More Than A Sense of Belonging
Alice Scarlet Death
Let’s talk a little about hearing voices. When a doctor asks you if you’re hearing voices, they are generally only concerned if those voices are telling you to do something. If only because they are often suggesting something violent and unsafe. I hear voices, but I don’t hear THOSE kind of voices, and I’m never sure what to say when asked this question.
Having experimented with extreme delirium, staying awake for 4-5 days in a row consistently over a period of months, with one instance of 9 days. I’ve had my fair share of delusions, paranoia, and voices.
One road block to getting the right kind of mental health treatment is failure to communicate properly one’s symptoms to a professional whose job is to decide whether or not the nuance of your situation merits consideration to make generalizations about you and send you on your way.
It can be quite difficult for anyone with this field of symptoms to communicate their own experiences in a way that relates to someone who has not- professional, advocate, or friend. You have experiences, feelings, sensations. Your doctor has experience, and the ability to hear a certain subset of words to be able to properly apply that experience.
You have experience. And generally not the right words.
We stigmatize googling your symptoms. If only because we are prone to letting our minds run wild. However, research and education is paramount to better understanding. I have fought tooth and nail to find the right words in order to get the help I need. I am fortunate to have the privilege of an education and technological resources to allow me to do so.
And even though now I have much of the right words, I’m at an impasse due to biases and ignorance of neurodivergence experiences held by those professionals afforded to me by the state.
This is why peer support is critical, in my opinion. Your peers will often have the words and experiences to help you possibly find a better understanding of your own nature by juxtaposition.
Community support is the overarching umbrella that can make the difference between someone being on the streets or thriving. A community can help guide people to the appropriate place where your experiences and words may be better understood. The community is not meant to be a replacement for peer support or professional support, but more of a safety net to catch people before the void swallows them whole.
Treating a community as a replacement is hazardous. With a purpose serving a far less nuanced perspective than peer/professional, you will run into more impactful bias here than anywhere else. Peer groups and professionals meet once a week more. Communities are there every day, are organized by people needing to be served by said community.
You can have a flare up at your doctor’s office and still be allowed back. you can get kicked out of that peer group, but there’s a 100 page book in my hand with other meetings.
When you get kicked out of a community, it is generally permanent. You are deemed as a risk, a threat to their status quo, and might as well be seen as an outsider.
But- if you try to hold a community leader accountable they’re able to prey on everyone else’s fear of losing something crucial to their survival.
So what do we do? I’ve been a community leader AND thrown out enough times to speak on this I would hopes. Just like fraternities and secret societies, they create a coded language to let everyone know who is a true member. Only difference is that nobody realizes they are doing it. Rhetoric is the programming language of propaganda. And while I’m not hear to defend toxic people, I’ve seen enough conversations, call outs, oustings, etc to see that it’s just an endless cycle of “oh hey, we’re starting to catch on that there’s a common communicative element keeping us in line. It’s being perpetuated by the group leader, we should oust them!” all while the group leader was acting out the same behaviours to be in control in the first place.
When they make the excuse “i was just trying to help people.” “i was just doing my best.” They are dogpiled by the same language they used they thought seemed most ethical to just ‘keep the peace and be fair.’
It’s an endless cycle of promoting a genuine sense of support to lure people in and give them a sense of safety enough to be prone to suggestion.
This is how cults work. This is how propaganda becomes as effective as it is.
A former friend paid for my plane ticket to move from Nashville to Seattle to stay off the streets and because not getting mental health resources was dangerous to myself and those around me. I move up here and make a lot of the same mistakes while in the process of recovery only to end up nearly as vulnerable, dangerous, and unhealthy as I was in Nashville. Community leaders here will tell you they don’t owe you anything and to seek peer or professional help.
They completely fail to comprehend the necessity for a balance of all three. This is how we end up with such rampant abuse of power by sending these people off to make their own communities. This only serves to increase vulnerability. It gets to a point where there is little leeway for not towing the line of whichever community you’re in. And you allow for it because it’s in the name of safety. Because if you don’t allow for it, you will be affected by it.
This gives little room for error because it does not allow for questioning how accountability works. It creates an environment in which critical elements of what allow peers and professional help to even function.
But if I say “you are creating a society of victims.” thankfully you have a stopgap in your rhetoric preventing that phrase from meaning anything other than what you’ve been conditioned to. I might not choose that phrase outside the context of this paragraph, and I know you probably don’t like being told it’s hard being objective—or at least that’s generally what this point is reduced to at the end of the day to sweep it under the rug.
These things happen to protect us from toxic, lying, and manipulative people. We don’t like admitting we are doing anything wrong. Especially when posts like mine whose intentions are a cry for help and a plea for everyone to ‘be better’ are seen as toxic, lying, and manipulative. Or that sentence, for that matter. And this is where it starts, losing that sense of reality. The true harm this all causes is the gaslighting- or basically convincing someone they are ‘crazy’ for lack of a better term for expressing things that are not. This is harm on a level that is far more destructive than any of us know.
And when I confront group leaders about this problem in the overarching community, or individuals. “Not my problem.” They are afraid too, and I don’t blame them one bit. I was afforded with the privilege to have experiences I’ve had to put into words and deconstruct how harmful all this is. I was not afforded the privilege to say it in such a way that has been acted upon by anyone in power in any responsible way. And watching all this go happen before my eyes feels consumes me with a constant feeling of being trapped with nowhere to go. It’s like I’m trapped in a coffin. Partly grieving, partly panicking. For you. For myself. I’m banging on my casket, screaming that they’re preparing caskets for you as well. And you’re sitting here reading this, behaving exactly as anyone else at a funeral would. Probably trying to forget, trying to fuck, or lessen the emotional impact of being faced with mortality.
