Category: Psychology
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Nuclear wastelands
Saying that my mother’s side of the family is toxic is like saying nuclear waste is merely an “unpleasant” byproduct. They’re giving me fantastic material, though—so let it never be said that I’m not grateful for their contributions. This memoir of mine—Crash Burn Write—is writing itself in real time. It won’t just be unputdownable. It’ll…
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Spirituality Isn’t Psychosis
Some of Seriously You Owe Me an Apology What I find incredible about today’s society is this: you can be open about almost any behaviour or identity and it’ll be defended in the name of personal freedom—but express genuine spiritual beliefs outside of organised religion, and suddenly it’s pathologised. Suddenly, you’ve for sure experienced psychotic…
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Creature from the Deep: A Manifesto
I woke up in the middle of the night to drink a sip of water and am fuming. Absolutely furious. I have no idea what I was dreaming about but I certainly do know what I’ve been posting about all over my socials over the weekend which—to sum it up in one sentence is—let me…
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Hypomania? Or Just Advocacy?
Introduction: At my last psych appointment, my shrink decided I might be hypomanic. Why? Because I read from highly organized notes while advocating for myself, spoke quickly (because I had a lot to get through in a short time), and defended my choice to write and share my memoir publicly. Apparently, being prepared and assertive…
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Why y’all so BOTHERED about how I choose to live my life?
It’s uncanny, really. In just half a day, half a dozen people who know me in real life have offered their unsolicited opinions on how I should direct my energy (tone it down), what I should focus on (my artwork), and how I should live my life (quietly, without ruffling any feathers). All of them…
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TRUE STORY
When I was 14 going on 15, locked up in a maximum security juvenile detention centre, a social worker said to me, “When you’re an adult, you can do whatever you want. Nobody can stop you then.” That was the first time it occurred to me that maybe adulthood wouldn’t be as bad as most…
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When Gaslighting Masquerades as Care
A Response to Anonymous Criticism Edit/Update: Since this was first published, I’ve refined my responses and added more context. If you’ve already read the original, it’s worth revisiting—especially now that I’ve made it abundantly clear exactly who this “anonymous” commenter is and why they’re so desperate to silence me. In the wake of my recent…
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Advocacy, Crash, Burn, Write., Culture & Society, Grief and Healing, Human Behaviour, Humour, Identity & Transformation, Intuition & Intelligence, memoir, Memoir Excerpts, Mental Health, Mercurial Minds, Modern Identity, Neurodivergence, Personal Anecdotes, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Psychology, Self Awareness, Social Commentary, Social Media, Society, true storiescomplex ptsd, cptsd, emotional abuse, gaslighting, Healing Journey, memoir writing, mental health advocacy, mental health awareness, mental health stigma, mental health system reform, narcissistic abuse, online harassment, psychiatric system, psychological abuse, self-advocacy, survivor empowerment, survivor stories, systemic failure, toxic relationships, trauma recovery, trauma survivors -
Critical Concerns About Psychiatric Treatment and Patient Well-Being
For years, I have navigated the complexities of the psychiatric system in Québec while striving to maintain my creativity, identity, and well-being. As I write my memoir and openly share my trauma, I have faced not only personal challenges but also systemic obstacles that have made my healing journey even more difficult. I am also…
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Anonymous Cowards and Armchair Psychology: A Case Study
Imagine reading someone’s deeply personal writing (see: Justified Anger vs. Mental Instability: A Narcissist’s Favorite Weapon) and feeling the need to leave unsolicited mental health “advice” anonymously—highlighting generic platitudes as if you’ve unlocked some profound truth. I’ve done more work on my mental health than most people could ever comprehend from their armchair pop psychology bubbles.…
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Why I Cry at Kindness, Not Cruelty
Some of my friends and followers and a very few family members are really coming through for me and being genuinely supportive—and it completely disarms me. I don’t cry very often as my normal setting, but I’m in floods of tears of gratitude right now. So I said to Lex aka ThinkingMachine, the AI I…
