One other thought about anonymity. I dislike that we are too often anonymous within the program. We should be anonymous outside of the program, but not inside. How often have you been at a meeting where someone says, “Joe is in the hospital” or “Jane says hello”, and you’re forced to ask, “Is that Joe the plumber, or Joe the biker, or tall Joe, or young Joe, etc.”

In my first home group, a lot of the people introduced themselves by their full name. I miss that.

thank god for 12-step recovery, sobriety and a Spiritual awakening!

I had an AWESOME Thanksgiving and I don’t think the players were any different, I was just working for a different Director

In addition, this isn’t a legal battle. A commenter doesn’t have to read every line of every other comment to respond to the author of the initial post. Given your attitude, I wouldn’t describe my family’s or my own difficulties in any detail, but I can tell you that “just” one schizophrenic sounds like an easy family load to bear compared to my own (try at least five times more relatives to care for and advocate for).

I was not saying that people shouldn’t care about words. We have all been hurt and infuriated by the words used by hostile people outside the community of people who either are mentally ill or who are caring for beloved relatives who are. But it is a completely different thing when someone within the community calls themself or their loved ones these words colloquially. Or a stressed out spouse impressionistically describes a traumatic setting. We are all doing the best we can. Also, when people blog or post comments, it is completely different to when we give a public speech or testify on behalf of mentally ill people. We are supposed to be amongst friends here, not battling crafty lawyers and revolting insurance claims deniers, or fighting for someone’s right to work or go to school or be included in regular life.

Nothing I wrote said that I was OK with someone calling me or anybody else crazy with disdain. I specifically said that I have filed complaints against people who made offensive comments about the mentally ill, sometimes at great political cost (in this economic climate it does not help to be labelled a touchy over sensitive pcer). Nobody can or should have to bear that. But the JW didn’t call anyone crazy with disdain, so you were just injecting your own legitimate pet peeve. Criticizing someone else for an issue absent from their post but present in your life that legitimately bothers you is unfair. Post your own essay or comment and let others react, but don’t see things in a post that aren’t there.

If you have visited your sister in the hospital, I assume you are familiar with the way patients check themselves and try to reassure themselves that they are progressing by things like “I may be a basket case, but at least I’m not crazy like my roommate….” It may not seem kind, but it is not something said to the sicker person. It is part of the healthier one struggling back towards health.

As to my point about labelling someone crazy versus fat, it was probably because of my own incomplete attitude adjustment even 25 years since being anorexic. All my family except a couple are so severely mentally ill that I long ago got over shock at words like loony. Or at least covered it with scar tissue. My point was that mental illness is not and should never be the defining characteristic of a person. So if we are called loony with disdain it is hurtful, but we
can tell ourselves that the person is a jerk, and that anyway, they are only discussing a small aspect of us. Even the sickest person with the most florid symptoms is way more than their illness. But insults and labels aimed at things to do with our character or our appearance can be harder to shrug off. At least for me.

For example, I believe that it is worse to be wicked than crazy, worse to be an insider trader than a mental patient, worse to be vicious than psychotic, etc. I have mentally ill children, but I would be even more devastated if they were rich, successful and dishonest “normal” . I offered the fat as one of those things that only wackos like me, former anorexics, can still be far more devastated by because (to me) it is a far more total condemnation than loony. But, we are all just miserable sinners, nowhere near health, doing the best we can, and each person has different things that devastate them more.

One thing I know about myself, and most anorexics, it’s all about control. Disordered appetites. We have to fight our own desire to subdue things, even others’ opinions, as we have so painfully subdued our own most basic appetite for food in the past. We are not good at lightening up, but we have to, or we will die.

You should give it a try. On Day 2 I’m finding that I’m craving stuff, probably just because I can’t have it. This is a good exercise for my soul, as well as my wallet….

