Just needed to be heard for a little while

Waves_and_Smiles

Now I am tearful again but in a good way. You have all been so very kind and supportive. I am so grateful, I feel like I have a little group of people standing with me. I will get too confused to quote everyone but I will attempt to reply back.

The people in my mind all live in a house in the woods, some are bad, some are good. Oddly the good ones have been with me since I was a very young child when I had no diagnosis, the bad ones came later. The only way I can describe it is you know how you remember a conversation and you picture it in your mind and see where you were and hear the voices? Well it is like that but I don't choose when these images and sounds will appear and instead of the sounds coming from inside my head as a memory they come from the outside. Sometimes when I suddenly see inside I cannot see the real world so it is dangerous if I am doing anything. I once poured boiling water over my hand and didn't even realise because I was within the house and not in contact with this world. Even this has it bright side though, if I am distressed I can retreat inside and play with some of the sweet children there, to me it is just as real as doing so in real life.

Perhaps a relaxation CD of rain could work if they exist. I find the sound of rain comforting and it has no voices or music which trigger those in the house to speak. Thank you for that, I will ask my partner if he can find me one.

I do have very low Vitamin D levels, I haven't been in sunlight for over 6 years. Apparently the consultant I see on Tuesday will deal with that as well as what medication I need for Lupus. It is difficult because I take a mixture of medication for different conditions so they have to make sure that they all match as best as they can. I lack other vitamins too because sometimes I cannot eat certain foods for months at a time if the voices tell me that they are poison. I know it isn't real but it is still hard to risk it.

Thank you for saying that I am brave and honest, I do try to remain strong. A psychiatrist told me that they would expect someone with my combination of mental illnesses to be permanently hospitalised but in my case because I cooperate with them, because I am trained in psychology and have an understanding of what is wrong with me and because I am completely honest it enables them to help me more than they can with most people. Before I was 15 I used to lie all the time. I would make things up like my mother was beating me, I even said she had died once. I wanted people to realise something was wrong but I couldn't say that she was sexually abusing me because the shame for that felt as if it was completely mine. When I told people finally no one was surprised, they had all already suspected and had been tailoring my therapy towards that. Since then I have been totally honest about myself even if I have been ridiculed at times, I have to be honest to keep myself alive and I made promises. My doctor told me that this is also why I have little problem with benefits, because I hide nothing on the forms and also never exaggerate, I just tell them how the days are for me and what happens inside of my mind. It also helps that I have a psychiatric history going back to childhood.

Today the world seems a little more real but I feel watched. I know that I am not but it doesn't stop the feeling. A lot of people do not realise with mental illness that even though you may know that something isn't real it doesn't stop the emotions, you feel everything as if it was. I will feel better when my partner is home tomorrow morning, I miss laughing with him. We laugh a lot, we share the same sense of humour. I just have to make it through this evening and tonight and then Tuesday's appointment and things will feel more even again. And I will do, I owe it to people and that includes everyone who replied here, you all took time to be there for me so I can't let you down now.

Tahlullah

Hello WaS, thanks for the reply. I was hoping was well with you. So, just until tomorrow morning, and then your partner will be back. So, do you sleep well or are you kept up at night? And if you do, what time do you normally go to bed? You were up late last night? Is that normal?

The people in your head who have been there since childhood, do they all have names? Do you discuss what they do during the day with your partner?

Thanks for answering.

toniq

This is a youtube rain sounds, 8hr compilation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPodpYu_Ruo&safe=active, you could always click it on and leave it running, Another day closer to hubby being home! x

Waves_and_Smiles

Sleep is a tricky one. I tend to sleep at dawn because I find comfort in the sun coming up. It takes me at least 2 hours to fall asleep as I have intrusive thoughts, I remember my past and every wrong I think that I have ever done to someone and it all replays repeatedly and I feel guilt, shame and regret. Not that I have ever done anything majorly bad, it is little things like perhaps being abrupt with a friend that make me feel like the worse person on earth. I have always tried to be as kind as I can.

The people in the house do have names and entire personalities. Cas and Carly have been with me since I was a small child and look after me in a way. If I am scared they will reassure me and be calming and rational. There are children too, Lucee is 6 and the one I am closest to (she told me to spell her name that way) and she was also abused so I try to comfort her. Also there are a few bad ones who agree with my mother that I am the Devils spawn and that I should hurt myself for all the pain that I have caused to others. I do know most of the time that these people are just reflections of me but sometimes they feel more real than real life people. It feels a little like living in two worlds and both can be as equally real to me. My partner knows that they are there but we don't discuss them much. I try not to mention my bad days as he has seen me at my worse and is terrified of it happening again so will become angry and defensive. I know that he isn't angry with me, he is angry and scared that this is happening to someone he loves and as he has said many times he doesn't know what to do to fix it. It upsets me a lot and I feel sad for him, he would do anything to help me have a 'normal' life.

jaylee3

Can't add anything to what's already been said 'worried and scared,' but I hope you'll feel better soon.

