First posted November 2005
''We're living in a world of fools, breaking us down
When they all should let us Be......"
The Bee Gees
It seems that often it is those who are most vocal in telling "us" that "blaming others " is wrong in the abstract, are themselves the ones most likely to "blame others" (often us) for what THEY do, but will never admit to doing. Many of them NEVER admit to anything, apologize, make amends or change.
The reason groups of people often treat us the way they do is because of the premise from which they are making their judgements. It is often this starting point of our story which they have been handed by our protagonist(s) which they simply do not question and therefore, do not understand our experience from OUR point of view.
From there, they often judge what we do and say, both to them and to others, as meaningless, largely because of how they view both themselves and us in this collective psycho drama.
They see themselves as "superior" in some essential way, or more conscious than us , their "inferiors" of what is going on, even if it is about our lives and not their own. They then behave towards us "as if" that were true. As "inferiors" of course, we are not "allowed" to challenge their belief system.
In my own case, I told many people what my protagonist was actually doing. Naturally, My perception of that, as well as my reactions, were assessed as "faulty," so it wasn't accepted. That meant they had to look for an alternative meaning for me. MY accurate assessment of my protagonist was judged to be my delusions and the population of half the city was enlisted to watch me, follow me and report to those who knew they knew better than I. My own definitions were ignored. I was patronized, humoured and refused help. (of the concrete variety) Instead I got more "help" than I could handle and I was helped" until the "help" caused my breakdown, at which point the "helpers" congratulated themselves, and each other, for a job well done.
Once the truth was rejected as nothing but "symptoms" a large and growing group of people got involved, some of them to abuse and threaten me, and the largest number to just stand around watching the event, assessing me ant the situation, usually negatively, from a few feet away, clearly enjoying the public circus that had been made of my life. No one was short an opinion.
Over the years, I was on the receiving end of fourteen death threats of the "uttered" variety, from total strangers to me.
All of these people though were involved in this by the supporters of my protagonist who had planned this outcome in the first place, which I eventually became able to prove with evidence. Imagine my shock when the evidence was simply ignored. As no one has admitted to their involvement, I remain the object of public ridicule and gossip, still in isolation with my truth. An ex friend of mine is one of the people who is still passing along all the latest gossip she gets from a relative who is a co-worker of my protagonist.
So why do all these people, fully aware of what they did, keep their silence towards me? The answer is very simple really. They don't want to get blamed for anything or have the truth exposed openly in case it costs THEM something. As a group, they continue to search for more flaws in me in order to justify their own behaviour. This event, started and directed by one person, demonstrates the group dynamic behind the focus on someone selected to be the "sick one."
It also demonstrates the victimization of someone by an aggressor with a hidden agenda of domination. Proving himself "superior" to someone who is selected as "inferior'' is the ''reason'' for doing what he does. This type of person sees life as a ''contest'' against others which he must ''win'' by defeating others who knowingly, or unknowingly, challenge his grandiose beliefs about himself. Logic or ''reason'' has nothing at all to do with this.
So why does the group do it?
It gives them an object of contempt and disdain to use as a surrogate. The object usually represents someone, often in authority, (though not always) whom they dare not confront directly for one reason or another. By using this surrogate, they can then vent all the negative emotions which they have been suppressing. After all, most of us are taught that we can't blame ''others'' even if those others are, in in fact, legitimately to blame for something.
Since the primary aggressor and his enablers are now in their own little delusional world and reinforcing it in each other, like one gigantic, compliant, dysfunctional family, they can no longer even hear us, psychologically speaking. They do a very neat mind bending trick to achieve that. They reduce US to the level of object, rather than person, then they treat us as if THEIR delusional beliefs about us were reality and our accurate perception of them was ''delusion.'' This neat little switch between the people involved and the reality of the situation, is the crazy making premise of the whole thing.
When that is accomplished by the aggressor, with group support, we become as if invisible to them. The fact is, we ARE invisible to them as the people we actually are and so is the primary aggressor ''invisible'' to them. The group though, thinking they have the ''superior'' understanding or worth, will NEVER believe that. So, instead, they treat us like we are objects of observation and assessment instead of people.
When we are reduced to the level of ''object'' the group members feel free to talk about us right in front of us, like we aren't there, or often even announce everything they are doing, believing we can't understand them anyway. They may even state that in our presence!
Why do they do that?
Because they have defined us that way and no contradictory input is going to be accepted that would cause them to question their own beliefs or behaviour. It is especially not going to be accepted from US. One does not communicate directly with an object, after all. So instead, in everything we say they look for the hidden meaning that will verify their own belief system. If they were to accept what we tell them at face value, it would cause them to know it is not WE who are the deluded ones in the first place; it's them. The resultant effect of this is: the more we tell them the truth, the less they can hear it.
When I was in psychosis ten years ago, in the whacko ward, I found the things they were saying absurdly hilarious because of it. Concrete example: Other less ''sick'' patients saying, ''Apparently, they think people are talking about them.'' Then the people talking about me turned towards me, as one, and observed the crazy woman who ''thought people were talking about'' her. It was hilarious. I thought they were doing it on purpose to be funny. But when I laughed, they then discussed that as a ''symptom.'' ''Apparently, they all laugh for no reason too.'' How could anyone keep from laughing at this comedy of errors? It was very hard to get my head around this and to know that the "people doing the talking" have no idea THEY are "the people" we "think" are talking about us. That the people we are laughing at have NO IDEA how truly funny they really are and that they are really NOT doing this deliberately in an attempt to be absurdly funny. The fact is, they have NO IDEA they are participants in this group madness. They are too busy thinking they have a higher understanding to allow themselves to know that.
