[leftbrain]

Masterlist

info

schizophrenia fact sheet

schizotypal fact sheet

catatonia

hearing voices network

schizoaffective pamphlet

schizoaffective fact sheet

papers

double bookkeeping

schizophrenia bulletin

understanding psychosis

schizophrenia, consciousness, and the self

thought insertion

distinguishing schizophrenia vs other psychotic disorders

internal vs external auditory hallucinations

schizoid personality disorder

cotard delusion in schizophrenia

tests

test post

prodromal questionnaire

paranoid thoughts scale

schizotypal

psychosis screening tool

help

lost all hope (not a schizospectrum resource but good anyway)

tools

worksheet

CBT manual

preparing for assessment

dealing with psychosis workbook

advice for therapy

coping with/responding to psychosis symptoms

CBT for psychosis workbook

books

the center cannot hold

book/pdf masterlist

treatment of schizoid personality

[funeral]

Concepts related to dissociation

Constance J. Dalenberg et al., The Case for the Study of "Normal" Dissociation Processes

[greeniery]

you’re giving unethical scientist vibes. follow!

[1234567865432345342343464-deact]

so, theres a severe lack of easy-to-access, helpful online resources for psychotic and schizospec disorders (google is literally useless wrt this for some reason), and i’m gonna attempt to remedy that. all of the resources below are resources i’ve personally found useful

firstly, i’ll tentatively drop a support group: i’ve personally been to hearing voices groups and have found them helpful with the particular empathy other psychotic people provide + the lack of pathologization, something i absolutely cannot get anywhere else. i suggest looking over their resource page, but i will note that for some psychotic people, especially people actively in a psychotic episode and experiencing significant delusions, this may not be helpful due to the inherent validation it provides! be careful in any case, and feel free to consume critical (1) perspectives on it as well.

also, forums can be nice. i suggest psych forums as well as schizophrenia forums (note: second is for both people with schizophrenia and caretakers/partners/families of people with schizophrenia, and the former has subcategories for every mental illness)

understanding psychosis: resources and recovery, very comprehensive but easy to read examination of psychotic symptoms and steps towards recovery. also has a helpful section on side effects of medication + considerations when deciding if medication is right for you

CBT for psychotic symptoms (consider going through this with a therapist, but it can be helpful alone too) + skip to appendix 2 (pg. 133) for worksheets

dealing with psychosis toolkit, self explanatory. consider looking at other things on earlypsychosis as well

what is schizoaffective disorder? (generally reliable information, i have a few issues with some of the wording though)

NAMI facts on schizophrenia and NIMH publications on psychosis

60 coping strategies for hallucinations

dealing with psychosis: full workbook, pretty self explanatory but very helpful and also relatively easy to read

now, for those without psychosis: how can you help people with schizospec/psychotic disorders?

the do’s and don’t’s of helping a family member (or friend!) in psychosis

helping someone with psychosis (tumblr post)

psychosis first aid guidelines for loved ones

dealing with unusual thoughts and behaviors factsheet

steps for working with delusions

if you’re a friend, family member, or at all close with someone with schizophrenia or psychosis i heavily encourage you to research as much as you can, and above all else listen to what schizophrenic and psychotic people say. if you ever find yourself in a situation where you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to ask the person in question how you can help them. 

book recommendations (with links):

understanding your schizophrenia illness

cbt for psychosis: a symptom based approach

psychosis, trauma and dissociation: emerging perspectives on severe psychopathology 

when the sun bursts: the enigma of schizophrenia (title sounds cheesy, is actually really good)

cognitive therapy for schizophrenia

living outside mental illness: qualitative studies of recovery in schizophrenia

trauma and psychosis: new directions for theory and therapy

schizoaffective disorders: international perspectives on understanding, intervention and rehabilitation

recovered, not cured: a journey through schizophrenia

note: the majority of these books aren’t very accessible as they’re meant for clinicians, but these are just books that i’ve found helpful in general

add anything else that’s been helpful for you accordingly! if you’re nonpsychotic feel free to reblog as well, as it could be helpful for any followers you might have that are psychotic 