Waves_and_Smiles

Thank you for the rain sounds, I think that will help me a lot. There is something so calming about rain, I do not find it depressing like a lot of people. I find it cleansing, washing away the bad and starting afresh.

Thank you Jaylee, I will feel better. Sometimes I just need to know that people in this world can hear me, it becomes very scary when the inside world feels more real than this one. I am much better when people are with me. My carer is trained in psychiatric illnesses and will sometimes just let me touch the tip of my finger to hers, that is all I need for this world to feel real again. She also brings her dog to visit me, I adore all animals and being around them lifts my mood so much.

Tahlullah

It is interesting that Carly, Lucee and Cas are manifestations of you, your different personalities. I guess this is the schizophrenia. In worst cases, the multiple personalities manifest themselves within the individual, and you may not know who you are speaking to without asking, and then asking if you can speak to the owner of the body. I hope you unerstand what I mean even if my language is off.

And so, that is why the doctors feel you are ok to be at home, because they are not taking you over, you are still in control.

It is good that you have positive friends as well as friends who wish to do you harm, at least they help to balance the war within you. I assume you medication cannot help you to ask them to leave. But I also guess having Carly, Cas and Lucee there is something you would find difficult to live without? If you could stop all the voices, would you choose to do so, or would you prefer to be selective?

And on an ordinary day, what sort of things do you all do together, when you go into their world? And one more question, do you worry that one day you will go there and forget how to find your way back?

Tx

Waves_and_Smiles

I have been diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder before Schizophrenia. A specialist told me that the jury is out on defining one from another depending on which psychiatrist you speak to, also it is common to have both and for them to overlap. I have been referred twice to a clinic specialising in MPD but they have advised that because I have a collection of other psychiatric disorders that it it is too dangerous to try and treat it because it can trigger another condition so all of the specialists (there were 13 once all at a case conference together with me, I was terrified!) agreed on maintenance rather than trying to eliminate anything.

I wouldn't want the inside world to disappear, I have no idea how to live without it, I think that I would feel desperately lonely. My earliest memories are of talking to the people inside of my mind and I am reliant on them. I could do with the bad ones who taunt me leaving but they are part and parcel of it so if I want the ones whom I consider to be my friends they have to come too. I was lucky enough to be given a brand new type of therapy at the time to learn to communicate with the others so I have mostly what they call co-consciousness but there are still voices who are unfamiliar to me. To me this is natural as it is for other people not to have them.

Those inside have more interests than I do, some paint, some write poetry. We talk a lot about our pasts (theirs are often different to mine) and we walk in the woods and look at nature together. If the bad ones are around we cannot do that however and will all snuggle together until they go away.

Yes, I have only been voluntarily sectioned for a month at the longest because I mostly see the others as reflections of me so they do not control me. Also being in hospital is very bad for me because I know I am cared for and feel myself slip inside which leads to catatonia. It is far too easy for me to live in the house and forget this world which terrifies me because I am scared that one day I will be unable to find my way back. Thank you for speaking to me, connecting with this world helps me feel more real.

ETA You mentioned others taking over. That happened when I was 13. I remember being in the car going to my fathers funeral and then suddenly I was sitting on my bed and just knew that I wanted to die. I slashed my wrists but then wondered why I had done so and why I wasn't in the car and why was it night time? I ran to a police station as for some reason I thought that I had been kidnapped and they took me to a children's psychiatric unit and that was when suddenly my life was awash with social workers and therapists. I discovered I had lost 9 months of my memory and I have never got it back but was apparently still functioning. I just wasn't me for that period. My mother had kept me off of school and was too ill herself to describe what had gone on so no one including me ever found out. Nowadays a child wouldn't be left for so long without attending school but 33 years ago authorities didn't check so much. I do wonder what they would have found...

It makes me very sad because I loved my dad so very much and I wish that I could remember when I said goodbye. Psychiatrists have told me that one of the people inside holds the memory but I was likely so distressed and sad that I will never remember.

whitewing

I am really pleased to have stumbled across this thread. I love the rain too and also listen to the youtube ones.

Waves_and_Smiles

The rain is wonderful, it washes away everything that is stagnant and bad and enables new life to grow in its place. I have always found the sounds of it incredibly soothing, often rain is the only thing that enables me to sleep soundly.