The Psychiatrized Person’s Perspective on the Same Reality

This is the one that Most people don't even know exists.

By Patricia Lefave, Labelled, D.D. (P)

I will try to simplify it for you.
Acted out repeatedly, on the streets of my city again this week was this line repeated by strangers to me:

“There she is.” (Three people turn in unison, all eyes fixed together on my face)

“He said he wondered why she stopped talking to him.”
(I am not ‘allowed’ to confront anyone as the psychiatrized person, so let’s look at that statement here instead and see what that might mean to ME.)

1. Which version of “she” (me) is being identified there? Is it ‘the mental case? (Or ‘whack job’ as some of the more colloquial types put it), the butt of the ‘joke’. , the female dog (not in those words) or the liar? Etc. etc.
2. Who is ‘he’ number one, as referred to here? Is “he’ number one, the same person as ‘he’ number two? Or is that two different people? What about ‘him’? Which ‘him’ is that?
3. Who exactly are all these ‘hes’ talking to while refusing to talk directly to me? Are they psychiatrists, doctors from the caduceus club, (and it is a ‘club’ and some of them would like to ‘beat me’ with it) lawyers, police, or your great Uncle Ned gossiping out at the mall?
4. ARE there some ‘hes’ I stopped talking to? Why, yes there are. There are also some ‘hes’ I have never talked to but let’s look at the some of the ones I stopped talking to; could ‘they’ or ‘he’ be one of them?

Let’s see now…I had stopped talking to: my protagonist (now known as the ‘source’) several psychiatrists, my father, a couple of landlords, one police officer, the police service, (Deputy Chief) a group of mental health administrators including some at the University, two lawyers involved and my ex family physician. This last one also involved himself in the speculation on the mysterious workings of my mind despite the fact that many were told outright he was no longer my physician. Some other physicians were quite put out about that according to local rumour, as blaming the patient is pretty much par for the course behind the old ‘white wall.’ Apparently they also decided FOR me what they would do about that which was simply to ignore my own wishes.
So, pick any one of these ‘hes’ who never speak to me directly but prefer instead to talk AT me or ABOUT me amongst themselves and then try to guess which ‘he’ is being referred to in that vague ambiguous statement acted out for me on the streets of the city. Now, imagine those statements from a few feet away numbering in the thousands.

I begged many of the people involving themselves in this to stop doing it to me long BEFORE I broke down. I told several directly, “you can drive someone into a psychosis doing this you know.” “I can feel myself breaking down.” “I am having trouble now staying connected to concrete reality because of this, the bombardment of multiple versions of reality and non stop contradiction along with no direct communication.” “I need them to talk directly to me and tell me what they believe is really going on between me and the HTA.’
Do you know what they result of that was? It was MORE denial and mystification; more secrecy. Had any of these arrogant people done what I asked them to do, they could have prevented my psychotic break, but you see, like every other dysfunctional group, they had to take care of their OWN interests so they refused to concern themselves with mine and as a result, I broke under the pressure.

After I broke down, many of them continued to smile, eyes all aglow with high amusement while the watched it happen, the ‘voyeurs in the snuff fantasy.”
After that, they denied their participation in it, pretended they had done nothing, and began spreading even more rumours along with their ‘interpretations’ of me after I was diagnosed. This helped them to justify themselves you see. They had to be right, to be smarter, and to ‘prove’ to themselves that I ‘deserved’ just what I got. This self justification has included telling many other people they know all over town, how ‘insane’ I was and how untrustworthy I am and how I should be ‘watched.”
I think people are ‘watching me.’

When no one communicates directly because they all ‘think’ they have the superior understanding or worth, in relation to someone they define as ‘inferior’, concrete reality becomes unidentifiable. When that happens to an ‘objectified’ individual, who is used as a target of group abuse, who is treated like a thing and not a person, the combination of disconnect from an identifiable concrete reality, the abuse of others, emotional/psychological isolation, and invalidation of all perception and emotional reactions, and non stop overall stress, virtually guarantees the triggering of psychosis as there is ‘nowhere’ else to go and nothing left to try.

This is the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ spoken of by Laing and Szasz and by some others also. It is the few who understand this best; not the many.
Once the targeted ‘crazy’ one is finally driven into psychosis, the same arrogant and certain people ‘assessing’ the situation offer this predictable outcome as ‘proof’ that the individual they assaulted ‘in secret,’ as a mob, was ‘flawed’ in the first place. The are ‘proving’ to themselves that the result was an internal, self contained flaw without relationship to external reality, events, or relationship to all those ‘sane and perfectly normal objective observers.’

This metaphysical psycho drama has actually been seen and quite well understood by many others, in many times and p0laces, but most people don’t connect the diagnoses given to the identified patient with this same drama. The people who experience this may be given a number of different labels even thought he experience is basically the same. These labels include: schizophrenic, bi-polar disorder, delusional disorders and borderline personality disorders and even sometimes, those labeled as sociopaths. It has much to do with WHO is selected as the ‘bad’ one in any group and often it is the wrong ‘selection.’ The label applied often seems almost irrelevant. I have heard similar experiences form many of such labelled people as these. The problem is also that it lumps everyone in together and treats all people the same and that tends to blame the innocent and excuse the guilty as often as not since it is al a labeling blur without connection to concrete detail. Many of us do much better in recovering because we help each other through it instead of depending upon those who don’t believe the experience itself exists. When we stop looking to those who deny it all to help us, we often do better.

