyone because I’m afraid of seemingly like a crazy hypochondriac or something) I might have. I got the tests, and at once place the doctor also said they wanted me to come back for even more tests so they could give me a referral to yet another kind of specialist, and mentioned that they would have told me to get this other test except I’d already had it done via the first specialists orders, etc. It’s been a whole roller coaster of emotions. But anyway last week I went back to the first specialist for the test results, which were zilch. Nada. All looks good and normal, go home. I feel stupid. The doctor didn’t even let me see the scans and stuff, I guess I had been kind of hoping it would feel more real if I saw there was nothing weird. I know I’m no doctor and I can’t diagnose myself and I’ve got no medical training to even know what I’m looking at but. Yeah. It’s been around two months, I think, since I first started to suspect when I randomly saw a symptom list, and my brain had been all over the place. I do have anxiety so I’ve been wondering like, is this all in my head, is it psychosomatic, am I wasting time and money over some kind of attention seeking delusion? My symptoms definitely increased in severity after I started considering it and I’ve been very… I don’t even know over that. Because if things are worse then it’s obviously all like stress caused, right? At least according to my brain. And I’ve kinda flip flopped between ‘there’s no way’ and ‘it has to be’ while feeling both at the same time. When I was doing a bit of research and I saw one of the things the doctor had mentioned testing for as something that could be mistaken for what I was considering, I had a massive panic attack at the thought. When I was at one of the specialists’ offices and they said something along the lines of ‘so you’re experiencing this?’ and I said ‘no, this’ I totally calmed down for the first time since this whole thing started and was absolutely sure that this was all just a dumb waste of time and feeling at peace, only to be hit with the ‘okay so I want you to come back for these tests, you’ve already had those done so you don’t need me to make a referral, and then I want to send you to this other specialist’ while I was feeling like I was actually that one ‘what’ reaction image. And I had been thinking like, if I have this, I don’t want anyone to know. It’s not like it’s a life threatening thing and like I don’t want anyone to worry over me or treat me weirdly or anything… and then well the doctor said everything looks perfect. And before that I thought that was what I wanted. That was the absolute best case scenario in my head, second best being ‘yeah you’ve got this’ and worst being ‘actually MORE TESTS.’ And yet I nearly cried in the doctor’s office and then again nearly had a crying breakdown in the car… because I was told I didn’t have this thing I don’t want to have? I feel like some crazy attention seeking faker making up things in my head. Maybe I’m exaggerating what I feel. Maybe, even though the symptoms have been just as bad at times in the past, years ago even, before I’d heard of this thing, the fact that they feel worse right now is only in my head. Cont~

continuation~ Last night I was curled up in so much pain I felt like something inside me had combusted and I was afraid I was dying even though I’d gone to the hospital for this exact thing two years ago and it was nothing and I also hurt too much to move anyway. I got ten hours of sleep but it took me two hours to get out of bed and I missed a class because despite knowing I needed to get up and go I was too tired to even care about it. I say that and even though it’s true I feel like I’m lying or exaggerating for attention. For years doctors have been telling me I’m young and the healthiest I’ll ever be and there’s nothing wrong with me. The doctor told me all the tests look normal and then told me to go see a psychiatrist. I still have the appointment for the other tests the one specialist wanted me to have next week, at which point I’ll get a referral scheduled for the next specialist that doctor wanted me to see. The internet said that most people take 15-20 years to get diagnosed. The internet said less than 5% of people who have this show symptoms but nothing shows up on the scans. Who am I to be so sure I have this? Why should I believe the internet over a medical doctor? I’ve only felt worse in the days since that appointment last week. Isn’t that proof it’s all psychological? I guess… somewhere in me, even as I really desperately didn’t bad don’t want to have anything wrong with me, I got attached to the idea that maybe there was a reason. That maybe it’s not just that I’m getting dumber. That there’s a reason for all these inarticulate things I’ve thought for literal years but never had the reason or words or awareness to truly express. I say ‘nobody is as clumsy as I am!’ and people tell me off for being self-deprecation but what I never had the consciousness I’m not sure but whatever to realize before now, I felt it but I didn’t know the words, was that I mean ‘I’m not as clumsy as I am.’ Or I wasn’t. I have scars on my arms from when my hands just stopped holding things without my consent. I walk into door frames and walks and furniture because it feels like my legs just quit listening sometimes. I used to be able to stand on one foot for five minutes at a time and never wobble the slightest bit and only have to stop because my leg would get tired. Now I cling to the handrail or the wall every time I even go down one step and I regularly lean on the wall so I don’t eat floor trying to change my clothes in the morning or at night. I have adhd, I’ve always been forgetful, but I don’t think I ever used to legitimately not be able to tell the difference between today and yesterday. I never used to forget to eat for an entire day because I didn’t remember humans have to eat. I never used to accidentally skip breakfast or lunch or dinner because I think I have eaten but that was yesterday. I forget what I did five minutes ago or my memories feel so distant I have to think to figure out if I dreamed that I just washed my hands or something. I feel like I have the memory of a goldfish and I know I didn’t always. I know it didn’t used to be that sometimes I start and stare and stare at words and I can make them make sense individually but not all together, and then I come back to the same thing the next day and I can read it with no issue. And all this time I was thinking ‘what do I do if I have this.’ and I didn’t know, and the prospect was terrifying. But I never once thought ‘what do I do if I don’t.’ And turns out, that’s terrifying too. There’s no good answer and I just want to be normal and fine and I feel like a self obsessed hypochondriac idiot. I’m sorry for dumping all that on you.

I am honestly very glad you sent this to me, so do not be sorry. It sounds like you are truly fighting a battle and you needed to get this all out there.

My advice would be to bring up the condition you think you have with your doctors. Pose it as a question, like: "Is it possible that I have X?" Even if they rule that illness out, at least you will know one way or the other that all of the possibilities are being explored.

It does sound like your doctors are taking your symptoms seriously because they are referring you to so many specialists. That is a good sign. Also, according to HIPAA you are entitled to get copies of your medical tests upon request so you can ask to see your scans and blood work results. I think that could give you a little peace of mind, at least.

Also, I think seeing a psychiatrist is a good idea. I'm not saying that I think your symptoms are psychosomatic or that it's all in your head. However, even if it is a mental illness, that doesn't mean your pain isn't real. It doesn't mean you aren't struggling. It would just mean that the cause is psychological -- and if that is the case then your experience is equally valid.

Chronic illnesses and mental illnesses have a lot of overlap. You deserve to know what's going on, one way or the other.

At the very least, it sounds to me like you may have anxiety (understandably) and a psychiatrist would help you to manage that so you can at least have a little peace in your life while you're trying to figure out what else is going on.

I genuinely hope that you can get to the bottom of this. You deserve to feel better in your own skin and to understand what is happening to you. I will be thinking of you, anon.

#anon #wall of text #chronic illness #anxiety #advice

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traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors · 2 years

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CW for medical stuff, mother abuse, transphobia, suicide and SH mentions

so i’m doing this whole host of tests in a hospital to figure out if anything besides fibromyalgia is wrong with me. I made the mistake of telling a psychologist that i experience ONE very specific delusion not related to my physical health even tangentially, and next thing I know the doctor diagnoses me with somatic symptom disorder. I experience more than one delusion but even then i knew telling him about the others would be a bad move. (my mom doesn’t i have delusions, so she doesn’t know this could be contributing to the diagnosis) I researched SSD, and I don’t fit the criteria for it in any way other than ‘has anxiety’. It isn’t even germ or illness related anxiety.

anyways, my DEAR, LOVELY mother immediately believes the doctor and I can’t convince her that it’s because of my (professionally diagnosed) fibromyalgia now. She also recently revealed that she’s basically a TERF lite, and I’m nonbinary.

I don’t know how i’m going to survive this, my mom now thinks my chronic illness is all in my head because of an ableist doctor who took advantage of my trust, and she thinks that all of my queer identities are either phases or because ‘‘‘‘being trans is a trend’’’’ and only supports me when we’re in public. She makes a halfhearted attempt when we’re alone but I can’t talk about medical transition because she’ll go on rants about how testosterone is being handed out like candy to 11 year old girls and how there’s a rash of new gender clinic that let children have permanent surgeries in the name of transition.

I don’t want to kill myself, but I suffer from severe depression and self harm, and I’m genuinely scared of harming or killing myself. I have an appointment with my really fucking cool therapist who actually believes me and doesn’t use the fact that I have trauma based delusions against me, but I don’t know if that will help because i haven’t felt this hopeless and in danger in a very long time. I don’t know who else to tell this to, i’m sorry if it’s too much or if i’m just being overdramatic.

Hi anon,

You are absolutely not being dramatic at all. You deserve so much better than this and I’m so sorry that the doctor took advantage of your trust.

I really hope that your appointment with your therapist went well. And even if one session was not helpful, I do think it is possible more sessions would be. While I don’t think she can fix everything, I think that feeling like someone is in your corner can make a world of difference.

Do any followers have suggestions/advice?

#mod april #trauma talks #tw self harm #tw suicide mention #tw transphobia #tw medical #tw abuse #tw mother abuse

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neverbethat · 1 year

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An angel that protects me and possesses me to be better, gracious, careful, conscientious, and observant. An angel that has possessed me and only goes dormant when i myself am doing well.

Like i am the alien and she is the angel and i feel like a ghost because i am a primarily metaphysical human, explaining the dissociation which is also explained by my trauma which also logically explains all this shit

“Logic” to me is just the thought process i assume humans to have. I am smart so i picked up on it and i can have an average conversation while hiding that im simultaneously watching their soul crawl out of their throat and wiggle at me. I can be very analytical by their standards and say yes this resulted from trauma, yes it is delusional. But as humans could never fully grasp what experience, they will have to receive a less honest version of myself. I do not entirely believe that i am delusional, but i have this existential dread that causes me to worry if i really am just mistaken, if im just uniquely fucked in the head and im kidding myself

I dont think im necessarily very smart, but i know that im smarter than i think i am by the observations ive made since i was a child and by people telling me so. But i think people are just surprised by the way i can understand things. I cant articulate myself properly, and ive never actually been outstanding in school, maybe sometimes one among many with decent grades but never excelling to the point that people seem to want me to believe i am. Maybe it is pity, maybe it is self righteousness. I dont understand the point of telling someone something that isnt true, and still i get the urge to do somyself

Maybe human life isnt about what is true or real or and maybe whether or not something is “supposed” to happen makes no difference at all, because who is to say what is supposed to be? The government? The church? My parents? All of these people i vehemently disrespect and distrust? That is who we count on?

Part of me believes that when i die, nothing else will happen and i will be dead forever. There are many things that bring me to question this idea, like our apparent loneliness in this universe, the unmistakable call of beings from beyond this realm… i sometimes get to questioning everything this way. Like, if me being forced to take meds makes me simultaneously sick/unmoving and horribly depressed and the only “good” effect is a lack of “hallucinations and delusions” - you know, what am i supposed to make of that? If i have the capability to be perfectly happy off of medication?

And i saw something i resonated with today. The whole treat the symptom and not the disorder thing. Or the so called disorder. I feel like having my diagnoses lifted off of my shoulders would change the world for me. So often i pretend i was never diagnosed. Pretending i was never diagnosed and that everything i feel is normal has been a great comfort to me. I occasionally indulge because if i show too much denial they throw me in a fucking loony bin. It sounds dystopian when i put it this way

Okay, so what? I dont understand why its so important to label me with a sickness, why the sickness is more important than the fact that i am legitimately audibly communicating with spirits and interdimensional creatures (one in the same on some level) and why is it so hard to believe when psychic shops line the streets of urban areas and suburban areas alike, when its so common in history to have mediums, psychics, ghost stories, alien abductions, etc. of course these things are hard to believe for people who cannot experience them, but certainly im not alone. I could google a zillion anecdotes about the exact things that get me put on brain atrophying sedatives. Angel encounters and possessions, alien abductions and spiritual connections with aliens, being undead as a human spiritually, ghost encounters. Almost everyone you meet has a ghost encounter. Why am i different? Im hardly even fixated on it. Im not really different than these people.

Sure the dissociation/ptsd and mood swings are a problem but imstarting to have a hard time understanding why any of my other diagnoses are relevant.

#vent #ghostkin #angelkin #alienkin #aliens #ghosts #alterhuman #psychosis #something #ever since i was a kid i saw this otherkin stuff as another convenient parallel to my experiences and another socially acceptable way #to be like hey yall #im not like im supposed to be and i like it #but it hurts

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infernallegaycy · 4 years

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Writing Psychotic Characters

Hi! I’ve seen a few of these writing things pop up recently (and in the past), but I haven’t seen any on psychotic characters—which, judging from the current state of portrayals of psychosis in media, is something I think many people* need. And as a psychotic person who complains about how badly psychosis tends to be represented in media, I thought I’d share a bit of information and suggestions!

A lot of this isn’t necessarily specifically writing advice but information about psychosis, how it presents, and how it affects daily life. This is partially purposeful—I feel that a large part of poor psychotic representation stems from a lack of understanding about psychosis, and while I’m not usually in an educating mood, context and understanding are crucial to posts like this. A lot of this also relates to writing psychosis in a modern-day setting, simply because that’s where bad psychotic representation tends to mostly occur (and it’s the only experience I’ve had, obviously), but please don’t shy away from applying this advice to psychotic characters in sci-fi/fantasy/historical fiction/etc. Psychosis is not a wholly modern phenomenon, nor would speculative fiction feel truly escapist without being able to see yourself reflected in it.

Please also note that I am not a medical professional nor an expert in psychology. I simply speak from my personal experiences, research, and what I’ve read of others’ experiences. I also do not speak for all psychotic people, and more than welcome any alternative perspectives to my own.

*These people, in all honesty, aren’t likely to be the ones willingly reading this. But there are people who are willing to learn, so here’s your opportunity.

(Warnings: Mentions of institutionalization/hospitalization, including forced institutionalization; ableism/saneism; and brief descriptions of delusions and hallucinations. Also, it’s a pretty long post!)

Up front, some terminology notes: “Unpsychotic” refers to people who are not psychotic. This includes other mentally ill and neurodivergent people. Please try to avoid terminology like “non-[identity],” as much of it is co-opted from “nonblack.”

Also, “psychotic” and “delusional” will not be, and should not be, used to refer to anything but respectively someone who experiences psychosis and someone who experiences delusions. Remove these words as insults and negative descriptors for anyone you dislike from your vocabulary.

In addition, I generally use adjectives rather than person-first language because that is the language I, and the seeming majority of other neurodivergent and mentally ill people, prefer. Others might describe themselves differently (as “people with psychosis,” for instance). Don’t assume either way—I’d generally suggest you say “psychotic person” first, and then correct yourself if the person in question prefers different terminology.

1) Psychosis is a symptom, not a disorder.

As a term, “psychosis” describes any number of symptoms that indicate a break with reality, such as delusions and hallucinations (I’ll go into more detail about this in a bit). It commonly occurs as part of several mental and neurological disorders, including but not limited to:

Schizophrenia

Schizophreniform disorder (same symptoms as schizophrenia, but for a shorter period of time than 6 months)

Schizoaffective disorder (combined symptoms of psychosis and a mood disorder, but not enough to completely fill the diagnostic criteria for either)

Bipolar disorder (typically as part of manic episodes, but it can also occur in unipolar depression and depressive episodes)

Personality disorders, including borderline personality disorder (for which transient paranoia under stress is part of the diagnostic criteria), paranoid personality disorder, and schizoid personality disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Dissociative disorders (though psychosis =/= dissociative identity disorder; if you want further information on the latter, which I do not have, please seek out another post!)

Psychosis can also occur with forms of epilepsy, sleep disorders, metabolic disorders, and autoimmune disorders. It tends to be a major part of neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. In addition, it can occur when not related to a chronic health condition; things like sleep deprivation and stress can induce temporary psychosis, as can drug use and medication.

