#psychological maladies

[as-rethinking-norms]

The Silent Suffering of Our Time: A Stark Look at Mental Health Stigma

In an age where the world openly battles with a plethora of crises, one particularly nefarious struggle simmers beneath the surface, eluding the widespread attention it so desperately requires. It’s the silent suffering endured by countless individuals grappling with severe mental illness, trauma, PTSD, and an array of psychological afflictions. It’s ironic, really. We inhabit a society that…

[wellnesgreen]

Mental Health stands as a pivotal facet of holistic welfare, molding cognition, emotions, and conduct in our day-to-day existence. It profoundly impacts our adeptness to confront stress, forge connections, and reach decisions. Nevertheless, instances arise when our Mental Health might encounter disturbances, giving rise to sundry psychological ailments. In this discourse, we shall delve into the four primary categories of psychological maladies and their amelioration for a more salubrious and jubilant life.

[ninja-muse]

This book was such a fantastic read I cannot review it! There's nothing I can say that isn't variations on "this was great" and I can't even throw in critique. So I'm just going to go out by telling anyone this even remotely interests to read it.

[bromcommie]

running a bazillion errands and cleaning the whole apartment all the while in turns blasting either 70s/80s bops or the winter soldier suite 2014 comp. henry jackman into headphones at 120% just to feel alive kind of friday

[haggishlyhagging]

This obsession with purifying society of deviant/defiant women has been both the origin and manifestation of the secret bond between seemingly distinct and even opposed categories of men. Thus the members of the legal profession, who at first appeared opposed or at least indifferent to the witch-hunting propensities of priests, later became even more fervent persecutors. Thus also protestants, though bitterly opposed to catholicism, vied with and even may have surpassed their catholic counterparts in their fanaticism and cruelty during the witchcraze. Typically, each used the orthodoxy of the other to entrap women under the witch-label. Among some protestants, for example, Bishop Palladius, reformer of Denmark, the term witch was extended to include "those who used catholic prayers or formulas."

This massacre of women, then, masked a secret gynocidal fraternity, whose prime targets were women living outside the control of the patriarchal family, women who presented an option—an option of "eccentricity," and of "indigestibility." The term eccentric is derived from the Greek ek (out of) plus kentrum (center of a circle). One definition in Merriam-Webster is "not having the same center, used of circles, cylinders, spheres, and certain other figures: opposed to concentric." It also means "deviating from some established type, pattern, or rule." The women hunted as witches were (are) in a time/space that is not concentric with androcracy. Hags are Self-centering, constituting the Society of Outsiders, defining gynocentric boundaries. This is the dreaded option of Dreadful, Dreadless Crones, the ultimate indigestible threat to the "majesty of God." Therefore in the name of god this Self-centering process must be halted and all Hag-centered process re-moved, sucked back into the dead center of patriarchal darkness.

The purification of society was legitimated as a cleansing not only of the "body politic" but, more specifically, of the Mystical Body of Christ. Since Christ was believed to possess not only his own body but also a Mystical Body—extended to include all members of his church—this Mystical Body had to be kept pure enough to perform the functions required by its divine Head. This extended Body symbolism had commonly been invoked by fathers and doctors of the church when confronted with the problem of heretics. The latter-like diseased members had to be cut off (killed) for the good of the whole organism. This tradition provided a ready-made solution for the problem presented by the witches. Moreover, while the argument had frequently functioned to legitimate the "amputation" of heretical male members, it was particularly appropriate in the case of deviant women, for there is something basically incongruous in trying to see women with any sense of Self as incorporated into The Male Mystical Body. This incongruity was partially and convolutedly expressed by Kramer and Sprenger when they declared that males were protected from so horrible a crime as witchcraft because Jesus was a man.

