Inside the mind of a schizophrenic

[edit on 20-7-2010 by LuckyMe777]

Originally posted by ModestThought
reply to post by NewlyAwakened

 

It makes sense that therapy in the traditional sense wouldn't help because this is an issue you need to tackle on you own. No person can help you, only you can help yourself. I know you may see me as ignorant for denying a medical syndrome, but don't use that as a crutch to further your ailment. I know what you are experiencing is real because it is actually happening to you, but you are the god of your realm (your brain) it is the only thing you can have absolute control over. It takes hard work and devotion, but it is attainable. First off, you have to stop living in your head. Use outside stimuli as a distraction. This will show you that you can ignore your inner dialogue. When this is realized, you can then begin to quiet your mind. This was tricky for me at first and I even felt a "burning" sensation every time I tried to completely stopped all inner dialogue and inner noise. I couldn't keep this cleared mind long because of the sensation. It wasn't pain, I would just start thinking about the sensation and thus my mind was no longer clear. Now i am able to clear my mind when ever i wish for as long as I wish. If I have a neurotic thought I just clear my mind and let it go. If you begin to control your own thoughts, then you can let go what you wish to. All the fearful thought will still come but they will go just as easily. I would advise to learn to clear your mind and see where it takes you. And just remember it is you who control your thoughts, NOT your thoughts that control you.

_MT_

[edit on 20-7-2010 by LuckyMe777]

Sorry, didnt mean to post here.

[edit on 20-7-2010 by LuckyMe777]

reply to post by NewlyAwakened

...If your basic underlying emotion that you have not yet properly dealt with is anxiety, then it is anxiety that your ego must hold on to and therefore you will constantly come up with reasons to be afraid. Ditch one, and your mind will find another. You simply must be afraid. Get too logical and destroy all the easy ones, and your mind will produce weirder and more fanciful ones. If you're really smart your mind will start giving you full-blown paranoid delusions and hallucinations. [...]

you've covered a lot of territory, aspects...
and the above thought, is about the closest example for my response.

Sure, (your above statement is true) that was before i self realized that my thought processes were the ones creating weider and more fanciful twists on the mundane world reality we all live in.

my stays in the mental wards, both less than 7 months each, finally gave me the needed info to NOT dwell or immerse my thinking into these 'constructs' of the mind.
the events, the hallucinations, the twisted experiences, could all be compartmentalized ~ as in chapters of a fictional book, novel, living saga~

keeping it simple is another truism, or Think Deep turn-into-a-creep, i try to remind myself almost daily,


thanks for sharing.
( * ) for Romans 10:9,if only that were true for every type of schizo,
~but at least for you & i that approach works~



[edit on 21-7-2010 by St Udio]

reply to post by NewlyAwakened



Interesting post dude I to walk the line in my own way or sometimes in other ways, or sometimes I leave the line all together and walk another way, what exactly is sane is a contraption constructed to help you on whatever path you are on, there is no definite true answer, because there is no such thing as definite or true, everything is a construct of our mind, god, universe, whatever you want to call it. As for those that consider them selfs as the sane, oh man what a house of cards build on sand do they live in, luckily for them circumstances remain stable for now, ignorance is a gift and a curse, same as sanity or insanity, circumstantials differ though. Were has there been the most unsane peoples then those who think they are sane but end up jumping off a cliff, look at history it's full of crazy people willing to do and be sane for the most unsane of perspectives on sanity. Luckily for them they have such short hectic lives therefore they wouldn't have to question there reality, there I go I said a sane thing unsanly. The danger of logic is not misunderstanding or not getting it, the danger comes from understanding the world, this world everything is quite understandable in how it works or is, everything is quite knowable though you wont always like the answer or knowing so your mind constructs fail safes to reality, our current reality is one of those fail safes, all happy realities are in ignorance, but a fleeting moment in the moment/space/time. So some degree of ignorance is required for some, and knowledge for others. The most basic case and common of perspective differential i have seen is the herd conciseness one we are all connected and we are all not connected at the same time kind of living in a multitude of multiverses in a singular universe called a the "moment in time" take anything that anybody considers sane and keep asking why and how and eventually it will not make sense, you get to a place of empty space, but don't question the sane they have there own path to take and wouldn't like you questioning there reality or believes, some will even try to kill you if you ask to many questions, all things walk there path so let it pass even if you think you see it walk in to a furnace, you could be wrong, or you could be right, either way things move on. And what is the thing with clocks, do you think you can speak there language and if so what are they saying to you other then remain in order. Oh and remember somethings are not what they seem.