[leftbrain]

updated book links for this post lol:

understanding your schizophrenia illness

cbt for psychosis: a symptom based approach

psychosis, trauma, and dissociation: emerging perspectives on severe psychopathology

when the sun bursts: the enigma of schizophrenia

cognitive therapy for schizophrenia (best i cld find)

living outside mental illness: qualitative studies of recovery in schizophrenia

trauma and psychosis: new directions for theory and therapy

schizoaffective disorders: international perspectives on understanding, intervention, and rehabilitation

recovered, not cured: a journey through schizophrenia

be wary of these still tho lol

[caden-archive]

polypharmaci asked: i think you do a really impressive job balancing comprehensive/concise while referencing a lot of complex frameworks(contexts? schools of thought? lol idk what to call that. big brain ideas) but if you have any readings specifically on the institution of psychiatry topic that you would recommend/think are relevant, I'd be interested. it's absolutely not a conversation that's being had enough and I want to be able to articulate myself around it

yes i have readings >:)

first of all, the anti-psychiatry bibliography and resource guide is a great place to start getting oriented in this literature. it's split by sub-topic, and there are paragraphs interspersed throughout that give summaries of major thinkers' positions and short intros to key texts.

it's from 1979, though, so here are some recs from the last 4 decades:

overview critiques

mind fixers: psychiatry's troubled search for the biology of mental illness, by anne harrington

psychiatric hegemony: a marxist theory of mental illness, by bruce m z cohen

desperate remedies: psychiatry's turbulent quest to cure mental illness, by andrew scull

psychiatry and its discontents, by andrew scull

madness is civilization: when the diagnosis was social, 1948–1980, by michael e staub

contesting psychiatry: social movements in mental health, by nick crossley

the dsm & pharmacy

dsm: a history of psychiatry's bible, by allan v horwitz

the dsm-5 in perspective: philosophical reflections on the psychiatric babel, by steeves demazeux & patrick singy

pharmageddon, by david healy

pillaged: psychiatric medications and suicide risk, by ronald w maris

the making of dsm-iii: a diagnostic manual's conquest of american psychiatry, by hannah s decker

the myth of the chemical cure: a critique of psychiatric drug treatment, by joanna moncrieff

the book of woe: the dsm and the unmaking of psychiatry, by gary greenberg

prozac on the couch: prescribing gender in the era of wonder drugs, by jonathan metzl

the creation of psychopharmacology, by david healy

the bitterest pills: the troubling story of antipsychotic drugs, by joanna moncrieff

psychiatry & race

the protest psychosis: how schizophrenia became a black disease, by jonathan metzl

administrations of lunacy: racism and the haunting of american psychiatry at the milledgeville asylum, by mab segrest

the peculiar institution and the making of modern psychiatry, 1840–1880, by wendy gonaver

what's wrong with the poor? psychiatry, race, and the war on poverty, by mical raz

national and cross-national contexts

mad by the millions: mental disorders and the early years of the world health organization, by harry yi-jui wu

psychiatry and empire, by sloan mahone & megan vaughan

ʿaṣfūriyyeh: a history of madness, modernity, and war in the middle east, by joelle m abi-rached

surfacing up: psychiatry and social order in colonial zimbabwe, 1908–1968, by lynette jackson

the british anti-psychiatrists: from institutional psychiatry to the counter-culture, 1960–1971, by oisín wall

crime, madness, and politics in modern france: the medical concept of national decline, by robert a nye

reasoning against madness: psychiatry and the state in rio de janeiro, 1830–1944, by manuella meyer

colonial madness: psychiatry in french north africa, by richard keller

madhouse: psychiatry and politics in cuban history, by jennifer lynn lambe

depression in japan: psychiatric cures for a society in distress, by junko kitanaka

inheriting madness: professionalization and psychiatric knowledge in 19th century france, by ian r dowbiggin

mad in america: bad science, bad medicine, and the enduring mistreatment of the mentally ill, by robert whitaker

[hammersys]

✦　˚ Schizophrenic Spectrum Disorder Resources

All of the links below are either resources, research, and/or tips/help for people with Schizophrenic spectrum disorder. Join our discord server here!

