LosingThe family and friends

The most painful thing for me about being labeled as a nutter is the damage it's done to my relationship with family and friends. WWhen family and friends hear that a medical doctor has branded you with a label of a major mental illness such as bipolar disorder, well, their perception of you changes. When their perception changes, then shared reality changes. And suddenly you become "crazy" in their eyes. Your normally skewed sense of humor, which everybody used to enjoy, will become evidence of your mental illness. Your sister will look at you, shake her head, and say "you're just not right." Your asshole brother will find a justification for his assholery--It's not him, it's that his mentally ill sister misinterprets things. It's a really convenient way for people to blow you off and demean you--"Well, she's a nutter, you know. Her perceptions aren't valid. We're all okay, it's just that she's not." There's no possibility of discussing with these people the high probabliltiy that this diagnosis is incorrect and insupportabe.

And so you begin your descent from valid personhood to nutter to be ingnored, perhaps even pitied, most certainly condenscended to. All with the magic wave of a psychiatrists hand you lose that which is most valuable...your distinct, valid, perceptions of reality. You lose your sense of self. You become sub-human because the mind makes us human, and if a psychatrist has declared on nothing but her subjective value judgments that your behaviour is aberant, then you are fucked if you believeit. You are fucked today and every day that follows. You just have to rebel, revolt, deny, run and hide from this corruption.

Psychiatry is an evil that presents itself softly and gently to many of us. It presents itself in the guise of a healer that wants to ease our sorrows. We suffer, undoubtedly, psychiatry offers us freedom for suffering by giving us slavery to drugs. Pyschiatry teaches that our thoughts and visions are dangerous and should be quashed.

I propose a different way. Psychiatry could help, though I doubt it willl ever be open minded enough to do so. I'll explain this in more detail in future posts. Nutters are a special breed, and they should be nurtured.