Author: NobleNeedle

Can We Own “Psychotic” Behavior?

15 minute read

Is it possible to own “psychotic” behavior? Or is it implied, by the very term “psychotic”, that the behavior under question is not exactly owned or can’t be owned by an individual or any sane self, or even that if an otherwise sane self were to officially take responsibility for (responsibility which therefore could dangerously be associated with pride) the behavior then such a self could no longer be considered sane? Along these lines, if the behavior under question is labelled by others as “psychotic”, can merely accepting others’ / the labelling parties’ views as your own constitute real repair or real growth?

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
Carl Rogers

Carl Rogers, in positing a phenomological theory of personality in 1951, put forward nineteen propositions, the thirteenth of which is:

In some instances, behavior may be brought about by organic experiences and needs that have not been symbolized. Such behavior may be inconsistent with the structure of the self, but in such instances the individual does not “own” the behavior.

These propositions are not specifically directed toward developing a theory of psychosis, but toward a general humanistic theory of personality. I personally like this language, and don’t think his ambition toward a universal theory of psychology should necessarily be regarded as an overreach even if there may theories today that are more “evidence-based” or focused on specific “illnesses”. Including this non-ownership makes me feel like any (even “psychotic”) experience can be included within this universe, and therefore dialogue is possible — those with “sick” minds don’t need to be quarantined off in some corner. The next proposition, fourteen, elaborates on the former:

Psychological adjustment exists when the concept of the self is such that all the sensory and visceral experiences of the organism are, or may be, assimilated on a symbolic level into a consistent relationship with the concept of self.

I love this definition of adjustment. This totally reframes it for me. In my experience of misdiagnosis, I would try to offer as a sign of previous mental continence that a year before the onset of my “illness” my college counselor remarked I was maybe the most well-adjusted student she’d encountered. External psychological authorities (the medicaid counselors mainly trying to ensure I accepted I was fundamentally sick and would comply with the drugs, and in different ways my father) pejorated the term “adjust”. Well, what does adjustment mean? What are you adjusting to? It’s no great adjustment to adjust a sick society. I remember encountering the Adjustment card (in place of Justice) in Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot, and I remember thinking that only a total “psychotic” Satanist like Crowley could begin to have sane views of Adjustment. Yet here, Rogers, without being at all wacky, instead while being maybe even a bit normative, is meaning with the word “adjustment” in psychology something that that makes a lot of sense. It’s not exactly about an individual adjusting to a situation or to a set of societal beliefs. I don’t know if the belief “Your mind is essentially sick, or essentially sickness; because people around you believe this you need to take the underresearched altogether medically inappropriate meds without question” can ever be actually adjusted to, and even if it could be, should it be? Real psychological adjustment may include adjustment to situations or social groups but is actually something in a way much bigger than that. Much bigger, though less external. It’s about a self adjusting to its actual experiences. How tragic it is when this distinction gets lost amid misdiagnosis and its many performances of “care”.

In this sense, I do believe that “psychotic” experiences, or memories of a self from when one’s behavior was labelled as “psychotic”, can be reviewed and eventually assimilated.

This, I think, is a very important belief in recovery.

Share what you feel comfortable sharing, own what you feel comfortable owning.

There were significant social forces in my journey of misdiagnoses that were adamantly opposed to anything approaching this kind of work. I’m thinking of my mother. I’m thinking of her rage. I first witnessed this somewhat unhinged rage when it was directed at adults who she perceived as being a threat to me as a child, mainly teachers. Within the gravity of the rage, there was her righteousness and a sense that I ought to feel guilty for feeling embarrassed or doing anything but accepting my vulnerability to the outside adult and the rightness of her raised voice, her angry (psychotic?) words and tears. It was this same protective rage that was turned on me when I would try to persist with an interest in psychology or in the circumstances of my “diagnosis”. She would demand ”acceptance”: “You were/are sick”. And I think that if I actually did “just accept” without also retaining hope for psychological adjustment, it wouldn’t be ten years since an episode of psychosis, instead I would still be on that cycle. In an experience of misdiagnosis, it can seem to be almost a form of heresy that you (your own mind, your own self) reviews and learns from your experience. If the mind is an agent is learning, that necessarily means that the mind will be making changes. And if it’s a “sick mind”, necessarily these will only be the wrong kind of changes, so in this paradigm, better to ”nip it in the bud” (a common phrase in the early years of my misdiagnosis) by ensuring that the mind doesn’t learn on it’s own or doesn’t believe it can or that its learning or competence is not believed in or given any value to by the “care team”. For me, writing about misdiagnosis helps to me to fight against these kinds of attitudes, as its very easy to internalize them when you’ve interacted with them regularly for years.

Though it may be difficult to think about given what we associate with the term “psychosis”, I do believe behavior that has been labelled either internally or externally as “psychotic” can and should be owned, assimilated, adjusted to, from, against, and with. What happened happened. Your choices weren’t perfect, but who made them? Keeping it all totally packed away I see as ultimately a kind of disorganization, and it can be a slippery slope if more and more of your personality gets devoted to hiding, to not-being, to not-remembering, to not-experiencing. I resist the idea that just because you’ve had something like “psychotic” experience, or just because you’ve been misdiagnosed, you therefore have a responsibility to “own more” than other people. I feel like that can lead to another extreme, where so much of you is caught up in trying to own every facet of your experience so as to defeat accusations or a sense of inferiority. I’m thinking specifically of oversharing, or feeling guilty about not mentioning the fact of the situation of my misdiagnosis on a job interview, or a date. Misdiagnosed persons should not feel morally wrong for not embarking on extreme or unusual quests of ownership. Share what you feel comfortable sharing, own what you feel comfortable owning. I feel comfortable saying that we should seek to assimilate and own even our “psychotic” experiences, just as anyone should seek to assimilate and adjust to aspects of their experience that at first don’t seem to fit, with the hope that you’re not going carry this should beyond what feels sensible for you.

The more that we assimilate and own the “psychotic” parts of ourselves, the more we will naturally expect our counterparts in the business of healing to do the same with their own business, the less we will end up hurt again, and the more we can actually hope.

