Here we can all be heard for a little while. Part 3

mellymoo74

Helllooooo Calley are you okay?

System

Can't reply individually as im on my phone (and it hates multi quoting) but thank you so much. It helps to know
I'm not alone. Swain has tried talking sense into me and reassuring me and ive not been in as much of a blind panic today. I'm still worried but I realise I also have a habit of castrophizing everything im booking a doctors appointment so I can ask for more support and ive emailed 2 local mental health charities to see if they can give me any extra advice. It scares me when my thoughts spiral out of control. but I'm tryong to keep it together. It's my cousins wedding tomorrow so shall try and put all this to the back of my head until after tomorrow. Not particularly looking forward to getting told how fat I am (what can I say my Grandma doesn't mince her words) but it's only for a few hours then it's done. My mum has told me she's going to get told the same so at least we have each other.

Feeling mentally drained and also seem
to have a full on cough/cold which is making me feel crap.

I promise I shall try and post more. I used to go On another forum but didn't post all the time in one thread but used to post sometimes and I got told to not bother posting for help if I wasn't contributing and Id hate any of you to think that of me

Torry_Quine

Hope it goes well tomorrow MU. Post here when it is right for you, whether often or seldom we all just want to support you. Hogs.

elsien

xXMessedUpXx wrote: »

I promise I shall try and post more. I used to go On another forum but didn't post all the time in one thread but used to post sometimes and I got told to not bother posting for help if I wasn't contributing and Id hate any of you to think that of me

No-one would ever say that to anyone on here, anyone who posts does because they want to, not because they feel they should. And you do contribute - both about mental health but also with your fabulous hair colours.

Glad you're feeling a little better and have some plans for next week to try to move things on a bit - one step at a time. There's nothing else you can do over the bank holiday so your plan to take your mind off things is a good one.
I think there's a lot of colds and lurgies floating around at the moment which seem to linger. Try and get a good nights' sleep and be kind to yourself.

(ETA - what it is about grans? Mine loved me but still used to regularly call me a !!!!!. Which I found very offensive. I think in the end I told her how hurtful it was and she stopped. )

Waves_and_Smiles

MU, you never have to feel you should post, no one should feel that here. Spiraling thoughts are horrid, that happens to me a lot and I do understand. Keep talking to Swain and us if we can help and I think it is very brave and a great idea to ask for more support right now. Hang in there and have a hug.

Hahahaha Tomcat is a brave little one, Melly!

I seem to be having a problem with the catatonic schizophrenia. It is possibly due to withdrawal because we did a final, big reduction to get my medication back to manageable but it is weird and annoying and I want it to stop. I might write a post explaining it later as I don't think I ever spoke about these symptoms because I rarely get them but for now I need to lie in a strange position with my arm raised and stare at the wall for hours because my brain is sludge.

elsien

May I just say WaS that if that's your brain being sludgy it's more articulate than some of us on a good day.
If you do want to post about it some time in the future, it would be interesting to hear. Is it another one where you just have to wait for the meds to take effect?

Waves_and_Smiles

Hahaha! thank you, elsien! It is much easier to type than speak, the words are perfectly there in my head but when this happens sometimes odd words come out of my mouth and I have no idea why I say what I do. In this case I think it's withdrawal from a higher dose of medication so rather than put it back up I am hoping to muddle through. It is happening in bursts so I am relatively ok inbetween, although all of my senses are very exaggerated - sounds are just horrible, light is too bright, any smell is making me feel sick. It causes odd motor activity in my limbs and then I get stuck in an odd position. I will write a post about it when it calms down a bit.

Waves_and_Smiles

As I am not going to sleep with this I might as well write about it on and off between positions. Rather than my usual wall of text I will split it into categories. I now feel like a psychology lecturer. :rotfl:

What it is - A symptom of Catatonic Schizophrenia that causes mostly uncontrollable, repeated, physical impulses which are officially called Posturing. No one is quite sure why it happens but it has recently been said that it is possibly a misfire of communication neurons. Your brain tells you to do something that isn't needed, it gets the message wrong and then locks up once you do so because the impulse should never have happened. The impulse then continues to randomly fire. Might be true, might not be.

What happens when it triggers - I always have this to an extent but there are times when it flares up into something worse. I will suddenly sit or stand in an odd position, I may say a word and then I will become silently locked in that position for a while, not moving and not speaking. It will then stop and I will return to what I was doing as if I had never stopped but might suddenly move my body into the same odd position or a new one and freeze on the spot again. This can happen once or twice or every 10 minutes. Sometimes I will hold the position for a few seconds, sometimes for 20 minutes.

What the impulse feels like - This is a hard one to explain so I am going to use three examples which are close and hopefully most people can relate to one. If you have ever been addicted to anything and then had the cause of your addiction taken away it fills your every thought and you crave it. That is how it feels to me when I feel the impulse. It becomes all consuming to do it no matter where I am or what I am doing, I feel that I HAVE to do this. Another example is for people who have restless legs. You know that feeling when your body is screaming at you to move your legs? That incredible urge to change position? It also feels like that. The last example is when you feel unwell and you cannot get comfortable. When your skin is crawling and you are tossing and turning and you have to keep moving. Imagine if you forced yourself to lie very still while you felt that and didn't move? Imagine how uncomfortable you would feel? It also feels like that. Now imagine all three examples hitting you at once, physically, emotionally and mentally and telling you that you MUST do this? That is how I feel when this happens.

