On psychosis, shame and art

"Put-together me lives in a peaceful and kind world. People are nice to put-together me. Psychotic me is another story."

My friend and idol, the writer Barbara Gowdy, once said this about the human urge to be seen: “I think the best thing we can do to people in the world is to acknowledge who they are, who they’re presenting themselves as and it’s a loving thing to do. The more we look, the more we attend to them, the more we see them the more empathetic we are and the more difficult it is for us to do them harm. All failure in the world is failure of empathy and all failure of empathy is a failure of imagination and a failure of attending.”

This post is a special one. In it, I’m asking another friend, the brilliant poet Robin Richardson, to talk about her experience with a 9-month-long psychosis. As someone who writes about mental illness I will never not advocate for the eradication of stigma connected to mental illness and today I want to give Robin this lil’ platform to talk about her experience with it and how she’s navigated it. In my opinion, Robin is very brave to be so open about something that is so deeply misunderstood and shunned and I feel so privileged to learn from her and I’m hoping you too will find what she shares illuminating.

Robin says, In my particular brand of psychosis there are characters who get close to you - then get inside you - they talk to you all day in your head and occupy your body, laughing through your mouth and touching you with your own hands. This makes it impossible to function past making a very basic meal and maybe showering once in a while. It's a 24-hour-a-day engagement that allows no space to think on your own.

My particular demon liked to make every moment feel like life or death and if I tried to ignore him and think my own thoughts I could feel him right there scowling or laughing or plotting. His emotions often came through bigger than mine so that if I had a memory he would be weeping at it and I would not be able to know what I felt - he was bigger than me and his emotions expressed more loudly than mine. He is a tireless being who lives entirely to possess and take me down and the effort required to move on from his influence is monumental - at a certain point it was impossible - it seemed going to Hell was the only thing that would distance me from him so that's what I did - I died down there and came back - not rid of him but with enough distance that I could get on with my life again. I'm sharing this so folks can get a sense of what psychosis is really like. I'm thinking of people who look at the homeless thinking they are not trying hard enough and I want you to understand some things are beyond our capacity at times to overcome. Some villains are just bigger, meaner, and more capable and sometimes we lose the battles. I know a part of the manifestation of my demons came from isolation and from feeling I was outcasted and scorned. This made it easy for them to prey on me. So for that reason as well I share this - I want you to know what someone like me may actually be going through while the average person looks over in judgement and deems them unfit for compassion or community for whatever reason.

Since this is a substack that deals with shame and that follows the theory that in order to rid oneself of shame, this shame has to be shared (whether with a larger audience or just a trusted friend or a therapist), I'm wondering if you have a similar point of view when you talk about things that are uncomfortable such as your psychosis? I know this is a leading question so feel free to ignore it but I'm curious about what drives you when it comes to talking about it. Or: what is your point of view on sharing our shames?

Well, now that you’ve got me thinking of it I am taken back to AA. Part of the steps is to share your inventory of shame and resentment and all of your missteps with another person and to allow them to more or less absolve you - such is the way with religious confession too. Before I’d done those steps I was an insomniac, kept awake by a sort of constant self-loathing. I sleep like a baby now, so I’d say there is something profound about confession that is also deeply healing - I can’t say I understand why exactly but I can see it works and I see why it’s part of so many rituals. I also will share that it comes naturally to me and I tend to trust what arises naturally and that does tend to work out well.¹

2. What have you learned about people since disclosing about what's happened to you?

I’ve learned that there are so so many people who have gone through or who are going through almost exactly what I have. I hear from people almost every day who say I must be their twin because they are fighting all the same battles with all the same characters. It’s very affirming in a sense - it becomes impossible at a point to claim schizophrenics and psychotics are just imagining things. It is now so much more apparent to me that we are all participating in a sort of collective archetypical drama with consistent plots and themes. We’re all in this together at the very least and that’s nice to know. It also gives some validity to the “realness" of the experience.

