I'm an overweight Hispanic woman with a disability. Every doctor I went to in Texas for pain told me it was the fault of my weight. Then I moved out of state and doctors immediately saw that the reason I was in pain was because of a botched surgery that slowly destroyed my ankle to the point there was no more cartilage and it had to be fused because bone grinding on bone REALLY hurts. Not a single doctor outside of Texas mentioned my weight at all.
Sharing the story because bias is dangerous bs and the comment helps this video appease the RUclips algorithm overlords :) You're really good at making entertaining and informative video essays.
As a black woman who is DEFINITELY mistrustful of the medical profession- and has had too many mental health traumas and misdiagnosis...you are appreciated.
I’m a psychiatric survivor, and I just wanted to add that psych abolition and antipsych is about having treatments available to those that want it, along with different modalities of understanding madness. We want everyone to have the tools for healing that are right for them, and that looks different for every person. What we do not want is coercion: that is violence. I cannot begin to describe the sheer trauma of being abused by the psychiatric system repeatedly, in different forms, and not being believed. There are no meaningful safeguards in place to prevent psychiatric abuse and psychiatric violence. The women who abused me went on to abuse at least one more person within the month in the same way. This particular abuse is illegal in my area. The regulatory board didn’t even give her a slap on the wrist. As far as I know, she’s still out there, and that’s the tip of the iceberg.
When I was visibly having a mental breakdown, having stress and trauma induced aphasia, due to the stress and fear caused by such coercive and controlling methods, I had this conflated with catatonia. As psychiatrists often do for selective mutism, and severe aphasia in autistics. When I finally built up the courage to say I wasn't taking their poisonous neuroleptics my psych said ''you're making this really difficult''. I still am trying to figure out whether he meant to forcebly drug me, or something else. I just can't see it meaning anything else. Also he just outright ignored me constantly repeating, literally every time I saw him, the trauma and biological damage of forced childhood ritalin. Full of GI issues, metabolic issues, fatigue, hyperalgesia and they thought it apt to put me on some drug that causes metabolic damage. I cannot, I will not forgive. I want vengeance tbh I fight daily with feelings of wanting revenge. Can't imagine how you feel
In America, most of our mental health facilities are rampant with abuse. Some of it is even legal, although most of it isn't. But who's going to believe the escaped mental health patient over a board of doctors?
I'm so sorry you live such a horrid experience in the hands of the f****** psychiatric systems, and also I want to thank you for sharing your experience and giving voice to the importance of anti-psychiatric thought.
Oh man you just blew my mind, I had never thought to abolish it in its entirety but fuck. Yes. Actually. I know this is mainly about psych *wards*, as a movement, but I'm going to relate something here. I've been to countless psychiatrists who insist on conflating the relational difficulty I have as a neurodivergent person with BPD. All of my friends say I am reliable and even-tempered and that my affections are consistent. That I have never made them feel loved one day and hated the next (which is colloquially called splitting and is a cornerstone of bpd). The psychiatrists do not value these accounts because all of my friendships are online, but all of my friendships are online because I'm neurodivergent and autism makes it hard to talk to new people. I don't think the unstable sense of self is an accurate description of my situation, I know who I am, I just don't know what to do with it. They won't accept the neurodivergent explanation of my constant craving for new things (adhd is like that) because I wasn't diagnosed as a child because I couldn't see a shrink until 16 and even then it was in secret from my father. And even if they did diagnose me with adhd I wouldn't get stimulant medication because they don't prescribe it to adults who never took it as children. Why did I not get to take it as a child, I wonder! It's a loop that I see the way out of, but the cruel idiots I have to depend on literally will not let me, because they're trained to see checkboxes and not people. I've literally been told I'm not an authority on my own experience of my mental health. Not to say that I've never been wrong, but me being wrong is never met with a genuine effort to explain the current understanding of reality as it stands. Only with contempt and anger, because the thing they don't like isn't that I misunderstood myself, it's that I questioned them. Abolition is starting to sound great. Say when :)
An old man I met in AA once gave me the best advice I've ever gotten about dealing with depression. He told me the only thing that has ever worked (?) for me, which is to accept it. I used to try to fight my way out, force myself to do more than I was really capable, bully myself into eating when I didn't have an appetite, and shame myself as lazy and self obsessed and indulgent. Now when a depressive episode hits I try to recognize and acknowledge it. "I am depressed today and it will pass." I go easy on myself in those times. Maybe it's ok to binge British panel shows for a couple days straight. Maybe I really do need to be alone for awhile. Maybe it's ok to eat cereal for several meals in a row. I'll get back to my routine when this episode is over. Depression still sucks, but it sucks a lot less without adding all that extra shame, guilt, and frustration; without trying to force yourself out of it.
Is it narcissistic to feel pride, when you listen to someone on the internet validating your thoughts or is the warm, cozy feeling in my chest coming from it reducing my anxiety about being wrong or misunderstood? - I don't care, actually. I'm mad and this is a perfect essay! Thank you ♡
I think pride is the opposite of shame, and an expression of dominance culture. It's a counter reaction to being shamed, and holds a lot of aggressive energy from trauma and It is a reclaiming of autonomy and identity but it does so through dominative, exclusory measures. Much like BLM and other such minority promoting groups. What it aims to achieve is equality, but only provides a platform for more domination. There is a reason pride is considered a sin and I think it stems from religions as monastics could see that such behaviours and mentalities create power dynamics even if they don't intend to. Obviously religion is an expression of dominance culture too but a lot of monastics, especially in religions such as buddhism and hinduism (as opposed to more western doctrines and those of the middle east) often don't contribute to power dynamics at all. Pride is an expression of ego and identity, not that these are something that we need to be rid of. Doing so would be to become a kind of wordly fossil. Become too monastic you end up being unable to operate properly in the physical plane, but become too devoid of spiritual and existential purpose/experiences, then you become materialistic, psychopathic, sociopathic etc. So a balance between the two, and not contributing to power dynamics by avoiding the pride thing is ideal. I do think that the purpose of a lot of ''pride'' events is an effort to normalise. So in that regard they're serving their purpose, but again, it can easily become exclusory and dominative. Maybe if we rename and repurpose ''pride'' stuff into ''acceptance''. Acceptance feels like the centre between pride and shame.
@@danielmclaughlin2145 ughhhhhhh alright lets sift through this firstly: blm is not a dominant and aggressive movement, they want to not get shot by police, thats pretty fucking reasonable to me idk a group saying “don’t oppress us” is not taking power or becoming dominant, it is acting to destroy power and dominance -a very white person who doesn’t want to get in the way of change secondly: acceptance is not enough because that implies that Normal People, from their high seat of authority, should accept us strange and lonely people into their world. pride, on the other hand, doesn’t imply that anyone is superior to anyone else, but that those who our society says are deviant should take pride in the aspects of themselves that make them unique, and thereby conquer their socialized shame. shame is a present and self reproducing force in our society, so (like all forms of oppression) active resistance is necessary to do away with it, not just passive condemnation. the difference between acceptance and pride is analogous to the difference between being non racist and antiracist. the prior is passive, easy, and useless, and the latter is active, often difficult, and produces actual results. TL;DR: if you are against pride you are against progress, and you can leave us people who want to solve actual issues alone
@@carsonpearce5980 I think pride is regressive. It is the antithesis of shame. Shame is submissive, and pride is dominating. We need to promote acceptance not pride. Becomes a pendulum of power dynamics. Also, BLM is in part a toxic movement due to this expression of power and dominance. That's what pride does. Or are we going to ignore the riots and looting? Doubt it's all paid opposition lol
@@danielmclaughlin2145 i know what you think, and i think you’re wrong lol also the looting isnt paid opposition, its more likely just people who aren’t invested in the ideology and are willing to take the presented opportunity to advance their own wealth despite its consequences for the optics of the movement that they dont care about.
I’m not finished with the video, but I just had to stop and say something now- THANK YOU for the section on NPD. My dad has NPD. At least, I’m pretty sure-not because I armchair diagnosed him, but because this has been tacitly admitted by both of my parents, but they’re both pretty dodgy about details, and my dad REALLY resist’s participating in any form of therapy or treatment unless it’s literally his last resort. Anyway, I’m often afraid of telling people this. I have to caveat it with a lot of things, and I obviously don’t share it outside of more intimate contexts. It’s hard to share because I love my dad-everyone loves my dad, honestly-he’s a super cool and engaging person. But being his child or spouse is very different than even being his friend. It’s so, so hard for me to convey to people that even though some aspects of my childhood WERE abusive, and even though I am careful to set firm boundaries and make hard choices RE: my family sometimes, my dad is not an evil person. Not by a long shot. NPD doesn’t make you an evil person, but it can make you a difficult person; difficult to love, and difficult to be loved by. I see why he does the things he does (surprise: he was emotionally abused throughout childhood) but that doesn’t excuse them, and it doesn’t mean I have to justify or accept them, but it also does not mean that he is irrevocably toxic. People are NEVER binary. And the way we as a society deal with these things and explain these things to ourselves just weighs on me. I can accept it. But the burden of explaining the nuance is just so heavy sometimes. Anyway, I feel seen. Thank you. [edited for spelling, lol]
Hmm, I'm an ADHDer who did really well in school (structure, feedback, learning new stuff-yay!) but absolutely fell to pieces in the workforce (repetitive drudgery, lack of clearly enumerated expectations-boo!), so I always feel weird that my experience with neurodivergence is itself kinda atypical? It's also a reason why I didn't get diagnosed until I was 37... Thanks for this beautiful and articulate video.
i think that's considered more typical of ADHD in women and girls, or sometimes what's called inattentive ADHD, where you do ok with structure and following instructions but then struggle once the structure is gone, as opposed to the hyperactive presentation which is the stereotypical ADHD of a rowdy boy bouncing off the walls and getting into fights.
@@risamaeveactually, hyperactivity in girls is not diagnosed a lot because it just present in other ways like talking a lot, drawing all class, fidgeting with pens, and things like that that are less visible since girls avoid all the jumping because they are conditioned to not show such energy. So saying that it's a girls add/boys adhd thing is not accurate, and, even the add/adhd distinction shouldn't exist (in my opinion) because there's not a difference at neurological levels. Also, a lot of people with adhd do better in school that later in life because they have less decisions to make and less executive functions to apply. Usually, if you live in an average household, your caretakers cook, make your doctors appointments, wake you up, get you breakfast, take you to school, tell you to clean your room or you're grounded, take care of your pets, you don't need to think that much about money, etc etc. And school is still easy compared to university where adults study. No hundred pages papers to read, no interviews to make, no sources to keep track, etc etc. So in some cases, being a child and going to school is waaaay less tiring than adult life.
As someone diagnosed with two personality disorders and have especially struggled hard with thoughts of suicide, I really love this so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I just wish more people didn't stigmatize this stuff but instead saw the value in supporting different types of people. People with personality disorders go through a lot but when they have the chance to thrive add so much value and diversity to life. Sometimes mental illness is ugly but everyone has their shit, just let people do their thing and provide help when appropriate. My boyfriend has NPD with comorbid OSDD and has struggled a lot. But I love him so much, he's just one of the most remarkable men I have ever met. He has been through so much, has put so much effort into healing and yet is so bad ass, resilient, hilarious, and just idk brings things into my life I would have never experienced without him. I am so proud of who he is including the NPD, yes he has a different emotional baseline but that is okay. He has a different perspective than me which is good to bounce ideas off, he is so creative makes the most interesting stories and art to cope with some behavioural tendencies. He used to before we met apparently he lied lot about being skilled to impress people, but now just actually is very skilled in several avenues and just shows people. Then he has something to actually feel good about. I hate seeing him suffer, but I also love seeing him gain more self pride. I have learned a lot from him about that actually for myself as I have DID and struggle myself with self esteem. I'm glad you have good people around you and I'm sure you add a lot to the world around you. I hope nothing but healing for you 🖤 the stigma around these things makes no sense. People with personality disorders are not bad people, there is not such thing as a "bad person disorder." Everyone deserves care and being mentally ill doesn't make anyone less worthy. There is cool shit about hoe everyone's brain works and we should be proud of that as a society.
I've long been conflicted over the remote emotional fulfillment of the comment section... it ("you") makes me feel so connected to a world that irl is harder but not impossible to access... i really cherish you people and your kindness, we really are here and doing this, it just mystifies me how immersed i can feel in comment section encouragement... i mean it's an extension of the parasocial relationship usually ascribed as host-viewer, it's good practice anyway for testing the kindness and normalcy you're capable of and long to be connected to... i feel like i love you, and it makes me temper positive feelings toward coworkers, strangers in the street, etc
@@JakubWaniek I've been trying to accept that that fear and shame aren't things someone with narcissism would be able to experience, as well as finding legitimate reasons to compliment myself and having supportive people to talk to is also beneficial. I would not say I am fixed though. I wish you the best in your struggle.
Same holy sh1t. I felt scared that actually giving love to myself would make me narcissistic and hence didn't think about self love. But what I realize is that having self love and confidence is not narcissism.
@@lorrygoth Thank you. I suppose that does make sense, but of course these issues are not really rooted in rationality in the first place. I'll try to work on that!
@@thesevenkingswelove9554 Exactly! And it's a feedback loop: the more you shame yourself for expressing self-esteem, the lower your self-esteem gets, so the more you shame yourself...
SSRI didn't work for me, but when I started an SNRI antidepressant for chronic pain (fibromyalgia, hypermobility), it helped so much! My brain/body needed help hanging on to more norepinephrine, not just serotonin. But the biggest contributors to my depressive episodes have always been when I have little or no say or power over my bodily autonomy and socioeconomic status. The biggest help has been finding a community of neurodiverse, queer, chronically ill, and disabled friends online. Treating my ADHD and my severe PMS with medications helps tons, too.
hey there can you share the med you're taking for your pain and hypermobility? I have a similar cocktail of conditions and symptoms and SSRIs nor treatments for bipolar have helped me. I am always looking for other peoples experiences with medication hoping to trial more and find one that works.
@@themidnightcleric Sorry for the delayed reply. The medication prescribed for my fibromyalgia (chronic pain) is duloxetine, an SNRI (serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor). The N stands for norepinephrine, one of the three hormones most often associated with pain management. It's not a cure, but it helps a ton and I don't wake up every morning feeling like every one of my ribs has been ripped out and shoved back in. Whatever the condition, I highly recommend trying Fascial Counterstrain (FCS) therapy with a physical therapist. Fascia hold the entire body together and affect, and are effected by, every system in the body. It's gentler than massage or pressure point therapy, and you're fully clothed and resting the entire time. It's helped me recover from a two-year burnout and find my true baseline of pain and mobility. It especially improves my lymph drainage, tendon pain, mental clarity, and GI function. My state insurance, Medicare here in the USA, covered it with a particular provider for a while, but I've moved to another direct-pay provider. Since a lot of my pain is related to hypermobility, twice weekly chiropractic keeps me mobile and reduces pain and neurological overwhelm. Everyone responds differently to medications and other treatments, so please don't give up if what works for someone else isn't the right fit for you.
I've had very vivid nightmares since age three, not every night but they sometimes go up in frequency, as they are at the moment. Sigh. A few times I've fallen out of bed as I've been thrashing about in terror in my sleep.
I’m a CBT/DBT/ACT licensed master’s level therapist in the US. Sorry in advance, this is long; I could talk on this subject forever… The personality disorder chapter made me react like the experts in the next chapter 😅… but that’s too nuanced for a YT comment. Appreciate mentioning other orientations like CBT as pretty good but wish you spoke more on them and how differ from this version of psychoanalysis; especially as many of us were also influenced by Rogers to be more collaborative in treatment. How much someone gets training on psychoanalysis, Freud and Jung, depends on their program. I was in school for my BS and MA in the mid ‘00s- mid ‘10s. For my core curriculum, psychoanalysis/psychodynamics was mainly a section in a couple theories/history classes (but other key figures in different classes did come from this school of thought- Erik Erikson) with much more emphasis on Freud; Jung was like a couple slides. I didn’t take the electives that probably discussed him more. But Jung was always more popular with new age types than scientific academics. Freud still gets respect bc he was the first and tried to be relatively scientific but limited by many factors… remember when he started, germ theory wasn’t fully accepted and his contemporaries were treating hysteria with manual stimulation, to keep the uterus from traveling all over the body; one even invented the v!brator bc his hands kept cramping… talking to these women was downright progressive, and also can see how he was primed to think psychosexually… and his ideas evolved and changed a lot over the course of his work… as history seems to repeat, I have a new found appreciation for Sigmund and Anna (daughter) Freud’s defense mechanisms (early-mid 1930s); not that I totally agree, more like “ah..ok… yeah, I see how you got there...” (if I remember correctly, they were studying “normal” young men by this time… in Austria… soo…). Anna also said “it’s abnormal to be normal in adolescence” (sometimes the translation is a little different); so not nearly as strict and pathologizing as portrayed in the mainstream… Also, and you talked on this, there’s a big difference between what we learn in school and know as clinicians and how the institutions of hospitals, insurance, APA, etc force us to practice. Many of the people still in power came up before the feminist and multicultural waves of the 80s and 90s became the standard (Jordan Peterson was among the last group of men before the field officially embraced diversity and I think that explains a lot about him)… and effective therapy is very different from sales and not very compatible with capitalism… all the ethical dilemmas that result is why we burnout so fast.. While the 2000s and 2010s were all about multiculturalism, systems in theory, and rejecting nature vs nurture, looking for what different modalities/orientations got right, the 2020s are gearing up to be more systems in practice. Our individual interventions are mere bandaids on bull3t wounds in this current system and we’ve been saying it for a long time… seriously wanting for all the burnt out mental health clinicians, teachers, and nurses to join forces like we’re the Avengers of professional caregivers against the current systems and institutions 👨🏾💼🦸🏽👩🏻🏫🦸🏼♂️🧑🏽⚕️🦸🏿♀️😂
I hope the leftists cooks read your comment snd get inspired to make a history video on the progression of psychology. As a queer person, I was outright conbative towards my therapist at the beginning and straight up told them "listen, i am here because the thoughts on unliving myself have taken me here, but I don't trust y'all's profession none since both being gay and trans were treated as mental illness until recently, also have had some of y'all tell me in therapy my sexuality doesn't exist; plus I'm scared y'all gonna send me to an institution which is gonna keep me alive while ruining my finantial future, because y'all ain't free here"; I could only trust my therapist, who is queer themselves, after we addressed that and made damn sure what were the conditions for institutionalization/calling 911/etc. I need to be aware that my therapist understands that we are in 2020, and that they aren't relying only in outdated biases. Or I'm walking out, which I've done with multiple therapists because i can't pay somebody to educate them during therapy. I'm too broke for that ish. Same as the bible, like, say Jesus was real; cool cool, nobody had a phone in the bible stories, I think nobody should expect to use the bible as a guide for life in 2020, although they can take bits and pieces as part of their study of humanity. I would really appreciate the leftists cooks doing a video on how to out science in historical context, kind of likee how they did a video on how to read scientific literature.
