Are you suffering from normality? Read about the Ten Warning Signs of “Normality” by Janet Foner, MindFreedom Board Member and psychiatric survivor activist.
Mad scientists are working around the clock to discover the cure for “normality,” a serious and persistent “chronic mental illness” afflicting much of the general population.
MindFreedom International, an alliance led by psychiatric survivors and open to the public, has become very concerned recently as a “norm-demic” has hit the streets, forcing many people formerly safe from this affliction to recognize that they, too, have caught the dreaded disease.
Fortunately, our mad scientists have been able to uncover the ten warning signs of “normality.”
Take this free self-test:
- COOL: You’re cool, you hold everything in and always put “a good face on it” – you never cry or laugh much, or show emotion in any way, certainly not in public. Your psychiatric label is “Tearlessnicity.”
- SERIOUS: You always do the proper thing – never anything unusual, playful, spontaneous, “different,” wild, or creative, if you can help it. You believe playing and being silly are beneath your dignity and only for children. You have a psychiatric label of “Stiff Upper Lippity.”
- NICE: You always act nice even if you can’t stand the person to whom you’re talking. You never say what you’re really thinking. Your diagnosis: “Inappropriate Smiling.”
- RIGHT: You always do everything right – wear the “right clothes”, say the “right thing”, associate only with the “right people”- you know there is only one right way, and it’s your way. You are diagnosed as “Conformity Prone.”
- BORING: Your conversations, life and living space are dull and boring, and your lawn is always manicured no matter what. In the more advanced stages you have much inner “lifelessness” and “flat affect” – in other words, you are one of the “walking dead.” Your psychiatric label is “Hyper-Inactivity.”
- OBEDIENT: You always try not to offend anyone, especially those in authority – your security seems to depend on that. So therefore you are willing to put expediency ahead of principles. Your psychiatric label is “Adjustment Prone/Adjustment Reaction.”
- GULLIBLE: You believe that the doctor always knows best, that the media is telling the truth (major newspapers always print the facts, right?), and that the medical model of “mental illness” has been proven scientifically. Your diagnosis is “Normal Naiveté Disorder.”
- AVOID FEELINGS: You are out of touch with yourself, with the natural world, and with what is going on with other people. It has become too hard to face how others are being oppressed, so you choose a more comfortable path. TV starts to look very, very good. You are labeled with “Severe Blinder-itis.”
- DON’T TRUST YOURSELF: You learned in school that it’s important to always pay attention to those in charge and not to trust your own thinking. You learned to “play the game,” and you are still doing that. You believe your own lies. You have an advanced case of “schoolmania,” which, if not stopped in its early stages can lead to severe overwork and, in advanced stages, “Corporate Asskissingitis.”
- INDOORISM: You lost touch with wildness in nature, and within your own strong feelings. You do not rebel against ecological destruction. Label: “Tame.”
DON’T PANIC:
Normality can be healed!
If you have two or more of these signs, within any lunar cycle, it is not too late.
Join MindFreedom International, read the MindFreedom Journal, support one another, get out into nature, and especially take action to stop psychiatric oppression before serious persistent “normality” sets in!
For more info contact MindFreedom International at www.mindfreedom.org.