This isn’t to say you necessarily need to define a disorder for a psychotic character, as some psychotic people (including myself) primarily just describe ourselves as “psychotic,” and some aren’t diagnosed with anything specific. However, if your psychotic character is a main/perspective character, I definitely recommend it. Chances are, someone with that disorder is reading/watching, and I’m sure they’d love to see a bit of direct representation. In general, you probably should at least have something in mind, because psychotic symptoms and severity/onset can differ greatly.

Some psychotic disorders’ diagnostic criteria explicitly exclude others (someone cannot be diagnosed with both schizophrenia and schizophreniform disorder at the same time, for instance, though the latter can develop into the former), but comorbidity is possible—and often common—among certain disorders and other neurological/mental conditions. Rates vary, so definitely research this, but in short, it is very much possible for psychotic people to have multiple disorders, including disorders that don’t include psychotic symptoms. (Personally speaking: I’m autistic, ADHD, and OCD in addition to being psychotic, and I’m physically disabled as well.)

I’m not here to do all the research for you—if you want to know more about specific psychotic disorders, then by all means, look them up! Go beyond Wikipedia and Mayo Clinic articles, too. Talk to people who have them. Seek out blogs and YouTube channels run by people with them. Read books about psychosis by psychotic people**. Pay attention to how we describe ourselves and our disorders.

And if you want to write characters with those disorders, especially if you’re writing from their perspectives, then please for the love of God, hire a sensitivity reader. For authenticity, I would recommend seeking out someone with the same disorder, not just anyone psychotic.

**If you want a fiction recommendation: I don’t actually know if the author is schizophrenic like the main character, but I really enjoyed and related to The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan. Content warnings include, but might not be limited to—it’s been a while since I read it—unreality, self-harm, suicide, abuse, and mentions of transphobia. I haven’t personally read any autobiographies/memoirs/essays yet, so I don’t have any to offer, and quite a few that came up through a cursory search seemed only to focus on being an inspiration to neurotypical people or were from a perspective other than that of the psychotic person in question. If anyone (preferably psychotic people) has any more recommendations, fiction or nonfiction, let me know!

2) Not every psychotic person has the same symptoms.

As mentioned, psychosis consists of symptoms that involve separation with reality, which can present as positive or negative symptoms. Every person’s experiences with these are different, but some generalizations can be made. I definitely recommend reading studies and articles (especially directly by psychotic people) describing experiences and presentation!

I’ll start with positive symptoms, which refer to the presence of symptoms unpsychotic people don’t have, and can include hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thoughts, speech, and behavior.

You probably know what hallucinations are (perceptions of sensory information that is not really present), but you might not know the specifics. Types of hallucinations include:

Auditory (which tend to be the most common, and are probably the form everyone is most familiar with, primarily as “hearing voices”)

Visual

Olfactory

Tactile/haptic

Gustatory (taste)

Somatic

Some types with regards to bodily sensations get a little muddled from here, but some forms of hallucinations you might not have heard of include thermic (hot/cold), hygric (fluids), kinesthetic (bodily movements), and visceral (inner organs).

(Note: Hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations, which occur when falling asleep or waking up, are not related to psychosis and can occur in anyone.)

As mentioned, there are some forms of hallucinations that are more common, but that is not to say that everyone has the same hallucinations. A lot of us have auditory and/or visual hallucinations, but not everyone does. Some have tactile, olfactory, or gustatory hallucinations instead of or in addition to more common forms (hi! Auditory hallucinations are pretty rare for me, but I constantly feel bugs/spiders crawling on me). If you write a psychotic character that experiences hallucinations, then you should definitely do further research on these types and manifestations of them.

You’re likely also familiar with delusions (a belief that contradicts reality), though again, you might not know the specifics. Delusions can be classified as bizarre (implausible, not shared or understood by peers of the same culture) or non-bizarre (false, but technically possible). They can relate to one’s mood or not.

Some people only experience delusions and no other significant psychotic symptoms (this occurs in delusional disorder). Delusions differ between people and tend to be heavily influenced by environment, but there are some common themes, such as:

Persecution

Guilt, punishment, or sin

Mind reading

Thought insertion

Jealousy

Control

Reference (coincidences having meaning)

Grandeur

Certain types of delusions are more common in certain cultures/backgrounds or certain disorders. I can’t really go into details about specific delusions, because I try not to read many examples (for a reason I’m about to mention), but if you plan on writing a character who experiences delusions, I definitely recommend heavily researching delusions and how it feels to experience them.

I would like to note: I’m not sure how common it is, but I’ve noticed that I personally have a tendency to pick up delusions that I see other psychotic people talking about having. Just kind of, like, an “oh shit what if” feeling creeps up on me, and before I know it, that delusion has wormed its way into my life. Just in case you want some idea of how psychotic people can interact amongst ourselves!

Another quick note: Delusions, by definition, are untrue beliefs; this does not mean that anyone who has ever been delusional is inherently untrustworthy.

Disorganization of thoughts/speech and behavior is more self-explanatory. Problems with thinking and speaking tend to be one of the most common psychotic symptoms, sometimes considered even more so than delusions and hallucinations. There are a lot of ways thought processes can be disrupted, and I honestly think it would be kind of difficult to portray this if you haven’t experienced it, but some common manifestations are:

Derailment

Tangents (which you might notice me doing sometimes in this very post)

Getting distracted mid-sentence/thought

Incoherence/“word salad”

Thought blocking (sudden stops in thoughts/speech)

Repetition of words/phrases

Pressured speech (rapid, urgent speech)

Use of invented words

Poverty of speech/content of speech

(Note that thought/speech disturbances aren’t necessarily exclusive to psychotic disorders. They tend to be common in ADHD and autism as well, though symptoms can be more severe when they occur in, for example, schizophrenia.)

Behavioral abnormalities can include catatonia, which presents in a number of ways, such as mutism, echolalia, agitation, stupor, catalepsy, posturing, and more. Episodes of catatonia last for hours and sometimes longer, which usually requires hospitalization and/or medication. This tends to overlap heavily with symptoms of autism spectrum disorders, which can be comorbid with conditions like schizophrenia.

Negative symptoms, on the other hand, refer to the absence of certain experiences. It can include flat affect (lack of or limited emotional reactions), generally altered emotional responses, a decrease in speech, and low motivation. Most of these speak for themselves, and I’m not honestly sure how to describe them to someone who’s never experienced them in a way that isn’t very metaphorical and therefore kind of unhelpful. If any other psychotic people have suggestions, feel free to add on/message me!

Not every psychotic disorder involves or requires both positive and negative symptoms (to my knowledge, manic episodes of bipolar disorder mostly only include positive symptoms), but many psychotic people experience both. And, as expressed multiple times—and I really can’t stress it enough—every person’s experience with psychosis is different.

If you interview two psychotic people at random, chances are they aren’t going to have the same combination of symptoms. Chances are they won’t even have the same disorder. Therefore, if you write multiple psychotic characters, they shouldn’t be identical in terms of personality or psychosis.

There are also some qualities of psychotic disorders that may not necessarily be diagnostic criteria but are prominent in people with these conditions. These also vary between disorders, but cognitive impairments and similar traits are fairly common.

3) In a similar vein, daily experiences can vary greatly. Psychosis can be a major part of psychotic people’s lives, but it doesn’t always affect daily life.

For some people, psychosis occurs in episodes, not 24/7; you may have heard the term “psychotic break,” which tends to refer to a first episode of psychosis. This is especially true of disorders where psychotic symptoms occur under stress or during mood episodes.

For other people, psychosis is a near-constant. It can wax and wane, but it never completely goes away. These people might be more likely to invest in medication or long-term therapy and other treatment methods.

Psychosis’s impact on everyday life can also be affected by insight (how well the person can tell they’re having psychotic symptoms). There’s not a ton of accessible research—or research at all—into insight and how it affects psychotic people, and I’m not a big fan of describing people as having high/low insight because I think it has the potential to be used like functioning labels (which, for the record, are bad; plenty of other autistic people have written at length about this), but just something to keep in mind. It’s a sliding scale; at different points in time, the same person might have limited or significant awareness of their symptoms. Both greater and poorer insight have been linked to decreased quality of life, so neither one is really a positive.

Just something to be aware of: Yes, sometimes we do realize how “crazy” we seem. Yes, sometimes we don’t. No, it doesn’t really make things any better to know that what we’re seeing/thinking/etc isn’t real. No, people with low insight shouldn’t be blamed or mocked for this.

As such, the diagnostic process can vary greatly. Psychotic people aware of their symptoms or how their lives are being impacted may directly ask for a diagnosis or seek out information on their own. Other times, family or friends might notice symptoms and bring them up to a mental health professional, or someone might be forcibly institutionalized and diagnosed that way.

My professional diagnostic processes have been pretty boring: Over time, I just gradually brought up different diagnoses I thought might fit me to my therapist, whom I started seeing for anxiety (which I no longer strongly identify with, on account of my anxiety mostly stemming from me being autistic, OCD, and psychotic). I filled out checklists and talked about my symptoms. We moved on with the treatment processes I was already undergoing and incorporated more coping mechanisms and stuff like that into therapy sessions. Hardly the tearful scenes of denial you’re used to seeing or reading about.

Other people might have very different experiences, or very similar ones! It all depends! I generally don’t really like reading scenes of people being diagnosed (it’s just exposition and maybe some realization on the PoV character’s part, but it’s usually somewhat inaccurate in that regard), so you can probably steer away from that sort of thing, but you might find it useful to note how your character was identified somewhere? I don’t really have any strong opinions on this.

I’d also like to note: Everything I publicly speak about having, I’ve discussed in a professional therapy setting, just because of my personal complexes. However, I do fully support self-diagnosis. Bigotry and money are huge obstacles against getting professional diagnoses, and if someone identifies with a certain disorder and seeks out treatment mechanisms for it, there’s no real harm being done. If someone is genuinely struggling and they benefit from coping mechanisms intended for a disorder they might not have, then I think that’s better than if they shied away because they weren’t professionally diagnosed with it, and therefore didn’t get help they needed. With proper research, self-diagnosis is fully ethical and reasonable.

I do not want to debate this, and any attempts to force me into a discussion about professional versus self-diagnosis will be ignored.

Anyway! I can’t really identify any specific daily experiences with psychosis you might want to include, because as mentioned, everyone has different symptoms and ways they cope with them.

Some psychotic people might not experience symptoms outside of an episode, which can be brought on by any number of things; some might experience symptoms only under general stress; some might have consistent symptoms. The content of hallucinations and delusions can also shift over time.

Psychosis can also affect anyone—there are certain demographics certain disorders are more likely to occur in, but this could just as easily be due to biases in diagnostic criteria or professionals themselves as it could be due to an actual statistical correlation. If you want to figure out how a psychotic character behaves on a day-to-day basis, then you’re better off shaping who they are as a person beyond their psychosis first, then incorporating their psychosis into things.

(A note about this: I consider my psychosis a major part of me, and I firmly believe that I would be a very different person without it; that’s why I refer to myself as a “psychotic person” rather than “a person with psychosis.” However, there is a difference between that and unpsychotic people making psychotic characters’ only trait their psychosis.)

4) Treatment for psychosis differs from person to person. The same things don’t work for everyone.

Some people are on antipsychotics; others aren’t. Medication is a personal choice and not a necessity—no one should be judged either for being on medication or for not being on medication. There are many reasons behind either option. Please do not ask psychotic people about their medication/lack thereof unprompted.

If you want to depict a psychotic character on medication, then research different forms of antipsychotics and how they affect psychotic people. I’ve never been on medication and don’t really plan to be (though if I ever do, I’m definitely taking a note from Phasmophobia’s book and calling them “Sanity Pills.” Just to clarify, I don’t want unpsychotic people repeating this joke, but if you want some insight on how some of us regard our health…), so you’re better off looking elsewhere for this sort of information!

I’m not going to get into my personal opinions on institutionalization and the psychiatry industry in general now, but institutionalization is, while common, also not necessary, and many psychotic people—and mentally ill and neurodivergent people in general—have faced harm and trauma due to institutionalization. Again, I can’t offer direct personal experience, but I recommend steering clear of plotlines directly related to psychiatric hospitals.

I would also like to emphasis the word treatment. Psychosis has no cure. It is possible for psychosis to only last a single episode (whether because it’s only due to stress/another outside factor or because it is treated early), or for symptoms to be greatly reduced over time and with treatment, but for the most part, psychotic people are psychotic for life.

However, with proper support networks and coping skills, many psychotic people are able to lead (quote unquote) “normal” lives. What coping mechanisms work for what people differs, but some psychosis-specific coping mechanisms might be:

Taping webcams for delusions of persecution/surveillance (which is honestly also just something everyone should do with webcams that aren’t in use)

Covering/closing windows for similar reasons

Using phone cameras/audio recordings to distinguish visual and auditory hallucinations from reality (most of the time, a hallucination won’t show up on camera, though it’s possible for people to hallucinate something on a camera screen too)

Similarly, removing glasses/contact lenses to check a visual hallucination

Asking people you trust (because of stigma and delusions, this might not be a long list) to check for symptoms of an oncoming episode

Avoiding possible triggers for psychosis (for example, I don’t engage with horror media often because a lot of it -- both psychological horror and slasher-type things -- can trigger delusions and hallucinations)

I’d also like to mention that treatment isn’t a clean, one-way process; especially with certain disorders, it’s normal to go up and down over time. I’d honestly be really uncomfortable with a psychotic character whose symptoms don’t affect their life whatsoever. There are ways you can write how psychosis affects someone that are… weird, which I’ll touch on, but overall, I think it’s better to actually depict a psychotic person whose symptoms have a clear impact on their life (even if that impact is, say, they’re on medication that negates some of their symptoms).

Just to reiterate: I am not a medical professional and cannot offer real-life advice regarding treatment, especially medication. Please do not ask me too detailed questions regarding this.

5) There are a lot of stereotypes and stigma surrounding psychosis.

The way psychosis is perceived both by general society and the field of psychology has changed a lot over the years, but even now, it still remains highly stigmatized and misunderstood. Wall of text incoming, but it’s important stuff.

Typical media portrayal of psychosis tends to fall into specific categories: The scary, violent psychotic person, or the psychotic person who is so crazy you can’t help but laugh. There are other bad depictions, but these are generally the ways I see psychotic people regarded and represented the most, so I want to address them directly.

Let’s talk about psychosis in horror first. Psychosis is often stereotyped as making people aggressive and violent. You’ve all seen the “psychotic killer” trope and depictions of people who are made violent and evil by their psychosis, even if it’s not explicitly named as the case. You’ve all seen “psychotic” used as a negative adjective, used synonymously to murderous, evil, harmful, violent, manipulative, etc—maybe you’ve even used it that way in the past. There’s no denying that the way society regards psychotic people is overwhelmingly negative, and that leaks into media.

If you are considering giving a violent, irredeemable antagonist psychosis, consider this: Don’t. More or less every psychotic person hates this trope. It’s inaccurate and, needless to say, rooted in ableism.

There are racialized aspects to this as well. People of color, especially Black and Latine people, are already stereotyped as being aggressive, violent, and scary; there’s also a history of overdiagnosis (and often misdiagnosis) of schizophrenia in Black people, especially civil rights activists. White and white-passing people will only be singled out if someone notices us exhibiting psychotic symptoms, but Black and brown people are already under scrutiny. Be extra cautious about how you write psychotic characters of color.

I’m not saying you can never give a psychotic person, say, a temper; in some cases, it might even make sense. Spells of uncontrollable anger are part of the diagnostic criteria for BPD, for example, and irritability is a common trait of manic episodes. Some delusions and hallucinations can affect aggression (emphasis on can—it would be inaccurate to imply that this is always the case. Once again, each person has a different experience with their psychotic symptoms).

But when the only psychotic or psychotic-coded characters you write are angry and violent, even when the situation doesn’t call for it, then there’s a problem. When you want to write a schizophrenic character, but only in a situation where they’re going on a killing spree, there’s a problem.

