#schizo spec

[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.

[schizopositivity]

Reminder that schizo-spec and psychotic people who need full time care are an important part of this community. People living in psychiatric hospitals, people in prisons, people in care homes, people living with a care giver/family member, anyone who needs lifelong care is an important part of our community. Just because we can't always see them, or can't always hear their stories, doesn't mean we shouldn't stick up for them, support them, include them, and respect them.

[schizoetic]

Just because something you experience in psychosis isn't happening in reality, it doesn't mean it wasn't real to you. The trauma you get from those experiences is real.

[madpunks]

i know that some neurodivergent folks struggle to read typos and disordered writing, but if you are the type of person who feels compelled to correct grammar and spelling when it's not related to struggling to parse what someone is saying, please do not do it to a schizophrenic or schizospectrum person. we often times mix up similar sounding words, mix up the order of sentences, say things that straight up don't make sense, or spell words in ways that make sense to us, but are not spelled 'correctly' and have no idea we did it.

if you can't parse what we said, please just ask us to say or explain it again. don't interject and say "oh you meant this," or go "it's spelled necessary*" or laugh at them for mixing up words or not knowing how to spell something correctly. it's not funny, it's a product of someone else's disability. just ask for clarification instead. we don't care about whether or not every single sentence we say is grammatically correct. sometimes you have to overlook those mistakes and engage with the person on their level.

[neuroticboyfriend]

person: *coincidentally says something related to what i was just thinking about*

me:

[ID: An anime character gesturing towards a yellow butterfly. The captioning at the bottom originally reads "Is this a pigeon?" - this being the butterfly. The text is edited to read "Is this a secret message just for me?" /End ID]

[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.

[pluralcultureis]

schizo-spec plural culture is- at least for us- co fronting with alters and like :p sometimes being able to see your alters outside like physically or usually just feeling them, so like I'll hold hands or sometimes dance n stuff :3

-🩰

.

[narcissisticpdcultureis]

Narc & schizo culture is being constantly paranoid that ur friend might have acted differently this one time bc they searched up “ how to deal with a narcissistic ” & now they secretly despite u & see u as a monster & want u dead bc ur a narc ,.

.

[thepracticeofglob]

Petition to change the name “Schizophrenia” with “Abstraction Disorder “

[narcatsisst]

being a schizo-spec narcissist is crazy because half of me wants to talk about my delusions and paranoia all the time to get attention but the other half of me would rather be caught dead than talk about them because i dont want to show weakness

[ppd-culture-is]

i have schizophrenia and my paranoia gets worse during winter. so glad im not the only person like that

Yes!! Our Schizophrenia (PPD premorbid) also geys worse during winter.. so odd lol

[entropy-sea-system]

Sticks the Badger (Sonic Boom) seems somewhat schizotypal to me, as someone who's schizotypal. She has many traits of STPD such as peculiar and unusual thoughts and mannerisms, suspicious/paranoid thoughts and belief in special powers, superstitions, etc. (related to her conspiracy theories), peculiar speech style, dressing oddly(unkempt in comparison to most of the other characters). She also has relatively flat emotional expression and forms of magical thinking(perceptions of unrelated events as being significantly connected).

Although, I do feel like the way she is treated in canon and the way her characterisation is written is somewhat ableist, with her often being seen as an outcast or eccentric or as 'the crazy one', and some episode arcs in particular highlight this.

[schizopositivity]

how to advocate for schizophrenics and psychotics in every day life:

correct people when they misuse the word "psychotic" (as in if they use it in any other way but a serious disconnect from reality, delusions or hallucinations)

correct people when they use the word "schizophrenic" as an adjective (its not!!! its a severe and persistant mental disorder)

correct people when they call people "crazy" aka "shes been acting crazy lately" (they likely dont actually mean it and this word is thrown around a lot, but as a schizophrenic im asking you to not use this word to describe people since this has been tied to me and my fellow psychotics for ages)

do not assume that a psychotic person is dangerous in any way (psychotic people are more likely to be the victims of abuse than be the abusers)

when talking about mental illness or the mental illness community as a whole consider, does this apply to psychotic and schizophrenic people as well? (if not, youre not talking about the whole community! its that simple)

