Here we can all be heard for a little while. Part 2

tea_lover

WaS, thank you so much for posting, even when you don't really feel like it. From a 'scientific' point of view it is fascinating to find out more about these issues from a first hand perspective. Of course, from a friend point of view I wish you didn't have to experience this, it must be incredibly tiring. For all I think human brains are amazing... they badly need an off/reset switch at times!

ETA; elsien - we are definitely thinking the same here! x

Wellyboots6

Keep going WaS, you are doing fine

Waves_and_Smiles

Aw, thank you. That means a huge amount right now and feeling useful helps counteract the patheticness. What isn't spoken about ( because the people with psychosis can't) is a huge amount of the paranoia is based on being 'found out'. Whether that's as a failure, a fraud, pathetic, useless or anything else negative. The psychotic person won't discuss it because they think they will be hated so they keep it to themselves and because it's relentless it just keeps spiralling. If you don't have coping strategies this thinking can make you get worse very quickly which then increases the feeling that no one must find out and before you know it you are extremely unwell and totally isolated. People with psychosis keep an amazing amount of their thought processes to themselves out of sheer terror. There are so many tiny, everyday things that trigger paranoia as well as the more well-known issues.

Like I said I get paranoid over too many comma's right now, it can be the smallest thing that triggers it that no one else would notice. I just had a slice of toast and I carefully fluffed up the margarine to cover the bit I had taken and tried to make the bread look unopened because I don't want WaSp to think I have eaten without him and left him out, it feels selfish and like he might be angry. WaSp wouldn't care in the slightest but that is how paranoid I am right now of anyone thinking badly of me and I won't risk it just in case. Luckily, being high functioning I can stand back from it and think nope! that's a psychotic thought which at least grounds me a little. Sadly, a lot of people can't do that and live with this paranoia eating away at them all the time, terrified to interact with anyone and something as small as having a slice of toast can trigger it. It would be laughable if it wasn't so exhausting.

tea_lover

If it's any consolation WaS, I don't know a single person that doesn't worry about being 'found out' to some extent. I think we all feel like we're winging it and everyone else has a better idea of what's going on - whether that's at work, at being a parent, with friends. I think it's human nature to think everyone else has got it sorted and you're just clinging on until someone notices you don't know what you're doing.

Not that that is meant in anyway to belittle your own experiences of course. Obviously the conditions you're dealing with bring their own difficulties! Just think it's interesting that underneath it all, I reckon most of us feel like a fraud and/or failure to some extent, at least some of the time.

Waves_and_Smiles

That's very true, tea. Thank you, that does help! Sometimes I feel like I am utterly strange and isolated from how everyone else thinks and it feels very lonely. It does help to be reminded that although my thoughts my be a little extreme, they aren't that different to everyone else's. Yay! I am still part of the human race even if I'm slightly odd.

Pyxis

WaS, I know you've had CBT in the past and found it useful. It sounds like it might be useful in this sort of scenario.
Would that be an idea? I know you know all about it etc., but sometimes having another person 'lead' the thought train. Might speed things up?

As for commas, I haven't noticed a surfeit of commas!
Sometimes I put some in when technically they aren't needed, because I think it makes the text clearer. Sometimes that little pause in the sentence highlights something, or divides one thought from another.

elsien wrote: »

, so I am now feeling obliged to get cross with your brain for telling you that on all our behalfs. (Behalves? - the grammar experts might need to help me out here.)

Behalf doesn't have a plural.
My behalf, our behalf - it's the same!

Pyxis

And I'm pretty sure that all of us on here feel constantly pathetic.
I feel pathetic because I can be such a wimp sometimes. I've put loads of weight back on because of being so inactive due to illnesses and the horrid family stuff and the really scary things, plus stuffing my face with all manner of calorific things, plus not having done the 5:2 for quite a few weeks due to the horrid family stuff/illnesses/ etc etc , round and round and round.

And while I was working, in both my careers, I constantly felt like I was total rubbish and would soon be found out.
Even in AmDram, while I know I'm not one of the best, there's always the thought that the others will think I'm rubbish and shouldn't be there!


So although your thoughts might be more extreme, we all understand, we really do!

Waves_and_Smiles

I am using the CBT I know now Pyxis, it's pretty much how I am keep to grips to it. No more therapy is recommended for me because there is too much risk of triggering a condition whilst trying to fix another but I have had 5 years CBT so can pretty much do it for myself.

Logically, the paranoid thoughts are just an extreme of everyone's insecure thoughts. The difference with these are that they spiral one after another and are triggered by the smallest of things. It does help me to remember that everyone feels like this, sometimes the isolated feelings are some of the worse parts of it. It gives me an awful lot of comfort to know that I still fit in even if loosely.

tea_lover

Fit in?! You're our hub! x

benrben

I know I'm a newbie to the thread, but thank you so much for posting that WaS (hope you don't mind me being familiar), so much of what you say resonates with me almost to the point where at my lowest times we could have been twins. So brave & kind of you to share, I would never have had the courage to post as you have done.
You're remark about your use of comma's remind me of a period of time where I struggled with pencils, I was studying part time at college, everyone else seemed to fly through the course with ease, my brain decided I struggled because my pencils were not sharp enough, nothing seemed to make them pointed enough, it got to the point (no pun intended) that I was using stanley knives, cut my fingers to ribbons I took them so low, I think that's when family/friends realised just how bad everything was.
Anyway, that's the first time I've shared that story with people outside my comfort zone, so you have inspired me to be a little bit braver.
My son reminded me last night of something he used to say to people about my mh problems growing up, he was/is a huge Lord of the Rings fan ( well we both are ), when people questioned him about my "weird" behaviour, he would say to them, "my mum battles her personal orcs every day, sometimes she wins, sometimes she retreats, but she never loses & ultimately she will win the war".
I've taken great comfort from his words again.