mental illness

[undergroundpanther]

Mental illness hurts,having it myself I know.

Anyway seems a lot of people out there like to pretend there is a thing called"normal" and they judge others worth to that' normality stick'.So, if you ain't normal or measure up to normal enough to 'pass' you are at risk for a social death sentence.

A social death sentence is painful kind of social rejection.It comes from being labeled crazy or not worthy enough to speak your thoughts among your social peers who being easily convinced by the label giver(usually a bully type in the group)that you are'crazy'. When you are deemed 'crazy'that means no one in the group has to take you or your points on any topic seriously and that is part of what hurts.

A social death sentence also means your distress is being made invisible("ignore them they are,faking it for attention, "too sensitive" 'paranoid" they're crazy") and along with that re-victimizing, you get made voiceless on a social level too.("because they are crazy, nothing they say contains actual thought,knowledge or important information to anyone else"). Mentally ill people become non persons to others who all are'normal' enough.And thus a hierarchy is formed and guess who's on the bottom?

Life is too short to bully the mentally ill.Life is to cold already to tolerate bullies period.


I say what I say, because to me it's worth saying it. Sometimes I am told by others after reading it,it makes more sense to them than some of the ramblings of the"sane" commenter's on threads trying to diminish me and what I write by calling me crazy..Our whole culture is based on social domination and hierarchies.People to survive socially become so cold,heartless,selfish, callous and mean.To a sensitive person like myself it's like I cannot breathe here, for the barbed words hang thickly over my head. I take a risk in speaking my mind or heart here,because I choose to. But also I have my bully detectors on lest someone who is bored or just mean, sends an evil words my way and encourages others to do the same..and they do as suggested by the most arrogant ones without thinking.And the thread gets derailed and the bully wins.And when a bully wins the social environment drops a few degrees colder,and skins get thicker,and the tender hearted,deep thinkers, and intelligent leave.

"Why can't I touch someone who doesn't strike back?
A question I searched to answer in vain.
Each time I opened the depths of my heart,
I ended standing alone with more pain."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=276x900
psychopathy on the other hand is not an actual mental illness, it is a personality type.http://www.angelfire.com/zine2/narcissism/antisocial_sociopath_psychopath.html

psychopaths by personality alone really can cause mental illness in those unfortunate to live,work or exist around them.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5631332
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5609545
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1743046
http://everydaypsychology.co.cc/?p=18739
tfromwithin.org/html/onbeing.html

[Odin2005]

1. K&R!!!!!!!!!!!!

:yourock:

[undergroundpanther]

3. Odin

:fistbump:

You Rawk!

[Odin2005]

6. Thank you!

:hi: :hug:

[undergroundpanther]

8. Purrrrrrrrr rrrrr rr

Loves U too!!!

[Warpy]

16. One thing I found out when working with people off their meds

who were really sick was that they never doubted their own sanity. Those of us who muddle around without hallucinations, delusions, or any of the other horrible symptoms that were keeping most of them terrified is that we're never quite sure if we're completely sane. That self doubt might be sanity's defining feature, questioning everything including our internal bearings. The clinically insane never had any shadow of a doubt about anything they were seeing, hearing, or feeling.

It's also true that being around a psychopath can make a sane person sick, as can being around a borderline personality. Some people are toxic and it takes a lot of knowledge about what's really going on with them to be able to deal with them honestly and without driving yourself around the bend.

Remember, the slickest, most manipulative person out there didn't just wake up one morning and think, "Gee, this nice guy thing isn't working for me, so I guess I'll be an asshole who makes everybody else suffer." They're sick. Something in their brains either got left out or is functioning differently. We don't know what causes it or how to cure it, but we do know how to deal with it.

Unfortunately, civilians don't. Support groups can certainly help, but it's still largely the blind leading the blind and the frustration of living with a sick person who thinks s/he is perfectly sane can be draining, at best. The strain of dealing with someone who thinks differently than most people do is too much for a lot of people, and they're either dismissive or bullying. It's a defense mechanism.

I wish there was some way of educating more people about this but we're also a Puritanical country that loves to blame victims.

K&R for a good post with good links.

