Sam the Psycho January 3, 2013
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Delusions, Hallucinations, Hearing Voices.Tags: Delusions, Hallucinations, Insanity
1 comment so far
Walking into the mental illness support group, I was surprised to see two teenage boys sitting side by side in our small circle of chairs. Very few young people came to our support group.
It was clear from Sam’s glassy and brilliant eyes that he was the one with the mental illness, and that his friend, Carl, had simply been the means of Sam’s transportation to the meeting. Later on, we learned that Sam’s mom had actually talked Carl into bringing Sam here. I surmise that Sam wouldn’t get in the car with his mom. Or vice-versa.
When Sam’s turn came to share, he said he was getting more violent against his mom, and that he was having trouble with his relationship with her. His principal complaint was that she didn’t agree with his religious views.
He claimed that he and God were buddies. He also claimed to be possessed by the devil and demons. He said he was routinely roused from sleep by the demons’ violence against him. They punched him and pushed him and yanked his hair while he tried to sleep. Oh yeah: and he said he wasn’t mentally ill. He was just possessed.
Initially, he and his friend sat quietly listening to the three of us share our stories. But as time progressed, Sam was increasingly claimed by his invisible friends. Talking and laughing with them, he faded in and out of our reality.
Sam said he had been taking two anti-psychotics for 2 months. Based on his severe delusions and his statement that he wasn’t mentally ill, I seriously doubt that he was taking his meds at all. His friend said that Sam hadn’t been back to his psychiatrist since he had been given the anti-psychotics. I suspect that was by choice.
Leaving the meeting, I realized the danger Sam’s mother was in. I hoped she had a lock on her door. After all, her teenage son, known to be very angry with her, roamed around the house believing that he was alternately God’s best friend or possessed by the devil and demons. It isn’t a stretch to imagine him slipping into her room at night and slitting her throat or stabbing her as she lay sleeping, convinced that the devil and demons- and maybe God- had directed him to do it. She would be just another dead mother whose soon should have been committed to a mental hospital before he murdered her.
Chenille: Reality Check Service Dog December 16, 2012
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Delusions, Hallucinations, mental illness, Uncategorized.Tags: Delusions, Hallucinations, Hearing Voices
3 comments
I met the cutest service animal the other day at a mental illness support group. She’s a friendly, bouncy Chihuahua named Chenille. I never thought about using a service animal for help with mental illness symptoms, but that’s exactly what she is. She is a reality checker for her master.
As with many people suffering from mental illness, her master’s symptoms include hallucinating. He sees people and things that aren’t there and hears things that aren’t there. Her job is to help him determine what is real and what isn’t.
For example, if there’s someone suddenly sitting in a chair in his living room that he’s never seen before, if she barks he knows it’s a real person. If she doesn’t react, then he’s seeing someone who isn’t really there. The same goes with noises. Dogs are sound-sensitive, and if there’s a lot of racket or unexplained noise, the dog will react to it. If someone calls his name from another room (and he thinks he’s alone in the house), and she doesn’t react, he knows he is hearing things that aren’t there.
What a relief it is to be able to tell reality from fantasy by using the unbiased opinion of a dog.
People not suffering from mental illness take for granted their ability to tell reality from fantasy every waking moment. They can’t appreciate what a gift it is not to have to questions whether what they see or hear is real. If the average person sees someone new sitting in their living room, he doesn’t even have to wonder whether that person is really there. But for people with certain forms of a mental illness, they can’t depend on their eyes to know whether that person is real. It is challenging to live in a world where your mind plays tricks on you. You need help detecting reality. Who better than a dog to do that for you?
Imagine hearing a loud noise coming from the bedroom. Or hearing someone call your name from the room next door that you thought was empty. There’s no one else with you in the house. Or is there? What would it be like not knowing the answer to that question on a regular basis? A dog can be a lifesaver.
People who use the “reality challenged” phrase in jest might want to reconsider whether that term is appropriate, given the fact that certain people are living the embodiment of the true meaning of that phrase. In order to leave a semblance of a normal life, they need a way to tell whether their perceived reality is real.
