#psychosis

[madpunks]

we are so ableist about memory. people with good memory take for granted the fact that they can recall as much as they can, and use that to taunt, guilt and threaten people with memory issues. many neurotypes and mental illnesses cause memory lapses. traumatic brain injuries can cause memory lapses. brain cancer can cause memory lapses.

even if your memory is good, it's not right to guilt someone because they can't remember something. trust me, people with memory problems are desperately trying to remember: it's just that we literally can't. it is a very literal "i can't remember".

[crippledpunks]

my heart goes out to you if you're a disabled person who has a complicated or negative relationship with sleep. if you need to sleep a lot but can't due to life circumstances, or sleeping extra causing other symptoms to flare up. if you can't sleep enough due to pain, or nightmares, or psychosis, or bipolar, or depression. if you sleep way too much and find it hard to stay awake. if you can't fall or stay asleep. if you need medication in order to be able to sleep. if you don't feel rested from sleep. if you wake up a lot in the night. if you have bladder or bowel accidents while asleep. if you twitch or convulse or move too or get injured in your sleep. if you can't control your sleep schedule no matter what. if you can't sleep during "normal" sleeping hours. if you can't sleep for 8+ hours straight but can sleep for shorter amounts of time. if sleep is what you need but for one reason or another you just can't or refuse to do it.

i care about you. your disabilities deserve to be seen and acknowledged

[schizopositivity]

Oh you love that musician that wears a strait jacket in a music video?

Oh you love haunted house attractions that are 'insane asylum' themed?

Oh you love that horror movie where the villain is portrayed to be psychotic?

But do you respect and care for mentally ill people who have been restrained because they were a danger to themselves or others?

But do you respect and care for people who are constantly in and out of psych wards, or have to live full time in psychiatric facilities?

But do you respect and care for people who have psychotic disorders, especially if they are poc and/or homeless?

Do you see us as real people, or do you just like the aesthetic of our suffering for your entertainment?

[sikeosis]

Being someone with psychosis, it can be difficult to tell others who I’m friends with/know that I actually, really am schizo-spec or experience symptoms.

For some reason when I tell people I experience or have experienced psychosis and that’s a part of my diagnosis, people assume I’m just being “dramatic” with my words or just saying it in the moment. Like, no.. I actually have a mental health condition, I’m not using delusional as an expression of speech, or saying I’ve experienced episodes before as some random thing to just say. When I say it I’m just telling the truth and being serious.

[schizoetic]

It hurts for people to laugh at you when you have symptoms of a mental illness. But it feels good to laugh at yourself. I hope you understand what I mean when I say this

[thecorvidforest]

boy it would be nice to be able to google something related to personality disorders, psychosis, intellectual disabilities, autism, DID/OSDD, etcetera without finding majority articles that are like “how to deal with a person with X” “how to cope with your child with X” “how to spot someone faking X” “can people with X be cured?”

[grendel-menz]

a little diary about trying to find a middle ground between being spiritual and being a schizophrenic

[tortiefrancis]

hey fun fact did you know that if you're on the schizophrenia spectrum, have psychosis, have psychotic symptoms or traits, etc, that you're loved and your symptoms and traits should not be vilainized or seen as evil or ugly?

[trans-axolotl]

idk i think a lot of people sort of build up schizo-spec diagnoses in their head as this example of a "clearly biomedical disease that is the scariest possible example of mental illness that is always a crisis no matter what." and i'm not going to sit here and say that schizoaffective is always pleasant to live with, or pretend that it's something that I can manage perfectly-it does cause me distress a lot of the time, and makes some things very difficult. but for me, psychosis is by far not the most difficult symptom i have to deal with, compared to some of the other things that have brought me distress. And yet it's always the symptom that is reacted to with the most fear, confusion, and disgust by other people. I hate it when people generalize psychosis as always and inherently and forever a crisis, and ignore the fact that everyone who experiences psychosis is going to have their own experiences, perspectives on how it impacts them, and that treating psychosis as a super scary, inherently dangerous symptom is incredibly stigmatizing and prevents us from receiving support and care from our communities.

idk. i just really wish people would realize that for some people, psychosis can sometimes be a neutral or even positive experience (i've had some incredibly lovely psychosis experiences), and that by positioning psychosis as a "super scary disease that has no quality of life" and only offering carceral solutions, it perpetuates a pattern where we get continually pushed into harmful treatments. Instead of a situation where our autonomy is respected, where we're offered a wide variety of treatments from meds to therapies to peer support like Hearing Voices Network to material community based support and where we're allowed to define our own experience of psychosis based on how it actually affects us. like, i don't want to deny that psychosis is often distressing for many of us--but I do think we have the responsibility to evaluate where we've learned about psychosis, what societal messages we've internalized about psychosis, what kinds of knowledge about psychosis do we not have access to, and just actually think in depth about how our biases impact how we communicate about psychosis.

[isabellascarlett1]

There’s nothing inherently “scary” about someone talking to themself in public.

There’s nothing “scary” about someone rocking back and forth in public.

There’s nothing “scary” about someone pacing back and forth in public.

Some of y’all are just ableist.

