The complete lack of self-awareness
The single most shocking thing a journalist bore witness to while embedded and reporting from the CHAZ in Seattle, June 2020.
Extracted from a Twitter thread. Insight from psychiatrist Michael Mantz, MD responding to the observation by a journalist that “the complete lack of self-awareness” was the single most shocking thing he bore witness to while embedded and reporting from the CHAZ in Seattle.
That's the whole point. I have worked with many intense woke patients for over 4 years now.
Generalization: Most have high amounts of shame, often seeing their Self as disgusting, terrible and unworthy. They are generally socially awkward and a suffer from intense loneliness & insecurity.
They hear about a doctrine based on socialist collective values that denies the values of the individual and allows their attention to rigidly attach to a philosophy that allows them to avoid taking personal responsibility since the individual = capitalism = bad AND collectivism = socialism/communism = good.
This represses their sense of individual sense of self and its SHAME & LONELINESS and they IDENTIFY with the collective which gives them a feeling of CONNECTION and PURPOSE.
This purpose acts like a guide to drive their attention to try to fix the world. This provides a higher degree of cognitive coherence in their once chaotic & insecure mind.
These huge psychological pseudo-benefits temporarily frees them away from their SHAME, LONELINESS, SELF-HATE & DIGUST, and INSECURITY. Giving them great relief. The beliefs act like drugs that take away their pain & gives them a sense of purpose and meaning.
Watch when one of their beliefs is directly challenged & see the correspondence to the behavior you would see when trying to confront a drug addict. DENIAL & RAGE.
These drug-like beliefs become their identity over time a process called IDENTIFICATION. Fusion of the sense of self with the beliefs. Thus THESE WOKE BELIEFS with a total focus of systemic this & that and COLLECTIVISM to almost complete DENIAL of the INDIVIDUALISM.
Also means....drumroll.... No (or very little) individual self-awareness!
To HAVE SELF-AWARENESS they would have to look back into their psychological mirror and LOOK at their DISGUSTING, LONELY, INSECURE, PAINFUL, sense of SELF that was conditioned into their minds during key developmental stages.
That takes a person highly-skilled in psychotherapeutics. It can be done, but it is tricky & takes time.
I have come out as a psychiatrist without anonymity, which may damage my practice, because I am deeply concerned about this. I have worked with this deeply & we need more mind experts out in these public forums helping to give guidance on public policies.
If not we may be in for one hell of a bumpy ride that may not end so well. It's not hopeless, we just need more intelligent leadership & bringing the focus on the human mind itself & how to heal it.
Michael Mantz, MD
Integrative Psychiatry
@michaelmantzmd
https://drmantz.com