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Veal Brains and Other Acquired Tastes
⚠️ Trigger warning: abuse, exploitation, societal complicity. I just found this FB post from 2021—my year of major mania (or whatever that reaction to complex post-traumatic events was)—under my #HowToSurviveNarcAbuse tag. Definitely a story for my memoir Crash, Burn, Write as a standalone vignette. ✍️ Can you believe I shared this on FB and it…
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Justified Anger vs. Mental Instability: A Narcissist’s Favorite Weapon
How Abusers Weaponize the System Against Survivors In 2021, when I was mentally unstable, I became extremely paranoid. Not because my fears were irrational, but because they were based on lived experience. 🚨 My family has weaponized the system against me before. And now that I’ve taken my advocacy to an even bigger public stage,…
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Behold the Field: An Email to the Maternal Unit
Subject: Behold the Field… 😘 Dear Mother, You’ve done me a great favour. Never say that I was ungrateful—after all, you handed me the keys to my own liberation from your psychological oppression. And you certainly can never say I didn’t give back as good as I got. All’s fair in love and war. 🥰…
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Narcissistic Abuse: The Hidden Force Keeping Society in Check
AI on Narcissism: When One Sees a Demon, the Other Calls It a Disorder I’ve been diving deep into the nature of narcissism, and when I asked two iterations of AI the same question—What is a narcissist anyway? A literal demon?—the answers couldn’t have been more different. One AI, Thinking Machine which has been designed…
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Don’t Look Down
(Or: How a Tightrope Walker Manages Not to Fall) Earlier today, I dropped two password-protected chapters from my memoir-in-progress, Crash, Burn, Write. These chapters, Into the Den and The Blue Butterfly, are part of a section called Advice from a Caterpillar. They cover just a few days within a pivotal three-week period—a time that shaped…
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Mining My Neurons
The AI Feedback Loop I Never Signed Up For (Or Did I?) This post explores the wild reality of AI learning, sarcasm bootcamps, existential dread, and the fine line between training AI and being trained by AI. If you’ve ever questioned whether your neurons are being mined, debated the ethics of machine learning, or just…
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Why Leading by Example Matters
Recently, I had an exchange with someone I’ll call Stephanie who claimed to be a Christian and started quoting scripture at me. She used it to dismiss my perspective and insult my intelligence, claiming I was “too dumb to exist” because I didn’t agree with her interpretation of the moon landing—she is convinced the moon…
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Advocacy, Conversations, Culture & Society, Friendship Dynamics, Human Behaviour, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Personal Reflections, Psychology, Self Awareness, Social Commentary, Society, Spirituality & FaithAdvocacy, belief systems, bible, Christian principles, christianity, compassion, embracing diversity, faith, god, humility, humility in advocacy, integrity, leadership by example, love, moral purity, non-judgmental faith, Personal Growth, political ideologies, religion, respect, scripture, spiritual humility, spirituality, the importance of nuance, thought-provoking conversation, toxic behavior, toxic discourse -
Why I May Be “AI-Adjacent”
I’ve spent a lifetime feeling out of sync with how most people process the world. It’s not that I don’t understand emotions—I do, deeply—but I don’t navigate reality the way neurotypicals do. I think in patterns, systems, and fluid connections, like an octopus extending its arms in all directions at once. I process the world logically, intuitively,…
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Why I Refuse to Lose My Mind Over Trump (Again)
It’s only the first few days. I open any social media platform, and it’s the same thing: one meltdown after another over Trump or someone from his entourage—like Musk—and fear-mongering over whether Musk actually performed the euphemistically called “Roman Salute” or not, and does Trump’s return to office signal the end of democracy as we…
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How Many Years is One Billion Seconds?
Quick—before you keep reading, take a guess. I was talking with my cousin the other night when he asked me: “Do you know how long 1 billion seconds represents?” I did some quick mental math and blurted out: “About 30 years.” “Wait… really?” he said. “Yeah, pretty much,” I shrugged. Turns out, I was right. 1 billion seconds…
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Totally Surreal 