During the height of my psychotic break with reality, I met someone at a Starbucks for coffee who was probably not real. He was a green-skinned merman who I thought was my long-lost son from 500 years ago. Long story. But the point is that person was as real to me as anyone I have ever met. I sat across a table and had coffee with him for several hours. Now at this juncture of my life, I realize I was probably one of those people you see who are sitting there in a restaurant talking to someone who isn’t there. Imagine going through this every single day of your life. You need an outside, unbiased source to tell you whether that green-skinned merman sitting across from you having coffee is real. For my part, it never dawned on me that it could be anything but real. But what if it wasn’t?
This use of a service animal is a clever and fascinating way to help people manage the symptoms of certain mental illnesses. This is the first time I have ever heard of this use. I wonder if more people could be helped by these service animals.
Here We Go Again: Reducing Mental Hospital Beds August 19, 2012
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Delusions, Mental Hospital, mental illness, Schizophrenia, Uncategorized.Tags: Delusions, Hallucinations, Mental Hospitals, mental illness, Schizophrenia
1 comment so far
Here we go again: more psychiatric hospital beds are disappearing in Washington State. How do I know? Not from anything in the news. It’s because I got a phone call from a 75 year old woman whose 54 year old schizophrenic son is being released from Western State Hospital. She called because she was desperate to find housing and help for her son before he is released, which will be soon. She explained that she is an old lady and can barely care for herself, much less her son, who has been at Western for many years.
At Western, he has case managers and people who make sure he takes his medication as well as living support. He never learned how to shop or care for himself because his symptoms were so severe that they required him to be permanently hospitalized. I’m guessing that even with proper medication, he isn’t symptom-free or he would have been released years ago. Even with proper medication, delusions and hearing voices is fairly common in hard-to-treat cases like his. Once out of that protective environment of the hospital, she is concerned that when he stops taking his medication, his symptoms will increase and he will become unmanageable. She is looking for housing for him that will also provide help in adjusting to life on the outside. And she doesn’t have much time.
This situation is tragic. They’re taking a man who has spent most of his life in an institution getting the help and support he needs in order to function, and throwing him outside to fend for himself. Had there been any adjustment support for him, she wouldn’t be so desperate. Programs like those he needs are overfull. He won’t be able to get into those programs for years because they’re at or over capacity right now. And with the State releasing more people like this man, more people will fall through the cracks. The State hasn’t funded stop-gap programs for people like him. There simply isn’t anywhere he can go. Who knows what will ultimately happen to this man?
Although I understand the need to balance the State budget, balancing it on the backs of the more vulnerable population is unconscionable.
Contrary to popular opinion, 99.9 percent of people housed in institutions like this aren’t dangerous when released. So we shouldn’t be afraid of him. In fact, statistically they are the ones who are more likely to be assaulted and victimized because they’re not equipped to survive outside their institution. Turning a man out who has been taken care of most of his life will not make his quality of life improve. In fact, the type of living situation that he was in had allowed him to have his “home base” at the hospital, able to freely come and go at will. The point of the hospitalization was to keep him taking his medication allowing him to live with and manage his schizophrenic symptoms. If he is left to his own devices at this late stage of his life, he will likely discontinue taking his medication, which will mean the symptoms of his illness, barely contained anyway, will return in a big way. I’m not saying he will be a danger to others. I’m just saying that hearing voices and other negative symptoms will likely return in a big way without proper medication and supervision. Clearly, his case must be particularly difficult because had he had an “easy” case, he would have been released years ago. He’s there because that’s where he needs to be.
His institutionalization is very different from involuntary commitment, so his release shouldn’t scare anyone from the standpoint of him being a threat. Far from it. He is allowed to come and go at will, but his base is always at Western State Hospital. He goes on outings and to visit his parents, but he never stays there for any length of time. He always has to return to Western so they can give him the care he needs. He hasn’t gone grocery shopping or done the dishes or any number of things we are all used to doing in order to survive. If left to his own devices without any education in performing these relatively easy tasks, he will risk his well-being to the point of being dangerous. Just turning him loose out into the world will be a hardship. His 75 year old mother won’t be much help, and because of his symptoms he can’t live with her- especially once he’s off his medication.
They say the mark of a civilization isn’t how they treat their rich. It’s how they treat their poor and vulnerable population. And from the way this gentleman is about to be treated, it’s clear that we’re not exactly the best civilization in the world.
Sam the Psycho July 8, 2012
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Delusions, Hallucinations, Hearing Voices, Insanity.Tags: Delusions, Hallucinations, Hearing Voices, Insanity
1 comment so far
Walking into the mental illness support group, I was surprised to see two teenage boys sitting side by side in our small circle of chairs. Very few young people come to support groups.
