The Power of Story: Who Holds the Pen That Writes Our Reality?

Stories shape the world we live in. They whisper in our ears, build the walls around us, and determine who holds power. Some stories nourish us, help us grow, allow us to find ourselves in their pages. Others are written for us—imposed, rigid, inescapable. They become our cages.

I have lived in a story not of my own making. A story written in forms and affidavits, in legal jargon and clinical terms that never asked for my truth. It was a story that redefined me, reshaped me into something small, something controlled, something no longer my own.

Psychiatry and the law do not need truth to hold power. They only need a story.

When a Diagnosis Becomes a Sentence

There is something chilling about watching yourself disappear inside a report. Words on a page replace your voice. A diagnosis becomes your new name, and once it is written, it cannot be unwritten.

I remember the moment I realized my own words no longer mattered. They called it an “evaluation,” but there was no space for my story. Instead, I watched as someone else pieced together my reality—an assemblage of checkboxes and pre-filled statements, a manufactured script designed to justify what came next. My name was there, but the person described was a stranger.

Psychiatry does not need proof. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the so-called “Bible of Psychiatry,” does not diagnose through tests, scans, or biological markers. There is no scientific certainty, no objective truth. Instead, it is a book of agreed-upon conditions, voted into existence by committees. One year, something is not an illness. The next, a vote is taken, and suddenly it is.

And yet, these words—these invented disorders—carry the weight of scientific fact.

For over 40 years, the belief in a "biochemical disorder of the brain" has been ingrained in the fabric of society reinforced by direct-to-consumer-advertising (DTCA). This notion—that mental health conditions are caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain—has been widely accepted, but it is not borne out by science. Decades of research have failed to produce concrete evidence supporting this theory, yet it persists, deeply embedded in medical practice, policy, and public perception.

It is all a story. And stories, when repeated enough, become reality.

The Courtroom as a Stage, the Psychiatrist as the Narrator

A civil commitment hearing is not a trial in the way we are taught to believe. There is no presumption of innocence, no burden of proof in the way the legal system demands for crimes. And yet, to be committed is to be stripped of one’s freedom in a way that, in many ways, carries more weight than a criminal conviction.

The psychiatrist takes the stand as the expert, the storyteller. Their report is treated as truth, their words unquestioned. The person they speak about—the person whose life hangs in the balance—is rendered silent. If they argue, it is called “lack of insight.” If they protest, it is seen as evidence of their illness.

The forms are pre-written. The affidavit barely changes from case to case. The judge, the attorneys, the doctors—each playing their part in a performance that has been rehearsed thousands of times before. I sat in that courtroom and realized the ending was already written.

There was no room for my truth. Only theirs.

Reality as a Construct, Madness as a Narrative

In Separation from the Real: The Power of Story at the Heart of the Civil Commitment Process, I wrote about the way truth is manufactured within psychiatric and legal systems. How an individual’s personal experience is erased, overwritten by an official narrative that carries the weight of authority. How once labeled, the label becomes inescapable.

Psychiatry does not just control bodies—it controls reality itself. Foucault once wrote that madness is not an objective condition, but a construct created by those in power. I have lived this truth. I have watched as reality was rewritten around me, as my own words lost meaning.

Because in this system, resistance is not allowed. To fight against the label is to prove it further. To question the diagnosis is to be deemed delusional. To demand freedom is to be seen as dangerous.

I was told this was for my own good. That this was care.

I know now that care should not feel like captivity.

Reclaiming the Power of Our Own Stories

So I write.

I write because words have power. Because when we lose the ability to tell our own story, we lose ourselves.

I write because the DSM does not define me. Because the legal system does not get the final say on my truth.

I write because, for too long, the pen has been in the hands of those who benefit from my silence.

And I am silent no more.