When Control Replaces Meaning
(Procedural Time and the Loss of Agency)
When an internal narrative collides with institutional reality, something has to give.
In Chapter Nine of Fought Disorder (“Landing Gear”), it isn’t meaning that disappears first.
It’s agency.
From Story to Schedule
In Act I, time was elastic.
Moments stretched or collapsed depending on significance.
Events arrived when they were needed.
In Act II, time changes character.
Now there are:
Rounds
Meal times
Medication windows
Observations
Paperwork
Time stops responding to meaning.
It becomes procedural.
A Short Passage (Structural Rather Than Quoted)
This chapter doesn’t hinge on a single line.
Its effect comes from repetition:
Being told to wait
Being told to sit
Being told what happens next
Being told nothing at all
Language no longer generates movement.
It halts it.
What’s Happening Linguistically
This chapter introduces a ninth shift:
Procedural dominance.
In ordinary life:
Procedures support agency
Schedules enable choice
Structure is background
Here:
Procedure overrides intention
Choice becomes irrelevant
Structure becomes foreground
Language no longer asks why.
It asks:
“Have you complied?”
Why This Feels Like Grounding — and Punishment
From the outside, procedure looks stabilising.
And in many ways, it is.
But from inside a psychotic narrative, procedure feels:
Arbitrary
Infantilising
Threatening
Because it doesn’t engage meaning.
It ignores it.
To a mind convinced that meaning is urgent, being told to wait is unbearable.
The Experience of “Landing Gear”
The chapter title is precise.
Landing gear doesn’t stop flight.
It makes impact survivable.
But the descent is rough.
This chapter captures the sensation of:
Coming down without choosing to
Losing altitude without understanding why
Touching ground without relief
The Reader’s Shift
By now, readers often feel something unexpected:
Not fear — but fatigue.
The narrative is no longer expansive.
It’s constrained.
That exhaustion mirrors the experience of institutional containment:
Less drama
More repetition
Fewer peaks
No release
This is realism, not anticlimax.
Why This Stage Matters
Recovery does not begin with insight.
It begins with interruption.
This chapter shows how interruption feels from the inside:
Not corrective
Not enlightening
Just stopping the momentum
Meaning doesn’t dissolve here.
It simply loses traction.
Language Begins to Thin
Notice what’s changing:
Fewer symbolic leaps
Less interpretive density
More literal exchanges
Language is being slowly flattened.
Not through argument —
through routine.
This is how psychosis starts to lose its grip.
Not dramatically.
Gradually.
Why the Book Holds You Here
Many narratives rush past this phase.
Fought Disorder does not.
Because this is where most people actually spend time:
Waiting
Being observed
Being managed
Being slowed down
It’s not inspiring.
It’s accurate.
