Had some really good talks with my son recently

My son and I have had two or three really good conversations over the last few days. I've been worried that he doesn't see that there's a problem, that he just has to get off the meds and he'll be fine. I'm realizing, though, that he does know there are challenges ahead. He's talked about his fears that he'll do some of the irrational things he did in the past - like giving his car away or quitting his job. He's afraid he'll get his life put back together and then blow it.

He's also tried to explain some of the experiences he had in psychosis. I really don't get it no matter how hard I try. It's beyond me. He tried to explain how he arrives at a delusional thought. He'll imagine something like what if my friend D.J. were here right now? What would he do? What would he say? Then somehow he gets confused about what really did happen and what he imagined.

He also said he's never actually "heard" voices or "seen" hallucinations. He just imagines these things, then ... frankly, I'm not clear on the concept past that. I don't understand why he gets so distressed, why can't he un-imagine them? And why did he say he saw and heard hallucinations if he didn't?

He said he was sad that I don't understand him. He says his new therapist would understand what he was trying to say - which is probably true, but she's been working with people who experience psychosis for many years. This is all new to me.

Anyway I'm glad he's talking to me about it.

Having schizophrenia or whatever you want to call it can be extremely distressing at times. Being psychotic is distressing because it can be frightening. Symptoms make it distressing. I don't really want to get in the gory details, but you get it. =P

I'm glad your son has a good therapist - it's always helpful

I'm glad your son is trying to explain things to you. It's very hard to express what's going on when you're psychotic.

For example, yesterday morning I imagined a whole text conversation on my phone between me and my landlady, which culminated in her telling me to move out. About half an hour later I was feeling much less blurry and upset, and started to wonder if the conversation had actually happened. So I checked my phone, and no texts had come in from my landlady. So the whole conversation never happened, and yet I remember it... at the same time as being aware it didn't happen.

I was quite upset, it was the most vivid hallucination I've had in a while. I'm just glad that I didn't phone my landlady up and start yelling at her... in the past I've got in fights with people because I thought they'd done something to wrong me, but nothing had actually happened. At least now if something's "blurry" I hold myself back from making snap decisions. But if I wasn't on my meds I don't know what would happen.

I think you don't quite get this because you're looking at it with a rational mind. Your son's mind isn't operating at the same mode as yours is.

I applaud your success in having good conversations with him. I've found that the more you listen to hear him, the more he'll open up to you.
Peace

That stinks =P

I agree with mgran

I have had fights and lost friends because I thought something had happend

I'm sorry to hear it wiprwill. My family have been very long suffering with me. They didn't realise I was mentally ill until I got my diagnoses, but they definitely knew I was always flying off the handle and accusing people of strange things. For example, every conversation I'd have with my Dad, at one point, was undermined by the fact that I thought I knew what he was really thinking... and it was always at variance to what he was saying, or was highly critical of me in some way. God alone knows how I still have a relationship with them.

This is exactly the kind of thing my son was talking about it. I told him he could try and explain it to me for three hours, and I don't think could grasp it. But if he talked to someone who had been through the experience, he could convey it with three sentences.

He says he starts with a nugget of truth, then imagines a bunch of what ifs. Then he can't work out what's true and what's a what if. But I've watched delusional thoughts take hold of him. He'll be talking, then suddenly mid-sentence he'll say something like, "Oh, I've just realized my wife is being gang raped." Sometimes he'll even add, "I don't know how I know these things." It literally seems like it happens so quickly, like there's no mental process behind it at all. At least that's how it appears to me as an observer.

One time he just burst into tears and said, "Adam is dead!" So, I called Adam and let my son talk to him to see he wasn't dead. As soon as he heard Adam's voice, he realized it wasn't true.

She's a very good therapist. I'm glad we found her. He clearly feels like she understands and supports him.

Hi Costello, I'm glad that your son is being able to question his delusional thinking. Sometimes I think it's what we're most fearful of, and our minds can't stop worrying about them. I'm sorry that he's got so upset in the past with the bad things that he fears happening in his mind.

The only thing I can think of to make it any clearer is to say... have you ever had a very vivid dream that you can't get out of? And in the dream these crazy things happen, but you believe them. And then, for a moment when you wake up, you think the dream actually happened? It's as though that dream, and the moments of confusion before you're clear of it, were happening when you were awake. In a dream we can't help what we believe. Sometimes I think the psychosis is like a painful waking dream. And with hard work we can learn a form of "lucid dreaming", a way to remind ourselves of reality when we're dreaming awake. It's really hard... at the moment my "tell" as to whether it's real or not is how do I feel. If I'm blurry and confused then it might not be real. So I try not to act on it until I'm feeling clearer.