@@wen6519 thank you for sharing! my bachelors was VERY research/science heavy and my masters was multicultural application focused; so it's always mind-boggling when i come across anyone bringing the bible or jesus into therapy... your point about only trusting a queer therapist reminded me of a "funny" story and my ongoing/never-ending battle with femme invisibility (even with an asymmetrical pixie, don't "look gay".. i joke about getting 🏳🌈tattooed on my forehead but idk if that would work, lol)... when i worked for a program, had a few clients request to have (kinda problematic "strictly d!ckly" straight woman) over me (lesbian/pan) "because i want a queer therapist who can understand" ...i was professional and maintained my composure, but inside i was screaming😭🤪🤦♀
Peer support, counseling, and advocacy are the next step in building useful and patient and community oriented treatment and support services... On so many levels from normal medical care, mental health (of course) to the judicial system...
Thank you, so much, for the section on personality disorders. As someone with BPD, I have indeed generally seen BPD spoken of as always synonymous with "bad person". Which is tough, because my psychiatrist explicitly told me that it's a result of a lifetime of, basically, mistreatment: abuse at home, ostracisation and bullying throughout school and even the workplace--the second and third there resulting from it taking until 35 and 40 to get properly diagnosed with ADHD and Autism, respectively. I was, instead, (mis)diagnosed and even re-diagnosed with various psychiatric illnesses to explain my, well, behaviour (esp the wild mood swings, which were overwhelmingly often meltdowns and shutdowns) and even some of my *physical* ailments. Family, (former) friends, teachers, peers, coworkers, management, etc, treated me like I was a weird, like I was broken, like I was a crazy rhymes-with-witch with no value, and I reacted by... developing a personality disorder to go with my heaping dose of unrecognised but most importantly *un-helped* neurodivergence. I'm not a monster. I'm hurt.
Lord, 30 mins in and I'm really digging it. As a ADHD & Autistic person it has been wonderful to hear so many different content creators finally start to get on the same pages as I have been for a while about mental illness & neurodiversity. Over the summer I was in a mentorship program and was lucky enough to work with a lot of neurodiverse people as their mentor and talked candidly about what disability is like for us, and my consistent refrain was and has been that the majority of it is because we live in a social world not build by us or for us, and when those things collide, the system would prefer to grind us to powder than admit it is not effective and improve. There is so much of our condition, and those of others listed as mentally ill, that I find is the product of this interaction, that I find beginning from the phrase, "You aren't broken, we are different." Is a much stronger, and more immediately actionable thing than the vast majority of shit we often see others in power actually do. And by focusing on how that difference is okay and can suck at worst or is a joy in our lives, we can begin to find healthier systems for dealing with it both as individuals and a social groups. I'd also like to add that I deeply appreciate Sarah's walkthrough of NPD and how these terms are used. It was insightful not just for the explanation of how these terms are used as weapons, but helped me realize the weird, unique intersection many of us in the mentally ills & neurodiv spectrum live in where our condition is often used as something like a living slur upon ourselves. The word becomes a weapon to wield against us, but is also one we use on ourselves, and often with shame, so we end up in a situation where we hate the titles for our condition but often internalize the things said about it as true, even when they are not. And that baggage harms us, and what's worse delays our actual ability to help ourselves, both because we internalize the shit ignorance and bigotry feeds use without knowing, and because it tends to discourage one from investigating further, or knowing what sources are credible to look for. Why would someone want to know more about a condition when it's already so awful, why would I want to look up something that seems bound and determined to make me feel worse with what I ALREADY know? Ableism intersects with so many other issues that untangling it can take a lifetime, and often needs community support from experts with lived experience, to actually get aid. And this last part can be one of the hardest things within this system. There is so much I could talk about with this, but know that I've found this as a neurodiv person very useful ^-^.
I have been falsely diagnosed with BPD (surprise I'm AFAB and have S/H and unalive tendencies), and sobI was pushed into doing DBT. Most of it was absolutely the opposite of helpful, but the ONE THING that has helped me more than anything is radical acceptance. Imposter syndrome is so easy to fall into when you are trying to reject those parts of yourself you don't like. When you accept them, unconditionally and move forward with the assumption you are justified in your own experience, life with mental illness completely opened up for me. I urge anyone dealing with self doubt around their mental illness to look into it
Came for the well-researched analysis, stayed for the beautiful, inspiring honesty and motivation to care for other people. This is an incredibly important video, and a message that needs to spread.
As a psychologist, I adore this whole essay. It's excellently crafted, well researched, and manages to walk the tightrope of critiquing the institutions and practices of mental health care while recognizing the good and well intentioned care that also goes into it. I'd highly recommend checking out Neuroqueer Heresies by Nick Walker for a look at the topic from the perspective of the neurodiversity movement. It's a lot of the same conclusions, but with a different trajectory/path. Either way as a very queer trans autistic person, I found it exceptionally affirming and again highly recommend it.
a video essay we didn’t deserve but NEEDED. so powerful, so well informed, so moving, so compassionate. y’all’s best work yet honestly i can’t believe i just casually watched the post modern video one day like two months ago and now im yoni deep in this weird community with y’all and i love it 💜
Several years ago I told my doctor, who was already treating me for anxiety and depression, that I'd had suicidal thoughts a few months before. He gave me two options; wait at his office for an ambulance, or go to the hospital on my own. I spent 26 hours in that hospital, most of them in the psych ward, terrified out of my mind and completely unable to ask any of the perfectly nice nurses for anything. I became convinced they were going to keep me there against my will. In the morning, while I was anxiously waiting to see if they'd let me leave, my mum called (I lied about where I was) to say our family dog had died overnight. The trauma from that day may never leave me, but hearing you acknowledge that psychiatric hospitalisation can be traumatising goes a long way to relieve it. Thank you for making this. And good luck with your anti-depressants. I know very well the balancing act of benefits to side effects.
My first and only suicide attempt was half hearted and painful. I decided that I wasn't going to try it again, plus it would break my parents hearts (they were always good to me). 2 years later and I haven't conquered it, I think it will always be there. Buuuuuut I have 2 suggestions that have really helped me start to ENJOY living (at least time to time). 1.) I started approaching life with the mindset, that I should at least give myself the opportunity to havea good day. I wake up every day tired and sad, not wanting to do anything, and for the longest time I'd just lie there feeling both mentally and physically terrible (When it first started I wasn't used to waking up with no motivation so I was sure how to handle it. I always had negative thoughts but they started to overwhelm me after college) I started out doing little things. If I dont at least eat anything theres no chance that this day is going to go well so I'll snack on something small and easy like trail mix, or maybe buy a cheap sandwich. If I wasn't going to do anything else, I'd at least put on sad music and slowly clean up around the house. A clean environment made my mind feel cleaner. None of this stopped the depression, but I found that if I at least did the little things, when something good happened, i could at least appreciate it. Someone would crack a joke, and I would sometimes even laugh. I started to stretch, I wanted to exercise but it was too hard, "too much effort, for what?" I would think, but i figured I could at least sit up in bed and try to tocuh my toes, I also googled a bunch of stretches. Then someting amazing happened.... after months of stretching, I became more flexible. I had changed myself in this tiny imperceptible way, and when I first realized, I started crying, I cried long and hard then laughed at myself a bit, and I felt it. That long lost spark that I thought was extinguished in soul. Motivation, not reasoning with myself, not self extortion or forcing myself to act, but a DESIRE to continue to improve. I started going for short walks around the neighborhood, every now and then I might even meet a stranger with a dog or couple or family and exchange a word or two. I started doing pushups and squats, not a lot, just 10 of each would feel rewarding. I felt capable of controlling my own life at least a little and then one day at work amidst of all these slow changes which felt like a short flurry and yet also a lifetime, an eternity... I made a joke, and people laughed. I felt a rush, I felt good, I had surprised myself, "oh yeah" I thought... "I used to be funny, what happened to me?".... that brief moment of joy and human connection preceded another cataclysmic spiral downards. It had been months i had been working so hard just to realize what shadow of my old self I still was. Everything felt impossible and overwhelming and my mind... my body buckled. I fell back in to all my old familiar self destructive habits, but something was different this time. I knew where this road led, was I going to truly waste everything I had done to change over the past few months? No, its either death or living, I need to at least TRY to live. So after a few days I was back at it. I was eating again, cleaning, moving my body trying my best to quiet and ease my tumultuous mind. As time passed I acheived new mile stones, each one giving me just a bit more confidenstarted to push on. I started doing hard exercises, I bought weights, I started to look good. I forced myself to start talking to my coworkers more, I even made a few more jokes every now and again, and then a another change. I was invited out to a bar.... socializing? Friends? I was terrified but eager to break soul crushing menotiny of my regular routine, and so I went... I had a good time (they said we should do it agIn sometime and I agreed) again tears, imI came home and cried, it was a good day. 2.) While making all these small changes I also started taking lionsmain mushroom supplements. They help neurons in your brain grow and make stronger connections. I thought maybe they would help reinforce the behavioral changes I was trying to make to myself, I thought with a stronger brain, I'd feel more confident talking to people. I feel that they did help me... Like I said, it's been 2 years since I started to make these changes. Last night I went to party that a girl I met on a dating app invited me to, and we kissed.... I still feel miserable. I'm still filled with these negative thoughts telling me how worthless I am, I know it's not true, but that's exactly it, I feel worthless, but I don't focus on that. I focus on the actions I can take to make my life worth living, no matter how small.... I think I might be happy.
Dear you Just wanted to pop in and say that you're a HERO. Really, I know myself how hard it is to do things. But you're managing GREATLY!!! Please, keep going I'm literally SO PROUD of you Much love 🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻 Wish you to be fully happy as soon as possible!
When I was in middle school and into HS, in the 80s, my estranged father and his family made me see a few therapists (called shrinks back then) and 'coaches" to "cure" my shyness/lack of self confidence, due mostly bc my mom was abusive/poor... (turns out she was autistic). Into my 20s, I just partied and fucked off in my spare time. No issues, 'cept I became an alcoholic. My early 30s had me at the start of me seeing a total of FOUR different therapists, after my G.P. of all people said I was depressed and should get help. Turns out that the "depression" was mostly from my drinking, as when I finally got sober, I could see how much it "brought me down". Around this time, in my early 40s, I would stumble upon this thing called "Asperger's Syndrome", and would find out through THOROUGH research of such that I was autistic. FORTY YEARS! ...and here is where it got REAL FUN. No one in my life would accept this, and so I gave up on all of them. It took another 10 years to finally get an official assessment, and only bc my sister "needed" the money I could get from one... which I have yet to see.
I often hate being several kinds of messy human discussed in this video. Yet, it’s the human I am. Thank you for helping me to feel something other than hate about my messiness.
Btw: there is a mutual aid program developed by the Jane Addams Collective called MAST, "Mutual Aid Social Therapy" it's based on anarchist non hierarchical structures and isn't pathologizing. Highly recommend looking it up Also books I'd recommend: (Mis)Diagnosed, How Bias Distorts Our Perception of Mental Health by Jonathan Foiles A Profession Without Reason: The Crisis of Contemporary Psychiatry-Untangled and Solved by Spinoza, Freethinking, and Radical Enlightenment by Bruce E Levine I'm trans and I've been organizing around mental health as a facet of trans liberation for a while now. (Btw I also have several mental illnesses/disabilities/disorders including Major Depressive Disorder with Psychotic Features, PTSD, Autism, Agoraphobia, etc)
one of the worst things to me about being mentally ill is how fucking hard it is to get help (at least here in Scotland). i have no official diagnoses, which makes it more cumbersome to talk about it, but i have persistent and severe low moods (including suicidal ideation) and difficulties with anxiety. there's also a very good chance i'm autistic. my GP gave me a prescription for sertraline after my first appointment, but it didn't work, so fair enough. i've also been referred to be assessed for autism, which has a very long waiting lost, and i was told that i should wait until i get a diagnosis to get therapy because of the way my symptoms of ASD interacts with my issues. this means that i won't be put on a waiting list to get therapy until i've made it through the waiting list to be assessed for autism. there are no free services near me to which i can refer myself. my uni has counselling but it's too limited in scope and resources to help (i've tried). online resources don't help me. i'm stuck waiting for potentially fucking years to overcome something which is often debilitating and which is constantly telling me to just fucking give up. i have to lean heavily on my friends for support because i can't get it elsewhere and it's not fair on them and it's not good for them, but if i lean less heavily i'm going to fall. there's nothing that makes me feel more helpless than having help kept just out of reach.
I've been having chronic health problems (especially tremors and muscle spasms) for the past 10 months and my doctor ALWAYS suggests that it could be anxiety. The thing is I'm not an overly anxious person, I don't relate to my friends with anxiety disorder. I genuinely do not think it's anxiety or stress causing my health problems. It's not my medication either, I've been on and off it to see if the symptoms would get better but they persist.
I would ask if it could be something rare at this point. I know that it’s notorious for “everything being cancer” but WebMD *will* give you a list of things you can bring up (I did get colon cancer as a potential problem, naturally it wasn’t, but it was one of the only 4 things even possible when I got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis).
Have you had your vit b12 tested? A deficiency in that can cause tremors. I bet you have since you have been sick for so long but your doctor also sounds kinda useless in this case so maybe not. I hope you find out what's going on!
I was diagnosed with depression at an early age, along with social anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. Long before I figured out I was also aroace, and eventually that I'm nonbinary agender, I figured there should be no reason why I can't take pride in the mental illness that make me neuroatypical. It's made my life more difficult to be sure, but it also has taught me how to endure life's ordeals, and to think of solutions to problems that wouldn't occur to most people. I've carried over the same attitude when it comes to my trans identity. In a political climate when it seems everyone, even allies and members of the trans community themselves, is talking about the hardships and difficulties that trans people face, I think it's about time we started talking about all the positive aspects of being trans. It exposes you to a much wider breadth of life experiences, makes you more introspective and insightful, and can help you become more empathetic towards other marginalized groups. Trans people are overrepresented in the scientific, information tech, and creative fields, and the trans people in my life are among the most intelligent and talented individuals I know. You can't change who you are, but there's no reason you should have to either.
I’m always very cautious of these kinds of essays because a lot of them go down the route of “all modern mental health is bs!!! No meds!!!” Which is frustrating as someone currently trying to find medication and who’s been in various kinds of therapies for over a decade. Half of my life. There needs to be more nuance than most give it and I sit somewhere on the fence. The system is fucked. I’ve been abused by therapists, I’ve been forced into treatment, I’ve been forced to take meds, practically had them literally shoved down my throat. And that’s traumatizing. But I’m also in therapy currently. My current therapist has helped me more in the past six months than years of therapy and treatments ever did. Because my past therapists couldn’t remove me from my abusive home. There’s so many aspects to it. And the main problem is forcing people into things from what I’ve found. But as yall pointed out, even that has nuance. There needs to be a better mix of community and clinical, and the clinical needs more community. And that goes for a lot of things. I wouldn’t be nearly as bad as I am currently (ptsd wise) if I had even just one person I could have truly just talked to about what was happening to me. But my therapists would tell my abusers what we talked about and I didn’t really have friends. But also my life improved without therapy just by escaping that. There’s no one answer to any of these problems.
After hearing your small discussion about personality disorders I will be following though. It’s become so hard to find spaces that have ever discussed mental health without them also going down the rabbit hole of “all disorders are valid and great and deserve treatment and care BESIDES NPD BECAUSE THEYRE ALL TERRIBLE PEOPLE!!!” And even though I don’t have npd I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called a narcissist for just implying that people with npd are still people.
@@saltydinonuggies1841I know thos comment is old, but omfg. I go to a DV group and this one person keeps saying "narcissistic abuse" each time she's there. I realized I wasn't comfortable saying that was bothersome, and I don't go anymore. Its really hard losing spaces due to just ableism
1:03:10 -- ADHDer here and my experience (as well as many other ADHDers I know) is the exact opposite. I did fine in school and childhood because it provided me structure and guidance. There were certainly major flaws with it -- I definitely felt a lot of resentment at the time regarding my lack of independence and autonomy, procrastinated terribly with homework, etc etc. I wouldn't say I thrived by any means -- the system still was very much not designed with my neurodivergence in mind. But ultimately I did just fine. Got good grades, and even if I was struggling with a lot of stuff I at least felt I was achieving something and gaining social validation throughout it. There was perceived progress, so despite my struggles I at least had hope for the future. The independence of adulthood is where I truly fell apart and began struggling immensely. Left to my own devices without imposed structure entirely annihilated the iota of executive functioning I had. Now I was not only struggling, but also felt as if I wasn't even achieving anything or doing "life progress" right. Which of course makes me feel even more shame and self-hatred, making me even more anxious and depressed, leading to even less executive functioning. It's a cruel feedback loop. It's definitely a nuanced thing. I can see how adulthood would help many with ADHD if they're lucky enough to make it into a career that suits them, find a like-minded community for support, etc. But the symptoms of ADHD itself also makes those things more difficult to achieve in the first place, so for those not as lucky...
omg this is literally where I'm at with my life right now... it's hell but at least I'm not the only one I guess lol! The gigantic unknown void of the future and *shudder* the workplace is so terrifying to me that I can't seem to move forward at all, yet sitting around doing nothing all day is also killing me at a rapid pace akdkfjjsjs (NB: not officially diagnosed cos the system here is a joke)
I really needed this. As someone who has been obsessed with trying to figure out what is “wrong” with me, trying so hard to pathologize myself, and becoming distressed over the idea that I am fundamentally broken, I needed this shift in mind set.
The story around [1:17:48] reminded me of how years ago I read some study about how symptoms of schizophrenia are impacted by the cultural norms and specifically the stigma and expectations around hallucinations in a society. And how in some places audio/visual hallucinations are typically not scary to the individual that is having them. Basically my take away at the time was wondering how much of the suffering of people with mental illnesses may not be inherent, rather socially imposed or constructed by the stigma or barriers of having a specific mental health diagnosis.
Maybe it has to do with being raised as a girl, or maybe not having a lot of friends as a kid, but I've never been particularly attached to an image of myself as "sane".
