#internalized sanism

[drifting-bones]

how small do i have to make myself before you can tolerate me enough to love me? how much of me do you not want to see? what about me is too ugly for you to care for me? are you even worth my time, or is this just proof that i'm better off alone?

[schizopositivity]

im in the process of being diagnosed as schizoaffective bipolar & since then ive been dealing with a lot of internalized ableism & self-hatred because i feel like a subhuman freak. i only feel this way about myself, not other schizospec people. how can i get past the feelings of worthlessness & accept myself, mental illness & all? :(

I understand that feeling completely. I had the same belief when I was first diagnosed. I'm not gonna lie, accepting a schizo-spec diagnosis is a journey.

But you are no different from the other schizo-spec people that you do accept. You are part of our community. There are so many other people who know how it feels to have your symptoms, and also struggle to unlearn the stigma around it. You are not alone in this. It was helpful for me to find people online who proudly talk about their diagnosis, it helped me see that I wasn't uniquely strange, but part of a community of people who also felt that way. And even though stigma and sanism makes us all want to be silent about who we are, we are still part of the greater whole that is the schizo-spec community.

People with schizophrenia and schizoaffetive disorder are not outliers of the world, we (including you) are not the fuck ups that happen to be here. We are an important part of the world and what makes it what it is.

Acceptance will become easier with time. It's a diagnosis with a lot of stigma and judgment attached to it, so it only makes sense to feel like it makes you the awful things people claim we are. But if you can recognize that the stigma isn't true for every other schizo-spec person, then try to remind yourself that you are part of that, the stigma isn't true for you either. You aren't just the stereotype of "a schizoaffetive bipolar", you are a whole unique person with certain symptoms that fit you into a diagnosis that is only part of what makes you who you are.

There is nothing morally wrong, evil or bad about having a schizo-spec diagnosis, it's just a difference in how our brains work. It doesn't dictate who you are either, there are many schizo-spec people in the world, and we are all different. It's possible for someone with a schizo-spec diagnosis to be kind, happy, productive, creative, successful, fun and anything else, the possibilities are endless.

If you want more personal stories or want to talk through your feelings of your diagnosis as time goes on feel free to dm me if you're comfortable (I don't post those).

[openedmaw]

not to Personal Problems post but anyone w/ schizophrenia or related disorder, do you experience the self doubt of "if i was actually [insert schizospec disorder] then i would have to be worse off than i am now" or the whole "i know this looks like [schizospec disorder] from the outside but i know my internal experience and it doesnt feel like [schizospec] to me"

and if you do, how do you work about getting over it?

[bluizu]

MAN internalized sanism sucks

like, you guys are just cool but brain goes "no." i am trying to get rid of it but fuuuuuuuuuu

[mischiefmanifold]

Some of you are really taking the social model of disability way too far. I’ve seen people go so far as to say that we shouldn’t say “mental illness” anymore.

Why? What makes you so uncomfortable about acknowledging that you have a genuine disorder that does in fact impair your life?

I feel like a lot of this is internalized ableism/saneism.

[strawberrybabydog]

TW for sanism / ableism (tagging just to be sure)

Hey again!! I've been experiencing delusions for 7+ years now and therapists have told me that I might be living with this forever. It's starting to feel like that might be true and I might have the 'headmates' I mentioned to you earlier for a long time if not forever

So do you have any advice for coming to terms with possibly living with delusions for a long time? I feel like I'm kind of mourning because I'll never get viewed as "normal" in society. I kind of feel like I've been missing out on life so to speak. :') My symptoms make it extremely hard to do things other people can do easily and it makes me feel very inferior.

I said advice but any kind of thoughts on the matter would be appreciated

🦴 treat for you!

i dont really have advice or thoughts on this, sorry noa :0( ive lived with delusions for my entire life, so theres never ever been an alternative for me - living without psychosis is literally unfathomable to me. this isnt really something i've ever dealt with :0(

anyone else is welcome to weigh in :0) ♡

[oblitus-vulpes]

yeah okay. sure.

[equalperson]

perhaps this is a hot take, but i am 100% sure that a large portion of self-identified "narcissistic abuse" survivors are also narcissists.

think about it: narcissism is most often caused by childhood trauma; having narcissistic parents makes it more likely you'll become a narcissist; there's a whole phenomenon in "narc abuse" spaces called "fleas," in which you supposedly take on narcissistic characteristics without actually "being a narcissist."

how many people with "fleas" do you think are just narcissists? they always tell themselves that "a real narcissist wouldn't care/realize that they're self-centered," which is verifiably false.

how many of these people do you think simply use internalized/lateral sanism to deny their own narcissism?

honestly, i wonder if some of these people only gravitate towards "narc abuse" because of this.

they'll talk so much about how narcissists always need to feel special, and yet act as if they're being belittled whenever someone even remotely critiques their "special" trauma that no one else can understand.

of course, i'm not saying that every "narc abuse" advocate is a narcissist, nor that the concept only exists because of narcissism, but it's just...so unlikely that there isn't at least some community of narcissists in self-denial there.

