paradigm shift

There's a term in science when the way of looking at the world changes. When Copernicus' work found the Sun to be the centre of the universe, that was a paradigm shift. Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection was a paradigm shift.

Could paradigm shifts be smaller? Can they apply to one person's experience?

The last two years have brought an entirely new view to the world for me. Pre-hospital and post-hospital are night and day. That April of my 24th year my entire reality moved. It was a paradigm shift.

And I've recently started university. It's a whole new world. Everything I thought I knew is going through a revision. Paradigm shift.

Maybe every day when you wake up and you decide to get out of bed and live, it's a little paradigm shift.

What about you? Does your world change? Do you find that one day everything is different and you'd better come up with a way to make it all make sense? Where are your paradigm shifts?

would you like some stigma with that?

I'm an open person. I envision a world where people can show themselves without stigma. I want a world where people can talk about things. I want a world where everyone is equal. Obviously I can't do that, but I'm kind of hating the "real" world right now.

In one of my classes we're learning the anti-oppression model. We're taught to focus on the strengths in people rather than their deficits. So I thought, okay. I feel safe enough to let someone in on my experiences. This person would at least try to see the actual me.

Remember my previous stigma entry? Well, I got another version of "just colour."

For god's sake, I'm not some lesser person. I got told that it's okay to take longer to get my degree.

Thanks, that's nice of you. But that's not what I was asking.

Please don't assume that I can't handle a normal courseload like "regular" university students. I got 100% on my last test for psych class. I finished both my big papers for my classes a whole week before they were due.

I do not need to just colour.

It just makes me mad that through all the "find their strengths instead of their deficits" and "we should erase oppression" bullshit I get oppressed and stigmatized and it's just hypocritical. Ok, maybe this person didn't realize. But she's in a position where she should realize.

This was the last kick I'm going to take. I'm not going to shut myself up anymore. Mental illness is not the illegitimate child you hide away in the attic. And one size does not fit all.

At first I berated myself for opening my mouth. I thought I should know better. But no. I should be able to be who I am without hiding. The world should know better.

How about you go colour? And don't worry, poor little normal person. We know you can't handle what we have. You can take your time.

How would you like it?

Side order or main dish?

crazy is as crazy does.

What would you say if a 25 year old girl told you that there was a little boy who said his name was Henry and he was sitting in the chair over there? And then you looked, and you couldn't see anything?

What would you do? Would you hiss, cross yourself and then run away as fast as you could? Or maybe you'd start talking softly while trying to back this girl into a corner so you can call the men in white coats.

I told someone in my life about Henry and she believed me. This entry is for her.

I actually do a lot of putting myself down. I call myself crazy and mean it negatively. I would never call someone else crazy, never mind meaning it like that. But I'm down on myself. I know the crazy things I do and that's the hardest. Because I can be writing on my clothes because that will keep me safe, I can be sticking symbols up everywhere because it will keep the bad guys out and in my head I'm thinking "You're ****ing crazy. People are going to want to put you away."

Being driven by unseen voices to do things that are illogical all the while knowing what you're doing is illogical but you can't stop for the life of you is hell. How would you feel if you just wanted to go to school but when you got on the bus you saw this woman who told you things like the other passengers could hear what you are thinking, that man over there wants to hurt you, you're trapped? What if, in order to take a bus ride you either had to put up with heart-pounding panic and a woman no one could see, or get off? And even when all you wanted to do was go to school, you were driven by forces you couldn't control to get off that bus and go hide? How would you feel?

I feel pretty crazy. And I need to figure out how to stop pairing crazy with bad. I am a woman who can write piano music, who is compassionate, who is always trying to do her best, who loves the snow, who wants to learn. And by a lot of peoples' definitions, crazy.

And that's the point. That's not the only thing that I am.

That's what I have to keep telling myself.

and just as a note, I'm not stealing the random little boy picture. I searched stock photos.

Irrelevance

"We are remarkably adept at distinguishing the relevant from the irrelevant information in the environment. Even so, sometimes the noise overwhelms the signal and you get distracted." A verbatim quote from my first year psychology class.

But what happens if there's something screwing with that distinguishing part. What if you keep getting taken over by the irrelevant information?

Is Henry irrelevant? Not to me. Is the noise sometimes overwhelming? Yes.

William James was a psychologist. He talked about the ability to withdraw from some things in order to deal effectively with others. What if some things will never let you withdraw?

Of course, these theories are based on a rational world. Too bad for those of us in the irrational world.

Waiting for Godot

It's been a while. It's been an adventure. It'll give me fodder for some new entries, but I have to figure out how to present them. When the line between reality and illusion are blurred, it's hard to come across as sane and rational. Our society puts too much stock in the real, solid, here and now.

I was in the hospital for a few days last June because my medication was out of whack and threw me for a loop. It was a quick hospitalization and I'm glad, because that hospital didn't have any resources to help someone who found themselves admitted to a mental health ward. It was a glorified holding tank. It was extremely difficult to sit there and watch people who had resigned themselves to an institutionalized life. I wanted to change things, I wanted to make help available to these people. It's hard to see people give up. It was difficult to see the preteens with cuts head to toe. It was difficult to listen to the woman who claimed that Jesus had sent her a message she had to share with others.

Because who am I to claim that she doesn't?

Because this is what's real to her. Who am I to doubt her reality?

People are scared of mental illness. I think they're scared because it reminds them of their own fragile grasp on "reality". It reminds them that they too can fall. And what is reality, anyway? Reality is subjective - don't we all create our own reality? My reality is not your reality. Your reality is not your best friend's reality. Who are we to judge each others' reality?

Your reality is your own. And some realities are different than yours. Some are much different. People are scared of different, because they think different is messy, something that smudges their neat little lives.

Those three days I was in the hospital, the only thing that happened was a volunteer came in to make cookies with us. After the cookies were finished and cooling on the table and everyone else had left to go back to their sitting and waiting (for Godot?) the volunteer started doing the dishes. When I moved to help her, she motioned to the table and said "Oh, there's some papers over there, you can just colour."

I stood still for a moment. Then I said, "Oh, no - I'll help you do the dishes." And I did. And I asked her questions like what she was doing in school and her recent marriage and I talked about my own educational goals.

And I hope I made her just a little bit uncomfortable to find out that people on the mental health unit do not need to "just colour". People on the mental health unit are people. They're not incapable.

People on the mental health unit are me.

People on the mental health unit are you.

What do you think?