I should reiterate, it's not happening nearly as much as it used to. The longer your islands of clarity the easier it is to spot phantoms.

When you have these kinds of delusions, do you try to figure out what they mean?

My son keeps telling me that sometimes he just wants something to be true badly enough that he makes it true in his own mind. He believes it because he wants to believe it. But he's also had lots of distressing delusions. So where do those come from?

Your conflict with your landlady is real on one level. I think you may have some angry feelings toward her? Maybe you don't feel like you can express those feelings without having a fight that would get you evicted? Have you settled the dog issue yet? Could it be that you feel vulnerable because she's not allowing you something you want (and probably even need), but that moving to a place that would accommodate a dog isn't possible right now?

I'm not trying to psychoanalyze you. I ask because it seems to me that my son doesn't feel like it's permissible to express strong negative emotions. Or even mild negative emotions sometimes. I think sometimes he pushes those emotions down and they pop back up in odd ways. And then when he can't push them down, he doesn't handle them well because he hasn't had a lot of experience in expressing them appropriately. So he lashes out and punches the person who is provoking the anger, because he can't escape and he doesn't know what else to do.

I think the whole system around mentally ill people colludes in suppressing emotions like anger. I think too many mental health professionals fear strong negative emotions, especially when expressed by mentally ill people. I suspect that an angry patient in a mental hospital is more likely to be sedated than listened to and heard.

One time we were in a med check appointment at the mhc. My son was pretty confused and wasn't making a lot of sense. Suddenly he looked directly as me and said, "You're irritating me." It was literally the most coherent thing he'd said in possibly days. The pnurse immediately distracted him by saying, "Are you talking to me?" It was clear he was talking to me, but he took the opportunity to deny it. So we lost the chance to hear him express whatever was making him angry at that moment. And he went back into incoherence.

The general feeling I've had with most mental health professionals is that we should all make nice and no one say anything uncomfortable.

Ronald Bassman tells this story on his website:

http://www.ect.org/selfhelp/psychtoday.html

My son says that all the time, it's like he's dreaming but he's awake.

That's good to know.

I asked my son about this last night, and he disagrees. He says he has no problem expressing anger. So maybe I've misread this too.

Hi Costello, I just wanted to let you know that our conversation on this thread has helped me greatly. I saw my doctor today, and was able to articulate some of what I've been experiencing far more clearly than before. I told her about the imagined text conversation, and how the mornings are harder for me. She's adjusted my meds, slightly, told me to come back in a fortnight, or sooner if I've got any trouble, and she's pushing to get me higher on the waiting list to see a psychiatrist. Also, this is a new doctor, and I felt that being able to communicate with her clearly was a real benefit... she was concerned, listened well, and very friendly. I'm usually nervous when I see a new doctor. I've booked my next appointment with her because she was helpful. I don't think I could have told her exactly what had happened though if I hadn't thought and talked it through with you on this thread. Thank you.

Sometimes I feel like my life is a nightmare, only I can't wake up. You get it.

Hey RunningEagle... I'm sorry. Hope you're okay at the moment.

I'm glad it was helpful. Sometimes it really helps to put your thoughts into words, whether spoken or written. You feel like you know what you think, but when you try to describe your thoughts in language you realize you don't have it quite right. Sometimes I like to "rehearse" things by explaining them - out loud - to an imaginary listener. It helps iron out the unclear parts.

That sounds really awful, RER. I wish I could help.

It'll get better. Maybe more meds, some vitamins would help. Thanks for caring

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
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. That's not only a very important part of his recovery, but also your relationship with him.
: ) 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

Omega oils help, I've started taking one every morning, 1000, you can get them in most health food shops. It might just be the placebo affect, but it does seem to keep me a bit clearer.

Somebody mentioned a while back that vitamin C supplements made them a bit hyper, and I was surprised, looking back at my online tracker, that it seems to have the same effect on me. So it might be an idea to take some vit C on mornings when you're cloudy, but not to take it at night time.

Hope that helps.

I think it will get better too. Just keeping trying. I know that's very easy to say and very hard to do.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Why would benadryl cause a problem? In the UK it's an allergy medication. (I've never taken it, but I'm surprised an over the counter would be dangerous.)

I wonder, from what you've said, if psychotic experiences might not just be people working through "baggage." As you say you had difficulty with your son as a teen, and are now repairing your relationship. I'm similarly repairing my relationship with my Dad... I wonder how common this is? If psychic trauma when you're younger causes a hiccup, and perhaps psychosis, properly managed, can be healing?