#like specifically ableism as saneism

[thenetvvork]

"well when you as a system experience ableism it isn't SPECIFICALLY because you're a system it's just because you're Not Normal so actually systems aren't oppressed for being a system" I think people were put on this earth just to piss me off

[seaweedstarshine]

Rewatching my favorite Christmas special and I cannot get over “Psych*tic Potato Dwarf” as an insult from a person who — canonically — according to sources from the same writer — often hears voices that he has trouble distinguishing from reality. It's not just the one line, it's the fact that it’s the title of Strax’s theme! I always wanna call it out 😭, which works out in my The Snowmen-era Eleventh Doctor fanfictions because Strax is a nurse and would know what that word means.

Like, it does unfortunately fit the character because Gallifreyan culture is — canonically — systematically exclusionary of mentally ill people, and the Eleventh Doctor — canonically — hates himself more than anyone in the universe. But the choice?

[trauma-trove]

System thing: I'm genuinely not afraid of intimacy. It's just that staying intimate and vulnerable with someone is really difficult when every 2-3 years, I experience enough trauma that I become a different person entirely. Like, imagine framing it like that. Yeah, you're a brand new alter who's only been alive for 2 months, but it's YOUR fault for not feeling comfortable opening up to the previous host's friends because you're "scared of vulnerability."

Bitch, I don't know you. And you don't know me like you think you do. I don't give a shit about you because we just met. How is any of this My Fault or even wrong to begin with? If I was a complete stranger in a different body, you wouldn't say this to me.

[trans-axolotl]

medical vent and such

doctor is testing for a new specific diagnosis and i am. having so many complicated feelings about this diagnosis partially because everything i research about it is so fucking ableist. have been reading lots of research papers + such about it the past couple days and so many of the researchers and doctors say such rude + cruel things to describe their patients--discounting the very real inconveniences and pain that this diagnosis causes people and accusing all of their patients of faking. i fully understand the concept of a biopsychosocial model for disease and can absolutely accept the idea that existing experiences of psych distress can contribute to causing disease + exacerbate existing vulnerabilities, but a lot of the literature just treats this as entirely "psychogenic" instead of actually developing a complex biopsychosocial model. or at least acknowledging that there is not an understanding of the biological risk factors. or the way that this diagnosis is positioned as uniquely contributed to by psych factors--so many different conditions and variations are known that stress exacerbates existing physical vulnerabilities. so many of the research papers written about this are just plain bad science--attributing causation without even finding statistically significant results, relying solely on cross sectional study data, and a lot of missing parts before you could actually prove causation.

and it's like. the idea that my madness could interact with my underlying chronic illnesses and cause another Set of Issues is something that feels believable to me, and i'm willing to try some of the treatment methods they suggest (Not CBT but some of the other stuff). i don't want to downplay or refuse to associate with my madness-- but it is so enraging to me to see this widespread saneism and ableism and dismissal of real experiences in a throwaway diagnosis seemingly used as an excuse to discard "problem" patients.

so far my neurologist has been really good and taken me seriously, it's just....frustrating to know the ways this diagnosis is treated and the way that there aren't really any good treatment options for it. idk. i'm tired of the medical system so much today

[jasperjv]

Hey. So 2 years ago Connor Lavery's aka khonjin's psychological torture of me reached fever pitch in my psyche and I was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital in a severe psychotic breakdown that lasted almost 3 months. Now I'm indexed in his long story of his supposed inexplicable persecution. He thinks me, in my psychotic state, demanding monetary compensation for his gaslighting and harassment, was some kind of attempt at "cancellation" and me throwing a tantrum instead of communicating like an adult. However I deleted my entire social media presence after getting back from the hospital and haven't bothered him since. But he still thinks I did something to him.

The man is dangerous. He believes that the worst sin of mankind is the ego, so he makes it his mission to bully the fuck out of everyone until they have no self-esteem, boundaries of their own, or healthy sense of self whatsoever. The elimination of the ego however is what psychosis is, also unable to suppress the flow of the unconscious, identical to a waking dream. But when that happened to me after 2 years of mind games, he retreated into himself and framed it in the most disgusting way possible. Which you will see.

Embedded here is the first video I made myself specifically on this topic. You will see more details in a more recent video, and follow the trail I put in that video's description to get my full story. For the podcast in particular I would give a content warning for assault, sexual assault, ableism ("saneism"?) and general torture and terror.

There's nothing on God's green earth I could do or say to force him to take me seriously. I have probably half of you people blocked because just seeing anything to do with him would make my blood pressure spike. And it's high enough as-is just due to genetics. Maybe the rest of you might be able to be reached.

I'm so sick of fucking self-centered freaks trying to hold me accountable for actual psychosis because they're so desperate to blame anyone or anything but themselves for their part in tragedy. I really get gaslit about my own psychosis, and forced to prove a negative repeatedly (which we know is a lexical impossibility). I'm handed a blatant double-standard about mental health awareness and basic human decency, when in many cases I desperately need it more than most. Schizophrenia sufferers are 1% of the population. We're dwarfed by most, if not all, other mental illnesses. In this I continue to be thrown alone to the wolves. Sometimes even while being laughed at, it truly feels like. So I feel like I have to do all in my power to help make sure that this happens to fewer people than it would otherwise.

The callouts in 2018, the types of points of persuasion they were trying didn't make sense to me. Maybe this, though, could strike others. I'm more specific about how exactly he destroys people from the inside out. Stay the fuck away from him.

He's scared of losing his financial support from Patreon and ad revenue or whatever. I really, truly felt for that for a long time. But now I know that none of us are obligated to keep his ass afloat. It would be nobody's fault but his own if he didn't even try to heal his fucked up mindset and was just a raging misanthrope nobody wants to deal with. When you get to be my age, you become aware of all the ways to make a living. He could get disability. He could get a factory job, for instance. And that paid me an absurd amount of money. He needs to make up his mind about if he wants to be around people or not. Because he can't keep treating them the way that he does.

Oh, and if you're reading this and you happen to have any social connections with him whatsoever, for the love of God, do not let him put you on the defensive. About anything. Over and over again. It chips away at you. He doesn't have the answers. He doesn't have any objective taste like he desperately wants to think. He doesn't know any wisdoms that you couldn't get from someone who won't talk down to you.

Took me quite a while to convince him of the truth that he is only older than me by only a few months. I needed my hope in humanity and the future in order to not go and end it all. He did not give a fuck. He kept accusing me of lying about not being a naïve teenager. Just for that. Ask any well-adjusted and experienced adult and they will tell you to stay far away from people like that. The motivations that drive them to that behavior and opinion are bad, bad news.

He is intelligent, in the scariest ways. Intelligence of that type allows dysfunctional people like him to fabricate lines of logic that justify and enable the abuse they already sought to do. Literally anything can be justified with just the right kind of logic. Trust your gut. Guard your mind. It's the only one you've got.

He leads an excessively stressful life, creates his own dysfunctional world both inside and around him. I truly believe that this causes him many health problems. I've been having nightmares because of him. And as this built up and weighed heavy on my mind I got a fucking hemorrhoid. It went away very quickly after I made this video.

I'm feeling anxious as I type this. But I have to tell myself that anyone who would continue harassment of me over all the truth I've spoken is not worth my time or space. This isn't for them. It's for me, and it's for people who still have basic respect and empathy left in them.