It was clear from Sam’s glassy and brilliant eyes that he was the one with the mental illness, and that his friend, Carl, had simply been the means of Sam’s transportation to the meeting. Later on, we learned that Sam’s mom had actually talked Carl into bringing Sam here. I surmise that Sam wouldn’t get in the car with his mom. Or vice-versa.
When Sam’s turn came to share, he said he was getting more violent against his mom, and that he was having trouble with his relationship with her. His principal complaint was that she didn’t agree with his religious views.
He claimed that he and God were buddies. He also claimed to be possessed by the devil and demons. He said he was routinely roused from sleep by the demons’ violence against him. They punched him and pushed him and yanked his hair while he tried to sleep. Oh yeah: and he said he wasn’t mentally ill. He was just possessed.
Initially, he and his friend sat quietly listening to the three of us share our stories. But as time progressed, Sam was increasingly claimed by his invisible friends. Talking and laughing with them, he faded in and out of our reality.
Sam said he had been taking two anti-psychotics for 2 months. Based on his severe delusions and his statement that he wasn’t mentally ill, I seriously doubt that he was taking his meds at all. His friend said that Sam hadn’t been back to his psychiatrist since he had been given the anti-psychotics. I suspect that was by choice.
Leaving the meeting, I realized the danger Sam’s mother was in. I hoped she had a lock on her door. After all, her teenage son, known to be very angry with her, roamed around the house believing that he was alternately God’s best friend or possessed by the devil and demons. It isn’t a stretch to imagine him slipping into her room at night and slitting her throat or stabbing her as she lay sleeping, convinced that the devil and demons- and maybe God- had directed him to do it. She would be just another dead mother whose soon should have been committed to a mental hospital before he murdered her.
Precognition and The Minority Report June 12, 2012
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in mental illness.Tags: Hallucinations, mental illness
add a comment
Here in Washington, yet another “crazy” person killed five people last week. The murderer’s friends and family say they knew he was a time bomb waiting to explode and tried to notify the proper authorities, but nothing was done. After the crime was committed, there was the usual handwringing and blaming the system for not having the tools in place to stop this crime. Some even suggested that a new department be created so that people could report those with bizarre behavior in order to lock them up before they committed the crime.
It reminds me a little of the plot for “The Minority Report”, a movie starring Tom Cruise. In the movie, people were jailed by police for supposedly intending to create a crime. Plot summary: In the year 2054 A.D. crime is virtually eliminated from Washington D.C. thanks to an elite law enforcing squad “Precrime”. They use three gifted humans (called “Pre-Cogs”) with special powers to see into the future and predict crimes beforehand. John Anderton heads Precrime and believes the system’s flawlessness steadfastly. However one day the Pre-Cogs predict that Anderton will commit a murder himself in the next 36 hours. Worse, Anderton doesn’t even know the victim. He decides to get to the mystery’s core by finding out about the ‘minority report’ which means the prediction of the female Pre-Cog Agatha that “might” tell a different story and prove Anderton innocent.
Once you get into the probability that someone will commit a crime, you move down the slippery slope to The Minority Report. Jailing someone for “intending” to create a crime is wrong. When you start to jail people for this, you start down that slope.
When it comes to the mentally ill, it takes more than someone thinking a crime is to be committed beforehand unless that person is a known danger to himself or others. The problem with this law when applied to mentally ill people is that most people suffering from mental illness, especially including paranoid schizophrenia (which I believe that shooter had) don’t seek help beforehand. They aren’t labeled mentally ill because they haven’t entered the mental illness system. They simply aren’t diagnosed. And one of the symptoms of those illnesses includes an inability to understand that they are sick. So you have tragedies like last week’s happening because of a culmination of the flaws in our system. And yet “precognition” isn’t the answer either.
I understand the nature of the frustration with the current system. We have had several bouts of paranoid schizophrenia-induced attacks on the general public within the past few years. Actually, this type of thing has been going on for eons, and it’s simply due to the rapidity of the news cycle that we learn about these types of occurrences as quickly as we do now- which is to say almost immediately. They have always been there, but they were under-reported.
The answer at this juncture is to carefully consider the effect that limiting personal freedom would have. Too much damage would occur were we to move to a “Minority Report” type of system, which is what is being talked about now. I vote no.