It is important to note here an essential pattern in the maze of the witchcraze. On the symbolic level, the emphasis centers around god-the-son, "The Second Person of the Divine Trinity," who "became incarnate." Dogmatically speaking, "the Word became Flesh." Thus in christian doctrine, the "fact" that god-the-son became man (male), assuming a human—that is, male—body, enabled males to become gods. It prepared the way for the Brotherhood representing/replacing Yahweh & Son. Thus the original christian divine model for Big Brother in Orwell's 1984 is the godman, Jesus. It is significant that in this "futuristic"—that is, patriarchally past and contemporary—novel it is not Big Father who is the Head. For everyone knows on some level that this "divine" father is omni-absent, a figurehead as blatant as Archie Bunker, Idi Amin (Dada), Tricky Dick Nixon, or Pope Paul the Sicksth (VI; sic). Rather it is Big Brother who is omnipresent—seeing/knowing/controlling all, constantly purifying the body politic of deviants. Male (and male-identified) professionals and aspirants to political power have identified with this more accessible and "real" symbol.

-Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology

[hanzajesthanza]

reading other short stories and novels and essays and interviews from sapkowski is so satisfying because not only are these fun to read in of themselves but when my mind returns to the witcher i am like

[yadu-lifecoach]

https://www.getinspiredspiritually.com/post/tackle-anxiety-worrying-tackle-anxiety-worrying-techniques-mentalhealth

[star-anise]

Warnings: Doomerism, climate grief, child death

The thing about having studied history and the psychology of trauma so much is that I can't pretend to myself that the world used to be better at sometime in the past.

Don't get me wrong; things are absolutely terrible right now and need to change, quickly.

But also, they're better than they've ever been for us as a species. It is literally mindblowing how much worse life was for us historically.

Have you seen one of those charts of the human population over time? Have you thought about what it actually means?

Because here's what I see: Humans have always loved things like living to old age, like having sex, like raising babies. Those are things we have always wanted to do. It's not like pre-industrial humans were giant pandas like, "Nah, rather not reproduce as a species. No thanks," and suddenly the Victorians discovered horniness.

Instead, for most of human history, we have died. At terrifically young ages. The few who made it to adulthood could make babies as much as they liked, and then overwhelmingly watched pregnancies miscarry, births end in tragedy, or babies die. Their own lives were constantly at the mercy of a world that could kill them without a second thought. To be human meant to live in a world full of a million little tragedies, all the goddamn time.

And then what happened was: The babies stopped dying. The effects of a lot of things from higher agricultural yields to public health efforts to mass communications made us the master over the diseases and maladies that once had us by the throat.

When we look ahead at catastrophe and terrors, yes, they're bad. But they'd have to be extremely bad indeed to measure up to the number of people who wouldn't even be alive in any other century.

And even the obvious bogeyman then, overpopulation—did you notice what's already happened? On that chart, there's the green measure of total population, but the thin purple line is the rate of population growth. Please notice that it peaked in 1968. It is, in fact, projected as entirely possible that within a century it could go lower than it was twelve thousand years ago, at the end of the last big ice age.

The moment babies started to live longer, people went, "That is too many babies. An absolutely unsustainable number of babies. People are crying out for help because taking care of that many children is completely overwhelming. We need to be able to fix this problem," and they invented birth control and fought to get it legalized. It hit the market in the late 1950s and in less than a decade, it had caught on like wildfire.

To me, this is the absolute opposite of an argument for passivity and political inaction. It's not that everything's going to be okay so why even try. It's that as it turns out, the human capacity to grow and thrive and make the world better is absolutely reality-defying. I don't have faith that all of our problems will be solved, but I do have faith that those problems are all the subject of passionate obsession of millions of people.

And apparently we have a really strong track record at that kind of thing already.

[scientia-rex]

Read some more of Toxic Parents tonight and wow!!!! the amount of anger I have!!! and the incredible unwillingness I have to actually remember my childhood and feel associated feelings!!!!! Like, there are events I keep telling over like talismans, because these are the events that prove I'm not crazy. These are things that happened that should never have happened. The time Dad kicked the door in is the biggest one. The time I spent twelve straight hours cowering in the far back of our station wagon with my fingers jammed in my ears so I wouldn't hear my father screaming at my mother and my mother sobbing as we drove to a different state. The time I told my mother I had gotten accepted to graduate school and her first words were, "How are you going to pay for it?" instead of "Congratulations" or "I'm proud of you."