On the other hand I’ve seen a whole new side to the average person. You realize when you change that much that people are not generally good or bad but are good or bad in response to you and how you present. Put-together me lives in a peaceful and kind world. People are nice to put-together me. Psychotic me is another story. The very same people who stumble over themselves to smile at put-together me, shun, insult, scream at and shut their doors to disheveled me. I just need to be a little scared and have messy hair and the whole human race becomes a kind of death trap. It’s horrifying but I will tell you if you really want to know what humans are like when no one “important” is looking ask a psychotic or a homeless person. There is more cruelty and ignorance in the world by about 80 per cent than I used to think there was. I was arrested and reprimanded for believing that the illuminati was after me. I was spoken to like I was an evil child by a doctor at CAMH who felt it was not important to help me feel safe but rather to assure me that I was insane and a problem and incapable of knowing or saying anything true. I will never stop wanting that woman to lose her job. The whole experience of looking crazy is like.. imagine being a 40 year old woman in the body of a 5-year-old throwing a hissy fit - everyone is talking to the crazy 5-year-old but you are not 5, You are 40. You just have no way to show them. People were scared. I get that. It’s scary. But also many people were just enjoying the opportunity to pick on someone who they believed lacked the ability to call them on it or create repercussions. That’s the scary part. They think they can get away with it because you’re not sane - imagine what they do to children and other vulnerable when no one is looking. Anyways, I know now. It hurts a lot and I am still recovering from this new understanding . I’d say maybe that’s the most painful part of all this, to be honest.

3. Can you talk about stigma?

Hmm, beyond what I said in the previous statement I suppose it’s hard to know - stigma is such a hidden thing most of the time. I’ll say what I observe most right now is that no one wants to talk about it or wants me to talk about it. Except you right now thankfully. But in general I think it’s a wool over the eyes sort of thing and other than that I’m still learning how stigma will effect me moving forward. People know so little about psychosis and seem so uncurious. I think they just want us to medicate and be better and leave it alone, you know?

4. As artists many of us harvest and exploit some of our most painful, tender experiences. I've been accused both of lack of imagination and exhibitionism when I talked about my personal experiences. What is your take on that?

You know what, I’d say the real creativity and imagination is embodied by you as you create and live these very experiences you exploit. Your life is art. So is mine. Then we put it on paper and share it. Coming up with some fiction off the top of your head is no more imaginative than living a life worth making art about.

5. What happens when you talk about things that people might consider shameful/ embarrassing? Do you find relief? Is it liberating? Or is it a form of self-harm? Something else?

I’m all over on this one. I’m by default an open book. I often realize too late that it would have been smarter to keep more to myself. I think I shoot myself in the foot ten times a day by sharing this stuff but I can’t seem to stop myself. I’m sure it would make for a better life if I started crafting a persona and sticking to it or at least being mysterious but I’m a creator who creates from what I live and what I think. I’m brimming with stuff and to keep it in would well… cause psychosis apparently. Art may sabotage me socially but it creates an outlet that keeps me sane (ish) so I say it’s worth it.

6. How do we protect ourselves from being misunderstood (in the context of revelation of something painful)? Is there a way to protect ourselves?

Oh lord it’s nearly impossible. The main character of my psychosis was a psychopathic billionaire who dedicated every minute of his day to social analysis and strategy to ensure every interaction yielded the exact result he desired. For him and his goals this works well and weirdly I learned a lot from him. I don’t believe in a psychopathic level of image management but I have accepted that my total lack of social tact has landed me in so many shit heaps I have lost track. I am notoriously misunderstood and I do now believe there is some advantage to taking time to learn about the way others think and do some careful translating to avoid pitfalls. I partially resent this but it’s reality and since I’ve started paying attention to it things have gotten better.

For instance I’m shifting the way I dress to hide my body and look a bit older and people are way nicer to me. But overall it takes work - my brain is so far on the spectrum I almost need a full time assistant to explain to me how people generally think. I have no idea if left to my own devices.

