Hypermoral, hyper-religious

One of my mental illness symptoms is hyper-religiosity, which I have truly managed as well as I could, no matter how much people might still point out that I am annoying and uptight sometimes.  I know I am, and I know that my scrupulosity is a fault as much as it is a burden and source of pain. But I was thinking today that some of my excessive moralizing might have served a practical purpose, and as much as I have had to fight it, I have also had to use it.  I have a theory that it isn't just part of my brain on overdrive, but it might be something I have had to do to try to counteract other weaknesses that seem like character issues.   Both my mental illness and the medicine I take cause lethargy and reduced motivation and alertness, so I really have to convince myself that chores are important in order to exert any energy whatsoever.  I mean I practically have to view everything as some integral part of the whole world's salvation or at least my own survival and behavior record to even get up from a chair and fix some cereal.  And I am actually wondering if this might be a theory about schizophrenia, which sometimes includes extreme negative symptoms of apathy and inertia, as well as grandiose delusions for some people.  I mean maybe the herculean effort that it takes to get out of bed does make people think they must be some kind of important hero.  I do not know if that is how the delusions form, but I just today started wondering if some of my hyper moralism and excessive religious thought is from building too much strength as I have had to continually tap into my moral reasoning and religious faith in order to do any basic chore at work or at home. The fact is that there might be a reason why people like me imagine ourselves getting a reward on Judgement Day for merely considering doing a load of laundry, or find ourselves quoting the band of brothers speech on the way to the coffee shop.

Advice: People who don't live in glass houses should throw stones.

   I am currently finishing compiling a book and want to be done but have one more blog post to add to my mental health blog. I just want to say something that I recently figured out, which is different than some of my thinking was for a while.  What I am talking about is self-improvement advice that is designed for people with healthy minds.  There are a lot of sayings about how everything comes down to having a good attitude, and there is writing that praises cheerfulness, and advice about efficiency and not wasting time and all kinds of suggestions for people to be successful literally in every moment of their days.  And over the years, I have read some of these books, and some of these facebook posts, and heard some of these sermon references and thought, okay, that is great, but they clearly just don't understand.  They just don't understand what it is like to truly be human which I define as crawling into a corner crying every day.
    But I recently grew a little bit in my thinking, and realized that it is a little bit self-absorbed of me to think that everyone else who is striving to have a meaningful life and do good or even great things needs to tailor every message to those of us who have debilitating mental illness.
    The fact is that people who have strong minds should also play to their strengths, which literally could be everything they do, and they should be free and inspired to achieve all they can and boldly fling any perpetual good attitude in this oppressive world's face.  All of us are dependent on those superstars, and why should they wallow in the self-pity of others.  It is absurd, and when I read the encouraging advice that is for them and even might seem insensitive to my own ongoing loss that comes with depression and okay, psychosis, then I will be happy for them and be thankful that they are giving their all.  It is not fair for me to think less of people who waste their sanity and then also look down on people who have the luxury not having to waste anything.  So when people say on facebook that attitude is everything, or that making their bed is the key to a successful life, I am going to be thankful that I live in the same world with those people, and that they have included me to the extent that I can overhear any of their conversations about their clean and good habits that allow them to accomplish the most extreme human achievements, like writing thank you notes, having friends ride in their cars, and having clean dishes to eat off of.  That sounded sarcastic, but it isn't sarcastic, which probably matches some great advice out there that I don't know about because it wasn't posted on a Starbucks cup or Coke can.