Quote:
Originally Posted by Shayatanica
And here I thought I was the only one who also has had "hallucinations" purely by being convinced they are happening... I guess I'm more or less delusional than I thought. :P
|
I think that's what my son was trying to tell me about his experience. He doesn't
see or
hear anything. He imagines things and then ... I don't know ... loses control so he can't un-imagine? It's made me realize he is actually completely delusional, and hallucinations aren't part of it for him.
It explains something that happened once. We were at the mhc in the waiting room waiting to see the pnurse. This was after about 10 days of taking 20+ Benadryl every day (without me knowing he was doing it). He was pacing around. Then he suddenly stopped and said, "I think I'm hallucinating. I'm seeing colored lights." He sounded so surprised. I wondered why he was surprised if he was seeing things all the time. I suspect the Benadryl was causing the visual changes.
Quote:
|
So glad you & your son are spending time communicating about his problems. He seems to be at a very strong point in his clarity if he is able to vocalize the processes that go on when he is having an episode.
|
I agree. I think, like mgran, trying to explain things to me has helped him think it through and try to find ways to talk about these experiences to someone who wants to understand but doesn't - yet.
It also gives me a chance to try and help him understand how others see him when he's in these states. He feels hurt and offended by the ways pepole have responded to him, but I've tried to show him that people don't know what to do and they have a lot of fear. Like most cities we have mentally ill people wandering the streets. I've asked him to put himself in the shoes of people interacting with him by thinking about some of the people he's likely to encounter downtown, like the guy who walks around with socks on his hands and stands in the road directly traffic. He told me when he was 19 he was walking through the park downtown when an obviously mentally ill woman started screaming at him. I asked him what he did. He says he just walked away.
He seems to understand that even those of us who want to help don't know what to do when confronted by a person who only has one foot in the "real world." If we make mistakes, some allowance needs to be made. I would be willing to bet that if my son met someone today who was acting the way he was acting a couple of months ago, he wouldn't know what to do either.
Quote:
|
That's not only a very important part of his recovery, but also your relationship with him.
|
I strongly agree with this. My son and I didn't get along at all when he was a teen. This is giving us a chance to repair that rift. A mixed blessing then.
Quote:
|
: ) Keep it up, both of you! Even though you don't quite understand, keep this in mind-- You can only understand the inner workings of insanity as much as he can understand the inner workings of sanity. We can both think about the same thing, but we have very different strategies of getting from point A to point B. And a lot of the time, we don't get to point B at all! Sometimes we pass it up to get to point K. Hahahaha
|
I'll keep trying. I'm convinced that what we call mental illness is just the extreme end of normal human experience. Depressed people are at the extreme end of sad. Phobic people are at the extreme end of fear. etc., etc., etc. It's much harder to understand psychosis that way, but I'm convinced I'll get there if I keep trying.