After creating and deleting about five accounts here (okay, more like 15), I intend to keep this one. I will also discuss why I have been doing such strange acts, and what I intend to contribute to the site going forward.
The reason I keep deleting my accounts is many fold. If you take a look at my comment history, you'll see the following test results from a mickey mouse facebook quiz taken earlier today:
https://hubski.com/pub?id=183719
Those results are accurate in regards to my romantic relationships as well as my personal ones with friends and family, as well as my interactions with random strangers on the internet. I simply cannot be myself around anyone because I have secrets from one person that cannot be talked about with another, and vice versa. You may feel the same, but it is different for me. If you cross your streams between friends, your friend might ignore you for a week or two. If the streams were to cross in my life, I would lose pretty much all of my friends, estrange my family, risk my employment, publicly embarrass myself, and end up a hobo on the streets. There are other repercussions that I am not legally allowed to disclose as well...
So walking this tightrope act, I've been struggling to figure out in what way I could actually communicate on Hubski without destroying the fabric of my life. I have to put up walls to prevent falling off, and I usually do it quite well, it just sometimes takes time. The time is nigh! I have properly prepared my segmenting and I know what I will and will not admit.
I also have been struggling with which portion of my life would most improve the quality of the content of this site while also improving the quality of my own life. I started out with some simple identities, but they seemed overrepresented on this site and already taken care of by others. I have since, however, finally figured out which communications and experiences would best suit my interactions with this site.
So without further ado, here are the two posts I am willing to admit belong to me:
Comment about NSA Surveillance and Mental Health
Yes that's right, I'm "that crazy guy". I keep deleting my accounts because I keep getting attention and I keep posting too many comments that will identify who I am by profiling likes, dislikes, and little details about myself. I really don't like that as it makes me nervous (see above quiz). But I'm here to stay this time, and I will not delete this account. The voice of the insane community must be heard, since they are completely and utterly falling on deaf ears and dismissed as unintelligent.
You may note that I actually commented within the first post ABOUT the second comment on government surveillance I posted here ("My mental health community has a no politics rule (it frequently agitates people who are mentally ill), so I have no idea about them since they are not allowed to talk about it."). In no way was I lying, I simply did not completely tell the truth. I in fact have no idea what that community thinks about government surveillance. I do, however, have OTHER friends who have been hospitalized after 10 years of stability. How do you think the poster found the article so fast yet the person who brought up the subject couldn't find it? Because it was written by the same person! The truth can be more misleading than lies.
What I intend to do with my account is explain my insanity and my stability as well, to attempt to accurately portray the life of a "crazy" person. Also, if I experience a psychotic episode, I will document every detail about what I am thinking and why (with some obvious minor filtering of course, I won't spell out my full name or anything).
I also wish to document ways in which mentally ill people can overcome their fears and paranoias. Usually this stuff is researched by people who have never experienced psychosis and cannot identify with the psychotic mind. I want to do independent research and document it here.
What triggered my wanting to come back into the light? Well, I had another psychotic episode last night. Thinking the NSA was probably targeting me, I started having a one-sided conversation with my phone. Actually to be honest, this has been happening for awhile now. In the last few weeks I keep having conversations with my phone. For my own benefit, I have to admit this to someone before it becomes a serious problem, and you guys are it. I know how bad these beliefs are becoming, and I intend to head them off at the pass as it were.
Aluminum foil actually does work as well as tin foil at cutting cellular signal (just use two layers), but you also have to be careful because the phone could be recording then transmit at a later date. To comfort myself in recent weeks, going outside without any electronics has helped since I know nobody can possibly be listening out there. I can't go anywhere on my property, so I leave the entire block to do so. I can't risk the possibility of someone bugging my yard because I am that paranoid. I feel like I live in the world of 1984, everywhere I am I feel like I am being watched or listened to.
So last night, I decided to test my theory of them listening in. I admitted to everything I thought they would care about and even lied about beliefs in radical movements, and ties to terrorist organizations and criminal enterprises to see what would happen. Obviously nothing because who would care about me to bug me? I'm not a person of interest nor would I be, so why do I worry so much about these issues?
The simple act of having the guts to just trust my own phone has reduced my paranoia considerably, and I feel comfortable again. Basically, I need a way to vent the crazy, and as long as I have that I am a normal and actually higher than average productive individual. I will be using Hubski for this purpose in the future, so expect further posts from me.
I have learned today that if you possess the ability to assess that certain thoughts are indeed not probable to be real or likely, perform those acts liberally to prove your insane thoughts to be false. If you do not have that ability to assess, attempt to learn the truth about the issues affecting you and use reputable sources to do so. The most important tool in a schizophrenic's belt is knowledge and the scientific method. Never stop learning about anything and everything, test your insane theories (as long as they don't involve violence), and never give up hope. I have been all the way under the spell of psychosis and recovered many times, and I believe ANYONE with this illness can as well.
(That being said, they could have easily known they were lies, and kept in the dark about it and are continuing to bug me.... DUM DUM DUM!!!!!!!! My sense of humor is back, that's a good sign :))
Welcome back. I gotta say it took me a minute to recognize you and I was curious why i was tagged :D It's good to hear from you again. When I struggled opening up with Hubski I was on-and-off in my activity and eventually made a fake account to work with. Eventually I dropped it,despite it getting a bunch of badges i can no longer show-off >:I, and went back to old Pabs. I don't regret it, it feels nice having a known place in such a nice community, especially with the added safety of always having the choice to be anonymous if you want!
