The Collective Delusion

An essay on calling out the reality that everyone chooses to ignore. TW: psychosis and suicidal ideation

.The ironic thing about delusion is that you do not know you are in it - but what if I told you collective delusions exist, and you are already part of one? Before I go down that rabbit hole, I need to introduce the idea of a collective agreement. A collective agreement refers to a group of people following a shared standard, either explicitly or implicitly. Sometimes this is formal, such as the procedures agreed upon between a trade union and an employer.

An example of an implicit collective agreement can be seen in how we handle money. I once passed cash directly to my auntie, from hand to hand, in a room full of elders, without placing it in an envelope. I didn’t think twice about it at the time but the next day, I was told I shouldn’t have done that. How was I meant to know it was rude? Despite everyone’s obsession with money and the social rules that surround it, nobody wants to talk about it. I have always struggled with unwritten social norms and wanted to know why they exist. When I was younger, this labelled me as challenging authority. Now, as a recently diagnosed ADHD babe, I understand that I was asking why in order to create meaning – because my brain processes the world differently.

The same way I was expected to understand how to handle money without being told, I was also expected to avoid speaking about race. The difference is that breaking the first rule leads to embarrassment. Breaking the second leads to denial - not of the rule, but the reality itself.

One collective agreement that society shares is that we should not talk about race. As a dark-skinned Black woman, growing up as one of three Black families in Windsor, race was impossible to avoid, even if the word was never mentioned. I have had enough experiences of awkward silences and weaponised tears to confirm this cultural norm. Not talking about race, but experiencing racism is not an isolated experience. Many people share this reality across the world, let alone within this country. However, I grew up in the noughties, before social media connected us as it does today. This meant that whatever I was experiencing felt doubly isolating because a) no one was around who looked like me, b) I was not allowed to talk about race, and c) if I did, I would be dismissed.

When society denies a reality that an individual is repeatedly experiencing, it creates a psychological rupture. I, like many, must choose between trusting my own perception or conforming to the people around me. Sustained exposure to this invisible yet insidious conflict destabilised my sense of reality.

I’ve been talking about race since I found myself at a very white private boarding school in Ascot when I was 15 but more on that later. It was weird seeing the world catch up to my perspective. It was also MORE than frustrating watching everyone I had grown up with, now talk about how bad racism is and showing their support by sharing a black post on Instagram for #BlackTuesday in protest of racism and police brutality. A student at said boarding school even posted a comment supporting me. I screamed at home in response. She had completely forgotten about how she actively got me suspended on one occasion or even was in rooms with people who would say ‘Where’s Sarah?’ after closing off the classroom lights. I was beyond pissed off at how my formative years of experiencing racism but being judged for talking about racism was now a trend. Everyone wanted to show how woke they were and be on this moral high horse, forgetting that myself and many others had to face horrible consequences in response to their denial or ignorance.

I do not come from money so going into a private boarding school was the biggest culture shock in my formative years. I went from shouting stickers (if you know, you know) or avoiding happy slaps at Windsor Girls to going to socials with Eton College. Many girls in my year spoke openly and confidently about how they hated poor people. I was judged because I did not know how cool it was to spend Christmases in Verbier (i.e. an Alpine village which hosts the largest ski area in Switzerland). It was so confusing. I was not going to lie and act like I know or cared but I think that’s what frustrated the rich white people around me.

I did not value what they did and as a Black person in their fancy school and from their perspective, I should be grateful for the opportunity of studying here and listening to their experiences. If I’m honest, I thought they were vapid. Don’t get me wrong, some people were lovely, caring and interesting. But the majority were losers. I could not understand why they had such hatred for poor people - a group they never interacted with. When I was younger and especially after their violent treatment towards me, I would think to myself, ‘wait, until they have to see the real world?’ to bring me some illusive sense of justice to separate myself from the people who hurt me. What I later understood is that most of them never will - they would surround themselves in circles of affluence and luxury because that’s all they’ve known. My real world and theirs was VERY different.

I am currently training to become a psychotherapist and during a personal development workshop, I shared an experience about my time at St. Georges in Ascot. My tutor responded with ‘that sounds like psychosis?’. At that moment, the penny had dropped. It was not a metaphor, it was psychosis. I had finally realised that these racist experiences, combined with the denial of them had destabilised my sense of reality. Psychosis is defined as a loss of contact with reality, often involved with hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking. What I had experienced was not just fear, but a distortion on how I perceived the world around me.

I describe this as psychosis because my mind did not feel like my own between the ages of 15 - 17. I became hypervigilant, constantly anticipating the next attack, the next moment I would be made to question what I had just experienced. Over time, this created a fractured reality - one where what I knew to be true was repeatedly denied, not just by others, but eventually by myself. However, this distortion was not created in isolation. This delusion was shared within a wider collective refusal to acknowledge racism. I was navigating not just my own thoughts, but a reality that was collectively denied.

I was too young to realise that even my experiences pre-boarding school were impacted by systematic racism. The collective agreement tends to show up often in interpersonal experiences, naively seen as bullying, as opposed to the symptom of a much bigger problem. I remember as young as primary being slapped by some boy who wanted to see if ‘Black people could bruise’.

Another collective agreement that is rooted in British values is the need to always be polite and yet, I am often not awarded this virtue. Racism awarded people the right to share their disdain towards me. I remember calling out my friend’s boyfriend who said he thought dark skinned women were ugly but blamed it on his preference. Mind you, I’m the only dark-skinned person HE KNOWS and in a 21-mile radius. I remember that same friend saying that he didn’t mean it. I didn’t find his man attractive, nor did I want to date him, but why did he feel the need to share his disdain for people who looked like me to me? It was unnecessarily cruel.

