I’m a monster

They call it schizophrenia. I have violent and sexual images in my head some of the time which can be very distressing. I try and tell myself that it’s just my brain saying, “What’s the most horrible thing we can make him think? I know!” and then bam, you’ve got intrusive images/urges.

Being diagnosed took much of the distress away because suddenly I wasn’t this awful, evil person anymore. However every intrusive thought that enters my head makes me question whether I am mentally ill or just a very, very bad person?

It’s not so bad when I get the urge to pour hot coffee over a crying baby’s head as that is so fantastical that I know it’s an intrusive thought. However having sexual thoughts about people who are close to you does cause a great deal of distress because they can be arousing.

I guess it’s only natural for my body to react to sexual things and the fact that I consciously resent having those kinds of thoughts is a good sign. I just wish they weren’t so damn persistent!

Be yourself (they say)

A friend once voiced their dislike of people always talking about themselves. Since then I’ve been careful (not always successfully) not to fall into that trap.

Growing up, at least in my culture, people are quick to encourage individuality. So if talking about yourself is what you naturally like to do, is it being false to yourself not to do so? If it takes effort to be someone else then does this not contradict the idea of trying to be an individual?

I have found that if you do something for so long, eventually you become what you do. So then, when people say “be yourself”, what meaning are we to take from that? For me, ‘myself’ is not something that is set in stone; if anything a major component of my personality is the desire to be someone else.

Qualities

Unfortunately I used to be very insular and watch a lot of TV and movies and read fiction and so the person I used to aim to be wasn’t a person based in reality; and this throws up all sorts of problems. The more you get out into the reality of our world, the more you start to base your idolising on actual people. This is important because real people aren’t ‘perfect’.

Everyone has both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ traits in play in every action of their lives (I put good and evil in inverted commas because the eventually boil down to us all being selfish.

So next time you are encouraged to be yourself, remember that you are what you do so please don’t be too quick to define yourself. Be sure to base your idolising on real people (and don’t forget that every decision you make is down to your selfish instinct).

The bed of life

The antipsychotic tablets which I take nightly are major tranquilisers so it is often difficult to wake up in the mornings. Then my now fiancée came along and when I struggle to wake up she is there to help me.

The other day I realised that it isn’t just actual sleep that she rouses me from; symbolically she has also woken me up in my life as well.

Following the trauma of my psychotic episodes (and without even really thinking about it) I shut myself off from the world. My body spent its days at home focusing on learning Japanese (long story). It did get out but it did so just a shell with no real personality or opinions.

Then my fiancée to be entered my life and somewhere along the way something clicked. I suddenly felt the tug of purpose trying to rouse me from inside my comatose shell; it may sound corny but she had given me a reason to live.

I didn’t break through straight away but the ball was rolling and it started with art. I had given up art when my illness first materialised but now I felt the push to re-embrace it. This was difficult to do because I was still mostly shut away.

I needed to process what was going on but I was too scared to throw open the flood gates. How it started I don’t know but I began to write; processing things a bit at a time and eventually forming concepts that I turned into paintings.

The more I did this the more confidence I was able to build and I gradually began to form opinions of my own­. Just like she does when I struggle with mornings, my fiancée had awoken me from the stupor that my illness had anaesthetised me into.

Body over mind (the illusion of self)

You are a vessel for your genetic code and this thing inside which you call ‘you’ is a gimmick and an illusion. This isn’t in any way negative - although it is very necessary to accept it as reality in order to lead a fulfilled life.

It is easy to think that you are in control of your body but are you?

If you move your arm you don’t have to think “move” in order for it to work; it just happens. So does that voice in your head have any actual power? Sure you have the ability to take your own life, but is that control? Or is that your body controlling ‘you’?

In fact you are your body. I accept that the decisions I make are, in the end, a product of my nature; which all boils down to the continuity, by reproduction, of the genetic code I carry.

This puts life into perspective for me. It doesn’t take anything away from the wealth of human experience but it does contradict this idea of importance that humanity has imbued itself with.

And spirituality is at the top of the list; the idea that we transcend our physical bodies becomes meaningless and actually gives us a greater purpose.

You are a being that is capable of experiencing pleasure and suffering. Once you understand the root cause of these sensations you can stop kidding yourself that there is fantastical meaning in life; the only meaning comes from nature.

So stop wasting time putting your faith in crap and connect with the world around you.

Words Have Power (do wild animals get mentally ill?)

The way I understand it language is quite a modern ability for humans, coming about in order to coordinate during the hunting of large prey. But are we up to the challenge of language? Is being able to speak actually inhibiting us?

I look at my cats and see that they are unable to articulate things in their heads like I am; I can communicate more than a cat is able to do through language. I am able to talk to myself too and write down things so that I can comprehend them.

It is true that words do have power and once something is articulated in your head it is difficult to forget about it. This is different with cats that don’t have the efficient tool that is language to enable them to achieve this.

But is it actually an achievement? Or is it like a peacock’s feathers, which have evolved naturally but now mean that the birds are more susceptible to being caught by predators?

Does language make us more susceptible to mental illnesses simply because we are now aware of our reality beyond the level of our evolution?

Belief

Richard Dawkins calls the extolling of the virtues of blind faith to children a form of abuse. I can understand how a child who is completely trusting may be duped and abused but I still think trust and belief are important things that need to be fostered in young children.

There is no afterlife awaiting us so the rewards must be here in the short life that each of us has. If you are trusting and then suffer because of it then that can’t be practical because once something has happened it is part of history.

A child’s mind is still forming so it is important to nurture it properly. Imagine a young child too small to have something explained to them like you’d explain something to an adult; you reward them with a treat when they’re good and punish them if they are not, right?

Is the same not true of belief? I think that teaching children through the medium of festive fairy tales that believing without seeing is very important.

The Matrix highlighted the point that you cannot even trust your own senses to be truthful to you. When I was ill I didn’t even trust that my own parents were my real parents! Trust (or belief) is a big thing in each of our lives so it is important to mould the brain of a maturing infant so that he or she can believe.

I thought that it was wrong to lie to anyone, least of all the most trusting. Master Oogway tells us that yesterday is history and I think that this is a good point. When you’re a child you become lost in the magic so it doesn’t matter how you feel once you are an adult; the important thing is that you found a measure of pleasure in the moment.

And belief has an important part to play in that. And hopefully when you make it to adulthood you will have the wisdom to see that you weren’t being duped, you were being loved.

But what if you reach adulthood and you have a very – maybe overly – trusting brain? You may be easily swindled or worse – where is the good in that? Can you teach children that believing without seeing is good but at the same time teach them to question the world around them?

The Value of Life

You probably think that life is valuable; but is it?

As a human I believe myself to have a better concept of death than, for example, a chicken does. Unfortunately being able to conceptualise death can cause a lot of pain when people do die.  And for whatever reason, it is safe to say that the living suffer when their loved ones are lost.

Does this ability to suffer loss mean that our lives have value? Does it mean that the lives of animals that aren’t capable of conceptualising death like us aren’t as valuable?

I don’t see a difference in value between the life of a human and that of a chicken; ideologically for me they are both valued at level zero. And so for example I don’t have a problem with eating meat (I am omnivorous after all).

I don’t want to kill another person but that does not mean that I value their life over that of a chicken. I wouldn’t want to cause any suffering to a person's loved ones; and I definitely would not want to cause suffering to myself by murdering a them.

If you look at the damage the humans have done to the planet, would you really choose to save the life of a human over that of a chicken? We have perverted the natural order and it has to stop.

Wake up to the facts, the world would be a much better place if the human race were to go extinct; and if that isn’t a wake-up call then I don’t know what is!