There are those I’ve met who feel embracing a label of psychosis for themselves, imbuing it with medical validity, gives them a kind of ownership. I’m happy for them to experience this, it is often described as a feeling of relief. Above I mentioned the importance of distinguishing psychological adjustment as being different from adjusting to a group or norm or negative self-belief. I’ll also mention the importance of distinguishing between a feeling of relief associated with a way of thinking (hedonic, feeling) and with a sense that a way of thinking actually does help (eudaimonic, sensing). A feeling of relief can be rooted in unconsious thinking like: “Well I’ll export these functions of self to those external agents who I feel I have to trust because they’ve given me no choice, and then maybe the world will leave me alone.” That’s quite unfortunate in my opinion. A life lived to be left alone? It feels sad, and neurotic. Maybe it helps some people survive, but is it worth it? A feeling of pleasurable relief is nothing I want to hold against those that experience it, though it can be manipulated, or the pleasure of it can be used in place of virtue in a kind of psuedo-moralizing: “Why don’t you just give yourself and everyone around you some relief (by giving up on yourself and life)?” If you had chickens being eaten by coyotes, and you bought some anti-coyote spray, would it be somehow be more moral or wise to try to experience a feeling of relief before you have any evidence of the spray effectively deterring coyotes? No, but that is what we ask of people on anti-psychotic medication — only the intervention we’re talking about might be coming as an order from the state, or from the family (who may have bred the coyotes to begin with), and we ask them to comply with it even when it kills a significant number of their chickens.

This reminds me of something of another subject, which I’ll try to wrap things up with. I’ve been really enjoying reading Erik Erikson’s stages psychological development. In each of these stages, there’s a virtue that is formed through a positive and negative aspect of the stage. In the very first stage, infancy, there is trust and there is mistrust. And hope, the real skill or virtue of hope, is not excluding mistrust, but incorporating both . So a system of “care” that demands zero mistrust, is an infantalizing system of the worst kind, is a system that can make you maladjusted at this stage if you weren’t already. Hope isn’t believing in a medicine (or something being called a medicine) because it’s there or because people are telling you to just shut up and take it. Hope isn’t complying with “care” that infantilizes you or never actually makes any sense despite endless promises. Real hope necessarily includes a willingness to mistrust, and we ought to adequately mistrust systems of economics / medicine / alleged science that still require the submission our hope for their functioning, no matter how far they hide behind “evidence-based” languaging.

As an ending thought, maybe the more that we assimilate and own the “psychotic” parts of ourselves, the more we will naturally expect our counterparts in the business of healing to do the same with their own business, the less we will end up hurt again and the more we can actually hope. The virtuous kind of hope that doesn’t just expect or imagine the world to be a certain way, but is actually something of an active participant in its improvement.

August 21, 2025
Is The Unconscious Real?

I just recently finished watching this video from the Institute of Art and Ideas. If you’re interested in intellectual conversations, it could be up your alley.

Sneaky technical secret for watching if you want to watch the full video:

When I watched on my phone, there wasn’t a subscription paywall, but there is one on my computer? If you hit a subscription paywall, and don’t want to subscribe (thought I’m thinking of this myself) then consider watching on your phone

I really enjoyed it! At the end of the discussion Barbara Tversky remarks how beneficial it would be if there was a Buddhist also on the panel. So more intellectual diversity would be a plus. But I still think there was enough diversity of opinion and backgrounds for a lively and illuminating discussion.

This is my first review for an iai.tv video, but I’ve been peeking at a few of them. They remind me of the promise of ted talks, but with a much more public interest than private interest focus.

Freud is someone I read and regret admiring when I was a teenager, and a college student. I had an influential (British, so his words were minted into my brain perhaps in a weirdly more proper way than otherwise) college teacher who was extremely into Freud, regarding him as, alongside Marx, one of the top two modern “thinkers” to ever have existed. I’ve since read Freud: The Making of An Illusion by Frederick Crews, which is an incredibly damaging biography, though most Freudians don’t seem willing to address its accuracy / facticity and their defenses all seem a bit desperate and gross once you’ve read it. Thinking of his patients’ perspectives, especially Fritz and Eckstein even though Dora is the questionable case history most psychoanalysts will want to discuss, makes it clear in my opinion you should be glad not to have been a patient of Freud’s. I find it unfortunate that Freud so deeply attached his name to the concept of psychoanalysis, as there are psychoanalysts such as Josh Cohen on this panel who I find to be intelligent in their views — many of them contrary to Freud’s.

Eduard Harcourt’s cogent speaking on the subject reminds me that Wittgenstein continues to be a thinker whose work it might interest me to read more or study in depth. Though, what might be called a well-documented verbal abusiveness in his personality (at least as a school teacher) suggests that perhaps none of these twentieth century Great Men were the gods they may been in icon hungry imaginations. (Or is it that men who’ve tried to mean a lot about meaning often end up a bit mean?)

Overall, though it feels funny saying about a video less than a hour in length, I feel liberated.

As a misdiagnosed person, maybe I’ve been trying rather hard in the background to develop a “correct” view of what “the unconscious” is and whether or not it really exists. Maybe I’ve wanted to shout at certain “providers” some of the observations elegantly observed by the speakers on the stage, or even those declared “self-evident”. What toll does it take on a soul to have those purporting to help them with their psychological processing routinely deny that which is self-evident? And then to have your concept of self brought into question, with all its insufficiency resting solely on you?

Seeing how the speakers handle each other’s discourses, it feels in a way inspiring, and in a way that might be more of an embodied kind of inspiration than what I would feel if I read them discussing these views through text. The civility and the curiosity, the alighted expressions, the kindness and humility. While this is a subject I’ve thought about before, and read about, and talked with therapists about, I found watching this video didn’t exactly grind away my misconceptions as much as increase my confidence in the subject area — and that confidence includes knowing how even top experts recognize its intangible nature.

August 17, 2025
The Psychotic, The Psychonautic, and Misdiagnosis

Perhaps this is your first time encountering the word “psychonautic” or “psychonaut”. It isn’t unrelated to psychology. A psychologist is someone who studies the mind or psyche, a psychonaut is someone who explores it.

