Quote Originally Posted by Proximal View Post
I personally don't agree with the fact that you don't believe in mental illness, though it's your right to of course. So the "issues" that you have that have had you enter a psychiatric unit are a matter of choice? A matter of weakness? How do you rationalize what you feel is not an illness?
As a result of severe trauma, betrayal, guilt, loss, humiliation and shame, a person can become psychologically traumatised.

A traumatised person behaves strangely. They don't have a clear distinction between what they believe and what they disbelieve. They form strange ideas. When they realise how strange their thoughts and beliefs are, they become paranoid about what's going on around them.

I've been quite badly traumatised in the past on a few occasions, I've behaved like a 4-year-old and I've lost all sense of what is appropriate in different social situations. I've put my elbow through a window three times, and I've crashed about 8 cars. I've sat in a small country pub by myself off my head on ecstasy. Believe it or not, I was held in a remand prison because I was refused bail, and then for shits and giggles I pretended to hang myself, so they put me in the padded cell, but then I smeered the padded cell with my own faeces so they transferred me out to the loonie bin.

I'm very aware of how messed up I've been, but I would never use medical terms like "ill" or "symptom". The reason I don't do this is because I only got worse and worse and worse when I latched onto the medical model, and I only began to get better when I discarded my belief in psychiatry as well as any belief in 'having' something.

To improve emotional and psychological being, I go with the following:
faith and prayer (pray to Jesus/Allah, think about going to heaven or getting reincarnated)
chanting
meditation
yoga
take up a new musical instrument
take up a new sport

The most important thing I've done to recover ... apart from going to live in a Hindu temple for a while ... was to go off and do a 10-day Buddhist meditation course .... I'm doing my fourth next month.

If there are people reading this who like to use the terms 'mental illness' and to talk about their 'symptoms', well I hope you can find your way forward with that. Personally I couldn't, but it might work for someone else.