Yours truly,

"slug"

[hawkogurl]

Thank you for that post about the ableism and saneism in the TASM films, especially around Curt and Harry! I have really mixed feelings about those movies, but it's frustrating how much those issues and the weird 'eugenics is real' core of the worldbuilding gets swept under the rug by the fandom. Both of those characters are among my favourites in the comics, and while there are issues there too, it's like, idk as someone whose Spidey niche interest is Connors/Lizard, I'm continuously frustrated that THAT version of the character is the most popular one and the fandom romanticizes the eugenics and ableism in the writing for him - it's not a good critical analysis of internalized ableism if it's never challenged by the narrative, among many other issues; you said it all, re: Harry in your tags, so I have nothing to add there.

god, im glad to hear this. helps me think im not insane for thinking these movies are really tone deaf in this regard. I think its obvious from all my posts that I'm biased towards Harry in the same way you are Curt, but its also the sort of thing where I don't feel as at liberty to speak on it as I do Harry. But reading this was like seeing all my thoughts on Curt put into words.

Even if I find specifically TASM2 uncomfortable to the point I avoid watching it, I don't like, think people shouldn't enjoy them or even that they have to be publicly critical of them or whatever. I think the thing that bothers me most is seeing these very ableist and saneist writing choices and tropes being used as angst fodder with little to no critical thought, just making these really in poor taste writing choices into a weird form of torture porn because the tasteless writing in question doesn't really effect them. (and I think a lot of people can be somewhat oblivious to the fact that although struggles associated with anxiety, depression, adhd, autism are very real, it does not put them at liberty to make calls on or decide if something is offensive when it targets personality or psychotic disorders.) I really don't think you can get more on the nose than literally trying to cure all disability and having your protagonist nod along with the character's ableist ass speech because he needs to be a Smart Guy, or having your character who's canonically schizophrenic in the comics go insane, kill an innocent person, and end up in a straight jacket in a mental institution when it comes to ableist writing. It feels like its parody sometimes. And that's not even getting into TASM Harry and chronic or terminal illnesses, though thats another thing I don't feel super qualified to speak on.

idk if this makes sense, i just got off an eight hour housekeeping shift, brain broken.

[autistic-katara]

ok finally making that writing post-

hi! i’m Ryan, or Raines_Adopted_Son on AO3. i write fanfic (mainly angst) and my inbox/dms/ao3 comments r always open for requests, here are some guidelines:

fandoms i will write for: (keep in mind i join new fandoms all the time so if theres a fandom u want me to write that isnt here that u think i like just ask, i probably forgot to update it // will say next to the fandom if ive written for it before or not)

Stranger Things (written for it before)

The Spiderverse Movies (written for it before)

The Owl House (written for it before)

Nimona (haven’t written before)

PJO/Riordanverse (including mcga and tkc // written for it before)

ATLA (including lok/the kyoshi novels // written for it before)

Heartstopper/Osemanverse (haven’t written before)

Jackson’s Diary (written for it before)

Bungou Stray Dogs (haven’t written before)

The Dragon Prince (have written but never posted)

Derry Girls (haven’t written before)

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (haven’t written before)

Good Omens (haven’t written before)

stuff i enjoy writing/specialise in:

shortish one-shots (1k-2.5k words // i would like to write longer and/or multichapter stuff, this is just my current level)

angst

hurt/comfort

heavier topics relating to mental health stuff (depression, eating disorders, self-harm, suicidal characters, etc.)

queer (specifically trans) stuff

stuff i feel uncomfortable writing/am unsure if i’m able to write it but wanna push my boundaries on: (aka send me requests but theres less of a chance i’ll write it)

nsfw stuff/smut

depictions of abuse (non-romanticised obv)

depictions of SA (specifically just the recovery tho, i am NOT writing non-con)

longer fics

multichapter fics

pure fluff (idk if i’m able to write smthn w/o angst 😭)

stuff i will not write: (do not ask me to write this stuff :))

nsfw/smut of characters under the age of 15 (that being my current age // still kinda iffy abt characters 15-17 but yk)

stuff that romanticises things like SA or abuse

any ships where both a) at least one of the characters is a minor and b) the age gap is canonically 3 years or more (emphasis on canonically, looking at u punkflower antis)

incest

other stuff i wasn’t sure how to fit in:

when it comes to depicting types bigotry or hate or whatever theres some stuff i feel comfortable including and some stuff i dont (obviously in a non-romanticised way as just like part of what a character experiences):

homo/transphobia, i’m fine with including this, i am queer + trans and feel like i could sensitively depict those topics.

racism/xenophobia, i dont rlly feel comfortable writing abt this stuff given that i’m white i rlly dont think id be able to write that stuff properly like at all.

ableism/saneism, depends on the type tbh, maybe subtle ableism to an autistic character (i am autistic) and casual ableism to a chronically ill character (i am chronically ill) but other than that ehhhh

antisemitism, while i am Jewish and have experienced it myself, for personal reasons i’m not comfortable writing stuff including it, even if its subtle and not a big thing (other kinds of religious discrimination i wont write simply cause idk enough about allat and dont wanna be insensitive abt it)

thats all i could think of for that one but next thing: i dont like AUs. its not like i hate them or anything, and if i time traveled to the future and found out i learned to love them i would be ecstatic since thats more fics for me, but for some reason i just don’t enjoy reading/writing them (excluding canon divergence, i wouldn’t mind writing a fic with canon divergence // didn’t wanna put this in the hard-no section cause again its not like they’re smthn i hate or am disgusted by or anything, i just don’t find them appealing)

also if u dont know what i ship/what ships id be ok w/ writing just ask, a couple of them should be clear based on what i rb/post tho lmao (still if u gotta ask, ask)

anyways yeah thats all i could think of for now, i probably forgot smthn important so i might edit this later + lmk if u have any questions srsly id love to answer :)

[schizosupport]

hey, people with npd are said to have grandiose delusions but wherever i look it says they dont (delusions) but its also not considered a psychotic disorder. do you have any info about this?

sincerely a silly little narcissist who loves ur blog (keep up the good work and i hope u have a great week!)

Hey there!! Thank you so much for the question!!

Ok, so historically there could be more to this than meets the eye, but at surface level I think this is one of those confusions arisen from ableism toward both psychotic people and people with npd.

Npd is not a psychotic disorder, no, and the term "delusions of grandeur" (grandiose delusions, more commonly) technically refers to a specific type of psychotic delusion, so no wonder you are confused!

There's a lot of stigma surrounding psychosis and delusions, and the term 'delusion of grandeur' is often wrongfully used to describe the actions of people who are not delusional, but rather perhaps just acting out of self interest, self importance and malice. I have heard people describe Trump with such words, as an example.

Now, narcissism or even npd, is another term that people throw around carelessly to describe people they don't like who act in a similar way as described above.

So I feel like this is one of those... People are bitchy at people with npd, and they utillize saneism against psychotic people against you guys by throwing the term delusion in there...

I think what is colloquially meant is 'people with npd think they are better than they really are', which is..... A gross simplification and misrepresentation of npd, and also not a representation of what delusions of grandeur are..

So I feel like this is one of those... People be out there saying some misinformed shit..

And the solution is not for psychotic people to say 'omg how dare you insinuate we are like *those* people with a personality disorder", nor for npd people to be like 'how dare you imply we are crazy like those dangerous schizos".. and so on.

I'm tired, so sorry if this didn't make sense!!

[slugass]

CW/TW: Rant, Ableism, Sanism/Saneism, Ableist Language (mostly censored), Mentions of Intrusive Thoughts (no specifics), Mentions of S/H (brief), Swearing, Mentions of Violence, Brief Arson Mention,

how fans and writers treat chaotic/violent/creepy/"unhinged" characters (pre-existing or creations of their own) ;(((((((

so fucking sick of people, writers, and fandom treating how much of a "lvnatic" or how "ins^ne" or "unhinged" or "deranged" a character is like mental sickness is a charming silly lil funny quirky "teehee VIOLENCE and MURDER!!! bwahaha!!! :3333 XDDDD/eeheehee *says the creepies thing evar* :) hehe ur gonna diiiie *grin*" trait to gush over and laugh about

and not a thing that causes legitimate suffering. It makes me angry and uncomfortable.