I loved the "thank you" "you're welcome/no worries" bit so much lololololol, that was really well done. As usual, you are challenging my ideas and forcing me to be more conscious about the way I think about and act on things and MAYBE I DON'T WANT TO WORK SO HARD (I do). Also, the production was great despite more than 90 minutes of edited work-I can only shudder at the thought of how much raw footage and editing this took. Thank you so much for all the new thoughts and all the hard work.
I keep coming back to mental illness as modern sin. I've never connected those dots before, but now it seems so obvious to me that our stigma about mental illness functions like that - a negative associated with someone's being, not their actions, thus a way to categorize someone as 'wrong'. Thank you for giving me this language to understand my experiences and to approach others with greater empathy.
I’m a therapist with two masters degrees: one in neuroscience and one in counselling psychology. Believe me when I say this essay is a perspective that our world needs right now. Thank you for putting it out into the world. ❤
Right. This made me cry about 3 times, maybe more. I have pretty strong ADHD, treatment resistant and often debilitating depression, and the usual collection of anxiety and personality disorders that tend to go along with those. I am also non-binary, pan and poly, and only half out of the closet on some of those. And as you said, I have been feeling like I am getting pushed further back into the closet while my depression has been getting worse. Again. All of this hits very, very close to home. (Oh, and I'm also Irish! At least on paper. My father is from Lisburn. Hah, I wonder if genetic lineage is a factor in depression...) I cannot express how thankful I am for you two to put so many things into words that I could never explain this well, even if at times it hurts to watch. Probably hurt a lot more to speak the words... I will make sure just about everyone I know watches this essay, and if I have to tie them down and force them... ok, maybe that is a bit much. But you get the idea. People need to understand. We exist. Our struggles are real. We aren't LAZY. We aren't SELFISH. People need to understand that we try, every day, to function, to blend in, to do what society and our own communities expect of us, under threat of losing our very means of existence. Food, shelter, friendship, comfort, never mind some sense of purpose. Function, or go sit in your hole; dirty, poor, lonely, suffering, until you can pull yourself out again - if ever. And while there is of course a physiological factor to depression, it would really help if people stopped judging us just because sometimes we are just too exhausted by the effort of trying to function how it is expected of us. Sometimes we just need to... stop for a bit. Gather strength. Cry. Talk to someone. Have a hug. Gather our thoughts. So we can try again. Well, this escalated quickly. That's why I don't write many comments. I could write much more, but that probably just makes it even less likely you'll read it, so I'll shut up now. But please know, your work and the pain and the strength of will it must have taken to create it are highly, highly appreciated. Thank you!
I'm on the fence about the "mad pride" community, specifically on tumblr. I am mentally ill. I want to be understood and I want to be treated better by society. But there is something off about the thing I see on tumblr. I want a world where people can be healthier, not "more normal". However, some of the rhetoric on here seems dangerous, such as anti-recovery. Sometimes we do have to get help if our conditions will hurt us. I need help to make sure I don't kill myself. If left alone to my own devices, my condition only worsens. We should absolutely distrust those who want us to be more "normal". We must get rid of the violence that oppress us, but we have to be wise and strategic about it. We mustn't shame those who wish to get better, and we shouldn't make ourselves more vulnerable to those who wish to hurt us. If we risk hurting ourselves, or if somebody is taking advantage of our condition in order to abuse us, are we truly changing things for the better? Not to mention, there is some odd takes on sane people, such as them being stupid and unable to see the world in a complete way. While most of the anger I saw was righteous, this seems a bit misguided. Nobody sees the world in an "incomplete" way. We experience what we experience. The only way to dismantle the systems of oppression that harms all people is for us to communicate and help each other. The revolution can only be successful if it is born out of love for humanity, not hate for another group. I may be misguided, but I am confused. I honestly feel alone and alienated from many groups. I am not neurodivergent, but I am mentally ill. But the anti-recovery rhetoric makes me feel unsafe. We need to dismantle the system that oppresses us, but we need to take care of ourselves.
It has always been essentialism. Our need to categorize, put people in boxes, has been both a defense mechanism (for the good and the bad, to help us avoid thinking about things that threathen our sense of self or sanity) and a shortcut we are prone to follow. But as always has lead to a lot of societal ills.
Well this was timely thanks 🙏 Appreciate this one a lot. ❤️ Congratulations on the 8 days, thank you for taking care of yourself! Edit again: If you also have multi-trauma PTSD, benefit from my experience: Start by looking into EMDR, somatic experience, Internal Family Systems, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, or Accelerated Experiential Dynamic therapy. They have significant success and evidence. Basic open ended talk therapy does not. "Trauma informed" doesn't mean "trauma trained." Pick up any book by Dr. Gabor Mate or Dr. Richard Schwartz. Edit 1: most of the way through. Having C-PTSD from early childhood, and having been in a large variety of therapy modalities and different psych professionals, I appreciate and respect the perception that many people with PTSD get better. And also I'm sad. I've been doing everything I freaking can since I was 18 and could finally try to get help without being prevented from doing so. I turn 34 soon. I'm tired guys.
To be clear I've made significant progress in self acceptance, I have a million tools, I read all the Gabor Mate. I found IFS and I have hope about it. I'm doing better than a lot of folks. I'm lucky and I have a lot of privilege. Boy would it be nice to not have to isolate for fear of accidentally hurting future partners while in an emotional flashback.
I, a neurodivergent, depressed, anxious, traumatised person, called a (former) friend (who's struggling with their mental health but is also very abusive) "crazy" for sending me abusive DMs. I mourn losing a friend, but I also deeply regret using that word. I wish I had had the strength to uphold my boundaries without it.
How the FUCK have I not seen this channel til just now?? This is so good, thank you so much. I had a partner use psychological terms and diagnose me with being dependent just because I noticed inconsistency in his behavior towards me and asked him about it, and from then on I could never bring up any issues in the relationship without being pathologised and dismissed. I have anxiety and he knew it and claimed he knew how to handle that with a partner but he very obviously did not understand how it worked or what my needs were and I was stigmatized from asking for my needs to be met or even addressed. All that to say, I know what it's like to have people in your real life, with no qualifications, hurt you by utilizing shallow understanding of psychology. I don't even think he did it on purpose or with the desire to invalidate me, it seemed to fit in his head
I found you guys earlier this year, around the same time I got diagnosed with bipolar one. It feels like this video was made just for me (or is that the mania lol) but seriously thank you for getting this message out there. Getting diagnosed with scary, realizing that you're not in a well mental state is scary. But it also felt very vindicating to realize that the mental anguish had been going through throughout my life wasn't all in my head (I mean it is, but you know what I mean.) I work with kids, and I've been very open about my mental health struggles, hopefully this message can get out there more and people can realize that being mentally ill doesn't change the fact that you're just a person, and when we stop fearing mental illness, we can actually talk about it and help reduce suffering. Thank you for this video, thank you for your channel, I hope you feel better Neil 💜
So the BPD section of this video was very helpful to me as I am diagnosed with it. Many people found my stories about myself fallible just because I was mentally ill. It made it nearly impossible to to my internal world seriously even though it affects me in serious eays
I have no idea how this video only has 5k views. Needs to blow up. Your format, verbal fluency, editing, comedy, insight. It's all incredible quality. Thank you for this. I think the biggest issue with mental health labels is the pathologisation of everything that it is to be human, it becomes dehumanising and people view you through the lens of psychiatry instead of a human being with disorders you are then a disorder that happens to be human. If you're already neurotic, people damaged by the DSM pathologising your every move and the spotlight effect generates literal insanity. Lets just say, I was drugged for ''paranoia'' due to this against my will despite vocalising the trauma childhood ritalin use caused me as i'd cry every day coming home from school. Psychiatry is an abomination
Medicine is based on diagnosing and treating illness; psychiatry is a branch of medicine. While psychiatry is incredibly complex and often difficult due to many illnesses being "invisible", it's still incredibly helpful to the majority of patients, but is lacking in adequate resources like every other branch of healthcare. For every patient who claims that psychiatry is evil and ineffective, I can point to 20 where it saved their lives. Perspective is key.
As an autistic person, there's data of "suicidal attacks" especially among us, where that window of tolerance is so insanely small between the pain and the action (such that an autistic person can seem totally fine, even to themselves, and then suddenly actively attempting) and my therapist and I have worked out an "you can complete this action in a year, but not in this moment" as a sort of mantra to get myself out of that "attack" - such that when I come down it's a relief that I didn't do something. The brain is very, very bad at tolerating the life or death constant terror moments. It's amazing to know I'm not the only one who has felt this way, but also so sad how dangerous it is for us all, how many of us are taken out of the world too soon because of something that we were alone in or not correctly supported in. If you are reading this in one of those moments, I hope you can hold on, you're so brave for trying.
I'm having an issue (also autistic) with masking. I can kinda let the walls come down and txt my friends that it's really bad and I need help, and a couple of them will come over (shout out to my ex wife, who was the groom at our wedding but now my BFF, and has been super supportive while admitting that she's out of her league when trying to help) but when they show up in person, I start making without trying and they leave after a whole because I "seem better," but I'm not actually better. I know this is an old vid and an old comment, but I do appreciate it. (I think the algorithm saw I was thinking about ending it and threw this into my suggestions) Thank you, even if you don't see this.
A catholic archbishop once told me i was depressed because i left the church 😂 Thank you so much for putting yourself out there to talk about this-- you all being alive and doing what youre doing here makes my life better ❤💛💚💙💜
This was one of the most beautiful, educational, and empathetic videos on mental illness I've seen in a very long time. It was...kind of a revelation. Thank you for doing this. And I would watch Neil dance to the phonebook.
About mad pride - With queer pride, I've often thought that "pride" here is a matter of assertive self-respect, not some sort of setting oneself up over others but setting oneself up as a peer in the face of the denial of that status. Someone can take that tack and still be cognizant of and an active participant in taking on whatever special needs are generated by that status. It can be saying, "I've got a thing, there may be stuff to do about the thing, but the thing doesn't make me some lesser being and we will not LET people take us that way."
Fuuuuuuck, this is so good. I work in psychiatry, and I have an ADHD type II diagnosis that I see more as a diagnosis of a failure of society. This is all ringing very true with the problems I am seeing in the way psychiatry operates and functions. I was recently offered cognitive behavioural therapy for my anxiety and depression, and not only did I get a startling feeling that they were trying to delegitimize my very real reasons to feel the way I do, but the whole concept was very dystopian: We have created a society that causes so much stress and anguish that we have started inventing and teaching methods to cope with how bad it is.
I am a teen who's been well aware of my chances of developing Bipolar Disorder for years now, and has recently realized that I have long begun doing so. I went a very long time sweeping symptoms under the rug. A couple of years ago, I experienced an excruciating, eight-month long depressive episode, to the point where I could barely move or speak. I've spent my entire life under the impression that depression is something reserved for those who've lost their livelyhoods or loved ones, even during the worst times of my life, mentally. Neil's description at the beginning of the essay rung very true for me. This perspective reminds me that who I am is okay, and that I am not alone. Excellent video, very insightful outside of my own relationship with mental illness. Thanks :)
This video got me out of a bog of doubt for my condition and it’s making me resist to call it an illness anymore. I used Jung when I was younger to help me out of an unstable psyche but I never realised how much constraint it put on myself to confine my understanding to a box I thought was big enough to thrive in. Nowadays, I haven’t been thriving, post mood stabilising medication, not understanding that this is the perspective I never realised I needed. This essay gives me hope and pride for bipolar, for my creativity, and understanding of those around me with their own conditions. Thank you so much, I can now genuinely suffer less ❤
From a fellow depressed Irish person I really appreciate this video, thank you for making this even when your motivation was on the floor. I will definitely have to watch few times to really appreciate the density of information here. After finding out some very disturbing family secrets, being very sick with COVID and trying to resolve life long self esteem and body image issues, I still find it so hard to talk openly with friends and family about my struggles, even if the stigma is not quite as bad as it used to be. On your point about cost of living, I am fortunate enough that I can *just* afford to pay the 280e a month it costs for my private therapy (there's usually nothing left at the end of every month because of it). I too get very worried about how cost of living might mean I have to give that up, when I only feel like im starting to get to grips a little after more than a year there. Hoping for the best for me and for all those out there struggling.
This was such a well put together video. I know it couldn't have been easy to make but thank you so much. I love seeing people share their actual experiences. In particular I loved how grounded the views are, and the mentions of the need for compassion. I feel like a lack of respect and compassion are core issues. I spent the last 35 years of my life seeing psychiatrists trying to get better. It didn't help, it made things worse. I had undiagnosed neurological issues and psychological problems misdiagnosed as psychiatric. I am not even going to go into the history of D.I.D. and why it might have been misdiagnosed. Instead of suggesting I might have other issues, they blamed me for not getting well. I cannot even begin to list the problems with the mental health industry at least in the US. From drug companies trying to find new ways to sell what they have, to arrogant doctors (or nurses they are replacing doctors with), to the private for profit mental 'hospitals', to the industry that surrounds and supports it, and bunches I haven't listed. Things were better 30 years ago so funding is part of the problem, but it isn't the only major issue. At the very least I think we need to take a good hard look at what psychiatry is, weather all the treatments actually help or hurt and quantify that. We must hold them up to scientific scrutiny and hold them as responsible for outcomes as we do other doctors, not to punish them but to force the industry to become more useful. And as radical as it is, I feel like compassion and respect should be part of all health care. If someone goes say 10 years through a system and doesn't improve... someone needs to step in and say hey, what's going on here - with the assumption that the patient isn't the problem.
As an autistic non-binary person with anxiety living in eastern europe, I want to thank you so much for everything you do, Neil and Sarah. (this is my first youtube comment ever, even though this account has existed for many years)
I'm nonbinary and have depression, SAD, and OCD, along with many of the signs of autism (though not yet diagnosed, to be clear). Just know that you're not alone.
Have you ever noticed that depression and anxiety are often spoke about in 2nd person whereas more stigmatized disorders are almost always described in 3rd person? "If you have depression, you might experience these things" vs "if they are a narcissist, they might do these things". It seems to me like a linguistic reflection of how people with stigmatized mental health problems are more often treated as if they have no internal life and are incapable of complex thoughts and motivations.
Perhaps when reflecting on this essay in 5 years, you'll recognize a nuanced gap in logic, an argument that could've been phrased better, maybe even a core misunderstanding - but I'm leaving this comment as record that in the year 2022 it doesn't get much better. You both should be very very proud of putting together such a phenomenal and neaningful work!
Now, normally if I said the words "Fred Durst Jumpscare" that would, in some way, defeat the purpose, in effect ruining the surprise by announcing there is, in fact, a Fred Durst Jumpscare (of sorts), but I imagine, in a video that is one hour and thirty six minutes long, this will only service to enhance the viewer's sense of...anticipation. To those who are cursed by this comment, I can't quite apologize, but I can offer my condolences.
I wish eating disorders were mentioned in this video, as I think society views them differently than other mental illnesses, and the physical side effects also makes them different. Proana communities have already existed for many years, but now get pm scrubbed off of social media sites. There’s still ED spaces, but not many “proana” (which is actually better lol). I think ED spaces are complicated, as they can make one’s illness worse from competition, but they can also save your life. I think they’re in general just misunderstood. And I don’t think it’s possible to be “proud of your eating disorder” the same way you can be “proud” of other mental illnesses
I think is my very favourite of your essays. So incredible, thoughtful, beautiful, and so, so, so kind. Thank you for helping me feel a little bit more okay about feeling so sad. :)
13:37 “ b o o t s ! “ -me, in a very high pitched voice for some reason i will reply to this comment when i have finished the video to tell you how good it is, because your videos are literally always top notch the two of you are by far my favorite youtube duo
Nb Psychology PhD. candidate here -- I don't think I've seen a more nuanced, informed take on mental health. And I absolutely second your views on psychoanalysis -- fascinating storytelling material & English lit. analysis lens, garbage science. (Subscribed!)
I dont know how many times I've been misdiagnosed with borderline or bipolar on my journey to my autism diagnosis. I dont know how many times I've been brushed off in general about my overall health concerns. But I know in this moment that while yes, my antidepressants make everything I can't control tollerable, I know that if society were different I wouldn’t need them. I know I hold trauma because I've been undiagnosed almost my whole life. I know that forcing myself into situations I can't handle causes anxiety. And I know I cope in many unhealthy ways that I work on constantly. I often wonder if in 30 years we might realize that we've turned symptoms into disorders. My list of disorders honestly feels rather reasonable in response to the system (US) that I am subjected to daily. And I refuse to feel guilt or shame because of it. Thank you guys, your videos mean so much to me ❤❤❤
The best help is a wise beloved one The second social worker's / psychiatric care give up the police task! Yes my appartement is very messy! My problem is that the petite bourgiousy makes it a problem My problem is not enough money to meet people, to find my tribe as an unemployed academic tyranny for 30 years
absolutely brilliant, once again. love y'all and sending whatever positive energy y'alls way! as a floridian surrounded by swamps, i also wanted to note that y'all found a lovely bog to shoot in. no recipe in this one either, but still a 10 out of 10.
@@TheLeftistCooks i've been doing a chickpea curry which i think might be vegan? great fun for batch cooking on weekends and then simply reheating in the microwave during the week. lots of great room to play around iwth veg and such in order to personalize it. personally, I'm not vegan or vegetarian, i jsut happened upon this recipe while looking for somethign to do with a bunch of chick peas my mom gave me for some reason. didn't even realize it was vegetarian until liek the 3rd tiem i made it.
This is the best video about mental health I have ever seen. It's incredible how much heart and effort goes into your videos. Also, thanks for introducing me to The Waterboys!
I was diagnosed with BPD about 5 years ago. I'd had a psychiatrist for a few months, and he was going on my previous diagnosis. After I talked with him a while, he asked me to fill out a questionnaire for him. As soon as I saw the questions, I knew what I was going to be diagnosed with I was like oh no, I'm going to turn into Jodi Arias and kill my boyfriend. In my mind, BPD was the crazy as s*** woman who killed somebody disease. As my psychiatrist notice my distress, he reassured me that although personality disorders are patterns that you learned very early in life, BPD is one of the most treatable as long as you have some self-awareness. Although I hate being put into a box, CBT and DBT have worked very well for me, and truly my diagnosis fits almost every feeling I've ever had for my whole life. I always wondered how people could be so calm and just not let their emotions take them away. I thought I didn't have the willpower. But then my psychiatrist told me that wasn't it. He told me that I experience things differently than other people, so it is actually harder for me to control my impulses. Harder for me to deal with the ups and downs without going from ecstasy into doom. It was kind of relief. I thought the problem was I wasn't strong enough, and he told me that the problem was I just didn't know any other way to be. I'm still wacky, but I love that about myself. I'm just not self-destructive anymore. Sorry for the novel
I love you two so much 😭 Mad pride, indeed! Thank you for the linguistic asides. You know I love me a good linguistic aside! Let's talk about clusivity and dual number and verbal aspect and... what were we on about again? Oh right, mental diversity. Did I mention ADHD and anxiety yet? Heh... Some of the things about mad pride remind me very much of the fight for fat pride. It's similar, isn't it, the way people think fat-shaming and keeping identity away from us will 'help' somehow, when really it's just fatphobia? And the same for mad pride, like you were saying: it's not the identity that's the problem; it's the stigma. Neil. I'm really proud of you for working to give up cigarettes.
