Just needed to be heard for a little while

whitewing

I like those wave piccies. Now you have an illustrated autobiography, WaS.

Yesterday, DD and I went out to a village fete. We had such a good time and the sun obliged by peeping out behind the clouds. I thought of you and how much I would love you to have more fresh air and sunshine in your life.

Do people hear voices saying nice things? On the mind website (I think), it said that 1 in 10 people hear voices at some point. That got me wondering what the difference is between 'hearing voices' and simply thinking.

Waves_and_Smiles

Thank you for all of the lovely comments and the waves! I am still grinning from ear to ear everytime I see my username, it really has made me so much happier.

I am currently staring at a cranefly/daddy long legs/flying spider thing. Now, I am nervous of these but I will not kill anything no matter what. If there is something that I am nervous of it can quickly get incorporated into hallucinations so somehow I need to get brave enough to put a glass over it and release it. Sadly my MIL had a fall yesterday, she was out with my BIL who was drunk, he staggered and pulled her over. The less I say about that the better, really as I will only make myself feel guilty for being mean about another person but suffice to say it was 11am in the morning, unbelievable. So my partner is staying with her today and my carer isn't due so I am on my own dealing with this. I also need to make sure that I don't trigger myself as I am alone until tomorrow morning.

Fortunately, my partner left me a flask of coffee so I am drinking that and looking at angles of approach...

Aw, so sweet that you thought of me, whitewing. As silly as it sounds I ask people to think of me when they visit places because then I am there a little bit. Daft, I know.

The disembodied voices don't say nice things but the inner voices are almost always nice. The latter are very sweet and comforting and will sometimes tell me to ignore the bad voices and oppose what they are saying.

The difference between hallucinating and thinking is a bit hard to describe but I'll try. In the case of the bad voices they sound just like someone talking to you who is sitting next to you, the voices are heard through your ears as if it is real life. When they shout you want to cover your ears because the sound comes from outside of you. The inner voices are a little more complicated. You know how you remember a conversation and you hear the people saying what they said inside your mind? Well, it is the same as that but you aren't recalling a memory, you don't know what the voices will say. Try recalling a conversation and picture it in your mind and hear the conversation. Now imagine that but you don't know what is going to be said or what the other person is going to do because it is not a memory. You also don't chose when the images and sounds occur, they can happen anytime without your control in both cases. Does that help?

Hearing voices is a lot more common than people think, it is just kept hidden. It can happen for a variety of reasons. Another of my diagnoses is depression psychosis which means even when schizophrenia is under control if I am severely depressed my brain chemicals misfire so I still hear voices. These are different however, and sound like crowd noise. Also depending if you class the inner voices as 'hearing them' (they come from inside my mind), then that is as a result of severe PTSD and not a psychiatric illness, MPD is a coping strategy used by small children to survive and not any form of illness, in fact is the mind trying to keep itself well and able to live. Even being exhausted can make you hear voices and hallucinate, sometimes if my partner has been dashing between me and my MIL with no sleep for 48 hours he will hear things and he has no mental illness at all, he just desperately needs sleep.

My symptoms are almost certainly biochemical so MPD aside it is an actual illness, my chemicals misfire in my brain and become active when they shouldn't be. I had an EEG which was abnormal, certain parts of my brain are shown as busy at the times when they should be dormant so something doesn't work right. Interestingly, latest research is looking at cases like mine as being a form of brain damage before birth which if it is proved will put an entirely different slant on it. The theory is part of the brain is created with bits not functioning normally so with our body being such a resourceful thing other areas take over to compensate which causes 'side effects'. Unfortunately it can't be seen until after death but there is a difference in the formation of some schizophrenics brains, there is loads on the internet about it. That is just one of the possible reasons why it can happen though.

I have requested that my own body is left to research so that hopefully I can help out with some of the studies. However, very little money is given to mental health research so these things take many years and in the meantime pharmaceutical companies make lots of money creating drugs that are half-efficient and give very little, if any of their vast profits over to discovering what is really happening (mental health is a huge market for them so why would they want things changed?). To give you an idea I take a pill that costs £12 for each one, there is a lot of money in manufacturing these drugs. I know this because my GP felt the need to point it out and plead with me not to lose them, it is a well known anti-depressant but a pure version without the chemical carriers which seem to be what my body has problems with. So it is double the price for less ingredients, now times that by a few million and you get the idea. But enough about that, it is a whole different topic...

dibuzz, are you ok? Sleeping I hope!

dibuzz

Hi WaS, glad the name change has had such a good effect.
I went to bed at 8.30pm last night but was still awake at 6 am after only having 2 hours the night before so I'm sort off walking round in a daze at the moment.
I can barely stay awake but can't sleep.