[Odin2005]

22. A friend of mine has a brother who I'm sure is an undiagnosed Narcissist.

Truly toxic person. :puke:

[Confusious]

2. Whats with the mental illness postings?

Did I miss something?

[undergroundpanther]

5. Nah

Just posted my thoughts on it.Since I have it.Why not say it. I see plenty of people calling other people crazy or paranoid or some other type armchair shrink type of bullying crap going on here on DU and it gets old,so I posted my take on it.

[Odin2005]

7. The story about mentally ill guy to lit himself on fire in front of a store with fur coats.

[undergroundpanther]

10. Poor guy.

That is tragic. Sometimes when a person in pain is ignored and ignored it ends in tragedies like that.

[SlingBlade]

4. Yep, K & R Another story of the forgoten

[SharonAnn]

9. "when a bully wins the social environment drops a few degrees colder". Wow!

What a great description of what happens.

We've all been in a group when that happens.

[undergroundpanther]

11. Not just a few degrees colder

but the ethical standards of how the group treats one another gets a little more cruel,and the bullies are given more freedom to abuse in more sadistic ways and as long as the by-standing, rationalizing and denial continues unchallenged.Eventually existing in the group becomes more about keeping and grabbing for higher hierarchical places,then it gets more arranged like the circles of hell in Dante's Inferno. The coldest hearted and most powerful ones everyone defers to are put in the center of power and given no consequences for how they abuse and hurt the group's members and outcasts with that power.

[SoxFan]

12. K&R

If I had a dime for every peckerhead who posted a "off your/his/her meds" comment, I could take a nice vacation in someplace considerably warmer than New Hampshire.

[bobbolink]

14. Exactly. And just think if the same kind of comment was made towards groups that have

sanctioned PROTECTION from such prejudice!

It wouldn't be tolerated here or anywhere else among progressives.

Yet, because it isn't yet popular to speak against prejudice toward people labeled as "mentally ill", or "poor", that is where the anger of the bullies is directed.

:nuke:

[Krakowiak]

51. agreed 100% - we see it with the poor all the time even here on DU (nt)

[Confusious]

18. Well if you are

You're not going to be able to take that vacation, since you'll have to pay for a new prescription!

:)

That was a joke.

[northofdenali]

25. It is, and it isn't -

Because the cost of meds exceeds my income, no vacation is available and hasn't been for years. Between my clinical depression and my husband's heart disease? Close to $600/month AFTER INSURANCE.

[Confusious]

26. Mine aren't that bad DAMN

Lucky most of the meds I take for my problems are generics.

I used to pay about $20 a month WITH insurance. After I got laid off, the drugs were actually cheaper, since I didn't have to go month-to-month!

Now I buy 3 months worth, done. think it's less then $10 a month.

Our health care insurance is F-upped, along with our system.

Anyways, one must have a dark sense of humor about these things, or you'll turn into a repuglican.

[northofdenali]

30. Tried the Fred Meyer/WalMart/Safeway cheap drug option.

They carry nothing that even relates to the meds we take. The drug companies say we make too much money to qualify for their "lower income" free drug programs.

I also have a pancreatic problem - not pancreatitis, but an atrophied pancrease (doc says probably caused by German Measles in my youth). $165/month, 6 pills a day.

Our income is $1820/month.

Our outlay? Fairbanks, Alaska oil companies charge $3.50/gallon for heating fuel. It takes $350.00 to put 100 gallons in our tank. 100 gallons lasts maybe 20 days at an interior temp of 62 degrees. We don't like it real warm. Our city says we can't install any other type of heat (wood) and we couldn't afford the stove if we were allowed to have it.

I'll be glad when this is done. This house, in particular. I'd prefer small, wood-heat with Toyo backup, a well instead of very contaminated city water (thank you, BIG OIL), and I will have it that way in the near future.

But what to do about the meds that literally keep you alive? The "retirees" have Medicare - but it costs. Standard health insurance means NOTHING if the drug companies aren't kept in line, and Shrub's "new medicare" made sure they wouldn't be.

So lots of times we do without.

But we still, when we can talk folks into "baby" (cat) sitting, hop on the bike and head 35 miles out of town to sleep under the Northern Lights. Yep, even in dead of winter.

There is something to be said for hope.