I've fallen into a little depressive, burnt out and ill state of being, and this inspiring thing helped my brain process my feelings and my situation. Couldn't have come at better time. Really one of the channels I would most heartily recommend to a friend. Love yous, never stop going for it. Lots of love to all
I love this, it came exactly as I am a couple months after a pretty bad break down, but I am in counselling, back to work (at a job that works well for me on a sensory level and lets me play to my strengths) , I am back to busking for an hour or so a day and making art, I feel like I am starting to get back on the mend, just need to see a doc to see if they think meds would help, I had to go awol from my last job after said breakdown, and go on social assistance to get access to counselling and meds because those aren't covered under medicare in the province I live in, I couldn't afford the therapy and meds doing the usual 3 jobs and even at the jobs I had with health plans, they stripped down the mental health ends. My therapist has me trying bibliotherapy right now, found a podcast that goes with the workbook that I listen to while I am making sandwiches at work.
Great video, as always. But it does leave me with a question that's been on my mind for a long time. The video re-states and emphasizes very effectively the dangers and self-deceptions involved in the way the language of psychology has been brought into everyday moral and political discourse. And it does all make sense to me. But when I try to apply it to certain specific situations, I feel like something is missing -- or maybe I'm just misunderstanding in this video's argument. For example, in my own life: my mother was diagnosed with borderline PD, anxiety, and depression when I was a child. This was long before borderline had acquired the stigma it now has, and I don't think she had any real idea of what the concept of "borderline" even meant. I certainly did not. My mother was also emotionally abusive towards me throughout my life, and I spent a great deal of energy trying to understand what was going on. The question "Is she evil or is she crazy?" hung over me for years, or at least it did after I started to realize I was not the problem. So when I finally read about "borderline" in my early adulthood, it felt like a revelation -- I now had language to explain what I had experienced at her hands. The descriptions of other forms of mental illness never seemed to fit anywhere near as closely as this one. Although my mother was in therapy for years, she never really got help for this problem, and I remember reading back then that no one knew of an effective treatment. Since she died I've begun to discover on youtube that there are other people who describe themselves as having BPD -- and they are getting help for it. They often seem like genuinely kind, thoughtful, compassionate people. This discovery has been very odd for me: in every case I recognize something in these people that I also saw in my mother, but they are very, very different from her. Unlike my mother, they show a willingness to admit when they're wrong; they want to do what it takes to avoid hurting their loved ones; they question their own emotional states -- it's amazing to see. I admire them tremendously. They have made me realize that there was something wrong with the way I used the idea of BPD to get a handle on the emotional torture I experienced, because I attributed all of my mother's habitual malice to her BPD. More recently I've been wondering whether the category of "narcissism" -- added to BPD -- might be relevant for my experiences with my mother. I mean, she unequivocally demanded that I make her the center of my life, and she hated me for refusing; so she spent decades alternating between "lovingly" begging me to move back in with her, and cruelly mocking me for my supposed lack of love for her. That sounds like a rather potent mix of borderline and narcissism, right? But I'm much more cautious now, and I'm not interested in using these ideas to categorize and dismiss my mother's mental illness. But my caution leaves me once again confused about how to think about my mother. Was she evil, or just mentally ill? Or is there some other way of thinking about it? That's how the question looks to me on the personal level, but I'm also confused about the politics of this issue. Example: we all have heard that Trump is a "narcissist". And we've all heard the arguments about why we should not use those labels in that way, arguments that are affirmed and expanded in this video. They make sense. But if they are accepted, how do we talk about the things that make Trump's style of bad behavior distinct from, say, the bad behavior of Nixon, or of Jeff Bezos, or of Dave Rubin? I mean, there's something weird and unique about Trump, right? We all see it -- what is it, if not narcissism? Sometimes I think we just need to get used to using this kind of language to mean different things -- in psychology it can have one meaning, in everyday discourse a different meaning. Would that be so bad? But I'm not saying it should -- I don't feel comfortable arguing for it. I don't know. That's the question I still have after watching this wonderful video.
That's one of the things I thought about during the video, especially the personality disorder and "sin" sections. Lately I've heard a lot of stories from friends about a terrible boss they have. The boss is verbally abusive, he lies extremely often, he randomly imposes arbitrary rules that keep people from doing work (e.g. "Stop this meeting right now, don't you know you can't have meetings in the afternoon?!"), he lies to the CEO so that his project keeps getting funded even though it's making no progress, he has delusionally grand ideas about what his project can accomplish, he has attempted to keep people from quitting by ripping up their resignation letters, and much much more. He seems to be somewhat aware that he's the reason why his employees keep quitting and why his project is failing, but he still can't stop these behaviors. I have a hard time describing that boss's behavior as anything but pathological, ableist though that may be. That ableist inclination is due in part to the moral outrage I feel towards him for abusing my friends and acting so irrationally. I'm aware, especially after having watched this, that I'm looking to condemn him for his sins by trying to label him as "disordered". But I still think it's necessary to think that there's "something wrong"™ with my friend's boss, because his actions are wrong and something about him is causing him to do them. There must necessarily be some collection of traits/tendencies/predispositions/etc. which is causing him to act in this unacceptable manner, because he isn't doing it for no reason. No one does anything for "no reason." Whether that collection of traits constitutes a disorder/illness or not, it is causing objectively harmful behaviors that should be curtailed. Maybe that collection of traits when present in other people doesn't always cause harmful behaviors but in this instance it is, so in this instance it constitutes "something wrong". And when those harmful behaviors present in a distinctive recognizable pattern, it is inevitable that people will use some kind of word to label that "something wrong". And I don't think that's inherently bad in theory, even if in practice people are guaranteed to use wrongness labels in unempirical, biased, non-nuanced, and oppressive ways. Whether that label is "oppressive," "abusive," "harmful," "sinful," "evil," "narcissistic"(in the colloquial sense), "has NPD," or simply "something's wrong with them," I think those labels can all be used in biased/oppressive ways. Obviously the armchair psychologist terminology is especially powerful because it's perceived to carry the objectivity of scientific authority, and the language of sin is given power by its association with God's Truth. But it's possible that the best we can do is to minimize the harmful(see, I just did it there) use of these wrongness labels, because I don't think it's possible to stop using them completely. And even if it's ableist to attribute wrongness to mental illness, wrongness must be attributable to something. And even if a "wrong" characteristic is present in everyone to some degree, it still makes sense for people to make normative statements about the point at which the presence of that characteristic is no longer acceptable. But maybe I only think that because I like being right and calling people (others and myself) bad. Maybe that's the exact moral simplicity and lack of nuance that causes this problem.
I relate a lot to both of your comments; learning more about MNS stigmas and conditions has made me reflect on my potential misusage of applying them to people who do bad things, but also leave me longing for an answer: why? Because people are almost always more complex than just their surface appearance and actions - physiology, material conditions, and identity all influence how one forms their worldview and values, but many people can share all those factors and still be good people - what makes people want to hurt other people, especially when many people are good (or at least act that way)? Thinking about it like this, I recognize that humans have been asking similar questions since we could even ask questions, so I suppose thinking that we can definitively answer that is silly of me, unsatisfying as it is.
Thank you, Neil, for your courage, concern and consideration. I truly appreciate your input and hope you feel better. this has been completely illuminating.
I was diagnosed with BPD in my late teenage years, 17 or so, and I've known plenty of people with BPD and even NPD and DID. This is a good video, I'm glad you guys made it, I'm still a new subscriber so I'm still discovering video you guys made, and I haven't disliked one yet
BPD is often just used as an oppressive medical tool for 'difficult' patients and to dismiss them. First time I tried un-alive myself, I was labelled with cluster B traits after being asked a few questions, even though literally the only trait I possessed was 'self-harm' as in, I tried to end my life. I've never engaged in any behaviour where I inflict harm onto myself such as cutting. Afterwards I had spoken over multiple sessions with two different psychologists and both agreed I didn't display any cluster B traits. The accurate disorders I have been diagnosed with are major depressive disorder, persistent depressive disorder, avoidant personality disorder, general anxiety disorder. All of which I was able to accurately self-diagnose before getting an official diagnosis. Second death attempt I had the method pre-planned for two years and this time I got labelled as borderline personality disorder after like a five minute conversation, which is not adequate time to diagnose a personality disorder. The symptoms just didn't apply to me at all. The death attempt was given a final push by someone I dated years ago randomly coming out of nowhere spreading lies about me saying I r*ped and abused them when the reality is our relationship was very smooth-sailing without conflict, there was no coercion or intoxicated state or withdrawal of consent or anything like that. They were even the one who initiated anything sexual and I was prudent to assure they felt safe and comfortable. They just kinda decided years later that they regretted it and that it was therefore r*pe and had to create fictional things that didn't happen and lie about how past events occurred in order to present me as a perpetrator. So I guess they used this as confirmation bias for "unstable relationships" even though if a partner or ex-partner randomly comes out of nowhere causing malicious harm to you without any previous signs, it's impossible to predict something like that happening and it's completely absurd to categorise someone with a mental illness due to being a victim of such a scenario.
You guys really have hit your stride with this video, it's a great mix of comedy, informative content and emotionally resonant personal commentary, and well worth the runtime.
Love this. I also went down the "I'm a massive narc" rabbit hole, but I've also been depressed or very depressed all my life. I was autistic all along, but I hated myself so much I gave myself a different neurological (fatigue) condition by age 30. Never dreamed I was autistic until 6 years later. I love the visible disability, I feel very differently about it now I can't walk than I did when I was just a dick who nobody liked. What is reality eh? (edit) Thing is, I really can't explain my thoughts usually (nature or nurture, who knows) so archetypes and astrology actually quite helpful in many ways as a way to see the inside of your head, and I've had really bad experiences with CBT - so quite frankly, fuck cbt as well imo. I've been on all the antidepressants since 2006 and while they have sometimes stopped me crying every day, they didn't do shit apart from that, just give you insomnia for a year when you try to come off them. The chemical imbalance theory has been disproved. Anyway - I agree (except about cbt) and you said it wayyy better than I ever could while in a big dark hole, so nice one, solidarity, love this channel and I love the radical empathy, maybe I can use that to stop hating myself and go back into the world 💖
I feel like 'laziness' is a weird word that doesn't make sense, it kind of implies; 'people decide to be unproductive and they're worse people for it'. I don't think I worded it well, but I don't understand how to word it.
it's a capitalism brain thing. people can't stand the fact that others aren't being productive all the time even though we aren't made to be mindless work robots
Part of the actually autistic community, and we both reject the medical model of disability and insist on calling autism a disability. We require accomodations that typically aren't readily available in an average setting, so we are disabled. If said accomodations was so commonplace that we would barely call is an accomodation, we wouldn't be disabled. That is the social model of disability. What makes someone disabled is not their difference, it's about how easy/hard it is to navigate society comapred to abled people. For example, a person who can't swim would be disabled in a town where you have to swim to get around. A person who can't cross their eyes would be disabled in a society where eye crossing was an important part of communication.
I liked this essay very much. I've come to count on you presenting ideas with nuance, empathy, and inquisitiveness, and it's always pleasant to see. In service to the idea of keeping ourselves accountable, I want to point out that a lot of the arguments in the "Mad Pride and Community Support" section against abolition of the mental health industry are identical to the ones used by those who defend the police - "I know a lot of police and they're nice people," "I know people who have been helped by the police," "Police are people who want to help," etc. I'm also someone who studied psychology and worked in mental health for a number of years, so I know how it stings to be told "This field you/people you care about are in is inherently and irredeemably bad." But while I'm not yet sold on abolition either, I think we should be concerned when our arguments start sounding like the ones made by the Blue Lives Matter crowd.
I'm a mad pride activist and supporter of psychiatric abolition. The main reason why I'm against psychiatry is because of its practice of non-consensual treatment and heavy reliance on the use of torture (including solitary confinement, forced drugging, having to "earn freedoms", emotional blackmail). You might be familiar with LGBT and autism conversion therapies, in particular ABA, and how intensely destructive those practices are to people's identities and mental health. Those practices are the norm in closed institutions. I've talked with some survivors for whom treatment was so intensely painful they desperately tried escape treatment by any means necessary, including dying. The only way to leave is to accept that you're mentally ill, staff knows better than you and does this to help you. Then there's lying about depression being caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain or unsubstantiated claims that ECT is proven effective even though the only thing it does is causing brain damage (though not as severe as lobotomy). I've talked with people who where harmed by CBT. I know plenty of stories of "voluntary" treatment where therapists engage in gaslighting and blackmail. The mental health care system causes so much harm to people and does so with near absolute impunity, that I honestly believe we'd be better off without it.
you guys have this knack of articulating concepts i have been struggling to communicate to friends, especially the bit about moving past a romanticizing/burdensome false binary of mental illness i'm currently on my own quest to getting diagnosed, psych eval and all, since i've been falling way behind academically. i thought it was interesting when the link between "craziness" and creativity was brought up, only because i'm an artist and i've tried to resist the mad genius stereotype. i feel like this framing, though, allowed me to take some pride in the cool art i've made while in a bad state of mind. i've long had some simmering feelings about how personality disorders, like NPD and ASPD, are demonized (not to mention schizophrenia and psychosis in general) - thank you for giving me the push to actually think about this more deeply. mad pride seems cool in that it has all kinds of mentally ill people, and not the depression/anxiety duo that gets an overwhelming amount of attention from online mental health spaces. sorry, this comment is all over the place lol - i really appreciate this video :)
I've been diagnosed as Autistic for almost a decade now. I've been in Autistic Spaces. From what I've seen (as well as my own feelings on the matter). Being Autistic IS a Disability. BUT! It's not a bad thing. There are some things I just can't do. It hinders my way of doing things in a society not accommodating. I am Disabled. But Disabled isn't a bad word, or a bad thing. So while I don't speak for the Autistic Community, I know that I'm not the only Autistic person who feels this way.
As someone diagnosed with BPD, ASD, and waiting to get my probable ADHD diagnosis, this video was very helpful. To not be treated like a monster because of my BPD diagnosis and to actually have it addressed with the seriousness that it deserves by someone other than 40+ year old boring doctors on RUclips (nothing against them though - the good ones at least -, I do really like a few), it feels so incredibly good. Thank you :)
i am agender and as such count myself also as non-binary and trans. i didn't know you for some months after i knew that much about myself. seeing your presentation of self and gender makes me feel "not that much out there", i do not feel like being on my own anymore. thank you
Yup! We exist :D I think there's a lot more agender people out there, but not a lot of people know what agender is. There's also a lot of agender people feeling like they're an "imposter" of sort, so they're not as outspoken. But yeah! Me and my partner are agender as well :3 There's also interestingly a link between ADHD and Autistic people and gender non conformity! I find that neat.
@@TwixtheFox Agreed, but also reject all psychiatric labels, too and pathologies and since they were all named from terrible things and perceptions and is also "#abelist" if also anti-able, but have been taught that as the opposite and shame more aware stuff?
Just noting this for later to see if my thinking changes after watching the video: Mental Illness is a category that has been helpful to me because it has allowed me to understand when I am hitting what feels like a impenetrable wall with someone. Where it feels like there should be a way to make since of what is happening with their cognitive processes but there just isn’t, even after years of trying. It was a lot more continuously frustrating when I didn’t understand that mental illness was involved. I was taking things more personally. I wasn’t understanding that there wasn’t a way for the other person to access insight to the cognitive issues they are having. The lack of insight, is the very thing at the heart of the difficulty. Mental illness has this particular experience of coming up against a confusing barrier that doesn’t go away or get resolved, and is also hard to see. It is underneath everything else. Once the issues are understood as mental illness the whole approach to creating a better situation sifts. It allows a way to depersonalize and get to actual help in a meaningful way.
I'm an overweight Hispanic woman with a disability. Every doctor I went to in Texas for pain told me it was the fault of my weight.
Then I moved out of state and doctors immediately saw that the reason I was in pain was because of a botched surgery that slowly destroyed my ankle to the point there was no more cartilage and it had to be fused because bone grinding on bone REALLY hurts. Not a single doctor outside of Texas mentioned my weight at all.
Sharing the story because bias is dangerous bs and the comment helps this video appease the RUclips algorithm overlords :)
You're really good at making entertaining and informative video essays.
As a black woman who is DEFINITELY mistrustful of the medical profession- and has had too many mental health traumas and misdiagnosis...you are appreciated.
I’m a psychiatric survivor, and I just wanted to add that psych abolition and antipsych is about having treatments available to those that want it, along with different modalities of understanding madness. We want everyone to have the tools for healing that are right for them, and that looks different for every person. What we do not want is coercion: that is violence. I cannot begin to describe the sheer trauma of being abused by the psychiatric system repeatedly, in different forms, and not being believed. There are no meaningful safeguards in place to prevent psychiatric abuse and psychiatric violence. The women who abused me went on to abuse at least one more person within the month in the same way. This particular abuse is illegal in my area. The regulatory board didn’t even give her a slap on the wrist. As far as I know, she’s still out there, and that’s the tip of the iceberg.
When I was visibly having a mental breakdown, having stress and trauma induced aphasia, due to the stress and fear caused by such coercive and controlling methods, I had this conflated with catatonia. As psychiatrists often do for selective mutism, and severe aphasia in autistics. When I finally built up the courage to say I wasn't taking their poisonous neuroleptics my psych said ''you're making this really difficult''. I still am trying to figure out whether he meant to forcebly drug me, or something else. I just can't see it meaning anything else. Also he just outright ignored me constantly repeating, literally every time I saw him, the trauma and biological damage of forced childhood ritalin. Full of GI issues, metabolic issues, fatigue, hyperalgesia and they thought it apt to put me on some drug that causes metabolic damage. I cannot, I will not forgive. I want vengeance tbh I fight daily with feelings of wanting revenge. Can't imagine how you feel
In America, most of our mental health facilities are rampant with abuse. Some of it is even legal, although most of it isn't. But who's going to believe the escaped mental health patient over a board of doctors?