Dissecting the mind into its component parts (such as id, ego, and super ego in psychoanalysis, or such as basic feelings or needs in Nonviolent Communication), and seeking for a mind to obey logical rules, as we compare the two, is much more in the realm of psychology than psychonautics. Both may value new experiences, or even weirdly new experiences as they bring our minds and their functioning into sharper relief. But, to characterize psychonautics as a separate entity from psychology, we can say that psychonautics places a higher value on this kind of newness and openness to newness.

Neither psychonautics nor psychology should require the use of mind-altering drugs for their practice. We might even say that such use is an entirely distinct practice — that of psychopharmacology. That said, we do tend to associate recreation drug exploration, if not regular use, more closely with psychonautics.

Deeply unfortunately and all too prevalent in our opinion is the use of psychopharmacology to repress the psychonautic impulses of those who can be deemed “psychotic” due to social and other factors.

There is a difference between working with and working against a patient just as their is a difference between working with and working against our own bodies or minds.

In latent Diagnosis Theory, with privileging of control above any other conceivable value, the psychonautic and psychotic are made out to be the same thing. That is to say, whether a person had a non-normative experience because it was their sincere desire to have such an experience, or whether such an experience was foisted upon them by biological or other factors, is largely irrelevant. In this logic, the only conceivable reason that a person would seek out a non-normative psychic experience would be as a symptom of a psychic illness. In addition to being inherently vulnerable to abuse, even if care is given, it definitionally can’t be non-coercive care much less foster a sense of strength, self-determination, or self-worth in those taken under as “patients”. Will and discussion of will is irrelevant, or at least the will of the subject of care is irrelevant. The will of the normative system and its enforcers (however difficult it may be decipher as coerced compliance may demand performances of psychosis and reward only convincing ones) is supreme.

By applying the lens of Misdiagnosis Theory we reenter the world as it ought to be, and in many ways is. A world where people are free to explore their own mind or even collective mind in any way that they see fit, so long as it doesn’t cause any harm to others, is a world we ought to live in. And it is a world we do live in. In a sense. If we choose to believe, the pharmaceutical industry, the reigning psychiatric orthodoxy, and even the worst actors within these systems, do not harm us and cannot. Our rights to freedom within our own mind are inalienable, and these are the most inalienable of our rights as individuals. The evidentiary or self-evidentiary nature of these truths ought not to lull us too far into a state of calm or complicity, or into forgetting our traumas at the hands of an unjust or coercive system, or into imagining that such experiences do not exist or have never existed or are not widespread. But rather, by reminding ourselves of these truths, we can create for ourselves psychological safety wherein we can survive, wherein we can continue growing and learnings as beings, minds, psyches, souls within the universe.

It is not a matter of escaping to a world of one’s one. Rather, we seek community with those like ourselves. Psychonautic exploration is not required for membership in MA, only identifying as misdiagnosed person who wants to improve their life is. However, as we share our experience and strength, it is important for us to recognize that our greatest strengths and insights might not just be “when we finally got help”, but our own internal strength and the insight we form through our own uniquely expert approach to our experience. In a psychiatric environment where insight is technically defined as agreeing compliantly with a professional expert about the nature of your illness, all too our often our strengths, insights, and virtues are erased. These may include but are not limited to: curiosity, sensitivity, imagination, resilience, courage, and critical thinking skills.

July 17, 2025
Why She Was (Not?) Misdiagnosed

15 minute read

Choosing to identify as misdiagnosed is a bit rare (do you know any other person or group who identifies this way? please send them our way), more common are mad, neurodivergent, or the identities of psychiatric survivor or ex-patient.

Lauren Kennedy West has garnered significant popularity in being open (along with a YouTube / video production oriented romantic partner) about her diagnosis of schizophrenia, and what she perceived to be symptoms at the time, including the “symptom” of believing the medication she was prescribed was unhelpful.

In this video, which may be worth a watch if you aren’t familiar with her story, she speaks on the subject of misdiagnosis in a way that might be illuminative. She says: “So for all of the people who are suggesting that perhaps there was an element of misdiagnoses on my part given that I have completely put what was deemed schizoaffective disorder into remission, that does feel like a bit of a reductionist approach.”

If West were to attend a Misdiagnosed Anonymous meeting, anything she shared I would not comment on outside of the meeting (what we share in meetings stays in meetings) least of all publicly. But with millions of total views on youtube, I view her as someone who is influential, who is choosing to be a public face with a public viewpoint on these issues, and I feel obligated to offer my own, hopefully supportive (if slightly harsh), analysis.

Interesting to me is her apparent assumption that “all of the people” who suggest an element of misdiagnosis are unified in their understanding of what misdiagnosis would even mean in this context. Would misdiagnosis mean there was a different diagnosis that would have been “correct”? Or is the flaw actually in our society’s system of diagnostic labels, as she herself seems to be expressing earlier in the video? If a medical misdiagnosis indeed happened, a kind of medical negligence, why does she walk her back her earlier analysis? Who does it protect exactly that she should be so careful not to point the finger at those who misdiagnosed her? Or rather, to begin an analysis that might point the finger, but then just leave it there. I feel that there is energy in the video where she is sharing her truth. But, especially when I step into the shoes of a naive viewer unfamiliar with these kinds of stories, I feel we’re left to wonder if anything she says is accurate, or if she values accuracy or coherent narrative. Or are we supposed to feel so charmed by the end of the video that we believe that somehow the key to mental health is simply letting go of any human need for accuracy in facts whatsoever?

As someone who has been influenced by the culture of nonviolent communication, I am a believer in the value “curiosity over accuracy” especially when it comes to empathic listening and seeking to resolve conflict. But accuracy, for me, still has value. I don’t feel the need to become so agreeable that, instead of accepting that I was in fact misdiagnosed, I instead absorb a big mushy but charmingly presentable (to people who haven’t been misdiagnosed) responsibility over the whole situation, as if I really have been the only power in my life, as if the excruciating levels of shame and emotional turmoil never occurred, as if no one but me the misdiagnosed person ought to be held to account for the arising of the situation, and thus someday I will be accepted.

