Saturday, December 02, 2017
Are We Going Mad?
By: Donovan Baldwin
I think many of us, perhaps more than you and I might imagine, wonder at times if we are going mad.
I've had times in my life when I thought that.
I've heard people describe clinical mental conditions, and thought to myself, "They're describing what happened to me!"
A couple of problems with understanding our own madness, of course, is, if you've never been crazy, clinically crazy, how can you know if you are or not?
If you go off someone else's description, how can you know that you are feeling the real thing, or even the same thing?
I "go crazy" in the emergency room of the hospital when they ask me to rate my pain on a scale of 1 - 10.
My 5 may be somebody else's 7 or 3.
A problem with self-diagnosing "crazy" or "madness", or, pain level, for that matter, is that, one person's "crazy" may be another person's "normal".
Still, even when we cannot quite be sure if we are "going crazy" or experiencing genuine "madness", if we are at that point where we are beginning to wonder, seriously wonder, then we are in a situation that needs to be treated as if it is real.
Someone in their own experience of madness can do, say, believe things that they would not under "normal" conditions and reactions. We can portray madness, especially merely perceived madness, as funny.
But, to the person experiencing it, it's very real.
I know.
I've had times in my life when I thought that.
I've heard people describe clinical mental conditions, and thought to myself, "They're describing what happened to me!"
A couple of problems with understanding our own madness, of course, is, if you've never been crazy, clinically crazy, how can you know if you are or not?
If you go off someone else's description, how can you know that you are feeling the real thing, or even the same thing?
I "go crazy" in the emergency room of the hospital when they ask me to rate my pain on a scale of 1 - 10.
My 5 may be somebody else's 7 or 3.
A problem with self-diagnosing "crazy" or "madness", or, pain level, for that matter, is that, one person's "crazy" may be another person's "normal".
Still, even when we cannot quite be sure if we are "going crazy" or experiencing genuine "madness", if we are at that point where we are beginning to wonder, seriously wonder, then we are in a situation that needs to be treated as if it is real.
Someone in their own experience of madness can do, say, believe things that they would not under "normal" conditions and reactions. We can portray madness, especially merely perceived madness, as funny.
But, to the person experiencing it, it's very real.
I know.
Labels: donovan baldwin, going mad, madness
# posted by Donovan Baldwin @ 6:14 PM 