I am mentally ill and autistic. I am not a "kooky" ins^ne "lvnatic" with cartoony pinprick eyes whose "kookiness" comes from being unapologetically dangerous and fun at the same time because i'm so "cr^zy" and "l00ny". I don't burn down houses for teh lolz XD and fight god with wide goofy grin on my face.

I am a human being who has to cope because my mind is playing tricks on me all the fucking time. I don't listen to the thoughts in my head telling me to do horrible things. I have meltdowns, I harm myself when I'm stressed, and I want it to stop.

MY MELTDOWNS, MY "INS^NITY" ARE NOT SILLY FUNNY ENDEARING TRAITS. THEY ARE NOT A PART OF WHAT MAKES ME FUN AND GOOFY. They cause me actual distress. I do not enjoy having to deal with intrusive thoughts, having destructive meltdowns, harming myself, "going ins^ne". those are all distressing to me.

Please stop romanticizing and sterotyping mental illnesses. Stop boiling down being mentally sick to a zany "hee hee hoo hoo violent and dangerous mweeheehee so fun and whimsical!!!!!1" character quirk. Stop treating stereotypes about mental illness like charming silly aspects to gush about when discussing or making a quirky chaotic character.

DOING DANGEROUS/WILD SHIT AND HAVING FUN ABOUT IT DOES NOT EQUAL BEING MENTALLY ILL. VIOLENCE DOES NOT EQUAL MENTAL ILLNESS. SAYING CREEPY SHIT DOES NOT EQUAL BEING "PS/CHO".

[transmasc-wizard]

psssst psssssssssstttttt

talk about the ableism and saneism in the writblr community. it needs to be talked about (i would help but wordnt)

thank u for the motivation!! also i hope 1) wordn't becomes wordy, and/or 2) u have a pleasant time while wordn't

anyway

god where do i start. This is probably going to be messy and angry and not the super convenient nice happy disabled person but GOD i'm so fucking tired lmao

starting. starting. Ah! i'll start with this: I am autistic, and the people who diagnosed me also generally agreed I have some form of anxiety. (I'm also currently figuring out if I'm struggling with depression.) I don't have first-hand experience with being physically disabled, and I am not every neurodiversity ever.

So, that's the standpoint I'm coming from in regards to first-hand experience; talking about disabilities I don't have will just be me repeating what I've seen around, as well as me taking experience of my own and applying it to similar situations (e.g. the demonization of low empathy hurts autistic people. I know why, as an autistic. Similarly, it hurts pwPDs).

With that out of the way, let's continue.

WHUMP

I'm just gonna say it. I fucking hate the wider whump community on writblr. I follow a few whump accounts and I like them, but most of the whump community is a toxic, saneist, ableist hellscape.

I have seen whump prompt blogs call characters who don't speak "perfectly broken". What do they think of nonverbal autistics?

I have seen them treat PTSD like a wonderful thing to inflict on their characters. What about the people with c-PTSD and PTSD who are reading that?

I have seen them describe sexual assault and the trauma disorders it can cause in one of their "fun whump prompts" lists--completely untagged with any sort of warning that, you know, REAL PEOPLE with REAL TRAUMA might have backlisted to avoid it.

I have seen something that was literally just the description of an autistic meltdown, minus any reference to the word autism, and say "this is so satisfying to write". (From an allistic person.)

I have seen whump blogs use physical disability as a perfect method of torture, treating blindness, deafness, amputated limbs, & chronic pain as the perfect curse to inflict on their characters--I don't know who has to fucking hear this, but physically disabled people are not some pitiable animals. They're people, and they're on tumblr, and they can read what you're saying about their disablities.

Additionally, the way people describe their whumpers sometimes... delusional, psycho, psychotic, sociopathic, narcissistic, "void of empathy", etc etc etc. DID YOU KNOW THOSE ARE REAL THINGS THAT REAL PEOPLE ARE. There are people with ASPD, psychosis, low empathy, and NPD on tumblr. They don't deserve to see that shit.

& like. @ whump blogs. Do you post your stories in the touch-averse tag? If so... stop. Us touch averse folk don't need our tag invaded by horrific stories and prompts about touch aversion being ignored and abused. Find another tag.

All in all, the whump community has a giant problem of treating mental illness, trauma, and disabilities like either 1) nothing but imaginary scenarios to put whumpees through, or 2) perfect traits for their evil, abusive whumper.

THE REST OF WRITBLR

I wanted to highlight a couple of my issues with whumpblr specifically, but the rest of writblr is by no means exempt from this bullshit.

First of all, the "describing your antagonist as unempathetic/psychotic/sociopathic/a narcissist/crazy" thing is Not something that non-whump writblrs are immune to. I'll put it simply: I am hypoempathetic. I do not experience empathy. If you equate hypoempathy to being a fucking serial killer or some shit, I am blocking you. Same with the things I don't have.

Next: trauma and depression.

I won't pretend that every joke about traumatizing your OCs is evil. Neither is joking about giving them depression (less common but still there). But the overarching trend of treating trauma & depression itself like a joke, about treating trauma and depressive disorders like fun little things that come with the plot and not like actual things people live with, is harmful.

I have struggled with depression. I am an autistic teen. 60% of autistic adults have PTSD just from growing up autistic, because it's often such a traumatizing experience. I do not feel safe in a community that treats depression & trauma like a joke.

now: "character flaws"

literally please stop calling obvious ND traits "character flaws". It is not that hard. "paranoid" "blunt" "odd" "unempathetic" "crazy" (what the fuck does that even mean to you) "hyperactive" "bad memory" straight up "hallucinates" and "depressed".... shut up, shut up, i hate you, shut up.

No, I'm not saying these things are all perfect and harmless and fun traits that never impact anyone. But flaws are traits that you're supposed to dislike about a character. A character having a paranoid anxiety disorder should not make you dislike them. A character being "odd" via displaying autistic traits should not make you dislike them. Flaws are things like being cheap, cruel, ignoring the needs of others, being a liar, being bigoted, etc. And... yeah! Some things you can list as flaws are also ND traits! Bc not all ND traits are that great! But like... lots are not flaws, they're just unusual to society. Something like "isn't NT" is not a character flaw. It's just not. Being neurodivergent is not something a character should have to make up for.

(bonus points (/s) to lists that give things like "always tired" and "difficulty moving quickly" as character flaws! You've managed to hurt physically disabled and/or chronically ill people, too <3)

coding villains as/making them canonically disabled, and/or just straight up ignoring the existence of disability

the writblr community is really diverse with their characters, and that's nice. But disability is... often hard to find? in abled people's work? Either they'll have the token ADHDer, one vaguely pitiable dude in a wheelchair, or the horrifically stereotyped autistic, or they'll code their villain as some sort of neurodivergent/chronically ill.

No one has to make disabled characters. Your story is your story. But it feels shitty to be left out of everything unless fellow disabled people made it.

Example for the coding thing: if your villain has difficulty connecting to people, is blunt, doesn't lie very well, is monotone, has "unsettling" or blank facial expressions, is awkward in the way they act, dislikes people, has very rigid thought patterns, is extremely stubborn, follows their personal set of rules to a T, is a loner, is very very intent on their goal/main interest, and seems to have trouble socializing "typically", or hits a lot of those things, congrats! they're autistic. That is a person I would 100%, without a doubt, think "oh, that's me" about. (That's just one neurodiversity; I see a LOT of villains coded as having antisocial personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder in particular.)

There's also, like. if your villain uses a mobility aid, has scars, is canonically ND, etc and is the only one out of your cast who is, that's ableism. You should feel bad. Full stop. It's not hard to keep yourself from connecting disability & mental illness to villainy.