By the age of 15, I had dealt with numerous racist encounters but after one so horrible, I was broken. The system worked in exactly how it was meant to. As a consequence, my spirit was taken. I have struggled with suicidal ideation before but this was different. This time, I had a plan. This time, I would walk by certain rivers in my local area of where I was going to end it all. This time, I had written multiple letters to loved ones to say goodbye. I repeat, this time, I had a plan. I was heartbroken by my lived experience but what I couldn’t get out of my head that made me so suicidal? If this is my life as a teenager, what the fuck am I meant to expect for my adulthood? That thought was on replay in my mind. I was more than a broken record. I was a broken person, who could not and would not engage with anyone who did not acknowledge the collective delusion I was facing. Even when I was not actively suicidal, I would gaslight or distract myself with upcoming festivals and events to turn my attention away from how lonely life was. This helped me to get by but, also resulted in an auto-immune disease that conquered my whole body. This experience taught me that your body holds the score. Since then, I will not suppress anything. I rebuke getting sick because I did not tell enough people to f!ck off.

Then, 2020 happened. We were forced into lockdown following COVID-19 outbreak, all following the collective restriction that we should not leave our homes to prevent the risk of this virus spreading. On the 25th May 2020, George Floyd was brutally murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis. This homicide led to global protests against the excessive force by police officers against Black people, this death was not the first (and unfortunately, not the last) time that Black men have been killed by the hands of the state. However, this time felt different. It was like a magnifying glass, exposing racism as a social norm, even during a pandemic. With the distractions of daily life stripped away by global lockdowns, race could no longer be ignored.

From that moment, nothing was going to be the same again. I say that because the collective agreement of ‘not talking about race’ had gone. Everyone and their mother and their neighbour were now talking about racism. Everyone was now re-sharing the video of Floyd’s murder online and were trying to educate themselves on being anti-racist. This developed after identity & representation became topics of conversation in the recent years. Being ‘woke’ was now fashionable. However, the term ‘woke’ is now weaponised to dismiss those who highlight injustices that minority groups face.

Before 2020 and George Floyd’s murder, Britain proudly recognised being a tolerant country. I believe this is why indirect discrimination and micro-aggressions are so rife. Of course, direct expressions of racism have occurred in the UK, but if we were to compare ourselves to the states, it is easier for the US to identify racist experiences due to their violent history of slavery. It’s like if you know that sundown towns exist and anyone in a sundown town is comfortable with calling Black people n!ggas? Guess where Black people ain’t going…

This challenges Black Britain’s experiences because of the double-edge sword they are left with: the racist experience & the denial that the experience was related to race. The 2024 Riots prompted by the Southport murders and the 2025 ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ campaign were clear and direct examples of the racist Britain that many Black and brown people know. If you don’t know what this campaign was, it was when every tom, dick and harry displayed the English flag for all to see. This was presented as patriotism but in reality, was just an insidious way of showing that they were anti-immigration. I’m not shy about expressing my resistance to this, documented by my many viral social media posts. I will not be gaslit by rejecting the collective delusion. #ThanksJohn.

I’m not shocked by these protests at all. I see this current collective experience as a inevitable consequence of our long-failure to act. Recently, a white person said to me that England is so much more racist than before. I’m not offended by this comment because if anything, it proves my point exactly, because what reality are you living in? I have relatives who have had their house set on fire in the 2000s in Salford, Manchester. I know people left with life-time wounds from racist attackers, in addition to having the case dropped by the police. Let’s be honest? If the attacker were not white, he would have been charged with Grievous Bodily Harm. I mention this because Black people in the UK can be physically harmed by racism but the biggest difference between how we and the states acknowledge this? African Americans do not gaslight themselves about if racism exists. Despite Great Britain being a huge slave trader, slavery did not happen on UK soil, so you could argue that this ‘out of sight, out of mind’ loophole has led to the foundation of UK denying race because it is not seen, despite evidence of being everywhere (i.e. the nation’s wealth, the royal family and the birth of the middle class).

I draw on current events and the comparison to the states because I refuse to let George Floyd’s murder be in vain. I will not return to the silence that defined a pre-COVID world. I not only accept this societal shift, but I will position myself as an active member for social change. I also hate passiveness, but that could be because I’m an aries (lol x).

My epiphany during my therapy workshop helped me to realise that the collective agreement of not talking about racism was a shared belief that did not match my reality. I was living within a collective delusion. Existing in a collective delusion is a dangerous place to be. Without people, practices or elders to ground you in your lived experience, you begin to lose yourself. That’s what happened to me. I’ve been in therapy since I was 16, but it wasn’t until 28 that I fully understood what I experienced. I had to crawl out of a psychosis. Looking back now, I finally see how much I endured and grieve it fully.

I’m writing this for the person who questions whether to speak up. The one who worries about the isolation they may face by going against the grain of challenging a collective delusion. I encourage you to do so. Give yourself the permission to be a spanner in the works. You are not difficult. You are just honest and that is nothing to be ashamed of. If you do not want to do it for yourself, do it for your sanity.

Now I know that remaining agreeable is only peaceful to my oppressor. It does nothing for my mental well-being. I’ve become really good at cussing people out and if that makes me an angry Black woman, then that is a label I am willing to hold. The real question is - what happens now that I no longer see that my anger is the problem?

I’ll explore the answer to this question in my next essay titled ‘I’m an angry Black woman, now what?’.