Warning for descriptions of discrimination against psychotic people, as well as psychiatric/state violence and ableism.
Sick of watching non-psychotic people complain about how difficult they find other people's psychosis, as if their difficulty outweighs that of the actual psychotic person's experiences. Especially in the context of psychiatric wards or seeing psychotic people existing in public spaces...
Ranting publicly about how hard it is for you to hear the psychotic person in the next room scream- because they’re afraid of their own reality- just because it’s “annoying/weird/upsetting” for you or whatever the fuck, is such a profoundly self-centred act. Consider: it is probably a lot harder for the psychotic person than it is for you!! The person who is distressed, hallucinating and/or experiencing delusions is having a far worse time than you are just by witnessing their existence.
Similarly, if your first move after seeing a psychotic person talking to themself is to.... *Checks notes*.... Complain online that "they're scary and dangerous and weird and gross".... Uh. Food for thought; only one person in that situation is exploiting a non-consenting person's mental state for attention and sympathy on the internet. And it's not the psychotic person. Which makes you the more weird (and frankly dangerous) one.
Idk it'd just be super great if we could all start centering actual psychotic people and their feelings in conversations about psychosis....??? Because I don't actually care if you find random psychotic people scary. That's very firmly in the "your-problem" category, not the "actually psychosis-related" category. I'm not interested in your feelings about psychosis as a non-psychotic person. Why do you get to dominate a conversation that's fundamentally not about you?
It just feels painfully obvious that whilst non-psychotic voices dominate discussions around psychotic experiences, the psychotic people in question are often systematically barred from participating. Psychotic people are at higher risk of being made unhoused, being locked in psych wards, or put in specialist facilities- or jailed for the "crime" of being psychotic. Psychotic people get drugged up beyond consciousness without their consent, physically restrained to hospital beds and left in total seclusion- all in the name of "treatment". Those voices don't get to join the conversation. They're missing.
...And then non-psychotic people try to drown out the voices of the psychotic people who can be involved.
So yeah, I honestly don't fucking care how witnessing someone else's psychosis made you feel, when the actual psychotic person doesn't get to speak. You're re-centering the narrative to be about you, when this isn't about you.
"Let the psychotic people speak about psychosis" feels like such a milktoast take, but apparently some people don't even think psychotic people are .... People? So maybe it's just time all the non-psychotic people shut the fuck up and hand over the talking stick for this conversation.