Also, side note. People's autistic characters often tire me. Because they'll have one profile of a character they say isn't ND and they're like "she's an artist who's OBSESSED with her craft, she's pretty socially awkward, she calms down in dark lonely spaces, she has difficulty communicating, she doesn't really understand social norms" and then their autistic character will be Sheldon Cooper 2.0.

using outdated/wrong terminology

maybe i'm just in the wrong circles but like. "asperger's" "multiple personality disorder" "person with autism" "psychopathic" literally what. stop that. no. (In order: autism, DID, autistic, antisocial personality disorder.)

fetishizing, romanticizing, stereotyping, and generally misrepresenting

your anxious character isn't an uwu sad small bean (like, literally stop, anxiety is hell). depression doesn't make good art. the autistic character does not have to be a super genius. your character in a wheelchair isn't a tragedy. blind people aren't super-wise sages. Etc, etc, etc.

in conclusion (not actually concluding)

i'm not done, i'm just feeling my weak grip on words slowly starting to slip away. Wordn't is coming upon me, too. hashtag quirky autism things!

Anyway, if other disabled people want to add on--ESPECIALLY those with personality disorders, psychotic disorders, and physical disabilities--i'm saying please do. I want to hear other people's experiences.

I love writblr, but it's very, very common for me as an autistic mentally ill person to feel uncomfortable with the way characters are treated & handled.

Just... listen to us? please?

that's all for now, i guess.

[antisocialxconstruct]

PLEASE WRITE AN ESSAY ABOUT SRHK IT SOUNDS GREAT

gfdsg OKAY WELL... it's a topic I've got stashed away for a possible video for the Hypothetical YT Channel but I can give sort of an overview 👀 These games are kinda old by now but spoilers for individual character arcs (not the central plots) in both Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong, for anyone who's concerned about that.

Basically in my opinion one of the most poorly aged and problematic elements of Shadowrun lore is the concept of "essence." From a game mechanics standpoint it makes perfect sense, the more cyberware you have and the more specialized you are for decking/rigging or combat, the less magic you can do. It's just a way to balance things so no single character can do too much of everything. What I don't like is how this is canonized by tying essence to a concept of someone's ~soul~ and humanity, so what you end up with is pretty much cut-and-dry "the more your body is changed the less human you are." The fact that it's also associated with psychosis and the risk of becoming violent is uuhh... a Bad Look. It's just ableism and saneism any which way you slice it, and it's especially frustrating because it would have been so easy to make it just... Not That.

But! I feel like someone (or multiple someones) on the Harebrained Schemes writing team must have had a personal vendetta against essence because there are at least three characters between Dragonfall and SRHK that feel like they were explicitly and specifically written to challenge that idea and then explore it further.

The first one is one of the main teammates, Glory, in Dragonfall. When you first meet her she's presented as exactly the stereotype you might expect of a "burnout" who sacrificed all their essence and ability to do magic for mods. She's cold and distant, doesn't seem emotionally invested in anything, and more or less comes off like little more than a killing machine. But then this crazy thing happens... you can talk to her, check in with her after runs, ask her about herself, and pretty quickly she starts to light up. She emotes more, expresses stronger opinions about things, and eventually opens up to you about her (pretty devastating) past. In my opinion it seems fairly evident after a while that the thing making her come off distant and unattached wasn't her cyberware, it was good ol' fashioned unresolved trauma. She came from multiple environments where her emotions, both positive and negative, were punished or weaponized to hurt her or others around her, while she was made to feel like she was already less than human because of her magical affinity. So when she eventually got away and made the decision to cut herself off from her own power, she attached her emotions to that process, and convinced herself she had cut them out as well, that she didn't need to be human anymore. But she still feels, and she feels strongly, once she realizes she's being given a space where she can do that safely and without punishment.

Then in Hong Kong we have two characters who interestingly contrast each other but I think touch on the same idea: Ambrose, the local street doc, and Racter, another teammate. Glory elected to have her mods installed, but both Ambrose and Racter received theirs out of necessity. They're mobility aids. Ambrose is a lot more visibly so than Racter, but they are both disabled. Right from the start Ambrose seems to go directly against the stereotype: after a disastrous accident he's more machine than man at this point, and at one point even describes his own remaining essence as "a shred," and yet he's boisterous, personable, and shows remarkable respect and compassion for all his patients. While deeper talks with him reveal that he carries a lot of trauma from that experience, it seems as if he's had time to work through it, find his own coping mechanisms, and build a community around himself that keeps him connected to his sense of self. On the other hand, Racter also eventually discloses that he has extensive cyberware as the result of an accident, but believes he avoided the psychological impact of losing his essence because of his clinical diagnosis of psychopathy. Throughout his life he has never experienced affective empathy, he doesn't really connect with people on an emotional level, and he has no strong attachment to the concept of his own "humanity"--essentially, he had none of the things most people fear losing during the modding process, and so he lost nothing and stayed himself.

All of these character concepts taken together seem to present an interesting angle on the concept of essence: the loss of humanity is psychosomatic. For whatever reason, people believe that extensive cyberware impairs your ability to feel and to connect with others, and so they withdraw, lock down their emotions, and stop trying to connect with others. But it's not an inherent consequence of the mods themselves. This is speculation on my part, but it seems to me you could argue that this is a cultural artifact. If the world that eventually becomes the Shadowrun universe is at least as ableist as ours (and why wouldn't it be), I have no doubt that as cybernetic enhancements and prosthetics became more widespread, they would be met with prejudice. It's easy to fear someone who paid a lot of money to have knives or a gun put inside their arm, and isn't is suspicious? Who would want to be a finely tuned killing machine, anyway? Someone crazy, right? Someone less than human. And it's not hard to imagine people extending that fear to anyone with mods, because hey, you never know how extensive they are or what all they can do! If enough people who need or want cyberware hear that kind of rhetoric, for enough generations, of course they would start to believe it, internalize it, and replicate it, and the popular conception that essence loss is also loss of humanity would become common knowledge.

[void-star]

Yeah, taking responsibility for what you do even if you're not in control is really important normal human in community and relation with other human activity. Cause regardless of the why, the what still happened and had an impact on another person.

The original post in the screenshot is pretty specifically about how to apologize to people who are affected by your behavior. To me, the point reads like this:

The first example feels, intentionally or unintentionally, like the person apologizing is trying to quickly blow past the behavior that affected the other person, and shut down any further conversation the person affected might need in order to feel some kind of closure to the event, and a feeling on which direction to head following that.

The second example feels more like the person apologizing is stepping into the relationship and allowing conversation and discussion to happen about it. There's more room for working through it together.

Diagnoses can help offer an explanation, but you have to address the event first.

But I would also like to offer that a diagnosis isn't the whole picture. The same symptoms do not manifest the same exact way between everyone who shares the diagnosis. You get what I'm saying?

To you, you understand you can expect to feel/struggle with/express yourself in xyz way because of your diagnosis. It's a tool to help you understand what's happening.

It is, imo, not very useful to provide to another person as a means to try and understand you because it doesn't actually say anything meaningful about you, specifically, as a person.

As someone with multiple highly stigmatized and villainized disorders, I can tell you with certainty that all you're doing is invoking somebody else's misconceptions, steteotypes, emotional associations, etc. when you mean to foster greater understanding instead. It's like... the opposite of that goal. And I'm sure that happens with literally every other illness, even if it doesn't necessarily result in people automatically assuming you're malicious because of your diagnosis.

"But it's important to request accommodations!!" it sure is, and providing somebody your diagnosis is not necessary to request that interpersonally (structurally, such as in a job or school, good fucking luck... sometimes it helps and sometimes it does not).