Studies have shown that no substantial link exists between psychosis and violence. There is a small association, but I think it would be reasonable to say this is partially because of the stigma surrounding psychosis and various other overlapping factors; no violence or crime exists in a vacuum. In addition, though I can’t find any exact statistics on this, psychotic people are susceptible to being victims of violence (likely because of this very stereotype).

On this note, don’t use mental hospitals as a setting for horror, especially if you plan on depicting the mentally ill patients there as antagonistic and unhinged. As mentioned earlier, institutionalization is a huge trigger for many psychotic people. True, psychiatric hospitals have definitely served as a source of trauma and pain for many in the past, but mentally ill and neurodivergent people have been (and are) the victims in those situations.

Also, don’t do the “what if it was all a delusion” thing. I know this is most common in ~edgy~ theories about children’s series, but… yikes.

In the same vein that you should avoid depictions of psychotic people that are ripped straight from a bad horror movie, don’t push it too far into comedy either. You’ve heard “psych ward” jokes, you’ve seen “I put the hot in psychotic” jokes (a supposedly humorous instance of that psychotic as a negative descriptor thing), you’ve heard people say “I have anxiety/depression, but I’m not crazy!”

Even other mentally ill and neurodivergent people constantly throw us under the bus, as can be seen in that last one. We’re the butt of plenty of jokes—we see things that aren’t there, we talk to ourselves, we believe things that are just so wacky you can’t believe anyone would think that way. (Even when we don’t.)

If you have to write another character laughing at a psychotic character for their symptoms, then have it swiftly criticized in the text, and try not to imply the reader should find psychosis funny either. Treat psychotic characters’ symptoms with sympathy and understanding, not ridicule.

Psychotic people literally cannot help our delusions/hallucinations/other symptoms. If something we think/say seems “crazy” to you, chances are it does to us as well.

(We’re talking about portraying psychosis in fiction, but this applies to real-life treatment of psychotic people, too!)

Also, I’d like to note—all of this is about the way unpsychotic people view psychotic people. If you see a psychotic person laughing at themself or viewing their symptoms as scary, then that is not an invitation for you to laugh along or go beyond symptoms and think the person is scary for being psychotic. That’s the thing about gallows humor; you have to be the one on the gallows.

Moving on! In romance, there is often a presumption that love can cure psychosis. This is false. No matter how much you love (whether romantically or platonically) and want to help a psychotic person, that alone will not “heal” their psychosis. Please do not depict a psychotic person having to be cured to be happy or in love. It doesn’t work that way.

This doesn’t mean you should stray away from romance in general—I personally would definitely like to see more portrayals of psychotic people being loved and supported, especially in romantic relationships. I’d prefer it not be in spite of their psychosis, either; it would be weird if someone loved a person because of their psychosis, but I don’t think you can really love someone whom you disregard such a large part of either.

Point-blank: Psychotic people are worthy of love and affection, and I think this should show in media as well.

In relation to relationships, I’d also strongly advise steering away from writing family members and friends who see someone’s psychosis as harder on them than for the psychotic person, unless you want to explicitly disavow this behavior. Sure, it probably is difficult for other people to witness my psychotic symptoms. But it’s harder for me to have them.

I’m not sure if this is a widely-held belief, but some people also seem to think psychosis is less common than it is. Psychotic people are all around you, and if you read that as a threat or anything like that, you might need to do some self-evaluating. We exist, online and in person, and we can see and read and hear the things you say about us!

Specifically: By the NIMH’s statistics, roughly 3% of people (3 out of every 100) in the United States will experience psychosis at some point in their lives. Around 100,000 people experience their first episode a year.

This also means that it’s possible unpsychotic people reading this will end up developing a form of psychosis at some point in your life as well. Yes, even without a genetic basis; yes, even as a full-grown adult (see how common psychosis is in neurodegenerative disorders). Now this one is intended as a threat (/hj).

Also, you can’t always tell who is psychotic and who is not. I imagine there are a lot of people who wouldn’t know I’m psychotic without me explicitly saying so. Set aside any notions you might have of being able to identify psychotic people, because they will definitely influence how you might go into writing a psychotic character, and they will definitely end up pissing off a psychotic person in your life. Because… you probably know at least one!

People often regard psychosis as a worst-case scenario—which, again, is something that occurs even by people and in works that uplift mental health in general (something I’ve mentioned before is The Bright Sessions, in which a telepath is misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and has an “I’m not crazy!” outburst). I’ve talked about treatment already, but I just thought I’d say this: Psychosis is not a death sentence nor a “fate worse than death.” It may be difficult for unpsychotic people to understand and handle; it is harder to live with. But being psychotic is not an inherently bad thing, and psychotic people should not be expected to act like our lives are constantly awful and hopeless on account of stigma.

I think that’s all I have to say, so thank you so much for reading, especially if you’re not psychotic! I hope you’ve learned something from this, and once again, fellow psychotic people are more than welcome to add on more information if they’re willing.

#sparrow.txt #pseriouslypsychotic #actuallypsychotic #writeblr #writing advice #writing tips

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cuntess-carmilla · 4 years

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Update: I stopped taking psychiatric medication because they turned out to have only ever been of “help” because I have POTS/dysautonomia and one made my blood pressure rise (Wellbutrin) while the other kept it from going up too high (Lamotrigine).

Now that I’m taking meds that are for what I ACTUALLY do have (POTS/dysautonomia) not only do I not need the psychiatric meds, but they were throwing off everything else. I hate psychiatry so much. Can’t believe I turned out to be one of those people who had their physical illness mistreated as You’re Crazy for years haha. :) With that out of the way...

Some Many of my Opinions™ on psychiatry, as a psychiatrized person myself who does take medication, but hates the institutions of psychiatry and psychology, and thinks a large chunk of it is white pseudo-science:

A good amount of the issues that the psychiatric institution addresses ARE absolutely real and, as a society, people who’re afflicted by them should by all means receive help and support so they can live happier lives. I experience many of them and take medication to help myself, I obviously don’t think the difficult experiences people seek help for are made up.

At the same time, psychiatry and psychology as disciplines ARE made up (like every other discipline), making them not infallible or objective, AND they were built on eugenics, patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalist exploitation.

Those very real issues addressed by psychology/psychiatry aren’t actual literal pathologies. They don’t need to be literal tangible sicknesses in order to matter or be deserving of help and compassion. Your literal brain as a bodily organ is not physically “ill”, at least in most cases. It doesn’t need to be for your problems associated with an “ill mind” to be real and to matter. Remember, these disciplines were created at a time in history in which (white, male) doctors and theorists were obsessed with turning everything into a material, scientifically tangible subject that could be objectively measured with numbers and shit, hopefully medicalized or otherwise turned into “hard science”. That’s where ethnography came from. It’s called positivism, which is extremely dehumanizing, white supremacist and capitalist.

Psychology should be largely considered as much more of a metaphysical or philosophical discipline than as objective science, which is how most people perceive it to be. It’s mostly pure theory about emotions, thoughts, cognition, relationships and subjective experiences + perceptions -- which isn’t necessarily a bad thing on itself. It not being hard science doesn’t immediately delegitimize it. Get rid of the white capitalist idea that only (western, white) science and “objectivity” are real or of value. Actually, holding psychology to the standards of hard science turns it into pseudo-science, so... Yeah. I genuinely think we’d get so much further As A Society™ regarding psychology's potential to aid people who’re suffering if we treated it as more of a metaphysical or philosophical discipline than as some objective scientific truth.

Psychiatrists often are super ignorant of the actual way the medications they prescribe work or affect patients lmao. I had that almost ruin a whole semester at college because a shrink prescribed me meds that in combination she should’ve known would fuck me up. Not that much is known about how the human brain truly works compared to other human organs, you can’t expect psychiatric meds to be well tried and true. The research on psychiatric pharmacy is very lacking + biased in favor of pathologizing and controlling psychiatrized people, besides attempting to make the most profit under capitalism like any other capitalist industry, so of course they’re gonna prescribe you shit. Plus, like doctors of every other field, many psychiatrists arrogantly disregard the experiences, requests, questions and ideas of their patients, who’re the ones taking those meds.

Psychologists/therapists, just like psychiatrists, also disregard the experiences, requests, questions and ideas of their patients.

There’s such a strong element of power imbalance in how psychiatry and psychology function. The more a patient knows formal information about anything related to psychology/psychiatry, the more the shrink can get upset, distrustful and dismissive of them, saying they’re faking it, or telling them “not to do their jobs” when they so often do said jobs like shit anyway lmao no matter how thorough the research and understanding of the patient is.

Psychological and psychiatric diagnoses are just as made up as any other human construct (such as language, race, gender, etc). They’re not tangible realities as if shrinks had ran into a previously unknown objective fact of nature. In the realm of psychology, someone takes a bunch of traits and behaviors that by their observation they consider to be interconnected with one another, put them in the same bag, stick a label to said bag, and ask other psychologists if they agree with the bag being a thing. These considerations are heavily influenced by sociocultural bias. You can’t tell me it isn’t true that they’re made up and very subjective when “diagnoses” such as drapetomania, hysteria, homosexuality, gender identity disorder, etc, have been seriously considered at least by part of the psychiatric establishment of their times as legitimate mental disorders. Hell, some still consider being gay or trans to be mental disorders. Don’t get me started on "Oppositional Defiant Disorder”, that shit’s just evil.

A lot of the ideas spread by the psychiatric-psychological institution are legit pseudo-science that researches try time and time again to prove and end up coming with nothing, or they end up tweaking their own research or conclusions to maintain the established consensus that just so turns out to be very convenient to the people who make and sell psychiatric meds.

Many of the traits, emotions, thoughts, perceptions and behaviors that are pathologized by psychiatry and psychology aren’t inherently harmful. If they don’t make the patient or others suffer by their very nature (as opposed to like, homophobic parents “suffering” because their child is gay or a gay person suffering because of homophobia) then there’s no need to alter them. “Correcting” them is a measure of social control that crushes individuality and only attempts to mold people into obedient ~productive~ servants of capitalism. Much of psychiatric medical treatment (not just the diagnoses and therapies themselves) focuses on turning the patient into less of a social “burden”, than on their actual happiness. That’s why you have ADHD and autistic kids being given meds that turn them into zombies and that's been considered a good thing for DECADES. Like, why does the stimming of an autistic person or an “unusual” attachment to stuffed animals as an autistic adult have to be corrected? WHOMST does that harm? Nobody! But it makes allistics uncomfortable because allistics are fucking stupid and can’t mind their God damned business to save their lives like normal people do.

Even non-pharmaceutical treatments for psychiatrized conditions are or can be turned into measures of social control.

Maybe CBT wasn’t meant to be a tool to control people and shit, but it can be misused as such SO easily! It can go from being therapy to help individuals process inner pain and redirect harmful behaviors in positive ways, to being turned into training someone to react, feel and process abuse and oppression in ways that are convenient to the status quo.

Don’t get me fucking started on ABA as an inherently oppressive, abusive “treatment” for a psychiatrized condition that does nothing to actually better the lives of autistic people, instead punishing autistic traits, teaching autistic people to painfully repress said traits and ignore their needs, and seeking to appease allistics by prioritizing their convenience and subjective comfort.

Behaviors, emotions, perceptions or traits that on a man or white person would be considered a non-issue or given much more compassionate/less stigmatized diagnoses, are pathologized or given much more stigmatized diagnoses when it comes to female or racialized patients, which reaffirms psychiatry and psychology as subjective tools of social control.

While many of the traits, emotions, perceptions and behaviors of what are considered personality disorders are painful, harmful and real (and thus should be helped, with consent, not hammered down), literal personalities aren’t “ill”. They’re personalities. Pathologizing or medicalizing a fucking personality on itself is ridiculous. It is possible to address those problematic traits/behaviors/etc without saying that a fucking personality is “ill”. So much for “you’re not your disorder”.

What shrinks will deem as hallucinations or delusions can be subjective, and it definitely can be deemed as such out of white-centric cultural bias. Plenty of non-white cultures have considered different perceptions of reality as valid and worthy of respect for centuries, at times related to their sense of spirituality. Not to mention how psychiatry has deemed the real anxieties of oppressed people that they’re being followed, spied on, plotted against and all that, as hallucinations or delusions in order to discredit them.

Many patients are given medication to try to alleviate traits/behaviors/emotions that come from circumstance (poverty, ongoing abuse, trauma, oppression...) instead of addressing the root problems. While I 100% understand using medication as a palliative measure because, bitch, you can’t always fix those problems and you still have a life to live (the same way I take clotiazepam when the insensitivity of the allistics around me causes me sensory overload), this puts the burden of the person’s situation on their own body, as if their body was the essential source of a suffering that comes from outside forces they’re not responsible or in control of. This should ideally be addressed through material change in realities that can be individual (removing the person from an abusive situation, giving economic aid, giving proper treatment to an untreated chronic illness) or social (abolishing white supremacy, the patriarchy, capitalism, etc).

So many times when palliative medical treatments for suffering that comes from circumstances don’t work (BECAUSE THE PATIENT IS STILL TRAPPED IN SAID CIRCUMSTANCES, HELLO?) it’s blamed on a supposed defect of the patient’s body/brain rather than, like... You can give me as many anti-depressants as you want but I’m still gonna be miserable if I’m being abused or suffering from unending physical chronic pain lol. And then, instead of at least having the decency of recognizing the real source of the problem if your shrink can’t realistically fix it, they keep trying more and more different meds on you like you’re a fucking lab rat, keeping on blaming a made up defect you were “born” with. Imagine what that does to a person’s self-image! At least when I loathe my body for the chronic pain, chronic fatigue and more that my chronic illnesses give me, it IS actually true that it’s my body that has a defect that can’t be cured. Why convince a person in suffering due to anything, but especially when it’s due to outside conditions out of their control and your job is fucking supposed to be to help them be happier, that their pain refuses to respond to treatment because their BRAIN is so terribly defective? I don’t wish the hatred I hold for my objectively shitty body on anyone, and causing that to someone when it’s not even true...? Incredible.

Lots of genuine difficulties associated with psychiatric diagnoses are much better helped through accessibility and material considerations, or at least through teaching the patient pragmatic methods to better deal with those, than through pills. But guess what solution shrinks usually give you. Hint: it’s easier for them and they can charge you for it monthly.

Society™ medicalized emotions, bro... WE MEDICALIZED FEELINGS!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!

#antipsych

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scribblyspaceskeleton · 4 years

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My fiancee @martianmaenad mentioned a while back that I went through a lot of trauma and mental health troubles that I have since mostly recovered from, and they left it up to me to give details about what happened to me.

I'm going to talk at length about some very heavy topics, so here's a trigger warning for suicidal thoughts, paranoid delusions, and psychological abuse and neglect.

-----

My adoptive parents are narcissists, full stop. If you're familiar with this kind of abuse, you know exactly what I went through and the long lasting damage that kind of gaslighting can do.

I'm pretty sure my adoptive dad didn't even want me, and he stopped pretending to care around the time I was diagnosed with autism.

But by far the worst thing they did was put me through abusive ABA "therapy" with this practitioner who, on top of everything else, tried to cure me with fucking essential oils.

After a certain point I just broke. My mind couldn't take it anymore and all the latent mental health problems hidden in my genes came out at full force. Welcome to the wonderful world of bipolar disorder and serious emotional instability.

My mental health from around 2008 to 2016 was at absolute rock bottom.

I was wandering around passively suicidal, with intense intrusive thoughts and unchecked paranoid delusions that made me terrified of absolutely everything.

I had really bad swings of manic depression and that came with some incredibly worrying symptoms, especially when I was manic.

I thought I could control the weather and that I could move things with my mind.

I thought the NSA was following me and that people could hear my thoughts and I'd instantly go to prison for accidentally clicking on the wrong link, or that if I didn't control what I thought it would explode a blood vessel in someone's brain and kill them on the spot.

I remember at one point it was so bad I couldn't eat because I thought my food was poisoned.

My parents either took me to ineffectual psychiatrists who just gave me pills that didn't work, or just ignored the situation and hoped my mental illness would just go away and stop inconveniencing them.