The Lexus and Financial Ruin February 27, 2011
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in mental illness, Mental Illness and Bankruptcy.Tags: Delusions, Hallucinations, Mental Illness and Bankrupcy
add a comment
In the early stages of my psychotic break from reality, I believed that Bill and Melinda Gates were good friends of mine. Hanging on my every word (via ESP), they willingly financed my needs and wants. They even offered me a job working for their foundation (via ESP), which I accepted.
Part of my compensation package for working at their foundation, I believed, was a new car. They told me (via ESP) to go find a car that I wanted, and that they would reimburse me for it.
As I walked onto the Lexus dealership car lot, I met a salesman who said he had many Microsoft employees as clients. He alluded to the fact that the Gates’ had a “tab” there, so it was natural for me to be reimbursed for my purchase.
When he asked me what I was looking for, I pointed to his gold ring and told him I was looking for a car that color. (Note: I know very little about cars). Taking in my appearance (I was all in gold), he smiled. “A gold car for a gold lady?” he asked. I nodded.
He walked me to the only gold car in a sea of silver, which happened to be a Lexus convertible coupe. At $55,000, the used car was a bargain, he said. He offered to take me for a ride in the car, and we rushed down the freeway, top open. Pulling off at a little park, we changed seats. Upon our return, I told him I would take the car.
The salesman brought me to the finance department, where we discussed my payment method. With assurances (via ESP) from Bill Gates that he would cover my check, I wrote a $55,000 check without sufficient funds to pay for the car.
After the deal was done, the salesman offered to meet me at a nearby restaurant to buy me lunch. As we sat eating fish and chips and clam chowder, I told him that I was a Mermaid, and so was he (actually, a Merman). He didn’t seem surprised at my revelation. He said he was getting ready to buy a house, and asked for advice. I explained that as a Merman, he needed a place close to the water and that he needed to swim daily. He was gratified at my advice, thanking me for his new-found knowledge of his Merman status.
As I returned home with my new car, I noted that my husband was on the roof, installing some trim on a new window. Not bothering to tell him about the new car, I left the paperwork and keys on the kitchen counter, and took the dog for a walk.
Coming down from the roof to get a drink of water a few minutes later, he saw the paperwork sitting on the counter, and realized that the new car sitting in front of the driveway, which he assumed belonged to a neighbor, was actually his.
Shocked and dismayed, he confronted me with the purchase, insisting that we return the car that very second. Unwillingly, I rode with him back to the dealership, pissed. He disappeared into the building while I sat outside in my new car. A little while later, he returned to the car, telling me to get out as he had just returned it. We drove home in my old broken-down pickup truck in silence.
To his credit, my husband performed a small miracle. Despite the fact that there’s no three day grace period for car purchases, he managed to convince the dealership to allow him to return the $55,000 Lexus Convertible – paid for with a “hot” check- within hours of it hitting our driveway.
That was just one incident among many. My husband went through Hell for weeks, watching helplessly as I continued to bring home purchase after purchase, wondering what I was going to do next. He could only watch as I went through tens of thousands of dollars in a very short period of time.
Finally, I was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, giving my husband some breathing room to do damage control. Enlisting my mom and sister’s help, they piled all of the clothes and shoes in a big heap on the living room floor, spending hours painstakingly matching merchandise to receipts, then heading to the mall to return everything they could. They looked for, but couldn’t find, a $500 ring and a $300 pendant, never guessing in a million years that they were at the beach, in a hole I had dug while wading around in 2 feet of water.
Damage control underway, my husband turned his attention to the bigger picture. My purse in his possession, he tore up all my credit cards. He flagged our credit to prevent me from opening another account without his knowledge. And, reaching beyond his legal limit, he –without my permission or knowledge- closed all of our credit and bank accounts, opening new ones that I had no access to or even knowledge of.
Coming out of the mania, I was ashamed and embarrassed at my conduct, even though my husband took pains to explain that the financial train wreck was, like my tremendous medical bills, another cost of my mental illness. He refused to consider my actions an act of moral bankruptcy.
I could do nothing to atone for my sins except put in place as much protection (from myself) as possible in case I again became manic. In the end, I realized that it came down to eliminating my access to all of our accounts. I have no credit cards. I don’t know what our bank account numbers are or what our bank balance is. In fact, I know nothing about our finances. My husband dispenses cash to me- me, a professional woman who made over $100K a year. And that’s the way it has to be.
