"Schizophrenia feels like there's always a ghost around you."
Schizophrenia is one of the most stigmatized mental illnesses. Here's how artist and animator @xoradmagical is helping people understand the disorder ...
Schizophrenia is one of the most stigmatized mental illnesses. Here's how artist and animator @xoradmagical is helping people understand the disorder ...
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Look out the window, it's me!
00:02I'm trying to show people the experience of schizophrenia with a lot of people
00:07is that everything is alive and you can't choose that perception.
00:17It's an artistic depiction of how it feels both emotionally and kind of overwhelmingly.
00:30I was in my second year of university and I remember I'd be in class and I was doing
00:44like art school and I would have to leave the class and I didn't know why but I just
00:51started going underneath like the staircases at the end of the building and just hiding
00:55and I remember in those moments it wasn't voices yet but it was intrusive
01:00like if intrusive thoughts had life to them I started hearing just little like laughter
01:06here and there like little shrieks and little things and I just kind of thought to myself
01:12okay well like this is weird I feel like I'm like is this tripping am I tripping
01:17and I got really confused I dropped out of university because I couldn't deal with it
01:36anymore I remember it ended up in me being homeless and traveling around my province
01:42in Canada it's New Brunswick my art with hallucinations started when I was homeless
01:55because I used to graffiti and I used to kind of like have permanent markers with me everywhere
02:01schizophrenia feels like there's always a ghost around you you always feel like there's something
02:06like haunting you or around you and you see things and it's it's such a weird experience
02:12that the only way I could express myself was by starting to draw the faces sometimes when I'm not
02:19hallucinating I'll draw them more neatly but right now I'm hallucinating so I would love for you guys
02:24to see the spirits coming out of my hand it got to a point where I was drawing the faces and I'd
02:28look at them on the wall the drawing that I did and I'd start talking to it and so I started
02:34building a relationship with this thing I started to draw them more and more when I was getting out
02:41of the psych unit for the first time I was hospitalized because there was something about
02:45it that was so comforting and I felt like I wasn't as alone as I used to feel when I'm making an art
02:52piece I feel like kind of ethereal like I'm making it and I feel like I'm doing something for myself
03:00for other people and it feels like a service
03:13do you see them like as people or are they stylized or are they
03:17you have to understand that schizophrenia is so much more complicated and multi-dimensional in
03:22how it works hurt everyone you love hurt them hurt them
03:30we all have intrusive thoughts okay but just because I'm schizophrenic it doesn't mean that
03:36I automatically have voices that are like kill kill kill it doesn't work like that
03:42there's so many people that I met especially through tiktok who have schizophrenia who are
03:48practicing lawyers who are doctors who are nurses it's a spectrum and there's such a thing as high
03:55functioning schizophrenia if you can watch my experiences and understand that you know all
04:02these things that people think about schizophrenia and how it affects them and how it affects you
04:07and understand that you know all these things that people think about schizophrenia are mostly
04:13wrong then you start to learn something new and then it makes the world a better
04:17place because people are connecting again