I have this idea that my mind is rather fragile and that the things I think about combined with stress combined with irregular sleep and diet makes me ripe for developing a serious mental disorder like schizophrenia or something. For the past few years, I’ve been pushed to the limit with stress, lack of interest in things that normal people care about, irregular sleeping/eating habits, errant attention and the inability to focus, and intermittent periods of ferocious thinking and insight. I get this feeling sometimes and I’m on edge. I mean I already went through a minor depression toward the end of high school, struggled with high anxiety and a mood disorder, and I’m at the perfect age for the onset of something nasty like schizophrenia. I just feel mentally vulnerable. The funny thing is, the idea of going through something like that more intrigues me than scares me. I’m not saying I would welcome it.
yes, this is true, I remember those days…she was pretty sexy and I was only like 10 …back when Poke’mon was cool (for 10 year olds) and when NSYNC was big (that was my favorite band for a year or so…lol)
=D>
I’m looking forward to all these things.
Oh, well, really I try to be modest about my intellect, but, since you mention it, I suppose it is something fine (not to mention towering). I was in a humanities scholarship program at school and it seemed to me that the program was full of pretentious students and faculty…surprise. I liked being around intelligent people, but I can’t stand that air of arrogant pretension and I have always spurned the invitation of cliques. As for cliques, I just don’t like falling in with that kind of group identity. It feels too closed off and I can’t be bothered to observe clique “rules”. Ironically, because I used to be anxious in social situations and because I have always enjoyed solitude and time alone, I have often ended up isolating myself socially – which makes me far more closed off than any clique – but at least I have never been subsumed by some pretentious group identity…eff that.
I studied psychology in college, but also I have dealt with your run-of-the-mill anxiety/depression symptoms and all that crap. My sister has paranoid schizophrenia though. I rarely see her and she doesn’t remember much about her psychotic episodes and is also not open like you are with your experiences…she rarely talks to me…or anybody, for that matter.
Well being consciously aware of being susceptible to such a disorder is already half the battle. It will help you make choices to avoid further regression, if you choose to. Of course depression can be alluring thing and it can consume an individual and finally break them. Tread carefully. The early 20’s are trying. Your just beginning the rest of your life and here your career path begins. It is also a struggle, you won’t make much money and you’ll need a lot, and there are a lot of expenses that you’ll have to learn how to manage. Trial and error for the 20’s. If you’re still at home dependent upon family, well I’m sure you probably don’t want to be either, so that in itself is its own challenge to overcome. Work is medicine for the soul, pride can deter you from jobs you may consider beneath you. One will have to give. “Intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character, that is the true goal of education.”- Martin Luther King
Nihilism has actually become a comforting thought when I am stressed – that things need only matter insofar as I think they matter. But that’s not quite right. I suppose I have been deceiving myself into thinking I don’t care when it is biologically determined that I do care. It’s a dangerous line to walk, but it helps me not to sweat the small stuff. For the big things, I have to remind myself that there are good reasons why they are big and why they matter.
I would still say I’m a nihilist, but there’s no reason nihilism has to or should define me forever. What I am doing now is trying to get my life moving again (as opposed to being in stagnation like it has been). As things progress, I’ll be bringing into focus my values. It will take time, but over a period of years my values will solidify and I won’t feel much like a nihilist anymore. My values will remain more or less consistent and I will begin to unconsciously think of them as objective or certain. They won’t be objective or certain, but they will be as good as…
WWIII, I read your entire 12 1/2 pages–did you write that as part of your therapy? It seems to have been published in some sort of journal to which I have no access.
No matter, I read it and I appreciate your posting it. You have humanized MI and I hope it teaches people to the point where they’ll stop using terms they think they understand to define things they really don’t understand at all. I hope you’ve also taught that suffering an MI isn’t a reason to be stigmatized in any way. It happens to both the best of us and the least of us–there is no differentiation.
Thank you. I’ve gotten a little further I was actually looking to publish with chipmunka publishing in London who specialize with Mental Illness writings but with work and an inability to refine it to my standards which are probably a little too high I have been slacking on it. But this wasn’t really part of my therapy, I wrote this all down after everything occurred, at least a year after I was recovered so to speak, off medication and thinking clearly. But it was therapeutic also. I still run through those days in my head, meditating on it, kind of keeping it fresh in my mind and making sure I don’t forget what exactly I went through as well.
I read the whole thing too, and also thought about suggesting you publish it. If anything it’s an engaging read.
How have you managed to not relapse despite coming off medication? - since the time you did that in what you wrote, you relapsed.
It’s interesting how a lot of it makes sense to me, in the sense that I’ve experienced similar things myself - only without the violence and probably not quite to the same degree as you did. Perhaps things like violence are the difference between mental illness and mental healthiness, and perhaps severity of episode.
Experimenting with a fair few types of drugs didn’t seem to affect me - are you so sure that weed definitely had something to do with your condition? Probably a widely debated subject, I know, perhaps it’s one of those things that reacts more with certain genes than others. But atm I’m inclined to think drugs don’t cause mental illness, but rather those with a propensity toward mental illness are more likely to get into drugs.
