Myschizlife

Photo Essay: Colonial Williamsburg Houses

American South, Travel, Williamsburg, Virginia

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“That the future may learn from the past”

Colonial Williamsburg is a living-history museum and private foundation presenting part of an historic district in the city of Williamsburg, Virginia. Colonial Williamsburg’s 301-acre Historic Area includes buildings from the 18th century (during part of which the city was the capital of Colonial Virginia), as well as 17th-century, 19th-century, and Colonial Revival structures, as well as more recent reconstructions.

The Historic Area is an interpretation of a colonial American city, with exhibits of dozens of restored or re-created buildings related to its colonial and American Revolutionary War history. Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area’s combination of restoration and re-creation of parts of the colonial town’s three main thoroughfares and their connecting side streets attempts to suggest the atmosphere and the circumstances of 18th-century Americans. Colonial Williamsburg’s motto has been: “That the future may learn from the past”.

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Savannah’s Forsyth Park Fountain

American South, Savannah, Georgia, Travel

Savannah’s Forsyth Park was designed after the French ideal of having a central public garden, and the fountain is said to be the garden’s centerpiece (although it isn’t at the center of the park).

However beautiful, the fountain is not unique. It was ordered from a catalogue.

Other cities fancied the catalogue spread, too. Similar fountains exist in New York, Peru and France.

Atheism Quotes

Atheism, Quotes, Secular Humanism

“Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things—that takes religion.”

~ Steven Weinberg, Theoretical Physicist, Nobel Prize Winner

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

~ Richard Dawkins, Evolutionary Biologist

“The president of the United States [George Bush] has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.”

~ Sam Harris, Neuroscientist

“Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”

~ Christopher Hitchens, Journalist and Critic

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

~ Epicurus (341-270 BC), Philosopher

“Don’t pray in my school, and I won’t think in your church.”

~ Unknown

“We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.”

~ Gene Roddenberry, TV Screenwriter and Producer

“Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions”

~ Blaise Pascal, Mathematician, Physicist, Philosopher

“Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man — living in the sky — who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do.. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! ..But He loves you… and HE NEEDS MONEY!”

~ George Carlin

“I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence.”

~ Doug McLeod, Writer

“Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, ‘atheism’ is a term that should not even exist. No one needs to identify himself as a ‘non-astrologer’ or a ‘non-alchemist.’ We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.”

~ Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”

~ George Bernard Shaw

“Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.”

~ Unknown

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

~ Carl Sagan

I’m Privileged

Coping Strategies, Medications, Mental Health, My Schiz Life, Schizophrenia, Stigma, Therapies

I’m privileged:

~ I live in a Western Country with well trained psychiatrists and therapists.

~ I’m white and middle class.

~ I have a college degree and a deeper understanding of my illness.

~ I have good health insurance.

~ I can afford my medications.

~ I have a family that has helped me pay my therapist out of pocket instead of one that my insurance would cover.

~ I have a roof over my head and food to eat.

~ I have a support system.

~ What if I had been poor with no insurance and lacking a support system? Would I be homeless and not medicated? Would I be the “crazy” person talking to himself on the street corner?

~ Having schizophrenia is difficult enough sometimes seemingly impossible, but I can’t imagine how hard and how different my life would be if I wasn’t privileged.

~ I’m no better than anyone else with schizophrenia, just privileged to be born into my social class and all the perks that come with it.

#MySchizLife #Privileged #Schizophrenia

Understanding Stigma

Mental Health, Quotes, Stigma

There are so many books on this topic and those who dealt with issues: composers, artists, even whole books that put Shakespeare’s plays and characters in the context of mental health.

But despite that interest, people with mental health issues didn’t always receive the care they needed. We mistreated people, we misunderstood people and we didn’t have good treatment options.

One of the big things people can do is talk about it. Sharing that mental health is common, that it’s treatable and that there are resources helps people understand. Organizations like the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association are good resources for support, information and treatment.

People need to know that there’s hope and help because it ties into the past, why people didn’t talk about it. There weren’t good options like there are now.

~ Psychiatrist Douglas McLaughlin, Cleveland Clinic

Ingersoll Day

Essays, Secular Humanism

On August 11th each year we , celebrate “The Great Agnostic” (actually an atheist) born on that day in 1833.

By all accounts a fine man and an unparalleled speaker, the Christopher Hitchens of his time. Ingersoll was one of the most popular orators of his age, when oratory was public entertainment. He spoke on every subject, from Shakespeare to Reconstruction, but his most popular subjects were agnosticism and the sanctity and refuge of the family. He committed his speeches to memory although they were sometimes more than three hours long.