"But we need to talk about and address ableism and saneism" we sure do... in conversations that are not you trying to address an interpersonal conflict with another person.

this is gonna be a really cool frame to apply to anyone with any mental illness stiffer than light social anxiety. can't wait to be berated for having an autistic meltdown and not taking personal responsibility for how much of a fucking bummer it is for everyone around me lmfao

[psychoticallytrans]

hi i hope this isnt a weird question to ask but. uhm tomorrow i have to tell my therapist about a maybe-psychotic-depression episode i had last week and im like, Nervous:tm: and unsure how or what to say? this is probably So stupid to ask but is there. i dont know. a script for this kind of thing, a limit to what i should disclose (im trying to avoid institutionalization, im in college and i cant afford to miss class)? therapy in general is new to me and while ive maybe had episodes like this in the past, the one i had last week was a new level of intense, too, so im just very out of my depth. thank you so much if you reply to this and if you cant thats okay too <3

This took me a long time to get around to. This probably won't help you in particular, anon, but I hope it helps others.

I will disclaim before this post that I have had extremely traumatic experiences in therapy. I came out of therapy with more disabilities and more severe ones than when I went in, and at least one of my therapists can be pinned as a direct cause. That will color this post.

The problem of therapy and disclosure is that... therapists are people, and they are people whose word holds an incredible amount of sway when considering how to act in regards to their clients. That sway is a problem because of how ableism and specifically saneism interact with the medical industry and with society. We are not seen as arbiters of our experiences. They are seen as the authorities on us. Everything you disclose will be filtered through the therapist, all of their prejudices and preconceptions, before it becomes something that the medical system will take seriously.

Amplifying this is the unavailability of therapy and how very few therapists are also mentally ill. If they are, it's even rarer to find one with a disorder that is considered "threatening"- for a reason. The inventor of DBT was BPD, and the second she revealed this, she was essentially exiled from her community. This means, in order, that a) a lot of people have to either adapt to their therapist or go without therapy and b) that therapists can very rarely actually relate to the experiences of clients that need heavy-duty help.

They might be presented as cutesy and "just here to help", but therapists are still medical professionals administering medical treatment with medical authority, and should be treated by disabled people with every caution that you treat a normal doctor with.

As such, this is my advice.

a) Don't disclose any heavy duty symptoms or trauma until you've tested them on some lighter topics, and they've handled them well. "Well" means not denying your experiences, respecting boundaries that you put up, and not acting like mental illness being in your head means you can think yourself well in a few hours. To define "heavy duty" generally, think about what you would put behind a trigger warning for an audience of adults.

b) Don't sign anything without reading it in full. If you don't understand it, tell them you need time to understand it before you can sign it. If they respond to this by telling you to just sign it or that it's not important, that should send alarm bells clanging in your head.

c) Request your medical record. Even if you're not concerned about your therapist, it lets you see their notes. It can be very informative.

d) If they pass as a decent person, then only one disclosure should get you institutionalization: confessing that you are going to hurt yourself or another person. If you can't afford institutionalization, and this is a problem for you, then you are going to have to find ways to deal with that without telling your therapist that. This is actually very easy. As long as you don't tell them that the feeling is current, you can ask for advice. "I sometimes have problems with wanting to hurt myself. Can you help me?" or "I worry that I might do harm to other people- what can I do to avoid that?" are great ways to phrase it that should still get you help as long as you can keep them in the past or future tense. If either of these is an active problem for you, seek whatever help you safely can.

e) Understand that therapy is medical treatment. It is very possible to perform great healing with it. It is also very possible to perform great medical malpractice.

You only have one mind. Be careful who you trust with it.

[infernallegaycy]

Writing Psychotic Characters

Hi! I’ve seen a few of these writing things pop up recently (and in the past), but I haven’t seen any on psychotic characters—which, judging from the current state of portrayals of psychosis in media, is something I think many people* need. And as a psychotic person who complains about how badly psychosis tends to be represented in media, I thought I’d share a bit of information and suggestions!

A lot of this isn’t necessarily specifically writing advice but information about psychosis, how it presents, and how it affects daily life. This is partially purposeful—I feel that a large part of poor psychotic representation stems from a lack of understanding about psychosis, and while I’m not usually in an educating mood, context and understanding are crucial to posts like this. A lot of this also relates to writing psychosis in a modern-day setting, simply because that’s where bad psychotic representation tends to mostly occur (and it’s the only experience I’ve had, obviously), but please don’t shy away from applying this advice to psychotic characters in sci-fi/fantasy/historical fiction/etc. Psychosis is not a wholly modern phenomenon, nor would speculative fiction feel truly escapist without being able to see yourself reflected in it.

Please also note that I am not a medical professional nor an expert in psychology. I simply speak from my personal experiences, research, and what I’ve read of others’ experiences. I also do not speak for all psychotic people, and more than welcome any alternative perspectives to my own.

*These people, in all honesty, aren’t likely to be the ones willingly reading this. But there are people who are willing to learn, so here’s your opportunity.

(Warnings: Mentions of institutionalization/hospitalization, including forced institutionalization; ableism/saneism; and brief descriptions of delusions and hallucinations. Also, it’s a pretty long post!)

Up front, some terminology notes: “Unpsychotic” refers to people who are not psychotic. This includes other mentally ill and neurodivergent people. Please try to avoid terminology like “non-[identity],” as much of it is co-opted from “nonblack.”

Also, “psychotic” and “delusional” will not be, and should not be, used to refer to anything but respectively someone who experiences psychosis and someone who experiences delusions. Remove these words as insults and negative descriptors for anyone you dislike from your vocabulary.

In addition, I generally use adjectives rather than person-first language because that is the language I, and the seeming majority of other neurodivergent and mentally ill people, prefer. Others might describe themselves differently (as “people with psychosis,” for instance). Don’t assume either way—I’d generally suggest you say “psychotic person” first, and then correct yourself if the person in question prefers different terminology.

1) Psychosis is a symptom, not a disorder.

As a term, “psychosis” describes any number of symptoms that indicate a break with reality, such as delusions and hallucinations (I’ll go into more detail about this in a bit). It commonly occurs as part of several mental and neurological disorders, including but not limited to:

Schizophrenia

Schizophreniform disorder (same symptoms as schizophrenia, but for a shorter period of time than 6 months)

Schizoaffective disorder (combined symptoms of psychosis and a mood disorder, but not enough to completely fill the diagnostic criteria for either)

Bipolar disorder (typically as part of manic episodes, but it can also occur in unipolar depression and depressive episodes)

Personality disorders, including borderline personality disorder (for which transient paranoia under stress is part of the diagnostic criteria), paranoid personality disorder, and schizoid personality disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Dissociative disorders (though psychosis =/= dissociative identity disorder; if you want further information on the latter, which I do not have, please seek out another post!)

Psychosis can also occur with forms of epilepsy, sleep disorders, metabolic disorders, and autoimmune disorders. It tends to be a major part of neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. In addition, it can occur when not related to a chronic health condition; things like sleep deprivation and stress can induce temporary psychosis, as can drug use and medication.

This isn’t to say you necessarily need to define a disorder for a psychotic character, as some psychotic people (including myself) primarily just describe ourselves as “psychotic,” and some aren’t diagnosed with anything specific. However, if your psychotic character is a main/perspective character, I definitely recommend it. Chances are, someone with that disorder is reading/watching, and I’m sure they’d love to see a bit of direct representation. In general, you probably should at least have something in mind, because psychotic symptoms and severity/onset can differ greatly.

Some psychotic disorders’ diagnostic criteria explicitly exclude others (someone cannot be diagnosed with both schizophrenia and schizophreniform disorder at the same time, for instance, though the latter can develop into the former), but comorbidity is possible—and often common—among certain disorders and other neurological/mental conditions. Rates vary, so definitely research this, but in short, it is very much possible for psychotic people to have multiple disorders, including disorders that don’t include psychotic symptoms. (Personally speaking: I’m autistic, ADHD, and OCD in addition to being psychotic, and I’m physically disabled as well.)