But these aren't all of it. They're so far from all of it. One memory I have is not of the presence of abuse, but the sudden, bewildering absence of it: my sister drove me to the nearest town with a mall, an hour and a half away. We were stopping to pick up snacks for the drive back, I think at a Safeway. I picked up a box of Golden Grahams cereal and nervously asked my sister if I could have it. She said, "Of course you can, you know what you want." In the limbus of a childhood spent being told I was picking the wrong soda for myself when I gave my order at fast food restaurants, suddenly being told I could have what I wanted T-boned me emotionally. It was like running into a wall I hadn't known was there. What? I can just want things? I can just get things and have them because I want them? I don't have to justify it, or lie, or hide what I want? No one is going to tell me I'm stupid for wanting something or that I'll regret it?

Just an incessant drip-drip-drip of emotional abuse, sometimes punctuated by a flash flood. "If I leave your mother, how do you think you're going to eat? You're going to end up on the street."

And now, reading the section on how children end up feeling about the passive parents who enable abuse, I just think, oh, there's me! There's me. I hated her and pitied her and loved her and wanted more for her. I didn't have the adult emotional capacity to understand how much of her life she was complicit in, but damningly, I did vaguely, tangentially understand that she was constantly making excuses for Dad--coming to my bedroom to sit on my bed and tell me, while crying, that he was sorry, while he never apologized. Making it my job to comfort her. I said to her once that I remember, "If he was really sorry, he'd stop doing this," and she just looked at me with something that looked like sorrow but I could tell was rage--she was angry at me for not forgiving him and letting us snap right back into the "good" phase between angry outbursts, where we could, for however long it lasted, pretend to be a normal family.

And how she always resented me. She resented that I was separate from her, she resented that I could do and see and understand things she couldn't, she was angry when I went into Psychology, even angrier when I went into medicine. She's been throttling down her anger at Dad for as long as I've been alive, pretending to be malleable, having vague health complaints and maladies mixed in among the real ones, forever retiring to her bed with a washcloth over her eyes instead of interacting with me.

And now that I'm an adult, and not just an adult but a middle-aged doctor, why don't I call? Why do I insist on bringing up the past? Why do I expect Dad to apologize? I'm hurting his feelings, after all.

The past. Sure. When I graduated from medical school, he named the worst doctor we ever met and said, "He went to medical school, too. Don't get a big head."

And when we were talking, once, not long ago, maybe two years or so, about how he used to stand there and yell at us--I can't remember any of the words anymore, just the way he looked, the tone of his voice, the experience like being buffeted by a strong wind--he said, "At least your sister fought back. You just stood there and took it."

I can't imagine a clearer illustration that he doesn't actually regret his behavior. He doesn't regret his actions. He still feels justified. We were disappointments, we were failures, we weren't him, we weren't what he wanted for us, and more than that, we were convenient targets for his rage. You can do almost anything to your children and get away with it. And he didn't hit us, so it was okay, and the fact that we were hurt by the actions he took with the intent to hurt us means that we were weak. And it's okay to hurt the weak.

Christ! This is the man who, in a fit of sullen self-pity, when I gave him a mug that said "World's #1 Dad" for Father's Day when I was probably eight or nine, talked about how we both know that's not true. As if a child is your therapist. As if it were my responsibility to reassure him.

My mother has read Toxic Parents. My mother has read Why Does He Do That? She has a bachelor's and most of a master's in psychology. She has an IQ of 150. She is a bad mother. It feels like the worst judgment you can make, a bad mother. It feels worse than calling someone a bad father. Because we expect less from fathers. But a bad mother is unnatural.

But lots and lots and lots of mothers are bad at being mothers. And I love mine and I hate her, and I'm angry and I'll always be angry, and I'll die angry, and I have to try to carve what happiness I can from a world I entered into under false pretenses. I was always told I was wanted. I knew I wasn't. I may have been intentional, but I wasn't wanted.

My mother's mother just died last week. I didn't know her. She chose not to know us. I hadn't seen her since I was twenty-two and graduated from college. My mother is struggling with her relationship with her mother. She often tells me her mother was a narcissist. I want to ask her what she thinks she is. She's not a narcissist, but she's an enabler, she's a doormat, she's a classic case of codependency, and I don't think she sees it that way. I always got the sense she was just waiting for us to grow up and go away so she and Dad could go back to being happily miserable alone together.

