Before you go all nuclear on me saying ‘how dare you make fun of people with psychiatric disorders!’, check my two previous posts about my rules for finding the humor in mental illness: rules for finding the humour in mental illness and 13 One-Liners About Being Crazy. Mean-spiritedness, degradation are NOT my M.O.s
The two most important tenets in my rulebook:
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- If you don’t have mental illness, it ain’t your rodeo to ride in. I live with multiple mental health issues. It’s up to me if I want to joke about them or not. If you have mental illness, you have the same choice.
- I don’t make fun of people with mental illness. Yes, I may make fun of myself, but mostly I discover the humor in the situations I find myself in because I have mental illness.
Why bother finding the comedy in pain? The overarching reason: for me, it is healing. I hope you have some giggles as you read these and as you giggle I hope you heal (just a smidgen).
Ok here goes. Warning: some corny, really corny jokes ahead.
- Mental illness runs in my family. Which is sort of weird, because my parents weren’t very athletic.
- I’ve never had paranoid delusions. Somebody told me I did, but I know they’re lying.
- I’m lucky, I have very little side effects from my medications. They can fit right into my pocket.
- In the beginning my eating disorder meant I had dessert before my entrée. But then it got serious and developed into compulsive overeating – as opposed to apathetic overeating.
- Hallucinations are when people see things that aren’t there. I totally understand that. An ex-psychiatrist of mine had them. I know for a fact, she never saw me. I don’t know what she was seeing, but she definitely didn’t see me!
- I’m on Zoloft and Epival and many other planets.
- I have psychotic breaks – my car stops at all delusions.
- I have an anxiety disorder…which means my anxiety orders dis and dat.
- I’ve faced mental illness. Stuck my tongue out at it, shook my fist at it and finally gave it the finger.
- What does it mean when people say “I don’t believe in drugs for mental illness”? ‘Cause they seem pretty real to me. I think those people might have a delusional disorder.
- It makes perfect sense mental illness runs in my family. I’d run too if I had a family like mine.
- Where do they get these names for psychiatric drugs? No wonder we don’t like taking them. They sound like a bad storyline from a Star Trek sequel. You know: Captain Zoloft and his commander in chief Colonel Paxil are involved in negotiations with the Prozac Nation and the Lithium Liberation Army.
- I still have psychotic breaks from time to time – which are very different than coffee breaks. You don’t get paid for psychotic breaks.
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© Victoria Maxwell
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