I'm so sorry you live such a horrid experience in the hands of the f****** psychiatric systems, and also I want to thank you for sharing your experience and giving voice to the importance of anti-psychiatric thought.
I’m right there with you in this.
Oh man you just blew my mind, I had never thought to abolish it in its entirety but fuck. Yes. Actually. I know this is mainly about psych *wards*, as a movement, but I'm going to relate something here.
I've been to countless psychiatrists who insist on conflating the relational difficulty I have as a neurodivergent person with BPD. All of my friends say I am reliable and even-tempered and that my affections are consistent. That I have never made them feel loved one day and hated the next (which is colloquially called splitting and is a cornerstone of bpd). The psychiatrists do not value these accounts because all of my friendships are online, but all of my friendships are online because I'm neurodivergent and autism makes it hard to talk to new people. I don't think the unstable sense of self is an accurate description of my situation, I know who I am, I just don't know what to do with it. They won't accept the neurodivergent explanation of my constant craving for new things (adhd is like that) because I wasn't diagnosed as a child because I couldn't see a shrink until 16 and even then it was in secret from my father. And even if they did diagnose me with adhd I wouldn't get stimulant medication because they don't prescribe it to adults who never took it as children. Why did I not get to take it as a child, I wonder!
It's a loop that I see the way out of, but the cruel idiots I have to depend on literally will not let me, because they're trained to see checkboxes and not people. I've literally been told I'm not an authority on my own experience of my mental health. Not to say that I've never been wrong, but me being wrong is never met with a genuine effort to explain the current understanding of reality as it stands. Only with contempt and anger, because the thing they don't like isn't that I misunderstood myself, it's that I questioned them.
Abolition is starting to sound great. Say when :)
An old man I met in AA once gave me the best advice I've ever gotten about dealing with depression. He told me the only thing that has ever worked (?) for me, which is to accept it.
I used to try to fight my way out, force myself to do more than I was really capable, bully myself into eating when I didn't have an appetite, and shame myself as lazy and self obsessed and indulgent.
Now when a depressive episode hits I try to recognize and acknowledge it. "I am depressed today and it will pass." I go easy on myself in those times. Maybe it's ok to binge British panel shows for a couple days straight. Maybe I really do need to be alone for awhile. Maybe it's ok to eat cereal for several meals in a row. I'll get back to my routine when this episode is over.
Depression still sucks, but it sucks a lot less without adding all that extra shame, guilt, and frustration; without trying to force yourself out of it.
Underrated comment :-)
But that can still lead to destruction of the body, unless also psychosomatic, but could lower immunity?
And/or overtime?
And by colonial entropic intake?
That could also be seen as enabling colonialism and/or is?
Is it narcissistic to feel pride, when you listen to someone on the internet validating your thoughts or is the warm, cozy feeling in my chest coming from it reducing my anxiety about being wrong or misunderstood?
- I don't care, actually. I'm mad and this is a perfect essay! Thank you ♡
I think pride is the opposite of shame, and an expression of dominance culture. It's a counter reaction to being shamed, and holds a lot of aggressive energy from trauma and It is a reclaiming of autonomy and identity but it does so through dominative, exclusory measures. Much like BLM and other such minority promoting groups. What it aims to achieve is equality, but only provides a platform for more domination. There is a reason pride is considered a sin and I think it stems from religions as monastics could see that such behaviours and mentalities create power dynamics even if they don't intend to. Obviously religion is an expression of dominance culture too but a lot of monastics, especially in religions such as buddhism and hinduism (as opposed to more western doctrines and those of the middle east) often don't contribute to power dynamics at all. Pride is an expression of ego and identity, not that these are something that we need to be rid of. Doing so would be to become a kind of wordly fossil. Become too monastic you end up being unable to operate properly in the physical plane, but become too devoid of spiritual and existential purpose/experiences, then you become materialistic, psychopathic, sociopathic etc. So a balance between the two, and not contributing to power dynamics by avoiding the pride thing is ideal.
I do think that the purpose of a lot of ''pride'' events is an effort to normalise. So in that regard they're serving their purpose, but again, it can easily become exclusory and dominative. Maybe if we rename and repurpose ''pride'' stuff into ''acceptance''. Acceptance feels like the centre between pride and shame.
@@danielmclaughlin2145 ughhhhhhh
alright lets sift through this
firstly: blm is not a dominant and aggressive movement, they want to not get shot by police, thats pretty fucking reasonable to me idk
a group saying “don’t oppress us” is not taking power or becoming dominant, it is acting to destroy power and dominance
-a very white person who doesn’t want to get in the way of change
secondly: acceptance is not enough because that implies that Normal People, from their high seat of authority, should accept us strange and lonely people into their world. pride, on the other hand, doesn’t imply that anyone is superior to anyone else, but that those who our society says are deviant should take pride in the aspects of themselves that make them unique, and thereby conquer their socialized shame.
shame is a present and self reproducing force in our society, so (like all forms of oppression) active resistance is necessary to do away with it, not just passive condemnation.
the difference between acceptance and pride is analogous to the difference between being non racist and antiracist. the prior is passive, easy, and useless, and the latter is active, often difficult, and produces actual results.
TL;DR:
if you are against pride you are against progress, and you can leave us people who want to solve actual issues alone
@@carsonpearce5980 I think pride is regressive. It is the antithesis of shame. Shame is submissive, and pride is dominating.
We need to promote acceptance not pride. Becomes a pendulum of power dynamics. Also, BLM is in part a toxic movement due to this expression of power and dominance. That's what pride does. Or are we going to ignore the riots and looting? Doubt it's all paid opposition lol
@@danielmclaughlin2145 i know what you think, and i think you’re wrong
lol
also the looting isnt paid opposition, its more likely just people who aren’t invested in the ideology and are willing to take the presented opportunity to advance their own wealth despite its consequences for the optics of the movement that they dont care about.
@@carsonpearce5980 You can think i'm wrong thats fine. Plenty people think lots of things which are untrue.
I’m not finished with the video, but I just had to stop and say something now- THANK YOU for the section on NPD. My dad has NPD. At least, I’m pretty sure-not because I armchair diagnosed him, but because this has been tacitly admitted by both of my parents, but they’re both pretty dodgy about details, and my dad REALLY resist’s participating in any form of therapy or treatment unless it’s literally his last resort.
Anyway, I’m often afraid of telling people this. I have to caveat it with a lot of things, and I obviously don’t share it outside of more intimate contexts. It’s hard to share because I love my dad-everyone loves my dad, honestly-he’s a super cool and engaging person. But being his child or spouse is very different than even being his friend. It’s so, so hard for me to convey to people that even though some aspects of my childhood WERE abusive, and even though I am careful to set firm boundaries and make hard choices RE: my family sometimes, my dad is not an evil person. Not by a long shot. NPD doesn’t make you an evil person, but it can make you a difficult person; difficult to love, and difficult to be loved by. I see why he does the things he does (surprise: he was emotionally abused throughout childhood) but that doesn’t excuse them, and it doesn’t mean I have to justify or accept them, but it also does not mean that he is irrevocably toxic. People are NEVER binary. And the way we as a society deal with these things and explain these things to ourselves just weighs on me. I can accept it. But the burden of explaining the nuance is just so heavy sometimes.
Anyway, I feel seen. Thank you.
[edited for spelling, lol]
Also from personal experiences would say it comes from having multiple, seemingly contradictory mindsets?
Hmm, I'm an ADHDer who did really well in school (structure, feedback, learning new stuff-yay!) but absolutely fell to pieces in the workforce (repetitive drudgery, lack of clearly enumerated expectations-boo!), so I always feel weird that my experience with neurodivergence is itself kinda atypical? It's also a reason why I didn't get diagnosed until I was 37...
Thanks for this beautiful and articulate video.
It’s hard to get caught when you have a genuine love of learning fostered by your family, so your primary school years go great 😭
i think that's considered more typical of ADHD in women and girls, or sometimes what's called inattentive ADHD, where you do ok with structure and following instructions but then struggle once the structure is gone, as opposed to the hyperactive presentation which is the stereotypical ADHD of a rowdy boy bouncing off the walls and getting into fights.
@@risamaeveactually, hyperactivity in girls is not diagnosed a lot because it just present in other ways like talking a lot, drawing all class, fidgeting with pens, and things like that that are less visible since girls avoid all the jumping because they are conditioned to not show such energy. So saying that it's a girls add/boys adhd thing is not accurate, and, even the add/adhd distinction shouldn't exist (in my opinion) because there's not a difference at neurological levels.
Also, a lot of people with adhd do better in school that later in life because they have less decisions to make and less executive functions to apply. Usually, if you live in an average household, your caretakers cook, make your doctors appointments, wake you up, get you breakfast, take you to school, tell you to clean your room or you're grounded, take care of your pets, you don't need to think that much about money, etc etc. And school is still easy compared to university where adults study. No hundred pages papers to read, no interviews to make, no sources to keep track, etc etc.
So in some cases, being a child and going to school is waaaay less tiring than adult life.
As someone diagnosed with two personality disorders and have especially struggled hard with thoughts of suicide, I really love this so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
@@actuallyasim I am fortunately! 🥰 Thank you
Wishing you the best as well!
L
I just wish more people didn't stigmatize this stuff but instead saw the value in supporting different types of people. People with personality disorders go through a lot but when they have the chance to thrive add so much value and diversity to life. Sometimes mental illness is ugly but everyone has their shit, just let people do their thing and provide help when appropriate.
My boyfriend has NPD with comorbid OSDD and has struggled a lot. But I love him so much, he's just one of the most remarkable men I have ever met. He has been through so much, has put so much effort into healing and yet is so bad ass, resilient, hilarious, and just idk brings things into my life I would have never experienced without him. I am so proud of who he is including the NPD, yes he has a different emotional baseline but that is okay. He has a different perspective than me which is good to bounce ideas off, he is so creative makes the most interesting stories and art to cope with some behavioural tendencies. He used to before we met apparently he lied lot about being skilled to impress people, but now just actually is very skilled in several avenues and just shows people. Then he has something to actually feel good about. I hate seeing him suffer, but I also love seeing him gain more self pride. I have learned a lot from him about that actually for myself as I have DID and struggle myself with self esteem.
I'm glad you have good people around you and I'm sure you add a lot to the world around you. I hope nothing but healing for you 🖤 the stigma around these things makes no sense. People with personality disorders are not bad people, there is not such thing as a "bad person disorder." Everyone deserves care and being mentally ill doesn't make anyone less worthy.
There is cool shit about hoe everyone's brain works and we should be proud of that as a society.
I've long been conflicted over the remote emotional fulfillment of the comment section... it ("you") makes me feel so connected to a world that irl is harder but not impossible to access... i really cherish you people and your kindness, we really are here and doing this, it just mystifies me how immersed i can feel in comment section encouragement... i mean it's an extension of the parasocial relationship usually ascribed as host-viewer, it's good practice anyway for testing the kindness and normalcy you're capable of and long to be connected to... i feel like i love you, and it makes me temper positive feelings toward coworkers, strangers in the street, etc
I am depressed, anxious, trans and autistic, and used to fear any expression of self esteem was narcissistic. This video hits hard.
How did you fix it? It's something I've been struggling with for some time
@@JakubWaniek I've been trying to accept that that fear and shame aren't things someone with narcissism would be able to experience, as well as finding legitimate reasons to compliment myself and having supportive people to talk to is also beneficial. I would not say I am fixed though.
I wish you the best in your struggle.
Same holy sh1t. I felt scared that actually giving love to myself would make me narcissistic and hence didn't think about self love. But what I realize is that having self love and confidence is not narcissism.
@@lorrygoth Thank you. I suppose that does make sense, but of course these issues are not really rooted in rationality in the first place. I'll try to work on that!
@@thesevenkingswelove9554 Exactly! And it's a feedback loop: the more you shame yourself for expressing self-esteem, the lower your self-esteem gets, so the more you shame yourself...
I massively appreciate this essay and everyone involved in making it.
Big same.
same
me too! neil is such an aries for managing to make a video essay while in the throes of depression, i’m proud of them :)
SSRI didn't work for me, but when I started an SNRI antidepressant for chronic pain (fibromyalgia, hypermobility), it helped so much! My brain/body needed help hanging on to more norepinephrine, not just serotonin. But the biggest contributors to my depressive episodes have always been when I have little or no say or power over my bodily autonomy and socioeconomic status. The biggest help has been finding a community of neurodiverse, queer, chronically ill, and disabled friends online. Treating my ADHD and my severe PMS with medications helps tons, too.
hey there can you share the med you're taking for your pain and hypermobility? I have a similar cocktail of conditions and symptoms and SSRIs nor treatments for bipolar have helped me. I am always looking for other peoples experiences with medication hoping to trial more and find one that works.
@@themidnightcleric Sorry for the delayed reply. The medication prescribed for my fibromyalgia (chronic pain) is duloxetine, an SNRI (serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor). The N stands for norepinephrine, one of the three hormones most often associated with pain management. It's not a cure, but it helps a ton and I don't wake up every morning feeling like every one of my ribs has been ripped out and shoved back in.
Whatever the condition, I highly recommend trying Fascial Counterstrain (FCS) therapy with a physical therapist. Fascia hold the entire body together and affect, and are effected by, every system in the body. It's gentler than massage or pressure point therapy, and you're fully clothed and resting the entire time. It's helped me recover from a two-year burnout and find my true baseline of pain and mobility. It especially improves my lymph drainage, tendon pain, mental clarity, and GI function. My state insurance, Medicare here in the USA, covered it with a particular provider for a while, but I've moved to another direct-pay provider.
Since a lot of my pain is related to hypermobility, twice weekly chiropractic keeps me mobile and reduces pain and neurological overwhelm.
Everyone responds differently to medications and other treatments, so please don't give up if what works for someone else isn't the right fit for you.
from one depressive with an off and on love affair with the idea of dying to the next: thanks
Damn what a nice way to describe it. Definitely sounds like me
To anyone reading this who also has nightmares almost every night, I'm so sorry and you are not alone.
I've had very vivid nightmares since age three, not every night but they sometimes go up in frequency, as they are at the moment. Sigh. A few times I've fallen out of bed as I've been thrashing about in terror in my sleep.
I’m a CBT/DBT/ACT licensed master’s level therapist in the US. Sorry in advance, this is long; I could talk on this subject forever… The personality disorder chapter made me react like the experts in the next chapter 😅… but that’s too nuanced for a YT comment. Appreciate mentioning other orientations like CBT as pretty good but wish you spoke more on them and how differ from this version of psychoanalysis; especially as many of us were also influenced by Rogers to be more collaborative in treatment.
How much someone gets training on psychoanalysis, Freud and Jung, depends on their program. I was in school for my BS and MA in the mid ‘00s- mid ‘10s. For my core curriculum, psychoanalysis/psychodynamics was mainly a section in a couple theories/history classes (but other key figures in different classes did come from this school of thought- Erik Erikson) with much more emphasis on Freud; Jung was like a couple slides. I didn’t take the electives that probably discussed him more. But Jung was always more popular with new age types than scientific academics.
Freud still gets respect bc he was the first and tried to be relatively scientific but limited by many factors… remember when he started, germ theory wasn’t fully accepted and his contemporaries were treating hysteria with manual stimulation, to keep the uterus from traveling all over the body; one even invented the v!brator bc his hands kept cramping… talking to these women was downright progressive, and also can see how he was primed to think psychosexually… and his ideas evolved and changed a lot over the course of his work… as history seems to repeat, I have a new found appreciation for Sigmund and Anna (daughter) Freud’s defense mechanisms (early-mid 1930s); not that I totally agree, more like “ah..ok… yeah, I see how you got there...” (if I remember correctly, they were studying “normal” young men by this time… in Austria… soo…). Anna also said “it’s abnormal to be normal in adolescence” (sometimes the translation is a little different); so not nearly as strict and pathologizing as portrayed in the mainstream…
Also, and you talked on this, there’s a big difference between what we learn in school and know as clinicians and how the institutions of hospitals, insurance, APA, etc force us to practice. Many of the people still in power came up before the feminist and multicultural waves of the 80s and 90s became the standard (Jordan Peterson was among the last group of men before the field officially embraced diversity and I think that explains a lot about him)… and effective therapy is very different from sales and not very compatible with capitalism… all the ethical dilemmas that result is why we burnout so fast..
While the 2000s and 2010s were all about multiculturalism, systems in theory, and rejecting nature vs nurture, looking for what different modalities/orientations got right, the 2020s are gearing up to be more systems in practice. Our individual interventions are mere bandaids on bull3t wounds in this current system and we’ve been saying it for a long time… seriously wanting for all the burnt out mental health clinicians, teachers, and nurses to join forces like we’re the Avengers of professional caregivers against the current systems and institutions 👨🏾💼🦸🏽👩🏻🏫🦸🏼♂️🧑🏽⚕️🦸🏿♀️😂
I hope the leftists cooks read your comment snd get inspired to make a history video on the progression of psychology. As a queer person, I was outright conbative towards my therapist at the beginning and straight up told them "listen, i am here because the thoughts on unliving myself have taken me here, but I don't trust y'all's profession none since both being gay and trans were treated as mental illness until recently, also have had some of y'all tell me in therapy my sexuality doesn't exist; plus I'm scared y'all gonna send me to an institution which is gonna keep me alive while ruining my finantial future, because y'all ain't free here"; I could only trust my therapist, who is queer themselves, after we addressed that and made damn sure what were the conditions for institutionalization/calling 911/etc. I need to be aware that my therapist understands that we are in 2020, and that they aren't relying only in outdated biases. Or I'm walking out, which I've done with multiple therapists because i can't pay somebody to educate them during therapy. I'm too broke for that ish. Same as the bible, like, say Jesus was real; cool cool, nobody had a phone in the bible stories, I think nobody should expect to use the bible as a guide for life in 2020, although they can take bits and pieces as part of their study of humanity.
I would really appreciate the leftists cooks doing a video on how to out science in historical context, kind of likee how they did a video on how to read scientific literature.
