11-18-2025, 10:28 PM
This is a common misconception among those who talk about schizo spectrum symptoms. When your body enters a state a catatonia, you are fully capable of moving in anyway that you otherwise would. You can still feel every part of your body. So, why then, aren't catatonic patients moving?
To use a gross oversimplification, they just don't feel like it. This is not to say they are being lazy. It is to say that they have been bombarded with so much, often bothersome, stimuli that they simply choose not to acknowledge shared reality any longer.
Is food ready? Bathroom time? Is potential danger approaching them? One could fill a page with reasons why a catatonic patient really should move. It doesn't matter. Reality has done a number on them the likes of which a normal person couldn't fathom. They are not acknowledging an existence outside of their mind. Taken to an extreme, a catatonic patient will mess themselves rather than acknowledge the shared reality that is the restroom.
It's not paralysis. It's not laziness. It's the decision to not acknowledge a reality that does nothing but dish out torment whenever outward interaction is attempted. It's understandable in a sense. If every attempt to engage in shared reality resulted in torment, you'd stop attempting as well.
To use a gross oversimplification, they just don't feel like it. This is not to say they are being lazy. It is to say that they have been bombarded with so much, often bothersome, stimuli that they simply choose not to acknowledge shared reality any longer.
Is food ready? Bathroom time? Is potential danger approaching them? One could fill a page with reasons why a catatonic patient really should move. It doesn't matter. Reality has done a number on them the likes of which a normal person couldn't fathom. They are not acknowledging an existence outside of their mind. Taken to an extreme, a catatonic patient will mess themselves rather than acknowledge the shared reality that is the restroom.
It's not paralysis. It's not laziness. It's the decision to not acknowledge a reality that does nothing but dish out torment whenever outward interaction is attempted. It's understandable in a sense. If every attempt to engage in shared reality resulted in torment, you'd stop attempting as well.