I would like to recommend a book that shows the concepts of this group madness.

Emotional Blackmail: by Susan Forward, PhD.

I would also like the people of my own city to focus on one of the chapters in it to start. The participants involved in my own case, should be able to spot their own roles in it easily enough. The chapter I am referring to is: Chapter 4: The Tools of the Trade. Included in it is the ‘pathologizing’ of my experience. Why don’t’ you read it and see if you can solve the ‘puzzle.’
When I read that laid out in Forward’s book on the conceptual level, I heard my own experience in it on three different levels; the family dynamic, the psychiatric hospital dynamic and the metaphysics of my own adversary’s training system, a system many people believe is a kind of cult. It’s the same poop folks, in three different piles.

There are only a few factors that have allowed me to regain and maintain my own sanity in this I think. This is despite the ongoing group behaviour. Except for those few differences, in my own case, I am sure I could have been driven into insanity and kept there too, just like anybody else. Had I been kept there, I too would have been made permanently and completely invisible as a human being, just like any one else in the same position. I am barely seen and heard even now except by a few.

We ‘nuts’ do not ‘withdraw’ from reality. (Always it seems, assumed to be a ‘good’ reality by those doing the observing) We are most often FORCED out of it by those who cannot and who will not face it or deal with it. Many of ‘us’ are suffering as a direct result of that group denial; not the ‘cause’ of the whole group’s problems as they would like the ‘outsiders’ to believe.

So is it ‘always’ the family? No. it isn’t.
Is it ‘never’ the family?
No.
Is it sometimes the family? Yes. It sometimes is and it is also sometimes a group at work, at school, or in the military or around town etc.
It is an individuals’ very real experience. You help the individual THROUGH this with active listening and emotional psychological validation; not by invalidation and silencing the complaints. You do this BEFORE the disaster occurs, you don’t just stand around watching it like it is entertainment for you or a sporting event. You won’t ever solve this problem by means of reductionistic ‘medicalization’ nor by having the group involved ‘interpret’ the perceptions, understanding and feelings of the identified patient. As psychiatrists have put it, “it would not be in the best interests’ of the group members to ‘admit to’ what they have done.’

It is the defenses of the group which has kept this group insanity going, unseen, misunderstood and ‘incurable.’ It is just that it is not the ‘identified patient’ that is incurable but rather the group as a whole for as long as the members of it deny reality and support the ‘interpretations’ that allow them to protect their own madness. Since the group members won’t face the truth and the individual attempting to reveal it gets attacked and actively invalidated for trying it, it can never be fully seen and dealt with. That is just the way the group wants it too. Since the chosen ‘patient’ is overwhelmed by the chaos created as the adversary’s (and groups) target, he or she can’t stay connected to concrete reality since it has been made unidentifiable. There are too many ‘versions’ of it being produced.
The whole event is then projected onto the ‘patient’ who is defined as inherently ‘defective’ and who is then permanently trapped in the paradox created by the group’s collective projection of it’s own traits.

The patient gets to watch as reality gets turned around on him or her, one hundred and eighty degrees, often knows it, knows he or she is psycho-spiritually trapped in it, and also knows he or she is helpless to stop it or escape it. Often, the ‘patient’ gets to watch as the adversary who created this turn around, smirks knowingly to himself, eyes aglow with amusement sharing the results of his power play with the only person who really understands it; his victim. Of course they both know at that point it is too late and that is part of this type’s pleasure.

Is everyone as conscious of this as that type of adversary? No. I think most people who get involved in this are either blind to it or really believe the version of reality that is accepted by the majority. So the sincerity of many involved is real and as the patient we sense that too but we still can’t break through the group delusion.
In general though, whatever the degree of conscious awareness in the individual group members, the group as a whole closes ranks and gets what it wants as an outcome. It (and it is an “it” at that point) ‘takes care of its own interests’ and avoids accountability and all negative consequences to itself. That occurs while it is still preaching it to others. There is one thing I have learned in this and that is the identity of those ‘others’ who can never be blamed. Basically they are these” When I try to hold those ‘others’ accountable, they are the ‘others’ who can’t be blamed. When they hold ME accountable for anything and everything, including what other people do to me, I am one of those ‘others’ who can always be blamed.

Once the ‘patient’ has been ‘diagnosed and labelled, everyone, including the well meaning and genuinely ‘mystified”, sees and hears everything the individual so identified says, does or feels in the terms of the ‘reality’ which has now been defined for them by the group and by ‘experts.’ After all, who can argue with ‘experts’? Certainly not the identified patient, and should we try it, our ‘grandiosity’ will be diagnosed immediately and stopped.

One thing I have learned form this is how to keep concrete evidence of this behaviour. Without it, the majority will deny the whole thing as if it never happened at all and if I can’t PROVE it, then I get to be ‘crazy’ one so none of them have to be.
That is about who THEY were, not about who I am.

This is the standard, dysfunctional invalidation process done to those who complain about the aggressor’s boundary violating, denigrating and ‘covert’ behaviour. It is often much more ‘covert’ to the group members then it ever was to the target. It is indeed, about a covert agenda of domination and submission.