#psychosis flag

[schizosupport]

Psychosis and Schizo Spec Flag Time!

My dear friends of the community! For a community in which so many of us have been called a freak at some point in life, we've had a distinct lack of a coherent freak flag to fly!

Well, no more. There's a new flag in town, and she's a beauty!

The flag is preceded by a number of other flags. @psychotic-pisces collected a number of them, and proposed yet more, here, and there have been other versions and attempts through the years. There can be many flags, and no flag is more right than another, but we did feel that our community might be in need of a simple yet recognisable flag, that would still be rich with symbolism. This is our proposal!

I shall refrain from waxing poetic about the elements of the flag, but the references are as follows:

The symbol used in this flag was proposed by @actuallyschizophrenic here, and has seen fair use in the psychotic and schizo spec communities around these parts.

The colour stripes in the background match the current flag most commonly used for disability pride.

The background is purple, because 70% of all previous proposed flags were purple, suggesting a cultural connection to the colour in our community.

The symbol sits upon a waxing silver-lavender moon, referencing not only tales of lunacy, but also the dichotomous nature of our illnesses, negative/positive symptoms and more.

Finally, the moon acts as a prism on the stripes, creating a disjointed feeling, that we associate with psychosis and disorganization, among other things.

The flag doesn't have a name, I think anyone in the community can call it what feels right. Schizotypy flag, psychosis flag, lunacy flag - you name it! I call it the lunacy flag, but I have provenly bad taste, so call it what feels right!

This flag was a collaborative effort in a community discord for schizo spec folk and psychotic people. There's no way I could have arrived at this design on my lonesome, and I'm forever grateful to our loving, creative, smart and awesome communities!!

Special thanks to a very cool, kind and talented person who goes by 'Orange' in the server, who created the vector file of the finalized flag, which can be found (on Google drive via tumblr) here!

And a userbox template bc why not..

Let's go fly our freak flag! 🧠🔥🎉

Other formats, color annotated version and image description under the cut

Long format:

Square:

Version of the flag with names of each colour for accessibility:

Image ID of flag: A rectangular flag. The background is purple, and in the middle there's a circle. The circle looks like the moon, with one side in darkness. The moon is dark grey and light silver-grey lavender. On the moon is a symbol commonly associated with psychosis and the schizo spectrum in white. A beam of stripes cross behind the moon from each corner. The stripes are light green, light blue, light grey, yellow and light red. They are similar to the stripes on the disability flag. The beam shifts position behind the moon, so it is parallel above and below the moon, but not directly connected. End ID.

[queerly-autistic]

You really can't engage meaningfully with Ed's story in S2 without firmly centring his mental illness and suicidality, because that's inherently what the story is: it's the story of a man having a severe mental breakdown and going to increasingly erratic extremes in order to achieve his end goal, which is to not be alive anymore...and then it's the story of his recovery from that.

And so much of my frustration with the way I see this being talked about (or, in many cases, not being talked about) reflects my more general frustration with how we talk about mental illness and neurodivergence, so buckle in because this got long (also I am going to be discussing suicide here, as well as very brief mentions of psychosis and ocd, so please take care). There's this trend when we talk about mental health: we go 'oh mental illness isn't an excuse' or 'mental illness doesn't make you do bad things' or variations thereof. These are, in my opinion, some of the worst things to ever happen to the discourse around mental illness. It's reductive. Absolutely mental illness can lead you to do things that you would not have otherwise done, even things that you would be absolutely appalled by, if you were mentally well. What do you think mental illness is if it's not something that impacts your brain and how your brain functions? If your mental illness doesn't directly lead to problematic behaviour, then that's fantastic, but that experience is not universal. It's not an 'excuse' - it's an explanation for certain behaviours that's vitally important to acknowledge and understand in order to try and mitigate harm.

There's also this thing that happens with discourse around mental illness where we assume that what you do in the grips of mental illness is reflective of something that's innate inside you. You were violent whilst in the middle of psychosis? Oh, it's because you're an innately abusive person and this just reveals who you really are. You have Tourette's and one of your tics is a racial slur? Oh, it's because you're an innately racist person and this just reveals who you really are. Your OCD is rooted in a fear that you're going to murder your family? Oh, it's because you inherently do want to murder your family and this just reveals who you really are. It's bullshit. What you do in your mentally ill state is not some deep philosophical reflection of your true character, and the idea that it is is something that causes really deep, dangerous harm to mentally ill and neurodivergent people.

So, now that that's over with, back to Ed.

Ed was behaving in ways that were acknowledged in canon as being extremely out of character whilst in the midst of a severe breakdown. Fang himself said that he'd 'never' seen Ed behave this way; even Izzy, who actively pushed for Ed to embody the extremes of his Blackbeard persona, ended up concerned because it became so extreme and out of character that it was impossible not to be concerned by it. The crew who mutinied on Izzy within a day didn't mutiny on him for months, not until their lives literally depended on it, because it's heavily insinuated that they were hoping he would get better. Because this wasn't the Ed that they knew (the Ed that we came to know in S1 - an inherently soft man who is caught in a culture of violence and is tired of it).