I view agreeableness as a personality scale, but misdiagnosis as a situation that coerces agreeableness beyond human or acceptable limits.

Revealing to me is West’s taking on of personal responsibility for even the potential appearance of “misdiagnosis on my part”, as though we might be imagining that she went ahead and got a serious psychiatric lifelong diagnosis and accompanying soul-deadening medication just to get attention or for some other blameworthy reason. It reveals both her attitude (agreeable) and the gross kind of attitudes she faces, the kinds of attitudes misdiagnosed persons too often feel they must face or even internalize as acceptable.

The attitude that your whole identity is that of an attention seeker ought to be as offensive to someone who identifies as misdiagnosed as it is to someone with a LGBTQ+ identity. It should not be tolerated as a way of understanding yourself, or even as a way that you understand others in your social circle understand you. Such a negative attitude should merely be filtered out like the kidneys filter out toxins.

When you are misdiagnosed with a mental illness, you are not at fault for this, just as you would not be at fault if you were misdiagnosed with a physical illness. It is trauma. It is medical trauma and relational trauma. It is a real situation, and being a situation that you are deeply involved in, and a situation that purports to be about your permanent, inherit, and un-erasable flaws it is difficult to see it objectively. But it is the result of a flawed system. Disguising this by “taking responsibility” may give off a veneer of responsibility to some. But ultimately, it is acting in complicity with our own gaslighting, and the gaslighting of those who care about us and actually deserve our support and responsibility, our functioning self-worth and strength.

As a human being you are actually allowed to feel rage, rage at unfairness or tragedy, or just plain rage because as a human being you are allowed to feel any emotion that humans feel.

West brings up the question of misdiagnosis only to discount it, and perhaps it’s because she’d rather we pay attention to the dietary solution she’s found (Keto Diet) that has corresponded with the remittence and maybe also the reperceiving of past symptoms. If anyone in a support group setting describing a dietary change or system or ritual or shift in perspective that had the kind of major positive effects such as West is describing, I would be entirely for that change for them. I hope MA can be a place where people can authentically celebrate — without feeling the need to make the celebration acceptable for those who don’t understand — their wins, their real moments of recovery in life, their actual emotions and thoughts.

Is it true the reason West so quickly discounts misdiagnosis as a plausible charge to level against the system is that, just as she allowed the misdiagnosis to take place by trusting medical authority (who wouldn’t?), she is still concerned with coming across as an altogether trusting or agreeable personality if not to this authority then to her subscribers, or am over analyzing her here?

Can a lifestyle shift of following the Keto diet be enough to permanently erase the memory and the reality of having being misdiagnosed, of having been ultimately betrayed by own’s medical system and the relationships within that system you thought were valid, of facing stigma and the threat of limits to freedom and of forced medication?

I’m not saying it can’t, because I’m truly trying to sit in a mode of support for someone whose life story / demographic / situation is quite similar to mine. But I am trying to create space where narrative truth and narrative accuracy can carry value, more value than face-saving politeness or surface-level forgiveness, even for a pathetic misdiagnosed person, such as I am, such as you might also be. Pathetic, meaning suffering. But also feeling, having pathos, persuasive.

Mental health and physical health may be related, and the contemplation of their hidden relationships may be food for real thought, inquiry, and even healing. But this doesn’t change the fact that we were misdiagnosed with mental illnesses and not physical ones. Despairingly, I used to even wish I’d been diagnosed cancer. But that was never my situation. My situation was a severe misdiagnosis with mental illness. And for those of us who have faced bitter discrimination or difficulty in establishing ourselves in the world in light of mental health stigma, the pressure and even desire to concoct a suitable outward and unequivocal narrative of healing can be real. The more physical, the more unequivocal. And I guess I’m just wary of narratives that seek to hide mental and emotional anguish under the banner of one-size-can-be-made-to-fit-all physical health solutions. I believe mental and and emotional problems, no matter how closely they might connect to the phenomenon of physical illness and health, are ultimately separate concerns, equally important, and we do ourselves a disservice as thinkers — especially in our capacity to have organized thought in this area — when are seduced by modalities that contend (either the biochemical model of mental illness, or the idea of Keto as a permanent cure for it (again, not trying to discount West’s expressed experience that her overall health and sense of well-being have improved on such a diet)) that two are somehow are the same or coeval.

I sympathize with West’s idea that misdiagnosis could be viewed as reductive, but what I can’t help but hearing from her is that it is her real suffering (yes, with natural human suffering as one of its initial ingredients) from the traumatic experience misdiagnosis is that she is afraid of being reduced. As if someone might credibly say: “Well, because you were seriously misdiagnosed with a severe mental illness, and not actually diagnosed, then you don’t actually suffer.” But she did suffer! Including from misdiagnosis! Let’s not reduce it!

It’s hard though, when she dismisses it herself. Out of fear?

Misdiagnosis as an identity raises questions in the minds of those who encounter it, and perhaps it should — perhaps what’s most needed in our current mental health system is in fact better and more pointed questions. Meanwhile, identifying as neurodivergent as a misdiagnosed person is problematic because then there will be people who you might otherwise enter into authentic relationship with who might assume that neurodivergence is concomitant with requiring the fix of medication or other inappropriate treatment. And this kind of assumption can be absolutely toxic to the well-being of a misdiagnosed person, and their containing of the trauma, to the point where it might be better simply be silent on issues of mental health and illness. Meanwhile, mad, ex-patient, and psychiatric-survivor to me suggests a requirement of anger toward the system as well as despair. You shouldn’t be required to not feel anger just to be seen as human, why should you be required to feel anger just to identify as who and what you are?

For me identifying as misdiagnosed is about occupying the middle territory, showing bravery in the face of inevitable questions, owning my suffering and my difficult past trauma, overcoming the negative peer pressure of misdiagnosis, and presenting as someone who values truth and even accuracy where it matters.

