…because this happened: I was at a class called Personal Development, and the teacher was talking about how kids have an open mind, and how she has a patient (a kid) who sees ghosts. She said she validated his hallucinations telling the kid to talk to the ghosts and hear what they had to say.
Then she went on telling us how we, as TCM speciallists should validate peoples hallucinations instead of calling them crazy.
I lost it, I said there was a third option, get them to seek treatment and left the class.
Not going back there, I’m furious.
Adding that she said a lot of people that are diagnosed with sz actually see ghosts and that mental illness is nothing but our spirit being opened and our mind expanding. I’m not that kind of sz.
Those kind of people like your teacher, here we call the sellers of fog. Lucky she has a job at all.
Its not like you spend a years and then have your eyes opened; you did it right on time.
Well you only had two options, either waste your energy debating your point of view with a bunch of amateurs or leave the scene as you did. You could beat them with a few arguments but then what ?
Better find a field where you can actually make a change.
This got me thinking of different kinds of reactions to madness that we as SZ’s can encounter among the general population. The two options your teacher considered present a false dichotomy, and it goes to show that mere thinking can be hard for some. Ofcourse, to call people crazy, go with the prejudices and stigmatize in a straightforward way is not the right way to go about when encountering SZ’s, certainly not preferable for our side of the encounter. But to reject such a response need not result in swinging to the other side entirely. Your experience in class makes me think of those who - with the best intentions, I am sure - simply take our SZ experiences at face value, or even worse, glorify them. In some sense, out of the two options, such a response seems preferable to us. For at least they listen to us, are kind to us etc. But I suspect these people have no clue what it is like to get lost into delusions etc. Maybe they are missing the point even more so than the ones that flat out call us crazy.
These are considered sane people, but the kind of stuff they are willing to consider and speculate about and belief in… outrageous. And the thing is, for them it is just some comforting musings, I suppose to them it is like when one suspends disbelief and reads a fairy tale and imagines oneself to dwell in the storyworld for a while. Such an attitude is needed to enjoy fiction. But the stuff they consider to be entertaining or even comforting can easily get real to us. And unlike being engaged in a work of fiction, we cannot snap out of it by a change of attitude. I may be missing the point but your story here reminds of some people that I disclosed my sz to and responded by them believing in some, by then outrageous to me, esoteric stuff. I actually fear such people. What helped me stay out of a lot of trouble in my delusional times, was that there was some sense of all of it only applying to me, or at least, that other people wouldn’t accept it. I cannot imagine what wouldve happened if I had a couple of those enablers in my vicinity. Should be avoided like the plague. Good job on walking out.
You’re not missing the point at all, she actually got to say that if we practice our energies long enough we become more intuitive and can recieve gifts “from the universe”. I’m so tired of all this new age bullcrap!
minni i think ur teacher is quit a ignorant one…
she doesn’t know what is sz and hallucination…
i think all teacher are not a perfect…
this is good example of lack of quality education(teacher)
in my perspective u should ignore what she says,
after all u seem quite interested on tcm
so i don’t think its good to quite cuz of this reason…
u should get going avoiding all this misconception…
AND
are u quitting whole semester or just one(her) class…
my piece of advice is for ur betterment.don’t take it too personally …
after all i am ur big brother…ha ha lol…take care.@Minnii…
Unfortunately it’s not only one teacher, it’s most of the course. Every subject has it’s issues besides Biology and Anatomy that I will only have this semester. The semester ends this week so I’m not really missing out on much.
They say the practice of Chi Kung can make us see auras, that we have spirit guides that guide our mental health, that the brain is not as important as the heart for mental health and a bunch of other crap.
I’m fed up.
When I decided to take this degree I was delusional, as I get better I see it’s mostly taking advantage of peoples ignorance to make money. The degree is really expensive for that matter also.
Ahhhhhrrrrrrgh… I’m SO glad you got away. I really hate it when people do that…
Have NO personal insight on the hell of Mental Illness and start spouting off how it’s a gift and it’s talent and it’s new age shamanism…
That is the trap that got me when I was leaving my family to go be “noble” in the park… and refused meds… and ended up eating out of dumpsters… I was SURE I was tapped to be a Zen master and a shaman.
Now that I’m stable… living in doors… have square meals and roof over my head… I never want to be homeless again.
Those type of people might mean well… but I see them as very dangerous.
Yeah you know, when I decided to take this degree I thought I had to be a healer of some sort. I always enjoyed medicine, I don’t have the grades or the mental capacity to do a medicine degree. So I went to this one, I was worried at first and it just got worse and worse until today, I just lost it. No more.
When I first told my husband about my hallucinations, he said “well, why does it have to be sz? Maybe you really see demons,” And I started crying. He was trying to be supportive, and that felt to him like the kindest thing to say. Part of me was grateful, and I said thank you to him because everything I see and hear is real to me. But I had to explain how twisted and damaging my experiences have been. Accepting that I’m actually ill, for me, is a process of accepting that I’m wrong. That the bulk of who I am, what I’ve believed and seen and heard, is part of an illness. It’s difficult, and it would be easier to slide back into believing I’m rather gifted spiritually. It’s the damaging, isolating self-destructive aspects that keep me from doing that, sometimes.
Spirituaity is an integral part of humanity, though. In my mind, having both is preferable. Balancing both, though is difficult with a mind that is most definitely not functioning optimally. Accepting that sz has ••••••-up a large portion of my life isn’t hard to admit. What is difficult is sorting through and retaining the spiritual experiences that are good/important to me.
I guess I’m trying to say that I agree with you that a complete acceptance of hallucinations as valid spiritual experiences is damaging and wrong. But invalidating spiritual beliefs all together is unnecessary. I can only speak for myself though.
The thing is these are health professionals. Would you feel safer going to a place where you were told that there are spirits talking to you, or that you have a mental illness that brings your imagination to the max and you come up with those demons? I saw demons too and when I was heavily psychotic if someone told me it was spirits I would be happy, but it would only fuel my delusions. It’s not healthy.
There’s also a sort of wanting to be a little bit psychotic in these fields, it’s romanticized. They kinda wished they saw stuff and fought demons like we do. It’s weird, and definitely not healthy at all…
I agree with you. Because I dove into extreme Christianity (Fundamental/Evangelical), I was able to keep and even grow my delusional thinking. It caused me a tremendous amount of suffering. When I had my son, I hadn’t been diagnosed yet, but I purposely did not raise him in any particular church. I knew on some level how damaging it was even while remaining delusional. When it became clear that he has sz, my eyes started to open about my own condtion. His hallucinations are all based in science/sci-fi. Knowing that what he was experiencing certainly wasn’t real helped me to understand my own condition. Spiritual hallucinations and delusions are in that sense harder to sort out so I agree with you that they should not be encouraged. Years and years have been lost in my life. I’ll never get them back and I’ll always be delusional now to some extent. I would never have wanted that for my son.
Yeah, I don’t know which is harder to be honest. Science based delusions are hard because nowadays anything is provable or being studyied. I have them both, spiritual and science. And they both connect. Which is very hard to let go of. My meds are going to get upped because of that, to see if I can get rid of this once and for all. I think once we get into the stuff, coming out of it is like we get reborn again.
The relief I’m feeling just for knowing I won’t going back there I can’t describe.
You seem to me a really brilliant mind, @Minnii. Honestly, you’re finding your way to a really good place. I’m hapy for you, and I believe you’ll do good things!!!
