How sane is your mind?

Therapy. And for the record, I consider myself stark raving mad.

“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.”

- Herman Melville

I dabble in sanity from time to time ;)
As for wanting to change?You just have to make the effort to so it.

@ChazMaz Blimey….!

Sounds like you might have a self esteem problem. One way to get help with that is therapy.

You can help that on your own by slowing down your inner dialogue and doing affirmations. A big help is the book Self Parenting.

If you question your sanity, you’re probably Ok. Its the insane that think they’re fine. Look at the Unabomber.

I deviate considerably from the mean measurement of sanity.

Insane supposes a loss of touch with reality. I am always in touch with reality. I have lots of other “things” I am bipolar (mood disorder) I am OCD, I also have PTSD. However, I am seen as sane. I also have lot’s of little idiosyncrasies that are seen as eccentric. The other stuff that bothered me I worked on in therapy, and will do so again if I need to. I think being sane and having issues are two different things. (Plus we all have some issues somewhere down the line it is what we do with them that counts).

Most of the time I think I’m normal. Until someone asks me about my life, or anything that reveals my thought processes, then, when I see their shocked faces I know I’m not right. Thats why I very rarely tell anyone in person, friends or family, whats going on in my head. It’s not nice when you see the way they look at you.

@Cloverfield I know that look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EE59Ex5Px4

@Dibley Can you afford therapy? You need to work on yourself (as I said in my other post).

@jjmah This won’t come as a surprise but I’m already in it, that is why I know the look that @Cloverfield means!

@Dibley Good luck!

@Dibley The only time I’ve ever discussed it with my mum I didn’t hear from her for 3mnths.

@jjmah Thanks

@Cloverfield The time I did she thought I was having a bad day! When I attempted suicide, she fetched me from the hospital and it has never been mentioned since. In fact the first thing she said when we got home, “you haven’t taken your shows off, you know we have a new carpet”!

@Dibley we ALL feel that way at times. It is a crazy World. We fall, we get back up, dust ourselves off, and get back in the freaking race. “Live is a beach!”

Hey, thought this was real funny…

A psychiatrist visited a California mental institution and asked a patient, “How did you get here? What was the nature of your illness?” He got the following reply.

“Well, it all started when I got married and I guess I should never have done it. I married a widow with a grown daughter who then became my stepdaughter.

My dad came to visit us, fell in love with my lovely stepdaughter, then married her. And so my stepdaughter was now my stepmother. Soon, my wife had a son who was, of course, my daddy’s brother-in-law since he is the half-brother of my stepdaughter, who is now, of course, my daddy’s wife.

So, as I told you, when my stepdaughter married my daddy, she was at once my stepmother! Now, since my new son is brother to my stepmother, he also became my uncle. As you know, my wife is my step-grandmother since she is my stepmother’s mother. Don’t forget that my stepmother is my stepdaughter. Remember, too, that I am my wife’s grandson.

But hold on just a few minutes more. You see, since I’m married to my step-grandmother, I am not only the wife’s grandson and her hubby, but I am also my own grandfather. Now can you understand how I got put in this place?”

After staring blanky with a dizzy look on his face, the psychiatrist replied: “Move over!”

@BoBo1946 Wow, now that’s a story!

My mind is way saner than my body, for sure.

@Dibley Good-grief…... sometimes I wonder if mums have a book filled with all of the wrong things to say & do, just for use with their children.

It is not wrong to be different. It is not necessarily mentally ill to think different than the vast majority of people, be a little eccentric or have a few quirks. I think about all the genius artists and interesting unique personalities I have met that wouldn’t fit the mold of what society considers to be normal but are not sick, just unique.

Everyone feels anxiety once in a while. Before you go on a roller coaster, before a job interview, before a surgery, you are going to feel anxiety. The emotion of anxiety is not a mental illness. Everyone has it. However some people have extreme anxiety all the time, to the point where going to the grocery store is very hard. They may start skipping work having too much anxiety about going in. They may start having anxiety attacks so bad they go to the emergency room thinking they are in physical peril. At some point a simple common emotion can start interfering in life and become a disorder.

It is hard for me to tell you when it is a disorder that you need some help with. The question usually comes down to how uncomfortable you are, how much it is interfering with normal life, if it is interfering with relationships, and things like that. There is clearly a line where you wake up and think, “hey I need some help.” Sometimes simple therapy and counseling can do wonders without even medication. Some people need medication in order to function. Those lines are very individual. Some people find their answers in alternative places like meditation and somehow manage to overcome things too. If you get the sudden urge to paint your garage purple and your house orange, it is weird, but not a dysfunction that needs a psych intervention.