I think you asked if I relapsed? Or are you telling me I relapsed? I’ve had minor residual effects since then, probably continuing through today. I think the voice in my head though is clearly not the voices of other people, and while it is a voice in my head of voices of other people, I understand this and recognize it as such. Its very quiet and very faint. Its almost as if I even have to strain to hear it when it does occur, to understand what it is. I understand though that it is just my projection of other people being thought out in my head as if they were actually speaking. Sometimes I’m not sure I overhear people or if it is a voice I made up, such as when I’m at the grocery store or something. Usually it happens with people I don’t know. Usually its about me. So its very ignorable. Nobody will ever know I’m experiencing it. I could say it never occurred at all, and nobody else would think it did, it doesn’t change me.
The intensity of these residual effects increases drastically after smoking marijuana, it is blatantly obvious that marijuana increases my symptoms. I couldn’t say it caused my symptoms though. It certainly seems to be a genetic predisposition with my mother suffering from hallucinations after some stressful period in her late life and she never smoked marijuana.
If someone slapped you for taking what was rightfully yours (as I thought in my mind) a violent reaction would be natural for some, that is my nature not a psychotic nature. What caused it was delusions thinking everything was free for me.
I asked if you relapsed since coming off meds. Because in your story you relapsed when you came off your meds. But you’ve answered that one fine, thanks
If you think everything is free for you because you’ve given everyone ESP then that seems fair. But if you think people are acknowledging your gift of ESP in a different way that’s not breaking the law (e.g. stealing, violence or endangering people’s safety) then you still have the “delusions” but without any of the legal repercussions.
But I don’t see anyone arresting me, medicating me and putting me in hospitals or jail because I have delusions. I don’t hear voices, but I’ve silently understood communications from things that most people wouldn’t pay any heed to and it’s made me do strange stuff, just not break the law. But I’m just classed in with all the mentally “healthy”, so that’s why I suggested that division between mentally ill and mentally healthy.
Mental “illness” is a strange classification anyway when it’s sometimes healthy for things like creativity and straying for the norm in general, but that’s another point entirely. I’m not saying paranoia and depression is nice, but it’s potentially very useful. Stop me if I’m offending you, I do get that traumatic experiences can render some people particularly sensitive about certain kinds of talk/suggestion concerning their episodes.
You’ve offended me by thinking you can offend me (not really. )
There is a time when mania will result in some very great things for people, its pretty apparent. If it is working for that person, society will typically accept the illness, however there is a fine line between prolific mania and being detrimental to yourself, there is no predictability and the next day could bring dire consequences. There’s no telling what will happen when your perception of reality is completely skewered as which occurs while being mentally ill.
As I think the basic nature of awareness and existence is already crazy that it’s normal for material universe and creatures including humans to be crazy.
So, I don’t worry if someone is diagnosed clinically insane.
It just means (to me) the person is insane in slightly different way compared to majority of people.
Once I rented some rooms in my house, and I lived with (probably) typical paranoia-schizo person for about a year. He thought I was a secret government agent watching him.
When he started to talk his story in his episode of crisis, I played the role he talked about, and somehow it seemed the acceptance/acting disturbed (or at least confused) him a bit.
Maybe he was expecting other people to deny his story (to keep the integrity of his story line that no-one understand/believe him).
Maybe everyone is trying to maintain and protect some strange story line (to cope with something, to dream about something, etc) without knowing, to different degree.
Or he probably wasn’t expecting a secret government agent to admit it to him… There could be alot of things here why you surprised him, which we may not even understand. Going along with his story however probably didn’t do him any good.
I would have thought that delusions were the attempt to take ingredients of what you know to be real, and make them into a “reality” that would explain the new, different way you feel/are sensing things. So it wouldn’t be the delusion that makes you e.g. paranoid, but the paranoia that makes you grab onto delusion in order to make sense of your paranoia.
In the case of paranoid delusions, when nobody else confirms the “sense” you’ve made, this just feeds the paranoia. So if you confirm the delusions, then you would ease the paranoia, which in turn would lessen the person’s grip on their delusion in order to make sense of their paranoia… That plus medication and/or therapy would then make sure the paranoia didn’t just come back as soon as the delusions stopped being confirmed, and gradually the person could be reintroduced to the accepted interpretation of reality.
Of course this is all just speculation, and I’m no expert. But it would explain the guy’s confusion when Nah disrupted his delusion. It just seems that it’s not the delusion that’s the primary problem (despite the obvious dangers of acting on the delusion), but the paranoia that’s at the root. Mental illness is some neurochemical imbalance right? - which then causes emotional and sensory imbalances, and only then causes an imbalanced interpretation of reality.
You don’t think one precedes the other? Without emotional and sensory experience, you have nothing to interpret. I get that interpretation seems immediate and simultaneous to what is being interpreted, but you can’t have interpretation of nothing: you need to sense/feel first.
…back when Poke’mon was cool (for 10 year olds) and when NSYNC was big (that was my favorite band for a year or so…lol)
(not really. )