You Believe, Then You Perceive.

April 18, 2016Leave a comment

I think a key difference between the healthy mind and the obsessive compulsive mind is that the obsessive compulsive mind is programmed to work from the inside-out, rather than the outside-in. You firmly believe from a place within your mind that the world is scary, so you perceive the world as scary. You don’t fear touching a doorknob because you have superhuman vision that allows you to see every microscopic germ on the metal knob. You fear touching a doorknob because there is an inner conviction telling you the doorknob is irrevocably contaminated with germs.

The OCD masters this process where your skewed beliefs from your distorted mind spill out into the real world, subsequently skewing your sense of perception. And you don’t recognize that you are seeing the world at a warped angle because, to you, the outside is in perfect alignment with the inside.

You believe, then you perceive.

-Valerie Parente (4-18-16)

Grandiosity of the Sick

April 13, 2016June 14, 2016Leave a comment

Grandiosity of the Sick by Valerie Parente

When retention of information is censored through sanity
then attention from the psychologically challenged must rely on vanity.
It is a self-centered way to overcompensate
for what we lack in our mental state.
I call it Grandiosity of the Sick.
The glorified martyr heuristic.
Where those of us who struggle hone our inner pain
through an art quite prone to become vain.
Thinking the anguish we feel is profound.
As if to be miserable puts us on higher ground.
Saying those who reject our thought process
don’t understand because we’re too complex.
Creating beauty from our moping
is a dangerous form of coping.
Because perceiving mental malfunctioning as our best,
can lead to believing we’re only useful in our distress.
But to call this warped mindset a stigma is not entirely fair,
because what could be more admirable than finding comfort in how we’re impaired?

– Valerie Parente (4-13-16)

Validation

April 8, 2016May 11, 2016Leave a comment

Valerie Parente (handwritten)

I think, from a psychoanalytical standpoint, one of the key reasons I write down my thoughts and daydreams is to validate my own stream of consciousness, as if ink on paper could assert the existence of my mind in this overwhelming universe.

– Valerie Parente (4-8-16)

Being the Judge

April 2, 2016April 18, 2016Leave a comment

To be able to healthily manage obsessive compulsive disorder is to be a constant judge. To incorrectly differentiate which thoughts are skewed projections of anxiety and which are valid fears is to do myself an injustice. And, contrary to common assumption, this job requires an emotionally impartial scrutiny of mental territory that goes beyond fear-based thoughts. Almost every rational thought has an irrational OCD counterpart ready to creep in and mimic sensibility.
Is this paranormal knowledge of “what feels right” the art of sharp intuition, or the convincing trickery of delusion?
Is this opposition a factor of my inborn personality or nurtured disgust?
Is this repetitious daydream an inspired fantasy, or just intrusive imagery?
Is this throbbing adoration love at its truest, or obsession at its sickest?
At the end of each trial, whether the verdict places cognitive guilt on obsessive compulsive disorder or not, this disorder still and always manages to uproot a deep-seeded philosophical conflict within me. If a foreign entity is responsible, even if only occasionally, for my brain’s generated thoughts, then who do I call Valerie? Can the “self” really exist in a mentally ill brain?

– Valerie Parente (4-2-16)

My Blog, My Platform

March 31, 2016August 18, 2018Leave a comment

My name is Valerie Parente, and as a writer and an artist I have decided to create a blog composed of prose pieces (both personality-based and intellectually-based) in the hope to upgrade my status from aspiring author to publicly recognized author.
My childhood was that of a girl with a knack for writing accompanied by an overly imaginative mind; constantly indulging in the thrill of fabricating daydreams and mental screenplays. My adolescence was that of a head-in-the-clouds teenager struggling with a life altering diagnosis of anorexia and severe obsessive compulsive disorder; trying to this day to identify her authentic voice through a synthetic storm of anxiety-charged OCD thoughts.
As a young woman with a very idiosyncratic mental condition and what I like to call a predominantly active “write-brain” hemisphere, I am constantly on an exciting journey of rediscovering my voice through the art of written word. While I manipulate fantasies into meaningful internal dialogues and find a silver-lining of revelations in my mental ailments I am proud to say that I believe my voice, as Valerie Parente, is a strong voice ready to be heard.
This blog will serve as the platform to my destined writing career.