Q & A: How Believing You're Insane Affects Behavior

Q:Let's say my character really, really, really thinks he's insane. Would he be acting different, maybe becoming a little insane through the thought? You know, like someone calling themselves stupid so much that they finally become stupid? And...how drastically different would he be IF the answer to the first question is yes, he would act different. As drastic as someone going into shock after almost dying, or after experiencing the death of a relative or friend, or after a traumatic event?

A: What we believe affects how we act, and how we act affects how others react to us.  In other words, what we believe about ourselves can come true, a phenomenon called a self-fulfilling prophecy (sometimes also called the Pygmalion Effect, after the mythological sculptor who fell in love with one of his sculptures—the goddess Venus took pity on him and brought the sculpture to life so he could be with her).

In this situation, your character would probably start to act paranoid.  Clinically, paranoia is chronic suspicion and mistrust that something bad will happen or that others want to hurt or mistreat the person. Paranoia is usually a projection (attribution of one's own feelings to others) of one's fears about oneself onto others. That means that your character will believe others think whatever he is most afraid is true. The more afraid he is that he's losing his mind, the more convinced he'll be that others think he's crazy.

The more paranoid he gets, the more he’ll try to find meaning in other people’s glances, questions, and comments.  Do they know?  Are they talking about him?  Are they going to lock him up?  His overreactions will then make people think there really is something wrong with him, which he’ll pick up on, which will increase his paranoia, which will make him act weirder, which will make people treat him worse, and so on.

I sometimes have my students go out and act weird in public so they can understand what it's like to be treated differently when you have a mental illness you can't control. They do things like talk to themselves, stand backwards on elevators, or dress oddly. People laugh at them, go and get friends to see, talk about them right in front of them as if they can't hear, and even take pictures with their cell phones, laughing the whole time. It's enough to make the most non-paranoid person start to feel paranoid, so it's easy to see why people act more and more suspicious, resentful, and even aggressive when they're already paranoid.

But as long as the person isn't hurting himself or anyone else, or his hygiene is deteriorating so badly that it's clear he can't take care of himself, nobody can force him to go to the hospital. Unless he’s a minor—in which case his parents can make him go.

If you're feeling really brave, you might try it so you get a taste of what your character would feel. I tell my students there are four rules to this experiment: 1) You have to do it sober 2) You have to do it alone, rather than with a pack of friends 3) You have to do it in public, and 4) You can't do anything that will get you in trouble with the police! If you're going to do your experiment in a store, it's best to ask the store manager if it's all right--a few managers will say no, but some love helping out!
 
Your character would probably also try to get away from these other people he’s seeing.  Since they represent his fear that he's going insane, he'll be desperate to get rid of them. He might lock himself in his room or home with his blinds closed, hiding.  He might refuse to go to work or school if he’s seen them there.  He might try to hide behind a post or a wall while he’s in public if he notices one (which is of course going to make people stare). He might do other things that seem strange—wearing hats and hooded sweatshirts to try to “hide” from these people, or carrying weapons in case they try to hurt him (even if they’ve never done anything to suggest that).  The more out of control someone feels, the less safe he feels, and the more he’s going to do to try to feel safe and back in control.

If you were to experience this kind of things for a few months, it could change your brain chemistry and make you clinically depressed or anxious.  In a Western industrialized culture (think United States, Canada, Western Europe), you’re not likely to go into physical shock or be in danger of dying, but in some cultures that would be a possibility.

Culture-bound disorders are psychological problems that only show up in certain parts of the world.  In some cultures that believe in possession, spirits, and voodoo, trauma or stress can cause people to collapse and be unable to move (Falling Out, associated with African-American and Afro-Caribbean groups in the southeastern US, Miami in particular), to believe that they’ve been possessed (Zar, which shows up in Northern and Eastern Africa and the Middle East) or that their souls have been stolen (Susto, which shows up in Latino cultures in the US, Mexico, and Central and South America), which can make them extremely sick and, in some rare cases, die (as in Susto, Hmong Sudden Death Syndrome in Asian cultures, and Rootwork in cultures like Haiti that believe in voodoo)—an extreme version of a self-fulfilling prophecy.