James Woods wants you to know how much he really, really hates Hillary Clinton

@ Kat
Yes, i read the information now that the people here shared with me and now i found that it is common, first i felt bad because if everyone has it then what is wrong with me to experience distress? But then after i also felt good, like now i can stop to feel guilty for the bad thoughts.

Also thank you))) i like to do positive thinking as well. Mad Heads do a good version of dont worry be happy which I listen to a lot. Music is a big helper. I’m sure lots of people agree.

@Anisky

I am not american or english speaking, for first language but i think i am quite good. Not to sound arrogant! But i read and write okay, not so much speaking out loud but thats not important here anyway.

Before i go onto the other bit, when you say put me in a box, you mean in a mental installation? Or like in a way like a box being like a category?

But yeah it is complicated about the eyes. I want to say you are right about the second one, cos i know really it is not possible. How can there be a portal to someone’s mind from a poster or a photograph? And how can they make an opinion on me? I would say in the front part of my mind i 50% beleive it. But the other part, like the inside, the physical part i can feel pictures and eyes there like there is someone else in the room with me. You know how you start to act when you are not alone? Like maybe not put your finger in your nose ? or be more cooler and try to look good. I do this infront of the eyes. I cant stop myself treat them like they are also real. And if also i thought there were no eyes in a room and later find out there were i feel embarrassed and have to check back through my memory to make sure i did nothing bad.

To be honest i thought this was more normal than the thoughts. I shared this with my mother before when i was about 14. She said in some culture they beleive that the camera takes away the soul. So i thought maybe this is normal that i feel they are real people. Stupid because i mentioned to a doctor it once and he tried to give me medication. I put it in the bin. I was i think on 19 at the time. Maybe or 20.

I remind myself though it is not possible. But sometimes i like to have the eyes there. If i look good or say something charming to guests and the eyes see me then i feel proud. If i do something bad infront of them then i feel ashamed. Once recently, i took down the posters so my girlfriend can move my things when we moved apartment, and i still behave like the eyes can see me then remember they are not watching me. This way i know it is like a bad habits.

So to conclude. Maybe i woulf say 50% beleive and 50% know it is not possible.

Also now i would just say i hope i didnt violate the policy too because i said i was crazy. I didnt mean to upset anyone reading.

@Valentine

Oh, box as in category, no question!! Sorry for the confusion. I’m not sure how it is in other countries, but in America, pretty much the only reason someone can be institutionalized against their will is if healthcare professionals believe they’re a danger to themselves or others. Unless mental health care in your home country is really backwards, no way something like believing photographs can see or hear you would qualify.

While I never had it to the degree you’re talking about, what you say about those sensations and behaviors definitely rings some bells in my mind. I remember that when I was a pre-teen/young teen, I had this thing where if I wasn’t dressed in my room, I had to hide it from my mirror. I don’t remember the details of why, but I do know that it wasn’t only because I didn’t want to see my naked body. It was that being naked in front of my mirror would expose me to someone who wasn’t me, and it sounds like very much the same sort of part-feeling, part-belief you describe. It was strong enough that I hid my nakedness from my mirror for at least a year, and even knowing intellectually that it didn’t make sense, I couldn’t stop myself from behaving that way anyway.

(I think, also in my early teens, I had the same sensation/partial-belief that my thoughts weren’t safe in my own head, and other people could see them. I forced myself to stop trains of thought in their tracks and would even start going “LALALALA” in my head really loudly if I started to think about things I wanted private.)

So, I do think that I understand, at least to some degree, what you mean. My guess is that it, also, is something many people experience, just not to the same degree.

I’m curious– you seem to be very against going on medication. Is there a reason, besides your job? While treating one’s issues through evidence-based therapy is a very valid, and in many cases can ultimately yield similar results to medication without having to take pills for the rest of one’s life, there are also some psychiatric conditions where medication really helps in a way therapy can’t. My college girlfriend had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in high school, but she was lucky in that she responded extremely well to anti-psychotics. Once every couple of years she may have an episode that requires brief hospitalization, but it doesn’t interfere with her life any more than occasionally getting a stomach bug would. She graduated on time, is at an extremely prestigious grad school, and is living a normal, happy life, that would probably not have been possible without medication.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely not saying that you’re schizophrenic, and I’m not saying that medication is necessary in your case– I don’t know nearly enough either about you or psychology to be able to even make the merest guess about that. I’m just curious why you’re so dead set against medication.