I’m not here to do all the research for you—if you want to know more about specific psychotic disorders, then by all means, look them up! Go beyond Wikipedia and Mayo Clinic articles, too. Talk to people who have them. Seek out blogs and YouTube channels run by people with them. Read books about psychosis by psychotic people**. Pay attention to how we describe ourselves and our disorders.

And if you want to write characters with those disorders, especially if you’re writing from their perspectives, then please for the love of God, hire a sensitivity reader. For authenticity, I would recommend seeking out someone with the same disorder, not just anyone psychotic.

**If you want a fiction recommendation: I don’t actually know if the author is schizophrenic like the main character, but I really enjoyed and related to The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan. Content warnings include, but might not be limited to—it’s been a while since I read it—unreality, self-harm, suicide, abuse, and mentions of transphobia. I haven’t personally read any autobiographies/memoirs/essays yet, so I don’t have any to offer, and quite a few that came up through a cursory search seemed only to focus on being an inspiration to neurotypical people or were from a perspective other than that of the psychotic person in question. If anyone (preferably psychotic people) has any more recommendations, fiction or nonfiction, let me know!

2) Not every psychotic person has the same symptoms.

As mentioned, psychosis consists of symptoms that involve separation with reality, which can present as positive or negative symptoms. Every person’s experiences with these are different, but some generalizations can be made. I definitely recommend reading studies and articles (especially directly by psychotic people) describing experiences and presentation!

I’ll start with positive symptoms, which refer to the presence of symptoms unpsychotic people don’t have, and can include hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thoughts, speech, and behavior.

You probably know what hallucinations are (perceptions of sensory information that is not really present), but you might not know the specifics. Types of hallucinations include:

Auditory (which tend to be the most common, and are probably the form everyone is most familiar with, primarily as “hearing voices”)

Visual

Olfactory

Tactile/haptic

Gustatory (taste)

Somatic

Some types with regards to bodily sensations get a little muddled from here, but some forms of hallucinations you might not have heard of include thermic (hot/cold), hygric (fluids), kinesthetic (bodily movements), and visceral (inner organs).

(Note: Hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations, which occur when falling asleep or waking up, are not related to psychosis and can occur in anyone.)

As mentioned, there are some forms of hallucinations that are more common, but that is not to say that everyone has the same hallucinations. A lot of us have auditory and/or visual hallucinations, but not everyone does. Some have tactile, olfactory, or gustatory hallucinations instead of or in addition to more common forms (hi! Auditory hallucinations are pretty rare for me, but I constantly feel bugs/spiders crawling on me). If you write a psychotic character that experiences hallucinations, then you should definitely do further research on these types and manifestations of them.

You’re likely also familiar with delusions (a belief that contradicts reality), though again, you might not know the specifics. Delusions can be classified as bizarre (implausible, not shared or understood by peers of the same culture) or non-bizarre (false, but technically possible). They can relate to one’s mood or not.

Some people only experience delusions and no other significant psychotic symptoms (this occurs in delusional disorder). Delusions differ between people and tend to be heavily influenced by environment, but there are some common themes, such as:

Persecution

Guilt, punishment, or sin

Mind reading

Thought insertion

Jealousy

Control

Reference (coincidences having meaning)

Grandeur

Certain types of delusions are more common in certain cultures/backgrounds or certain disorders. I can’t really go into details about specific delusions, because I try not to read many examples (for a reason I’m about to mention), but if you plan on writing a character who experiences delusions, I definitely recommend heavily researching delusions and how it feels to experience them.

I would like to note: I’m not sure how common it is, but I’ve noticed that I personally have a tendency to pick up delusions that I see other psychotic people talking about having. Just kind of, like, an “oh shit what if” feeling creeps up on me, and before I know it, that delusion has wormed its way into my life. Just in case you want some idea of how psychotic people can interact amongst ourselves!

Another quick note: Delusions, by definition, are untrue beliefs; this does not mean that anyone who has ever been delusional is inherently untrustworthy.

Disorganization of thoughts/speech and behavior is more self-explanatory. Problems with thinking and speaking tend to be one of the most common psychotic symptoms, sometimes considered even more so than delusions and hallucinations. There are a lot of ways thought processes can be disrupted, and I honestly think it would be kind of difficult to portray this if you haven’t experienced it, but some common manifestations are:

Derailment

Tangents (which you might notice me doing sometimes in this very post)

Getting distracted mid-sentence/thought

Incoherence/“word salad”

Thought blocking (sudden stops in thoughts/speech)

Repetition of words/phrases

Pressured speech (rapid, urgent speech)

Use of invented words

Poverty of speech/content of speech

(Note that thought/speech disturbances aren’t necessarily exclusive to psychotic disorders. They tend to be common in ADHD and autism as well, though symptoms can be more severe when they occur in, for example, schizophrenia.)

Behavioral abnormalities can include catatonia, which presents in a number of ways, such as mutism, echolalia, agitation, stupor, catalepsy, posturing, and more. Episodes of catatonia last for hours and sometimes longer, which usually requires hospitalization and/or medication. This tends to overlap heavily with symptoms of autism spectrum disorders, which can be comorbid with conditions like schizophrenia.

Negative symptoms, on the other hand, refer to the absence of certain experiences. It can include flat affect (lack of or limited emotional reactions), generally altered emotional responses, a decrease in speech, and low motivation. Most of these speak for themselves, and I’m not honestly sure how to describe them to someone who’s never experienced them in a way that isn’t very metaphorical and therefore kind of unhelpful. If any other psychotic people have suggestions, feel free to add on/message me!

Not every psychotic disorder involves or requires both positive and negative symptoms (to my knowledge, manic episodes of bipolar disorder mostly only include positive symptoms), but many psychotic people experience both. And, as expressed multiple times—and I really can’t stress it enough—every person’s experience with psychosis is different.

If you interview two psychotic people at random, chances are they aren’t going to have the same combination of symptoms. Chances are they won’t even have the same disorder. Therefore, if you write multiple psychotic characters, they shouldn’t be identical in terms of personality or psychosis.

There are also some qualities of psychotic disorders that may not necessarily be diagnostic criteria but are prominent in people with these conditions. These also vary between disorders, but cognitive impairments and similar traits are fairly common.

3) In a similar vein, daily experiences can vary greatly. Psychosis can be a major part of psychotic people’s lives, but it doesn’t always affect daily life.

For some people, psychosis occurs in episodes, not 24/7; you may have heard the term “psychotic break,” which tends to refer to a first episode of psychosis. This is especially true of disorders where psychotic symptoms occur under stress or during mood episodes.

For other people, psychosis is a near-constant. It can wax and wane, but it never completely goes away. These people might be more likely to invest in medication or long-term therapy and other treatment methods.

Psychosis’s impact on everyday life can also be affected by insight (how well the person can tell they’re having psychotic symptoms). There’s not a ton of accessible research—or research at all—into insight and how it affects psychotic people, and I’m not a big fan of describing people as having high/low insight because I think it has the potential to be used like functioning labels (which, for the record, are bad; plenty of other autistic people have written at length about this), but just something to keep in mind. It’s a sliding scale; at different points in time, the same person might have limited or significant awareness of their symptoms. Both greater and poorer insight have been linked to decreased quality of life, so neither one is really a positive.

Just something to be aware of: Yes, sometimes we do realize how “crazy” we seem. Yes, sometimes we don’t. No, it doesn’t really make things any better to know that what we’re seeing/thinking/etc isn’t real. No, people with low insight shouldn’t be blamed or mocked for this.

As such, the diagnostic process can vary greatly. Psychotic people aware of their symptoms or how their lives are being impacted may directly ask for a diagnosis or seek out information on their own. Other times, family or friends might notice symptoms and bring them up to a mental health professional, or someone might be forcibly institutionalized and diagnosed that way.