Anyway, as lil said it sounds like you're working on things but to me it only looks good. I'm really happy for you friend, and I really hope you do whatever you need to feel comfortable here, cause you're good company.
- So last night, I decided to test my theory of them listening in. I admitted to everything I thought they would care about and even lied about beliefs in radical movements, and ties to terrorist organizations and criminal enterprises to see what would happen.
This sounds like a catharsis, a really brave and probably terrifying action to face your paranoia. When I used to go out at night to throw the trash in my building's dumpster, i used to chuck the garbage bag into the dump from as far as possible, and turn and sprint immediately back to the door because I was afraid that something in the dark would catch me. Even when I got in the door i would bolt up the flights of stairs refusing to look back and would only take a breath when I closed and locked my door.
Then one day I stood in front of the dumpster at night, trying to look as tough as possible while plugging my nose from the stench, and I stood there in the dark. Then, I turned around and spun in circles a time or two, and walked backwards to my door. Then turned around and calmly, slowly ran up the steps.
--OK that was my fourth try because I couldn't keep my cool by the time I got to the staircase, but I did it eventually is my point. Fear is fear man, it manifests in different ways for different people. From what I understand you referred to trusting your phone and doing the confession thing as a psychotic episode, but I think it was a very sane episode indeed. Crazy and scary and thrilling and strange but brave and sane and necessary. I say, congrats on getting it out of your system.
Good to have you back.
e- edited for stupid and tired typos
- I started out with some simple identities, but they seemed overrepresented on this site and already taken care of by others. I have since, however, finally figured out which communications and experiences would best suit my interactions with this site.
Glad to know ya thus far eris!
Hey Eris, this is very fascinating. I think it's great that you put in the time and effort for this post and your own self-reflection.
Sometimes people need to vent or to get things out without having to justify "why". We just need it. I would be happy to read more of your rants, vents or otherwise!
I'm not trying to protect myself from this community, nor the devs, nor the government.
I don't know if I've posted this factoid or not, but there was an instance of a family member of mine who knew about my illness and blamed themselves over it and developed a serious case of grief stricken depression that had to be treated with medication. I had no idea. It wasn't until years later that I found out, and had them talk to my doctor to reassure them that they were not to blame for my illness and that I was doing quite well.
This was also true about my mother, and I posted about this elsewhere:
- I am doing remarkably well at hiding my insanity from friends and coworkers. In fact, only my immediate family knows anything is wrong. My extended family which I talk to regularly has no idea as well. Some of those people (specifically friends) are on Hubski. I don't want them to know because when I initially told my immediate family and them going through all the craziness, shit got serious for them. They feared I would be permanently hospitalized, would commit suicide, etc. I don't need nor want people thinking things like that when it's pretty obvious that's never going to happen. When Robin Williams died I mentioned (stupidly) to my mom that he had bipolar. I think that freaked her out, again fearing I might commit suicide like him knowing I have similar issues. I want to make it clear to anyone who does discover this account, that's just plain not going to happen. It's impossible, I wouldn't be able to do it nor would I ever want to. I've already experienced the worst of my illness and I didn't do it then.
I also have friends who are psychotic who, when the wrong coworker found out that coworker became the biggest bully in the world. He shouted about the illness over the rooftops, and the company decided that the mentally ill individual was to blame for the situation simply because he was sick and brought the situation into the workplace. He was fired.
I also know other mentally ill people who were bullied to the extent that they committed suicide. People I called friends. I have heard of, but not known personally, instances of mentally ill patients being physically harmed because they figured in the eyes of the court they would not be believed if they accused someone else of a violent crime.
A lot of these statements being made are practically accusing me of trying to deceive this community. No, I'm trying to protect my identity. Not from the government, I really don't give a shit about them, nor do I care about the devs. I am protecting both myself from average people who are either malicious in their intent (it is very very common) or people who are vulnerable to becoming depressed or ill themselves over blaming themselves for my illness or worrying over it.
I will not apologize for defending my own safety, my own mental well being, and others' mental well being. If you are ignorant about the stigma associated with mental illness that is fine because it is quite common. Informing people of things like what the stigma feels like is exactly what I'm going to attempt to solve by being here. I wish to inform people of what it's like to live with illness, not just the aspects that involve the illness itself.
If a woman in a physically abusive relationship were to come on hubski and try to talk about her experiences, would you attack them for hiding their identity as well?
All I (was) trying to do was not tie my interests together in one account. It's very easy to figure out that someone who watches Homeland, Supernatural, and Modern Family who also listens to Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus, and also believes in and speaks out for gay rights, could actually be the person sitting right next to them, triggering them to investigate the account and find out that yes, this is in fact their coworker.
"Could actually" and "is" are very different things and it would be impossible to identify a single person based solely on such qualifiers as you mention. The person would at minimum have to disclose some sort of location in order to be identifiable with any amount of confidence. The world is a big place. Why would I assume a Hubski user is the person sitting next to me just because they have some similar characteristics? Hubski is a small place and its members come from all over. It's generally foolish to assume most people on Hubski are anywhere near you/each other
- It's very easy to figure out that someone who watches Homeland, Supernatural, and Modern Family who also listens to Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus, and also believes in and speaks out for gay rights, could actually be the person sitting right next to them,
My natural instinct in response to what you wrote and how you are choosing to interact with people here is the "That's totally fascinating and interesting!" thing, but that can be very de-humanizing and that's not what this community has shown itself to be on every occasion.
This is a great place to discuss the world through your lens, just talk, or blow off steam, and, although practicing complete empathy with respect to your disability may be difficult or impossible, I hope I can help make a space where you feel comfortable enough to exist in your own skin! :D