July 9, 2025
Madness

If what you are looking for is a concrete definition of madness, this isn’t your article. But chances are, especially if you are an adult, your definition of madness or psychosis is already fairly formed. Maybe it’s an image-based, archetypal, or totemic definition arrived at via material in film or other forms of media. Or maybe it’s an internal definition, wherein you hold your own actions as either mad or not and seek to improve. If you are authoritarian, it may be reactively obvious to you that madness is bad, the enemy of order. If you identify as anti-authoritarian, liberal, or as an activist, it’s also possible that you bravely view at least certain kinds of madness as being essential for progress in our human project.

This article aims to make elucidate for members of Misdiagnosed Anonymous some of our views on madness, the word, the concept, the action.

Lisa Archibald writes for Mad In America

The term “mad” has been reclaimed intentionally as a deliberate interruption or sabotage of the dominant psychiatric perspective. It challenges the entire basis of the medical framework which is that people have illnesses or disorders. Prior to the last 200 years in history, “madness” was a widely accepted term in society and was not a medical term. The reclamation of “mad” is a provocation to psychiatry as it is a complete rejection of their diagnostic expertise and power.

The Misdiagnosed identity is open to persons who identity as “mad” or as “mad activists”.

However, the mission of Misdiagnosed Anonymous is to fulfill a need for regular (occurring on a regular basis) mad-friendly support meetings. As much as we admire MadInAmerica, we have noticed a certain pattern where it comes to the keeping of regular meetings. There was Mad Summer Camp, long live Mad Summer Camp (it didn’t end up happening the year I wanted to go and no longer seems to be a regular occurence)! There was this incredible online poetry slam, billed as the first as if to indicate these might become regular occurrences. And yet there haven’t been so far. The organization is improving, and was recently rated as “Mostly Factual” by Media Bias Fact Check which is quite a bit more than we can say for the mainstream media’s reporting of The Star*d Study. We love Mad In America, and hope it continues doing what it does best: journalism, activism, sharp critiques of psychiatry, and speaking truth to power. However, it may very well be that regularly occurring support groups are not what fuels the kind of incisive journalistic viewpoints that MIA supports. And so, as a person who values the support group experience, how I do reconcile this?

Mad in America was founded by journalist Robert Whitaker after responding with admirable compassion when receiving feedback from misdiagnosed persons after his scorching expose / history of mental illness practice, a book by the same name. Whitaker was never himself misdiagnosed with a mental illness, or at least not by the mental health industry (spurious pharmaceutical-funded op-eds notwithstanding). Mad in America has a journalists ethics at its core, and quite frankly, from where we sit at Misdiagnosed Anonymous, deserves all the respect in the world.

Anyone can claim to be a “mad person” or a “mad activist” no matter their biography. And once claimed, they can also back away from this identity at any time and for any reason. Maybe they were being simply more generous than they had realized, or actually it wasn’t the political cause that speaks to them the most out of all the causes to choose from. As Misdiagnosed Persons, we appreciate the support, or the kind thoughts, or the… madness?

Misdiagnosis is a situation that seriously derails and disrupts the lives of those who it impacts, and can lead to the worst kind of trauma and self-negative thinking: the kind that many in power in our mental health care system would prefer to imagine doesn’t exist much less reserve empathy for. It is a concrete situation that is beyond exists within the relationship between the misdiagnosed person, their state, the Western institution of psychiatry (the DSM committee moreso than psychoanalysts and other factions that resist the biochemical model), and too often family members or “caregivers” who feel a sense of obligation to act as surrogates of state power. In its concreteness, it is beyond the power of the misdiagnosed person to escape from their situation, and as post Osheroff V Chestnut Diagnosis Theory’s illnesses are considered to be “lifelong”, despair and concomitant compliance are counted on as the only reasonable reactions. After misdiagnosis, any minor failure (we all fail before we succeed) and any minor misbehavior (we all misbehave at times, especially when we are young) are conflated by the system as proof that the misdiagnosed person “deserves” the punishment of their absurd situation.

Some days we get mad. Rage, even. Other days we’re just trying to make the best of our lives. Either way the system and our situation in it (by the very definition we have been ordered to accept) does not change. It is good to read articles supporting or clarifying our views or internal critiques of psychiatry. And yet, there remains an intense aloneness when we are not talking, sighing, hearing, communing on a regular basis with those who understood where we’re coming from, and those we understand.

We are inspired by many of the Twelve Step programs that exist today and their valuing of humanist, emotional, and moral inquiry and regular support. We are inspired to create a Twelve Step program that fits and our needs. For most of us, alcohol has been a major problem in our lives (many of us have avoided it early in life to avoid possible bad reactions and have never developed a habit with it or taste for it) so for obvious reasons we can’t attend AA. But like the blurring effects of alcohol, the malicious confusions of misdiagnosis have blurred us. At Misdiagnosis Anonymous we find solace, accountability, and truth when we hear others speak. And in our choice to commit, we discover courage, power, and the inspiration to live our best lives.

It is our hope that mad persons and mad activists feel welcome in our ranks. It also our hope that persons among us who enjoy order and regularity, accuracy, and organization feel equally welcome. We have a blog and are on the lookout for voices to join us in writing. But primarily, we believe in the liquid nourishment that is regular talking and sharing to relieve us where we have been so needlessly and desperately parched.

We value madness and appreciate its purpose. My madness and yours.

Structure and order also are deep values of ours, as we build an organization of real strength, real support, lasting kindness.

Though we all contain various parts, we are all fundamentally whole.

