What it’s like to be Labelled with Schizophrenia

Or, everyone is a little bit psychotic

First, let me get something out of the way: I don’t necessarily believe I have schizophrenia. I had a psychotic episode with schizophrenic features, but as any psychiatrist will tell you, one psychotic episode does not a schizophrenic make. In fact, according to the US National Institute of Mental Health, three out of every 100 people will experience psychosis at some point in their lives.

Now, one of my doctors said they believed I showed psychotic symptoms at an earlier point in my life, but I disagree with that diagnosis. That was in relation to my belief in extraterrestrial life, which I supported with evidence (see my previous article, “Evidence for the Existence of Extraterrestrial Life” for more on that). Another doctor was less convinced I have schizophrenia — he was more open to the possibility of this being a one-off or a “brief psychotic episode”, the type three out of every 100 people will experience.

Nevertheless, it’s my opinion that I had a one-off at this point. The future of my life will be more revealing as to what exactly may be going on with my mind, but I await further evidence before labelling myself as schizophrenic.

Secondly, I have been on a spiritual path for the last 7 years where the express goal of that path is to attain “enlightenment” by transcending the limits of the human mind. This is not an easy thing. It requires you to deeply examine all your belief systems, and ultimately let go of all your belief systems so you view the world directly as it is in awareness rather than through the filtered, and often erroneous, prism of the human mind.

I believe this second thing is the main cause of what I went through, given my psychosis happened after an intense experience during a meditation weekend. I believe I am on the path of awakening, and the path of awakening is not always easy, and can sometimes lead you down a very rocky road.

This isn’t to downplay the severity of what I went through or the consequences of it, which you can read in my first article, “My disastrous spiritual awakening”. What I went through that evening and the weeks leading up to it was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I believed — more out of uncertainty than anything else — that I may have become a target of “negative beings” in the universe, and in my ambulance trip to the hospital I thought I had finally been captured by them and was being taken to be tortured and possibly killed. I can’t really explain the terror of believing something like that was happening. The fear was paralyzing.

But that is why I don’t necessarily believe I’m schizophrenic. I believe that what happened was directly a result of my spiritual path in which I was attempting to transcend the mind. The consequence of this is that the mind begins to break down — it has to in order to see beyond it. And I believe it just so happened that in my case my mind breaking down — while becoming more and more open minded (I am probably the most open-minded person I know! Some might say too open-minded!) led, because of some deep-seated fears of mine, to experiencing a very scary scenario.

This leads into my next point, and the subtitle of my article, that: everyone is a little bit psychotic.

At some point in our evolutionary history, humans started to develop language. We started to make sounds and point at things to communicate to each other what we were seeing. This was an immeasurable benefit to the development of our species. It allowed us to let others know what was happening, even if they weren’t experiencing it themselves.

This started to become more and more detailed, to the point that we were making up *stories* about what was happening.

This is when the trouble began, however. Stories are useful so long as they accurately reflect the details of a situation, but often they don’t. Often they are inaccurate stories based on inaccurate conclusions, and stories that can become so detached from reality that they could themselves be labelled as psychotic. This is why I think intrinsic to human language is the propensity to be somewhat “psychotic” — that is, to break from reality and become “just a story” in someone’s head.

We humans have a lot of these stories. Stories like “I’m a good person because of A”, or “I’m a bad person because of B”. Stories like “the world is a scary place”, or stories like “the world is a good place”. These are all just stories, but they’re stories that the majority of the human population has at least some of, and usually a lot of.

Language is an invaluable tool so long as it sticks with our actual experience, but often human stories are so detached from actual experience that there’s no real basis for them at all. Yet we believe them anyway.

Why? Because stories are what we use to try and keep us safe. We think if we just *understand* things enough, then we can know how to navigate this life we find ourselves in.

My contention is that no stories are ultimately true, they are simply relating a perspective of one individual to another. Some stories are at least somewhat accurate — they convey useful information that is grounded in experience. But a lot are not. A lot are so abstracted and detached from reality that there’s no basis for them at all. This is what happens when someone becomes “psychotic”. Their minds have become the sole ruler of their internal world, and has created stories within stories to the point of not being based on anything legitimately occurring in their experience.

Most human beliefs are like this. In fact all are. In my opinion there should be no such thing as a belief. A belief is what happens when you say “I have all the relevant data and I have made this conclusion” and you stop looking at any evidence which might contradict that viewpoint. But why would you ever want to stop being open to evidence potentially countering your viewpoint? This is why the subtitle of this article is “everyone is a little bit psychotic” — because everyone has some of these beliefs rolling around their heads. It may be “I’m not good enough”, or “I’m not attractive enough”, or “I’m not likable enough”, or conversely “I’m great”, “I’m the best at this”, or “I’m the most popular person around.”

When has nature ever looked at a flower and come to one of these conclusions about it? When has a tree ever looked at its withering leaves and thought, “I don’t deserve to be here”? So why do humans do it? Why are humans the only ones who come up with these crazy stories about themselves and about the world?

The truth is, you are fantastic just as you are. With all your faults, all your blemishes, all your past embarrassments and failures, you are fantastic just as you are. Why? Because you are living in this incredibly complex and mystifying world and you are doing your best to navigate it, while trying to manage all the crazy stories going around about who you are and what you’re worth.

So, how does it feel to be labelled as schizophrenic? Well, it feels pretty normal. I went through a period of my stories taking over completely and losing touch with what was real and what wasn’t, but now I’m back. I don’t believe any of the stories my mind comes up with about myself or about the world, I just think to myself, “hmm, that’s an interesting perspective you have there”, and that’s about it.

The truth is, we actually don’t need stories as much as we think we do. Some of them can be very useful to navigate the world, so long as they’re based on our direct experience, but so many of them are simply just stories. A byproduct of our species developing very sophisticated language. And along with that, a whole lot of suffering that no other animal on the planet experiences to the same degree.

So why not just get rid of all your stories that you can’t be certain about. I’ll bet you there’s really not much left once you do that. Just the practical everyday things the mind can be useful for. e.g. I drove to the store today to pick up some food. Great. Awesome story based on direct experience. But how about all the other ones we come up with along the way? Are those really necessary? Are they based in certifiable direct evidence, or are they just a crazy story you picked up somewhere along the way?

As always, in love and light,

Will.

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