I asked her, this last year, if she'd read Why Does He Do That? and she said she had, and she asked me carefully why I was thinking about it, waiting for me to confess to her that my husband of ten years was abusive. She's been gunning for this relationship since the beginning--I'd been with him for maybe a year when she mailed me a copy of He's Just Not That Into You (or maybe it was the sequel, It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken) along with an article on how to date as a single older woman. I was 23. She was flabbergasted when I said I thought Dad was abusive. Denied it immediately. I listed examples and she didn't even say words, just made simultaneously pained and exasperated noises.

She wants me to be single and a career failure and pathetic so she can feel good about herself in comparison. Dad thinks he wants me to be like him, but if I actually behaved like he does, I think he finally would belt me.

I had to hide everything good in me from them so they wouldn't deliberately ruin it. I couldn't tell them about my writing. The first time I finished writing a novel I told Mom and she didn't even acknowledge it, just told me to do the dishes. I was sixteen. I can't tell them what I love about my husband because it would be like speaking to them in a foreign language. They think it's a performance, like their performance, and they're always waiting for me to slip up and reveal the misery they're sure is lurking just underneath.

I've done well. They don't own me. I wish I had real parents, but I'm going to try not to shop for oranges at the hardware store anymore.

[pennyserenade]

bored so here are some more nsfw headcanons i have about jonathan crane:

he likes to play doctor - to have you submissive and obedient, to watch with a clinical distance as you undress, to having you let him do as he pleases, squirming but never, ever questioning. though sometimes he’ll even wear a the white lab coat, slap on a pair of latex gloves — depends on what you’re doing and how long he wants to ruin you

his self-control is impeccable. if you want a drooling, whining, pleading partner who will fall to their knees for you, he’s not it, babe. there’s scarcely a part of his sexual desire he’s not explored and analyzed to the point of absolute understanding, and he doesn’t exactly thrill at the idea of you finding any unbidden. having said that, he is surprised by you—by how much your desire, your want, your needs—enhance things for him. it is never a variable he can account for, how attracted he is to you, and it makes him a little unnerved

he’s not terribly sentimental. material objects such as gifts, and traditional long term relationships are not his cup of his tea. jonathan understands himself to be solitary, and until you, his only form of fascination with other people laid mostly in their maladies. however, if gift giving is your brand of affection, he will allow it so long as its subtle. he’ll wear a tie you got him, use the paper weight, carry around the fancy pen. mostly though, sexual favors are his favorite gift of all—and they are the one thing he returns, not with embarrassment, but fervently, ardently.

he likes exploring you. sometimes it makes your head feel heavy, how much he weaves himself through you, tinkering, tugging, searching. there are days when what he likes best is not to bury himself in you to the hilt, but to stretch you out on his lap, put you both in front of a mirror, and watch. it could last for hours.

he isnt judgmental, sexually speaking. he understands sex to be a highly psychological thing, that desires can be contrary to personal beliefs at times, and that he himself is not to be the arbitrator of moral judgment. he does not view your attraction to him as something incredible. you like the idea of danger, the idea that he might kill you, that he can, but even better than that you like that he doesn’t, that he won’t. and he knows, just as you, that when you allow him to use you, allow him to bruise your skin and push you to limits unforeseen, that doesn’t mean you’ll allow it outside of the bedroom. it’s part of what is so good about him: that he has no interest in judgement, not even a capacity to explore it beyond, perhaps, the self criticism you may have about it

he is rough, but he is also extraordinarily gentle. his after care doesn’t include much in the way of human emotion, but there’s … quirks to him. things he will do that allow you to know he cares, however dismally, about your well being. a caress, an offer to fetch water, a prolonged glance, and sometimes, extraordinarily, an offer to spend the night (separate rooms, of course)

[transmutationisms]

hi ! second time caller, for context ive been going through a lot of anti pysch recs and think i have a pretty good grasp on what my views are - unfortunately, confiding in my best friend or partner seems to elicit the "go to therapy! go back on meds!" response.

