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Due to the fact that people classified as "normal" rarely get a glimpse into the everyday lives of a person who suffers from schizophrenia, even just a simulator of "hearing voices" disrupts the natural flow of a person's everyday routine. The thing that really intrigued me about THIS particular experiment (not anyone else's experiment) was the frustration displayed by Anderson Cooper when asked to do what some term as "simple tasks" during this "Exercise in Empathy". At one point, he quit while trying to make a paper boat due to lack of concentration. If he had been a child in school, he would have been laughed at and felt humiliated. The second point, for me, was when he was walking down the street and asked for a newspaper. At that point in the video, I found myself getting confused with the narrative because I couldn't hear it over the voices. I had become hyperfocused on the simulated voices in his head in just a little over 3 minutes. Although he completed the task, it was difficult for him not to respond to the voices he was hearing. In our society, if he had been some arbitrary person on the street trying to tell the voices to shut up or responding to the voices, he would be getting stares as people made wide breadth around him with some people probably muttering "crazy" under their breath. I felt a sense of sadness at the end of the video when Anderson Cooper mentions how he could not wait to take those headphones off (no doubt so he could get back to feeling normal again), but all I could think about were the true sufferers of schizophrenia who have no real means of escape.

I have seen situations were I see a psychiatrist ask a person if they hear voices and they don't elaborate for that person as to what hearing voices actually means, specifically when its a younger person and the family is pushing because they are desperate for answers and when that person ends up saying yes because they are being led to believe that their own internal chatter is actually psychosis, believe it or not that will get a person labeled and big pharma earning a new costumer, new SSI claims, new stigmas, etc=more government dependent people..because someone told them they were less than perfect and because they are labeled and the big bad ass mental health doctor said so than they give up, it's almost like they are expected to. ..that is why advocacy is important so people are able to teach what these disorders actually are and why having one doesn't mean you have to give up on your goals and desires to be successful in life. The fact is that it's not about the disorder, it's not about the label, it's about your coping skills, support system, self care and self awareness. We all have some shit going down inside...some of us know how to hide it, other's embrace it. Talking about it normalize it and makes some feel better because they can come out of that darkness and breathe for once. *just an observation.