Psychiatric Zen

Rethinking An Ages Old Experience

By Patricia Lefave

How do you tell people you are being attacked by someone when the people you are trying to tell believe that 'claiming' you are being attacked by someone is a sign that you are NOT being attacked?

When they then create an alternate reality in which your experience of being attacked is transformed into symptoms of a 'disease', how do you talk them out of it?

If denying you are sick is another sign that you ARE 'sick', because the same people define your 'denial' as part of your illness, how do you tell them your 'claim' of being attacked is not 'sickness' but reality, and that your denial of your sickness is based on that reality?

How do you talk them out of their erroneous beliefs, when they believe the attempt to talk them out of them is a sign that you are 'manipulative?'

How long do you think you could stand being caught in this psychiatric Zen-like vortex (as some of the psychiatrized very aptly call it) before you started to get nauseated, dizzy and began to break down under group pressure?