@@wen6519 thank you for sharing! my bachelors was VERY research/science heavy and my masters was multicultural application focused; so it's always mind-boggling when i come across anyone bringing the bible or jesus into therapy...
your point about only trusting a queer therapist reminded me of a "funny" story and my ongoing/never-ending battle with femme invisibility (even with an asymmetrical pixie, don't "look gay".. i joke about getting 🏳🌈tattooed on my forehead but idk if that would work, lol)... when i worked for a program, had a few clients request to have (kinda problematic "strictly d!ckly" straight woman) over me (lesbian/pan) "because i want a queer therapist who can understand" ...i was professional and maintained my composure, but inside i was screaming😭🤪🤦♀
Peer support, counseling, and advocacy are the next step in building useful and patient and community oriented treatment and support services... On so many levels from normal medical care, mental health (of course) to the judicial system...
The vibrator thing is a myth, just so you know. Women were never masturbated as a treatment either.
CBT
Thank you, so much, for the section on personality disorders. As someone with BPD, I have indeed generally seen BPD spoken of as always synonymous with "bad person". Which is tough, because my psychiatrist explicitly told me that it's a result of a lifetime of, basically, mistreatment: abuse at home, ostracisation and bullying throughout school and even the workplace--the second and third there resulting from it taking until 35 and 40 to get properly diagnosed with ADHD and Autism, respectively. I was, instead, (mis)diagnosed and even re-diagnosed with various psychiatric illnesses to explain my, well, behaviour (esp the wild mood swings, which were overwhelmingly often meltdowns and shutdowns) and even some of my *physical* ailments. Family, (former) friends, teachers, peers, coworkers, management, etc, treated me like I was a weird, like I was broken, like I was a crazy rhymes-with-witch with no value, and I reacted by... developing a personality disorder to go with my heaping dose of unrecognised but most importantly *un-helped* neurodivergence.
I'm not a monster. I'm hurt.
Lord, 30 mins in and I'm really digging it. As a ADHD & Autistic person it has been wonderful to hear so many different content creators finally start to get on the same pages as I have been for a while about mental illness & neurodiversity. Over the summer I was in a mentorship program and was lucky enough to work with a lot of neurodiverse people as their mentor and talked candidly about what disability is like for us, and my consistent refrain was and has been that the majority of it is because we live in a social world not build by us or for us, and when those things collide, the system would prefer to grind us to powder than admit it is not effective and improve. There is so much of our condition, and those of others listed as mentally ill, that I find is the product of this interaction, that I find beginning from the phrase, "You aren't broken, we are different." Is a much stronger, and more immediately actionable thing than the vast majority of shit we often see others in power actually do. And by focusing on how that difference is okay and can suck at worst or is a joy in our lives, we can begin to find healthier systems for dealing with it both as individuals and a social groups.
I'd also like to add that I deeply appreciate Sarah's walkthrough of NPD and how these terms are used. It was insightful not just for the explanation of how these terms are used as weapons, but helped me realize the weird, unique intersection many of us in the mentally ills & neurodiv spectrum live in where our condition is often used as something like a living slur upon ourselves. The word becomes a weapon to wield against us, but is also one we use on ourselves, and often with shame, so we end up in a situation where we hate the titles for our condition but often internalize the things said about it as true, even when they are not. And that baggage harms us, and what's worse delays our actual ability to help ourselves, both because we internalize the shit ignorance and bigotry feeds use without knowing, and because it tends to discourage one from investigating further, or knowing what sources are credible to look for. Why would someone want to know more about a condition when it's already so awful, why would I want to look up something that seems bound and determined to make me feel worse with what I ALREADY know? Ableism intersects with so many other issues that untangling it can take a lifetime, and often needs community support from experts with lived experience, to actually get aid. And this last part can be one of the hardest things within this system.
There is so much I could talk about with this, but know that I've found this as a neurodiv person very useful ^-^.
I have been falsely diagnosed with BPD (surprise I'm AFAB and have S/H and unalive tendencies), and sobI was pushed into doing DBT. Most of it was absolutely the opposite of helpful, but the ONE THING that has helped me more than anything is radical acceptance. Imposter syndrome is so easy to fall into when you are trying to reject those parts of yourself you don't like. When you accept them, unconditionally and move forward with the assumption you are justified in your own experience, life with mental illness completely opened up for me. I urge anyone dealing with self doubt around their mental illness to look into it
Came for the well-researched analysis, stayed for the beautiful, inspiring honesty and motivation to care for other people. This is an incredibly important video, and a message that needs to spread.
As a psychologist, I adore this whole essay. It's excellently crafted, well researched, and manages to walk the tightrope of critiquing the institutions and practices of mental health care while recognizing the good and well intentioned care that also goes into it. I'd highly recommend checking out Neuroqueer Heresies by Nick Walker for a look at the topic from the perspective of the neurodiversity movement. It's a lot of the same conclusions, but with a different trajectory/path. Either way as a very queer trans autistic person, I found it exceptionally affirming and again highly recommend it.
Gorgeous comment. Thank you
I’m actually sending this to my therapist because I think he’ll like it lol
a video essay we didn’t deserve but NEEDED. so powerful, so well informed, so moving, so compassionate. y’all’s best work yet honestly i can’t believe i just casually watched the post modern video one day like two months ago and now im yoni deep in this weird community with y’all and i love it 💜
Several years ago I told my doctor, who was already treating me for anxiety and depression, that I'd had suicidal thoughts a few months before. He gave me two options; wait at his office for an ambulance, or go to the hospital on my own. I spent 26 hours in that hospital, most of them in the psych ward, terrified out of my mind and completely unable to ask any of the perfectly nice nurses for anything. I became convinced they were going to keep me there against my will. In the morning, while I was anxiously waiting to see if they'd let me leave, my mum called (I lied about where I was) to say our family dog had died overnight. The trauma from that day may never leave me, but hearing you acknowledge that psychiatric hospitalisation can be traumatising goes a long way to relieve it. Thank you for making this. And good luck with your anti-depressants. I know very well the balancing act of benefits to side effects.
My first and only suicide attempt was half hearted and painful. I decided that I wasn't going to try it again, plus it would break my parents hearts (they were always good to me). 2 years later and I haven't conquered it, I think it will always be there. Buuuuuut I have 2 suggestions that have really helped me start to ENJOY living (at least time to time).
1.) I started approaching life with the mindset, that I should at least give myself the opportunity to havea good day. I wake up every day tired and sad, not wanting to do anything, and for the longest time I'd just lie there feeling both mentally and physically terrible (When it first started I wasn't used to waking up with no motivation so I was sure how to handle it. I always had negative thoughts but they started to overwhelm me after college)
I started out doing little things. If I dont at least eat anything theres no chance that this day is going to go well so I'll snack on something small and easy like trail mix, or maybe buy a cheap sandwich. If I wasn't going to do anything else, I'd at least put on sad music and slowly clean up around the house. A clean environment made my mind feel cleaner.
None of this stopped the depression, but I found that if I at least did the little things, when something good happened, i could at least appreciate it. Someone would crack a joke, and I would sometimes even laugh.
I started to stretch, I wanted to exercise but it was too hard, "too much effort, for what?" I would think, but i figured I could at least sit up in bed and try to tocuh my toes, I also googled a bunch of stretches. Then someting amazing happened.... after months of stretching, I became more flexible. I had changed myself in this tiny imperceptible way, and when I first realized, I started crying, I cried long and hard then laughed at myself a bit, and I felt it. That long lost spark that I thought was extinguished in soul. Motivation, not reasoning with myself, not self extortion or forcing myself to act, but a DESIRE to continue to improve.
I started going for short walks around the neighborhood, every now and then I might even meet a stranger with a dog or couple or family and exchange a word or two. I started doing pushups and squats, not a lot, just 10 of each would feel rewarding. I felt capable of controlling my own life at least a little and then one day at work amidst of all these slow changes which felt like a short flurry and yet also a lifetime, an eternity... I made a joke, and people laughed. I felt a rush, I felt good, I had surprised myself, "oh yeah" I thought... "I used to be funny, what happened to me?".... that brief moment of joy and human connection preceded another cataclysmic spiral downards. It had been months i had been working so hard just to realize what shadow of my old self I still was. Everything felt impossible and overwhelming and my mind... my body buckled.
I fell back in to all my old familiar self destructive habits, but something was different this time. I knew where this road led, was I going to truly waste everything I had done to change over the past few months? No, its either death or living, I need to at least TRY to live. So after a few days I was back at it. I was eating again, cleaning, moving my body trying my best to quiet and ease my tumultuous mind.
As time passed I acheived new mile stones, each one giving me just a bit more confidenstarted to push on. I started doing hard exercises, I bought weights, I started to look good. I forced myself to start talking to my coworkers more, I even made a few more jokes every now and again, and then a another change. I was invited out to a bar.... socializing? Friends? I was terrified but eager to break soul crushing menotiny of my regular routine, and so I went... I had a good time (they said we should do it agIn sometime and I agreed) again tears, imI came home and cried, it was a good day.
2.) While making all these small changes I also started taking lionsmain mushroom supplements. They help neurons in your brain grow and make stronger connections. I thought maybe they would help reinforce the behavioral changes I was trying to make to myself, I thought with a stronger brain, I'd feel more confident talking to people. I feel that they did help me...
Like I said, it's been 2 years since I started to make these changes. Last night I went to party that a girl I met on a dating app invited me to, and we kissed.... I still feel miserable. I'm still filled with these negative thoughts telling me how worthless I am, I know it's not true, but that's exactly it, I feel worthless, but I don't focus on that. I focus on the actions I can take to make my life worth living, no matter how small.... I think I might be happy.
Dear you
Just wanted to pop in and say that you're a HERO. Really, I know myself how hard it is to do things. But you're managing GREATLY!!!
Please, keep going
I'm literally SO PROUD of you
Much love 🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
Wish you to be fully happy as soon as possible!
This is the most beautiful reflection…so much love to you ❤️❤️❤️ We are all going to continue doing this thing called life one step at a time
When I was in middle school and into HS, in the 80s, my estranged father and his family made me see a few therapists (called shrinks back then) and 'coaches" to "cure" my shyness/lack of self confidence, due mostly bc my mom was abusive/poor... (turns out she was autistic). Into my 20s, I just partied and fucked off in my spare time. No issues, 'cept I became an alcoholic. My early 30s had me at the start of me seeing a total of FOUR different therapists, after my G.P. of all people said I was depressed and should get help.
Turns out that the "depression" was mostly from my drinking, as when I finally got sober, I could see how much it "brought me down".
Around this time, in my early 40s, I would stumble upon this thing called "Asperger's Syndrome", and would find out through THOROUGH research of such that I was autistic.
FORTY YEARS!
...and here is where it got REAL FUN. No one in my life would accept this, and so I gave up on all of them. It took another 10 years to finally get an official assessment, and only bc my sister "needed" the money I could get from one...
which I have yet to see.
I often hate being several kinds of messy human discussed in this video. Yet, it’s the human I am. Thank you for helping me to feel something other than hate about my messiness.
Btw: there is a mutual aid program developed by the Jane Addams Collective called MAST, "Mutual Aid Social Therapy" it's based on anarchist non hierarchical structures and isn't pathologizing. Highly recommend looking it up
Also books I'd recommend: (Mis)Diagnosed, How Bias Distorts Our Perception of Mental Health by Jonathan Foiles
A Profession Without Reason: The Crisis of Contemporary Psychiatry-Untangled and Solved by Spinoza, Freethinking, and Radical Enlightenment by Bruce E Levine
I'm trans and I've been organizing around mental health as a facet of trans liberation for a while now.
(Btw I also have several mental illnesses/disabilities/disorders including Major Depressive Disorder with Psychotic Features, PTSD, Autism, Agoraphobia, etc)
one of the worst things to me about being mentally ill is how fucking hard it is to get help (at least here in Scotland).
i have no official diagnoses, which makes it more cumbersome to talk about it, but i have persistent and severe low moods (including suicidal ideation) and difficulties with anxiety. there's also a very good chance i'm autistic. my GP gave me a prescription for sertraline after my first appointment, but it didn't work, so fair enough. i've also been referred to be assessed for autism, which has a very long waiting lost, and i was told that i should wait until i get a diagnosis to get therapy because of the way my symptoms of ASD interacts with my issues. this means that i won't be put on a waiting list to get therapy until i've made it through the waiting list to be assessed for autism.
there are no free services near me to which i can refer myself. my uni has counselling but it's too limited in scope and resources to help (i've tried). online resources don't help me. i'm stuck waiting for potentially fucking years to overcome something which is often debilitating and which is constantly telling me to just fucking give up. i have to lean heavily on my friends for support because i can't get it elsewhere and it's not fair on them and it's not good for them, but if i lean less heavily i'm going to fall.
there's nothing that makes me feel more helpless than having help kept just out of reach.
I've been having chronic health problems (especially tremors and muscle spasms) for the past 10 months and my doctor ALWAYS suggests that it could be anxiety. The thing is I'm not an overly anxious person, I don't relate to my friends with anxiety disorder. I genuinely do not think it's anxiety or stress causing my health problems. It's not my medication either, I've been on and off it to see if the symptoms would get better but they persist.
I would ask if it could be something rare at this point. I know that it’s notorious for “everything being cancer” but WebMD *will* give you a list of things you can bring up (I did get colon cancer as a potential problem, naturally it wasn’t, but it was one of the only 4 things even possible when I got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis).
when I was very stressed i ground down my teeth at night. only suspected something was up as my chewing muscles grew
Have you had your vit b12 tested? A deficiency in that can cause tremors. I bet you have since you have been sick for so long but your doctor also sounds kinda useless in this case so maybe not. I hope you find out what's going on!
@@Original_Flanno I've had it tested once at the beginning of the year and last week. Both were normal.
I was diagnosed with depression at an early age, along with social anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. Long before I figured out I was also aroace, and eventually that I'm nonbinary agender, I figured there should be no reason why I can't take pride in the mental illness that make me neuroatypical. It's made my life more difficult to be sure, but it also has taught me how to endure life's ordeals, and to think of solutions to problems that wouldn't occur to most people.
I've carried over the same attitude when it comes to my trans identity. In a political climate when it seems everyone, even allies and members of the trans community themselves, is talking about the hardships and difficulties that trans people face, I think it's about time we started talking about all the positive aspects of being trans. It exposes you to a much wider breadth of life experiences, makes you more introspective and insightful, and can help you become more empathetic towards other marginalized groups. Trans people are overrepresented in the scientific, information tech, and creative fields, and the trans people in my life are among the most intelligent and talented individuals I know. You can't change who you are, but there's no reason you should have to either.
I’m always very cautious of these kinds of essays because a lot of them go down the route of “all modern mental health is bs!!! No meds!!!” Which is frustrating as someone currently trying to find medication and who’s been in various kinds of therapies for over a decade. Half of my life. There needs to be more nuance than most give it and I sit somewhere on the fence. The system is fucked. I’ve been abused by therapists, I’ve been forced into treatment, I’ve been forced to take meds, practically had them literally shoved down my throat. And that’s traumatizing. But I’m also in therapy currently. My current therapist has helped me more in the past six months than years of therapy and treatments ever did. Because my past therapists couldn’t remove me from my abusive home. There’s so many aspects to it. And the main problem is forcing people into things from what I’ve found. But as yall pointed out, even that has nuance. There needs to be a better mix of community and clinical, and the clinical needs more community. And that goes for a lot of things. I wouldn’t be nearly as bad as I am currently (ptsd wise) if I had even just one person I could have truly just talked to about what was happening to me. But my therapists would tell my abusers what we talked about and I didn’t really have friends. But also my life improved without therapy just by escaping that. There’s no one answer to any of these problems.
After hearing your small discussion about personality disorders I will be following though. It’s become so hard to find spaces that have ever discussed mental health without them also going down the rabbit hole of “all disorders are valid and great and deserve treatment and care BESIDES NPD BECAUSE THEYRE ALL TERRIBLE PEOPLE!!!” And even though I don’t have npd I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called a narcissist for just implying that people with npd are still people.
@@saltydinonuggies1841I know thos comment is old, but omfg.
I go to a DV group and this one person keeps saying "narcissistic abuse" each time she's there.
I realized I wasn't comfortable saying that was bothersome, and I don't go anymore.
Its really hard losing spaces due to just ableism
1:03:10 -- ADHDer here and my experience (as well as many other ADHDers I know) is the exact opposite. I did fine in school and childhood because it provided me structure and guidance.
There were certainly major flaws with it -- I definitely felt a lot of resentment at the time regarding my lack of independence and autonomy, procrastinated terribly with homework, etc etc. I wouldn't say I thrived by any means -- the system still was very much not designed with my neurodivergence in mind. But ultimately I did just fine. Got good grades, and even if I was struggling with a lot of stuff I at least felt I was achieving something and gaining social validation throughout it. There was perceived progress, so despite my struggles I at least had hope for the future.
The independence of adulthood is where I truly fell apart and began struggling immensely. Left to my own devices without imposed structure entirely annihilated the iota of executive functioning I had. Now I was not only struggling, but also felt as if I wasn't even achieving anything or doing "life progress" right. Which of course makes me feel even more shame and self-hatred, making me even more anxious and depressed, leading to even less executive functioning. It's a cruel feedback loop.
It's definitely a nuanced thing. I can see how adulthood would help many with ADHD if they're lucky enough to make it into a career that suits them, find a like-minded community for support, etc.
But the symptoms of ADHD itself also makes those things more difficult to achieve in the first place, so for those not as lucky...
omg this is literally where I'm at with my life right now... it's hell but at least I'm not the only one I guess lol! The gigantic unknown void of the future and *shudder* the workplace is so terrifying to me that I can't seem to move forward at all, yet sitting around doing nothing all day is also killing me at a rapid pace akdkfjjsjs (NB: not officially diagnosed cos the system here is a joke)
@@delphidehavilland SAME!!
@@the_sky_is_blue_and_so_am_I solidarity my friend :') we can get through this!
I really needed this. As someone who has been obsessed with trying to figure out what is “wrong” with me, trying so hard to pathologize myself, and becoming distressed over the idea that I am fundamentally broken, I needed this shift in mind set.
The story around [1:17:48] reminded me of how years ago I read some study about how symptoms of schizophrenia are impacted by the cultural norms and specifically the stigma and expectations around hallucinations in a society. And how in some places audio/visual hallucinations are typically not scary to the individual that is having them.
Basically my take away at the time was wondering how much of the suffering of people with mental illnesses may not be inherent, rather socially imposed or constructed by the stigma or barriers of having a specific mental health diagnosis.
Answer: a lot. A supportive/loving/accepting environment often makes a huge difference for people dealing with symptoms of psychosis.
Silly Neil, it's okay for EVERYONE ELSE to experience symptoms, not me though ❤️ (this is a joke, I used to believe on some level)
good joke, it made me smile
@@hallehuckleberry you are a peach ❤️ ty for brightening my day!