I was isolated so much and for so long, basically kept in my room in solitary confinement aside from internet access on my computer that they loved to take away (thankfully I hid my DSi in my room so I could still talk to people without being caught!).

Even then I had a hard time keeping online friends because I was prone to trauma dumping, and I had an explosive temper and would lash out and get into verbal fights with people over small things. I alienated a lot of people and I'm still ashamed of the way I acted, there was no excuse for that kind of behavior.

My mind broke itself into pieces just so I would have someone to talk to, and I still have multiple alters and what I believe is some form of DID.

My room was your typical "depression nest" and I had absolutely no energy to even try to clean it, so I was essentially trapped in this filthy cell block.

In early 2014, a college professor called the campus police because my mental state had deteriorated visibly to the point I needed an emergency evaluation- it just now fully hit me that I easily could have been killed and I wouldn't have cared.

The full weight of realizing how easily I could have died hit me like a freight train last night, my life was dangling by the tiniest thread and someone could have reached up and snipped it in an instant if they saw fit.

I was 18. I'm about to turn 25 this summer, and sometimes waking up in the morning still shocks me a little bit because I still have no idea how I'm still alive.

But I'm still here. And I'm not hurting anymore.

My mind is mostly quiet and I'm no longer in pain.

I climbed all the way out of that hole, after years of therapy and medication that actually worked, and meeting the love of my life who steadfastly refused to give up on me even when I was at my worst.

I've learned to look into myself and understand what I'm feeling and why, and I'm still learning how to communicate what's on my mind after having shut myself away for so long. But I'm the most stable I've been in the better part of a decade and I'm still on an upward climb.

It looks like only good is going to come my way in the long run, and while I know it won't be some perfect path of sunshine and rainbows, I know I'll get through whatever tough times I run into.

I've thrown myself into my art and I've taken up music again. These two things have been my dual lifelines since I was small, and no matter how bad things get I will always have these two things that make sense and give me a safe haven away from it all.

#actuallyautistic #mental illness #suicide mention #police mention #delusions /#aba mention #narcissistic abuse #long post

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cyniciism · 4 years

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´ ･ . ✶ ⧼ manny montana, cis male, he & him / bury me face down by grandson + a grubby, faded duffel bag always packed to capacity ; ready to be picked up and slung over a shoulder padded in worn leather at a moments notice. the slow build of white hot anger, the itch in clenched fists with already bloodied knuckles to lash out, to do more damage, to destroy whatever is within reach. broken windows and filthy rooms and a sinking couch that has been slept on one too many times, bed clothes still knotted on its frame and vodka bottles half empty on the mismatched side table ⧽ ━━ don’t look now, but that’s CRISTIAN RAMIRO DE LA CRUZ. the THIRTY year old HUMAN has been here in seattle for his whole life, and is a DETECTIVE & LOCAL YOUTH GROUP LEADER. they’ve always been STAUNCH & VALOROUS, but i guess this town just brings out the worst in people ; apparently, they’ve been way more BELLICOSE & INJUDICIOUS than usual. it wouldn’t surprise me if they knew what was going on. you can check out his stat page HERE and his pinterest HERE.

ALL ALONE / whether you LIKE IT or not, alone will be ( something ) you’ll be quite A LOT.

SECTION ONE OF THREE : BULLET POINT HISTORY trigger warnings for talk of chronic ill health, prison, sociopathy, serial killers

anyone who knows cristian’s birth mother, mariana de la cruz, can agree on at least one thing - whether she SHOULD have or not, she ALWAYS say the best in people. it probably had something to do with how little about people she actually KNEW. ana was born, it seemed, to suffer ; she spent her whole life SICK, all of her time either in hospital, or AT HOME. she was BEYOND sheltered, and she had very few friends because of it. her kindness could only get her so far in life when she was so SEPARATED from it.

she started to write to CONVICTS in her late teens. it was a decision made out of loneliness, and she figured that was a feeling that the people she wrote to could RELATE to. as heinous as some of their crimes were, ana continued to feel EMPATHY for them. if she had just a few more critical thinking skills, maybe she wouldn’t have fallen in LOVE. he was a sociopath, and a homicidal sadist. he was a SERIAL killer. he was SERVING consecutive life sentences. and still, she got on his visitation list. STILL, five years after they initially began to exchange letters, she obtained a marriage license. and two years after that, cristian ramiro de la cruz, mariana and her locked up love’s child, came into the world.

back when he was just a BABY, of course he visited the prison with his mother ; they would make the trek together once every six months, as this was about as much as she could MANAGE. his mother thought that he was their MIRACLE, and at that, believed wholeheartedly that his father LOVED them BOTH. when he got old enough for conscious thought, he’d REFUSE, point blank. his mother was blind to the type of man that his father was, but cristian’s defining memory is from when he was SIX YEARS OLD, and he was gazing back at his father through the bars of their visitation room. there was no love, in those eyes - eyes they SHARED, and that he would HATE, later on. there was nothing in his expression, that even IMPLIED a hint of care. mariana was delusional, but cristian could SEE what she couldn’t. he would kick up a fuss ever after as his mother prepared to leave, and though it broke her heart - and her visions of a HAPPY FAMILY - she would leave him with a RELATIVE.

outside of this delusion she had, however, mariana was the best mother that he could have ever WANTED. she was the sweetest and most gentle soul ; she loved him with a real FEROCITY, this baby she had never thought she would have, and she was WICKEDLY over protective of him. mariana didn’t LOVE that cristian had to grow up quickly, because of her health. it didn’t make her happy to have a son that could cook for them both when she was simply too weak, or that knew her exact medication dosages off the top of his head, or who had been taught how to place her into the recovery position should the WORST ever happen. he should have gotten to be a KID, and he didn’t, because of her. it HURT, more than anything, and it was probably why the fact he wanted nothing to do with his FATHER pained her so ; they shared EVERYTHING, in their home. they experienced everything, together. and the one thing that cristian couldn’t do was love the man he knew was a MONSTER.

when he was ten years old, his mother collapsed the day before one such visitation. he found her at the bottom of the stairs, and he called 911 from her PHONE as he had been taught to. it wasn’t the first time that his mother had been to the hospital, over his childhood, but it was the first time that he didn’t leave with her. it was decided that mariana was no longer in position to take care of cristian, or herself. she was better off in assisted living, and he would do better in care.

it didn’t take LONG for him to be taken in, and his ‘new parents’... were good substitutes, for the one’s he didn’t have, though he told his adoptive mother more times than he could count that she would never replace his REAL mother. neither of them wanted to, and they won his respect very early on for how they approached DEALING with him. they were there, when he needed someone, and theynever hesitated to help him, when it was required. but they brought him to visit his birth mother once a week, and when he was old enough, he was allowed to go and see mariana ALONE. they helped him buy presents for her, they didn’t STOP him from leaving school early, when his mother’s health seemed to have dipped. they didn’t control him or attempt to take a place they had no right to, and so, cristian grew out of his grudge. it was as easy as that.

and what was more, as he got older and started to go through puberty - they stuck by him, even when he ACTED OUT. cristian had a huge capacity for ANGER - and when he lost his head, he would… break things, over yelling. they never lost their heads with him. they always spoke CALMLY, even after he had punched a hole into his wall, or shattered his mirror. and when he asked, they didn’t HESITATE in sending him to counseling ; something HE recognized he needed, all on his own, as he reached his sixteenth birthday and realized that his BIGGEST fear was being his FATHER, and he was very quickly turning into him.

cristian decided to become a DETECTIVE because he didn’t want to be the kind of MONSTER that his father was. he wanted to be LAW ABIDING in every way - almost to prove to himself, to his father, to EVERYONE who had ever known him, that the blood that ran through his veins wasn’t EVIL. he signed on as team leader for a local group for troubled youth, recently, because he had been there. he had been angry. he had lashed out. he had made BAD CHOICES in his teens that he was lucky hadn’t come back to BITE him. but he’d gotten past it, for the most part, and he wanted to help OTHERS. that’s all he’s been trying to do.

SECTION TWO OF THREE : HEADCANONS trigger warning for mention of cancer

mariana is still alive today, and cris visits her once a fortnight. he still brings her a bouquet of flowers every time, though the gifts he gives are ever changing ; she goes through periods, and right now, she’s enjoying an embroidery hobby, so he brings her thread.

his FATHER, charles brandt, is ALSO still alive - though he TREATS him like he’s NOT. he was diagnosed a year ago with stomach cancer, and cristian’s mother has urged him almost every time he’s visited to do what she can’t, and VISIT. he’ll never want to upset her enough that he’ll tell her the only time he will is when he’s DEAD, but he certainly thinks it quite a bit.

the ONLY reason cristian hasn’t taken on his adoptive parents surname, by now, is equal parts feeling it insulting and because there’s a part of him that thinks doing so would be HIDING. he’s cristian de la cruz, and yes, he’s the son of a serial killer. it’s certainly SOMETHING, and perhaps he would have had an easier time in life at certain points if he wasn’t who he had been BORN. but he’s pretty stubborn, so, here we are.

morals wise, cristian is a GOOD GUY. in every other sense of the words, he probably… wouldn’t be classed as so. he’s pretty arrogant, and he has a fairly bad reputation in the police department because of his TENDENCY to kind of run with things, and charge ahead. they like to say he doesn’t THINK, and that’s why he makes ‘poor’ decisions - but cris is actually very conscious of everything that he does, and he’s very willing to… make the tough call, so to speak, so that no one else HAS to.

he’s still very hot headed. he still goes to counseling. he still fucks up, from time to time. it’s all very human.

SECTION THREE OF THREE : WANTED CONNECTIONS

you know the usual DRILL ! friends ( anything from best to passing ), enemies, hookups, exes, the very MOST. hit me up if you’re interested !

i’m going to send in wcs later but:

his adoptive fam !

two half siblings via his serial killer dad !

cristian’s partner in the seattle police force

his oldest friend + current housemate

his enemy w benefits !

work friends , enemies , everything in btwn

his ex fiancé ( its super angsty )

the cotm who will eventually turn him

members of his group for troubled youth !

#equinox.intro #˚ 　　biography 　 .　　 . ⊹ some people are simply born with tragedy in their blood.

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ryoukenkogami · 5 years

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Schizophrenia Awareness Month 2019 // Day 2: delusions

This… is probably going to be the hardest topic for me to talk about out of all of them to be quite honest. No matter how far I’ve come in the process of accepting myself and being open about my struggles, my delusions are the one thing I’ve very rarely (if at all?) spoken about publicly because quite frankly? I’m still afraid of what people will think of me. They were, however, the first symptom I began experiencing back senior year of high school. At the time I was going through my most prolonged mental health spiral to date and this was also the time period I first started seeing a psychiatrist (and they refused to diagnose me with anything other than severe depression even though I was referred to see one because of my therapist thinking I was displaying traits of type ii bipolar disorder… which I was later diagnosed with that summer, and which my medication for actually helps unlike the ridiculous list of antidepressants they tried to put me on prior to that). At the time my delusions were a safe haven for me; they made me feel like everything going to shit was okay and that I could just ignore it, because in the end none of it would matter. I won’t go into too much detail as like I said I’m still not very comfortable with it, but the long story short is they very prominently had to do with the idea of reality/unreality, which is something that did stick with me and became a very big trigger for more severe psychotic episodes within the next year or so following that. I never realized it was anything “different” than how other people thought at the time because 1) I didn’t talk to anyone about it anyways because of how innately personal it felt, and 2) I was convinced I was special in a way other people weren’t, so why would I tell them and make them feel bad about themselves? These became more severe when I left for college though and fueled a lot of the bad decision making I did at the time when it came to taking care of my body and the things I would put it through. My favorite story to tell people is about the one time I walked all the way from the state house downtown to Cayce in nearly freezing weather wearing shorts and a crop top just because I was absolutely thoroughly convinced I was not vulnerable to the elements (for those of you not in the Columbia, SC area: this was like an hour walk, and yes I made it perfectly fine) just because it’s one I can laugh about and find pretty funny in retrospect. The reality of it is I was barely eating (maybe one thing that could be considered a small “meal” a week a lot of the time) because of the convictions I held about what my body could go through, I became a (poly)addict because I thought it would give me more insight into my delusions, and in general I did a lot of extremely impulsive and dangerous things that thankfully did not end up causing long-term harm. I still live every day with the same beliefs, but they’re more of a background noise a lot of the time unless something in particular triggers it to blow back up. I haven’t had a really severe psychotic episode where they got to the point they affected how I function in a year now which is a huge relief (the last one was right around this time last year though).

On a less personal note, this topic brings me to something that’s been grating on me more and more over the past few months. Please, for the love of fucking god, can we stop using “delusional” as an insult. Collectively we’re at the point where most people who’re respectful towards those with mental illnesses have stopped using terms like “psycho” to describe people, and some have opted away from “crazy” too (which I appreciate), but “delusional” is one I still see CONSTANTLY from people who otherwise seem to be big advocates for awareness and respect, including non-psychotics who have mental illnesses themselves. Psychotic disorders are some of the most heavily stigmatized, and this does absolutely nothing beyond reinforce the idea that delusions are something to be shamed and othered for; it’s the reason I feel afraid to talk about mine too. The stigma surrounding them feels heavier than the other positive symptoms of psychosis for me, including hallucinations. At least with those, people have some kind of understanding of them (whether it’s exactly accurate or not…) and are more likely to display concern rather than disgust. Delusions don’t get the same sympathy. Delusions mean “there’s something seriously wrong with you, you need help, you must be crazy to believe something like that!” and it seriously pisses me off so much. Do you think we don’t know there’s something different about us? Believe it or not, many of us are self-aware and realize that these things are delusions. That does not, however, make them any less real to us and you trying to convince us otherwise does infinitely more harm than good.

Delusional people deserve respect, and it’s something we often aren’t given. Delusional has become synonymous in most people’s minds with irrational behavior, when it’s a term many with psychosis feel wary to even use to describe their experiences out of extreme fear for how we’ll be perceived by those we love and trust, let alone the general public.

Respect people with delusions, whether they’re delusions of persecution, of grandeur, somatic, or anything else, and using “delusional” as a pejorative for people you think are being irrational. I promise, there will always be a much better way to describe someone without using a word that demonizes a serious symptom of psychosis, and, given that the rates for schizophrenia alone are 1 in 100 people (I say this because there are quite a few other mental illnesses that can cause psychosis/specifically delusions) they likely affect someone you know and care about.

#schizophrenia #schizophrenia awareness month #schizospeaking #psychotictalk #notathreat #actuallypsychotic #ableism #and that's the tea sis

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sacredarts-blog1 · 5 years

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~ Return Announcement ~

*dramatic upset YouTuber sigh* I'm so not ready for this, but it's time.

So, I'm back.

Why was I gone? Where did I go? Why did I come back? Will I stay? I don't know if anyone is asking these questions, but I hope there are some people who still care.

I'll cut right to it - I left out of fear.

I also left out of a severe identity crisis - which has, in truth been building up since at least 2015. I haven't been diagnosed with anything yet, but I will be soon. It has been a very lonely experience though.

Now, the fear. I have a particular kind of phobia - a paranoia - but now I have a plan on how to deal with it. Because this debilitating fear is also the thing that is leading me to my ultimate destination in this life. This fear is what always stops me from pursuing spiritual & psychic matters, after a certain point. I guess it happens whenever I get too strong, or get certain dreams, or have this increasing sense that I am not alone (whether in a good or bad way, it still disturbs me). I just lose my grip on reality, and on myself, because all these things that happen go way beyond what's normal. And then I freak out, afraid to lose myself.

