I just thought of something.
In prison, white Supremacist gangs have an iron-clad rule: "Members of the master race do not have psychiatric problems. If you are a white guy, getting any kind of psych care, then you do not walk with us. You are a disgrace to your race, and you are a degenerate."
I did correctional nursing for a while. I met white inmates with the kind of tattoos you describe. This was in the psych section of the facility. They told me they could never again fraternize with white supremacist inmates in the prison's general population. Getting psych care marked them as inferior and unworthy weaklings.
And guess what? Over in the psych area of the prison, the guys with swastika tattoos hung out with Latino and Black and Native American guys . . . and they all got along just fine. (Or, if they became contentious, it wasn't over ethnicity.)
When I started there, a Latino guy was the alpha male in one of our psych pods. In came a young, strong, white guy with a white gang past. We figured the fur was gonna fly. They'ld be contenders for top dog. They became bff. It was so cute to hear them at bedtime, talking to each other from their respective cells. (I couldn't make this stuff up.)
So think about it: This guy with his Aryan race tattoos is showing up at a bipolar support group, instead of hanging out with a bunch of guys wearing the same tattoos.
Maybe he's been booted out of the local "stand up peckerwood" lodge. I'ld love to talk to this guy. He's got a story to tell. And he's got to be one lonely-arse bigot to be hanging out at your group.
You know . . . sometimes, if you just bear with a situation for a while, you can learn that all is not as it seems. Then again, that's just me - I'm the curious type.
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