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54 lines
6.1 KiB
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54 lines
6.1 KiB
Markdown
# Mental Health
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I live openly with schizoaffective disorder. This isn't inspiration — it's system documentation. When consciousness systems fail, understanding the failure modes helps everyone build more resilient ones.
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This thread collects the lived experience, the design implications, and the honest reckoning with systems that exploit the vulnerable. It's also about what works — the tools, relationships, and practices that keep me here. For the personal story, what helps, and crisis resources, see [my mental health page](/mental-health).
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### Lived Experience
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- [**Sarah Knows First**](/essays/2026-03-06-sarah_knows_first) — Before a manic episode fully arrives, Sarah sees it before I do. On the structural limits of self-knowledge and the kind of love that has skin in the game.
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- [**What Schizoaffective Disorder Actually Feels Like**](/essays/2025-09-04-what_schizoaffective_disorder_actually_feels_like) — Precise phenomenological description of a mind where reality-testing operates differently.
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- [**Delusions and Schizoaffective Disorder**](/essays/2025-09-17-delusions-and-schizoaffective-disorder) — Watching angels descend, believing English is the ancient language of gods. How the brain constructs alternate realities with their own internal logic.
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- [**The Textured Mind**](/essays/2025-09-16-the-textured-mind-when-consciousness-speaks-without-words) — Non-verbal consciousness that operates in textures, shapes, and archetypal presences. Not pathology — a different mode of knowing.
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- [**MentalHealthError: An Exception Occurred**](/essays/2016-01-mentalhealtherror_an_exception_occurred) — When psychosis met programming metaphors.
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- [**MentalHealthError: Three Years Later**](/essays/2019-01-mentalhealtherror_three_years_later) — The follow-up.
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- [**On Mania**](/essays/2024-01-on-mania) — What mania actually is, from inside.
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- [**Mental Health Isn't What You Think It Is**](/essays/2025-09-01-mental_health_isnt_what_you_think_it_is) — Not lifestyle optimization. Complex systems management under uncertainty.
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- [**Open Source Gave Me Everything Until I Had Nothing Left to Give**](/essays/2026-03-18-open_source_gave_me_everything_until_i_had_nothing_left_to_give) — Confusing a psychiatric emergency with a spiritual awakening. The honest reckoning.
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- [**The Gift of Disordered Perception**](/essays/2025-09-01-the_gift_of_disordered_perception) — Different doesn't mean broken. It means different optimization for different problems.
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- [**When the Simulation Speaks Back**](/essays/2025-09-13-when-the-simulation-speaks-back) — Using AI during a schizoaffective episode.
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### Designing for Mental Health
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- [**Designing for the Worst Day**](/essays/2026-03-18-designing_for_the_worst_day) — What human-centered design means when the human is in crisis.
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- [**The Interface Is the Subconscious**](/essays/2026-03-20-the_interface_is_the_subconscious) — Why careless interface design is a clinical risk for vulnerable minds. The canary in the coal mine.
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- [**Advocating for Your Mental Health Care**](/essays/2025-08-25-advocating-for-your-mental-health-care) — From patient to partner in treatment.
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- [**The Coworking Space Saved My Life**](/essays/2026-03-06-the_coworking_space_saved_my_life) — Third spaces and the conditions that create serendipitous support.
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### AI as Support
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- [**Using AI for Reality Checking**](/essays/2025-08-25-using-ai-for-reality-checking-with-schizoaffective-disorder) — AI as cognitive support while maintaining human agency.
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- [**Obsidian Vaults & Claude Code**](/essays/2026-03-06-obsidian_vaults_and_claude_code) — Documentation as survival infrastructure for a mind that can't always trust its own memory.
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- [**Idea Amplification and Writing with AI**](/essays/2025-09-05-idea_amplification_and_writing_with_ai) — Cognitive scaffolding when executive function is compromised.
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- [**Building Rapport with Your AI**](/essays/2025-08-26-building_rapport_with_your_ai) — Non-judgmental space as practice ground for authentic self-expression.
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- [**The Great Unmasking**](/essays/2025-08-30-the-great-unmasking-when-ai-shows-us-who-we-really-are) — Why AI interactions allow authenticity that human social dynamics prevent.
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- [**PyTheory: Breaking Through Five Years of Creative Block with AI**](/essays/2026-03-22-pytheory_breaking_through_five_years_of_creative_block_with_ai) — AI as thinking partner that breaks through creative paralysis caused by decision overload.
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### The Dark Side: Systematic Exploitation
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- [**The Algorithmic Mental Health Crisis**](/essays/2025-08-26-algorithmic_mental_health_crisis) — Anxiety, depression, and attention fragmentation by design.
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- [**The Prophet's Frequency**](/essays/2025-09-08-the_prophets_frequency_on_reading_divine_static) — When AI amplifies psychotic patterns instead of grounding them.
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- [**The Meditation Trap**](/essays/2025-09-08-the_meditation_trap_when_mindfulness_makes_things_worse) — When mindfulness destabilizes rather than supports.
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- [**The Inclusion Illusion**](/essays/2025-08-26-the_inclusion_illusion) — Tech's systematic betrayal of neurodiversity.
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- [**The Cost of Transparency**](/essays/2025-08-27-the_cost_of_transparency) — The price of authentic existence in systems that punish vulnerability.
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- [**When Values Eat Their Young**](/essays/2025-08-25-when-values-eat-their-young) — Communities that claim to support the vulnerable while excluding them.
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I write about this because silence is complicity with the stigma. Every time someone builds a system without considering what it does to a mind in crisis, they're making a choice — usually without realizing it. I'd rather be uncomfortably honest about how consciousness can break than let that keep happening quietly.
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### Related Themes
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- [Psychology & Consciousness](/themes/psychology-and-consciousness) — The deeper architecture of mind.
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- [Algorithmic Critique](/themes/algorithmic-critique) — The systematic mechanisms of exploitation.
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- [For Humans Philosophy](/themes/for-humans-philosophy) — Design that serves rather than exploits.
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- [Pattern Recognition & Manipulation](/themes/pattern-recognition-and-manipulation) — Recognizing exploitation patterns.
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