I highly recommend this amazing TEDx talk, I Am Not A Monster: SCHIZOPHRENIA [below] by Cecilia McGough, a young woman studying astronomy at Penn State. She talks with clarity about living with schizophrenia and discusses her work to start a non-profit, Students With Schizophrenia:
sites.psu.edu/studentswithschizophrenia.
Her talk is so valuable to me, and fascinating, and I bet would be to many others. Understanding what other people go through helps to understand what it is to be human.
Mostly I've only met people––in nursing homes where I've worked that housed the most disenfranchised poor people––who were so caught in schizophrenia that they couldn't talk about it to me.
I mean, they could tell me their reality, but not meet me in mine, so I had a hard time seeing it as anything but unfathomably scary. It is scary, but it's not as foreign as I'd thought. Kinda looks familiar, even, like my fears and nightmares, but amped up beyond easy recognition.
Ceclia McGough says to other people with schizophrenia,
I have long used that word unthinkingly and automatically, but after listening to this young woman, I'm going to stop now. If I can't think of other words that don't add to people's hurt or imply they are monsters, that's just pathetic on my part.
Disordered Tissue
I recently went to the physical therapist because my calf got stiff working at GW and it has not healed itself in the two months since I quit. She told me my stressed Achilles tendon (connects the knee to the heel) had laid down new tissue in an effort to heal from overuse, but it wasn't able to heal (not enough time between stress) so now I am limping around with "disordered tissue".
How 'bout if instead of saying Trump is "crazy", I say he is disordered tissue? It's like my nation is trying to heal but instead has laid down this material that further constricts and painfully limits us.
The p.t. told me that my tendon will heal, but it will hurt more for a while because I need to traumatize it more, in a controlled way, through gentle stretching and exercise, so it will grow new, helpful tissue.
What might that look like for our country?
I don't know---maybe something more like Jimmy Carter talking about North Korea?
"Jimmy Carter: What I’ve learned from North Korea’s leaders", Washington Post, October 4, 2017.
According to Carter (and this makes sense to me, from the little I know from reading about the country and just from what I've seen of human nature), North Korea is acting like my stressed tendon--trying to secure itself but making things worse---and Trump is acting like me who kept walking on it, stressing it even further.
Now that's disordered.
___________________
Cecelia McGough's blog, I Am Not A Monster: SCHIZOPHRENIA: sites.psu.edu/ceciliamcgough
sites.psu.edu/studentswithschizophrenia.
Her talk is so valuable to me, and fascinating, and I bet would be to many others. Understanding what other people go through helps to understand what it is to be human.
Mostly I've only met people––in nursing homes where I've worked that housed the most disenfranchised poor people––who were so caught in schizophrenia that they couldn't talk about it to me.
I mean, they could tell me their reality, but not meet me in mine, so I had a hard time seeing it as anything but unfathomably scary. It is scary, but it's not as foreign as I'd thought. Kinda looks familiar, even, like my fears and nightmares, but amped up beyond easy recognition.
Ceclia McGough says to other people with schizophrenia,
"You're not crazy."That startled me, I have to admit, and humbled me. Especially since Trump became president, I've been aware of people with mental illness asking us to stop using the word crazy to describe disturbing people and situations like that.
I have long used that word unthinkingly and automatically, but after listening to this young woman, I'm going to stop now. If I can't think of other words that don't add to people's hurt or imply they are monsters, that's just pathetic on my part.
Disordered Tissue
I recently went to the physical therapist because my calf got stiff working at GW and it has not healed itself in the two months since I quit. She told me my stressed Achilles tendon (connects the knee to the heel) had laid down new tissue in an effort to heal from overuse, but it wasn't able to heal (not enough time between stress) so now I am limping around with "disordered tissue".
How 'bout if instead of saying Trump is "crazy", I say he is disordered tissue? It's like my nation is trying to heal but instead has laid down this material that further constricts and painfully limits us.
The p.t. told me that my tendon will heal, but it will hurt more for a while because I need to traumatize it more, in a controlled way, through gentle stretching and exercise, so it will grow new, helpful tissue.
What might that look like for our country?
I don't know---maybe something more like Jimmy Carter talking about North Korea?
"Jimmy Carter: What I’ve learned from North Korea’s leaders", Washington Post, October 4, 2017.
According to Carter (and this makes sense to me, from the little I know from reading about the country and just from what I've seen of human nature), North Korea is acting like my stressed tendon--trying to secure itself but making things worse---and Trump is acting like me who kept walking on it, stressing it even further.
Now that's disordered.
___________________
Cecelia McGough's blog, I Am Not A Monster: SCHIZOPHRENIA: sites.psu.edu/ceciliamcgough
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