[Fumesucker]

13. Erasmus thought that in the country of the blind the one eyed man was king..

Erasmus was a flaming optimist, in the country of the blind the one eyed man is thought insane.

It is no mark of sanity to be well adjusted to a culture as sick as the one we have in the USA these days.

[bobbolink]

15. Ill? You??? HAH! Methinks you got my mental bulletin...

I was thinking of you yesterday, and how I miss your bully posts... You are the only one I know speaking out in this way, and what you have to say is so very important!

You are my hero! :loveya:

[undergroundpanther]

41. Bobbie

Glad to see you are here,dispite all the shit you face everyday..I loves ya too.

[The Doctor.]

17. Society needs to learn to understand the brilliance of para-cognition.

We all have it, to some degree.

Most people ignore lateral relationships in favor of linear ones. Nearly everyone eschews poly-relational-cognition because it just plain defies the language necessary to communicate it. That is our failure as a society. We cannot learn to understand because we still have the immediacy of survival placed in front of us.

Some of 'mental illness' is dysfunction. Much of it is para-cognition.

When we can get rid of the fear and myopia that plagues us as a race, we'll begin to learn just how big consciousness really is.

Then we can start the real journey.


Thank you, UP. Miss ya.

[Confusious]

20. Hmmm, ok.... and now for something COMPLETLEY different...eom

[The Doctor.]

24. Hehehe... oh, please do explain...

UP Registers off the Stanford-Binet, MMPI-2, and just about any stupid damn blunt instrument I can imagine the world of psychology might subject her to.

If I say something that you can't wrap your head around, then maybe, just maybe it was intended for someone a bit brighter.

She is, and I damn well know it.

You, otoh, know how to pick apt usernames.

[Confusious]

27. The greatest minds make even the most complex ideas simple...

Einstein, Newton, Sagan...

Maybe, just maybe, you're not as bright as you think you are.

And obviously ( just maybe it was intended for someone a bit brighter ) never learned any manners either.

[The Doctor.]

29. Funny how that would make two of us.

Congrats!

:toast:

[Confusious]

34. Manners are about being polite to people who are polite

not laying down and having shit shoveled at you from people who are rude.

[The Doctor.]

36. Of course.

You are right, of course. You've been nothing but polite, even from your first response to me in this thread.

Please go on being polite. Don't consider any of those things I said that you didn't quite grasp... it wouldn't be 'polite' of me if you did.

Thanks again for being the better person-age.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Confusious]

46. Boy you really have an ego don't you

And you seem so hung up on whether or not I understood you. That's a real "tell", as they say in the poker world.

I'll leave it up to you to decide what I think, 'cause I really don't care.

As my step-mother always said "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Words to live by.

[The Doctor.]

48. What I have is little patience for hypocrites.

So far you've declared me 'rude' by being rude yourself, and you've violated your own 'step-mother's' credo.

I'll admit I assumed your non sequitur reference was an intended slight, hence the 'please do explain' bit. If it was not, then you most certainly have my apologies. I've had reason to have little patience lately, and have been under constant and unfounded attack by fools in other venues... including RL.

Now... precisely what was the meaning of your comment?

[undergroundpanther]

43. Heh..last time

I took the MMPI about 7 years ago..I think that's what it was..I finished each of the loaded sentances/questions,I answered honestly,but with my replies I made them into a long a poem for my own fun.And the shrink giving me the test got a kick out of it.Sometimes I like to do shit like that because tests can bore me and I stop giving a crap what answers I put down,so I use creative answers to entertain myself so I can get through the test.

[The Doctor.]

49. And I thought I was being clever...

When I first took it, I dissected every question and pointed out how limited the scope of it was by being affixed to the contemporary paradigm.

Poem?

Shit girl... that's talent.

[undergroundpanther]

42. Para cognition

Haven't heard that term mentioned for a very long time.Para cognition needs to be relearned. But in this social hierarchy structure dog eat dog psychopathic society where most barely can survive let alone have time to question cognition,I don't see it happening soon.
oh,and thanks.

[bobbolink]

19. Unreccers at it again.

The hatred is truly amazing.

:nuke:

[Mind_your_head]

21. UP, you're one of the most sane people on this planet.....

That's why "they" hate you and 'try' (I'm glad that that effort has been largely unsuccessful) to make you believe that you're 'crazy'.