[edit on 22-7-2010 by galadofwarthethird]

I believe people who are or have gone through this have suffered a great upset in their lives, something changed, you broke up with a mate you loved so much, there was a death of someone you loved very dearly, something on this order. When this happens the pain is just too much and a lot of people start drinking or doing other things, this coupled with the great misery and upset makes people go through hard struggles. This can also happen if you drink too many energy drinks along with vitamins to get that amp effect.

First we have to get over the pain, then we have to get over the things which help us cope with the pain. One good way to get over the pain is just let it all out, let those tears flow, and know it's alright to hurt but also know you have to be strong and that you have to function in everyday life so you can not allow this to consume you or it will put in a situation where you can not manage your own life.

Time heals all wounds, and most of you are shiny new green leaves on the top of the tree of life, you have your whole life ahead of you!

If you are to the point of paranoia and having inanimate objects speak to you, it is time to seek serious medical treatment. It can be controlled by medications.

Other things is thinking you see people out of the corner of your eye through your home, and hearing voices that are not there.

Whatever your definition may be, you need treatment. You don't need to make excuses, you do not need to be ashamed. It is a disease inherited by a lot of people.

With therapy and the right meds, you can lead a normal life.


A great book I highly recommend, as well as the website:

Living well with depression and bipoalr disorder:

living well with depression and bipolar disorder

reply to post by Doc Velocity



Interesting point uncomfortably you do have a point, not about the weak surviving not that that does not matter whoever survives is the strong, how else would one gauge who is strong, but in the end no one survives and there is no such thing, everybody dies, no one gets out alive. But you have a good point about the inoculations, and the way of life we really are making ourself dependents on a system that is not very efficient or all that great. Its like farming with pesticides in the end all you are doing is creating stronger weeds and weaker dependent crops, then during the first calamity we basically scientifically breded our own doom, in farm and plant stocks at least. Humans are the same way, and our created habitat is more susceptible to calamities then the other animals or insects on this planet. Basically if something happens we would be wiped out fast and they would thrive eventually. I have seen this with my own eyes, I know some people that if something would happen and it would revert back to the survival of the fittest they wouldn't last a day. Overspecialization and intellect leads to a kind of living in a bubble mental world, I know pretty much all have felt this effect in one form or another from losing a job in such a civilization to actually going in the woods and living off the land for a while. And for some reason people seem to have begun to worship science now as if it will be around forever, or even the next couple of thousand years, educated guesses, humanity has gone from quesses of the future to educated quesses of the future. we have made progress.

What does not kill me, makes me stronger. Friedrich Nietzsche.

He left out an important part of this saying.

What does not kill me, will probably cripple me. But what does not kill me or cripple me makes me stronger eventually.

I would like to toss something into this mix. Had some issues that showed as a possible problem. Had some tests and it turned out to be a bad case of Hypoglycemia.

Years later my mom who is a nurse gave me a medical journal to read. Some respected man in the field did an artical on the maifestation of schizophrena like symptoms in folks with really bad hypogysema. He went on to say that he believed that one third of all cases of schizophernia were do to hypoglicema.

Although its existence was denied by the American Medical Association in 1973 (Marilyn Light), hypoglycemia is now the direct precursor of the epidemic of diabetes - affecting 246 million people worldwide - possibly responsible for various degenerative diseases, obesity, and asoaring rate of mental illness and clinical depression. (82 JOM studies).

Hypoglycemia means low blood sugar level, although “unstable blood sugar levels” would have been more fitting. This term is used to describe a metabolic disorder, that may manifest itself in a variety of physical and 'psychological' symptoms. One must understand that glucose is a source of both physical (muscle) and mental (brain) energy. The brain, representing only 2 percent by weight of the body, has no energy stores of its own. It requires about 60 per cent percent of the all available glucose in the body and consumes about 120 grams per days regardless....