[disassociation-culture-is]

dissociation culture and internalized sanism is thinking you are the better responder compared to people with emotional outbursts, when in reality you might be more in danger than them as it is harder for you to identify an emotional wound.

.

[xxlovelynovaxx]

I feel like there's two things that get lost in the weeds a lot when discussing gendered oppression of marginalized men, specifically in how "there's no such thing as systemic misandry!" gets tossed out by transandrophobes and people discussing transmasc oppression alike.

And those are:

1. Something can be systemic and harmful and still not be oppressive. Toxic masculinity is just patriarchal misandry. Just because (white, abled, cishet, etc) men who conform to it benefit from it and are privileged, doesn't make it not gendered harm and bigotry against men specifically.

2. People get so caught up in the idea that there has to be a clear OPPRESSOR group which benefits from oppression for oppression to exist at all. Which, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that (white, abled, cishet, etc) men DON'T benefit from oppression of women and gender minorities. But people forget the concept of hegemonical oppression - that rather than a specific group oppressing, a system like patriarchy can be responsible for oppression.

And I think under that understanding of oppression, patriarchal misandry could be considered a form of oppression itself, with room for the nuance and complexity of the fact that the harm it does scales inversely to how much privilege a man is able to access by conforming to said hegemony.

Like, we learned that patriarchal expectations of masculinity harm men too in feminism 101. I am a firm believer in the idea that ALL violence is gendered - that intersectionality means it has to be, and that it's NOT just Violence:Woman Edition, Violence:Nonbinary Edition, and Violence:Basic Edition. ALL identities matter when looking at oppression through an intersectional lens, particularly when talking about the idea that other marginalizations affect your ability to conform to patriarchal hegemony and access male privilege!

Oppression isn't a zero sum game. People who are oppressed can also be oppressors. There are systems under which everyone is oppressed in some way and only the degree of oppression significantly affects class dynamics. Hell, just about every oppressive system ends up harming the people who benefit from it, at least in small ways, and sometimes in large ways dependent on their other marginalizations.

Impoverished abled people are affected by ableism to the point they could be considered oppressed by it, because aspects of ableism and classism are identical and interchangeable. Perisex trans people are affected by intersexism, because intersexism, transphobia, anti-gender-nonconformity/patriarchal gender roles, and sexism are all one big blended mess.

Basically, oppression, while related to ontological identity, is so highly dependent on ability to conform to hegemonical standards; which itself is highly dependent on ability to conform to ALL hegemonical standards/kyriarchical standards. One can be partially or even fully denied access to privilege, to acceptance as a member of the oppressor class and therefore the ability to benefit from said oppression - all on the basis of inability to conform to a different standard of systemic hierarchical power.

This affects different intersections of identities to varying degrees. In some cases, it may not be possible to be fully denied access to privilege or membership within an oppressor class on the basis of other marginalization. Identities which have a more physical or material root seem to be affected in an entirely different way than identities that are strongly subjective and internal. Identities like race, disability, sex (particularly intersexness) and so on, seem to be more self-similar in this regard than they are to identities like neurodivergence and plurality, gender, and ethnicity, despite the significant overlap between multiple of those categories.

Some forms of oppression that involve multiple of these identities - transphobia, neuroableism/sanism (against both primarily mental and primarily physical neurological disabilities), and so on, also sit more squarely in the middle of the two groups.

It is also worth noting that oppression of identities that have corresponding physical/material aspects is still highly social in nature, and based in social categorization of arbitrary physical features.

More to the point, though, gendered oppression seems to be uniquely ubiquitous under patriarchy. Men do face unique violence for being men - for the nuance haters, this doesn't mean that it's worse violence, that women oppress men, or any of that other garbage. Some of the violence men face is still universal violence that all people face. Some of it is universal, but manifests in unique ways dependent on gender - for example, the emotions considered acceptable to display openly based on gender, as there is no gender for which openly displaying all emotions is considered acceptable.

Some violence is also unique to men - either to (nearly)* all men, or to specific subgroups of marginalized men.

*There are exceptions to this, of course: the people who are able to achieve complete or near-complete conformity to hegemonical standards, and billionaires (as class is heavily weighted in determining conformity to hegemony, particularly in a capitalist society). These exceptions are often used to claim that no one in a group ever experiences oppression on the basis of the specific identity the exceptions gain power through.