This WORLD we live in is 'crazy' and illogical. People who have two or more good brain cells rubbing together see that.....

I'm not very articulate, but I respect you (and what you've gone through) very much.

My (online) observation is that you are 'totally sane', right on the mark, and a totally beautiful, lovely person through-and-through (I didn't say 'perfect' ~ no one is 'perfect' :-) )

[undergroundpanther]

40. are you trying to make me cry?

Thank you,that was so very sweet of you.

[Mind_your_head]

52. I'm just speaking the truth! ~ truly.

:-) :hug:

[Terra Alta]

23. what is "normal"?

I was bullied often in school, sometimes for my short stature, but mostly because I was not considered "normal" and did not socialize much with the "in-crowd". I was a bit of a loner who preferred reading a book to hanging out.. I guess that made me "different" at least to the bullies.. I just never had the desire to socialize and as I got older it got worse... I receded more and more into my little shell until I finally couldn't take it any more...
Even now.. as I am coming out of my shell and making more friends... I am not considered "normal" by some.. so, what is "normal" exactly? :shrug: I never quite got it.

[The Doctor.]

28. There really is no such thing as 'normal'...

Words like 'normal' and 'reality' should always be used in quotes.

There is an empirical reality, but 'reality' is often suborned to perception. In 'reality', the fools who quantified you revealed their limitations. They could not grasp the 'meaning' (yeah, there's a lot of them pesky 'gray words') of what you were, so they boxed you into "Fuck if I know because I can't grasp it" territory and were done with it.

You've undoubtedly found that your best friends think 'normal' is wrong. Don't get too cocky though... I hear 'abnormal' has been the new 'orange' (which was green until the new black was 'blue' which was black sometime before that). It's ok to be temporarily Goth though... I was there when it happened. You, on the other hand, are asking the right questions. Don't be surprised if some idiot on the internetz tries to answer them in modern Koans.

That is the way it is.

[Odin2005]

31. +1. Normal is overrated.

:-)

[The Doctor.]

32. +π

"Normal" isn't rated at all... I think that's the point. N'est pas?

[Mopar151]

33. Probably why I hang out with the wackos I do

A nice older couple was called "normal", and were genuinely offended. There is a psycholigist among us, and he says that we all get to be "legends in our own mind" without offending. A "why be normal" sticker on my car only got raised eyebrows from those outside our social circle (and national media).
Frankly, anybody who aspires to "normal" creeps me out a bit. I like people who aspire to be better - better parents, better friends, better at their job, better at their hobbies. Folks who live "many hands make light work". When our current club president first met up with us, he dubbed us "The Land of the Misfit Toys", and it's true - but we're all bozos on this bus, and I would'nt have it any other way.

[undergroundpanther]

44. Misfit toy

here...BTW in my room hanging from my ceiling I have a sculpture of King Lear,the purple winged lion who was the King of the Island of Misfit Toys. Ironic?

[Mopar151]

47. "God is an iron"

"If someone who commits felonies is a felon, then God is an iron, 'cuz he commits irony every day." Spider Robinson Are you in the Northeast? We can always use a corner worker, and we'll give you lunch and beer after.

[Dappleganger]

35. It runs in my family.

Having grown up with a bipolar father and a mother with serious depression, my sister and I never knew how 'normal' families could relate to each other until we had our own. Except that I suffer from depression myself, as well as one daughter. My sister has a son w/Aspy's so she is facing it too.

What I hate is how the churches pretty much ostracize the families going through this, or whisper behind your backs whenever someone is hospitalized or just doesn't show up for weeks at a time.

Big hugs to you. :)

[LatteLibertine]

38. Yep

and it's scary to think many sociopaths head up our most powerful corporations. Dehumanizing, marginalizing and oppressing folks have definite consequences. I'm a big fan of civil discourse.

[EFerrari]

39. K&R

[Ardent15]

45. K and fucking R

[hunter]

50. Hello, thought I'd stop by to kick this one back up.

:hi:

Yes, I very much agree, the "normal" of the USA is pathological.

Those who cannot find or refuse a place in the hierarchy of "normal" are beaten down.