As in diabetes, when a patient injects excess insulin, it causes the blood glucose concentrations to crash. This happens in non-diabetic hypoglycemia when the body produces too much insulin called hyperinsulinism...... Consequently any extreme fluctuation in the supply of glucose to the brain will inevitably affect our emotions, feelings and personality...... you need to treat the hypoglycemia by nutritional means. The symptoms of hypoglycemia may mimic and even cause many psychological and physical disorders some of which are shown in the following list in order of frequency and as reported by hypoglycemics;

Nervousness, irritability, exhaustion,
Faintness, dizziness, tremors, cold sweats,
Depression,...Forgetfulness, mood swings, anxiety, aggression, violence, anti-social behaviour,...Mental confusion, limited attention span, learning disability,....Phobias, fears and neurodermatitis, restless leg syndrome (8%), nervous breakdown,

The blood sugar level is controlled by the pancreas by means of two hormones; 1) insulin, which pushes blood glucose into body cells and so lowers the blood sugar level, and 2) glucagon, which slowly raises the blood sugar level if it falls too low. Another hormone involved is adrenaline produced by the adrenal glands which may quickly raise blood sugar level in response to a crisis. (See image) When there is a overproduction of insulin, as is the case in hypoglycemia, the brain will be starved of its source of energy - glucose.

So you get insulin, glucagon and adrenaline working willy nilly in the brain housing unit and wow!

What Is It

if you want to do research into non-diabetic hypoglycemia, you need to look for medical terms such as ‘insulin resistance’, ‘hyperinsulinism’, Glucose Intolerance, hyperglycemia, HPA (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis),, metabolic syndrome, cerebral glucose metabolism. Some scientists studying schizophrenia have already come up with terms such as 'Cerebral diabetes', ‘brain diabetes’, pointing to abnormal glucose transport systems across the membranes of brain cells.

Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis

As you can see if you care to look into it, it is not a simple matter of blood sugar levels and what not.

The scarcity of research into hypoglycemia is due, no doubt, to the fact that most medical research is carried out by global pharmaceutical companies with an eye on profits for their investors. The financial reward for the production of xenobiotic chemical agents cannot be matched by scientific research about nutritional influences on disease and mental disorders without a ‘profit’ component.

So, one would really need to go to a specialist to sort this out. I personaly know of someone with a bad case of bipolar that can kill 3 2 liters of mountain dew a day...but they are all candied up on meds. I am sure if they would just get off the large sugar and caffeine fix they probably wouldnt need the meds. But there is no money in that.




[edit on 22-7-2010 by Logarock]

NA, I see you as a very intelligent and aware individual. What I'm having trouble understanding is, with your family history, why you are so hesitant to seek professional help? I can understand why people don't trust the medical system, but if I have a transmission problem, I'm going to a transmission man. If I have an accounting problem, I'm going to a CPA. If I have big dent in the fender of my car, I'm going to a professional body man. This is what is available to us. It is much easier and less painful to fix anything on the front end than on the back end. It is even more critical when we are talking about a health problem. If I let my high blood pressure go, I'm likely to have a stroke. If I don't take care of my cholesterol, I will one day likely have a heart attack. Some will say that Psychatrists and Psychogists don't have a clue about what causes mental illness, but isn't most medicine of any kind treating symptoms? The whole idea is to get rid of the symptoms that are causing the proble, or make them tolerable. You can get great advice in your own community by calling a Psyche hospital and asking to speak to the head nurse on the day shift. If you can't talk to them when you call, leave your name and number and have them call you. Someone like this has the experience and nuts and bolts knowledge, and awareness of treatment plans, and the strengths of the different Psychiatrists onboard. Tell them you have a family history of schitzophrenia and you are afraid and you fear that you might be becoming symptomatic. They can easily give you a number of names of someone you can see. If your insurance is such that you need a referral from your primary physician, make an appointment and discuss the situation with them. Let them know in a kind way that you want to see a Specialist. They can refer you to a Psychiatrist or Psychologist, whichever your insurance requires. If it is a Psychologist, and you need intervention, you can get the referral to the Psychiatrist from them. Psychologists cannot prescribe medicines. If you want to talk further, U2U me, and I'll call you on the phone and we can talk further. I mean this. Rich

[edit on 7/22/2010 by deadred]

I can't stop thinking about a quote I heard about society and those who are different...

"They think we are crazy because we are different. We think they're crazy because they are all the same..."

Psychiatry will soon have every behaviour listed as a 'condition' to be treated with medications...it is an industry after all. I'm afraid thats why 'sufferers' don't all rush to the doctor. Psychiatry, unlike other branches of medicine...have no tests to validate their theories re bio-chemical imbalances. Chicken and egg going on with that theory...especially when it is considered impossible to stop taking anti-psychotic meds once you're prescibed them without going through the worst psychosis ever, which is actually withdrawal symptoms.