Found any outdated links, or any links that include misinformation? Please let me know!

✦ Resources/Miscellaneous

@schizopositivity, a blog dedicated to spreading positivity!

(Youtube channel) Living Well with Mental Illness

It's okay for you to be psychotic

To all of my schizospec littles/cgs/pets/handlers..

Schizospec system positivity!

The psychotic spectrum (and my own experience) - A guide

✦ About Schizophrenic Spectrum Disorder

(Youtube video) What is Schizophrenic spectrum disorder?

(Youtube video) 6 signs of Schizophrenic spectrum disorder

The DSM criteria for Schizophrenic Spectrum Disorder

A Carrd about the DSM criteria for Schizophrenic Spectrum Disorder

Myths and Misconceptions

✦ Recovery Resources

Understanding voices

Dealing with psychosis

Coping strategies by Hearing Voices Network

Tools and worksheets

Rehabilitation and recovery from Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia Resources For Getting Support And Improving Mental Health

My Psychosis survival guide

✦ Schizophrenic Spectrum Disorder safe blogs/Informational Blogs

@schizospec-culture-is

@schizospectrumsuggestions

@delusionalculture-is

@schizopositivity

@221bluescarf 

@mental-health-advice

!!! WARNING!!! Lauren Kennedy West, also known as "Living well with/after Schizophrenia" is DANGEROUS. Please do not use watch her videos and/or promote them. More in this post.

BEFORE YOU COMMENT:

Everybody can use my resources, but keep discourse/syscourse out of our comments. Our anti-endo tag exists for personal interaction. Asks are anti-endo, etc, but as I've said, resources are for all.

[atlaculture]

Hey! I'm writing a fic with Azula as the main character set post-canon. I happen to have schizoaffective disorder and really identify with her; I know a lot of people tend to think her breakdown was temporary but in my fic it was not. Schizophrenia is an illness that has been recorded in every culture across time and history. We have records of it in ancient Egypt and Sumeria and so forth. But our name for it is modern and comes from Latin. Even the older name from the turn of last century comes from Latin.

They don't have Latin in ATLA! I was wondering if you had any resources on what it might have been called in China/Japan/Korea etc in the good old days? Something that might fit the tone of a fic better than our modern terminology ?

Thank you for reading!

I'm not super well-versed in psychology or traditional East Asian medicine, but I can give it a try. Anyone more knowledgeable in these subjects, feel free to chime in.

So, from what I understand, most pre-modern medicine in East Asia has its roots in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and the philosophy behind it. In TCM, the underlying belief is that there are multiple energies (yin-yang) and metaphysical elements occurring within your body. These energies and elements are all necessary for you to be healthy and functional. If your body is unwell, it's because there is a lack of balance in your elements and energies. As such, there's really not as much emphasis on creating very specific labels for every variation of human behavior or human illness (schizoaffective vs schizophrenic, for example). The emphasis is more on diagnosing what is lacking or in overabundance within you that is causing your imbalance and recommending lifestyle changes to re-balance your energy/elements.

As you can see, this underlying philosophy is very much baked into Avatar's worldbuilding. Anyways, now that we've established the hypothetical philosophy of how illness would be viewed in the ATLAverse, we can discuss terminology that might effectively encompass Azula's mental condition.

Kuang (狂): In TCM, the term kuang refers to a state of mania or acute, wild, and violent madness.