My professional diagnostic processes have been pretty boring: Over time, I just gradually brought up different diagnoses I thought might fit me to my therapist, whom I started seeing for anxiety (which I no longer strongly identify with, on account of my anxiety mostly stemming from me being autistic, OCD, and psychotic). I filled out checklists and talked about my symptoms. We moved on with the treatment processes I was already undergoing and incorporated more coping mechanisms and stuff like that into therapy sessions. Hardly the tearful scenes of denial you’re used to seeing or reading about.

Other people might have very different experiences, or very similar ones! It all depends! I generally don’t really like reading scenes of people being diagnosed (it’s just exposition and maybe some realization on the PoV character’s part, but it’s usually somewhat inaccurate in that regard), so you can probably steer away from that sort of thing, but you might find it useful to note how your character was identified somewhere? I don’t really have any strong opinions on this.

I’d also like to note: Everything I publicly speak about having, I’ve discussed in a professional therapy setting, just because of my personal complexes. However, I do fully support self-diagnosis. Bigotry and money are huge obstacles against getting professional diagnoses, and if someone identifies with a certain disorder and seeks out treatment mechanisms for it, there’s no real harm being done. If someone is genuinely struggling and they benefit from coping mechanisms intended for a disorder they might not have, then I think that’s better than if they shied away because they weren’t professionally diagnosed with it, and therefore didn’t get help they needed. With proper research, self-diagnosis is fully ethical and reasonable.

I do not want to debate this, and any attempts to force me into a discussion about professional versus self-diagnosis will be ignored.

Anyway! I can’t really identify any specific daily experiences with psychosis you might want to include, because as mentioned, everyone has different symptoms and ways they cope with them.

Some psychotic people might not experience symptoms outside of an episode, which can be brought on by any number of things; some might experience symptoms only under general stress; some might have consistent symptoms. The content of hallucinations and delusions can also shift over time.

Psychosis can also affect anyone—there are certain demographics certain disorders are more likely to occur in, but this could just as easily be due to biases in diagnostic criteria or professionals themselves as it could be due to an actual statistical correlation. If you want to figure out how a psychotic character behaves on a day-to-day basis, then you’re better off shaping who they are as a person beyond their psychosis first, then incorporating their psychosis into things.

(A note about this: I consider my psychosis a major part of me, and I firmly believe that I would be a very different person without it; that’s why I refer to myself as a “psychotic person” rather than “a person with psychosis.” However, there is a difference between that and unpsychotic people making psychotic characters’ only trait their psychosis.)

4) Treatment for psychosis differs from person to person. The same things don’t work for everyone.

Some people are on antipsychotics; others aren’t. Medication is a personal choice and not a necessity—no one should be judged either for being on medication or for not being on medication. There are many reasons behind either option. Please do not ask psychotic people about their medication/lack thereof unprompted.

If you want to depict a psychotic character on medication, then research different forms of antipsychotics and how they affect psychotic people. I’ve never been on medication and don’t really plan to be (though if I ever do, I’m definitely taking a note from Phasmophobia’s book and calling them “Sanity Pills.” Just to clarify, I don’t want unpsychotic people repeating this joke, but if you want some insight on how some of us regard our health…), so you’re better off looking elsewhere for this sort of information!

I’m not going to get into my personal opinions on institutionalization and the psychiatry industry in general now, but institutionalization is, while common, also not necessary, and many psychotic people—and mentally ill and neurodivergent people in general—have faced harm and trauma due to institutionalization. Again, I can’t offer direct personal experience, but I recommend steering clear of plotlines directly related to psychiatric hospitals.

I would also like to emphasis the word treatment. Psychosis has no cure. It is possible for psychosis to only last a single episode (whether because it’s only due to stress/another outside factor or because it is treated early), or for symptoms to be greatly reduced over time and with treatment, but for the most part, psychotic people are psychotic for life.

However, with proper support networks and coping skills, many psychotic people are able to lead (quote unquote) “normal” lives. What coping mechanisms work for what people differs, but some psychosis-specific coping mechanisms might be:

Taping webcams for delusions of persecution/surveillance (which is honestly also just something everyone should do with webcams that aren’t in use)

Covering/closing windows for similar reasons

Using phone cameras/audio recordings to distinguish visual and auditory hallucinations from reality (most of the time, a hallucination won’t show up on camera, though it’s possible for people to hallucinate something on a camera screen too)

Similarly, removing glasses/contact lenses to check a visual hallucination

Asking people you trust (because of stigma and delusions, this might not be a long list) to check for symptoms of an oncoming episode

Avoiding possible triggers for psychosis (for example, I don’t engage with horror media often because a lot of it -- both psychological horror and slasher-type things -- can trigger delusions and hallucinations)

I’d also like to mention that treatment isn’t a clean, one-way process; especially with certain disorders, it’s normal to go up and down over time. I’d honestly be really uncomfortable with a psychotic character whose symptoms don’t affect their life whatsoever. There are ways you can write how psychosis affects someone that are… weird, which I’ll touch on, but overall, I think it’s better to actually depict a psychotic person whose symptoms have a clear impact on their life (even if that impact is, say, they’re on medication that negates some of their symptoms).

Just to reiterate: I am not a medical professional and cannot offer real-life advice regarding treatment, especially medication. Please do not ask me too detailed questions regarding this.

5) There are a lot of stereotypes and stigma surrounding psychosis.

The way psychosis is perceived both by general society and the field of psychology has changed a lot over the years, but even now, it still remains highly stigmatized and misunderstood. Wall of text incoming, but it’s important stuff.

Typical media portrayal of psychosis tends to fall into specific categories: The scary, violent psychotic person, or the psychotic person who is so crazy you can’t help but laugh. There are other bad depictions, but these are generally the ways I see psychotic people regarded and represented the most, so I want to address them directly.

Let’s talk about psychosis in horror first. Psychosis is often stereotyped as making people aggressive and violent. You’ve all seen the “psychotic killer” trope and depictions of people who are made violent and evil by their psychosis, even if it’s not explicitly named as the case. You’ve all seen “psychotic” used as a negative adjective, used synonymously to murderous, evil, harmful, violent, manipulative, etc—maybe you’ve even used it that way in the past. There’s no denying that the way society regards psychotic people is overwhelmingly negative, and that leaks into media.

If you are considering giving a violent, irredeemable antagonist psychosis, consider this: Don’t. More or less every psychotic person hates this trope. It’s inaccurate and, needless to say, rooted in ableism.

There are racialized aspects to this as well. People of color, especially Black and Latine people, are already stereotyped as being aggressive, violent, and scary; there’s also a history of overdiagnosis (and often misdiagnosis) of schizophrenia in Black people, especially civil rights activists. White and white-passing people will only be singled out if someone notices us exhibiting psychotic symptoms, but Black and brown people are already under scrutiny. Be extra cautious about how you write psychotic characters of color.

I’m not saying you can never give a psychotic person, say, a temper; in some cases, it might even make sense. Spells of uncontrollable anger are part of the diagnostic criteria for BPD, for example, and irritability is a common trait of manic episodes. Some delusions and hallucinations can affect aggression (emphasis on can—it would be inaccurate to imply that this is always the case. Once again, each person has a different experience with their psychotic symptoms).

But when the only psychotic or psychotic-coded characters you write are angry and violent, even when the situation doesn’t call for it, then there’s a problem. When you want to write a schizophrenic character, but only in a situation where they’re going on a killing spree, there’s a problem.

Studies have shown that no substantial link exists between psychosis and violence. There is a small association, but I think it would be reasonable to say this is partially because of the stigma surrounding psychosis and various other overlapping factors; no violence or crime exists in a vacuum. In addition, though I can’t find any exact statistics on this, psychotic people are susceptible to being victims of violence (likely because of this very stereotype).