Nondisabled neurodivergent and plural people, for example, are treated as though if they don't face ableism, they aren't oppressed for their neurotype. Trans men, men of color, disabled men, and other marginalized men are told they "only" face transphobia, racism, ableism, etc, in a way that is entirely nongendered and lesser/easier than what trans women, women of color, disabled women, and other women face.

The fact that manhood is treated as more of a contributing factor to whether someone is a member of an oppressor class (and therefore, not oppressed on the basis of that identity) than stuff like class or race to me is the biggest indicator that that analysis is faulty. A nonbinary billionaire has significant power over impoverished binary cis people. White women oppress men of color. While oppression is complicated, some intersections are relatively simple, and any analysis which ignores the material reality of oppression in these situations is flawed.

Maybe it's the way that victimhood is treated as both passive and virtuous and victims as therefore above criticism for any behavior, while oppression is treated as synonymous with aggression/being an active and enthusiastic perpetrator of violence and therefore ontologically evil. Maybe it's the dehumanization and objectification (non-sexual, for those who don't know it can be used outside of that context) of oppressors and aggressors. Maybe it's simply the aggressively binary and cis lens of rad/ical feminism that is so deeply ingrained in modern gender theory.

But people seem deeply reluctant to analyze the fact that people with identities they've deemed inherently oppressive and therefore evil can be oppressed, sometimes on the basis of the very identity considered inherently oppressive. Gender in particular is one that people refuse to approach with nuance, despite that it is itself multifaceted and heavily interrelated with and inextricable from other identities.

Transness, distance from or adjacency to the gender binary, masculinity and femininity and gender conformity vs nonconformity, sex conformity, conformity/nonconformity to the sex dyad - both via medical means in either direction and via perisex/intersex identity, type of transition, ability to fulfill gendered expectations and roles on the basis of other identities such as cultural, abled/disabled, subcultural, attractional, and other identities... these are all aspects of gender identity. Oppression on the basis of any one of these can mean that you are oppressed for your gender as a whole - intersex people's genders, for example, are both heavily policed and tokenized for our being intersex, even for intersex people who are cis and binary.

One aspect of gender identity - even one that is sometimes separate from internal identity, such as presentation, not conforming to hegemonical expectations can be enough to not just completely bar access to the oppressor class on the basis of gender, but to itself cause the ENTIRE gender identity to become marginalized and the people of that identity to face oppression for it.

Trans men, gender nonconforming men, intersex men, altersex men and cis men who take HRT and/or pursue surgeries that align their body with perisex female standards (for lack of better phrasing), butch and femme men, queer men, disabled men, men of color... all can be specifically oppressed for their marginalized manhood, because the marginalization of their manhood comes from an inability to conform to hegemonical standards of manhood.

So, is it really even true to say "systemic misandry doesn't exist"? Patriarchal masculinity is systemic, harms men, and marginalizes any manhood specifically that does not conform. Its oppression of marginalized men isn't a side effect or collateral damage, but rather a feature of the system itself. By so aggressively gatekeeping conformity to hegemonical masculinity and the benefits that it grants, the patriarchy reifies itself and encourages its own perpetuation.

Is systemic misandry real? Is the idea that men can be oppressed specifically for their manhood on the basis of not being able to conform to an arbitrary standard of manhood a useful lens for analysis? Does the concept of systemic misandry further our analysis of how the patriarchy works and how best to dismantle it?

I believe so. At least, I believe more so than "if you acknowledge that men are hurt by the patriarchy you're an MRA incel!!1" It's almost as if gender dynamics under patriarchy are extremely complex and nuanced and oppression isn't simply "evil cackling villain enjoying squashing innocent victims' hopes and dreams", because oppression is based in access to hierarchical power which itself is EXTREMELY heavily dependent on ability to conform to the standards of whoever and whatever systems hold power!

Additional note: If you actually want to have a conversation about this, I'm open to talking. If you just want to tell me I'm wrong or somehow bigoted because you disagree with my analysis, lob ad hominem attacks my way, or simply maliciously misread this post and respond to things I never said, do us both a favor, don't waste both our time, and block me. I have less than zero energy to deal with bullshit right now.

[drifting-bones]

i’m tired of being too insane to have friends. i’m convinced every move i make is the wrong one and it’s just another thing my friends will one day use against me and abandon me over. i wish i could trust them because i know logically that they’re good people, but every time i screw up i can’t help but wonder when they’re going to tell me what a disgusting person i am. i wish they would just leave already so we could get it over with. i wish for one fucking second i could be somebody’s first choice so i wouldn’t have this fear. because if i was the first and i was the favorite then maybe they’d think twice before moving on from me.

[schizopositivity]

Here's a reminder to fight the internalized sanism/ableism in your head.

If you have executive dysfunction, don't compare your productivity to people who don't.

If you have anhedonia, don't compare your struggling to keep up with hobbies to someone who doesn't.