Waves_and_Smiles

Awww, dibuzz my heart goes out to you, this has to be horrid! Maybe try to nap later? Is the new medication increase helping at all? I know it is early days yet but you deserve a break...

dibuzz

I think the increase has made me sleep less

Waves_and_Smiles

That can happen, they tried one with me and I couldn't sleep at all, although I react oddly to drugs and one I take now which I am meant to take in the morning as it will wake me up makes me extremely drowsy so I take it before bed.

Do discuss it with your GP, there are lots of alternatives out there and you can't go on like this, nevermind mentally this is going to make you physically ill.

Waves_and_Smiles

Hello Duke! Poor Harry, I thought of him when that case hit the news and wondered if it would affect him badly. At least his sleep pattern is improving. You may have noticed that mine is all over the place which is common with psychotic illness, he has my total sympathy. I don't know if it would help Harry to know this but the way it was explained to me is that during psychosis my mind is partially in a dream-state so I am slightly sleeping whilst being awake, this means when I do try to sleep my brain says nope! already done that! and nothing happens. Keep in mind what I said about a switch that turns dreams off when you are awake and defines between the two. In my case ( and in the case of a lot of psychosis) that switch is broken so you never quite lose the dream-state, it completely confuses the body of when it is time to sleep.

I love questions, it stops me feeling so self-indulgent when I post. If I feel like I am useful to someone I don't feel as attention-seeking-ish (I just invented that word).

whitewing

No, I am not doing a case study. I have mh problems myself that are gradually getting better with the support of my husband, and come from a family who refuse to believe that mh issues exist. In fact my grandmother, an otherwise absolutely wonderful lady, actually said, 'You never had post natal depression in my day'. I am of the belief that a lot of it is biochemistry so WaS is on my wavelength (seems appropriate wording). I am therefore continually fascinated by how unnecessary a lot of my suffering was and, as much as I can in an unsympathetic world, will try to help alleviate someone else's suffering. I did not realise until my mid 30's that other people did not feel, think and respond like me. I am happy to be unique but unique and happy not unique and depressed! I too am leaving my body to medical research. I particularly want to ensure as much as I can that if there is a genetic susceptibility to certain traits and conditions (post natal depression, for example and anxiety) that my DD is as informed as she can be so that people who love her can recognise issues earlier before they turn into complex problems.

In real life, few people know the extent. I long for a day when I can actually say, 'This is me, and this is what it's actually like' but I think that day is decades off still. I told DH that I want him to mention it in my obituary eventually. I don't know if he will though because of the children.

I think WaS and I have enough in common that it makes me care, but enough differences that it makes me curious because it isn't my kind of 'normal'. If that makes sense. As a child, I was curious as well as very ill. As an adult, life was just hard a lot of the time. As a married lady, I now have the love and security that I have always craved and I think this year a child-like enthusiasm for life is sparking into place. For the first time ever, I have having weeks at a time without having a suicidal thought and that is quite amazing. Earlier this year I heard a talk by a young woman who worked as a research scientist for a drug firm abroad. She said that her future was trying to develop drugs for mh conditions so that people could be the people that 'they were meant to be'. That has inspired me, but also the thought that however many brilliant treatments there are if we can't recognise that a person is suffering then they aren't going to be treated.

I also find the dehoarding thread fascinating, again because of the patterns of behaviour that I recognise in myself.

Waves_and_Smiles

I am so glad things are improving for you whitewing. There is still a lot of prejudice out there towards mental illness, mostly born out of fear especially in the case of the psychoses. I have never divulged that I am schizophrenic to anyone in real life apart from my 3 trusted people and the medical profession because so many people immediately believe it makes you dangerous. I am the least dangerous person I have ever known, I am terrified of hurting anyone or anything physically or emotionally (I am still staring at the cranefly). But while there is still the stigma I just don't feel comfortable in speaking about it.

Ha! Hoarding, what you would like to know? I am a hoarder, so much so that my previous house was declared unfit to live in by environmental health and they put me in hospital while they cleaned it up. I have it a lot more under control now but it is very difficult and I absolutely hate throwing anything away, even useless things.

whitewing

One day I am going back to the beginning of this thread to read it all again. I don't always remember all of it.

How did you meet your partner, WaS?

Did your MIL go to hospital after her fall? I was wondering if that would trigger some additional help for you all. It is concerning that your DH is driving sometimes on a lack of sleep. I appreciate that he feels he has no choice but it is very dangerous.

Yes, I don't know anyone who is schizophrenic in real life. In fact, I can't even think of a female that I know of who has it.