June 30, 2025
Why Misdiagnosed Deserves To Exist as an Identity
There are so many (unconvincing for misdiagnosed persons) reasons why it should not exist.
- You should forget about it and move on with your life.
- If you say “misdiagnosed” someone might assume you’re asking for seconds, for another (more severe?) diagnosis
- The path of healing and recovery is about forgiveness. By claiming to have been misdiagnosed, it’s almost as if you haven’t chosen to forgive your doctors, or our mental health system, or the system of capitalism from which it arises
- It is four whole syllables long, what a mouthful!
- It reminds people of mental patients who shout: “I was MISDIAGNOSED” as if their lives and needs for integrity almost depended on someone accepting this
- It’s a threat to the ordered (and apparently rather fragile) world of Capital Psychiatry and the (B?)DSM, and the powers that be shall not have it!
- If you say “misdiagnosed” an evil leprechaun in a grey pinstripe suit will come and, gosh, we just… we just can’t have it!
But then we are inevitably confronted with unchanging fact that leprechauns do not exist except in fables and stories, but the experiences and facts of your misdiagnosis did and do. It exists! So to have a word for it, a word besides “it” or “the bad thing that happened to me or with me or whatever” or “my past” or “my struggle” or “yeah that fucking nightmare huh”, to contain it in a single descriptive if not perfect word has immense value.

No one goes around wanting to be misdiagnosed. And yet, severe and traumatic experiences of misdiagnosis do happen to a certain group of people. These people deserve an identity.

Much ink has been spilled reclaiming various terms such as madness, and this extends to mad activism and mad pride. While reclaiming terms of hate have functioned well for identity politics in the area of sexual difference, the area mental health and mental difference operates with different dynamics. It isn’t necessarily wrong for a misdiagnosed person to attempt to reclaim madness, but it feels to us a spiritually onerous burden to suggest that they must retain deep anger at the system that misdiagnosis along with a stance of activism to merely be regarded as having an identity. When the system purveys the idea that misdiagnosed persons must be “one of the good mentally ill people” to then earn a facsimile of respect, demanding they must also be “one of the good mad activists” to be seen as truly intelligent, truly liberal, or truly engaged with reality only heightens the impossibility of their situation

“Psychiatric survivor” and “ex-patient” are also words that are used to mean something roughly similar, and already exist as acceptable identities in certain circles — though none with active or regular peer support meetings as far as we can tell. “Psychiatric survivor” is seven syllables, three more than misdiagnosed. We have no beef with anyone who identifies as a psychiatric survivor. We also have not yet witnessed any sustaining efforts for there to be support groups for such individuals — though for all we know they could be on an island somewhere. Comparatively, “misdiagnosed” and “misdiagnosed person” suggest not that psychiatry is evil or that psychiatrists are evil (extreme or idiosyncratic views) but that a mistake was made. Can the world not allow that mistakes are occasionally made in a particular field of study? “Survivor” also implies that no talking or sitting should be in order, only escape. Contrastingly, with “Misdiagnosed” as an identity, we focus on our own lived experience, and leave room for analysis and careful thought, that those of us who feel called to engage as patients in therapy as we see fit.

In reality, my identity as a misdiagnosed person does not pose any threat to psychiatry and neither would yours, should you choose to adopt one. In reality, honest feedback is a kind of support, even if harsh. The worst that could happen to psychiatry might be: we cause greater attention to mistakes that have been made and are made and better processes for more collaborative and accurate diagnosis processes. This is not to say we ignore power imbalances or are interested in vain compromise. Good intentions are not enough for change, commitment and strength are also needed. The misdiagnosed founders of NAMI may have started with good intentions, but in their compliance with Diagnosis Theory, it was perhaps inevitable that they accepted pharmaceutical dollars, a corrupting influence and capitulation to the biochemical model that renders their claims of activism vacuous and their culture toxic. Mad activists calling for revolution are not necessarily foolish in their calls.

We as allied misdiagnosed persons hope to cause a revolution in the sense of how psychiatry looks at the biochemical model of mental illness that has been prevalent if not wildly addictive for the past forty years since at least Osheroff V Chestnut. Once more accurate information comes to light, psychiatry and psychiatrists may choose of their volition, in the language of step four, of The Twelve Steps “make a searching and fearless moral inventory” of themselves. We concede ahead of time that this might seem preposterous to psychiatry’s more committed detractors. But it is our belief that anyone can let go of the harmful pattern of misdiagnosing others and themselves.

I am a misdiagnosed person is a way of saying:
- Facts and information and learning (including even book learning sometimes!) are important to me, as is useful feedback
- I have faith that the people who matter to me will understand that I am not insane (and maybe even never have been, though indeed, that is an insanely high bar )
- I am an honest person but struggled in the past with the concept of healthy denial
- I deserve to exist as a person in this world, despite all of my relational and psychological trauma from my experiences of misdiagnosis telling me I do not
- I do not necessarily agree with our mental health system of diagnosis, as they may (in the language of Nonviolent Communication on diagnosing others ) ultimately do more harm than good by creating conditions for tragic self-fulfilling prophecy
June 25, 2025

M.A. not M.I.

My oh my I was in world of M.I.
mental illness was what they sang
I had I was

I met others who it seemed had
the same defect and everyone sang
mi, mi, mi

looking for a solution to themselves,
these faulty objects, Maya, the
world

of physical appearance. I studied 
Buddhism, rediscovered “Ah”.
Aha?

Can anyone ever truly discover
sanity cleanly
or only rediscover?
You
me
yourself
yourselves
your cells
their mitochondria
not inherently selfish
not defective
curious    
certain
syllable
MA, MA, MA 

OM MA
NI PAD
ME HUM
OM MA!

but chanting alone
is not alive
alone is not alive
meditating alone or alone only is not 
the ultimate reality
we are interdependent
M.I. is interdependent
healing is interdependent

and so
I no longer believe that mis-
taken thinking when I was 
taken for a ride of mis-
diagnosis, impartial
and independent it
only seemed
like the one truth
and trapped
me and my voice
and my song
in loneliness,
it, and think I was
the it
they said
I surrendered
to think of it/they
not I/thou
of it and them
and no higher power 
and no real self just it
took, and it
took, and it
mistook

I no longer believe in their mistakes


Instead, through
Misdiagnosed Anonymous
and building, and building
trust back
in truth
and my real self
I am given a second chance
I am given my life back

I may forgive, because I am forgiving and believe in forgiveness
and I may deny, because I have a healthy mind that can deny what is not true
but I will deny reality, or the reality of what happened, or my story

I don’t forgive beyond facts, because not even my higher power tries to destroy facts
facts are facts
I was misdiagnosed 

and what a hopeless situation
(so hopeless even those who cared about me tried to make it not exist by making me deny its existence, as if mentioning the truth of it was somehow against our unspoken religion, "just don't say misdiagnosed, just don't use that word")
until I found M.A.
and others in the same situation
and how much we can more we can profit
how much more we can profit together in M.A. than we can alone
how much more we can profit than the billions in dollars made at our expense
how much more we can profit when we accept the good future our lives can be, when we accept we are each our own prophet in our own ways, when we accept there is nothing pragmatic about shunning our connections to our higher power, our real self, our capacity to hold our own thoughts as they are and to heal

more and more money might be a strategy some employ for their fear and entertainment
but how much more we can profit we stay with the whole truth, which includes the fact of my misdiagnosis, and yours, and yours, and yours

For the sake of giving and forgiveness too, I don’t accept anymore the convenient narrative of the biochemical model of M.I. 

