Saturday, September 01, 2012

Delusions of Being Harmed by Others


People who get dragged off to the madhouse, insane asylum, psychiatric hospital, health centres...are dragged there quite often because they “think” they have been harmed by others.
The “others” are always “mystified” and usually claim to be “falsely accused.”
Since the “crazy” people won't let go of their “delusional” belief that they are being “harmed by others,” many of them have been locked up, for life, drugged, or given shock treatment, all against their will. This, of course, is not considered to be “harm” since it is defined as “help.”
Although psychiatry KNOWS that ongoing stress ALONE can cause mental breakdown, being treated in this way for “thinking” you have been “harmed by others” is not considered to be an added stressor which can CAUSE a mental collapse. Let me assure you; it can.
Those who believe that the defined help is actually harm are of course said to have “no insight” into their own condition. That is why they have to be locked up drugged and shocked by those who are only trying to help them.

The Metaphysical Magic of the DSM
I feel like I am going to be made to move quite smoothly from the current prejudices, invalidation and objectification of “mentalism” into the prejudices, invalidation and objectification of ageism.  In fact it is almost a seamless transition.   I, like many elderly folk in nursing homes, am still being talked about, in the third person, right in my presence like I am not there, so that nurses and support worker groups can come, by way of consensus assessment, to an agreement on my awareness and character, while lacking the awareness to see themselves or me, as they do it. No direct communication from me is ever wanted or even tolerated.  One is talked ABOUT, or AT, but in either case the assessed and evaluated one is not talked TO, like an equal human being, even when it is regarding one's own life experience and thoughts about it.
Soon, if I start to get too forgetful, and if I do not want to join in a nursing home group's session of “drumming” for “activation” it will be a behaviour problem that I am having, as an anti-social, old mental case, for one must not find either the “help”  or the “activities” too stupid, or boring, or condescending, as it might hurt the helper's feelings to know that. One must co-operate with the cookie cutter version of co-operative and compliant old age. This nonsense too is making it's way into the DSM and no doubt will be adopted and followed by all those who follow the orders of authority and their training without question.
What the DSM does best is supply individual's concrete details with abstract meaning. An example would be a “case” being diagnosed who complains of being harmed by a parent. As soon as this is even suggested, those trained to think in abstract terms supply it with the meaning they are trained to hear and which they want it to have- as a “symptom.”  For “parents don't harm their children”, therefore the child MUST be mentally ill for believing that they would.”
Rosalyn Carter, still pals with Fuller Torrey, is still speaking out against such 'old' ideas as these. Ones which suggest that  “parents” (as an abstract entity of course) could possibly be blamed for making their children sick. I repeat; what we are not allowed to see, hear or know about we can NEVER really fix.
To all people who still think in these magical Pollyanna terms I would like to suggest you ride around for some time with police agencies doing domestics. It might just help you to face reality and stop blaming the children's/victims' brains for the effect their real lives are having on them and hopefully it will encourage you to stop thinking in one size fits all abstractions.

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