quote:
Ahunter3, are you saying that you enjoy having schizophrenia (or whatever it is you prefer to call it)?
Overall, on balance (if that's not an unfortunate choice of words here), I like the ways in which my head seems to work differently than that of most other folks. The voices are a definite exception, but that's rare; and sometimes I get rather sad about...well, every now and then I get a strong sense of how uninvolved I am with other people, a distinct sense of outside-looking-in. That ranges from "Gee, everyone feels that way sometimes" through shades of "I have a set of life experiences that cause me to 'homogenize' less easily, but with the right people under the right circumstances I can be a friend and a participant" all the way over to "Face it, I'm like a sociopath except that I'm not violent. I don't take other people seriously, do I? And look at them, they do, in some important sense that makes me different, the others do."
What does it feel like? Well, most people's sense of reality is attained and supported, in part, by what I call "Did you see that?" moments. That is, most folks are leery of incorporating beliefs that are not shared by other folks, so when something comes along that provokes a "weird" conclusion, they tend to seek corroboration from others. That is not necessarily the ONLY reason they don't believe aliens are trying to control their thoughts through processes that can be blocked by wearing tinfoil hats, but it's a big part of it--their first reaction would be to turn to their neighbors and companions and say, "So, ha ha, sunnuvabitch, there are aliens after all, huh? So, uh, holy shit, you think we need to make tinfoil hats or something?" And if everyone else looked back and said "Huh?? What the fuck are you smoking?", they'd find it difficult to continue to entertain such a weird and uncorroborated belief.
So part of how it feels comes from not having that. Not getting corroboration and not checking for it because you don't expect it. Accepting that you take some things for granted that other people have never considered, and that you reject things that they take for granted (and expect you to agree with, I might add). And the scary part is that at any given moment you can start entertaining thoughts that aren't grounded, and build on them, and paint yourself into corners or get all invested in priorities and causes and ways of being that don't make sense, and there's no one to give you back a checksum to see if it all adds up, see? It's like the difference between driving on a paved road and driving in the direction you think you want to go but on hard-packed flatland that extends in all directions.
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Unfortunately he believed that he was God
Me too. I am, of course. So are you, if you look. Did you think he was wrong? It is not only true, it is a truth of rather dramatic importance. And despite the universality of the condition, it is my responsibility to save the world. (Yeah, yours too, so get with it. What are YOU gonna do?)
Original SDMB thread - What does it feel like to have schizophrenia?
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