Excessive Heart Fire: In TCM, the heart is where one's mind, consciousness, and spirit lie; it is associated with yin energy. Fire is the element of enthusiasm and drive in TCM; it is associated with yang energy. When your heart is too aligned with fire, it indicates a deficiency of yin to balance out the yang. Thus, the enthusiasm and drive of fire will escalate into restlessness, anxiety, and emotional instability. Since "excessive heart fire" sounds clunky, you could try wording it something like "a heart set ablaze" or "a heart overwhelmed with fire"--- something more poetic like that.

Interestingly, quite a few websites recommend Tai Chi as a way of calming a mind afflicted with kuang. It makes me wonder if Iroh's interest in water bending stems from him noticing how destructive an excess of "heart fire" could be, through his observations of his own family.

Another interesting fact is that low voltage electrical injuries are correlated with developing schizoaffective disorder. Given how often Azula spams lightning in the show, one wonders if her schizoaffective tendencies were aggravated by all the lightning bending.

[1234567865432345342343464-deact]

so, theres a severe lack of easy-to-access, helpful online resources for psychotic and schizospec disorders (google is literally useless wrt this for some reason), and i’m gonna attempt to remedy that. all of the resources below are resources i’ve personally found useful

firstly, i’ll tentatively drop a support group: i’ve personally been to hearing voices groups and have found them helpful with the particular empathy other psychotic people provide + the lack of pathologization, something i absolutely cannot get anywhere else. i suggest looking over their resource page, but i will note that for some psychotic people, especially people actively in a psychotic episode and experiencing significant delusions, this may not be helpful due to the inherent validation it provides! be careful in any case, and feel free to consume critical (1) perspectives on it as well.

also, forums can be nice. i suggest psych forums as well as schizophrenia forums (note: second is for both people with schizophrenia and caretakers/partners/families of people with schizophrenia, and the former has subcategories for every mental illness)

understanding psychosis: resources and recovery, very comprehensive but easy to read examination of psychotic symptoms and steps towards recovery. also has a helpful section on side effects of medication + considerations when deciding if medication is right for you

CBT for psychotic symptoms (consider going through this with a therapist, but it can be helpful alone too) + skip to appendix 2 (pg. 133) for worksheets

dealing with psychosis toolkit, self explanatory. consider looking at other things on earlypsychosis as well

what is schizoaffective disorder? (generally reliable information, i have a few issues with some of the wording though)

NAMI facts on schizophrenia and NIMH publications on psychosis

60 coping strategies for hallucinations

dealing with psychosis: full workbook, pretty self explanatory but very helpful and also relatively easy to read

now, for those without psychosis: how can you help people with schizospec/psychotic disorders?

the do’s and don’t’s of helping a family member (or friend!) in psychosis

helping someone with psychosis (tumblr post)

psychosis first aid guidelines for loved ones

dealing with unusual thoughts and behaviors factsheet

steps for working with delusions

if you’re a friend, family member, or at all close with someone with schizophrenia or psychosis i heavily encourage you to research as much as you can, and above all else listen to what schizophrenic and psychotic people say. if you ever find yourself in a situation where you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to ask the person in question how you can help them. 

book recommendations (with links):

understanding your schizophrenia illness

cbt for psychosis: a symptom based approach

psychosis, trauma and dissociation: emerging perspectives on severe psychopathology 

when the sun bursts: the enigma of schizophrenia (title sounds cheesy, is actually really good)

cognitive therapy for schizophrenia

living outside mental illness: qualitative studies of recovery in schizophrenia

trauma and psychosis: new directions for theory and therapy

schizoaffective disorders: international perspectives on understanding, intervention and rehabilitation

recovered, not cured: a journey through schizophrenia

note: the majority of these books aren’t very accessible as they’re meant for clinicians, but these are just books that i’ve found helpful in general

add anything else that’s been helpful for you accordingly! if you’re nonpsychotic feel free to reblog as well, as it could be helpful for any followers you might have that are psychotic 

[giritina]

How do you identify if you're schizotypal? It's something i've questioned i've had on and off for awhile.