i was just wondering what your thoughts are on the very normalised use of those statements as like- a throwaway? ESPECIALLY when loved ones talk about self harm/suicide (particularly online), and also in the context of when someone's state of mind is based largerly on shit life syndrome/ a terrible environment (ie. in my case, and why i feel so strongly about it)

i hope i dont come off as already having made up my mind, and apologies if this has been asked before!

i mean i think it's fine if you have already made up your mind lol it's an insidious tendency you're picking up on: individualising social and political failures by rendering them the domain of psychological maladies. historically it has not always been the case that psychiatrists viewed themselves as apolitical; many early parisian alienists, for instance, considered individual health inextricable from the social environment, to the point of initially believing that the first french revolution would be key to achieving true health and well-being. but this isn't really a position the psychiatric profession embraces today & instead therapy and psychiatric treatment are thrown at people in lieu of political engagement. it's a very easy answer that mostly placates the recommender, who doesn't have to think very hard about thorny social questions, and ofc it's profitable for the psychiatric profession, which has often claimed scientific legitimacy partly by divesting from its more political and socially embedded elements.

[ninja-muse]

As you can tell, my plan to acquire only two books this month went perfectly. No notes. 😰 On the upside, four of these I did not pay for and only one of them was full price, so it’s like I saved money.

I really do need to get better at reading off my physical TBR though. I’ve started a Storygraph challenge for myself, so we’ll see how that goes.

July started with a bookish bang: there was the planned bookstore visit (three books bought, not two, but I unhauled ten and used my credit), and then my dad came down so we could marathon the local Shakespeare festival, which was great! And somehow not the Shakespeare overdose I was worried about, and they nailed the play we were worried they weren’t going to.

After that, it’s been business as usual. I feel like I’m behind in my reading because Malady of the Mind took so long to get through, but honestly, I suspect I’m not because I’ve been blowing through lighter fiction on the side. The library’s finally getting April releases into circulation though, so I’ve had physical reads from them again. (Which will totally help my physical TBR goals, I know.) Very much looking forward to The Library Thief, which I picked up this week.

The only other noteworthy thing of the month is I discovered my library has an ebook of Rose/House by Arkady Martine! Except it’s in French, so it’s been taking me a bit to get through. I might not even get it done before it’s due back, but if so I’ll just check it out again because it is good, just … in French.

Click through to see everything I read this month, in the rough order of how glad I was to have read them.

Malady of the Mind - Jeffery A. Lieberman

A history of schizophrenia, with a hopeful ending.

10/10

warning: detailed descriptions of the symptoms of schizophrenia and past and present medical and societal treatments of the mentally ill

reading copy

The Reappearance of Rachel Price - Holly Jackson

Bel’s participating in a documentary about the disappearance of her mother sixteen years ago when her mom walks back in the door. Now nothing is okay.

8.5/10

Black British secondary character

warning: kidnapping, gaslighting, psychological abuse

library ebook

The Pairing - Casey McQuiston

Theo is over Kit. Four years over, which means there’s enough distance to take their dream European food tour solo and close the book. Except Kit had the same idea. Out in August.

8/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonists (bi man, bi enby), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary and incidental characters (sapphic, achillean), 🏳️‍🌈 author

reading copy

Dear Wendy - Ann Zhao

Two aroace teens start competing college advice columns. Professionally they’re rivals. Unknowingly, they’re becoming friends.

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonists (aroace), Chinese-American protagonist, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (lesbian, bi, demisexual), Indian-American secondary character, Black secondary character, Latin secondary character, Chinese-American author, 🏳️‍🌈 author

warning: aceophobia

library book

Goodnight Tokyo - Atsuhiro Yoshida

Interwoven stories about nighttime life in Tokyo. A prop procurer seeks the perfect items, a crack detective seeks his father’s films, a diner owner seeks a past customer, and more.

7/10

Japanese cast, Japanese author

reading copy

Peking Duck and Cover - Vivien Chien

Lana’s helping run the Chinese New Year celebrations at Asia Village and everything’s going great—until someone kills a lion dancer.

7/10

Taiwanese-American protagonist, largely Chinese-American cast, Taiwanese-American author

warning: gun violence

borrowed from work

The Tomb of the Mili Mongga - Samuel Turvey

A conservationist seeking fossils in Indonesia is sidetracked by a local legend of a giant wild man, and along the way muses on extinction, human cultures, folklore, and our place in the world.