Maybe it has to do with being raised as a girl, or maybe not having a lot of friends as a kid, but I've never been particularly attached to an image of myself as "sane".
I loved the "thank you" "you're welcome/no worries" bit so much lololololol, that was really well done. As usual, you are challenging my ideas and forcing me to be more conscious about the way I think about and act on things and MAYBE I DON'T WANT TO WORK SO HARD (I do). Also, the production was great despite more than 90 minutes of edited work-I can only shudder at the thought of how much raw footage and editing this took. Thank you so much for all the new thoughts and all the hard work.
This has got to be the MOST UNDERRATED channel on RUclips! I appreciate all the effort and dedication too all that y’all do! Thankyou
I keep coming back to mental illness as modern sin. I've never connected those dots before, but now it seems so obvious to me that our stigma about mental illness functions like that - a negative associated with someone's being, not their actions, thus a way to categorize someone as 'wrong'. Thank you for giving me this language to understand my experiences and to approach others with greater empathy.
This is so important, nuanced, and beautiful. I hope it gets to those who need to see it. Thank you 💜
I’m a therapist with two masters degrees: one in neuroscience and one in counselling psychology. Believe me when I say this essay is a perspective that our world needs right now. Thank you for putting it out into the world. ❤
Right. This made me cry about 3 times, maybe more. I have pretty strong ADHD, treatment resistant and often debilitating depression, and the usual collection of anxiety and personality disorders that tend to go along with those. I am also non-binary, pan and poly, and only half out of the closet on some of those. And as you said, I have been feeling like I am getting pushed further back into the closet while my depression has been getting worse. Again. All of this hits very, very close to home. (Oh, and I'm also Irish! At least on paper. My father is from Lisburn. Hah, I wonder if genetic lineage is a factor in depression...)
I cannot express how thankful I am for you two to put so many things into words that I could never explain this well, even if at times it hurts to watch. Probably hurt a lot more to speak the words... I will make sure just about everyone I know watches this essay, and if I have to tie them down and force them... ok, maybe that is a bit much. But you get the idea. People need to understand. We exist. Our struggles are real. We aren't LAZY. We aren't SELFISH. People need to understand that we try, every day, to function, to blend in, to do what society and our own communities expect of us, under threat of losing our very means of existence. Food, shelter, friendship, comfort, never mind some sense of purpose. Function, or go sit in your hole; dirty, poor, lonely, suffering, until you can pull yourself out again - if ever. And while there is of course a physiological factor to depression, it would really help if people stopped judging us just because sometimes we are just too exhausted by the effort of trying to function how it is expected of us. Sometimes we just need to... stop for a bit. Gather strength. Cry. Talk to someone. Have a hug. Gather our thoughts. So we can try again.
Well, this escalated quickly. That's why I don't write many comments. I could write much more, but that probably just makes it even less likely you'll read it, so I'll shut up now. But please know, your work and the pain and the strength of will it must have taken to create it are highly, highly appreciated. Thank you!
I'm on the fence about the "mad pride" community, specifically on tumblr. I am mentally ill. I want to be understood and I want to be treated better by society. But there is something off about the thing I see on tumblr.
I want a world where people can be healthier, not "more normal". However, some of the rhetoric on here seems dangerous, such as anti-recovery. Sometimes we do have to get help if our conditions will hurt us. I need help to make sure I don't kill myself. If left alone to my own devices, my condition only worsens.
We should absolutely distrust those who want us to be more "normal". We must get rid of the violence that oppress us, but we have to be wise and strategic about it. We mustn't shame those who wish to get better, and we shouldn't make ourselves more vulnerable to those who wish to hurt us. If we risk hurting ourselves, or if somebody is taking advantage of our condition in order to abuse us, are we truly changing things for the better?
Not to mention, there is some odd takes on sane people, such as them being stupid and unable to see the world in a complete way. While most of the anger I saw was righteous, this seems a bit misguided. Nobody sees the world in an "incomplete" way. We experience what we experience.
The only way to dismantle the systems of oppression that harms all people is for us to communicate and help each other. The revolution can only be successful if it is born out of love for humanity, not hate for another group.
I may be misguided, but I am confused. I honestly feel alone and alienated from many groups. I am not neurodivergent, but I am mentally ill. But the anti-recovery rhetoric makes me feel unsafe. We need to dismantle the system that oppresses us, but we need to take care of ourselves.
It has always been essentialism. Our need to categorize, put people in boxes, has been both a defense mechanism (for the good and the bad, to help us avoid thinking about things that threathen our sense of self or sanity) and a shortcut we are prone to follow. But as always has lead to a lot of societal ills.
"our"...no, not "our". western, modern and eurocentric, yes
Well this was timely thanks 🙏
Appreciate this one a lot. ❤️ Congratulations on the 8 days, thank you for taking care of yourself!
Edit again: If you also have multi-trauma PTSD, benefit from my experience:
Start by looking into EMDR, somatic experience, Internal Family Systems, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, or Accelerated Experiential Dynamic therapy. They have significant success and evidence. Basic open ended talk therapy does not.
"Trauma informed" doesn't mean "trauma trained."
Pick up any book by Dr. Gabor Mate or Dr. Richard Schwartz.
Edit 1: most of the way through. Having C-PTSD from early childhood, and having been in a large variety of therapy modalities and different psych professionals, I appreciate and respect the perception that many people with PTSD get better. And also I'm sad. I've been doing everything I freaking can since I was 18 and could finally try to get help without being prevented from doing so. I turn 34 soon.
I'm tired guys.
To be clear I've made significant progress in self acceptance, I have a million tools, I read all the Gabor Mate. I found IFS and I have hope about it. I'm doing better than a lot of folks. I'm lucky and I have a lot of privilege.
Boy would it be nice to not have to isolate for fear of accidentally hurting future partners while in an emotional flashback.
I, a neurodivergent, depressed, anxious, traumatised person, called a (former) friend (who's struggling with their mental health but is also very abusive) "crazy" for sending me abusive DMs. I mourn losing a friend, but I also deeply regret using that word. I wish I had had the strength to uphold my boundaries without it.
How the FUCK have I not seen this channel til just now?? This is so good, thank you so much. I had a partner use psychological terms and diagnose me with being dependent just because I noticed inconsistency in his behavior towards me and asked him about it, and from then on I could never bring up any issues in the relationship without being pathologised and dismissed. I have anxiety and he knew it and claimed he knew how to handle that with a partner but he very obviously did not understand how it worked or what my needs were and I was stigmatized from asking for my needs to be met or even addressed. All that to say, I know what it's like to have people in your real life, with no qualifications, hurt you by utilizing shallow understanding of psychology. I don't even think he did it on purpose or with the desire to invalidate me, it seemed to fit in his head
I found you guys earlier this year, around the same time I got diagnosed with bipolar one. It feels like this video was made just for me (or is that the mania lol) but seriously thank you for getting this message out there. Getting diagnosed with scary, realizing that you're not in a well mental state is scary. But it also felt very vindicating to realize that the mental anguish had been going through throughout my life wasn't all in my head (I mean it is, but you know what I mean.) I work with kids, and I've been very open about my mental health struggles, hopefully this message can get out there more and people can realize that being mentally ill doesn't change the fact that you're just a person, and when we stop fearing mental illness, we can actually talk about it and help reduce suffering. Thank you for this video, thank you for your channel, I hope you feel better Neil 💜
So the BPD section of this video was very helpful to me as I am diagnosed with it. Many people found my stories about myself fallible just because I was mentally ill. It made it nearly impossible to to my internal world seriously even though it affects me in serious eays
I have no idea how this video only has 5k views. Needs to blow up. Your format, verbal fluency, editing, comedy, insight. It's all incredible quality. Thank you for this. I think the biggest issue with mental health labels is the pathologisation of everything that it is to be human, it becomes dehumanising and people view you through the lens of psychiatry instead of a human being with disorders you are then a disorder that happens to be human. If you're already neurotic, people damaged by the DSM pathologising your every move and the spotlight effect generates literal insanity. Lets just say, I was drugged for ''paranoia'' due to this against my will despite vocalising the trauma childhood ritalin use caused me as i'd cry every day coming home from school. Psychiatry is an abomination
Medicine is based on diagnosing and treating illness; psychiatry is a branch of medicine. While psychiatry is incredibly complex and often difficult due to many illnesses being "invisible", it's still incredibly helpful to the majority of patients, but is lacking in adequate resources like every other branch of healthcare. For every patient who claims that psychiatry is evil and ineffective, I can point to 20 where it saved their lives. Perspective is key.
As an autistic person, there's data of "suicidal attacks" especially among us, where that window of tolerance is so insanely small between the pain and the action (such that an autistic person can seem totally fine, even to themselves, and then suddenly actively attempting) and my therapist and I have worked out an "you can complete this action in a year, but not in this moment" as a sort of mantra to get myself out of that "attack" - such that when I come down it's a relief that I didn't do something. The brain is very, very bad at tolerating the life or death constant terror moments. It's amazing to know I'm not the only one who has felt this way, but also so sad how dangerous it is for us all, how many of us are taken out of the world too soon because of something that we were alone in or not correctly supported in. If you are reading this in one of those moments, I hope you can hold on, you're so brave for trying.
I'm having an issue (also autistic) with masking. I can kinda let the walls come down and txt my friends that it's really bad and I need help, and a couple of them will come over (shout out to my ex wife, who was the groom at our wedding but now my BFF, and has been super supportive while admitting that she's out of her league when trying to help) but when they show up in person, I start making without trying and they leave after a whole because I "seem better," but I'm not actually better.
I know this is an old vid and an old comment, but I do appreciate it. (I think the algorithm saw I was thinking about ending it and threw this into my suggestions) Thank you, even if you don't see this.
A catholic archbishop once told me i was depressed because i left the church 😂
Thank you so much for putting yourself out there to talk about this-- you all being alive and doing what youre doing here makes my life better ❤💛💚💙💜
This was one of the most beautiful, educational, and empathetic videos on mental illness I've seen in a very long time. It was...kind of a revelation. Thank you for doing this. And I would watch Neil dance to the phonebook.
About mad pride - With queer pride, I've often thought that "pride" here is a matter of assertive self-respect, not some sort of setting oneself up over others but setting oneself up as a peer in the face of the denial of that status. Someone can take that tack and still be cognizant of and an active participant in taking on whatever special needs are generated by that status. It can be saying, "I've got a thing, there may be stuff to do about the thing, but the thing doesn't make me some lesser being and we will not LET people take us that way."
Fuuuuuuck, this is so good. I work in psychiatry, and I have an ADHD type II diagnosis that I see more as a diagnosis of a failure of society. This is all ringing very true with the problems I am seeing in the way psychiatry operates and functions. I was recently offered cognitive behavioural therapy for my anxiety and depression, and not only did I get a startling feeling that they were trying to delegitimize my very real reasons to feel the way I do, but the whole concept was very dystopian: We have created a society that causes so much stress and anguish that we have started inventing and teaching methods to cope with how bad it is.
This essay was beautiful, thank you for sharing this with everyone.
I am a teen who's been well aware of my chances of developing Bipolar Disorder for years now, and has recently realized that I have long begun doing so. I went a very long time sweeping symptoms under the rug. A couple of years ago, I experienced an excruciating, eight-month long depressive episode, to the point where I could barely move or speak. I've spent my entire life under the impression that depression is something reserved for those who've lost their livelyhoods or loved ones, even during the worst times of my life, mentally. Neil's description at the beginning of the essay rung very true for me. This perspective reminds me that who I am is okay, and that I am not alone. Excellent video, very insightful outside of my own relationship with mental illness. Thanks :)
This video got me out of a bog of doubt for my condition and it’s making me resist to call it an illness anymore. I used Jung when I was younger to help me out of an unstable psyche but I never realised how much constraint it put on myself to confine my understanding to a box I thought was big enough to thrive in. Nowadays, I haven’t been thriving, post mood stabilising medication, not understanding that this is the perspective I never realised I needed. This essay gives me hope and pride for bipolar, for my creativity, and understanding of those around me with their own conditions. Thank you so much, I can now genuinely suffer less ❤
From a fellow depressed Irish person I really appreciate this video, thank you for making this even when your motivation was on the floor. I will definitely have to watch few times to really appreciate the density of information here. After finding out some very disturbing family secrets, being very sick with COVID and trying to resolve life long self esteem and body image issues, I still find it so hard to talk openly with friends and family about my struggles, even if the stigma is not quite as bad as it used to be.
On your point about cost of living, I am fortunate enough that I can *just* afford to pay the 280e a month it costs for my private therapy (there's usually nothing left at the end of every month because of it). I too get very worried about how cost of living might mean I have to give that up, when I only feel like im starting to get to grips a little after more than a year there. Hoping for the best for me and for all those out there struggling.
This was such a well put together video. I know it couldn't have been easy to make but thank you so much. I love seeing people share their actual experiences. In particular I loved how grounded the views are, and the mentions of the need for compassion. I feel like a lack of respect and compassion are core issues.
I spent the last 35 years of my life seeing psychiatrists trying to get better. It didn't help, it made things worse.
I had undiagnosed neurological issues and psychological problems misdiagnosed as psychiatric. I am not even going to go into the history of D.I.D. and why it might have been misdiagnosed.
Instead of suggesting I might have other issues, they blamed me for not getting well.
I cannot even begin to list the problems with the mental health industry at least in the US. From drug companies trying to find new ways to sell what they have, to arrogant doctors (or nurses they are replacing doctors with), to the private for profit mental 'hospitals', to the industry that surrounds and supports it, and bunches I haven't listed.
Things were better 30 years ago so funding is part of the problem, but it isn't the only major issue.
At the very least I think we need to take a good hard look at what psychiatry is, weather all the treatments actually help or hurt and quantify that. We must hold them up to scientific scrutiny and hold them as responsible for outcomes as we do other doctors, not to punish them but to force the industry to become more useful.
And as radical as it is, I feel like compassion and respect should be part of all health care. If someone goes say 10 years through a system and doesn't improve... someone needs to step in and say hey, what's going on here - with the assumption that the patient isn't the problem.
As an autistic non-binary person with anxiety living in eastern europe, I want to thank you so much for everything you do, Neil and Sarah.
(this is my first youtube comment ever, even though this account has existed for many years)
It was a good one.
💜
I'm autistic and non-binary with ADHD and in the USA and I'm so happy you're here and made a comment and were held by this video. Much love to you!
I'm nonbinary and have depression, SAD, and OCD, along with many of the signs of autism (though not yet diagnosed, to be clear). Just know that you're not alone.
I'm a person with ADHD and high anxiety ... and in eastern europe, too. I feel you.
100 seconds in and I see myself in this video already.
Congratulations on not smoking for 8 days and counting, Neil! :D
Have you ever noticed that depression and anxiety are often spoke about in 2nd person whereas more stigmatized disorders are almost always described in 3rd person? "If you have depression, you might experience these things" vs "if they are a narcissist, they might do these things". It seems to me like a linguistic reflection of how people with stigmatized mental health problems are more often treated as if they have no internal life and are incapable of complex thoughts and motivations.
Perhaps when reflecting on this essay in 5 years, you'll recognize a nuanced gap in logic, an argument that could've been phrased better, maybe even a core misunderstanding - but I'm leaving this comment as record that in the year 2022 it doesn't get much better. You both should be very very proud of putting together such a phenomenal and neaningful work!
I'm doing some rewatches, and was again staggered by how good y'all are at this.
Mental illness is so often handled without kindness. I love your work in part due to your kindness and I look forward to watching this
Now, normally if I said the words "Fred Durst Jumpscare" that would, in some way, defeat the purpose, in effect ruining the surprise by announcing there is, in fact, a Fred Durst Jumpscare (of sorts), but I imagine, in a video that is one hour and thirty six minutes long, this will only service to enhance the viewer's sense of...anticipation.
To those who are cursed by this comment, I can't quite apologize, but I can offer my condolences.
Also I hope I wasn't the only one who went back to watch The Pillow Continuity™
I wish eating disorders were mentioned in this video, as I think society views them differently than other mental illnesses, and the physical side effects also makes them different. Proana communities have already existed for many years, but now get pm scrubbed off of social media sites. There’s still ED spaces, but not many “proana” (which is actually better lol). I think ED spaces are complicated, as they can make one’s illness worse from competition, but they can also save your life. I think they’re in general just misunderstood. And I don’t think it’s possible to be “proud of your eating disorder” the same way you can be “proud” of other mental illnesses
“It’s either luck, or privilege, or it’s a lie.”
Have never heard truer words.
Haven’t started, yet, but excited to watch!
"I took them, and it was like a fog lifted." Yeah I had that feeling too, I called it estradiol.
A full hour and a half of Leftist Cooks content is a real treat. Nice work!
I think is my very favourite of your essays. So incredible, thoughtful, beautiful, and so, so, so kind. Thank you for helping me feel a little bit more okay about feeling so sad. :)
From someone with ADHD, a history of depression, trauma and with a pinch of anxiety to top it all off, I very much appreciate this video!
13:37
“ b o o t s ! “
-me, in a very high pitched voice for some reason
i will reply to this comment when i have finished the video to tell you how good it is, because your videos are literally always top notch
the two of you are by far my favorite youtube duo
15:41 *but that was the best part*
Nb Psychology PhD. candidate here -- I don't think I've seen a more nuanced, informed take on mental health. And I absolutely second your views on psychoanalysis -- fascinating storytelling material & English lit. analysis lens, garbage science.
(Subscribed!)
I dont know how many times I've been misdiagnosed with borderline or bipolar on my journey to my autism diagnosis. I dont know how many times I've been brushed off in general about my overall health concerns. But I know in this moment that while yes, my antidepressants make everything I can't control tollerable, I know that if society were different I wouldn’t need them. I know I hold trauma because I've been undiagnosed almost my whole life. I know that forcing myself into situations I can't handle causes anxiety. And I know I cope in many unhealthy ways that I work on constantly. I often wonder if in 30 years we might realize that we've turned symptoms into disorders. My list of disorders honestly feels rather reasonable in response to the system (US) that I am subjected to daily. And I refuse to feel guilt or shame because of it. Thank you guys, your videos mean so much to me ❤❤❤
The best help is a wise beloved one
The second social worker's / psychiatric care give up the police task!
Yes my appartement is very messy! My problem is that the petite bourgiousy makes it a problem
My problem is not enough money to meet people, to find my tribe as an unemployed academic tyranny for 30 years
absolutely brilliant, once again. love y'all and sending whatever positive energy y'alls way! as a floridian surrounded by swamps, i also wanted to note that y'all found a lovely bog to shoot in. no recipe in this one either, but still a 10 out of 10.
