Depression is not selfish. Anxiety is not rude. Schizophrenia is not wrong. Mental illness isn’t self-centered, any more than a broken leg or the flu is self-centered. If your mental illness makes you feel guilty, review the definition of “illness” and try to treat yourself with the same respect and concern you would show to a cancer patient or a person with pneumonia.
(via goldenphoenixgirl)
I have lived for eight or nine years thinking I’m wrong, broken, and defective. I’ve had to deal with being told by societal cues that I’m not worth being a part of it, especially because of my schizotypal personality disorder. My therapist in the past few months has shown me that I’m not defective, just a little differently wired. And thinking of myself any other way is less than I’m worth.
So this one time
I was at a friend’s party
I was in the corner coloring
(This was how out of touch with reality and proper social decorum in high school; folks were drinking and listening to music and I’d busted out my colored pencils)
And a guy I sat next to in Bio came up and asked me what I was doing
And I was like I’m coloring see
And he said
“That’s pretty fucking gay”
In the most deliberate, dispassionate way I’d ever heard anyone say anything.
March 13th
I was so busy worrying this year that I forgot.
Ten years ago on the 13th of March in the middle of class I had a mental breakdown. I call it “the craziest I’ve ever been”. It was a day where the delusions were so thick in the air I was suffocating beneath them, a day of such crashing mental walls it’s been the only time I’ve heard voices.
This year for the first time none of the blood in my brain was anywhere near those memories.
But I feel like I mustn’t let myself forget that day. I mustn’t forget what it was like to drown in the delusions, sure beyond any doubt there would never be a reason to surface, sure there was no surface; I mustn’t forget the faces of every one of my classmates, I mustn’t forget how my teacher dealt with me.
Because I must never forget how far I’ve come.
Charlie Brown + the Vega Choir’s cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” = unadulterated awesome. He leads such a sad, bizarre life.
Note:
This video could also be blocked if SOPA or PIPA were to pass.
I hate when people self diagnose themselves.
Reading about mental illnesses can make you go bonkers for real. Beware of cyberchondria.
It’s a curse that I have to fight every day. This strong compulsive urge to know about what is wrong about me and try to categorize it and label it. The curse of a curious, analytical mind.
People should recognize the difference between the ego-stroking panic that erupts when you read you COULD have something and the uncanny, peaceful shame that comes over you when your realize you DO.
At least that’s how it was for me; my symptoms emerged roughly two years before I came into contact with any official diagnostic criteria, so I’d had awhile to stew in my own juices.
Minds are as clever as they will ever be, say scientists
cwnl:
If our brains were to evolve any further, it would increase the risk of disorders such as autism.
Our grey matter has hit an evolutionary ‘sweet spot’ – with the perfect balance between high intelligence and a balanced personality.
But scientists claim that, if our brains did become more advanced, we would be more likely to develop disorders such as autism or synaesthesia, where several senses ‘join together’ and are indistinguishable.
Becoming super-intelligent would also increase the chances of us concentrating too hard on tiny details of life and missing the wider picture.
» via Metro.co.uk
Wow what an interesting article, definitely reading through it.
There is a phrase that runs around in my brain sometimes, it’s “The consequences of being thinking creatures”.
This is damned amazing.
Why don’t we normally hallucinate?
If you’ve ever seen strange geometric patterns while on drugs, you might have wondered what on Earth caused you to see these hallucinations. What mechanism is behind this weird effect?
But a new study asks a different, equally reasonable question — not “Why do hallucinations occur?”, but “Why don’t they occur all the time?”
You rely on your visual cortex, located at the back of your brain, to process the images that you see. When light enters your eye, it stimulates certain parts in the visual cortex, forming a pattern of excited neurons, which you experience as an image. But once in a while, these excitation patterns arise spontaneously, overwhelming the visual signal from the eyes and causing geometric hallucinations. This “failure mode” only occurs when some influence, such as drugs, compromises your normal brain function.
The pattern of neurons that makes you visualize things that aren’t there arises because of a type of self-organizing diffusion called the Turing mechanism, which contributes to the creation of patterns in certain biological and ecological systems.
Read the full article here.
Top image: dimitris_k/Shutterstock.com
Why have I seen so many schizotypal-related things on Tumblr today??? I seriously would think the patterns and references were starting up again if I wasn’t desperately trying to remind myself they aren’t real.
Rho Ophiuchus Nebula Complex (by rankinstudio)
Because it is my birthday, here’s a lovely picture of part of my sign, Ophiuchus. If any astrologers could have told me about the effects this gem of a sign would have on my personality, rather than letting me stumble blindly into the snakes I’ve had to bear, the scorpions I’ve had to kill while they’re killing me, and all that falderal, I might have ended up with a slightly different worldview than the one I hold now.
Physician, heal thyself.
(by claudiabaer)
This almost could not be a more relevant snapshot of my life’s story.
…
So I’m watching Sapolsky’s lecture on religion and schizotypal personality disorder.
Hearing so many of the things I’ve experienced and feared and theorized throughout my battle between the religion in which I was raised and the schizotypal symptoms that grew within me put in such a way, by such a person, is having an intensely profound effect on me.
This is how I felt when I took a psychology class for the first time, in 12th grade, when we reached the pathology section. I’m being permeated, indelibly soaked, by a haunting, almost shaming sense of the uncanny. Shaming in its verisimilitude and how inescapably vulnerable the realization of it renders me.
It’s igniting things that have lain dormant in me these past years because I haven’t let myself countenance them.
brb, gunna go find a therapist.