We all have moments with a paranoid thought, a feeling of anxiety, a down day. When and where that turns into paranoia, panic attacks, or debilitating depression it is another matter. So the guideline to go by is how much it is interfering in your relationships, life, work, happiness. When you think you need help, you usually do.

There are some things that need immediate attention no matter what. Psychosis such as seeing things or hearing things that are not there, long conversations with Abraham Lincoln’s ghost, false beliefs the FBI are following you or aliens are reading your mind, you have to go in immediately for some help. If you ever, ever ever feel like you are going to hurt yourself or someone else, you need to seek emergency treatment. You can even go to the emergency room. They will know what to do.

@BoBo1946 I sooooo hope that story is true :)

@Cloverfield loll..

Working with a good therapist should start to help you. Good lluck!

@BoBo1946 LOLL, LOLL, LOLL… you so make my day, thanks

Think your self-esteem is at rock bottom. Learn to love and respect yourself, first and foremost.
You are the most important person.
When you love and respect yourself other people will reciprocate. I am sure of that.

Define normal.
Define sane.

I think if anyone was totally sane it would drive them nuts.

Everybody is crazy, to some degree.

@partyparty loll..you’re obliged…

I am much saner than I was 10 years ago. I was a mess.

Being insane is thrown around so loosely, and often, it seems, placing insanity in the stead of one’s perceptions on reality and how they act towards it without ever wondering what others think in the same situation, (It’s easy to think you’re nuts when you don’t know how others think.) or people just say it cuz they wanna appear all different.

As long as you’re aware that there’s a reality around you and that your reasoning and thought process allows you to exist in society as seemingly intended Although that in itself might be crazy haha I wouldn’t worry about it much, but if you really do worry, you might seek psychological analysts, and then depending on the results, perhaps some therapy. Maybe it’s a hint at a mental disorder. Most of us have some trait, only that it’s never really pronounced as much as some other folks.
Others learn to live with it without it ever being known to anyone. Counseling of some kind may be another option, especially if you think this to be an issue of self esteem rather than sanity.

Now I can’t say I can define insanity one hundred percent, and it often depends on the context or what psychology books you read haha, but wondering about oneself and one’s behaviour is a sign of a sane mind I think.
Of course it’s hard to tell if you’re insane or not because many “insane” people function quite well in society, but then maybe I just watch too many movies.
Dismiss.

I don’t know what sanity is. Nor do I know what insanity is. When I think of insanity, I think of a couple of things. One is someone locked away in an asylum, wearing a strait jacket, talking to invisible people and attacking people and attempting to bite them when the patient is not restrained.

The other thing I think of is myself when I do self-destructive things and I have no idea why. It seems insane to me to be trying to hurt myself or lose everything I care about and that makes me comfortable, or to try to kill myself… well, think of trying to kill myself.

It’s possible that there is a sensible reason for me to knock myself down to beggarhood. Maybe it is an experience I need to have for some reason I cannot currently apprehend. Maybe it is an example of a mind not working properly. Surely it is insane to want to be much worse off than you are?

I don’t think I’m insane. I don’t think I understand myself, either. I think that if I want to do it, there must be a good reason for it. I don’t believe I do things for self-destructive purposes. But it is possible that I do, and that I do need to be medicated so that I stop trying to hurt myself.

Before I was diagnosed, I got to the point where I was actively trying to destroy my life. I was irritable with my children (who became afraid of me) and I was verbally attacking my wife at every opportunity. I couldn’t work. I could only think about suicide and how much it hurt to be me. Not necessarily in that order.

I am told that my mind was misfiring because of a failure of the biochemistry of it. Something to do with sodium uptake. They gave me drugs and my behavior changed. It freaked me out. I didn’t want to think of myself as a machine whose thoughts could be adjusted by a little bit of lithium. I wanted to think of myself as controlling my thoughts.

I suppose I should be dead by now. I’m glad I’m not. I guess my wife and children are also glad I’m not dead. Maybe one or two others, as well.

So you tell me. How sane is my mind? How sane was it?

There is NO mind so sane is not an issue for me!

It’s borderline, but I do a good job at fooling people =)

Being sane and being normal don’t have to coincide.

It’s funny. The voices in my head asked me the same thing the other day.