We will cook soon. Just for you. But always so glad to hear from ya.
@@TheLeftistCooks i've been doing a chickpea curry which i think might be vegan? great fun for batch cooking on weekends and then simply reheating in the microwave during the week. lots of great room to play around iwth veg and such in order to personalize it. personally, I'm not vegan or vegetarian, i jsut happened upon this recipe while looking for somethign to do with a bunch of chick peas my mom gave me for some reason. didn't even realize it was vegetarian until liek the 3rd tiem i made it.
This is the best video about mental health I have ever seen. It's incredible how much heart and effort goes into your videos. Also, thanks for introducing me to The Waterboys!
Watching this video in an inpatient mental health unit in Australia. The system is actively destroying me. Thank you Neil and Sarah.
I was diagnosed with BPD about 5 years ago. I'd had a psychiatrist for a few months, and he was going on my previous diagnosis. After I talked with him a while, he asked me to fill out a questionnaire for him. As soon as I saw the questions, I knew what I was going to be diagnosed with I was like oh no, I'm going to turn into Jodi Arias and kill my boyfriend. In my mind, BPD was the crazy as s*** woman who killed somebody disease. As my psychiatrist notice my distress, he reassured me that although personality disorders are patterns that you learned very early in life, BPD is one of the most treatable as long as you have some self-awareness. Although I hate being put into a box, CBT and DBT have worked very well for me, and truly my diagnosis fits almost every feeling I've ever had for my whole life. I always wondered how people could be so calm and just not let their emotions take them away. I thought I didn't have the willpower. But then my psychiatrist told me that wasn't it. He told me that I experience things differently than other people, so it is actually harder for me to control my impulses. Harder for me to deal with the ups and downs without going from ecstasy into doom. It was kind of relief. I thought the problem was I wasn't strong enough, and he told me that the problem was I just didn't know any other way to be. I'm still wacky, but I love that about myself. I'm just not self-destructive anymore. Sorry for the novel
I love you two so much 😭 Mad pride, indeed!
Thank you for the linguistic asides. You know I love me a good linguistic aside! Let's talk about clusivity and dual number and verbal aspect and... what were we on about again? Oh right, mental diversity. Did I mention ADHD and anxiety yet? Heh...
Some of the things about mad pride remind me very much of the fight for fat pride. It's similar, isn't it, the way people think fat-shaming and keeping identity away from us will 'help' somehow, when really it's just fatphobia? And the same for mad pride, like you were saying: it's not the identity that's the problem; it's the stigma.
Neil. I'm really proud of you for working to give up cigarettes.
I've fallen into a little depressive, burnt out and ill state of being, and this inspiring thing helped my brain process my feelings and my situation. Couldn't have come at better time. Really one of the channels I would most heartily recommend to a friend. Love yous, never stop going for it. Lots of love to all
I love this, it came exactly as I am a couple months after a pretty bad break down, but I am in counselling, back to work (at a job that works well for me on a sensory level and lets me play to my strengths) , I am back to busking for an hour or so a day and making art, I feel like I am starting to get back on the mend, just need to see a doc to see if they think meds would help, I had to go awol from my last job after said breakdown, and go on social assistance to get access to counselling and meds because those aren't covered under medicare in the province I live in, I couldn't afford the therapy and meds doing the usual 3 jobs and even at the jobs I had with health plans, they stripped down the mental health ends. My therapist has me trying bibliotherapy right now, found a podcast that goes with the workbook that I listen to while I am making sandwiches at work.
Great video, as always. But it does leave me with a question that's been on my mind for a long time. The video re-states and emphasizes very effectively the dangers and self-deceptions involved in the way the language of psychology has been brought into everyday moral and political discourse. And it does all make sense to me. But when I try to apply it to certain specific situations, I feel like something is missing -- or maybe I'm just misunderstanding in this video's argument.
For example, in my own life: my mother was diagnosed with borderline PD, anxiety, and depression when I was a child. This was long before borderline had acquired the stigma it now has, and I don't think she had any real idea of what the concept of "borderline" even meant. I certainly did not. My mother was also emotionally abusive towards me throughout my life, and I spent a great deal of energy trying to understand what was going on. The question "Is she evil or is she crazy?" hung over me for years, or at least it did after I started to realize I was not the problem.
So when I finally read about "borderline" in my early adulthood, it felt like a revelation -- I now had language to explain what I had experienced at her hands. The descriptions of other forms of mental illness never seemed to fit anywhere near as closely as this one. Although my mother was in therapy for years, she never really got help for this problem, and I remember reading back then that no one knew of an effective treatment.
Since she died I've begun to discover on youtube that there are other people who describe themselves as having BPD -- and they are getting help for it. They often seem like genuinely kind, thoughtful, compassionate people. This discovery has been very odd for me: in every case I recognize something in these people that I also saw in my mother, but they are very, very different from her. Unlike my mother, they show a willingness to admit when they're wrong; they want to do what it takes to avoid hurting their loved ones; they question their own emotional states -- it's amazing to see. I admire them tremendously.
They have made me realize that there was something wrong with the way I used the idea of BPD to get a handle on the emotional torture I experienced, because I attributed all of my mother's habitual malice to her BPD. More recently I've been wondering whether the category of "narcissism" -- added to BPD -- might be relevant for my experiences with my mother. I mean, she unequivocally demanded that I make her the center of my life, and she hated me for refusing; so she spent decades alternating between "lovingly" begging me to move back in with her, and cruelly mocking me for my supposed lack of love for her. That sounds like a rather potent mix of borderline and narcissism, right? But I'm much more cautious now, and I'm not interested in using these ideas to categorize and dismiss my mother's mental illness.
But my caution leaves me once again confused about how to think about my mother. Was she evil, or just mentally ill? Or is there some other way of thinking about it?
That's how the question looks to me on the personal level, but I'm also confused about the politics of this issue. Example: we all have heard that Trump is a "narcissist". And we've all heard the arguments about why we should not use those labels in that way, arguments that are affirmed and expanded in this video. They make sense. But if they are accepted, how do we talk about the things that make Trump's style of bad behavior distinct from, say, the bad behavior of Nixon, or of Jeff Bezos, or of Dave Rubin? I mean, there's something weird and unique about Trump, right? We all see it -- what is it, if not narcissism? Sometimes I think we just need to get used to using this kind of language to mean different things -- in psychology it can have one meaning, in everyday discourse a different meaning. Would that be so bad?
But I'm not saying it should -- I don't feel comfortable arguing for it. I don't know. That's the question I still have after watching this wonderful video.
That's one of the things I thought about during the video, especially the personality disorder and "sin" sections.
Lately I've heard a lot of stories from friends about a terrible boss they have. The boss is verbally abusive, he lies extremely often, he randomly imposes arbitrary rules that keep people from doing work (e.g. "Stop this meeting right now, don't you know you can't have meetings in the afternoon?!"), he lies to the CEO so that his project keeps getting funded even though it's making no progress, he has delusionally grand ideas about what his project can accomplish, he has attempted to keep people from quitting by ripping up their resignation letters, and much much more. He seems to be somewhat aware that he's the reason why his employees keep quitting and why his project is failing, but he still can't stop these behaviors.
I have a hard time describing that boss's behavior as anything but pathological, ableist though that may be. That ableist inclination is due in part to the moral outrage I feel towards him for abusing my friends and acting so irrationally. I'm aware, especially after having watched this, that I'm looking to condemn him for his sins by trying to label him as "disordered".
But I still think it's necessary to think that there's "something wrong"™ with my friend's boss, because his actions are wrong and something about him is causing him to do them. There must necessarily be some collection of traits/tendencies/predispositions/etc. which is causing him to act in this unacceptable manner, because he isn't doing it for no reason. No one does anything for "no reason." Whether that collection of traits constitutes a disorder/illness or not, it is causing objectively harmful behaviors that should be curtailed. Maybe that collection of traits when present in other people doesn't always cause harmful behaviors but in this instance it is, so in this instance it constitutes "something wrong". And when those harmful behaviors present in a distinctive recognizable pattern, it is inevitable that people will use some kind of word to label that "something wrong". And I don't think that's inherently bad in theory, even if in practice people are guaranteed to use wrongness labels in unempirical, biased, non-nuanced, and oppressive ways.
Whether that label is "oppressive," "abusive," "harmful," "sinful," "evil," "narcissistic"(in the colloquial sense), "has NPD," or simply "something's wrong with them," I think those labels can all be used in biased/oppressive ways. Obviously the armchair psychologist terminology is especially powerful because it's perceived to carry the objectivity of scientific authority, and the language of sin is given power by its association with God's Truth. But it's possible that the best we can do is to minimize the harmful(see, I just did it there) use of these wrongness labels, because I don't think it's possible to stop using them completely. And even if it's ableist to attribute wrongness to mental illness, wrongness must be attributable to something. And even if a "wrong" characteristic is present in everyone to some degree, it still makes sense for people to make normative statements about the point at which the presence of that characteristic is no longer acceptable.
But maybe I only think that because I like being right and calling people (others and myself) bad. Maybe that's the exact moral simplicity and lack of nuance that causes this problem.
I relate a lot to both of your comments; learning more about MNS stigmas and conditions has made me reflect on my potential misusage of applying them to people who do bad things, but also leave me longing for an answer: why? Because people are almost always more complex than just their surface appearance and actions - physiology, material conditions, and identity all influence how one forms their worldview and values, but many people can share all those factors and still be good people - what makes people want to hurt other people, especially when many people are good (or at least act that way)?
Thinking about it like this, I recognize that humans have been asking similar questions since we could even ask questions, so I suppose thinking that we can definitively answer that is silly of me, unsatisfying as it is.
I've never fallen in love with a poem as much as Sarah's or feel so seen by one
Thank you, Neil, for your courage, concern and consideration. I truly appreciate your input and hope you feel better. this has been completely illuminating.
I was diagnosed with BPD in my late teenage years, 17 or so, and I've known plenty of people with BPD and even NPD and DID. This is a good video, I'm glad you guys made it, I'm still a new subscriber so I'm still discovering video you guys made, and I haven't disliked one yet
BPD is often just used as an oppressive medical tool for 'difficult' patients and to dismiss them. First time I tried un-alive myself, I was labelled with cluster B traits after being asked a few questions, even though literally the only trait I possessed was 'self-harm' as in, I tried to end my life. I've never engaged in any behaviour where I inflict harm onto myself such as cutting. Afterwards I had spoken over multiple sessions with two different psychologists and both agreed I didn't display any cluster B traits.
The accurate disorders I have been diagnosed with are major depressive disorder, persistent depressive disorder, avoidant personality disorder, general anxiety disorder. All of which I was able to accurately self-diagnose before getting an official diagnosis.
Second death attempt I had the method pre-planned for two years and this time I got labelled as borderline personality disorder after like a five minute conversation, which is not adequate time to diagnose a personality disorder. The symptoms just didn't apply to me at all. The death attempt was given a final push by someone I dated years ago randomly coming out of nowhere spreading lies about me saying I r*ped and abused them when the reality is our relationship was very smooth-sailing without conflict, there was no coercion or intoxicated state or withdrawal of consent or anything like that. They were even the one who initiated anything sexual and I was prudent to assure they felt safe and comfortable. They just kinda decided years later that they regretted it and that it was therefore r*pe and had to create fictional things that didn't happen and lie about how past events occurred in order to present me as a perpetrator.
So I guess they used this as confirmation bias for "unstable relationships" even though if a partner or ex-partner randomly comes out of nowhere causing malicious harm to you without any previous signs, it's impossible to predict something like that happening and it's completely absurd to categorise someone with a mental illness due to being a victim of such a scenario.
I can't wait to watch and a massive thank you
You guys really have hit your stride with this video, it's a great mix of comedy, informative content and emotionally resonant personal commentary, and well worth the runtime.
Love this. I also went down the "I'm a massive narc" rabbit hole, but I've also been depressed or very depressed all my life. I was autistic all along, but I hated myself so much I gave myself a different neurological (fatigue) condition by age 30. Never dreamed I was autistic until 6 years later.
I love the visible disability, I feel very differently about it now I can't walk than I did when I was just a dick who nobody liked.
What is reality eh?
(edit) Thing is, I really can't explain my thoughts usually (nature or nurture, who knows) so archetypes and astrology actually quite helpful in many ways as a way to see the inside of your head, and I've had really bad experiences with CBT - so quite frankly, fuck cbt as well imo. I've been on all the antidepressants since 2006 and while they have sometimes stopped me crying every day, they didn't do shit apart from that, just give you insomnia for a year when you try to come off them. The chemical imbalance theory has been disproved.
Anyway - I agree (except about cbt) and you said it wayyy better than I ever could while in a big dark hole, so nice one, solidarity, love this channel and I love the radical empathy, maybe I can use that to stop hating myself and go back into the world 💖
I feel like 'laziness' is a weird word that doesn't make sense, it kind of implies; 'people decide to be unproductive and they're worse people for it'.
I don't think I worded it well, but I don't understand how to word it.
it's a capitalism brain thing. people can't stand the fact that others aren't being productive all the time even though we aren't made to be mindless work robots
Part of the actually autistic community, and we both reject the medical model of disability and insist on calling autism a disability. We require accomodations that typically aren't readily available in an average setting, so we are disabled. If said accomodations was so commonplace that we would barely call is an accomodation, we wouldn't be disabled. That is the social model of disability. What makes someone disabled is not their difference, it's about how easy/hard it is to navigate society comapred to abled people.
For example, a person who can't swim would be disabled in a town where you have to swim to get around. A person who can't cross their eyes would be disabled in a society where eye crossing was an important part of communication.
I liked this essay very much. I've come to count on you presenting ideas with nuance, empathy, and inquisitiveness, and it's always pleasant to see.
In service to the idea of keeping ourselves accountable, I want to point out that a lot of the arguments in the "Mad Pride and Community Support" section against abolition of the mental health industry are identical to the ones used by those who defend the police - "I know a lot of police and they're nice people," "I know people who have been helped by the police," "Police are people who want to help," etc. I'm also someone who studied psychology and worked in mental health for a number of years, so I know how it stings to be told "This field you/people you care about are in is inherently and irredeemably bad." But while I'm not yet sold on abolition either, I think we should be concerned when our arguments start sounding like the ones made by the Blue Lives Matter crowd.
I'm a mad pride activist and supporter of psychiatric abolition. The main reason why I'm against psychiatry is because of its practice of non-consensual treatment and heavy reliance on the use of torture (including solitary confinement, forced drugging, having to "earn freedoms", emotional blackmail). You might be familiar with LGBT and autism conversion therapies, in particular ABA, and how intensely destructive those practices are to people's identities and mental health. Those practices are the norm in closed institutions. I've talked with some survivors for whom treatment was so intensely painful they desperately tried escape treatment by any means necessary, including dying. The only way to leave is to accept that you're mentally ill, staff knows better than you and does this to help you. Then there's lying about depression being caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain or unsubstantiated claims that ECT is proven effective even though the only thing it does is causing brain damage (though not as severe as lobotomy). I've talked with people who where harmed by CBT. I know plenty of stories of "voluntary" treatment where therapists engage in gaslighting and blackmail. The mental health care system causes so much harm to people and does so with near absolute impunity, that I honestly believe we'd be better off without it.
you guys have this knack of articulating concepts i have been struggling to communicate to friends, especially the bit about moving past a romanticizing/burdensome false binary of mental illness
i'm currently on my own quest to getting diagnosed, psych eval and all, since i've been falling way behind academically. i thought it was interesting when the link between "craziness" and creativity was brought up, only because i'm an artist and i've tried to resist the mad genius stereotype. i feel like this framing, though, allowed me to take some pride in the cool art i've made while in a bad state of mind.
i've long had some simmering feelings about how personality disorders, like NPD and ASPD, are demonized (not to mention schizophrenia and psychosis in general) - thank you for giving me the push to actually think about this more deeply. mad pride seems cool in that it has all kinds of mentally ill people, and not the depression/anxiety duo that gets an overwhelming amount of attention from online mental health spaces.
sorry, this comment is all over the place lol - i really appreciate this video :)
I've been diagnosed as Autistic for almost a decade now. I've been in Autistic Spaces. From what I've seen (as well as my own feelings on the matter). Being Autistic IS a Disability. BUT! It's not a bad thing. There are some things I just can't do. It hinders my way of doing things in a society not accommodating. I am Disabled. But Disabled isn't a bad word, or a bad thing. So while I don't speak for the Autistic Community, I know that I'm not the only Autistic person who feels this way.
Ya Fav also has BPD 😅
As someone diagnosed with BPD, ASD, and waiting to get my probable ADHD diagnosis, this video was very helpful. To not be treated like a monster because of my BPD diagnosis and to actually have it addressed with the seriousness that it deserves by someone other than 40+ year old boring doctors on RUclips (nothing against them though - the good ones at least -, I do really like a few), it feels so incredibly good. Thank you :)
i am agender and as such count myself also as non-binary and trans.
i didn't know you for some months after i knew that much about myself. seeing your presentation of self and gender makes me feel "not that much out there", i do not feel like being on my own anymore.
thank you
Yup! We exist :D I think there's a lot more agender people out there, but not a lot of people know what agender is. There's also a lot of agender people feeling like they're an "imposter" of sort, so they're not as outspoken. But yeah! Me and my partner are agender as well :3
There's also interestingly a link between ADHD and Autistic people and gender non conformity! I find that neat.
Same here!
@@TwixtheFox Agreed, but also reject all psychiatric labels, too and pathologies and since they were all named from terrible things and perceptions and is also "#abelist" if also anti-able, but have been taught that as the opposite and shame more aware stuff?
Missed the hell out of the narcissism video, I actually liked the dancing! Good to see it sort of reborn here. Great video!
Just noting this for later to see if my thinking changes after watching the video:
Mental Illness is a category that has been helpful to me because it has allowed me to understand when I am hitting what feels like a impenetrable wall with someone. Where it feels like there should be a way to make since of what is happening with their cognitive processes but there just isn’t, even after years of trying.
It was a lot more continuously frustrating when I didn’t understand that mental illness was involved. I was taking things more personally. I wasn’t understanding that there wasn’t a way for the other person to access insight to the cognitive issues they are having. The lack of insight, is the very thing at the heart of the difficulty.
Mental illness has this particular experience of coming up against a confusing barrier that doesn’t go away or get resolved, and is also hard to see. It is underneath everything else.
Once the issues are understood as mental illness the whole approach to creating a better situation sifts.
It allows a way to depersonalize and get to actual help in a meaningful way.