If you have paranoia, don't think of your fears as any less valid than the fears of someone who doesn't.

If your meds make you tired constantly, don't compare your energy levels to someone who doesn't take those meds.

If you have issues with concentration, then you won't be able to pay attention as well as someone who doesn't.

If you're in the deep end of a pool, then you can't compare how well you keep your head above water to someone who is standing in a kiddie pool.

Please try to think of these things when you feel "lazy" or "childish" or "a failure" compared to other people that don't struggle with the same symptoms as you. If you have a mental illness that will affect how you act in everyday situations, then it will in fact affect you in everyday situations. It's not an excuse, it's just a reality. We need to try to be kinder to ourselves.

[openedmaw]

i shouldnt be required to give disclaimers every time i talk about my psychosis just for other peoples comfort

having to approach every discussion with double bookkeeping and "i know its not Actually real" is more distressing than the actual delusions. pretending that my reality isnt fully real to me just because i know its not real to you hurts me. the headaches and the spiraling and the questioning and the way my brain makes it more intense every time i deny it.

i know you dont see what i see. i know you dont feel what i feel. i know you dont think what i think. but having to say that every time i tell what i see and feel and think isn't helpful. it doesnt make what i experience any different, it just makes me feel worse.

[5-7-9]

I was trying to think about friendship things for Bruce and Harvey, but this can work for any Bruce friend. It works a lot better with autistic and internalized sanism Bruce too.

So, Bruce almost never tells anyone his special interest, its a secret. It’s considered a high honour if you know it. No, it wasn’t Zorro, but it’s close.

[avpdpossum]

“your self-diagnosis will never be as good as a professional diagnosis” yeah, my self-dx isn’t “as good” as a pro-dx would be, it’s better!

most psychs have spent maybe a few days maximum learning about the absolute basics of my diagnoses, while i’ve spent years taking in every bit of information i can find, including lots of information from the same sources they’d be using and more — chances are i know more about my diagnoses than the average psych ever will

psychs who do have more knowledge got that knowledge from deeply stigmatizing sources, and most have never bothered to learn from the people who actually live the experiences they claim to be experts in (ex. “npd experts” who actually just specialize in “evil abuser disease” or people like martin kantor)

a psych will never be able to know what’s going on in my head the way i can because they can’t read my mind, so even if i was able to articulate my internal experiences really well (which i’m not — i’m a semiverbal avoidant with often disorganized thoughts/speech; explaining something like that is hard if not impossible for me), hearing it secondhand can’t compare to the 20 years i’ve spent living it

the vast majority of psychs operate based on sanism and profit motive — they’re more than willing to take obscene amounts of my money, only to deny me a diagnosis based on not meeting some shitty stereotypes or say there’s no point in giving me a diagnosis if i don’t want a cure or give me the diagnosis and then have me put in a psych ward because my diagnoses make me one of those ~scary mentally ill people~ that none of them want to deal with

a misdiagnosis from a psych could potentially lead to me being put through intensive therapies or put on medication for the wrong thing, which can have very bad results, and the label might stay on my medical record even after being proven wrong; if my personal assessment is wrong, nothing happens — no one gets hurt, i just go “oops, nevermind”, keep whatever useful things i learned from it in my “toolbox”, stop using the label itself, and move on with life

coming to my own understanding of how my brain works and using the labels that actually make sense to me means i actually get to have some autonomy for once — i get a community of people who understand my experiences and a better understanding of how to manage my symptoms and accommodate myself, without having to fear things like forced treatment or intensified discrimination

the idea that my neurotype makes me incapable of self-awareness and introspection is ridiculous — some people might feel that way about their own situations and need to rely on outside assessment as a result, but that experience is not universal

my understanding of my own mind is NOT second-rate compared to a psych’s, and i don’t need to put myself at risk just for a stranger to tell me what i already know

[solitaryschizoid]

NPD community makes no sense because why are people saying NPD is permanent and incurable (100% true) and then going around and saying they are trying to recover... Recover from what? I understand needing help to navigate this world in a way that does not harm yourself or others, but you cannot recover from narcissistic personality disorder, if you have any personality disorder it's lifelong. The internalized ableism and sanism is sad, we need more positivity and less propaganda so we are not led to think it's okay to exterminate ourselves to make egotypicals happy.

You cannot recover from a personality disorder, and even if you could, you shouldn't do it just to placate people that dislike you purely for having a personality disorder. If your symptoms are causing you or others distress, it's a good thing to get help in learning to manage them, but don't let anyone try to convince you that you should try and go so far as to stop having a personality disorder. You have a personality disorder as a coping mechanism from severe trauma, you have a personality disorder because your brain is trying to protect you, don't betray yourself by ignoring that.