The Mermaid and His Alien Baseball Team January 24, 2011
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Delusions, ESP, Hallucinations, mental illness.Tags: Delusions, Hallucinations, Hearing Voices, mental illness
add a comment
One morning, I was just finishing up swimming my laps (I thought I was a Mermaid) when I noticed a man getting into the lane right next to mine. Rising to my feet, I told the swimmer that he could have my lane, as I was done swimming.
He thanked me, but he said that he didn’t like to swim in that far lane. When I asked him why, he explained that it made him uncomfortable but he didn’t know why. I explained that he was probably sensitive to the energy buildup along the bottom edges and corners of the pool. Instead of looking at me like I had lost my mind, he became very interested in what I had to say. Fascinated, in fact. Wanting to discuss the concept further, he asked to meet me at a nearby Starbucks in about 15 minutes, to have coffee and talk.
But I hadn’t left the pool yet. Dunking my head in the water to clear my mask, I noticed the familiar faint green tint to his skin. He was a Merman.
Arriving at the Starbucks a bit early, I purchased my coffee and contemplated the logo on the cup. A two-tailed Mermaid. Hm. A Sign. I settled down to wait for my new Merman friend. Shortly he arrived, purchasing his coffee and joining me at a small table by a fireplace, surrounded by other patrons.
Explaining that I saw the green tinge of his skin in the pool and that he was a Merman, I was prepared for him to walk out on me. But he didn’t flinch. Instead, he insisted that we move outside where we wouldn’t be overheard. Once there, he told me his little secret: he was a mind-reader. Then he offered to demonstrate his skill, telling me to think of a word and to concentrate hard on that word.
As I sat across the table from him, I concentrated on the word “Abracadabra” as hard as I could, even mentally painstakingly writing the word on a blackboard in my mind, willing him to succeed.
Although he tried many times to come up with the word I was thinking of, he just couldn’t do it. He didn’t even come close. Finally, he said had to leave. We parted, not even exchanging names or phone numbers. He didn’t know who I was, and I didn’t know who he was. And that was okay by me.
But before he left, he told me about his Alien baseball team. He said that there were lots of Alien baseball teams throughout the galaxy, and that they played each other in games that were similar to the ones played here on Earth. Then he offered to show me pictures of his Alien baseball team. When I assented, he pulled out his wallet and extracted several baseball cards.
On each card was a photo of an Alien dressed in a baseball uniform. The player’s name, unpronounceable, was written underneath the photo. Statistics and the player’s position were written on the reverse side. In all, the cards were virtually undistinguishable from regular baseball cards with the exception of the players. He explained that he owned an entire baseball team of Aliens, but he never told me where the games were played or invited me to watch a game with him.
The next day, the word “Abracadabra” was written in blue letters on a whiteboard hanging on the wall. I was shocked. Directly below that word, written in green, was another word: dandelion. Clearly the Merman had returned to the pool and had written the words on the whiteboard. I understood writing the word that was in my mind, but I had no idea what the word dandelion meant. Then it came to me: that was the Merman’s name. Dan De Lion.
Was Dan De Lion real? I don’t know. If he was, then he was as mentally ill as I was. If he wasn’t real, then I was one of those people you see sitting in restaurants talking to themselves.
Anatomy of a Breakdown September 23, 2010
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Delusions, Hallucinations, Involuntary Committment, mental illness.Tags: Delusions, Hallucinations, mental illness
1 comment so far
Looking back at my diaries of 2 years ago, I again became enmeshed in my identity crisis. It reminded me of how difficult it was to lose who I was. And to find out that who I was wasn’t exactly pleasant.
Before I became psychotic, I was Kathy 1. Then, when I became psychotic, so many things about me changed that I lost my identity as Kathy 1. While I was psychotic, this change from Kathy seemed a very natural turn of events, since my delusion had included my belief that I had always been someone else. According to my delusion, I was, and always had been, a mermaid named Pangea. For 48 years I just never knew it.
During my psychotic break, Kathy 1 was no more, wiped out of existence, replaced by an entirely new personality: Pangea the Mermaid. Transfering my identity from Kathy 1 to Pangea was easy. It was an act initiated by me. It was an act controlled by me. I was drawn in gradually over a four month span of time into my new identity as Pangea. My final act of recognition of this sea change was that I planned to change my real legal name to Pangea. But before I could carry out my plan, I was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.
