diary

Half six in the morning, and no sleep. Forgot to take my nightime seroquel... seriously, the side effects kick in within a few hours of missing a dose? Great... how am I ever going to get off this stuff.

It's official. Quarter to seven in the morning, I didn't sleep at all last night. And the previous two nights I've only managed about three hours tops. Right now I'm not tired at all... I'm almost enjoying it at this point, it's better than the endless exhaustion I've been battling against. Now, if I could only strike a happy medium...

Hope you're ok, mgran. Been thinking about you.

Okay, very tired.

Hope you're doing well and taking care of yourself. I miss your kindness and your wisdom.

I miss you mgran

Hi all, I'm back. A little bit better. I've been going off on tangents and having obsessions take over, but it seems a bit better now. I did a lot of writing to get it out of my system, over sixty thousand words apparently, I might even read what I wrote one day. But I'm feeling better, if still very very tired.

I feel really awful. My son's girlfriend sent me an essay she'd written for English, and asked me to mark it for her. So I did, and gave her some tips on how she could increase her grade from a D to a C. She'd written a bare synopsis of the plot.

Anyway, it turns out that the essay I marked was her best effort, and she's now really discouraged. She actually thought she might get a B for it.

I've tried to explain to her that all she needs to do is add a little detail, quote from the text she's reviewing, give and explain her opinions.

She is now saying that she doesn't want to do her English exam anymore, because if she can only get a D it's not worth doing.

I've tried to explain that it won't take much work for her to get a good grade, but she's locked down in panic about her exam now, and her mother is going to blame me forever if L doesn't in fact get the grade she wants.

If she goes in and does the exam now and only gets a D I think they'll still blame me for upsetting her...

I don't think there's a winnable way out of this, unless there's a miracle, and L actually does scrape a C.

Now I wish I'd never offered to help. I helped her with her German, and she took on board my suggestions and got a B. So it comes as a shock that she's behaving so differently about her English.

I've done more harm than good.

Mgran, it sounds like the advice you offered is really positive, even if it isn't the praise she wants to hear. It is sad that she feels discouraged, but you can't blame yourself for offering positive criticism that you genuinely feel will help her in her objectives.
It is up to her to take to leave your advice. Remain positive as much as you can, and hopefully she will realise that her own emotional response is getting in her way, and not you.

I agree with Tsunamisurfer. Don't let her try to shift her emotional burden to you. It's not good for you, and it's not good for her either. She needs to take responsibility for herself.

Did her family say they blame you, or is that your fear?

Hi Costello,

It was her mother, she became completely hysterical, and it rubbed off on her daughter. They all calmed down in the end though, so things weren't as awful as I thought.

But I feel like I'm being taken advantage of.

I've been not very well for a while anyway, sleep is up the wall, and teetering between no energy at all to completely wired. I've given up caffiene, hoping it would help, but it seems to have made no difference.

It's now officially nearly a year that I've been on a waiting list to see the wellbeing clinic, and I'm seeing someone next week. So it will have been eleven months and three weeks after I asked for help

It will get better, and it is better, but I'm just not right. Not flat out awful, but not doing as well as I should.

I see. People do tend to get panicky when they feel like their survival (or their kid's survival) is threatened. And I can see how she might have feared that a bad score on the exam might put her daughter in a bad place later in life. It's too bad she let her panic overwhelm her, and she acted it out with you. It doesn't sound like it was personal, although I'm sure it felt that way. You were just a bit player in this drama - which probably had mom imagining her child's entire future being destroyed. I'm an expert at catastrophizing, so I can imagine her thought process.

I agree. Maybe they should hire someone else to tutor their daughter in the future.

Yes, sleep, the constant challenge. Limiting caffeine doesn't help my son either. Maybe some exercise would help?

mgran,

I've read your posts while here at pc and you seem to be coping well with your life and mental disorder.

My dr explained to me that when someone has voices, they are caused by a traumatic event that we "blocked out" or winced through. Like a turtle retracting its head into its shell, we protect ourselves from predators by doing this. Unfortunately, we leave a void in our memory from which radiates "voices" which are messages from our sub conscious mind. It helps to talk to a dr about the voices, they might help you to interpret the messages from your sub conscious mind. They have helped me, but it is an ongoing job, for me. Life is life, understand? My wife needs dialysis everyday to live, this is my job, or cross, to bear the burden of. Survive or survive, there isn't another option...

Peace of mind to you, mgran.

YOu seem like a friendly person to me...

brook

Hi guys, still hanging in there. Averaging between four and five hours sleep again, which is okay... unfortunately they're not all at night. But coping.

Glad you're holding up, mgran.

I think about you often.

Thank you Costello.

My son right now is not doing so good. He confided in me a while ago that he sometimes had thoughts that I was a robot and wasn't "really real", ie, that I'd replaced his real mother. And that passed, but this last couple of weeks he's been really moody. Yesterday he started crying after he'd spoken to his little cousins on the phone, saying he felt guilty because he thought they weren't real. Turns out he's been thinking that he's the only real person in reality, he's been frightened that he's imagining the rest of us, and that he's all alone.