You think those words DON’T DEVALUE people with mental illness? So if someone you don’t know calls you crazy with disdain that’s OK with you? Well, I’ll tell you something. Schizophrenia is beyond horrible, beyond a nightmare, and again, unless you have a loved one with it, then you don’t know how such language does “devalue.” A “mere” loony? As someone who has depression, who was anorexic, I can tell you that the stigma, the experience, and the way others view me is nothing, NOTHING compared to what my sister goes through.

Talk about the PC police. You’re trying to say that some people shouldn’t care about words used to describe people like themselves or their families members, but they should care about someone being called fat? Reality check, please.

Get off your high horse.

I’ve visited relatives countless times in mental hospitals, and calling them looney bins helped allay my anxiety each time. My fears for my family, myself. When I was in one for depression all of us made constant cracks about ourselves. A wimpy social worker tried to make the same argument about language and we turned on her: we choose how we refer to ourselves, and pc be damned. I worry more about language that we use to devalue ouselves or our loved ones as individuals, morally, spiritually. A diagnosis, a condition, is just part of a person. Far more damaging to be called stupid, vicious, fat (sorry, the former anorexic in me) or a bad mother than a mere loony. The labels that truly damage are those that key into our deepest insecurities about whether or not we have value. Being a loony or mentally ill is an illness not a moral choice so somebody using it to insult (as opposed to affectionately tease or trying to alleviate tension) is just another jerk. But if someone calls us a bad mother, for example…..Those are fighting words. At least for me.

I you *do* incur such debt, then you’d better start working the program formally - at least if you want to get and stay solvent.

When I read JW’s post, I see someone who is scared and anxious about a man she loves very much. I see her using tongue-in-cheek language to distance herself from the situation so that she can cope. Her experience is that her husband is locked up in a hospital that is dirty and loud and feels to her like a jail. It mirrors stereotypes in the media in a way that seems surreal and frightening. Her husband is sharing a room with someone suffering from dementia, and he is unable to sleep, which adds to his tension and her fear. Throughout the process of having him committed, she has felt unheard and disrespected.

When I read Etta and Aimee’s comments, I see people who have been hurt and judged and marginalized by society’s stigmatization of their own or a loved one’s mental illness. JW’s language and her attempts to process the disturbing things she has seen feel like one more painful attack, and they feel unheard and disrespected.

And it all sucks. It sucks to have a husband who is in an institution that feels scary and dangerous and inhuman. It sucks to feel that you are being told that what you are experiencing isn’t real or to feel that you are expected to be able, in the midst of howling raging pain, to find a way of expressing it all that doesn’t hurt anyone. But it sucks just as much to feel like you are being called names. It sucks to feel that people are not listening or showing respect for the way you’ve asked to be treated. It sucks to feel that people don’t care enough to take the time to listen, learn and change one single hurtful word. It sucks to struggle with mental illness in a society that still views it as a moral failing rather than a disease that needs treatment.

What I see is every person here (from JW to Etta) has been beaten down by pain too much to listen to someone else’s right now. Both sides are saying, “Validate ME.” But neither has the energy left to validate the other. And believe me, both sides are hurting now: much as JW’s “crazy” language hurt some of you, I have been blogging long enough to know that the critical language in some of these comments is the kind that would keep me up at night crying. (Yes, language on both sides can sting like that.) And the ironic thing is that everyone is hurting from the exact same thing: the feeling people are choosing to hurt you when they should and could find another way and time that’s less painful to you to express their own pain.

When I’m at my most sarcastic and smart ass — or my most outraged and ranty — I’m usually most desperately hurting and looking to avoid that hurt. And that has served me really well over the years, and continues too, but as always, in the long run, what needs to heal and change isn’t the rest of the world, it’s me. And given the length of this comment, I think it’s probably a signal that I need lunch, a nap and some time in meditation. Love you all.

I’m sorry you have to put up with people bossing you around. Political correctness is way out of hand and I think people need to remember that if they feel overly sensitive to someone’s tongue in cheek, they can always stop reading and move on to the vanilla, ‘non-offensive’ writings available to them. Your writing is about you, and how you feel. Keep doing it your way lady!