7. I always say that there's a very fine line between stupidity and courage when it comes to revealing personal stuff... What do you think about that?

Oh I’m just stupid. People always say I’m brave and I’m like “nope I just forgot to consider the consequences of my actions as usual”²

8. What do you find to be the most tender and personal form of art and reveal? I think we talked about poetry before and I said I couldn't write poems because I found them to be too naked, too intimate... as an accomplished poet, what is your take on that?

That’s funny, I think poems are a great little mask - they aren’t real, you know? I get away with so much in them because they can be written off so easily as embellishments and so much can be hidden in them. As far as what’s vulnerable - I suppose the personal essay - what you did with Drunk Mom I’d say takes the cake. No hiding in there.³

9. What do people misunderstand about what happened to you?

Of lord! How to be brief here? I think the biggest misunderstanding was around my switch from being a poetry mentor to preaching spirituality. Many saw me as some opportunistic snake oil saleswoman. What’s kinda crazy about that perception is I was doing so well at the time with poetry. It was financial suicide to switch tracks. I didn’t do it as some pre-meditated career move, I did it because in the first lockdown I lost my mind, had an NDE and found the only thing I wanted to do was “explain the laws of the universe to people” - it gained me nothing and lost me everything. I was in another dimension at the time, and suppose I still am - unable to understand or communicate with people really the way I used to - and dealing with angels and demons on a daily basis while living in what felt like a simulation. I was excited to tell everyone everything I swear to god because I wanted to help not because I wanted to take their money.

It broke my heart how people framed me - especially after years of helping so many in the community. I often get criticized for charging 90$ at the time for people who wanted my help but I think that’s a horrible thing to criticize. I get to charge for what little I can offer - especially when I have no other source of income. Anyways, I was insane and was genuinely excited about what I was doing and way too far gone to see how it was coming across publicly. A spiritual awakening renders you totally idiotic for a long time. It’s like getting a whole new brain and I don’t think anyone had the slightest idea what I was going trough at the time. But all in all I promise I was not “making it up to get TikTok followers” - god I hate people for how eagerly they attacked me for talking spirituality publicly. I also want to add that of all the terrible things people do: Robin having spiritual platforms is not the worst thing in the world nor does it warrant such vitriol - even if I was doing it for “the money”, you know? I have been through it before with the literary scene and I suspect at this point it’ not about my screwing up so much as it is just their nature to attack anything that stands apart for a second. So screw’m.

10. Any regrets?

It’s hard to regret. I mean I’d say I wish I was smarter but I wasn’t, so even if I went back I couldn’t change that. I’m an insane idiot and that gets me into trouble. What can I do?

1. I love this so much! I have a whole section about confession in my book Unshaming as I’ve come to a similar conclusion. Therapy, confession… all those things are about being seen — shame is a thing that hides and that likes darkness, bringing our shames to light exposes them, makes them smaller. Eradicates them.

2. Ha ha, I was just talking to someone (you?) about the time I was in Whistler, a couple of weeks ago and I was walking in this beautiful forest, in the rain, like in some nature cathedral — with those massive sequoia trees that seem to hum and glow and emit God all around — and I suddenly blurted out-loud, “ohh people are gonna fucking hate you,” and I heard it loud and clear like someone else said it. I ruined the perfect moment. Despite the surroundings and the peace I felt, I’ve had this hamster wheel in my head thinking about Unshaming coming out and all the raw, unfiltered, damning things I’m about to reveal and how I got away with it once, with Drunk Mom, but there’s no way people are going to go easy on me once they read this one. But screw it, you can’t half-jump in the lake. I’m all in. A queen of stupid. Join the club. (I’m also officially in the club of talks-to-herself.)

3. Wait till… see footnote #2 lol (where’s the stupid laughing-crying emoji when you need it?)