The side-effects of the drugs are (often) torturous and can be lethal when NO mental illness is actually fatal. Most mental health patients (in the UK) die of heart failure (always recorded as 'natural causes' as opposed to a consequence of medications).

Depression and psychosis can be life interupters....but they are not lifelong conditions requiring lifelong treatments. My 'psychosis' could have been described as a 'kundalini awakening' that neither I, or anyone around me, was prepared for. In another culture that may have been different...it may have been regarded as a positive experience.

I can you let you in on a little secret regarding my own experience of psychosis. It can be treated as learning experience and an enlightening one. Depending on your background and education you can make all kinds of mistakes during the experience. Its the 'mistakes' that cause the problems.

A regular feature of psychosis is that the individual thinks they are the new messiah....that is because they are experiencing 'God', 'universal consciousness or whatever you want to call it, at that moment in time. More of the psychotic's brain is active....at that time their fast brain can 'experience genius'....they can experience the brain's telepathic abilities. Its all a bit of a head buster and can easily lead to confusion. Its just that we human beings are more amazing than we think we are.

Schizophrenia: the illness that made us human

Oh I am already a mental patient. I have been on a Zoloft/Risperdal cocktail since 2005 after a major depressive break in 2003, and have seen all sorts of therapists and psychiatrists, with mixed results.

Ultimately, none of them really got it. The meds allow me to function and grow as a person, and for them I'm thankful (but I may need to "up" them!).

From my own experience I tend to agree with the skeptics of the mental care industry. The whole concept of the DSM is very misleading. It lists "disorders", basically with the assumption that they are problems, then lists their symptoms, but what it does not tell you, which you must read between the lines to realize, is that the disorders are defined as the symptoms.

If you have a cough, sore throat, etc., you might be diagnosed with the flu. But the flu itself is not identical with the symptoms. Its definition involves an invasion by microorganisms. With psychiatry, the symptoms and the "disease" itself are synonymous.

In other words, they are not diseases but categories.

Now, categorization has its purposes; observed trends can be studied better when given a name. But if they called them categories yet acknowledged each individual case is different and acknowledged that we really don't know a damn thing about brain/mind relations and that it's all guesswork, I would respect them more. Nothing wrong with guesswork when you're hurting and confused.

The above are just my conclusions from having studied this stuff, but I have studied them rather intensively as my depressive break in 2003 came from a self-diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, followed by a mad scramble to see what else I could diagnose myself with.

It took me years to realize these "authorities" are thinking about the problem all wrong.

When I say I think I'm going schizophrenic, I do not mean a diagnosis of a specific disease, but that I may be exhibiting patterns that others have exhibited before and are labeled "schizophrenia". But all cases are different; we all have completely different minds based on our life experiences and there is therefore no such thing as two identical mental diseases.



[edit on 25-7-2010 by NewlyAwakened]

I know someone very close to me that was diagnosed as schizophrenic.
BUt it is strange when things, washing machine , cenment mixer, start to talk to you, but unless they have someting of value to say what good is it.

And there is nothing to be afraid of except your Maker, don't lie to yourself and others everything should be on even keel.

I know one of the side effects of a recovered schizophrenic, is they have above normal hearing, so don't whisper around one because they will hear you.

Might want to try some of those Mega dose B-complex vitamins, that's what the brain works on and sugar.

reply to post by NewlyAwakened


Psychiatry invents conditions and then we set about catching them for them. 'A pill for every ill' is a marketing slogan. Depression and psychosis are quite real and often require treatment.

I too have been diagnosed, medicated and spent time in institutions against my will with enforced treatments. It took me years to recover...not from the 'condition' but from the so-called care i received. The NHS ensures patients can remain detained their whole lives.

I chose my own path. Do not take medication. I raised my children, paid my mortgage and ran my business all factors which probably led to the original breakdown (too much on my plate - like many of us today). However if I'd followed the medical advice I was given I would have been unable to do any of these things.

The bio-medical model means drugs. The social model means therapy and actually taking the time to help resolve stresses in peoples' lives that have triggered the problems in the first place.

The first ever psychiatric drug was chlorpromazine. tested on a half ward of psychotics while the other half received no drugs. Those receiving the drugs recovered much more quickly than those who didn't and it was declared the first of many 'wonder drugs' and promptly put on teh market. But...there was a five year follow up which was never published...and whereas those who were given the drugs recovered more quickly they also relapsed many times over the 5 years.....unlike those who were never given the drugs.

