My mind and me

[luke1982]

Hi Guys im sure some of you already know I suffer from paranoid schizophrenia. Well I have been in the chat room for a few days now and have mostly enjoyed my time there and found many of the folks that go in there very supportive and always have good advice, some of the folks in there are just a damn right good laugh and always cheer me up:)
Anyway after spending sometime in there some people because curious of my condition as they didnt know too much about it and wanted to know more.
Some people had their own thoughts on the matter and while I was almost offended by some of those thoughts I realised lack of education on the subject was probably the reason behind this.
Here are two of the thoughts that were shared by a few of the members:

1: Schizophrenics are scary and violent
2: Schizophrenics are unpredictable

These are the two thoughts shared that day that really stood out for me as you can imagine its not nice to be perceived in such a light, I blame this mostly on the media. Every now and then you will read a story about a sufferer of the condition going off the rails and murdering someone, I must stress this is very rare and the only reason why the media reports it.
More people commit serious crime daily and have no mental illness's.

Sorry if this post seems slightly jumbled I have trouble putting things into words sometimes I just wanted to get how I feel off my chest as i was a little upset over peoples immediate thoughts.
Iv compiled a little bit of information that will follow in a minute in the hope I may help educate people on the subject a little.
:

I was diagnosed with schizophrenia because at the time I was a nervous wreck, I was suspicious of everyone I thought there was a bigger plan against me and if people didnt fall in with my perceptions of this plan i became even more suspicious, I even went through a phase of believing people could read my mind, I mean I know logically people cannot read my mind but it was the idea, it just stuck with me and I couldnt get it out.
I was hallucinating pretty much all the time auditory meaning i was hearing chatter, constant noise even in quite rooms didnt matter where I was I was hearing what sounded like a untuned radio sometimes though that untuned radio was very clear and lets just say the broadcasts that came through were not very pleasant but id rather not go into too much deph about that.
Visually I was seeing things that werent there especially at night time while in bed, from strange dark people walking around my room at night lurching over me as I tried to sleep, to floating faces...in fact the floating faces were the most common they were normally faces of people that I had known who had died it was terrifying.

I dont suffer so badly from the hallucinations anymore because im controlled medicinally.
My biggest challenge is strange thinking, I sometimes feel manic im unable to pin point down thoughts properly and everythings jumbled up.
I am unable to concentrate on things for a great length of time making reading difficult sometimes my mind wanders and I cant help it, if someones talking to me for over a few minutes my mind again wanders and i can often appear to be starring into space and apparently i can stay like that for a while without even realising it, some what catatonic.
I sometimes feel very isolated and it can make life very depressing, I dont go out anymore really unless its the 1 minute walk to my parents house, iv practically quit my job, not been there in 9 months and when I did go back for a trial week when I thought I was better my boss asked me If i wanted to hurt myself, or anyone else. That really upset me and I hid away from the outside world yet again, this perception that im gonna hurt someone really gets me down, iv never been violent and never will.
Please if your going to speak to me in future please dont assume the worst I know this post is really mega long but I just wanted to get a few things off my chest allot of people had been asking me what I see hallucination wise and various other questions so here's your chance to have a look into my mind for a day.
I hope this helps if anyone has any questions dont hesitate to ask me but please I must stress im not a murderer i dont want to hurt anyone

[kathee]

thank you for this most enlightening post. as you say the worst illness of all is ignorance. take care x x x

[Vanilla Sky]

Hi Luke, Thank you for the post, it is very enlightening . I am so sorry , I was one of the ones in chat who was involved in this conversation , and I explained to the room what happened to me years ago, I did not mean to upset or offend you in any way, but we did clear that up, I hope ! I understand how you must be feeling , you do not want people to get the wrong impression of you and quite right too ! You seem such a nice person and you have a great sense of humour. I admire the way you are handling this illness and you are right , people are ignorant and do assume things but you are brave enough to speak out , and i think with talking about it, you are not only helping people understand it , you are also helping yourself . Did you notice in chat the other night , how many questions people asked you ? Everyone was interested because we need to understand the condition and who better from someone who has experience of it . I think you will agree that everyone was very supportive and that's what we all need. So thank you Luke for bringing this to our attention, I am so glad you are able to talk about this . With regards to my experience, and that happened to me 19 years ago , I do not talk about that to any one and i did in chat the other night , so like I said , maybe this is a chance for me to let it go and try to understand what was going on with the person in question., that can only be good and I have you to thank for that. Please don't think that I hold something against you , just because that happened to me, I am not that sort of person. Well i just wanted to say that to you Luke , you've already made some good friends on here and you will continue to. So I will see you in chat , look forward to it , take care hun Love Paige x x x

[luke1982]

Thanks Paige yeah my post wasnt really directed to what you said really more so what someone else said I think you were there are the time. I understand why you felt the way you did, id be the same if it happened to me.
Really enjoyed chat the other night was a good laugh and took my mind off of anything negative the room really does have some funny characters and i look forward to talk to you and everyone else again soon it made my evening.
:)
Luke:hugs:

[gtrgrl3369]

hello Luke and thank you for that post. Like a lot of people I thought the same thing about your condition. Violence and death come to mind when I thought of schizophrenia. I am grateful to have read that because I have a better understanding of what is really going on. You are so right when you say the media only shows the bad parts of something like this. From reading your post you sound nothing like that. I can imagine how rough it can be for you sometimes because I know what people go through when people hear you have panic attacks. I can only imagine what people say to you sometimes. Thank you so much for the post, it opened my eyes to how you must feel. All I can say is keep being you, you sound like a really cool person. Take care.

[luke1982]

Thanks gtrgrl that is very kind :)

[SueBee]

Hi Luke,

A wonderful and informative post, thank you.

As I told you in the chat room the other night, I have a cousin who has schizophrenia so I have a degree of understanding in how the condition can affect suffers.

My cousin, even at her most troubled, is the sweetest, caring and most understanding girl you'd ever wish to meet. I mean she'd give you her last penny if you asked, so much so we have to keep her money a secret from more unscrupilous family members because, if they asked, she'd give it all in a blink of an eye.

Before her medication was eventually sorted - it took 3 years - she suffered so badly. At no point did she ever come close to being violent. She was a very scared young girl with so many bad things happening to her at the time her mind went into meltdown I guess. She suffered and still does from time to time, from auditory hallucinations. They didnt tell her to do anything unlawful or violent, just made her very frightend and caused her to retreat into herself.

I think people are people, schizophrenia or not. Either you have the ability to be violent or you dont and having a mental illness DOES NOT mean you're going to lose control no matter what the illness is.

There, rant over ...... ignorance really annoys me sorry

Sue
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