With such willingly self deluded people, it always seems to be like a game with them of ''now you see me; now you don't.'' As I told my recovery therapist, post breakdown, '' because of it, I could no longer identify concrete reality by the time I landed in the whacko ward, but I had already told them that it was happening and why long before it did." I told her, "I would have had to be able to ask each of them, each and every time they were talking about me in my presence, "Is this one of the times YOU believe I can see you and hear you, OR is this one of the times YOU think you are "hidden"? I could see no difference in that as from my point of view, there IS no difference. The only difference exists within their own minds.
Is there "fabrication in all of this? You bet. But it was coming out of them; not me. Of course they have a pre-fab answer for that also. Us nuts are always "blaming others" unlike those "others" who are always "blaming us nuts." Everything that is said in the abstract about "schizophrenia" is true but it is originally about the primary aggressor and his supporters and enablers perceptions, not about the victim's perception. It is about their "flat affect" or "inappropriate affect"; not the victim's. Concrete example: There is nothing quite so bizarre as telling a shrink or a psychiatric nurse about being assaulted in some way by a group and watching them smile with amusement about it, or try to sound like they care while offering an emotionless, or obviously phony response like, "Oh my. That must be really scary to have something like that happen to you." Watching that flat affect on their faces is like being in the twilight zone. Of course, they have no idea we are aware that we are being humoured or lied to; after all, we are all stupid and/or unconscious aren't we? When I was in psychosis observing the SAME people at the hospital who had done it to me, pretending they did not know anything about it, I thought, "They all look insane." They would all stare at me but not utter a word. From my point of view of course, they WERE insane. But they did not know they were because they had been led to believe reality was something other than what it was. They made all of their judgements based upon what they believed to be true. Not on what WAS true. I knew that but I was not "allowed" to tell them. For "no one must be blamed."
If we maintain our "insane" beliefs that there is something wrong with them or with psychiatry itself, that belief of ours has already been defined by psychiatry as a "symptom" of ours. Since it is just a "symptom" of ours, psychiatry can maintain it's own belief that it is right even when it is wrong. You might say, as my protagonist actually does, that they can think they are "always right and never wrong." This is the nature of the paradox all labelled people are trapped within.
We may not change psychiatry's views on either us, or itself, but if you understand it, you can at least get yourself psychologically free from the chaos. and if you do, you won't be triggered into psychosis any more by the search for the missing information you are endlessly searching for in your right brain which will make conceptual sense of all of it. What we are trying to do in psychosis is match our concrete experience to our conceptual understanding of what is going on. Since we are being led AWAY from the truth, the "help" usually just makes it worse. Finding the missing conceptual information will help you solve your OWN puzzle. After that, your problem may be the drugs or the drug withdrawal that can trigger psychosis so you MUST be very careful.
Do not ever suddenly stop taking drugs if you are on them, no matter how good you feel. A sudden stop can make things worse or even cause seizures etc. so be aware of the reality of this. If you think you truly understand your own event or the twisted relationship(s) that caused your original break, try to find a doctor with some real integrity who is willing to help you withdraw gradually, if that is what you want to do. There are a few of them, I hear but right now, they seem to be in the minority. The longer you've been on them, the more you take, the higher the dosages, the harder it will be to get of of them. Be very careful, both for your own sake and for that of others. We all know how scary and disorienting psychosis can be. Treat it with the caution it deserves and treat yourself with great care and the respect YOU deserve for having to go through all of this.
Penetrating the group delusion of psychiatry and the public at large is going to be a monumental task, so don't count on being able to do it in your own cases. Nevertheless, we must all keep trying together. It has been twelve years since my protagonist started his nonsense in my own case. ( as far as my awareness of it goes) The large group involved is still supporting it's own beliefs about me, my protagonist, itself and the event. The reality of the situation was always the exact opposite, and in my own case, it was the exact opposite BY DESIGN. The group still fights to convince itself that I am unaware of them as they really and most obviously ARE. The idea that some people are inherently "superior" to others dies a hard death it seems. It is a universal defense mechanism and rationalization for thinking and behaving in ways that are based on "secret" rage, contempt, and hatred acted out on those who are perceived as "getting just what they deserve. "It's the stuff that lynch mobs, witch hunts, wars and schizo hunts are made of.
It's about existential shifts that allow those who are shifty experts at it, define reality for others, find lots of compliant, co-operative people to support that, and get away with some of the most blatant abuse of power imaginable. It is often also about dealing with "loved" ones with no conscience and a need to control everyone else's "reality" at all costs; and the costs can be very high.
In creating the separate blog, "The Guelph Mirror" my hope (however faint) is that those who participated in this, in MY reality, will look into the mirror I am providing for them and recognize a simple truth; that they who are doing all the gossiping, assessing, evaluating and judging, ARE the "invisible people" to whom we nuts are talking, in a hopelessly frustrating and never ending attempt to have the truth about both them and us heard as it is stated. Perhaps if they are all named and exposed publicly, to themselves, their own comments and behaviour mirrored back to them long enough, they will be shocked out of their group delusion and finally face the reality of their own "fabrications." It is said, "If you want to see the devil, then look in the Mirror."
The spirit of the Adversary (Satan), like God, operates on a collective metaphysical level.
The Guelph Mirror: http://www.municipalenquirer.blogspot.com/
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