youve got the means to live

Context that may be revelant here -

I'm 30ish years old, severely mentally ill, and have spent half my life in the mh system at this point. I also have a psych degree, am a grad student, and am pursuing a career in this field. Most importantly for the sake of this post, I'm anti-psych meaning that I believe that the psych/medical system should NOT have the power to remove a person's autonomy and that any "treatment" which is not patient-driven is unethical. I recognize (poor) psych treatment can often be more harmful than helpful. This is something I've also personally experienced over the years I've spent in the mh system.

The issue I'm seeing is this -

People are starting to recycle the old-fashioned (frequently held by boomers and gen x) mentality that psych treatment, esp therapy, is inherently a scam, useless, or untrustworthy, and therefore they're throwing up their hands and going, "It's pointless to seek help anyway!"

There's no way I'd be able to fully unpack this issue in a single blog-length-friendly post, but it's getting so pervasive that I feel the need to try scraping the tip of the iceberg.

I think there's room to discuss psych abuse without discarding the entire field.

1. There are absolutely good practitioners out there who care deeply about helping clients, and who firmly believe in maintaining their clients' autonomy while doing so.

2. There are (a lot of) mental illnesses that simply do not have good outcomes for recovery without professional help, whether that comes in the form of medications and/or therapy.

The biggest issue, from my standpoint, is that the majority of therapists aren't being trained to work with things beyond mild to moderate anxiety and depression, marriage/family issues, sometimes eating disorders, etc. Not in depth. Your average therapist isn't going to have a good understanding of more complex issues such as personality or dissociative disorders unless they've taken it upon themselves to seek continued education in that--and many don't. This in turn leads to a not insignificant amount of therapists who are outright ableist towards severe mental illnesses.

The sad truth is if you want competent help, you are probably going to have to search for a therapist who specializes in your area--or at least one who's open and willing to learn. This shouldn't be the case and it sucks that it is, but this also doesn't negate the number of therapists who are genuinely good at their jobs and the amount of help they provide.

I know this is anecdotal, but I can tell you that good therapy exists. I've had bad--terrible--therapists who further damaged me. I will always speak about that issue openly. I have also been fortunate enough to find good therapy that has been immensely beneficial. I had to put the work in to find these therapists. They didn't fall in front of me on my first Google search. I dug, I looked for specialists, I made multiple contacts asking questions about their practices to find a good fit. But I did find it.

I think it's incredibly discouraging and harmful to scare people away from getting help. We cannot go backwards towards being so anti-psych that we are anti-help, anti-treatment, and anti-recovery. Not for our own good and not if we ever want to see the psych field continue to improve (and it has, incredibly so, over time).

So again I will say -

I am seeing people reinventing an outdated view of psych that I've commonly seen before in older generations. The avoidance of seeking help only led to avoidance of acknowledging problems, which is kind of what walked us all into a massive amount of generational trauma to begin with. Do not fall into that trap.

Expect to need to advocate for yourself, or have a trusted person help to advocate for you. Seek specialized treatment. Push for what you need. Don't give up on your recovery.

It assumes a medical view of fictivity that doesn't inherently apply to all fictives. Not all fictives are introjects and the original use of fictive was for people who experienced characters coming to life, usually through writing, roleplay, etc, which would usually involve them being 100% their source. Some fictives are more spiritual or walk-ins. The framework doesn't work when applied to non-introjects who might have reasons for just being their source.

Even with introjects, I know there are some who reject the idea that they're just "based on" a fictional character and might just consider themselves to be that character. All types of fictives can have deep views on their identity.

This term was also coined by fictionkin, which is another framework some fictives may fit better and likewise "source separation" isn't really a concept in the same way in fictionkin communities because it's recognized as an involuntary identity.

It also doesn't feel like it accounts for natural character development. If you exist in a system as a fictive for decades, of course you're going to be a different person, but you can still identify as your source and be just "source but 10 years have passed that I've been in this body".

There is something to be said about avoiding harmful behaviors based on your source and finding hobbies outside of your existence in a system in general. I know there are also issues with fictionfolk being too possessive of their source, which is where I've seen a lot of people assume fictionality is unhealthy.

The issue is the way source separation implies you can't be a fictional character and be "functional" is a saneist view that also goes against the ones who coined source as it's being used here, which were fictionkin. There are better ways to encourage developing yourself as a headmate and being less possessive over others - the later I think is a much more important conversation right now because of doubles discourse coming back.

While this isn't a subject we can speak easily about (factives can trigger depersonalization and so we usually just avoid discussing it in depth), I also don't think this should inherently apply to factives. While I don't think factives and fictives are compatible (i.e. telling a person you are them is very different from telling a person you are their character), I don't think telling people "just stop identifying as them" is helpful and it's better to discuss actions and consequences than something that's out of their control.

The same goes for genuinely problematic identities. I think it's better to discuss the ways you present those identities and find a healthy balance that works for yourself than it is to force people to stop what is generally an involuntary identity experience. I don't think any of these should be censored and there should still be spaces to discuss them.

NGC 6302: The Butterfly Nebula - June 2nd, 1998.

In Pennsylvania...

Humans are not the Big Bad™

Humans have definitely causing climate change, they're also plenty fighting it x

Humans have caused extinctions, we are also a species that can cooperate together to specifically save species from that fate

Removing humans from an area doesn't make it pristine wilderness, thats anti-indigenous bullshit