Obviously the answer is probably research, but even with research i see the criteria presented in diagnostic articles and I go "ok, but what does that look like?" It's hard to discern all the medical terminology as well as not have a frame of reference for the symptoms they're talking about. It's even harder to diagnose when you've been dealing with something for so long you can't tell if what you're experiencing is just something that kinda... happens, or is actually a sign of something else. Like, it's normal to me, but I realize as someone whose been living with mental illness all my life my perception of what feels "normal" is incredibly skewed and probably not to be trusted. Hope this all makes sense

I understand how you feel! Its very difficult to discern your experience from others and understand what is normal or abnormal. The biggest thing is just fitting the diagnostic criteria. I fit the publicly available diagnostic information to a T and decided to get diagnosed by professional. Whether you want to go through that process in the current climate is up to you. This criteria sheet helped me understand a lot.

If you find yourself going through it thinking "yes I believe that, but I also know it isn't true" that is a very schizotypal impulse.

The thing that discerns it most from similar experiences to me is the constant doublethink of "I believe this" and "it's obviously untrue." Like you constantly have what might be called delusional thoughts, but you can identify they are somehow different than normal thoughts. I think the schizotypal experience is tied up in constantly doubting if you are symptomatic or not, because you are experiencing symptoms on the border of two things. It is not something people explain to you, because "having delusional thoughts you know are false" usually prompts a "youre faking it, that's not a thing" type reaction. The average person, even people with anxiety, also doesn't have the experience of fearing people more and more the more they get close to them.

[cytochrome-sea]

as with most clinically reputable sources about symptoms of severe mental illnesses, every article about catatonia is written from an outsider's perspective.

this is what catatonia it is like for me, on the inside

feeling your muscles tighten at a slow and constant rate that you could not perform on queue. if i get stuck holding something while catatonic, my fingers will eventually dig into it so deeply that it hurts.

i get stuck in awkward positions. legs tucked underneath my body, most of my weight shifted to one side, head tilted, stuff like that. because of your muscles stiffening as well, this becomes uncomfortable in less than ten minutes, and agonizing in 20.

time passes differently. most of my catatonic episodes at this point last for upwards of 2 hours, even with ativan. but the two hours i spend while catatonic feel comparably faster than if i just decided to sit down and stare at nothing for 2 hours. (the "increased speed" does not make it more pleasant and it's not like dissociation i don't think. it's just like, usually at 1.25x speed)

i'm aware of my surroundings i literally just can do fuck all about them.

i cannot focus on anything more complex than a children's cartoon during it. i have tried putting on longer documentaries, but never get anything to stick in my brain. i still prefer longer things to watch or listen to during cataleptic catatonia tho.

my muscles burn during the whole thing from being so tense or not positioned "squarely" i.e. - shoulders hips and neck at a 90 degree angle.

i will be sore and exhausted the next day, which actually makes it more likely for me to become catatonic again.

i never know how long it will be before i can move again. 3 to 4 hours isn't out of the question (note: i feel lucky that its never gotten longer than 4 hours as catatonia can last for days)

the embarrassment. like, there's no shame in experiencing it, i know that. but it doesn't make me stop feeling like i wish i could crawl into a hole, especially when it happens in public. i hate being stared at on the best of days and being so stiff that people have to frog march you everywhere is just , it's so not fun.

screaming for help inside my head (i can't use AAC when i can't move, unless i was able to feel it coming on beforehand and set my switch up)

or, being so embarrassed that i don't want anyone to find me no matter how long it takes for me to come out of it.

when i am "coming out" of it, i slowly start to be able to move lighter body parts first, like fingers and toes, then hands and feet. the last thing i am able to move is my upper legs and torso.

i am basically dead weight during this time, and my body is hard for other people to move as well because of tension in my muscles.

any needing to go to the bathroom? either you hold it, or someone kinda has to frog march you to the toilet, or, you're gonna have to do laundry

it sucks

it doesn't stop sucking until a few days after the fact, because it's physically and emotionally exhausting

obligatory disclaimers that 1. these are only my experiences, don't use them as your only source of information about catatonia 2. my experiences only apply to cataleptic catatonia. i don't have excited catatonia, so i didn't post about it.

if anyone else wants to add their experiences with what catatonia (not freeze responses or autistic inertia, please) feels like from the inside, i would love to also hear about them.