For the sake of the possibility of having moral thoughts, for possibility of leading a moral life

Thank you M.A.

June 25, 2025

Why We’re Not Forgetting About It

Q:

If your mental illness was misdiagnosed, why not just forget about it?

A:

It’s a natural enough question. If something is in the category of “mental” and as well as the category of ”bad“, then might not forgetting simply be answer?

Sadly, in the lives of many misdiagnosed persons, those who demand that they forget the trauma of their misdiagnosis are often the same voices who in another turn demand they accept any number of disastrous traits to fundamentally or biochemically exist within themselves, without evidence, often without a coherent belief of those traits from the person making those demands, but only a false sense that emotional safety requires abject compliance with the games we interpret society as playing.

One can never prove with positive, physical, or medical evidence that you do not have any particular mental illness (with rare exception) that someone may accuse you of having. And by this same token, though not at all once a medical diagnosis is rendered, there is absolutely no official process within psychiatry for it to be revoked in any way. If cancer is eliminated from the body, there are tests that can prove that it is in remission. But whether treatment is helpful to a mental health patient or not, there is no avenue in our medical system for an official stamp of remission, much less any place to investigate or petition for the diagnosis to be officially regarded as an error. If a diagnosis of mental illness can be official, shouldn’t also that diagnosis’s status as an error, just as any other medical diagnosis? It is not our purpose as an organization to reform psychiatry, as there are already voices in this space working toward this end. However, it is a part of our purpose to stand against acceptance of false realities constructed by the situation of misdiagnosis. The business and political interests of psychiatry may never align with officially recognizing the ways it makes mistakes. But we do not let that limit our own capacity to recognize harm caused by these mistakes, or what is real. Only when we are grounded in reality do we find true strength.

We contend there is a deep overlap between people who experience the situation of mental health misdiagnosis and people who are particularly good at taking blame when they should not because they believe that capitulation is politeness, or being shamed into silence when their truth is actually quite accurate and their voices are actually quite necessary. We believe it is because some people either have a natural suppressed defense mechanism of denial, or have learned to suppress it. If someone accused you of a crime you did not commit, would you have the strength to deny it and defend the truth? And what if the cost became so great and the strategies of your accusers too extreme and you either capitulated or were merely defeated, would this put on your soul and on your relationship with truth? For people who have been misdiagnosed, merely accepting that they have experienced a traumatic misdiagnosis can be an important and enlivening step. Merely accepting the reality of their situation, and that there is nothing toxic or impolite about their silent knowledge of reality can go a long way toward strengthening their psychological defense mechanisms and overall mental health.

Those who have not been misdiagnosed may be so thoroughly insulated from their empathy on this subject and with “these kinds of people” that, from positions as caregivers, they may insist the experience should be easily forgotten. This may be coupled within the same caregiving authority that previously demanded that the misdiagnosis and it’s litany of undesirable traits and associations be accepted by the misdiagnosed person as their one true psychological reality. The value of “Acceptance” thus becomes distorted in the world of the misdiagnosed person, where it becomes synonymous with accepting the obvious contradictions of their care. Meanwhile, their capacity to seek, receive, and offer real acceptance is wounded. The pattern may also be coupled with a game in which the non-empathizing non-misdiagnosed caregiver seeks to control the details of how the misdiagnosed person shares their struggles with anyone at all, and with the misdiagnosed person’s care being contingent on the continued adherence to proper behavior as “one of the good ones” among those who fundamentally and permanently reside in the category of undesirable, inappropriate, uncomfortable, or incomprehensible.

On our good days, we may become so involved in our work or creativity, in the fulfillment of our needs or in connection with others, that we natural forget about our the negative and difficult experiences we’ve faced in life. This is natural effect of our minds being naturally associative. But our minds are not only associative, we are not Pavlov’s dogs or jellyfish dumbly floating in an ocean of whatever current association happens by. We have logic, thoughts, desires, and will. When we comply with a demand that in order to be a “good patient” we must simply forget and all will be well, we invariably cut ourselves off from our capacity to think for ourselves about the things that matter in our lives, to solve our own problems, to fulfill our own needs. The more we insist however that beyond this natural phenomenon of forgetting that we are somehow obligated to forget, the further we are taken from our natural capacity to feel and indeed go with the flow of life. We become split and blocked. In so far as we succeed in our unnatural missions of forgetting, the world in which we have pain and the world in which our pain must not exist grow more and more distant. In other words, we undertake internal thought-patterns and bloodsports of psychic polarization, psychic splitting, and self-abuse and so become more and more bipolar, schizophrenic, and otherwise disordered.

Should one achieve success in life, if one has been misdiagnosed, it is doubly an achievement. But can we call such success truly sweet without others who accurately understand all that was overcome to achieve it, or more to the point, while forgetting it oneself? Does the action of erasing the memory of one’s struggle really ever bear the fruits of satisfaction? Really these are unrelated; no living creature would ever endeavor to erase its own memory or knowledge unless under extreme stress or within a relationship of coercion. The kind of psychological satisfaction that comes from real growth and learning may be the sweetest that human life has to offer, and it is not available within the construct of a misdiagnosis, with its insistence on mental disease being lifelong, biochemical, and immovable, and it’s strong propensity to isolate misdiagnosed persons from community — which it flatters itself in believing it serves to protect. Engaging with a therapist may go a long way in satisfying our needs for connection and meaning, especially if it is the first honest such engagement amid years of capitulation to the construct of misdiagnosis, but it is a very different from engaging with peers.

