Schizotypal disorder is described as being slightly eccentric or odd, claiming to have certain extra senses or being subtle to certain energies, having unusual thought patterns or behaviors, and claiming to be "sensitive to other peoples energies". Individuals who claim to be empaths, have high awareness, and even people that say they are enlightened could easily fall into these categories. So which one is it? People have been saying forever that their is unseen energy and you can resonate with people and certain environments and even modern science is slowly starting to accept mystical/philosophical ideas to explain or push their ideas now. Is it all rubbish and are they all slightly off? Or is it just that society as a whole is desensitized, dense, dumbed down and has to find labels for individuals who are more aware of what is going on around them? I.E. eccentric, strange, offbeat Now there are individuals who are surely "crazy" and it shows in their actions.. but just because someone perceives reality different than the masses, does that mean they have to have some sort of brain disorder? My opinion is that objective thinkers feel they have to objectify everything and box everything they don't understand in. All the geniuses, highly creative, free thinkers I've met always had perceptions that even I thought were odd but I never looked at them as strange. All the "normal" individuals seemed dense, unaware, and simple minded. So what is it?
Very interesting post. I will read it again to absorb more/confirm my comprehension of your ideas. My initial reaction is thinking that it is a mixture of both, being dependent on the point of view of the observer. A brain disorder can only be such when compared to a norm, so yes, any deviation from the majority may appear as a disorder. I also think you are right that some people have more acute sensitivities to particular stimuli. Enlightenment is a strong word and wouldn't apply in my case, but I certainly notice more empathy and sensitivity in my behavior and thoughts than the norm... Unfortunately at this point I would struggle to express these feelings and observations in more tangible or precise ways. My analysis has not gone far enough. Making peace with who you "are" and how you interact with the outside "world" is perhaps the most important in the end. Then again I am not sure what I just wrote, and maybe there is a little or a lot of INSANE in the mix. Life is a roller coaster.
Nothing is certain because you can't pinpoint anything. Awareness is unpredictable and the conscious mind makes any experiment impossible to rely on.
I have a personality disorder! Either that or everyone else just has a perception problem! Probably the second one.
this whole i'm better than you, smarter, more enlightened than others makes me think that folks who think they're in the know, have no clue. when you think that you know everything or know more than most everyone else, you know nothing. i know a couple crazy people who deserve a poke in the eye.
In order to have disorder we must first agree upon what is order. This is still merely an agreement on how 'we' believe things are supposed to go... when in reality we're all living this thing we call life for the very first time. Nobody's born with 'the' blueprint for life. Life is spontaneous and free with no stipulations, it's when we humans try and compartmentalize reality with our finite brains that brings about suffering. Human measurements (or judgements on what 'is') which are measurements from OUR vantage-point only can never be true reality because it's only what our agreed upon reality allows us for measuring. We can agree on measurements and thats fine, we humans mostly measure things the same way so it's ok to agree on the behaviors of things. It's our agreement on things that brings us together. It gives us a sense of concreteness in an impermanent reality. Does that make it illusory? Yes, but as long as we agree upon an illusion, that makes it fact....according to 'us'.
The more we can abandon thinking in definitions, labels, and symbols, the more we will see the true nature of life. "Why even use the label disorder"?
A genious or intellect is by definition not "normal" otherwise all would be genious. That surely isn't the case. Faith in selfless Unity for Good.
love your post. i'm not sure where i fit on the spectrum of an "empath" as you say and technically speaking that's putting a title on it like you said but i would consider myself to be highly empathetic to the point of showing apathy a lot of the time. maybe because of the positions i've put myself in the last few years and a few before that but i feel a lot different these days, i am an individual who likes to take drugs for more than one reason. just about any reason. at the same time i like to become desensitized the next day i want to exhilarate everything. on the part of psychiatry naming everything, the money grabbing and love catchers just want to catalog us into groups so we can better understand where another is coming from but are we not all looking for money and or love? good post
I would say its all cultural, usually in modern western cultures we are more "disconected" spiritually, we now claim almost everything as a psychological problem which the people need to take some medicine. Some native american tribes say that what we now call schizophrenia, they used to call a "god's gift" and those people were seen as VIPs while now we treat them as sick people, however how do we know who is right and who is wrong? That's up to you to decide because remember that neither side (a god's gift or a mental problem) has the right to claim they have the absolute truth. In my case I do like to think that there is more in life that justa simple "we are humans who evolved to a point to be able to think more than animals, and it's all science", I like more a spiritual way to see things, more like a "we are a consciusness who are having a time on Earth to gain knowledge and experience, in a vessel known as a human body" , and that there are more things that the naked aye can't see.What I'm saying isn't anything new, it's been said through centuries in the eastern civilization, and that civilization is older that our actual western "world", which that may be another reason why people don't care much about the eastern traditions and ways of thinking, because of science, and a the "new is better" way of thinking. Your post was great, actually I once asked this in a psychology class "what is the difference between a self proclaimed psychic/medium (who isn't taking any medication or visiting a psychologust, just having a "normal" life), and a person with schizophrenia (who is taking medication, etc.). And the teacher's answer was "a very good question, but just to say, a psychic swims where the schizophrenic drowns". Even though it isn't a concrete answer, what I understood is that the difference is in the way you handle the "problem", if you freak out, or accept it and live with it without any problem (assuming that's possible), and it also depends on the people who surrounds you, and their views to the "problem". (The "problem" is the ability to see unseen energy, etc. that can be considered a mental problem or a gift) My conclussion, as told before in this post is that it all depends on how you aproach this "abilities", either a problem or a gift, there isn't a right or wrong answer, because we dont know the absolute truth. Thanks for reading, and if there is an spelling mistake I'm sorry because english isn't my first language.