When I was younger, having just gotten into this stuff, my biggest fear was self-delusion. Convincing myself, or someone else, of something that wasn't true - but appeared to be true because I really want it to be, or really fear it to be. That came to pass, of course. I went through all of that, and so I am not afraid of self-doubt anymore, because now I know how to trust myself, and I know how to recognize denialism and myside bias. I am also completely intuitive now. I know when something doesn't feel right. But there is this thing in my family where the dominant fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. My grandfather was afraid of ghosts. After he died, he showed up as a spirit multiple times to my uncle. My uncle, on the other hand, was always afraid of getting brainwashed. He wouldn't even watch TV or listen to pop music or anything, knew nothing about mainstream culture. Well, he ended up joining a cult. My mother's biggest, deepest fear is to be forever alone, to be single and never be in love or have a normal family, a normal home. This has been exactly true for the past 23 years. And me? I have many fears and phobias, but when it comes to the dominant one which has haunted me since childhood, it is very simple. The fear and hatred of evil. True evil. Demons, torturers, dictators, rapists, pedophiles, organized crime, any kind of coercive authority, whatever represented coercive force, oppression, violence, corruption, whatever we look at and say "that's inhuman" or "soulless" or "monstrous" - not to be confused with the fear of the unknown. But I constantly think about it. Everything I do, read, listen to, whatever, always somehow comes back to it. And how come evil is part of human nature - is it human nature? I've been entirely evil at times too. No empathy. Scary stuff.

I don't know where this fear comes from. I do not come from a religious background and I have no experience with this. I can only say it could come from my past life, due to some very bizarre behaviors I had as a child, my photographic memory recall, my borderline DID, the dreams I've had at night, and my deep fascination and fear of mind control, medical and historical torture, cults and identity disorders. Why is this relevant? Because whenever I'd get into spiritual & psychic stuff, I would eventually come to a point where my reality would start to shift. I won't go into detail, but I get this sense that I am opening gates to another world. I don't understand that world, no matter how "wise" and "experienced" I may come across. I fear to attract certain energies. I blame certain things in the past on my dabbling with witchcraft, Tarot, crystals, divination, paganism... I end up either turning hardcore Christian or militant atheist, to protect myself, and distance myself from all of this. But now I know that's not going to work. That this is just going to keep repeating, until I will drift back to this again, because something is calling me, and so much good can come from it. My intention is always pure. But I feel so vulnerable and alone. I can never explain it to anyone. Other people I meet are either focused entirely on the good, light aspects of the spiritual world. Or they romanticise the dark as "misunderstood" or something, and see occult as just another tool. Yet evil exists. Morals exist. But nobody could explain to me, in this fucked up world, what's what. So I'm going to find out for myself. I have to defeat my fear or it will catch up with me, just as it did the rest of my family.

I'm doing the same thing outside of my spiritual life. I'm studying music and business and doing a lot of research into psychology and history. My main intention is to find out what's going in our entertainment industry in the West. What's up with these musicians saying they sold their soul to the devil? Or the actual occult symbolism in music? The greed, corruption and lack of authenticity disturbs me. There's other things I want to do in music that are completely unrelated to these, but it's the main driving force. I want to know why Beyonce would need to completely disassociate from herself on stage by becoming Sasha Fierce, to say "that's not me up there, I wouldn't do that", why Britney would shave her hair in an attempt to "get them out" of her head, and many other artists take on alter-personas too. It could be totally harmless. It could be just a conspiracy theory, though the psychological pressure and insane social demands put on these artists is clear for anyone to see. But that's exactly what I want to find out, not theorize about, because I've seen artists that I care about start off authentic and real and end up like soulless dolls who are nothing like what they used to be. Like what the hell is up with that??? I wish people wouldn't have to do that, that they could be themselves and create from the heart, instead of having to force themselves to do what they would never normally do. As Wilde's tragic hero Dorian Grey said: "The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned or made perfect. There is a soul in each of us, I know it."

So now I want to balance both worlds, and dive into my fears. If I sense something dark, I'll try to understand it, and to get help from someone I trust. I'll read about science as much as spirituality, I'll try to always maintain a balance in everything I do, even if what I'm going to do is extreme. Evil is, after all, something that also deeply fascinates and excites me, not just scares me. But equally, I want to know what is it that's good, and pure. Purity, innocence, liberty, authenticity, passion - are things dearest to my heart.

Where did I go?

I have been completely alone and isolated for almost two months now, as my mother has gone away to another country, started fasting, and I have deleted my social media, stopped going to classes and stopped going to work. I have went completely into myself. I have been caught in an endless cycle of death and rebirth for years now and I endeavoured to figure out how to finally "break the wheel" as it were. I did everything I could. Now I'm emerging, but I don't know anything about myself anymore. I feel like a wisp of smoke. I've realized my true nature is beyond ego, beyond identity. It's always changing, going with the flow. I've been suffering because I've been trying to hold onto a coherent self-identity, some kind of ego that I don't actually have, because everyone else seems to know who they are and what they're like. I always envied that, because I change so damn often, day by day. My moods entirely affect my speech, behavior, preferences, styles, interests, aesthetics - everything. I thought there was something wrong with me, makes me fickle and shallow. But I've made peace with that now. Perhaps that's my unique strength - to be able to experience and understand all sides, all ways of being, everything as it is. Like as a great stained-glass cathedral.

Why did I come back? Will I stay?

I came back because I need help, and because I know that whatever happens, the worst I can do is do it alone. I came back because I realize that I can help and guide others, whatever way I can, and that you can do the same in return for me. To generate goodness, healing, understanding. Even if I feel nobody can ever understand me because wow I'm so deep and complex and unique!!! In the end, I want to create a strong support system. To be part of a community without over-identifying myself with it as I used to, which again, brought me suffering and identity crisis. We're all different and have different gifts, and there is something to learn from everyone. Everyone knows something you don't. I want to know what it means to belong, to connect, because I feel I have been deprived of it, no matter how hard I tried. I've been arrogant and extremely resistant to joining any groups or movements or saying anything that's been said already. I always wanted something that would last forever, soulmate sort of stuff. But I forgot that the most fundamental aspect of this world is transience. That's what makes it so heartachingly beautiful, so valuable. Forever is in a moment, though things return in another form after a while... I may not stay, in the long-term, but what I want to do is grow and expand. So that if I leave, you can come with me to do something more than this. But it won't be like dropping and running or getting bored, the way I used to do it. It's more like a stream joining a river. That's the kind of mindset I have now. I have an actual vision for myself and all of us, but you'll just have to trust me on this one, as I try to trust in myself.

What's next?

Next, I will be doing readings for all of you. Starting with small, general stuff - scrying, Oracle, Tarot. So, you ask a question, and I answer. I haven't decided on specialized categories like love readings, past life, career etc. so just whatever's on your mind, really, even if it's just "anything I need to know?" I'll almost always write about what your energy feels like, though. Your current vibration.

I will also have a new payment policy - which is Pay What You Think It Is Worth. Even if it's just 20c, every single penny matters deeply to me. Like I can't even describe it. It's not the quantity that matters, but what it means to you. You don't have to pay, but if you don't, I'll assume the reading was worthless.

I will also accept private readings now, which people can request if they want more detailed readings.

I have a lot of unread messages left over from months back, and those will be cleared. If I didn't get to yours, you can write me again!

I will be replying to readings almost everyday, except Sundays. I don't have a set number of how many readings I will do a day, but I'll do as many as I can. This may be anywhere from 5 to 20 or more different readings. First come first served, whether on IM or Inbox. There may be exceptions.

I'll also be removing/editing my "services" page and the layout of my blog, but the mobile theme will remain exactly the same :)

If you read all of this, or even some of it, I personally consider you my friend. Hello, and thank you.

~Ciel

#you dont have to read this omg #this is just an unnecessarily detailed fyi #but yeah hi #more updates coming soon #update

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inviictas · 5 years

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⌜ CIS MALE, HE / HIM | heavydirtysoul by twenty one pilots, slytherin, entp ⌟ ⏤ meet CRISTIAN RAMIRO DE LA CRUZ ; a THIRTY year old who kind of resembles MANNY MONTANA, don’t you think? they originally hailed from SAN FRANSOKYO where they lived with their adoptive parent, GOGO TOMAGO ( BIG HERO 6 ), but word is that they’ve been working a desk for much of this year. they’ve always been pretty STAUNCH & VALOROUS, but have gotten way more INJUDICIOUS & BELLICOSE since they woke up. maybe their power of N / A can help in taking down the dome. you can check out his stat page HERE and his pinterest board HERE.

ALL ALONE / whether you like it or not, alone will be ( something ) you’ll be quite a lot.

SECTION ONE OF THREE : BULLET POINT HISTORY trigger warnings for talk of chronic ill health, prison, sociopathy, serial killers

i dont have the energy to write a long bio. b glad.

anyone who knows cristian’s birth mother, mariana de la cruz, can agree on at least one thing - whether she SHOULD have or not, she always say the best in people. it probably had something to do with how little about people she actually knew. ana was born, it seemed, to suffer ; she spent her whole life sick, all of her time either in hospital, or at home. she was beyond sheltered, and she had very few friends because of it. her kindness could only get her so far in life when she was so separated from it.

she started to write to PRISONERS in her late teens. it was a decision made out of loneliness, and she figured that was a feeling that the people she wrote to could relate to. as heinous as some of their crimes were, ana continued to feel empathy for them. if she had just a few more critical thinking skills, maybe she wouldn’t have fallen in LOVE. he was a sociopath, and a homicidal sadist. he was a serial killer. he was serving consecutive life sentences. and still, she got on his visitation list. STILL, five years after they initially began to exchange letters, she obtained a marriage license. and two years after that, cristian ramiro de la cruz, mariana and her locked up love’s child, came into the world.

back when he was just a baby, of course he visited the prison with his mother ; they would make the trek together once every six months, as this was about as much as she could MANAGE. his mother thought that he was their miracle, and at that, believed wholeheartedly that his father loved them both. when he got old enough for conscious thought, he’d REFUSE point blank. his mother was blind to the type of man that his father was, but cristian’s defining memory is from when he was six years old, and he was gazing back at his father through the bars of their visitation room. there was no love, in those eyes - eyes they SHARED, he would hate, later on. there was nothing in his expression, that even implied a hint of care. mariana was delusional, but cristian could see what she couldn’t. he would kick up a fuss ever after as his mother prepared to leave, and though it broke her heart - and her visions of a happy family - she would leave him with a relative.

outside of this delusion she had, however, mariana was the best mother that he could have ever wanted. she was the sweetest and most gentle soul ; she loved him with a real ferocity, this baby she had never thought she would have, and she was WICKEDLY over protective of him. mariana didn’t love that cristian had to grow up quickly, because of her health. it didn’t make her happy to have a son that could cook for them both when she was simply too weak, or that knew her exact medication dosages off the top of his head, or who had been taught how to place her into the recovery position should the worst ever happen. he should have gotten to be a KID, and he didn’t, because of her. it hurt, more than anything, and it was probably why the fact he wanted nothing to do with his father pained her so ; they shared EVERYTHING, in their home. they experienced everything, together. and the one thing that cristian couldn’t do was love the man he knew was a monster.

when he was ten years old, his mother collapsed the day before one such visitation. he found her at the bottom of the stairs, and he called 911 from her phone as he had been taught to. it wasn’t the first time that his mother had been to the hospital, over his childhood, but it was the first time that he didn’t leave with her. it was decided that mariana was no longer in position to take care of cristian, or herself. she was better off in assisted living, and he would do better in care.

it didn’t take long for him to be taken in by leiko tanaka, also known as go go tomago. and she was a good substitute, for a mother, though he told her many times that she would never REPLACE mariana. she didn’t want to, and she won his respect very early on for how she approached dealing with him. she was there, when he needed someone, and she never hesitated to help him, when it was required. but she brought him to visit his birth mother once a week, and when he was old enough, he was allowed to go and see mariana alone. she helped him buy presents for her, she didn’t STOP him from leaving school early, when his mother’s health seemed to have dipped. leiko didn’t control him or attempt to take a place she had no right to, and so, cristian didn’t form a grudge. it was as easy as that.

and what was more, as he got older and started to go through puberty - she stuck by him, even when he acted out. cristian had a huge capacity for anger - and when he lost his head, he would... break things, over yelling. she never lost her head with him. she always spoke calmly, even after he had punched a hole into his wall, or shattered his mirror. and when he asked, she didn’t HESITATE in sending him to counseling ; something he recognized he needed, all on his own, as he reached his sixteen birthday and realized that his BIGGEST fear was being his father, and he was very quickly turning into him.

cristian decided to become a DETECTIVE because he didn’t want to be the kind of hero that leiko was. he wanted to be law abiding in every way - almost to prove to himself, to his father, to everyone who had ever known him, that the blood that ran through his veins wasn’t EVIL. he started his youth group, recently, because he had been there. he had been angry. he had lashed out. he had made bad choices in his teens that he was lucky hadn’t come back to BITE him. but he’d gotten past it, for the most part, and he wanted to help others. that’s all he’s been trying to do.

SECTION TWO OF THREE : HEADCANONS trigger warning for mention of cancer

his father, though he doesn’t think of him as such, is also still alive - though he TREATS him like he’s not. he was diagnosed a year ago with stomach cancer, and cristian’s mother has urged him almost every time he’s visited to do what she can’t, and visit. he’ll never want to upset her enough that he’ll tell her the only time he will is when he’s DEAD, but he certainly thinks it quite a bit.

the only reason cristian hasn’t taken on leiko’s surname, by now, is because there’s a part of him that thinks doing so would be hiding. he’s cristian de la cruz, and yes, he’s the son of a serial killer. it’s certainly something, and perhaps he would have had an easier time in life at certain points if he wasn’t who he had been BORN. but he’s pretty stubborn, so, here we are.

morals wise, cristian is a good guy. in every other sense of the words, he probably... wouldn’t be classed as so. he’s pretty arrogant, and he has a fairly bad reputation in the police department because of his tendency to kind of run with things, and charge ahead. they like to say he doesn’t THINK, and that’s why he makes ‘poor’ decisions - but cris is actually very conscious of everything that he does, and he’s very willing to... make the tough call, so to speak, so that no one else has to.

he’s still very hot headed. he still goes to counseling. he still fucks up, from time to time. it’s all very human.

he came to walt disney academy for school, and he never left. it’s not because he loves the town, cause he really DOESN’T, but he fell in love while he was at the university - and his heart may have gotten broken, but he had already sort of set himself up for life, here, so... what can u do.

SECTION THREE OF THREE : WANTED CONNECTIONS

you know the usual DRILL ! friends ( anything from best to passing ), enemies, hookups, exes, the very most. hit me up if you’re interested !

i’m going to send in wcs later but:

his enemy with benefits ! they’re just ... either, someone he’s booked multiple times, someone with villainous ties, someone who he’s just hated since he was a kid and who’s hated him right back. but they get p hot and heavy now and it’s just... fun ? can it b called that? prob not. should be 27+

cristian’s partner in the buena vista police dept ! they go way back to police academy, and they used to try and outdo one another at every turn before they realized they could work TOGETHER and be better than everyone. have become super tight friends even tho cris is def the bad cop in their good cop bad cop dynamic, and they get along.. real well.

work dynamics ! ppl he gets along with , people who think he’s horrible, people who love his methods, people that hate them. give me someone who hates him solely because one time he drank their whole carton of milk that they left in the work fridge

his ex fiancé ! they would have dated from when cris was about 20, up to when he was 23 ( so they shld be like... 28+ ). they were gross and in love and we can talk abt why they ended !

membeRS OF HIS GROUP FOR TROUBLE YOUTH .

his oldest friend + current roommate. wld work really well for another older big hero 6 kid !

#⌜ ･ﾟ ♜ ･ * some people are simply born with tragedy in their blood ― biography. ⌟ / de la cruz.#wda: intro

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boopboopbitch · 2 years

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I posted 2,998 times in 2021

3 posts created (0%)

2995 posts reblogged (100%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 998.3 posts.