[serialunaliver]

the reason people on tiktok can't differentiate psychosis from conspiracy theory content is that conspiracy theory content plays into common themes in psychotic delusions, particularly persecutory and paranoid. but someone in the comments of one of these tiktoks mentioned that a lot of these conspiracy theories (qanon resembling paranoid psychosis the most in my opinion) originate from the US specifically, and this points to something other than mental illness. it's a political climate that encourages this sort of thinking and behavior--the individual is most important, defend yourself from your neighbors, community corrupts children. it has been observed that schizophrenic people in the US hear more violent voices and overall have a more terrifying experience with the condition. they feel alienated from communities around them and are abandoned by loved ones.

there is a semi-recent mass shooter in the US who, before the crime, experienced paranoid delusions and hallucinations. while such extreme violence from psychotic people is not the norm, if you read about his family, they are qanon fanatics who believe an apocalypse is coming. an environment that encourages and validates delusions that--out of all types of delusional thinking--are most likely to lead to violence against others. this man had been hospitalized for psychosis before but did not receive proper support from family after and had access to weapons despite the persecutory delusions.

now i'm seeing an increasing amount of younger people from the US noticing these things--well, specifically, the paranoid and violent conspiracy theories and how terrifyingly popular they are among the general population. to dismiss it as simply illness ignores the larger problem. it's highly unlikely the 200k people who liked a conspiracy video are all schizophrenic*. but they are instead people who consider this sort of thinking not only correct, but patriotic. and they are isolating their children to instill the exact same mindset in them. it's a cycle that will never be broken if it's dismissed as a flaw in the individual's brain.

*psychosis is a very debilitating condition and involves more than just "weird beliefs". this is why every goddamn doctor is able to identify me as psychotic by me simply interacting with people and the world around me. a psychotic person will not engage with others the way conservative conspiracy grifters do. stop tying everything to mental illness.

[schizopositivity]

Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian with schizophrenia! Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian with schizoaffective disorder! Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian with schizoid personality disorder! Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian with schizotypal personality disorder! Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian with paranoid personality disorder! Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian with delusional disorder! Happy lesbian visibility week to every lesbian who has ever experienced psychosis!

I love you all, happy visibility week! 🧡🤍🩷

[funeral]

Guattari’s idea is both refreshing and profound. He suggests that when a person experiences psychosis, her psychosis changes according to her surroundings, and, therefore, treating her with fear by locking her up, keeping her in restraints, overmedicating her, and exposing her to other methods of suppression only serves to change her psychosis to a psychosis of fear and paranoia. Who, psychotic or not, in the same situation wouldn’t also feel terror and paranoia? Indeed, there is a legitimate reason to be paranoid and afraid. Further, the shock of being treated inhumanly, the sense of alienation and of betrayal, and, perhaps paramountly, the realization that humans can and do treat other humans in this way, is itself shocking and traumatizing. It is a shock and trauma that alters the psyche, changing the personality of the person who undergoes it.

Cynthia Cruz, Disquieting: Essays on Silence

[gunkmusher]

i wish the world was a more gentle place to psychotic people

[neuroticboyfriend]

If you struggle with substance abuse but not addiction, you still deserve support. If you struggle with suicidality/self harm urges but don't act on it, you still deserve support. If you struggle with psychosis and paranoia but have insight, you still deserve support. If you struggle with anything but are "coping with it," you still deserve support.

You dont need to be in imminent crisis to get help - safety planning, harm reduction, resources, and accommodations. You're still struggling. You're still suffering, You're still at risk/in danger. You deserve better - you need better. Your health and wellbeing matters.

[hussyknee]

Hey, just in case people who already have been having a bad time with this meme are retriggered by Francesca Scorcese's TikTok – Goncharov is fake. It doesn't exist. [Edited for further clarity] That is really Martin Scorsese's daughter, that's her real TikTok account, and presumably that is really her father in the chat screenshot she posted. Francesca saw the piece in the NY Times talking about how Tumblr made up a fake movie, sent her Dad the link and asked "Did you see this?" Martin joked back "yes I made that movie years ago." That's all it was, Martin Scorsese himself playing along with our silliness.

PLEASE reblog this and DO NOT TAG IT UNREALITY. "Unreality" is for posts that are keeping up the bit, but info posts, reality-affirming posts and ones talking about the meme as a meme are solidly real. We really haven't been doing a good enough job tagging this properly and protecting neurodivergent people from being gaslit and traumatized. I've seen way too many people saying they nearly had a breakdown because of being lied to. We never meant to hurt you, and I'm so sorry people were jackasses when you wanted to know the truth.

Edit: I love everybody reblogging this, but a handful of idiots have been clowning on this post so here's an explainer about how site-wide disinformation can trigger psychosis. Please go in the replies and notes, they have a lot of interesting insights, by everyone from non-psychotic autistic people with gaslighting trauma to DID systems. You can go through the notes on this post as well.

There's absolutely no reason to be ashamed of loving and enjoying this meme, or to feel bad about not tagging things properly when you didn't know how. And PLEASE don't harass, dogpile or shame people for failing to tag properly or choosing not to. You're just giving people anxiety and policing them. Do what you can how you can, be kind, and don't tell other people their business. That is more than enough.❤️