Quote:
Originally Posted by MotownJohnny
I am in such a state of flux now, I have to deeply examine things on a different, more profound, perhaps even primal level.
Therapy the last two days was extremely intense. I feel like my life is moving to some kind of epic turning point - it will either kill me or cure me. I need to own up to things I have done, but I also need others to do the same.
I just cannot go on like this. Stuck in some 42nd Circle of Hell.
I started my session yesterday with the statement that, if this were Germany 1940, I probably would have been gassed by now under the "mental hygiene" program the Nazis instituted as part of their eugenics/ethnic cleansing push.
I am, after all, a "mental defective". But what does that mean to me? On a societal level, on a personal level?
Think about that term, "mental defective". It is grossly offensive to me. Yet it is still the official legal term in US federal law. "legally incapacitated individual" used in my state law is all warm and fuzzy by comparison.
It makes me feel automatically hated, judged, disgraced, dehumanized. Words like defective or nutcase or psycho sting my soul just as racist, derogatory terms would be hurtful to a person of color or of a different faith.
One of the biggest questions - where do I stand? Who am I?. What am I?
What if I really am bipolar? Notice I didn't say have? Am. Have says "I'm still me, I just acquired this new thing" - am says "it defines who I am".
Interesting, people say "I am bipolar" or "I am schizophrenic" but only "I have PTSD". Does that imply something about mental illness vs psychiatric injury?
NO ONE ever answers my prime question - does that one thing, mental illness, negate EVERYTHING ELSE?
Am I still me, but with Mental illness X, or am I JUST X????
If I am just X, and all I will ever be to everyone is X, because they just see the label X, and won't take the time to look beyond it, then I need to go, forever. Like in 1940, on a "train to the East"
If I can still be me, with X, still be who I want to be, them I choose life.
Limbo, purgatory, stuck in between is worse than either choice, at least then I would know.
Things have to come to a head right away in my life, I cannot go on like this.
Kill me or cure me.
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Hi Johnny... I'm sorry to hear you are struggling. You know, I had a psychology professor in college who said that the behaviors people with mental illness exhibit (the ones that cause society to label them as mentally ill) are simply more extreme varieties of the behaviors everyone exhibits every day. For example, we may all wash our hands after we come home from being out in public in case we have touched something that had cold or flu germs on it. But when it gets to the point where a person is washing his / her hands so much the skin begin to chafe, then we may conclude the person has OCD.
For me, the really valuable part of seeing mental illness this way is that it puts it on a continuum rather than having it be an either / or type situation. Every one of us has aspects of ourselves that can be viewed as being unconstructive. Some of us just have more of these, more extreme varieties of these, or perhaps we simply don't cope with them as well as some others do. So, from this perspective, there's no "them" & "us", no "normal" vs. "mentally ill". There's just people who all have varying degrees of the same problems.
So, in your case, my perspective would be, you are not different from anyone else, except that you have some thoughts, feelings, & behavior patterns that are perhaps more difficult for you to manage than some other people's are for them. But, by learning to manage your thoughts, feelings, & behavior patterns you can shift yourself to another point along the continuum; one society typically views as being "normal". And once this is done, it's done. I have a little saying I once came up with: "The past is like your ***, it's behind you!"
The big problem with the either / or model is it paints one into a corner, as we say. If you're either mentally ill, or you're normal, then you're stuck. But if you're just resting at a certain point on a continuum, then there's space around you to move, and you can choose to do so. It is true, I think, there was a time (& not all that many years ago, really) when society-at-large looked at everything using the either / or model. Thankfully... hopefully... society is moving away from that once & for all.