7.5/10

Indonesian secondary characters

library book

My Love in Stitches, Vol. 1 - Emily Gossmann

Frankie’s trying to get her life together when she meets Momo, but dating her is going to be hard. First, she needs a job, and also their friends are dead set on keeping them apart….

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonists (sapphic), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (sapphic), 🏳️‍🌈 author, 🇨🇦

kickstarted/off my TBR

The Dishonest Miss Take - Faye Murphy

Desperate to clear her name after a murder she didn't commit, a superpowered former villain stumbles onto a mystery—and a curious assassin. Out in September.

5.5/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (sapphic), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (sapphic)

digital reading copy/won

Picture Books

It’s Raining Bats & Frogs - Rebecca Colby

The witch parade is in danger of being rained out but one young witch has the solution. Or does she?

Scorch, Hedgehog of Doom - Cate Berry

Scorch is going to be the biggest, baddest hedgehog ever, no matter what.

Into the Goblin Market - Vikki VanSickle

Two sisters live near the goblin market. When one seeks out its temptations, the other follows to save her.

Reread

Timeline - Michael Crichton

In the late 1990s, a tech company finds a way to send people to the Hundred Years’ War. Immediately, things go wrong.

7/10

warning: misogyny, attempted sexual violence

library ebook

Currently reading

A Gentleman from Japan - Thomas Lockley

The true story of a Japanese man who found himself at the court of Elizabeth I.

warning: slavery, orientalism

library book

Rose/House - Arkady Martine

There is a body within Rose House—two, if you count its architect, who ordered the house shuttered with his passing and left to its AI. Only one person is allowed to enter now, and she’s accounted for. And yet there is a body within Rose House….

library ebook

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century - Richard Taruskin

A history of early written European music, in its social and political contexts.

The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

Victorian detective stories.

disabled POV character (limb injury), occasional Indian secondary characters

warning: racism, colonialism

Monthly total: 9 + 1 + 3 Yearly total: 68 Queer books: 4 Authors of colour: 3 Books by women: 5 Authors outside the binary: 1 Canadian authors: 1 Classics: 0 Off the TBR shelves: 1 Books hauled: 11 ARCs acquired: 4 ARCs unhauled: 4 DNFs: 0

January February March April May June

[asifyoucouldoutreadme]

Have to give my favorite character to write for some love on this beautiful WIP Wednesday.

Excerpt, Chapter 17: The Cat

“This is Crookshanks.” She said gruffly, bending her leg to brace the heavy creature against her knee.

“What is a Crookshanks?” Blaise asked, eyes wide with revulsion, but also a bit of wonder.

“He’s Hermione’s.” Weasley explained. She tucked an arm around the cat’s midsection, freeing her other hand to move hair out of her face. The tendrils stuck to the perspiration gathering on her pale skin, which Draco watched Blaise note with rapt attention.

“It’ll make her happy.” She said quietly, bending to give the creature a kiss on its great dome of a head.

“It smells like death.” Blaise commented, walking back. The cat moved its ugly eyes to glare at him, as if he could discern insults.

“Well, he’s quite old. He mostly just sleeps nowadays.”

“And you cannot continue to care for him until his imminent demise?” Draco asked, shuffling backwards himself. This Crookshanks did indeed stink.

“My son irritates him, so it’s never been a good fit. I just thought Hermione could use a friend.”

“A friend who is about to die.” Blaise stated with a grin, as if this was an exciting new frontier for psychological torture.

The Empress of all Maladies

AsIfYouCouldOutReadMe on AO3

[awfullybigwardrobe44]

Listen folks, you won’t see me posting from Desiring God very often. But this one (written by a guest author, I must add) is very well written and important.

I quite enjoyed this:

Being curious by nature, and also a nerd when it comes to history and historical theology, I started digging and discovered that scrupulosity is a spiritual malady that has caused pastors to say, “Oy, not this again,” for about two thousand years. It’s also a neurological, OCD-related condition that can be treated on that basis. In fact, confessors, spiritual directors, and pastors have been using tools similar to cognitive behavioral therapy for a good portion of church history — long before medications provided additional treatment options.