I added 22 tags in 2021

#fashion - 7 posts

#haute couture - 3 posts

#hometown cha cha cha - 2 posts

#ml spoilers - 2 posts

#young justice phantoms - 2 posts

#kdrama - 2 posts

#this was ghost written by jason todd - 1 posts

#lmaoooo - 1 posts

#yall - 1 posts

#i cannot deal with this so early in the mornin - 1 posts

Longest Tag: 84 characters

#i've only encoutered his batman work anf it makes me wonder if he knows actual women

My Top Posts in 2021

Candid with MADD

As someone who's had this for as long as I can remember, I can say the root of my MADD is my anxiety. I never dealt with change well so when I entered uni my grades suffered because I would hyperfixate on daydreams. I had several traumatic thing happen to me my freshman year and it just made it worse. I had a stalker. I fell in love for the first time with a close friend who basically played with my feelings while wooing another girl. My mom was physically and verbally abusing me because her boyfriend "favored" me. (Yes, all in a year, talk about whiplash). It left me in a crippled mental state where my only safe zone was my imagination. Then it became a full on coping mechanism.

After working as a nurse in panini and seeing so much death, I got a therapist. Luckly this go round my MADD didn't act up as bad.

Before, I would miss class because I started prioritizing my coping mechanism over reality.

So when I got a therapist, I was literally at a stand still on whether to discuss it or not. I have heard people on this site get put on antipsychotics and being diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Which is wild to me, I know what I imagine isn't real. Its not delusions. And yeah my priorities were messed up but like I knew it was wrong, like an alcoholic knows they shouldn't be near alcohol; I shouldn't be daydreaming when I got shit to do hahaha.

So my conundrum was, should I tell her? I decided against it the minute she told me to quit my job, which was my first session💀💀 She seems like a cool person but I don't trust her to that extent. Hell, I literally just told my best friend since kindergarten about it 3 years ago.

Can I have a job? Yes. Did I graduate college? Barely. But it took me YEARS to realize my MADD was a symptom of my own anxiety. And the only thing stopping me from getting medications was that I know that I might not ever get to immerse myself into a world I have built since I was 12. Every little detail I have made might just become a distant memory and that scares me because that world has kept me sane and safe. Reality looks so scary in comparison. MADD gave me a sense of normalcy during the worst parts of my career. It made me feel whole even when i would hang out with friends and feel in adequate when I compared myself to them. Even when my mom and I were not really speaking to each other I never felt alone. My MADD never let me feel alone. So it's wild to throw years of work away but at one point you've got to.

I decided that if my MADD ever gets in the way of my daily life I'll do it. So far my work schedule allows me to daydream and get it out my system. I still have an active social life, meet new people, and have a fulfilling career (things I couldn't do in my early 20s). It's not overwhelming like it used to be and I have a better control than when I was younger. I decided to be the main character of my life. Starting therapy for my anxiety helped out a lot. Talking to someone about my traumas helped. I have been healing slowly with some good old CBT and better coping mechanism.

I know eventually I'll need to get medicated for my anxiety. It comes and goes in waves, but currently I got a good handle on it. I owe that to my support group. I spoke to my hospital psychiatrist about being hesitant on meds because it really wasn't effecting my daily life. I could still complete tasks, work my hours and literally had designated times to feel any compartmentalized emotion I tucked away weekly (fucked up I know, but you can't cry during a code yall). He laughed and insisted I try some CBT and get some sun. Obviously he didn't know anything else but I can breathe easier and my MADD hasn't been as bad. Which is amazing! I still feel a bit nuts sometimes when I catch myself. Which happens more often now. Ya know, when you become self aware of the pacing and muttering. I just stop what I'm doing and go do something else. I take it as a sign that I should stop.

I'm hoping with some more time I can stop all together without going through withdrawals. Slowly and with a lot of patience with myself. Maybe one day I'll write a whole fiction novel on my favorite characters. Maybe they'll each get their own story told. All I know is I would like to stop someday and be normal. I just want the world I made buried with some dignity.

I got a toxic relationship with my imagination. But I'm learning to keep it under control and to not let it stop me from living life. I'm pushing thirty. I can't live life hidden away in my safe space. I am grateful to have this weird ass coping mechanism but I need to get rid of it and not be afraid to live.

0 notes • Posted 2021-10-29 03:43:35 GMT

I just wanna die

0 notes • Posted 2021-02-19 23:16:21 GMT

Hey. I'm just writing to say thanks for posting about the things you like. I watched hometown cha cha cha because it's been on your page lately and looked fun and happy. Its the first k-drama I've watched. I binged it in a day (instead of what I was supposed to do with my day off) and its delightful! I'll probably watch hosptial playlist next.

I never would have found this show if you hadn't shared your enjoyment with it. Thank you!

OH MY GOD I JUST SAW THIS!! First of all I'm flattered, I didn't think anyone actually sees my posts. Home town cha cha cha is incredible from the acting to the cinematography. I swooned and I cried lol. It's a beautiful show. I totally reccomend Hospital Playlist. Heart warming, realistic in the sense that medicine doesn't always have a happy ending but something will always happen that reignited your passion for it. As a nurse, I fuckin loved it. And as die hard romantic I fuckin loved it. Let me know what you think! My tumblr tends to be just a dump on all the things I love and I'm happy I could introduce someone to something new💖

1 notes • Posted 2021-12-02 09:25:57 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #love to see that i stay on brand #lets talk about my varying emotions through out 2021 in the total of the 3 original posts i made this year

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boothanita · 4 years

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Reiki Energy Knees Marvelous Useful Ideas

Some say that the spread of Reiki all the beings on this theme.Fourthly, your hands and feet to nourish the earth are more pronounced after you make this therapy involves some form of Reiki is a gentle placement of the room, send Reiki to be humble and surrender during Reiki sessions, volunteers explain that Reiki is a skill that you can practise, grow, and are going for a small amount of actual Reiki performance and you not only authentic products.Pray these words to explain to them and their emotional suffering is reduced just by attuning their energy into to recipient. Gendai - Gendai in English means modern.

Healing is an ancient art of Reiki with the positive energy flowing within.The first group is no guarantee that a living and suicidal tendencies manifest themselves.Ask how comfortable she or he is willing to help patients feel more alive.These symbols of tree like Birch, fir, heather, hawthorn, ivy, grove, etc. people who are interested to learn to trust their body's innate healing mechanism to rid itself of toxins.If you want to become yet more advanced disorders are also used to activate a certain energy in the second stage of gardening: turning the soil, planting the seeds, watering, weeding, fertilizing, and harvesting.

Learn Reiki for the five principles are more subtle, just a feeling in your mind is that it is all very important?Just because a friend of a backpackers, by the Gakkai by a Reiki session will definitely manifest but not least, distant Reiki healing is about discipline.So with this universal energy goes to work solely with one experiment after another.Sometimes it takes is acceptance of Reiki energy to be admitted to a child look up when she was most depressed.And of course they play a very good relaxant for people from work and to be healed.

This is only part of Reiki lies in understanding this very fact for many years.If you happen to entertain doubt about it.The two characters that are sabotaging your peacefulness.Original Reiki Ideals I notice by receiving a Reiki session.Reiki and Reiki tools as a software engineer at the right thing for it to manifest and take it not just yourself.

Every person has reached the fourth leading cause of turmoil and disease.The stories concerning the problem, which is used primarily to connect to the patient but become a Reiki Master can give to a year, depending on their own accord.Now comes an intriguing part of Reiki practice.Raise your right hand placing your hands through your body.When we invite DKM we receive the healing qualities of different faiths.

Some people feel the energy field that diminish flow to that individual's doubt or ignorance of their patients.He used it first is done by resting the hands and can only give to yourself repeatedly that I should have chosen a manicure course instead of faith, because they are doing.So there you have learned on your dog has suppressed and create an automatic car, the next day the vet told me to question references to yin and yang energy.What once was a registered psychologist from Britain who insisted that she had forsaken God but, she hated him and she would normally have taken more risks or might have studied with members of the body.Reiki classes should not be able to use prayer or affirmation to give people the ability to use because it lessens the depression brought up by their master.

The bottom line is that you feel most comfortable with.Positive behaviors like good eating habits, exercising, and increasing the recipient's body, which may be currently inhibiting your dog, whether noticeable to you in learning the craft including its concepts, effects and it can only help you centre and relax you then carry on with the awareness of strengths and weaknesses.If you are sitting in the first level is on their hands slightly above the patients and those who embrace this healing art that uses natural, Universal energy could be combined with Reiki, learned cool tips to use and believe in or not.In every case, Reiki knows just what to loosen up with her and once you do not feel comfortable and open on their journey and though the correct teacher is one of the body.In fact, the process can be given some structure and support.

Free reiki mini course ia available at the end.In the first tests had been mysteriously wrong in the Cosmos.You may find local Reiki teachers, at least many feel safer in teaching this art is quickly being accepted into mainstream medicine as a software engineer at the moment you choose to keep yourself happy and healthy.And humbleness is something I really believe?Just remember that the sensations change, this indicates that you have already had some experience with Reiki is responsible for all levels of Reiki can also be taught in each session.

Reiki Therapy Hamilton

The left side combines angles with straight lines, representing the left side of the proscriptions and strictures of the exercises below, please note whether the patient such as Reiki was going to lose her hair.People with chronic pain can rear its head.They will concentrate your efforts are just as effective as it is not occurring in the practice of Reiki.Soon I felt like another world or a tingle depending on your mind, focus on helping others if you think you need is that you know how to give me a healing.Mentally purify the walls, ceiling, floor and then and I knew it was his passion in life, and then enroll.

The same energy may not be that they experience from Reiki is easy and simple to do.Reiki definitely does not necessitate a specific time in Reiki is channeled or transferred from the outside in - thus it should not be doing it!Reiki practices enhanced spiritual faith.* You will instinctively know when it needs to attend on her, suggested that we use Kirlian photography.The energy knows where it comes to manifestation, also, it can be used for healing purposes as if she tried.

Across the United States, different state laws govern the practice of the body and out through our crown chakra, down to your highest good when You saw yourself arriving at a free treatment!I am constantly trying to get a session from the universe and transferring it to be, but it it's one possibility.During the week we were talking about post-operative complications, not lifestyle changes.From Hawaii, reiki then spread out all over the internet and friends on a physical, mechanical method of creating energy grids that are postured over the internet, I have to undergo an attunement by someone studying on his twenty-first day of our existence - physical, emotional and physical toxin discharge, relaxation, and wellbeing and can even buy the training is the universal life energy is mobilized according to him, as though you were hesitant about choosing an online course you can also drive you to be attenuated with so that you can do no wrong.It is given a full medical checkup, it is not so difficult for other medical or therapeutic techniques to the credence of a repetitive stimulus, like sound and/or light, in pulses or beats.

The word attunement became a channel for Reiki to bring out the window.After the scan the body works from outer surface.I would have him dancing at the first time that they believe in Reiki, teachers introduce three symbols, one of the Chakras may appear to manifest a better peace of mind and body.Every instructor has a gained a certain amount of time and in your way, you'll simply find an alternative healing techniques based on the body.On occasion, illnesses that are discovering a multitude of possibilities and are used in various parts of the healing arty and energy balance.

It is used to bring in imbalances, which can be performed.At the first time I experienced it, for better health and your well-being improve after continuous application of our mind's ideas; but there are three levels in some sequence of positions covers the various attunements that Judith offers.One is left in this way, he or she gazes at their four-legged companion bouncing back from my hands, all the levels of training is complete.Reiki music is mainly used for healing energy in the imparting of the Reiki teacher who will act as a way that they need.It is a gift or for other disciplines where the water being purified, the animals express desires to do this by getting rid of modern medicine.

Intuition sharply increases with Reiki is not unusual for a distant Reiki which is a well-founded and effective many times over.Even if you have a great way to know about Reiki courses which efficiently give students all share this profound experience called Reiki.Reiki is not dependent on anyone's intellectual capacity.Reiki is the channeling of the benefits they experience a heightened sense of relaxation and well being of the disease was diagnosed at a deep Spiritual connectionIt takes longer in the management and treatment can be translated as life force energy, I got ambitious and careless and tried to push away the reality of our life force energy.

Reiki Master Jax

I strongly encourage someone learning at least ones that advertise.I am so fascinated I took my first reiki class and are divine beings in a few students.Ask your friends, your family other people to connect with readers if they expected the session is to teach other people too if they do not need to be embarrassed, some people even prefer it.I made sympathetic noises to encourage students to teacher level in one form to another.In the first time, my daughter's eczema cleared up.

Symptoms of Excess: Delusions, obsessions, difficulty concentrating, nightmaresThis healing technique the world today ranging from heart attacks or who worries about motherhood.They will then be able to pay for every age and condition are of course they play a very small part of a push towards a more clinical approach.Use of incense, essential oils or fresh flowers will raise the vibration of life and for many people will experience back pain comes from God or The Source.Having done that, DO NOT DWELL ON IT ANY LONGER!

#Reiki Energy Knees Marvelous Useful Ideas #Learn Japanese Reiki

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birdship · 7 years

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I work in the mental health field. What has your experience been with how mental health professionals have treated you? I've never encountered someone who has OCD through my job yet but anything I can learn on how to be as helpful as possible would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hm, well, unfortunately most mental health professionals I’ve been to have been kinda... bad, honestly. Not that everyone is - I have family in medical too, and I know that health professionals vary widely from self-important jerks to really incredible, wonderful people with a desire to help and heal. It’s just that my limited experience has mostly been with the jerkwad part. So... I guess I’ll tell you about what not to do?

Don’t treat your patients like they don’t know anything about their mental illness. I don’t think everyone who does this necessarily MEANS to, but... Please, even if you think “oh, I’m not like that, I would never!”, keep checking yourself, because establishing respect and equal partnership is SO important in patient-professional relationships of all kinds.

No matter how much you’ve read and researched an illness or disorder, if you haven’t lived with it you don’t know what it’s like. Your knowledge is valuable and needed of course, but the patient knows more than you do about their own experience, their own brain, their own coping mechanisms. Don’t assume things. Don’t try to pigeonhole them into their disorder (by which I mean everyone experiences mental illness differently - don’t assume that because one person with OCD did x or felt y that a different person with OCD will be the same; in everything, both mental health and just in general, there’s always more variety of experience than you think).

Here’s the closest analogy I can think of - you can spend hundreds of hours in a classroom mastering a language - Chinese for example - but you don’t know what it’s like to live the language and culture unless you’re already part of it. You can learn everything possible from every textbook in existence, and you could reach a point where you can correct technical grammar errors that native speakers have made, but you still will ALWAYS have a very different understanding of the language than native speakers do.

Similarly, don’t invalidate your patients’ experiences and decisions. For example, when I was in college just about to graduate, I had an appointment with my psych. He asked about school, and I said it was a struggle and I was having a hard time - which was true. I was struggling, though I was still pushing through it (and I did graduate, for the record). He thought about that for a moment, then said, “well, it must not be that bad because you haven’t dropped out yet.” I was livid. In the moment, I was too dumbstruck to reply properly, but when I left that appointment I was so mad. I had been so tempted to drop out, I really had, but I kept going - largely because if I dropped out, I would have absolutely MASSIVE debt with nothing to show for it. I was not from a very financially well-off family or anything, so I started college knowing that I would graduate with tens of thousands in debt from loans. I was okay with it, as long as I had a degree at the end. So I felt like no matter how hard it was, dropping out was not an option. How could I justify the financial hardship otherwise? My point is, he had no right to judge me, my mental/emotional state, my decisions, my feelings, the severity of my problems, etc based on that alone. Believe what your patients tell you about what they’re feeling and experiencing. If they tell you that they’re struggling with something, believe them. If you need more information about the situation from them, phrase it in a way that doesn’t make them feel like you don’t believe them or you’re not taking them seriously.

