stolen from sophiaserpentia

[thejunipertree]

3 things which scare me: zombies, dolls, the dark.

3 things which I don't understand: the stock market, reality television, quantum physics

3 things I'd like to learn: Latin, pocket picking, how to play the accordion

3 things I am wearing right now: my Sinner/Saint necklace, black velvet jeans, glittery skull and crossbone socks

3 things on my desk: my cigarettes, my sacred heart Zippo, a cherry pie the size of a half dollar made from Sculptey clay

3 things I want to do before I die: be ridden by a lwa, own a boat, own my own funeral home

3 good things about my personality: quick wit, empathic, can tell the best stories

3 bad things about my personality: short tempered, lazy, forgetful

3 parts of my heritage: Cherokee, German, French

3 things I like about my body: my eyes, my lips, the small of my back

3 things I don't like about my body: height, weight, hands

3 things most people don't know about me: I did two and a half years in colour guard during high school, I'm a diagnosed schizophrenic, I can turn my right leg completely around

3 things I say the most: 'hee!', 'Jesus fuck!', 'And I was like...'

3 places I want to go: Jerusalem, New Orleans (again), Paris

3 names that I go by: Tara, Tara-Love, magdalene

3 screen names I use or have used: littleflappybat, batsinthebelfrey, dormouse

Comments

personal

[stonykitty.livejournal.com]

do you believe your diagnosis? i know that's a very personal question, and i hope i'm not being intrusive, it's just that i just read kate millet's "the loony bin trip" and i study music therapy, and i've been in inpatient psychiatric care-

although there are biological components to psychiatric illness; i truly believe that it is the culture that determines "mental illness" this greatly impacts the individual's self-concept and could contribute to self-fulfilling prophecy, so to speak-
what do you think?

Re: personal

[meetzemonsta.livejournal.com]

do you believe your diagnosis?

I do, though I believe it leans more towards being schizoaffective. I've never had any psychiatric care, I've always refused it. And I refuse to take meds for my issues. I've gotten this far in life without them, there's no reason for me to start now. Sometimes the "issues" I have are a bit difficult to deal with when they manifest, but I muddle through it.

For what it's worth, the doctor who nailed my diagnosis down said I had mild to moderate schizophrenia with hypo manic episodes.

i truly believe that it is the culture that determines "mental illness" this greatly impacts the individual's self-concept and could contribute to self-fulfilling prophecy, so to speak-

I'm not quite sure I fully understand this statement, specifically the culture determining bit. Could you expound on it a bit more? The idea interests me.

Re: personal

[stonykitty.livejournal.com]

that mental illness only exists because the culture has specified what is normal, etc... and i don't necessarily buy this- there is no "average" person, i don't know if i've explained it well, but
this is true for sexual orientation as well- prior to the 1900's the terms "lesbian" for example did not even exist-- women were not labeled according to their sexual relationships , but according to their familial relationships with husbands and children--
i guess what i mean is that-- i don't buy pop culture and the social norms of our society...

Re: personal

[meetzemonsta.livejournal.com]

that mental illness only exists because the culture has specified what is normal, etc...

I don't believe this. I don't believe that mental illness is necessarily abnormal, to begin with. It's just a case of brain wires being crossed or chemical imbalances. Another curveball thrown at us from Nature. Neither normal or abnormal, it just is.

I think that many people are misdiagnosed because of the willingless to throw labels around to excuse behaviour, especially when there's nothing "wrong" with them at all, and thusly they're frequently overmedicated.

Too many people are all too willing to accept the explanation of something like depression, when they're actually just going through a bad streak in their lives. Too many parents would rather label their children as having ADHD, when in actuality it's more of a case of problematic parenting skills.

(of course, this isn't to say that there aren't cases of actual depression and actual ADHD and whathaveyou. I just think there are far less of them then people have come to believe.)