Over the years, many different English words have been used as translations. Yōkai can be translated as monster, demon, spirit, or goblin, but it encompasses all of that and more. The world of yōkai also includes ghosts, gods, transformed humans and animals, spirit possession, urban legends, and other strange phenomena. It is a broad and vague term, and nothing exists in the English language that quite describes it. Yōkai is one of those words–like samurai, geisha, ninja, and sushi–that is best left in its native tongue.
One of the most difficult things to define are the boundaries of what constitutes a yōkai, and what isn’t a yōkai. Even in Japanese, the term is difficult to pin down. Over the many eras of Japan’s history, different words have been used as catch-all terms for the supernatural forces of this world; bakemono, obake, mononoke, kaii, oni. Depending on who you’re talking to, specific creatures may or may not be classified as yokai. Are ghosts yōkai? Are oni yōkai? Can good spirits be yōkai or are they only evil spirits? Are kami yōkai? Does yōkai only apply to Japan, or does it apply to all countries? Every rule has an exception, and every answer has a contradiction.
I chose my screen name many years ago, when I wanted to post on a Doom forum and my main criterion was not having a gendered name. I had in mind creatures like Ents and Dryads, not anything specifically evil.
There’s kind of a movement in modern times to depict traditionally evil creatures like vampires and werewolves as good or sympathetic rather than straightforwardly evil, which also applies to demons.
However, I agree that if someone is complaining of seeing demons, it’s highly unlikely they view them as good or neutral.
Sounds like ‘supernatural creature’ would be the most accurate translation, but that isn’t exactly snappy.
These two bits together get me thinking.
A fair number of us have parented little kids, and many of them have gone through periods of fear regarding monsters coming in their rooms at night, or such.
In general telling the kid “no need to be scared, it is just your imagination” typically is not very helpful. Even when they are able to rationally accept it is their imagination. They *know that. *The experience is still very real and very scary. Even knowing it isn’t real doesn’t change that.
Some us have ended up on some version of empowering them with imaginary weapons and defenses to use against their imaginary monsters. Most famous in my neck of the woods is the monster repellent spray, heavily decorated and with a drop or two of lavender oil so they can smell it working: “one spritz is very potent against imaginary monsters and keeps them away all night.” And while reason fails it does work.
So whether or not @kanicbird ever accepted that their experience was not “real” in the sense of a shared objective reality, they created a tool for themself that worked. And they are happy with the result.
Maybe a potion would work? Yes you and I might call the potion by its name as sold for treating psychosis, but hey, how these meds work seems like magic to me.
Generally as I understand it, one wants to apply authority over them, or in some cases break, or have them break, their authority over you. The application of said strategies however are not often so straight forward. In the case of monster spray, that would seem to be a temporary fix, but IDK I never used that.
Well the problem is temporary; giving the child a means to resolve it in the terms of their world of imaginary monsters being real to them just speeds it up. Usually.
It may be that on occasion an adult whose experienced reality includes demons can create a tool that will resolve the suffering without challenging the reality of the experience. Maybe psychiatric treatment will be more acceptable if it is framed in a way that does not require rejection of their experience of reality?
It sounds to me like you may have been suffering from sleep paralysis, @kanicbird.
Take a look at these experiences:
Beliefs and worries from when you’re awake influence what you see during the episodes. There’s no specific treatment, but it says better sleep hygiene, and dealing with mental health issues like anxiety and depression can help.
Well the sexual parts do have similarity , however looking at the definition of SP, I see this:
Sleep paralysis is a temporary inability to move or speak while falling asleep or waking up. It’s a state where you’re aware of your surroundings but cannot control your body, and it can be accompanied by frightening hallucinations.
Which has not been my experience of that, unless that is the part of the the frightening hallucination that you are not experiencing the rest of SP.
I have not had issue with movement or speech while falling asleep nor when awakening. Actually one of my tactics I would use to end a night terror was to wake myself from the dream - and I would be awake, aware and sometimes making a recording of my experiences , however that ability I lost and I was unable to awaken myself from within the dream closer to the final last dream of that type.
I also was aware of my dream surroundings when dreaming, not my physical surroundings. That exception again was when I lost the ability to awaken myself from within the night terror, and sometimes I would think I would awake successfully in my bed, everything seems normal and I would get up and go into the living room, which was not normal and I realized I was still dreaming and had not woke up.
That last part may be SP, but if so that developed later. In that maybe I did awake, unable to move may been hallucinating that I was and re-entered a dream like state IDK. Though I did not feel like I could not move.
One of my friends who is a CSW has commented multiple times that methods I do in faith have parallels to what she does and learned with her social work and she was often surprised with my insight into such issues she has shared, and I have been thanked multiple times by some others in that as well.
Sometimes a problem which is hard to solve from one perspective becomes easier to solve in another. It may be that the use of demons may be easier than other more medically acceptable methods of diagnosis and treatment. As demons have known patterns, behaviors and traits and will sometime tell you who they are and fit into categories.
Guess that’s not it, then. Even regular dreams/nightmares are affected by what we believe, though. As well as stress, trauma etc. There’s an awful lot we don’t understand about sleep and the brain.
For the record, what Swift said was : “Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.”
The saying “Men are not to be reasoned out of an opinion that they have not reasoned themselves into” was written by Fisher Ames.
And for the record I think it is perfectly obvious that it was a personal insult.
There is a pretty big difference between saying about someone, “he has a broken leg”, and saying “he is mentally ill”. The first is not a personal insult. The second is.
Yes, because questioning the sanity of someone that claims they have a demon fuck buddy can only be an insult.
While there is an ATMB discussion here, there’s also an awful lot of stuff that really doesn’t belong in ATMB. I’m temporarily closing the thread until an ATMB mod can review it.
Moderating
I am going to re-open this, but as @puzzlegal said, there’s an awful lot of stuff here that doesn’t really belong in ATMB.
Please keep the comments relevant to ATMB.
For example, these are relevant:
How moderators should handle these types of things.
How posters should respond to these types of things.
What should and shouldn’t be within the rules and moderation of the SDMB.
Questioning someone’s sanity is always going to have the potential to be an insult, and has to be handled carefully. “It’s true” has never been a defence for making personal attacks outside the Pit, and in this as in most cases, you don’t actually know whether it’s true. You’re not a doctor, you’re certainly not this person’s doctor, and you cannot diagnose any illness from a message board post. The most you can do is say that their symptoms sound concerning, and advise them to see a mental health professional.
As for believing in demons, there’s a large cultural component to beliefs; what is considered sane and normal depends on the people around you. If you are part of a religious group that believes in the literal existence of angels, demons etc, then believing you have interacted with such beings can be perfectly normal. Common (or uncommon) experiences are interpreted differently depending on such beliefs, rather than them necessarily being hallucinations.
It would be nice if we could get some feedback from the relevant mods (IMHO in this case) in threads like these. What was their original reasoning for moderating/not moderating, have the arguments changed their view at all, and if not, where do they see the line being? That would be useful for both the OP and other posters.
1: We really don’t do lines, that has been said very often.
2: Kanicbird had my answer. That should have been enough, the arguments in this thread seem spurious at best.
Too much time devoted to a very minor thing is my main opinion, I have not been following this thread very much, especially with the right turn it took.
Including having long term sexual relationships with them?
I am not at all clear whether a) you don’t think saying another poster has a mental illness and there is therefore no point trying to reason with them is an insult, or b) you don’t think the comment was clearly aimed at kanicbird, or something else.