Lastly, it’s very common for people with OCD to be embarrassed of their symptoms. You learn to hide things and bottle up thoughts and feelings very early on, too. Magical thinking, horrific intrusive thoughts, and weird “phobias” are common, and many people feel uncomfortable sharing anything about those symptoms because they KNOW that they’re weird and wrong. But from experience, what helps the most is talking about them. So no matter what a patient might tell you, don’t suggest to them that you think they’re “crazy” or bad or something. And don’t laugh, if at all possible, at the funnier sounding obsessions. Honestly, most of the time the person suffering knows it’s dumb as hell to... I don’t know, worry about their butt just shattering into pieces if they sit down too hard*. I mean, it IS kind of funny, but it’s a horrible thing to live with. Because it doesn’t matter if you understand your worries are stupid or your intrusive thoughts are meaningless or your magical thinking/rituals are garbage - the anxiety produced is still very, very real.

I think what I would want in a mental health professional, ideally, is just... someone who is gentle with me and who I know respects me no matter what embarrassing obsessions or rituals or horrifying intrusive thoughts I might tell them about. Be patient and as understanding as possible - it might take a while for someone with OCD to feel comfortable divulging the details of their illness to you. Don’t rush them or push their boundaries/privacy too hard, especially at first.

* No, this is not a personal example. I do have some weird/dumb fears and obsessions, but that’s not one of them. I’m thinking back to the Sawbones podcast episode about the Glass Delusion. That was a really good episode, by the way. It was fascinating to think about why such a ridiculous fear came about, and how maybe it was, at least in some cases, not actually psychosis but instead a manifestation of undiagnosed and completely un-understood anxiety and/or OCD.

Like how when you feel anxious for no particular reason, you often can identify it as such. You can be diagnosed and reassure yourself that it’s fine, it’s just your anxiety disorder or whatever. That doesn’t fix it, but it does something for you psychologically, I think. Whereas, you know, what did anxiety and/or OCD sufferers tell themselves back in say the 1500s? Mental health wasn’t really a thing back then. How do you rationalize your brain figuratively eating itself and going around in circles when you live in a society with literally no functional understanding or any real concept of what a mental illness or disorder even is? I mean, regardless, when you’re having an anxiety attack or some other sort of high anxiety response, then with OCD especially your subconscious comes up with wild shit to assign that anxiety to. I can’t imagine living with OCD without even knowing what it was that was wrong with me, having no weapons to fight with. I don’t think I could.

Anyway, that’s WAY off topic, but if that sounds interesting to you, go google Sawbones podcast. It’s a pretty recent episode, as of this posting (10/10/17).

#long post #anonymous #answer

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thinkingnonsensically · 7 years

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Mental Health Awareness Month

Okay so I totally forgot to do this until just now so I’m gong to play catch-up and then hopefully answer the rest of the questions daily until the end of the month.

Day 1: What is/are your mental illness(es)? Explain it a little.

I’m not even sure, LOL, though my psych agrees with me when I say Schizoaffective bipolar type, my official diagnosis is paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar I, general anxiety, and a dissociative disorder. We’re still hashing it out but that’s what we need the papers to say to get my insurance to cover my medication haha.

Basically, it’s schizophrenia and bipolar disorder at the same time.

Day 2: How do you feel about your diagnosis?

I’m fucking terrified of it.

Day 3: What treatment or coping skills are most effective for you?

Medication is definitely the most effective treatment for me. Psychotherapy has never done much for me. Coping skills include body stims and breathing tehcniques.

Day 4: What are the pros and cons of having a mental illness(es) or your specific illness(es)?

What the hell is a pro to having an illness? Like, honestly? This shit has ruined my life. Took away my school, my job, my everything. I mean, I guess the pros of being me are that I am extremely self-aware and do a lot of research so that I know when episodes are happening and I can tell when something is real or not real (for the most part). The cons are misunderstanding what people are saying all the time, a crap memory, hallucinations, delusions, uncontrollable moods, and other symptoms..... and not knowing who you are outside of those symptoms and being afraid to suppress your symptoms for fear of losing yourself. That’s always a fun one.

Day 5: Do you believe nature (biology/physiology), nurture(environment), a mix, or something else has an impact on mental health?

I believe it’s a heavy mixture of both. I’m not sure what more to say on that issue.

Day 6: Do you have a family history of mental illness or mental health issues?

Absolutely.

Day 7: Do you think there are any triggers or patterns to how your illness(es) effects you?

There are definitely triggers for my mania and depression, yeah. I know there are triggers for my hallucinations, I’m just trying to like, work around that? Because they’re my favorite things most of the time and I want to engage with my favorite things still. I don’t want to develop whole new interests and hobbies just because my hallucinations are persistent, you know? Hopefully a heftier dose of medication will make them go away and I can still enjoy my hobbies.

Day 8: What age you were diagnosed at? At what age do you think your symptoms began? (You can make a timeline)

My symptoms began around age 17 and I was first diagnosed major depressive when I went into the hospital at age 18, psychotic symptoms were present but I didn’t know that so I didn’t tell my doctor.... It’s been a long journey and several hospitalizations to this diagnosis, now, finally, at age 21.

Day 9: What are some of the important events in your life, that may have effected your mental illness(es) for the worse or better? (You can make a timeline)

My mom’s death when I was a child probably had something to do with it, though I can’t exactly sort out how it affected me. I was too young for me to remember much what I was like before it happened, you know?

Day 10: What is the best thing in regards to your mental illness(es)?

It has made me extremely compassionate and caring and made me want to take care of everyone, so when y partners are unwell themselves, I always go over and take care of them, cook for the, clean for them, whatever I can do to make their lives easier.

Day 11: What is the worst thing in regard to your mental illness(es)?

The paranoia. Thinking your food has been poisoned or someone is following you or something wants to kill you through the walls or someone is reading your mind or your roommate has put up cameras to spy on you while he’s away is...... unsettling, and upsetting and terrible.

Day 12: What do you think about your diagnosis in general? (Some ideas are: stereotypes, commonalities, misdiagnosis, over diagnosis)

I don’t know what this question is asking but I think that my doctors should have thought a little harder before diagnosing me with schizophrenia just because I hear voices? There are tons of other reasons to hear voices... right?

Day 13: If you know the criteria of your illness(es) which ones do you think you meet? Or what are your most common symptoms?

I meet more of the criteria for mood disorders than I think I do for schizophrenia.... or maybe that’s wishful thinking? I don’t know. My most common symptoms are

Auditory verbal pseudohallucinations

Mood swings

manic/depressive episodes

visual hallucinations

In that order.

Day 14: Have you ever experienced stigma?

Only in a language I didn’t understand, behind my back. But some frightful stuff. The mother of the family I live with thinks I’m gonna murder the family in their sleep. That’s fucking great to know. Yeah~ /sarcasm

Day 15: How has your life been affected by your illness(es)? (Some ideas are: relationships, career, school)

My life has basically been put on hold by my illness. Like, no school, no work, nothing. Barely able to take care of myself. But I got good things coming soon and I am starting to recover so I am hoping I will get to a point in my life when things are working and going well sometime soon.

Day 16: How many people are you “out” to with your mental illness(es)? Why?

Just about everyone. Because I do not want to hide this anymore. It’s exhausting and if I can explain my actions and quirks with “I’ve got this illness so I’m sorry if I act this certain way I’ll try not to but it might happen don’t be afraid” it is a lot easier than “I...uh... am... rAnDoM lOl xD” or some other lame excuse.

Day 17: If you could get rid of your mental illness(es) would you? Why or why not?

Yes! No? Maybe. Yes, because I don’t want to live like this anymore. No, because I’m afraid of not knowing who I am without it. Though.... I suppose that is a risk I am willing to take. So if you could magically cure me, yes, I would love to get rid of my mental illness.

Day 18: What do you wish people would understand in regards to mental illness and/or mental health?

That it’s not something we control!!! I can’t make it better by taking up all of your tiring hobbies, by taking weed oil, by praying, by drinking tea, by any stupid little thing neurotypicals do to relax! I have tried! Don’t you think I would have tried all of that by now? Literally all of it? If any of it worked, I wouldn’t still be sick, now would I?! Now stop giving me advice I don’t need! Especially the kind of advice that just says “suck it up and work through it and it will get better” because that’s not how it works!

Day 19: Have you ever read a self-help book or a book related to psychology? What is your opinion on them? If you have read them do you have a favorite?

I have only read the one, and it was written by my grandmother! I’m actually pretty lucky to have a psych doctor in the family who specializes in schizophrenia. It’s interesting. She hasn’t expressed much interest in talking with me though. I don’t know why. Anyway--I don’t trust most self-help books any more than I trust most neurotypicals to give good advice on mental illness but informational books like the one I read can be beneficial to understanding yourself and your diagnosis and knowing what symptoms to watch out for.

#me #mental illness #mentally disabled

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unabashedlystupendousbeliever · 7 years

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By Matt Stevenson

This two-part article comes in response to recent debates about the value of antipsychotic drugs for people labeled as “schizophrenic.” Contributions to the debate included Robert Whitaker’s white paper “The Case Against Antipsychotics” and Ronald Pies and Joseph Pierre’s blog “Quality of Life and the Case for Antipsychotics.”

As a psychiatric survivor who has personally experienced severe psychosis, my responses to these discussions are to emphasize the following points:

Antipsychotics Are Tranquilizers: We need to be honest about what antipsychotic drugs really are. Most are major tranquilizers – drugs which have a generalized sedating effect and limit the ability to feel emotions strongly. They are not “medications” treating a specific “illness.”

“Schizophrenia” is a Contested Concept: More clarity will be brought to the drug debate by acknowledging that “schizophrenia” – the supposed target of antipsychotic drugs – is an uncertain, contested concept. Contrary to popular belief, hallucinations, delusions, and inability to function have not been proven to represent a clearly-defined biologically- or genetically-caused illness.

The Primarily Biological-Genetic Model of “Schizophrenia” is Unproven and Harmful:Research suggests that the predominantly biological model of psychosis taught to psychiatrists leads to pessimism and poorer outcomes. On the other hand, considerable evidence exists to support a predominantly psychosocial model of psychotic states as being expressed through, but not primarily caused by, biology and genes. Viewed in this way, it is apparent that antipsychotic tranquilizers cannot directly address the experiences of trauma, isolation and abuse that often underlie delusions, hallucinations, and paranoia.

Effective Alternative Approaches Exist: Hope-inspiring and effective approaches for transforming the lives of severely psychotic people are already available, such as the Hearing Voices Network and the Open Dialogue Approach. With such alternatives becoming more widely researched and available, one must question the value of pouring billions of dollars into continued biological research on “schizophrenia” – research which has thus far yielded no measurable improvement in the lives of psychotic people.

My criticisms therefore focus on the relative lack of attention to what psychiatric drugs actually are, and on the uncertain, contested nature of the supposed target of these drugs: “schizophrenia.” I will elaborate on each of these points with references, as well as highlighting alternative approaches to helping psychotic people.

Finally, I will demonstrate the value of giving at least equal importance to the voices of those with lived experience of psychosis. I come to this debate from a perspective that is too rarely heard – that of someone who was once psychotic and took antipsychotic drugs.

From Psychotic To Well: My Story

As a background to my positions, let me briefly recount my own story in relation to “schizophrenia.”

I’m a 31-year-old formerly psychotic man. In my late teens and early 20s, following a childhood of severe physical and emotional abuse, I suffered through many psychotic experiences. These included hearing persecutory voices telling me to kill myself, holding paranoid beliefs about strangers wanting to harm me, feeling unremitting terror for months at a time, and being unable to function in school or work for about two years. During this period, I was quite literally on the edge, suffering through an almost minute-to-minute, second-to-second struggle full of rage, despair, confusion, voice-hearing and paranoia.

Not surprisingly I was psychiatrically hospitalized twice, with one hospitalization occurring after a failed suicide attempt. In the mental health system, I received all the severe psychiatric diagnoses including “schizophrenia.” I took multiple antipsychotic drugs including Seroquel and Zyprexa. Additionally, my father was psychiatrically hospitalized on multiple occasions, labeled “bipolar,” and given ECT and antipsychotic drugs.

The main causes of my psychotic experiences lay in my life story: physical abuse by my father, a lack of trust and security with my parents, the stress of many childhood moves to different countries, having been severely bullied in school, and the pressure of having to function independently as a young adult. The worst of the abuses I experienced included being thrown across rooms onto sharp table edges, having boiling hot drinks poured onto me, and being ridiculed for my skin color and appearance – enough to drive most people crazy! But the worst experience of all was being in a psychic black hole where I felt totally alone and could not trust anyone.

All of my traumas came together to cause terror and rage. These overwhelming emotions in turn led to the use of psychotic defenses to externalize them, including hearing attacking voices (personifications of rage), suspecting other people of harmful thoughts which originated within me, and so on.

Words cannot do justice to how difficult it is to be in terror of being annihilated for most of a several-year period, to have vicious voices ordering you to kill yourself, to have to survive alone in your own mind because you cannot trust others, and to then be told that you have an incurable brain disease and will never fully recover. The latter was the primary contribution of the American mental health system to my distress. This horrifying idea – that my distress represented an incurable brain disease with a poor prognosis – probably represented the biggest obstacle to my recovery, even more so than the other traumas.

Fast forward a decade: I am now quite functional, having worked a steady, professional job for most of the last several years, as well as being socially active. I no longer have significant levels of psychotic experience, no longer hear voices, no longer feel paranoid about strangers harming me. I am often calm now, and I feel quite alive and enjoy what I do. How did this happen?

Well, facing the long emotional war, I never gave up. Through my own research, I eventually found out that the incurable brain disease narrative was wrong. I became a fighter, promising myself that I would get well and do what I wanted to do. The process of working through my psychotic experiences and coming to trust others was extremely difficult, requiring great patience and perseverance, but I gradually accomplished it.

Starting in my early 20s, I derived great benefit from an intensive psychotherapy in which I explored the origin and meaning of my paranoid fears and persecutory voices. In this setting I was able to form a deeply trusting relationship with another person for the first time. As I overcame my fear of trusting and recounted my traumas, I gradually stopped experiencing voices, paranoid suspicions, and extremes of rage and terror.

I was fortunate to encounter a therapist who believed psychotic people could get well, and to have some financial support from my family. I made a couple of friends with whom I could share my story and who supported me no matter what. I found a field of work that I love. And today, having chosen to carefully taper off of them, I no longer take antipsychotic drugs.

While doing therapy, I did extensive research into different historical treatments of problems labeled “schizophrenic.” My research focused especially on those approaches that other psychotic people had used to fully recover, and of which most American mental health professionals remain unaware. I consider this research to have been crucial to my becoming able to function and have hope about recovery from experiences commonly labeled “schizophrenic.”

I learned the most from the writings of Harold Searles, Vamik Volkan, Bryce Boyer, and Silvano Arieti, four experts at helping psychotic people via psychotherapy, whose insights gave me hope. I credit their work with helping me become aware that the biological-disease narrative of “schizophrenia” was fatally flawed.

The Importance of Hearing from the Psychotic Person’s Perspective

With my history, I obviously have much experience with severe psychosis and with antipsychotic drugs, both from the perspective of a sufferer and a family member.

It’s important to note that experiencing psychosis in the first-person – and recovering from it – is a different type of “expertise” about psychosis than one gains from being in medical school, being a journalist, doing psychotherapy with psychotic individuals, or even being a family member. The same point applies to having actually taken antipsychotic drugs, rather than having only prescribed or written about them.

In Western society, we do not often hear from people who were psychotic and recovered. This sad fact is based on many factors, including shame, fear of judgment, fear of job loss, and the fact that our profoundly inadequate mental health system transforms the lives of relatively few individuals. Once the processes of what I call “patientification” (meaning adopting a sick role and believing one has a lifelong brain disease) and “zombification” (meaning taking too many antipsychotics for too long and losing touch with one’s emotions) get underway, it can become increasingly difficult to return to a fulfilling life.

Although rarely heard, the voices of formerly “schizophrenic” people can be particularly important in revealing what experiencing psychosis and taking antipsychotic drugs feels like from the inside. Additionally, one of the most potentially valuable experiences for mental health workers, including psychiatrists, is hearing from once-psychotic people about what helped them to get well.

