{"id":47644,"date":"2022-08-06T09:55:31","date_gmt":"2022-08-06T09:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=47644"},"modified":"2022-08-06T09:55:39","modified_gmt":"2022-08-06T09:55:39","slug":"the-creation-of-mental-monsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2022\/08\/06\/the-creation-of-mental-monsters\/","title":{"rendered":"The creation of mental monsters."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Another little piece on mental labels.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disorder and disease thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday or the day before I read a post from a guy who was totally elated to finally know what he was suffering from, mentally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were several official disorders he\u2019d recently received, and the most interesting, at least to me, was one that\u2019s called NOS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NOS stands for Not Otherwise Specified, and \u2018it is used to note the presence of a condition where the symptoms presented indicate a general diagnosis within a family of disorders (e.g. depressive disorders, anxiety disorders), but don\u2019t meet criteria established for specific diagnoses within that family\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new term for NOS is \u2018unspecified disorder\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means, if I loosely translate it, \u2018you have a couple of symptoms but they don\u2019t officially add up enough to form a \u2018real\u2019 disorder\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re sort of depressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or kind of anxious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Really?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because these seem to be things that every human being experiences now and then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And putting a label on something that doesn\u2019t fit the existing collection of labels (that were totally made up by people anyway), feels very, very off to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As if you’re sorry that you can’t truly and officially classify the person’s experience, and now they get something for comfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the things that REALLY struck me was when the guy said \u2018Now all of the pieces of the puzzle start falling into place, and many of the things that happened in my life finally make sense!\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, if it\u2019s helpful, if it\u2019s soothing: why not, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let me explain what really happens here, and why this is absolute bullshit, by using a weird example that I\u2019ve used before, but works quite well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s say you walk into the kitchen and you haven\u2019t cleaned up in a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of weeks, even.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are used pans and crusty plates everywhere, empty jars, smelly old pieces of bread, rotten fruit, moldy shit, raunchy cups, and lots of flies and ants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now let\u2019s say, for the sake of this argument, that very important Kitchen Organization and Layout Specialists have decided to call this collection of disorderly, dirty things \u2018Shnoocks\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still with me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shnoocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, if anybody would call you and asked \u2018Can I come over for dinner?\u2019, you could say \u2018Nah, not a good moment, I have Shnoocks\u2019, and they\u2019d get the picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shnoocks is the random name for a sum of randomly identified things, and we\u2019re used to that and have learned to agree to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, kinda helpful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But nobody in their right mind would say that the warzone in your kitchen is CAUSED by Shnoocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That would simply be a weird case of completely flipping the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, that\u2019s exactly what happens when people are labeled with a mental disorder or affliction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just imagine the kitchen therapist asking you about your situation, checking off the different elements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Crusty plates? Check.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Empty jars? Okay, check.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Flies AND ants? Check.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Well, hm, it\u2019s obviously a case of Shnoocks.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you\u2019d be sitting there, scratching your head, relieved, saying \u2018NOW it makes sense, all the time it was Shnoocks! Yes! I see that a couple of years ago I had many moments of mild Shnoocks, my parents used to have episodes of Shnoocks, but for me, it\u2019s gotten out of hand, and it\u2019s SO obvious now!!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is somewhat ridiculous, I know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is also exactly how the mental health system works, how we got it backward, and how the names for things transform into the CAUSE of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s like saying that Shnoocks created the mess in your kitchen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(By the way: I\u2019m not talking about personal responsibility here; this example is purely to paint a visually helpful picture).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using this way to go about stuff, to \u2018explain\u2019 things, you can make literally anything work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just pick a random selection of things in the world, give it a name, and then, when one of the things from the selection occurs, you can now claim that it\u2019s the result of the name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is pure mental trickery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s ridiculous to give a bunch of random things a specific name, and then all of a sudden make that name responsible for the appearance or creation of those things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It creates things and causal connections that don\u2019t really exist but are used to build a whole fucking paradigm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not about the denial of suffering or misery or confusion or darkness: this is about seeing it how it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s about natural mental resilience, the acceptance of normal human experiences, and working from health instead of sickness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the opposite of creating afflictions that are not biologically induced, that often turn against us when we start to believe they\u2019re part of who we are, and open up a whole world of dubious pharmaceutical solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the present mental health methods and models are aimed at killing monsters, suppressing monsters, or learning to cope with monsters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if we recognized that those creatures don\u2019t even exist?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by @dbmartin00, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another little piece on mental labels. The disorder and disease thing. Yesterday or the day before I read a post from a guy who was totally elated to finally know what he was suffering from, mentally. There were several official disorders he\u2019d recently received, and the most interesting, at least to me, was one that\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[99,102,97,117,100,116,113,107,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47644"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47646,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47644\/revisions\/47646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}