Not a translation: I’d like to write about psychotic characters in a way that doesn’t dehumanize or villainize them. Do you have any resources or tips from actual psychotic people on writing psychotic characters in a non-ableist way?

evenmoreclinicallydepressedpug:

translatingableism:

translatingableism-archive:

I would like our listeners who are actually psychotic to answer this.

Is there a specific tag that should be used for psychotic people?

~admincam

Hey, mod Eliza here! My time has come!

I think the important thing to remember is that people who are psychotic behave rationally in response to their environment. That environment itself is confusing and terrifying, often, so (who am I kidding i’m talking about myself) bizzare behavior to others makes perfect sense to me when I’m psychotic. So make actions the character takes make sense instead of having them be random.

Also, very important – don’t do the “all this plot was just a hallucination and this person is just in an institution.” I doubt you will, but just to be safe.

Write diverse psychotic characters, too.

Don’t do the Lonely Man Talking to Himself type. Make the character a person.

Psychosis really shapes who I am, but it is not all that I am.

Include different types of hallucinations. I had a lot of tactile ones for a while. Olfactory hallucinations might also be fun to explore.

Also, there’s something very important that I want to add, that usually makes people very upset with me, but I think it’s essential.

Sometimes people are violent in response to a confusing and disorienting environment. The first time I was hospitalized, I had the police called on me because I was violent. I’ve also been violent while in hospital and seen other mentally ill people be as well. It’s not okay to do, but it is something that happens.

Pretending it isn’t is some ridiculous sort of trying to make mental illness more palatable for the neurotypicals. It’s creating a “we’re not like The Truly (insert slur here)” mentality.

So don’t make the focus of your character’s psychosis violence, but it’s okay (and in my mind, good) to include the fact that sometimes you’re not your best self when psychotic.

(If anyone is upset with me about this, i’m sorry. Don’t send the blog hate, talk to me calmly on my personal blog, please. I’m @coldwind-shiningstars)

You’re doing well asking questions! Do your research, too, know that people can be psychotic from more than schizophrenia (I’m schizoaffective bipolar) and please please please don’t be like that one person who used Supernatural as a source.

Thanks for the question, and I hope this helped!

Also, the tag is pseriouslypsychosis.

A lot of the time, psychosis is small
random things like hearing music playing in another room, smelling
homemade
macaroni and cheese casseroles when one hasn’t been cooked in months,
sometimes
feeling like some insect landed on you and stung you without leaving a
mark,
flashes of light or darkness, hearing a voice in the running water after
you flushed the toilet. A really common one involves your phone
ringing,
chiming or buzzing except it didn’t or you didn’t have it on you. I
think that
is because we’ve trained ourselves to listen for our phones all the
time.

Things to avoid:

Hearing voices/seeing people or
creatures is actually ESP or a superpower Why not? Because it basically erases
the psychosis and goes ha-ha that character was never mentally ill at all

Having two souls/separate personalities
in one body, especially where one is evil and violent.

Confusing psychosis with Dissociative
Personality Disorder (DID)

Seeing people/creatures as full
independent apparitions with separate personalities who can appear for
significant periods of time who might be real or might not. Is the imaginary
person doing it or is the psychotic person doing it?  The whole Harvey/Donny Darko thing.