Columns

Since my column is often about the human mind, I can get away with writing a lot of thought pieces. This is one of them--very much so. Please indulge...

If your mind is operating from one of more false assumptions to guide you in your speech and actions, you are on thin ice.

I've been stabilized on medication since the latter half of 1996. And no one can deny this is an accomplishment for someone with my psychiatric condition. Although my prognosis was wrong, I was not misdiagnosed. Any time in my past that I've tried to do without medication, disaster ensued--I became severely psychotic.

However, becoming stabilized doesn't mean that everything is resolved. I've dealt with a substantial number of "delusions" that meds do not eradicate. Yet, I've also learned that you do not need to have a mental illness diagnosis to have delusions.

Antipsychotics do not fully do away with delusions and other symptoms. The medications must be supplemented with therapy, partly to "reality check," and with what I'll term "mental hygiene." 

If you go into psychosis enough, your mind will "split off" from reality. This causes speech and actions that are counterproductive to living, at the least, and at the worst, a threat to safety. 

Those who don't struggle with this, especially those who do not have a mental illness, are lacking something important. Even a person considered "normal" can benefit from mental hygiene. While a "neuro-typical" or non-afflicted person may not be fending off severe delusions, they can try to make the thinking more accurate, and they can work to maintain this accuracy. This is not a waste of time and effort. If you improve the mind, it follows that most other things that you do will be done better. 

If you look at ultra-smart people, geniuses and so on, at my best guess, many of them have good mental habits to keep their minds on track. However, I don't know this firsthand, because although I know people who are smarter than I, those I do know don't seem to hone (the technical term is "calibrate") their thinking very much. 

Your picture of the world, whether you suffer from a mind-altering condition or not, is subject to distortions. The human mind makes a map of the world, but it is only a map. Any map isn't the actual territory, it is only a map of that, and as such, it is subject to inaccuracies. Most people don't understand this basic thing about themselves. And this is a very important thing to understand. People project their perceived realities on the world, and this leads to misdirection. Those in positions of power who do this, project a false version of the world, are at the very least, nuisances. 

An example of a "bad assumption" could be where you think something is true merely because you think it. This could seem to many readers like an absurd thing to believe. Yet, if you are becoming increasingly psychotic, this is an assumption that could arise. And if it does, it functions like a "trojan" (analogy refers to computer malware) in which any thought you have is accepted into your version of reality. It then can cause a flood of erroneous thoughts, ultimately causing complete chaos in the mind, and resultantly, harming the brain. 

(Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? That's a good question to which psychiatry's answer is, psychosis starts in the brain, and you need to medicate the brain. Yet, there is a need for mental hygiene, nonetheless. And I agree with psychiatry that you can't "think away" psychosis. The cause of it is mostly biological. And if it goes unchecked, the brain damages itself.) 

Another example, which is similar, is that you are "psychic." Now, I don't want to insult or invalidate those who seem to have a genuine gift. Yet, if you suffer from psychosis, the assumption that you can know something without any sensory evidence of it, that you know it because you're psychic, as bad as the example in the paragraph above. Both have a deep effect on how information is processed. 

The belief that other people can read your mind or that you can read theirs is a seriously bad assumption. You are much better off if you realize that you may often need to explain yourself and that it is not obvious to people who you are and what you're doing. The belief that you can read someone's mind will cause poorly chosen actions, and it is yet another "infection" that can plague the thinking. 

A similar erroneous assumption is where you assume others will understand you, without the need for you to spell everything out. In fact, people must be filled in, and they will not, as a rule, make an effort to figure you out. They will proceed on their own assumptions. When you are trying to accomplish something, it is likely you need to explain what you are doing and why. 

Or, if you assume that Friday the 13th causes bad luck, then you're going to have a rough time on that date. If you ascribe to the idea that you have bad luck or good luck, it discounts the actual causes of life events. It can also lead to false expectations, whether favorable or unfavorable, within the thinking. 

Today we have false assumptions being spread by politicians and by fake news. This misleads the public. The public as a result, in the not-so-distant future, will be led to a rude awakening. Think of the story of the Pied Piper... 

But I've been fighting off a specific paranoid assumption. This affects how I act, and it may prevent me from making correct decisions. Any incorrect assumption skews the entirety of thinking and gets you disconnected from reality, at least to an extent. When you can correct the assumption, the mind has a chance to recalibrate. 

When conclusions become assumptions, you are on a slippery slope. I know many individuals who pass judgment on me without knowing what they're talking about. If this is an example of how they think, they're fortunate their thinking hasn't caused them even more problems. As it stands, when people misjudge me (and this is based on outward appearances or maybe on what others have said about me) it has bad effects on me. 

Most people assume too much. 

We can teach ourselves to have better cognitive habits. A part of this is where we question ourselves. On the other hand, if we are in contact with a predatory person, such person could exploit this habit and use it against us. A person who questions oneself is less vulnerable to internal causes of problems, but more vulnerable to another person's "gaslighting." 

A mentally ill person can do an exercise on oneself that resembles the function of an antivirus application on a computer. This is where, one at a time, the beliefs are evaluated. In doing this, you look for characteristics of a thought or belief that resemble those that in the past turned out to be delusions. This is like an antivirus on a computer which identifies viruses through their "signatures." 

Where do most people get their belief systems? Many seem to get this from church. Others get their versions of the world from television commercials. And others get it from peers and supervisors at work. In other words, most people obtain their belief systems from external sources. If you decide to think on your own, believing that you could be another Leonardo da Vinci, you could expose yourself to your own unique errors. If you get delusions and other assumptions from external sources, you are subject to collective inaccuracies. 

And if you let your television set or an internet website do your thinking for you, then you deserve what you get.