[giritina]

i'm sorry i'm new here, do you happen to have suggestions for how to understand if i might have schizophrenia or a related condition? a lot of what i see more recently of you discussing your experiences feels oddly similar and more specific to what i've been dealing with than other diagnoses thrown at me, and i don't know if self-screening tools exist that are any good as of now.

thank you for your time. wishing you a lovely day :•)

These are assessment tools that can be useful for self screening

Online version of the Prodromal Questionnaire (Brief Version, PQ-B), a screening measure for symptoms indicating risk for psychosis. Please

Paranoid Thoughts Scale, R-GPTS. Online version of the psychological test. Instruction. Start the assessment.

Online version of the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ), a self-report scale modeled on DSM-III-R criteria for schizotypal persona

Some of the stuff I post about is also theoretically exclusive to the schizophrenia spectrum. If you relate to ipseity disturbance or thought disorder in the way the papers I share describe, there's a good chance that is schizospectrum related. The complicated thing is understanding the differences between the schizospectrum version of these symptoms and the many other presentations of similar symptoms from other disorders. That's kind of a thing where you have to pause and think, "Is this framework more helpful for me? Does it explain why I haven't had luck getting help for XYZ?"

There's no harm in being wrong and trying to get help/learn how to help yourself better. If you do have a schizophrenia spectrum disorder, early intervention helps more than anything, and if you don't, you've learned something about yourself that will help you find proper care for what is going on.

You can also get a psychiatric evaluation, which I personally found helpful. In the US, currently, it's sadly much more risky. Self-assessment followed by looking for a specialist (and leftist) therapist and a non-evil psychiatrist is probably the way to go for professional help if you can access it.

[giritina]

The ‘schizophrenic’in the self-consciousness of schizophrenic patients by Mari Nagai

[giritina]

This strikes me as like extremely important info that perhaps would have changed my life if it was common knowledge. You mean constantly, involuntarily thinking about myself and what I am doing at this very moment as if being forced to narrate my own life in third person isnt a unique freakishness which makes me unworthy of being a human being?

[giritina]

Here are Nagai's other defining modes of self-consciousness as well. Amazingly helpful

[giritina]

Motobayashi, Y.; Parnas, J.; Motobayashi, Y.; Kimura, B.; Toda, D. L. SAGE Publications (ISSN 0957-154X) History of Psychiatry, #4, 27, pa

[giritina]

This might help it make sense:

"Crucially, this involuntary self-witnessing is quite different from normal kinds of self-observation or introspection where one takes oneself as an object of reflection. In involuntary self-witnessing, there is no clear-cut subject-object structure and the fundamental unity of experience, which normally ties together the ‘reflecting’ and ‘reflected upon’ ego, is replaced with a fundamental self-fragmentation or duplication occurring within the experiential stream itself. As the patient explains, there are “two Is”, “the inner self” and “the outer self”, and they ceaselessly and at the same time observe each other. In other words, the act of observing and being observed apparently occurs simultaneously within one and the same experience"

Basically, in schizophrenia and schizospectrum disorders, the self witnessing is involuntary and overwhelming. Non-schizospectrum people self-introspect at times, but it isn't constant. With self-disorder, while most people have a basic me-ness where they view everything they experience as a perspective belonging to a specific person. Schizospectrum people may struggle to view their experience as belonging to a "me" with any form of concrete existence. It's hard to believe it isn't the average persons experience, but many people go through life with a sense of self and a sense of perspective.