Typically, families of someone misdiagnosed may seek to guide the misdiagnosed person to forget or erase the trauma of misdiagnosis, partly in the hope of erasing their own feelings of guilt. Sometimes, much of the guilt they feel is based on having enforced the games of misdiagnosis itself, believing or seeking to believe from a place of feeling a superior sense obligation they acted responsibly in the interests of their misdiagnosed family member. Though they may also realize (whether or not they admit this realization) the falseness of the misdiagnosis paradigm, they may be reluctant to face their own difficult psychic reality of having made an error in judgement and having misused their authority in a hurtful way. Still, there are those (both who have experienced misdiagnosed and those who have not) who are capable of giving care, support, and understanding to misdiagnosed persons without making extreme or absurd demands regarding the coerced holding of false and negative self-images and labels, or prohibiting healthy abstinence from unhelpful treatment.

True healing is not forgetting. True healing is not erasure.

We don’t need to forget to forgive ourselves and others.

What you don’t remember you repeat.

And the parts of one’s real self that are mislabeled and suppressed in the oppressive games of misdiagnosis will invariably appear again.

Without self-understanding and without peer support, we remain fragmented. And this is a key mechanism that keeps the self-fulfilling prophecy of misdiagnosis self-fulfilling.

We believe in the power of peer-based communities such as Misdiagnosed Anonymous to help us truly learn from our mistakes and from each other and to truly heal.

If you or someone you know has experienced the trauma and oppressive games of misdiagnosis, we are very glad you found us. While we support the autonomy and health of your mind (including the healthy sides of its defense mechanisms!) we hope you don’t let the pain of your experiences or knowledge prevent you from holding and accepting yourself and your reality, seeking understanding from those who understand, and seeking connection from those who would like to connect with you.

June 25, 2025
A Misdiagnosed Person’s Self-Forgiveness Prayer

I forgive myself for having gotten myself misdiagnosed with an insane mental illness.

I forgive myself for me.

I forgive myself for believing it was selfish to be proud. I now see that by honoring my own pride and even its intersections with my sense of truth I am able to grow and support myself and support others to do the same.

I forgive myself for believing the falsehoods, lies, or accusations about me I heard from others, or the falsehoods, lies, or accusations I only believed others had spoken. I forgive myself for believing the falsehoods, lies, or accusations I have told about myself.

Treatment for the mind and spirit does not have have to be, and is not something that gets written up or prescribed by a doctor schooled in the ways of how people diagnose one another, but ignorant of and uninterested in exploring me, my mind, my spirit.

As I forgive myself, as I sink into the light and flow of forgiveness, I find it easier to treat myself as well as others with gentleness and kindness.

I grow in strength and can more clearly envision myself giving back to my community.

As I further align my actions with my needs for autonomy, I forgive myself for asking for support from others beyond the support they have wanted to be generous with.

As I further align my actions with my communal needs, my need for understanding, my need for acceptance, my need for consideration, my need for emotional safety, my need for reassurance, my need for respect, I forgive myself for isolating away from community and from love.

June 24, 2025
What is Psychological Denial?

Psychological denial is a healthy defense mechanism in which a person or mind is able to handle while staying safe from a negative or unhealthy desire, concept, person or reality.

In the context of much of modern therapy, historically and publicly, denial has been narrowly defined as a patient’s denial of a difficult reality or their own need for therapy. It is as though, if the subject of denial is being brought up, then someone’s experience of self ought to be denied, and given the vulnerable position of the patient, it ought to be the patient.

We observe that there is a correspondence between those who, in their maturational environment have learned to suppress their natural capacity for denial and those who end up in the situation of misdiagnosis. When confronted by those who would deny us an identity as misdiagnosed persons, it may be implied that by “misdiagnosed” we are trying to imply that we are somehow perfect, or somehow devoid of any discernible psychological flaws, flaws in character, or suffering. This is not the case. It may be helpful to recognize that a misdiagnosed persons central flaw may be that they are under-insulated from harsh criticism or from the introjected voices of perceived of authorities. Therefore, healthy denial may be something they should practice.

Are you able to hold in your mind the concept of fear without becoming afraid? Are you able to hold in your mind the concept of insanity without yourself experiencing it? Every human requires insulation or denial in order to build within themselves psychological and emotional safety. Denial and psychic insulation are not exactly the same, though it would needlessly obfuscating to pretend the concepts are worlds apart. If you were accused of a crime you didn’t commit, would be able to deny it? If so, in our view, this is part of your healthy psychological defense mechanism. A person or patient who would be unable to deny having done something they did not do would be, to our mind, a candidate for a therapeutic process in building up their capacity for healthy denial. An lowered capacity to deny falsehood or deny falsehood in ways that are successful or believable often corresponds with a psyche that tends to underinsulate.

If this sounds to you like an interesting topic, if you relate to it or would like to relate it to someone you know who may be undersupported and suffering, consider attending one of our meetings.

For further intellectual understanding from a psychodynamic perspective, we can also recommend this article from the 1960s on the subject of psychic insulation, though it comes with the warning that the implicitly imbalanced power relationship (particularly in the arena of psychological authority) between the author and his patients may be triggering for readers who have experienced traumatic misdiagnosis.

While we may need practice in healthy denial as we grow in psychological heft and strength, denial is not (in our opinion, though some in the new age community may disagree) an absolute good. We can be both open to valid feedback, as well as able to reasonably avoid, tolerate while filtering, and even appropriately and comfortably resolve overly harsh or mean-spirited criticism. Strength and sensitivity may seem to some like opposites, but they may actually be the same, or at the very least quite closely and meaningfully intertwined. Through Misdiagnosed Anonymous meetings, we are helped and supported as we build up our egos (our senses of self), our boundaries, our healthy psychological defense mechanisms and psychic immune systems, and our capacity for denial.

June 24, 2025