delusional attachments & reality checking
as you can tell, this rentry is about delusional attachments + reality checking, however it's not going to be the common "reality checking is bad!!!! 😡" in fact, this rentry is in favour of it. now, before you get on my ass about it, i'll explain.
before i even start on my opinions on reality checking, i'll start off with the definitions of delusional attachments and reality checking.
delusional attachment - "A delusional attachment (DA) is a term that psychotics have coined as an alternative to the term 'Identity Delusion', in which someone believes that they are another 'being' than they actually are, whether that be a real person, a fictional character, a nonhuman creature, an object, etc." (taken from this carrd here.) however it's watered down to believing that they're just a fictional character from what i've seen.
reality checking - from what i've seen, reality checking is just denying that the said person with delusions are actually that fictional character or whatever.
now let's get onto the actual topic of this whole rentry.
it has come to my knowledge that delusional attachments are becoming a fairly popular thing among social medias such as tiktok, twitter and whatever, which is concerning in itself however i won't be discussing that today. what confused me the most was how a lot of the people who experience these delusional attachments are claiming how "reality checking" is extremely harmful and is said to "put people in a state of panic." or cause them to dissociate or whatever, and well... i would like to prove that wrong.
first, i'm going to start off with the effects people have been saying reality checking has on them. i'm going to be honest, if someone denies a person's primary delusion, which is a delusion which arises "out of the blue" with no morbid antecedents, it's a belief that is not triggered by any other ideas or events, and if you react like this, it clearly show how immersed you are with your delusion and how much you have lost contact with reality.
reality checking should in fact keep someone grounded, instead of spiralling like some people have said, and the reason for that is because it doesn't encourage those said delusions. i think a lot of people in the delusional attachment community have forgotten how harmful it is to actively encourage your delusions. feeding into these delusions isn't helping you at all, even if it's just some silly old d/a. it will have further negative impact later on in the line. these "d/as" are such dangerous and depersonalising delusions and it heavily messes up your perception of reality and it's just SAD to see how many people forget that. it's all "don't encourage people's delusions!!" until it comes to delusional attachments.
as for people saying reality checking is harmful, i can assure you that feeding into your own or someone else's delusions is far more harmful than it, in fact feeding into that delusion will have much more negative effects on the subject in the present and future (like i said earlier) than reality checking.
i also want to add on how people say they're delusional and then say they only experience irls. being psychotic is not just thinking you're a fictional character. it's genuinely life ruining and i hate seeing how people make it all fun and games.
is this me saying you should just reality check every irl you see? no. sadly, at the end of the day it's their decision in whether they want to indulge in their delusions or whatever. yes it's fucking weird if you ask me but yk, there's not a lot you can do about it. i mean sure i'll reality check someone if it looks like it's becoming super unhealthy but other than that? i don't bother. there's no point in it, but will i encourage those delusions? no. best choice is just to ignore it or don't interact with those who have d/as.
anyways..... that's the end really of this rentry, i just wanted to speak about my opinion really. i meant no harm making this rentry and if i did say something weird? contact me, my disc is vira#2100 if u need to.