The show wasn't subtle about this. It didn't bury the lead. As well as the constant reminders that he was acting out of character in increasingly alarming ways, this was very clearly depicted as a breakdown, an almost total collapse of Ed's mental health. We saw Ed detached and numb and completely dissociated from the world around him. We saw him in private moments of despair, breaking down. We saw him behaving erratically in the grips of mania. We saw him display absolutely textbook warning signs of someone whose made the decision to die by suicide. We saw him smile and say 'finally' at the moment when he knew he was going to die.

The show basically painted a giant neon sign over his head flashing 'THIS MAN IS EXTREMELY UNWELL' in bright lights, and if you miss that, then it's because you're deliberately avoiding looking properly.

(And, important to note, that most of the people that I've watched the show with outside of fandom discourse absolutely took away from these episodes what the show was intending - they saw how unwell Ed was, they were devastated for him, and they desperately wanted him to get better.)

When Ed steered the ship into the storm, and threatened to put a cannonball through the mast, his clear goal was to create a situation where the crew had no choice but to kill him. I've seen people describe this scene as Ed 'trying to hurt the crew', and I think that's very much a misrepresentation of what the show was depicting. It was very blatantly a suicide attempt. He wanted to die, and he didn't care what he had to do in order for him to achieve that goal. That doesn't make it good behaviour, and it doesn't mean people didn't get hurt, but it does make it a very different situation than if causing harm had been his main intent.

There is a fundamental difference between 'he is doing this because he explicitly wants to cause harm to the people around him' and 'he's doing this because he's suicidal and beyond the point of being able to rationally consider who might be getting hurt in the process of ensuring that he ends up dead'. One of those is a bad person who enjoys causing pain - and the other is a deeply unwell person who can be supported and helped to recover and be better (and should be, for the good of themselves and the people around them).

And on that note, the failure to engage with this as a mental health story is also, I think, why I've seen some people get so upset about the show not doing Ed's redemption arc 'right' - because this isn't a redemption arc, and it's not trying to be. One day I'll do a separate post about how much I love that the show explicitly rejected a carceral approach, opting to essentially put him through community rehabilitation rather than punishing him, and even mocking punitive prescriptive measures (that rubbish youtuber apology speech was supposed to be rubbish and unhelpful), but that's one for another day.

The fact is that the show is telling a story about mental illness, and that inherently means that Ed's arc is a recovery arc, not a redemption arc. And if you're expecting a redemption arc, then you've fundamentally misunderstood the story that they're telling (and the revolutionary kindness at the heart of the show).

I have a lot of feelings about this because I genuinely believe that it was one of the best depictions of mental illness and suicidality that I've ever seen. Within the confines of it being a half hour, eight episode comedy show, they told a story about mental illness that was surprisingly realistic (with the obvious fantastical over the top elements of it being a pirate show - and piracy is explicitly depicted as a culture where violence is heavily normalised), and that didn't shy away from the messier, darker, more complex elements of mental illness (particularly of being suicidal).

And then, most importantly, after all that, the show took me gently by the hand said 'you are not defined by what you do in your lowest moment - you can make amends, you can recover, you are still loved, and you are worth saving'.

[rabidbatboy]

PSYCHOBOY ; a gender for psychos who are boys, being a boy in a psycho way, or being a boy influenced by being a psycho

PSYCHOGiRL ; a gender for psychos who are girls, being a girl in a psycho way, or being a girl influenced by being a psycho

exclusive to psychotic people and pwASPD

🦇 ——— COINED BY ME

[ PT / psychoboy ; a gender for psychos who are boys, being a boy in a psycho way, or being a boy influenced by being a psycho

psychogirl ; a gender for psychos who are girls, being a girl in a psycho way, or being a girl influenced by being a psycho

exclusive to psychotic people and pwASPD

coined by me / END PT ]

[strawberrybabydog]

people who say "i wont feed into your delusion/delusional identity" are so silly because there's no way for them to judge our "level" of delusion. or what behaviors even are related to delusion (yes im talking about psychotics here too. many psychotics are deeply guilty of this sanism.)

i just bought a little personal utensil set online. it has a knife, fork, spoon, and a little container. this is mostly because i have a contamination/uncleanliness delusion. if i follow the beliefs of the "i wont feed into your delusion" crowd, i never would have bought that and would have struggled with eating from utensils indefinitely. because getting my own personal utensil set with the intention of avoiding the contaminated utensils of others, in their eyes, would be "feeding into delusion." in their eyes, any level of non-negative interactions with delusions are inherently bad and inherently harmful. to them, if you're psychotic and not actively attempting to shame yourself out of delusions (or other psychotic symptoms) this is a moral failing.