Many of Ingersoll’s speeches advocated freethought and humanism, and often ridiculed religious belief. For this the press often attacked him, but neither his opinions nor the negative press could stop his increasing popularity. During Ingersoll’s greatest fame, audiences would pay $1 or more to hear him speak, a considerable sum for that time.

Here’s a quotation on his belief of the harmony, or lack of, between religion and science which of course is still a contentious debate:

“There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: “Let us be friends.” It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: “Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet.”
~ Robert G. Ingersoll, American Soldier, Lawyer, Orator and Politician

Sam Harris on Atheism

Quotes, Secular Humanism

Age 16, 1988

Auditory Hallucinations, My Schiz Life, Poetry, Psychosis, Sexual Assault, Stigma, Violence, Visual Hallucinations

Age 16, 1988

For me my mental illness came crashing into my life in full force when I was sixteen.

That was the year I first started hearing voices,

started to believe people could read my mind and insert thoughts into my head,

was the first time I was truly suicidal,

was the year I started to self harm,

dragging a razor blade across my left arm and watching my blood flow,

the first time I was dissociative,

when the world became vague, dreamlike, less real,

as I observed events as if from outside my body like a movie in slow motion,

the year the panic attacks began.

This was also the year I suffered as a survivor of sexual assault,

the most difficult event of my life as a biker held a knife to my throat and raped me,

beating me severely.

From then on I carried a knife in case I am in a similar situation,

not so I could defend myself, but so I could slit my wrists.

To this day the sound of a Harley Davidson makes me physically cringe.

That was when the night terrors began reliving my trauma every time I closed my eyes.

That was the year the negative coping mechanisms developed: cutting, isolating, alcohol, drugs.

That was when the abyss of depression swallowed me up whole,

and I wanted to die or crawl in a hole forever,

because I was worthless, pathetic, weak, and most importantly,

I was to blame for being raped,

I should have been able to stop it as a sixteen year old boy.

This is not how it should be at sixteen.

Do I Dare Ask

Delusions, Mental Health, My Schiz Life, Visual Hallucinations

Do I Dare Ask

Do I dare ask what we already know,

There shall indeed me time to answer,

Do I presuppose in the depths of a binge,

To burn through our ignorance into truth.

We stand by a forest in the cold of night,

We question what is to befall us,

Searching past the promises we must keep,

Only contemplating our forest of the night.

You have forged this cross along your journey,

You are preparing your self-crucifixion,

Tears trace over you,

Where blood desires to follow.

Two paths diverged in your souls journey,

One leaving you upon the cross to wither and blow away,

The second burns past this existence,

We slip into the void between them.

Crawling across the wasteland of dark sky,

A new birth opens before my eyes,

One not filled with the continuance of life,

One filled with peril of your immediate break from existence.

The question has come to a close,

The funeral procession wanders to the grave,

The coffin left open only for you,

We all stare deep at your face in the grave.

The Four Types of Schizophrenia

Mental Health, My Schiz Life, Schizoaffective Disorder, Schizophrenia

People with schizophrenia may hear voices or noises; become very paranoid; believe they have unusual powers; think others control their thoughts, or vice-versa; or believe world events are connected to them

It can be a long road to diagnosis however. Patients — and families — are often in denial. After all, it’s a tough diagnosis to accept.

“We don’t label it schizophrenia right away; the diagnosis can follow a person throughout life once it’s in their chart,” says Dr. Minnie Bowers of the Cleveland Clinic.

Schizophrenia looks different from one person to the next. Here are the four main categories patients fall:

Paranoid schizophrenia: The person’s paranoia may be extreme, and they may act on it. “They may show up at the door of the FBI and ask, ‘Why are you following me?’” says Dr. Bowers. They may also behave oddly, have inappropriate emotional responses and show little pleasure in life.

Catatonic schizophrenia: The person shuts down emotionally, mentally and physically. “People appear to be paralyzed. They have no facial expression and may stand still for long periods of time,” she says. There is no drive to eat, drink or urinate. When catatonia lasts for hours, it becomes a medical emergency.

Undifferentiated schizophrenia: The person has various vague symptoms. “They may not talk or express themselves much. They can be confused and paranoid,” says Dr. Bowers. The person may not bother to change clothes or take a shower.

Schizoaffective disorder: The person has delusional thinking and other symptoms of schizophrenia. “But they also present with one or more symptoms of a mood disorder: depression, mania and/or hypomania,” says Dr. Bowers.

Source: The Cleveland Clinic