Somewhat in line with what Kat was saying about “don’t worry, be happy” and not to overthink things, there are some places where it seemed to me that you were being way too hard on yourself. For example,

If i am alone and i get a bad thought then i speak to myself. But i know this is not correct.

I don’t see anything wrong with speaking to yourself while you’re alone. Why do you say that it is “not correct”? I don’t think it’s that unusual to talk to yourself when nobody is around. But even if it is, I don’t see why it would matter. I mean, obviously it’s not a great thing if you’re saying awful, terrible things to yourself, but even that doesn’t seem to me significantly worse than *thinking* awful, terrible things about yourself. Anything that doesn’t hurt anyone isn’t by itself, independently “incorrect” or “bad”– the problem is that it upsets and distresses you. Chastising yourself for behavior that makes you (and only you) feel bad… that does no good.

As my Jewish-Buddhist mother likes to say… be kind to yourself.

Again, I am a complete layperson, so take this with a grain of salt, and if there’s some problem that I don’t see, I beg other posters to correct me quickly.

As far as the policy, I’m not a regular poster so I don’t have a strong sense of the subtleties of the ableism policy. But it’s obvious that you are sincerely looking for help/advice, and that you weren’t intending to belittle anyone else by using the word “crazy”. While it may have broken the policy, in my experience the people here are very kind, so I don’t think they’re going to yell at you for putting yourself down while you were asking for help.

Er… sorry for the teal dear. I don’t even know if I should post this, but I spent this long typing it, so… I hope I didn’t say anything here to make people hate me.

re: the ableism policy

The purpose of the ableism policy with respect to “crazy” and “insane” and the like is to keep from conflating mental illness with simple assholishness. Doing so is harmful to people with mental illnesses, and it gives assholes an easy “out” – if they are crazy then they aren’t really responsible for their actions.

Related, we also don’t want people to diagnose others with mental illness or speculate about what mental illnesses someone might have when the only symptom is that the person is an asshole, or is using bad logic, or is a violent individual. This is also harmful to people with mental illnesses by implying that people with mental illnesses are violent assholes who can’t reason.

It’s not to ban the words themselves. I will refer to myself as crazy or mad (although madness is a political identity and not just a description of someone with a mental illness) and that’s okay, because I am actually literally mad.

Basically, don’t use “crazy” as a metaphor. It’s okay to use it when it’s literally true, especially if you are using it to refer to your own mental illnesses. The purpose of the policy is to avoid splash damage, not to police words out of the lexicon.

One of the great successes of the anti-Hillary propaganda campaign was to convince moderates that she was a flaming liberal and at the same time convince progressives that she was not a liberal at all. In many ways she had an almost impossible line to walk as a woman — one one hand she needed to prove that she was “tough” enough to be commander-in-chief, but that led to Berniebros claiming that “she never met a war she didn’t like” — which was kind of ironic, since she was an anti-war activist as a college student.

I can’t help but feel that a lot of the success of the anti-Hillary campaign came from the fact that a lot of men — and probably more than a few women — wanted an excuse to vote against her because they weren’t comfortable with a strong woman, but knew it was unfashionable to admit it. Woods is just a bit of the same thing taken to a delusional extreme.

Valentine, an old behavoiral therapy trick is to wear a rubber band around your wrist and snap it when you have intrusive thoughts. Lots of smokers have used this when they craved a cigarette. If digging your nails into your arm doesn’t leave marks or cause bleeding, this works too.

A therapist who uses hypnosis might be able to help you to replace your nail-digging with a more discreet method, like a finger-tap to your wrist.

The drawback to my plucking habit is that it won’t always work in the moment; I can’t plop myself down and whip out my tweezers when I’m not home! Also, my eyesight’s not what it used to be and I need really good light nowadays.

I’ve never felt crazy, just occasionally bothered by intrusive thoughts that disrupt my sleep. Although when I was a child, the lights from passing cars in my room at night when the lights were off really bothered me and I still close my eyes when I hear passing cars in a darkened room at night!

It does not surprise me at all that Mike Nelson is a fan of the Medved brothers, considering his approach to film criticism is pretty much the same as that of the Medveds – tarring-and-feathering cult classics with actual fan followings in an incredibly mean-spirited manner and refusing to consider the possibility that anyone could possibly enjoy these films in any way.

As for the guy who accused James Woods of being a druggie, he may have a point. The actor’s toxic behaviour is pretty consistent with that of a coke addict. Especially with regards to his unprovoked anger, violence, and defensiveness.

If a whole bunch of us called James Woods a cocaine addict on Twitter, would he sue everyone? Or could he not sue us all?