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At the end of the day, the terminology turf war really just makes me laugh. You can’t censor someone else’s speech. You can block them yourselves or whatever, but any attempts to make people not say the thing at all to begin with, usually just make them louder. So it’s pretty futile to try.
But anyway. Here’s a similar analogy with a term that, unlike “system”, clearly has roots in medical terminology: hallucinate.
Who usually has hallucinations? People with mental illnesses. Schizophrenia, and various kinds of psychoses, for the most part.
Guess who else hallucinates?
Synesthetes.
Synesthesia is absolutely NOT a mental illness whatsoever. But synesthetes definitely hallucinate, in patterns, as a result of certain sensory stimulus. Letters may appear to have colors. Sounds may have smells attached. With auditory-tactile synesthesia, like our partner system has, sounds and music makes them literally feel sensation on their body. With ticker tape synesthesia, like we Crew have, words whether heard or thought are seen as text floating in the air. Is that normal? Definitely not. Is it a mental illness? Definitely not. Is it still hallucinations? 100% definitely YES.
No one goes into synesthesia communities like, “!Gasp! You used the word ‘hallucinate’! You can’t do that!” lol.
Honestly I’d like to see them try and see how far they get lol.
i saw an article recently by a schizophrenic person (can probably dig it up again if needed) that mentioned how everyone hallucinates. if you’ve ever thought the phone was ringing when it wasn’t, or thought you heard someone calling your name, you’ve hallucinated.
they mentioned this because a lot of people have the impression that people who hallucinate are totally different from the mainstream, that they’re having some kind of incomprehensible experience that’s completely frightening and alien. and while yeah hallucinating can be very frightening, it’s not alien. it’s a human thing, to hallucinate, and the more we recognize that the more we realize that schizophrenics aren’t terrifying monsters, just people having a more vivid version of a normal human experience.
so why is it that so many people in the mental illness communities insist on the idea that what they experience is totally different from anything others experience?
i mean, i get it in the sense of “it’s frustrating when nt people act like their mild experiences of anxiety or obsession are the same as our debilitating ones”, but that’s why we have words like “debilitating” and “clinical” and “disordered”? you don’t have to deny that human experiences are on a continuum to say that people trivialize serious mental health issues.
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