Facebook keeps reminding me about my psychotic break
Thanks to Facebook memories the social media platform for me is sometimes traumatising, showing me things I posted while suffering a psychosis.
It's been a few years now, roughly since the start of the covid 19 pandemic that I had what is not my first psychosis. I am one of those people who if anything newsworthy ever happened to me I would probably be described with that generic phrase “history of mental illness”. Not that it bothers me. However, the way Facebook likes to show me reminders of my psychosis can be confronting. These are not always things I remember. They are usually religious. They are always cringeworthy.
Now I'm not blaming Facebook for its pretty vanilla “memories” feature as it is great to see friends and family and things you may have been doing years ago. It's not fun to see a digital version of your psychosis promoted to you when you go on Facebook. Just being reminded of a psychosis can often lead to reliving trauma. Fortunately, I am in a very different place now and to be honest, these little reminders don’t phase me too much.
Time plus medication equals progress
The biggest difference in my life is my diagnosis of bipolar disorder (type 1, the most severe, which I talk about in this post. Along with this came a medication that seems to be keeping me well. What is making sure I am even better is my resistance to certain stressors, such as a reminder of psychosis or what I did during a psychosis. These are very traumatic memories because it’s like watching someone else in charge of your actions and words.
This was a serious incident in my life and it did at one point involve police questioning due to the content of what I thought was an “art project”. Yes, I am an artist as well as a writer and I dabble in digital art installations online. I make little websites and was working on a series that was based on music videos. So much of my psychosis and associated mania was also productive.
Here is just a single digital art piece I created for my series (this was titled “The Seven Seals”:
So during my psychosis, I had the most precise “vision” of what I was working on. The reality though this art was created with mood swings, mania and the most grandiose feelings you can imagine. These were all symptoms of my bipolar, but at the time they had a “holy” feeling to them. I can really see now why so many religious writers confuse their own undiagnosed mental illnesses with something divine.
Psychosis can feel divine. However, it really isn’t when you count the embarrassment and destruction that it causes not only to those who suffer through it but those who are around to witness it. I don’t have many friends that I still speak to and I know now it is mostly because of psychosis. I don’t blame anyone, I wouldn’t want to be around psychotic me either. In fact, deep self-hatred is very common in people with bipolar disorder.
So Facebook can keep reminding me of my psychotic episode all it likes. It was a part of my life and I remember as an artist really wanting to “perform” my (at that stage undiagnosed) mental illness. We all try so hard on platforms like Facebook to appear normal and mentally stable that I guess I thought it would be nice to share the symptoms I have to swim through most days. Obviously, when the Australian Federal Police want to talk to you, the “art project” has possibly gone a bit haywire.
As I said I am in a different place now though, and I can now do what I wanted to do when I was experiencing my latest psychosis: talk about real mental illness. While it is now ok to talk about middle class mental illness like depression, it is not ok to talk about bipolar and related issues like psychosis. This is despite how common it is. I guess it just isn’t a very marketable illness. That, and the fact people see it as your fault.
You are a burden. You are an embarrassment. You are crazy. Unfortunately, mentally ill people don’t need to be reminded of that, we already know that. We live with that. The stigma of mental illness doesn’t wash off just because you have a diagnoses and proper medication. That continues with family and friends not understanding that you live with a serious condition. For those of us with serious mental illnesses it is like someone screaming at someone in a wheelchair because they can’t use the stairs.
I take my little Facebook reminders of the worst time in my life and see it as a sign of how far I’ve come.
Thanks for reading my post today. I wanted to touch on mental illness again after writing a bit about religion. My mental illness really drives my discussion on religion because religious ideas did so much damage to my mental health. So I will be posting more on the subject of religion and mental illness when I get a break from my two wonderful children. All the best in your day, feel free to leave a comment or a question, especially if you have any about psychosis. I know it’s a subject that people aren’t always aware of (especially in relation to serious mental illnesses like bipolar).
Your vulnerability is powerful, KJ. Your artwork "The Seven Seals" is quite mesmerizing. I love it! Hope you have a great week.