In Britain pre-victorian era the learning disabled were called 'natural born fools' and teh mentally ill were known as lunatics. They were considered to have more of God in them and it was a blessing to bring these people into your home and take care of them. Without responsibility Mr and Mrs Lunatic were 'at it like rabbits' and kept having babies with no responsibility as parents.

Darwinism was making its debut and the victorians came up with the asylum. The idea behind the asylum was all the ladies in the west wing...all the gents in the east. Never let them meet and within a generation or two they would all have died out. Of course more lunatics and natural born fools just kept being born into 'normal' society and the over populated asylum was becoming a money burn. that's when the drugs came in. Roundabout 1955

Ever since they first started being used the incidences of mental illness have reached epidemic proportions. 2+2=?

reply to post by googolplex


'Acute hearing' and 'perfect memory syndrome' are both psychotic symptoms which I have experienced. Remembering everything seen, heard, read, felt, smelled, and said in your whole life is great but not all at one time (which is what happens).

The acute hearing is similar...the filter system of the brain disapears and i can hear a tap drip in the next room as clearly as the person sitting next to me talking.....going into a restaurant at those times is just a no no.

I went through a really rough period when i was a young adult,
luckily my family put up with me through it.

It sounds like your emotions might be arguably over-amped & driving your intellect into fantasy, & you don't have anything stable/neutral to cling to or build upon/work-with.

Maybe put a little more saturated/animal fats in your diet, as long as it is not a cardiovascular problem?

Fear may be a genetically filtered for characteristic,
but i have to say what a relief it is to live without most of the tortuous anxieties of my youth.

reply to post by NewlyAwakened


Well, I am not 100% sure I get what you are saying, so please correct me if I mistake it.

While I do agree that there is a natural conflict between logic and ego, (the ego wants to maintain itself as "real" despite the obvious evidence that it is little more than a collection of memories and projections of future events) I dont think I follow the logic that logic is the problem here.

(If I am getting you right towards the end, you seem to be saying the more logical you become, the more fantastical the ego must be)


That seems to me an ego problem, as you describe it. Not a logic problem. It seems to me logic losing out to a very strong ego. One which simply will not accept its essential non existence as a "real" or concrete thing.

Mind you I am not saying that I feel schizophrenia is really based in this conflict. I dont know what to believe about it, honestly. But as you describe the battle, I dont see logic being the problem, but the thing that is losing the battle to irrationality, through greater escalation of said irrationality.

For instance I also have noted that "significant" numbers will appear on clocks, but I also noted that I looked at clocks many times during the day, did not see a significant number, and so did not "note" that I looked at the clock. But, if I looked at the clock 20 times in one day, and one time I looked saw my birthdate, or 9:11, I made special note of it. "Oh wow, thats cool, its ..." its self selecting bias. Even though most of the time, the numbers are of no significance, I would remember the very few when it was. For me, however, there was no elaboration of the phenomenon into a story, "I am being communicated with" or "Somehow this makes me special"

It seems to me the story telling element seems to be the problematic part. And that isnt logic, but creativity in a sense. Pulling the random into a coherent story line, where none should exist.

And I will mention, along that vein, that many many, many, highly intelligent and logical people do NOT end up delusional. The few that do are kinda like the clock numbers, significant because you are looking for significance.

Im sorry you are going through this. It must be very distressing. I dont know if its fair to implicate logic, though. Im glad you made the thread however. Its cool to hear how it seems to someone struggling with it, even though I am sure it isnt so cool to the one going through it.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander

I didn't mean to suggest logic by itself tends to make people insane (though as i mentioned I have read quotes to that effect). I also in my OP pointed out what at this point in my understanding I can only call a "need for anxiety". Something deep down requires me to be anxious, something logic cannot seem to attack, and so the more logic attacks its "reasons" for anxiety, the more various fanciful things rise to the surface.

reply to post by NewlyAwakened

If you have a cough, sore throat, etc., you might be diagnosed with the flu. But the flu itself is not identical with the symptoms. Its definition involves an invasion by microorganisms. With psychiatry, the symptoms and the "disease" itself are synonymous. In other words, they are not diseases but categories.

Don't get to caught up in this labeling is as old as mankind, in our society were all types of groups are mashed together labeling is process, even though they say it's not. And what you said is true they don't know but think they know, no one really knows...you can get approximations or I have seen something like it before but to actually "know" its just silly. I guess we each have our own world to figure out, some of us just have less relations to call on ergo not "normal" meaning not "common" to the common.