How it feels to move into a position - It is like flicking a switch. All of the above three examples immediately stop. In my mind I see an endless pitch black darkness. There is no feeling or thought there, it isn't scary because there is no emotion either. I have no sense of time passing, I just stare into the darkness and everything switches off. My body stiffens into position and I am told it is impossible to bend my limbs or talk to me, I just don't hear it. I also don't feel touch or see anything but the black void. What is slightly scary is I like the void, I worry sometimes that I will not want to come back and find a way to stay.

What happens afterwards - I will suddenly move again and go back to what I was doing before as if I never stopped. I can carry on exactly where I left off even though 20 minutes may have passed. I know I have been in the void but have no idea how long for. Then it may stop there or might happen again 10 minutes later, it is completely random. It usually lasts for a day or so and then doesn't happen to this extent again until something else triggers it such as stress or a medication change. Anxiety is a huge trigger.

Daily life with the reduced version - This is very hard to write because I find it very embarrassing but I shall be honest as always (Eeep!). It happens to an extent regularly everyday but in a much milder version that I do have an element of control over. I repeat movements and often phrases for no more than a minute at a time throughout the day. For a few years I would say "Lalalala" and stretch my leg out. This then turned into loudly saying "Boing" and staring at the ceiling. Another was holding my arms rigidly out in front of me and clapping my hands together and then locking myself into that position. These days I stretch my arm to the ceiling and say "Superman!" and hold it there for a minute or two. You may laugh, I know it's ludicrous. I would say these impulses happen anything from 10 to 20 times a day. The same feelings as in the example above are there but there is no void, I am still in this world, I just HAVE to do it and hold the position, remain stiff and remain silent.

On the above note I can stop it for a few hours if I wish to. I will become very anxious, very panicky, my body will feel like it's on fire and I will have to physically pin myself in place. I will feel dizzy, sweat and will develop a bad headache if I wait too long but I can put it off. It does make me feel very unwell however so normally I just do it as WaSp is quite used to it and doesn't really notice anymore. If I am in public eventually I will have to at least hide in the bathroom and do it because it becomes unbearable.

An interesting point is when a new movement and sound takes over the old ones no longer mean anything to me. I have no desire to repeat them at all. Eventually the current one will change and I will never want to do it again.

Posturing does give one high care needs because for example, the last thing one needs to happen is to be cooking something and then they disappear into the blackness for 20 minutes while the house burns down. For this reason I will not have a shower or even make toast without WaSp being with me or undertake anything potentially dangerous. It is also possible to harm oneself physically whilst in an odd position or at least develop very bad cramp immediately afterwards. Incontinence is another possibility which I have suffered with myself because there is no bodily sensation to hold on or go, there is no bodily sensation at the time of the posture at all.

Hope that was at least interesting and not too boring. There are loads of papers available online about it, all coming to different conclusions about why it might happen but very little about how it feels because sadly people are often too unwell to describe it so I can only tell you how it is for me. There is also a huge stigma for sufferers to talk about something that appears so odd, other people I have met with the condition have had very low self-esteem and have felt very embarrassed, frightened and confused by it. They already know that they are viewed as strange and prefer not discuss it. The only treatment found so far is antipsychotic medication and then it just takes the edge off it for a lot of people and relapse is common. Many people with Catatonic Schizophrenia remain in long stay hospitals.

Now I have thoroughly embarrassed myself I shall hide. :rotfl:

Pyxis

No need to hide, WaS, that was very interesting.

Now, was that the condition that Silas Marner had? ("Silas Marner" written by George Eliot).

Many years ago it was dramatised on TV, and I remember he was depicted as having a condition where he would just freeze, and go unconscious but not collapse, for a length of time. Given that the novel was written in the mid-19th century, that was an interesting condition to give the protagonist!


Edit......Yes! Just been looking up Silas Marner, and it would appear that he had 'cataleptic fits' which are just as you describe, and it said that can be a side effect of certain anti-psychotics.
You can see the whole dramatisation, televised in 1985, on YouTube. (1hr30mins).
I remember that I really enjoyed it at the time! I'll watch it myself, later on today!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q7THUBwEJus

Penguin about the programme, if you're wondering whether it has triggers. It's only penguined so that there are no spoilers about the story and the ending, etc!
It all has a happy ending. The nasty people who wrong Silas get their just desserts, and although Silas' life is unhappy for many years, he does find happiness in the end! From memory, I don't think there is anything in it that should stop anyone watching it!end penguin.




MessedUp, very glad to hear you're ok. I hope you will have a good time at the wedding and a good Easter break with Swain. xxx

Waves_and_Smiles

It is described as catalepsy in the book which is now thought to either be a form of epilepsy or indeed catatonic episodes from schizophrenia. Catatonic schizophrenic certainly isn't a new condition, there is literature from 200 years ago that mentions individuals who hear voices and move into a state of catalepsy. Unfortunately it was often seen as a sign of being possessed back then so many of these poor people were locked away as dangerous and rarely offered any treatment.