Thought insertion and disturbed for-me-ness (minimal selfhood) in schizophrenia

In contemporary consciousness research, we have defended a position of experiential minimalism, arguing that for-me-ness (or minimal selfhoo

[giritina]

Another good example of this from another good paper

"The patient feels divided between himself as an “individual” and himself as “a person in society.” He often questions “who is the true me?” He observes himself instead of being engaged in situations: “I become almost out of myself. I can observe myself existing (…) when I heard the squealing train tracks, I also heard the sound itself (…) and I became conscious that it felt like there was more in it than there maybe was (…) I felt there was a deep, inner voice that could observe (…) There is something rational, observing from the inside, simultaneously as there is the very thing that I experience or do."

Double bookkeeping is a term introduced by Eugen Bleuler to describe a fundamental feature of schizophrenia where psychotic reality can exis

[silyaspider]

This seems to touch on one of the core issues my mind’s been slowly chewing away at. The unitary self is an illusion. It’s hard to find people who talk in detail about how that illusion functions or is maintained. But there are a lot of different conceptual frameworks, more or less stigmatised and medicalised, for categorising the ways it comes apart.

So, once one has oneself come to the point where the illusion of the unitary self has come apart… in my case somewhat deliberately… where do you go from there? What’s the new organising principle and what does it mean for you that so many of the options are stigmatised and medicalised?

Like, all of this stuff is malleable to some degree. You can rework your own mind in many ways, it’s just high-stakes and hard to find decent user guides.

[giritina]

I am someone who considers this experience something which warrants a medical (therapeutic) response, so my response might not be ideal. The self is in many ways an illusion, but it is an illusion that is beneficial to the human mind. There are probably healthy ways to reject the idea of the self and reform your sense of your mind, and I think schizospectrum people gain many benefits from having experienced the self in different ways, but the view most of us come to without help or awareness tends to be less than constructive. We could say that both a rigid belief in the existence of the self and the absolute breakdown in ability to believe in the self are less than ideal. I enjoy the writing of the MERIT Institute about repairing the self. I don't think we should have to conform our minds to neurotypical standards, but I think having your sense of self and narrative be impaired has real consequence. They are consequences that become invisible internally precisely because narrative disorder hides emotion and subjectivity behind a constant wall of observation, which can feel like enlightenment. I would like to think that MERIT and the papers above are largely patient focused and serve to empower patients to form an independent view of themself and even to guide themself through certain processes without a therapist rather than pushing them to conform to a practitioners worldview, but I can't say they are demedicalized. Some philosophers try to explore these symptoms in a demedicalized way, but when you remove all assumption of delusion, distress, disorder, or pathology, you do lose some truth of the experience of the break down of the self in schizospectrum disorders and psychosis.

[giritina]

I've encountered many people with schizospectrum symptoms (including myself) who say therapy doesn't work for them, and usually after talking it becomes clear they lie to their therapist, make up problems to talk about, or go along with whatever their therapist's assesment of them is and suppress anything that doesn't fit. This is actually a problem common enough that it shows up in schizospectrum therapy research. It's worth stating explicitly you should be able to tell your therapist whatever youre feeling, even if that is

1. I feel nothing and have nothing to talk about

2. I hate you/think you're evil/think you're plotting again me

3. I think you hate me/think I'm evil/think I'm doing something bad

4. I think this isn't working and the things you tell me don't help me

5. Your analysis of what I'm going through is wrong

6. You're making me feel angry/sad/useless/stupid

7. I feel like you're secretly trying to communicate [x] to me because you said [y]

8. I've just been trying to guess what you want me to say and saying it

9. I'm suffering because of things I can only describe as otherworldly or spiritual or not of this world

Getting a trustworthy therapist can be difficult, and a bad therapist might react in a way that makes you feel like you can't do these things when you do say them. I always look for leftist therapists who will advocate for my rights as a patient and who are critical of police and institutionalization, and this advice is most relevant to people who are entering therapy consensually rather than under coercive, dangerous circumstances. A good therapist will want you to say these things and won't be upset or reject you, they'll just try to help with the issue.

[grub-muncher]