He's been trying to rationalise himself back to common sense, telling himself things like the universe is too complicated for him to have imagined, and that God wouldn't have created one creature to live out life all alone. But I know there are other things he's been thinking which he hasn't told me about.

So, as you can imagine, I am quite alarmed. He's about the age I was when I had my first full on psychotic episode.

I'm taking him to the doctor's today, and he's really angry about it, but I've decided he has to go. I'm not going to ask for him to be medicated (though some emergency med to calm him down in a crisis might be a good idea.) He's doing his exams, very very soon now, and if he was half asleep he'd fail them.

So, anyone out there who prays, could youse say a prayer fo my son?

And Costello, I know you've been through this yourself. Just to let you know, you made me realise that this is doable, even if it is (please God) a temporary glitch or the start of something more serious.

Sorry you're struggling with this. Just take it a day at a time and don't get too caught up with the ups and downs. The bad things that happen aren't the end of the world, and the good things aren't the end of all troubles. When I think back to September 2005 - the start of my son's first episode - well, ... it's been a long road. Try to focus on the journey rather than the destination. Each day is a new gift with its own challenges and opporunities.

It helps me to avoid thinking of my son as having an "illness." He just has a different way of perceiving the world. Taking the emphasis off pathology and putting it on the qualities that make him unique and lovable helps me relax with the situation. When I relax, he relaxes. That makes everything easier.

Thank you. The doctor was actually very encouraging towards him, telling him that everybody gets strange thoughts sometimes, particularly when they're under stress, and that he's still young at sixteen, and still developing. Also, that he has asperger's syndrome, and these kinds of thoughts are more common in that group.

He's sending a letter to CAMS, and getting some support set up for him, but fortunately he didn't go the medical route immediately, which I'm glad of. In other words, he didn't pathologise him the instant he walked in the room, and he did help him feel better.

Though once we were out of the surgery my son started saying, "well, of course he would say that if he was a figment of my imagination." And later in the day he panicked, because he thought he didn't have a face unless he saw his face in the mirror. So we did some very ordinary things... I took him for a hair cut, bought him some new shoes, and we went out for lunch. Okay, more expensive a day than I'd hoped for, but it did seem to settle him, to see so many people walking about, to have a pub lunch with fruit juice and blues music playing on the radio. And I don't know, shoes and a hair cut always cheer everybody up, even men... I don't care that they don't admit it. We know it's the truth!

And then when we got home he talked to his girlfriend on Skype, which again seemed to help settle him. I'm glad he has friends, because they really do seem to ground him.

I think the stress of exams is definitely contributing to this. Learning to cope with stress will help him for the rest of his life.

He's doing a little better since the holidays are over. Being in school distracts him, and although he's still had some thoughts (particularly in noisy and anxiety inducing lessons) he's putting them in context. I've told the special needs department, so they're aware of the situation, and trying to minimise his stress levels.

Thanks Costello...

Glad he's doing better, mgran.

Hi again,

he has an appointment set up for next week, but he may have to miss it because of school commitments. I'm talking to the school about getting him out of it. In the mean time my back is so bad that I can hardly move, I've been practically housebound for a week. Plus my sleeping patterns are now completely up the wall. I slept from quarter to eleven to quarter past four today, now I know I can't sleep tonight, and I'll be a wreck tomorrow hwen my son is off school and needs me to be okay for him.

I'll do my best but this isn't any fun.

I'm sorry I didn't respond to this sooner, mgran. I didn't notice you'd posted. I'm sorry things are so hard now. And the back problems and the sleep problems! I've had both myself, and I know how they make everything so much harder.

I hope you and your son catch a break soon. You're due for some relief.

I'm thinking about you. Actually I've been listening to some books set in England, and I often think, "I wonder what mgran would think of that."

One is a series of mysteries by Stephen Booth set in Derbyshire. Which is pronounced "Darbyshire," and I wouldn't have known that if I'd been reading it instead of listening. And they keep talking about the Peak District - but I thought he was saying "peat district." Listening's different than reading!

The other is a series of mysteries written by a Canadian author, Alan Bradley, but set in 1950's England. The "detective" is an extremely precocious 11 year old named Flavia de Luce. The first book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, got some pretty bad reviews on Amazon, because the author got lots of things wrong about England. For example, in the very first paragraph of the book Flavia has been tied up and thrown in a closet by her two older sisters. One reviewer pointed out that 1950's English homes had "wardrobes" not "closets." And through the whole book she talks about the poison ivy she's mixed into her sister's lip stick. Apparently you don't have poison ivy in England. Whoops! Ah, well, I still love the books.

Take care. I hope you feel better soon.

Landlady is kicking me out. I have two months to find a new place. She says she'll give me a good reference, but I don't know that I can find anywhere in the time frame that I can afford. So, keep seeing my son and I homeless. And can't sleep.

((Mgran))) many hugs to you--- I am so sorry to read what is recently going on with you....

It is very stressful to think of not having a home-- The only thing I can say is that usually things do work out--- Many many many hugs to you.

with you and your son dx's is there anything where you live that could help you find a place? i.e. like social workers help out?