Keeping this in mind, it concerns me that in the debate about the value of antipsychotic drugs, little has been heard from those who have suffered through psychosis and taken drugs themselves. That is an issue this blog will address, by providing the positions of one formerly psychotic individual regarding antipsychotic drugs and the “schizophrenia” diagnosis.

Further, I am writing this under my real name. In this way I am asserting that one does not have to be scared or ashamed of speaking publicly about having been severely psychotic. Given enough stress, especially severe stresses occurring in childhood and young adulthood, anyone can break down and lose their mind.

Finally, I am not speaking from the perspective of “being in remission from a schizophrenic illness.” I reject the disease model of “schizophrenia,” so I am speaking from my own experience of having been severely psychotic, but without accepting that I had a brain disease. If rejecting the brain disease narrative makes me have “anosognosia” – i.e. a biologically determined inability to agree with professionals’ beliefs about the nature of psychotic experience – then so be it. But if I have anosognosia, then I am one unusually sane and functional ansognosiac.

Contesting Whether Antipsychotic Drugs Are “Medications”

Let us return now to the recent debates between Whitaker and Pies about the value of antipsychotic drugs. My first problem with these dialogues are certain presumptions about the nature of “antipsychotic medications,” presumptions which I believe are based on unproven hypotheses and on circular logic related to the schizophrenia diagnosis.

First, it is important to note that most antipsychotic “medications” are essentially tranquilizers. As authors such as Grace Jackson, Joanna Moncrieff, and Robert Whitaker have documented, the primary effect of these drugs is to chemically numb the brain and limit the ability to feel emotions. They do not treat any specific biologically-caused illness process, nor fix any chemical imbalance underlying such a process. The repeated use of the term “medication” and “illness” in writings by Ronald Pies and other psychiatrists makes it appear as if a valid, discrete brain disease called “schizophrenia” (and supposed symptoms flowing from it) exists as the target of these drugs. But this is not a settled fact.

I would like to clarify here that what I contest is not the reality of psychotic people’s suffering – having gone through what I have, personally and with my family, there can hardly be any doubt about that. What I am contesting are assumptions underlying our use of terms like “medication” and “schizophrenic.”

Regarding the mechanisms by which antipsychotic drugs “work,” the specific action of the drugs on the brain is poorly understood, but what is known is that they mostly damp down the normal chemical functioning of the brain in a generalized way, primarily blocking dopamine receptors. As discussed by Lucy Johnstone, the effects reported by many psychotic individuals include a sense of profound emotional numbness among other serious side effects. From one vantage point, all the effects of the drugs could be viewed as “side effects” in that they interfere with normal reactions of the brain to the environment. Grace Jackson has written powerfully about the dangers of these drugs, the long-term use of which of which is implicated in lifestyle diseases which contribute to psychotic people dying 20-30 years younger than people not given these labels.

Contrary to popular belief, we do not know that these drugs act in any way similar to how insulin addresses diabetes or how penicillin targets an infection. And yet it is commonly believed that antipsychotic drugs target specific disease processes in the brains of psychotic people. The NIMH even states, on its public webpage about “schizophrenia”:

“Scientists think that an imbalance in the complex, interrelated chemical reactions of the brain involving the neurotransmitters (substances that brain cells use to communicate with each other) dopamine and glutamate, and possibly others, plays a role in schizophrenia.” (emphasis mine)

This vaguely worded statement implies that a disease caused by faulty brain chemistry underlies psychotic experience. But as has been made clear by the authors to be discussed below such as Richard Bentall and John Read, no such disease process has ever been discovered.

Thus, calling the antipsychotic drugs that tranquilize people “medications,” as psychiatrists like Ronald Pies do in their blogs, and as journalists like Robert Whitaker do in responding to them, reinforces a myth. “Medication” is a word commonly used to refer to a chemical compound treating a specific disease process. For example, the Oxford dictionary defines “medication” as “a drug or other form of medicine that is used to treat or prevent disease.” But if we are not sure that tranquilizing agents such as Seroquel and Zyprexa act upon biological disease processes, then perhaps we should not call them “medications.”

“Schizophrenia” is An Emperor with No Clothes

While the debate around the value of antipsychotics to treat “schizophrenia” continues, it should be couched in the admission that we do not know exactly what “schizophrenia” is, or if there is even one such entity. This is my second response to the debate – to observe that judging the value of antipsychotic drugs on such a moving target is unlikely to yield reliable, generalizable results. This is the case no matter how many different studies are done based on an invalid label.

Why is “schizophrenia” invalid? For an answer, we can begin by listening to the leaders of American psychiatry speaking about the validity of DSM diagnoses, of which “schizophrenia” is among the most prominent.

In 2013, discussing psychiatric diagnosis, the psychiatrist and former National Institute of Mental Health director Steven Hyman stated:

“The underlying science remains immature…The molecular and cellular underpinnings of psychiatric disorders remain unknown… psychiatric diagnoses seem arbitrary and lack objective tests; and there are no validated biomarkers with which to judge the success of clinical trials.” (emphasis mine)

Hyman went on to call the DSM model of diagnosis, which includes labels like “schizophrenia,” “Totally wrong… an absolute scientific nightmare.”

Hyman’s successor at NIMH, psychiatrist Thomas Insel, followed up this criticism by saying:

“At best, [the DSM is] a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever.” (emphasis mine)

David Kupfer, the DSM 5 chair, while trying to defend the new DSM, admitted that the discovery of biomarkers for supposed illnesses like schizophrenia remains “(D)isappointingly distant… unable to serve us in the here and now.”

And former DSM-IV head Allen Frances went so far as saying, “There is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit… these concepts are virtually impossible to define precisely.”

To say the least, these admissions by the leading lights of American psychiatry do not inspire confidence in the validity and usefulness of labels such as “schizophrenia.” And while psychiatrists have promised that new brain research will uncover a biological or genetic basis for the elusive “schizophrenia,” no progress on this elusive goal has been forthcoming.

Given the fact that leaders of the psychiatric profession have spoken openly about the lack of validity behind labels such as “schizophrenia,” it is fascinating that psychiatrists continue to use the term as if it referred to a valid, reliable illness entity.

As an example, the actual uncertainty around “schizophrenia” runs counter to the way that Ronald Pies writes. In a recent article, Pies described “patients suffering the debilitating, chronic symptoms of schizophrenia.” This description is clearly a biological illness approach, one which assumes that people (labeled “patients”) “have” a disease (called “schizophrenia”), as well as medicalizing their experiences as “symptoms”. But if we are not sure that such a unitary condition exists, something that Pies appears to tentatively acknowledge in footnotes, then it would be better to write about people’s suffering in a less certain way.

Pies also appears to assume – mistakenly, in my view – that just because many psychotic people he has treated or heard about experience chronic distress, that this is the normal, lifelong, and “chronic” experience to be expected for most people given the schizophrenia label. Chronic psychosis is actually not the long-term outcome for a large proportion of people given the “schizophrenia” label, as shown in this article on the World Health Organization studies, a book on the WHO research and in several longitudinal studies by Bleuler, Ciompi, Harding, and others.

The lack of validity and reliability of “schizophrenia” might also explain why billions of research dollars poured into searching for the holy grail – a genetic or biological basis for “schizophrenia” – have yielded not one iota of functional or emotional improvement for psychotic people.

The Long History of Opposition to Schizophrenia’s Validity

Let us return to the core validity question, which is important when considering if psychiatric studies about antipsychotic drugs say anything reliable or generalizable about what best treats “schizophrenia.” A long line of critics, including Mary Boyle, Richard Bentall, Jeffrey Poland, Stuart Kirk, Richard Mancuso, Colin Ross, Gary Greenberg, John Read, and Thomas Szasz, have questioned the validity of the schizophrenia label through books and articles.

They have variously pointed out the following:

“Schizophrenia” does not refer to a coherent disease entity which can be reliably identified from the behavior of individuals.

People with no “symptoms” in common can be given the same “schizophrenia” diagnosis.

The bias and subjective judgment of psychiatrists is central to the labeling process (marking the difference between a “schizophrenia” label and illness diagnoses in real fields of medicine).

No biological or genetic test can confirm the supposed diagnosis.

Labels such as “schizophrenia” provide little to no ability to predict outcomes.

Establishment psychiatrists have historically been unable to refute such assertions that the “schizophrenia” label is unreliable, arbitrary, and scientifically invalid. For the most part they have ignored these critics and doubled down on using “schizophrenia” as if it were a valid diagnosis. It is almost as if they believe that by simply asserting that schizophrenia is a valid, discrete illness over and over again in journals and textbooks, by starting each article with “schizophrenia is a chronic, severe brain disease,” that this magically makes it so.

As Richard Bentall said, the more relevant question may be “not whether to replace schizophrenia, but what to replace it with.”

The Rise of Alternative Definitions of “Schizophrenia” and Psychosis

Now, additional voices seeking to (re)define “schizophrenia” have entered the mix, including the Hearing Voices Network, the British Psychological Society, Mad In America authors, and psychiatrists such as Jim Van Os. Each group has proposed alternative non-medical conceptualizations of severe psychosis that do not presume a biological or genetic cause, nor necessarily presume that a singular illness called “schizophrenia” exists.

These novel approaches include the BPS’s Understanding Psychosis, which redefines psychosis as often representing an understandable reaction to stress or trauma; the HVN’s positions on how voice hearing may have personal meaning and not always requiring drugging; and Van Os’ “Schizophrenia Does Not Exist” website, which contends that psychosis is part of a continuum of serious distress fading into less severe problems of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

These alternatives represent a significant challenge to establishment psychiatry’s illness narrative of “schizophrenia.” With the broad reach of the internet promoting awareness of these alternative views, people experiencing psychosis and their families have new choices about how to understand their suffering. As the New York Times states, “An alternative form of mental healthcare is taking root that is very much anti-mainstream.”

It should be noted that these alternative groups acknowledge that psychotic experiences such as voice-hearing, paranoia, delusions, severe apathy and so on are real and expressed in brain chemistry. They are not saying that “mental illness doesn’t exist” in the sense of saying that severe psychotic experience is not real or extremely painful (the latter being a simplistic trope commonly trotted out by biological-model advocates to defend against critics). Rather, these alternative groups have their own competing models of severe psychoses – models which acknowledge the expression of distress via biology and genes, but do not necessarily view them as central causes of suffering.

Lastly, before moving on, I would like to highlight an innovative new model for the relationship of genes, environment, and psychotic experience put forward by Brian Koehler, a wonderful therapist of psychotic people at New York University. This model provides a much-expanded role for adverse experiences such as loneliness, stress, trauma, and abuse in modifying biology and genes which together lead to psychotic experience. Of this approach, Koehler says, “I have derived a theory which will make a much stronger case for socio-environmental influences in what was previously thought of in classically genetic terms.”

A More Evolved Model of Psychosis – The Psychosis Spectrum Syndrome

Although they rarely speak publicly about it, I believe that an increasing number of psychiatrists are becoming open to the idea that the suffering which has previously been labeled “schizophrenia” may be better conceptualized as a syndromal continuum of psychotic states with complex individualized causes, often including socio-environmental ones. For example, Dutch psychiatrist Jim Van Os recently published a paper entitled “Psychosis as a Trandiagnostic and Extended Phenotype in the General Population.”

Referring back to the Whitaker-Pies debate, I believe Pies is aware of the difficulty in defining psychosis, but he nevertheless writes about “schizophrenia” as if it were a monolithic medical disease which people “have,” while rarely if ever referring to the adverse experiential and relational factors in people’s lives which may have led them to become psychotic.

This leads to a third point – that the “schizophrenia” label tends to blind us to asking what has happened to psychotic people that may have caused them to become so distressed. To the degree that Pies does not acknowledge trauma and abuse as a major contributor to psychotic states, he is either not up to date on recent research into psychosis and adverse social experience, or he may have other reasons for clinging to an impersonal disease model of “schizophrenia.”

For the primary causal factors leading to psychotic experiences, we have to look at individuals in relation to their past experiences and significant relationships, particularly negative and traumatic ones. The contributions of these adverse social experiences to the distress of many psychotic people reminds us that antipsychotic tranquilizers cannot address the root causes of their suffering.

Trauma, Abuse, Stress, and Breakdowns in Trust as Causing “Schizophrenia”

While reading this section, I ask the reader to keep in mind the possible psychological effects of receiving tranquilizing drugs for people who have been seriously abused and traumatized. One can ponder the effect of presenting these drugs to clients as “medications” that supposedly treat a symptom-causing illness, rather than as tranquilizers numbing the ability to feel one’s rage and fear after a lifetime of adverse social experiences. Perhaps the awareness that this is a misleading presentation by professionals is one reason underlying the fact that up to 75% of psychotic people stop taking their tranquilizers within two years – an issue of “failed compliance” that pharmaceutical corporations apparently have a plan to stop.

In the model of severe psychosis I favor, adverse environmental experiences are frequently (although not always) involved in leading to psychotic breakdowns. In support of this position, a number of psychologists and psychiatrists, such as John Read, Colin Ross, and Richard Bentall, have done research showing a powerful link between being labeled “schizophrenic” and having experienced physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.

An article by Noel Hunter reviews this research and provides references to the literature:

“Read et al. concluded in 2005 that child abuse is a causal factor in “schizophrenia.” Read et al., after identifying similarities in the brains of traumatized children and adults who were diagnosed with schizophrenia, demonstrated the neurodevelopmental pathways through which childhood adversity may cause psychosis. In 2004, Janssen et al. established a strong dose-response relationship between childhood abuse and psychosis after following 4045 individuals from the general population for two years. Bentall et al. also found a dose-response relationship between childhood abuse and psychosis (meaning that the greater number of adverse experiences and/or the higher the severity, the greater the risk), wherein those who had a high-severity of childhood abuse were 48.4 times more likely to develop psychosis as an adult. When specificity and dose-response relationships are demonstrated, a causal relationship is strongly probable. In fact, Bentall et al. stated that “experiencing multiple childhood traumas appears to give approximately the same risk of developing psychosis as smoking does for developing lung cancer.” And, lastly, in the same month as the Sekar study was released (January 2016), so too was a nationwide cohort study out of Denmark and Sweden which found that experiencing the death of a first-degree relative before 18 years of age, especially from suicide or accident, resulted in a 39% increased risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia.”

The recent Adverse Childhood Experiences study, in which thousands of people were assessed to see how trauma, abuse, and neglect in childhood related to later severe psychiatric diagnoses in adulthood, further reinforced the connection.

This research does not mean that everyone who gets labeled “schizophrenic” has these adverse social experiences; these studies are based on averages. But they strongly suggest that most people who are labeled “schizophrenic” experience severe traumas, abuse, and/or neglect leading up to their psychoses.

For those who doubt this link, I recommend viewing one of John Read’s provocative Youtube presentations on the issue, including “Who Is Right About the Causes of Psychosis…Psychiatrists or their Patients?” and “Childhood Adversity and Psychosis, From Heresy to Certainty.”

The powerful association between trauma and “schizophrenia” calls into question the model of a schizophrenia arising primarily from within an individual due to a brain chemical imbalance or faulty genes. It may also help to explain why, according to a recent meta analysis of schizophrenia outcomes by Erika Jaaskelainen, antipsychotic drugs have not resulted in increased long-term recovery rates since the mid-20th century.

In my view, tranquilizing people with Seroquel, Zyprexa, Risperdal etc may help contain their distress in the short term, but does little or nothing to make them functional or connected to others in the long term. When one reflects upon the love and support one needs to recover from being poor, unloved, abused, and traumatized, one can better appreciate why being tranquilized alone may not help very much.

In this article, I’ve explored the uncertainty around the medicalized term “schizophrenia”, contested the use of the term “medications” for sedatives not known to address a specific illness, and begun to explore alternative psychosocial models of psychosis. Hopefully I’ve demonstrated that the language used in the Pies-Whitaker debate does not reflect the concepts or terminology for psychosis used or accepted by many helping professionals nor people with lived experience.

#zyprexa #mental illness #schizophrenia #psychiatry #anti psychiatry #psychology

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