The world should know what this ■■■■■■■■ is like. Language alone fails.
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I’ve never been able to describe to a non-schizophrenic what my illness is like and what goes through my head.
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I never tried a sz simulator to see if it’s accurate, but I heard something interesting on the news about it the other day. People campaigning against stigma had promoted these simulations of schizophrenic experience in order to raise empathic understanding for our condition. The research showed it turned out to be only contributing to stigma, making it worse. People had no idea it was that bad and got more frightened of schizophrenia because of it.
And then I’m guessing the simulation can only simulate so much. Primarily voices’ running commentary and commands. But not intrusive/inserted thoughts, not paranoia (although some might be induced by the simulated voices), not the altered salience of the world, and not that feeling of suddenly living in another world because of an all-changing delusion - for people still know it’s a simulation.
So that makes me wonder whether it is actually desirable to be able to express the whole experience accurately. You will definitely have to be careful who to disclose the full horror to, but I guess we already have to right now with our limited expressive powers. However, the bright side of the newsreport I heard was that they found something that reduced stigma as well. It was said that direct face-to-face experience with ‘a live specimen’ greatly reduced stigma, which I’m glad to hear since this has always been my hunch. Then again this may just work just because the very fact that we are unable to express the full experience, and make it seem less bad than it was accordingly. But I’ll be happy to settle for that really, if it makes for people to get along.
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and I keep thinking some winner
is recording or transmitting signals using
my body as decoy and all that happens is
just remote control but the body lives as if everything is real
http://
m.youtube.com/watch?v=gtjP38nae5M for voices simulation
http://
this guy talking about his hallucinations
Those ones who really want to understand are gonna try and eventually capture at least some of experience.
I watched a lot of various simulations as well as personal experiences, mostly uploaded on the you tube.
Im not yet allowed to post links but here’s a few i found quite informative.
The sims don’t come close. My voices and hallucinations play with/off of my mind.
Interesting. And sad. These are just blabbing nonsense?
I don’t know. But you can’t prepare the experience before hand.
J was just saying it’s like a whack a mole game… that kind of applies to my voices
These are just distracting then.
There was another video of some place in colorado. People had to do the voice sim while they tried to interact with people and do simple things like count change and do maths.
Most people said they started to get head aches and couldnt focus
I know i tried something like that.
Thats why when i read some normie bs joke
" with schizophrenia you’re never alone" …someone should be punched in the balls for that. 
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Twice… at least.
VERY much agreed. The cultural norms out there do NOT provide adequate or functional psychological boundaries for those who believe themselves to be “okay” or “well” when they are in fact not.
Think the masses live in delusions of verbalized representations of “reality” they have little or no idea about because their “reality” is little but words (vs. the more direct experience many sz pts have)?
So when one of us attempts to explain ourselves to “them,” it usually gets weird. (“Do not try this at home.” It doesn’t work most of the time.) Several of my family members have milder (well, relatively) neurotic and borderline symptoms (and one is floridly bipolar), but save for one – and then only occasionally – they don’t want to deal with their own foot-shooting whatsoever.
“Me? F##ked up? I don’t wanna go there! And I don’t want to be reminded of my stuff by having to listen to yours.”
Co-Dependents Anonymous was helpful in dealing with that, though I do not yet do it “perfectly” and may never get it 100% “right.”