fortunately, this isnt how delusions work in real life (or anything. when has self-shame helped us really?) my personal utensil set doesnt confirm My reality as any more real to me than it was before. the people in my life who encouraged me to buy my utensil set, and who will encourage me to use it, are not worsening my delusions. my delusions are already there, and they will be there regardless of what happens to me; schizophrenia is chronic after all. all they have done is provide me an environment where i wont be judged if i engage in coping methods related to soothing delusions, and where i am encouraged to cope and feel better

the best part is, engaging with my personal utensil set AND other people encouraging me to use it is completely unnocuous. it's literally just a fork, knife, and spoon; a person eating with a personal utensil set is uncommon and a bit odd, but nothing more. these behaviors not only cause no harm to me (they directly benefit me actually) but they also cause no harm to others

this post is about coping behaviors and respect for delusional people. this post is not about whether you should engage with your delusions in a specific way or not. every delusional person has an individual experience and should address their delusions in whichever way helps them most - but this does not mean forcing other delusional people to cope with whichever method worked best for you, especially if that is shame.

[flagsandtags]

psychosis calmer

an alter who takes on the role psychosis calmer, similar to a soother these alters front during times of distress, specifically when another alter is having a psychosis episode this alter will front to help calm them down, keep them company, or whatever that alter needs to help with their episode

coined by saturn !!

[ENDOS DNI]

pinterest link

[thehoundsflags]

Image description: the PTSD Objectum flag on the left, which is made of 7 vertical stripes in the following colors: dark gray, gray, turquoise, white, pastel green, lavender, dark gray lavender. In the center is a gray magenta circle. On the right is the same flag, but without the circle symbol. ID end.

Image description: the CPTSD Objectum flag on the left, which is made of 7 vertical stripes in the following colors: dark blue, dark teal, teal, light yellow, purple, dark purple, dark blue. In the center is a gray magenta circle. On the right is the same flag, but without the circle symbol. ID end.

Image description: the Psychotic Objectum flag on the left, which is made of 7 vertical stripes in these colors: dark purple, purple, lavender, light yellow, pink, dark pink, pastel indigo. In the center is a magenta circle symbol. On the right is the same flag, but without the circle symbol. ID end.

Image description: the OCD Objectum flag on the left, which is made of 7 vertical stripes in these colors: dark gray, blue, turquoise, white, yellow, dark yellow, light brown. In the center is a red-brown circle symbol. On the right is the same flag, but without the symbol. ID end.

Objectum + disorder combo flags! Mainly intended for those who have their orientation affected by said disorders, but any objectum person with the disorders may use!

[pride-flag-fag]

errofluid

errofluid/erroflux/errogender: a neurogender that shifts or fluctuates in some way depending on one’s psychotic symptoms. exclusive to people with psychosis.

term coined by: tumblr user punk-dorian on or before february 22, 2017

flag designed by: tumblr user xeno-aligned.png on march 10, 2019

[moe-broey]

Sketch dump I was gonna post after several other drawings but I just. Need to get it out of my system actually.

Big hc I've been running w lately is that Alfonse is a lap guy (entirely on his terms) and I. Had the thought. Of that extending to Lif.

Also finally pinned down the Alfonse/Dimitri/Lif dynamic and it's Evil Compatibility, where they're a perfect match to inevitably bring out the worst in each other LMFAOO

[oblivion-yxllow]

colorswapped autism flag / schizospec flag + combination flag .. ! ★

feel free to use! credit is appreciated but not required

[objectlovernonhuman]

MaDD + Psychosis flag

A flag for those who have both Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder and psychosis. As such, it is exclusive to those people.

In order: main, then 2 icon friendly variants.

[belinhagamer999]

Psychosis based genders

Teledelugenderic

a gender related to the delusion of having telepathy, communicating with others through thoughts, seeing others in your head, and speaking with them.

Goddelugenderic

a gender related to the delusion of being a god and having special powers and showing them to other people, it's also related to euphoria feeling, delusions of being a special divine figure with superpowers

these genders are exclusive to those with schizophrenia.

[flagsandtags]

psychosis symptom holder

alters of a system who experience the bodies psychosis symptoms more then the others

flag made by saturn !!

[ENDOS DNI]

pinterest link

[andromedako]

THERE WE GO !!

[fecto-forgo]

psychosis flag autism symbol icon for da disability month

[thursdayglrl]

ppl on the internet will be like I'm insane I'm crazyyyy I would have gotten a lobotomyyyy and then they have mild anxiety and think psychotropic drugs are scary.

[creatively-ill]

About time I post this, my flag!!

In order of the colors,

Radioactive

Glowing

Glow in the dark/night

Pink blood

The dear, radioactive symbol, and the glow in the dark star PNG’s, are self-explanatory 

I won’t be doing anything with it atm but it was fun to make and it’s nice to have a flag for myself