Stephen Plustwik

Brief reflection on ‘having insight’, 2026-10-24.

I know full well that I am 'sick', have 'impairments', mental defect, a 'disability'; whatever you want to call it. I would like to enlighten you as to why I stick to the 'disordered symptoms', focusing on the ones which are visible to others (because these are the ones which can be recognised easily). I want to do that enlightening because you may have been wondering for some time: why do I think, say and do what I think, say and do; with full knowledge that it is 'wrong'? Just because I know what the right code of behaviour is, is not enough for me to snap into it. That is because it would only be pretending; it is actually foreign; and hard or impossible to maintain. Nor do I do these wrong things because it is 'comfortable' and I am lazy. In the end, these thoughts and behaviours are the only ones which I am able to access. I stop short of calling it 'my reality' or 'my truth' as I think that these terms are clichéd. The reason that I adhere to the 'strange' thoughts and behaviours is that I honestly feel that they have validity in and of themselves. My perfect Standard becomes God and his Approval of me; simply because 'no one else truly understands'. It is a contradiction, a paradox and a mystery: how there can be a widespread and well-known societal standard for thinking and acting, and some people like me who 'disagree'. It is not that I am trying to be alternative: only that I do not or cannot fathom that societal standard and therefore cannot access it. So, for instance, I have put up a lot of religious and moral material because I know or 'feel' that God loves this which I love, and that then becomes the reason for acting, because I do not know the corresponding 'sane' alternative.