do not purposley trigger someones paranoia aka telling people that theres someone after them (this is always harmful and potentially life threatening, its not a joke and never was)

dont assume schizophrenia is "just hallucinations and delusions" (its much more than that, it has negative and cognitive symptoms as well, which for some people is much worse than the positive symptoms of hallucinations and delusions)

dont make lobotomy jokes aka "lobotomize me" jokes (these procedures were used to turn schizophrenics into "pets" so that other people could better deal with us, its not a joke)

dont act "crazy" for shock value aka wide eyes, rocking back and fourth, shaking (our mannerisms arent for you to pretend to be crazy with, this is who we actually are, im looking at you rock bands)

dont fear the people on the street talking to themselves aka calling the cops on them (these people are suffering, these people need help, them being psychotic doesnt make them any more dangerous than anybody else)

dont use the word delusional for every idea you dont agree with aka "that conservative politician is delusional!" (delusions specifically describe strongly held beliefs outside of reality, not just beliefs outside youre specific world view)

dont expect people to express emotions the same way you do aka "why arent you reacting?" (many schizophrenics stuggle with flat affect and cant change it, it doesnt mean we dont feel things, just that we dont express them the same way)

dont expect us to be able to do the same amount of, or intensity of work you do aka "i work 5 days a week, you have it easy!" (executive disfunction is very common in schizophrenia, it doesnt make us lazy, we are just disabled)

dont post derealization without tagging it or TWing it as such aka that post with a fake european country saying that americans dont even know what country this is (we already struggle enough with figuring out whats real and whats not we dont need "pranks" or "jokes" trying to fool us without any TW)

dont assume schizophrenic and psychotic people cant see your post or view your media or anything else (we are real people interacting with the world just like everybody else, we can see your jokes about us, or your media portraying us as dangerous, we arent fictional characters)

dont assume youre superior to, or smarter than us (once again we are real people, we deserve the same respect as anyone else on the planet)

dont call someones delusion stupid aka "obviously youre not the reincarnation of kurt cobain thats stupid" (you have no idea how real these are for us, they dont always make sense to you but they do to us, please respect that)

dont ask if were hallucinating right now (its none of youre business! and if we say yes youll likely ask where it is, and if we show you youll likely look in the direction of the hallucination which is dangerous, it blends the real world with the hallucination and its already hard enough for us to tell the difference)

dont stop trusting us and what we say just because were psychotic (we still deserve to be listened to and trusted just like everybody else)

learn about less talked about symotoms like catatonia, avolition and word salad (these are just as common as the talked about ones, but just less talked about cause i guess it doesnt make for an intresting horror movie)

learn more about schizophrenia and psychosis from actual schizophrenics and psychotics (a great example is the podcast Inside Schizophrenia, scrolling through this blog, looking up students with psychosis)

TLDR: no go back and read it, its the least you could do

[schizoetic]

If you have mental problems you don't have to try to be normal. It's okay to be mentally unwell. You don't have to fight to be adequate to others. Screw expectations.

[ghostlyschizophrenic]

i should have realized i’m starting to have more psychotic symptoms than usual when i turned on NPR in my car and it was talking about a topic that i was just watching a youtube video about and my reaction wasn’t “huh that’s a coincidence” but instead “this was meant for me specifically”

[neuroticboyfriend]

If there's one thing growing up plural and delusional taught me, its that reality is subjective and the mind is an infinitely curious place. Your experience of anything and everything is just that - yours. And that matters. It does! Because you matter... but so do other people.

There will always be people out there who, for better and worse, have different realities than us - different ways of experiencing, understanding, and, ultimately, Being. Existing. And their mere existence as a whole person isn't an infringement on you. It doesn't mean you're wrong, and it doesn't mean they're wrong. Your experiences can coexist. They *have* to coexist because both of you are here. All of us are.

And more than that... If someone genuinely is doing wrong? Genuinely is doing or saying something that threatens you unjustly? That still doesn't change the fact you're here. Obviously, you have the right to fight like hell to prove them wrong - and they should stop immediately.

But please remember, you are the only person who can dictate what your reality is. What being and feeling and doing means to you - for better and worse, just like the rest of us. Just try your best to choose better, including keeping an open mind when someone is both similar and different from you. That's all you can do. Your best.

Does that make sense?