On this note, don’t use mental hospitals as a setting for horror, especially if you plan on depicting the mentally ill patients there as antagonistic and unhinged. As mentioned earlier, institutionalization is a huge trigger for many psychotic people. True, psychiatric hospitals have definitely served as a source of trauma and pain for many in the past, but mentally ill and neurodivergent people have been (and are) the victims in those situations.

Also, don’t do the “what if it was all a delusion” thing. I know this is most common in ~edgy~ theories about children’s series, but… yikes.

In the same vein that you should avoid depictions of psychotic people that are ripped straight from a bad horror movie, don’t push it too far into comedy either. You’ve heard “psych ward” jokes, you’ve seen “I put the hot in psychotic” jokes (a supposedly humorous instance of that psychotic as a negative descriptor thing), you’ve heard people say “I have anxiety/depression, but I’m not crazy!”

Even other mentally ill and neurodivergent people constantly throw us under the bus, as can be seen in that last one. We’re the butt of plenty of jokes—we see things that aren’t there, we talk to ourselves, we believe things that are just so wacky you can’t believe anyone would think that way. (Even when we don’t.)

If you have to write another character laughing at a psychotic character for their symptoms, then have it swiftly criticized in the text, and try not to imply the reader should find psychosis funny either. Treat psychotic characters’ symptoms with sympathy and understanding, not ridicule.

Psychotic people literally cannot help our delusions/hallucinations/other symptoms. If something we think/say seems “crazy” to you, chances are it does to us as well.

(We’re talking about portraying psychosis in fiction, but this applies to real-life treatment of psychotic people, too!)

Also, I’d like to note—all of this is about the way unpsychotic people view psychotic people. If you see a psychotic person laughing at themself or viewing their symptoms as scary, then that is not an invitation for you to laugh along or go beyond symptoms and think the person is scary for being psychotic. That’s the thing about gallows humor; you have to be the one on the gallows.

Moving on! In romance, there is often a presumption that love can cure psychosis. This is false. No matter how much you love (whether romantically or platonically) and want to help a psychotic person, that alone will not “heal” their psychosis. Please do not depict a psychotic person having to be cured to be happy or in love. It doesn’t work that way.

This doesn’t mean you should stray away from romance in general—I personally would definitely like to see more portrayals of psychotic people being loved and supported, especially in romantic relationships. I’d prefer it not be in spite of their psychosis, either; it would be weird if someone loved a person because of their psychosis, but I don’t think you can really love someone whom you disregard such a large part of either.

Point-blank: Psychotic people are worthy of love and affection, and I think this should show in media as well.

In relation to relationships, I’d also strongly advise steering away from writing family members and friends who see someone’s psychosis as harder on them than for the psychotic person, unless you want to explicitly disavow this behavior. Sure, it probably is difficult for other people to witness my psychotic symptoms. But it’s harder for me to have them.

I’m not sure if this is a widely-held belief, but some people also seem to think psychosis is less common than it is. Psychotic people are all around you, and if you read that as a threat or anything like that, you might need to do some self-evaluating. We exist, online and in person, and we can see and read and hear the things you say about us!

Specifically: By the NIMH’s statistics, roughly 3% of people (3 out of every 100) in the United States will experience psychosis at some point in their lives. Around 100,000 people experience their first episode a year.

This also means that it’s possible unpsychotic people reading this will end up developing a form of psychosis at some point in your life as well. Yes, even without a genetic basis; yes, even as a full-grown adult (see how common psychosis is in neurodegenerative disorders). Now this one is intended as a threat (/hj).

Also, you can’t always tell who is psychotic and who is not. I imagine there are a lot of people who wouldn’t know I’m psychotic without me explicitly saying so. Set aside any notions you might have of being able to identify psychotic people, because they will definitely influence how you might go into writing a psychotic character, and they will definitely end up pissing off a psychotic person in your life. Because… you probably know at least one!

People often regard psychosis as a worst-case scenario—which, again, is something that occurs even by people and in works that uplift mental health in general (something I’ve mentioned before is The Bright Sessions, in which a telepath is misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and has an “I’m not crazy!” outburst). I’ve talked about treatment already, but I just thought I’d say this: Psychosis is not a death sentence nor a “fate worse than death.” It may be difficult for unpsychotic people to understand and handle; it is harder to live with. But being psychotic is not an inherently bad thing, and psychotic people should not be expected to act like our lives are constantly awful and hopeless on account of stigma.

I think that’s all I have to say, so thank you so much for reading, especially if you’re not psychotic! I hope you’ve learned something from this, and once again, fellow psychotic people are more than welcome to add on more information if they’re willing.

[fenmere]

OK, on behalf of those of us who think the DID diagnosis is bad and should be abolished, an explanation.

First of all, those of us who believe this do not think that disordered plurality isn’t real, or that the diagnostic criteria used in the diagnosis are fake. Not at all.

It basically boils down to a variation of ACAB, of abolish the police. But with nuance.

This faction of the Inmara want to abolish the entire psychiatric industry and replace it with something less, perhaps, white supremacist.

So, that reflects on all diagnoses of all “disorders”, not just DID.

And there are specifics regarding DID, including it’s name, but those specifics just serve as examples for the greater argument, and we could use any other diagnosis, including ASD or ADHD, as an example instead.

So, instead of making a list of points that would allow sysmeds to cherry pick quotes from us to make us look bad, we’re just going to point out that the entire medical system, and the science that supports it, is built on centuries of racism, ableism, sexism, and saneism, and even the diagnostic and prognostic model of DID is not exempt from that.

There are some people attempting to reform it by adding lines like the cultural/spiritual plurality exemptions. But that still exists in a white supremacist bureaucracy and scientific framework, and there are subtler ways that white supremacist biases are still taking profound effect.

Like, the concept of a disorder itself is deeply flawed, but not that the experiences the construct of a disorder describes. The experiences are real and can be distressing or disabling.

Anyway, our abolitionist faction responds to all of that with “JUNK IT!”

[fenmere]

You know what? We've got to reblog this occasionally.

Because, to put it more bluntly, denying the validity of any spiritual origins that anybody claims is straight up bigotry.

You can be an atheist and a skeptic and not accept those explanations for your own model of reality, but the moment you start using your stance to argue with other people about how anyone else sees themselves and their reality, you're a fucking bigot. You are upholding white supremacy on multiple levels, including racism, ableism, and saneism, by insisting on a strict psychological explanation for everyone.

Don't do it.

And if you try to get around this by saying only people of color can claim spiritual origins for themselves, that's fucking racist too. You're still setting them apart from white people, especially regarding a very generic and otherwise universal experience, and it's fucking bullshit. Do not pull the "appropriation" card here. It's not applicable.

It's specific terms and practices that shouldn't be appropriated, and that's something that must be followed from culture to culture, because not all practices are closed like that.

Having spiritual origins, generally speaking, is something white Christian singlets have for themselves.

A lot of singlets believe that they have spiritual origins, you know.

Almost everyone who is religious or spiritual does. They might define "spiritual" in different ways, but it is extremely common to believe that one's soul was put or created in one's body by spiritual processes, even put there by a god. If not a god, then it's reincarnation or the processes of the animistic world. And that's the majority of people on Earth.

So, like, if you think or feel like system members of a plurality all have to have psychological origins, maybe it's a good idea to ask why you've come to think or feel that way. And whether it is fair to yourselves and other pluralities to have that assumption.

Especially if it's an unconscious bias where you don't tend to really believe someone when they say they have spiritual origins, consider that, please.

But, like, if you are a member of a plurality and have spiritual origins yourself, please do rest assured that you are in good company with most singlets in the world.