When I was hospitalized, the staff began the long process of stabilizing me. Part of that process was administration of medication that pushed me out of my delusion that I was Pangea. Logically, removing Pangea from the equation should have left me back at identifying with Kathy 1. Unfortunately (or not), this didn’t happen.”
It’s difficult to put into words, but the person who was Kathy 1 had certain thought patterns, certain ways of doing things, certain tastes in clothing, hair styles, and expressions of who she was, as well as a much faster speed of thinking, and other brain-related characteristics that made up her very soul. Her very existence. Those characteristics are gone.
There’s a void where my identity is supposed to be. I try to feel a familiar pattern of thinking or feeling or being and there’s no familiarity at all. Zero. I have no idea who I am. It’s as if I woke up in someone else’s brain. I have no reference points. I’m in a strange place and can’t find my way back to who I was before. But then do I really want to return to that person?
Through counseling, I learned to analyze all of the little choices that Kathy 1 made in her life that brought her the total control that she was looking for, which ultimately led to her complete break with reality. Little things and big things loomed in my head. Overall, I realized that my efforts at control not only led to my complete break with reality, but in the process had turned me into what I would term a “flaming bitch”. I had attempted to control virtually every facet of my life down to the last speck of dirt in the house to the greatest extent possible. Everything was always about me. It was embarrassing to come to this realization at the age of 48. How horrible, how narcissistic. It was depressing to consider all of the wasted years, all of the misery, that I had inflicted on people, including those I loved, through the years. Was there anything I could do to make up for my past bad behavior?
I need to find out how to get me back to who I was before- only nicer. And if I can’t do that, then I need to figure out who I am now. For lack of a better word, I’ll call myself Kathy 2. I need help to discover who she is.
Hearing Voices and A New Identity September 16, 2010
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Delusions, ESP, Hallucinations, Hearing Voices, mental illness.Tags: Bipolar Disorder, Delusions, Hallucinations, Hearing Voices, mental illness
3 comments
I admit the first time I heard the voice of my boss, Mark, while driving down the freeway alone in my car, I was surprised. He wasn’t in the car or on the cell phone, and yet he spoke to me as clearly as if he were sitting next to me. I realized immediately that I had a special power: ESP. It didn’t seem unusual at all to be gifted with special powers, and it didn’t even cross my mind that I could be mentally ill. I was simply gifted.
I assumed from the very first time I heard Mark’s voice that I had control of my ESP. I assumed that I would be able to simply stop hearing the voices whenever I chose to, and that was how it worked. At first.
Then things changed, and suddenly I was no longer in charge. The voices were. As the voices slowly increased in number- around 50 at the high- they also increased their grip on my mind, ultimately refusing to leave. When I eventually begged and pleaded with them to leave, they wouldn’t go away. That’s where the strength of my personality played into the situation.
I should have been terrified when the voices wouldn’t leave. I should have sought immediate medical intervention when I felt my mind being smothered by theirs, wrapping their thoughts around mine and choking me off like morning glories on a rhododendron.
But because of the nature of my personality, I felt strong enough to handle the situation. I had always succeeded in everything I had undertaken before, so this wouldn’t be any different. I fought hard to keep a sense of self, knowing that I would prevail, despite the increased smothering of my ideas by theirs. To keep things from unraveling, I learned not to express fear. To express fear brought on the evil voices. But to embrace the voices with love kept the voices slightly off-balance. Where there should have been fear in me there was a sort of pity for them.
My saving grace was that the voices never learned how to read my own independent thoughts. This situation is hard to articulate even now, but suffice it to say that they tried to smother and replace my thoughts with their own, but they never knew what my thoughts- my real thoughts- were.
Trying to maintain my separate being from being taken over by the voices was like being in a room with someone fighting for possession of increasingly more space. Never satisfied with taking just a part of the room, they moved their line of possession to increasingly larger sections of the room. As long as I could maintain even a tiny portion of the room, I could hold on to my identity. That was what protected me from total destruction.
Eventually, the voices took over my entire mind, cleanly breaking my mind off and replacing it with their own, plunging me into a total and complete break from reality. Their reality became my own.
In the days and hours before my involuntary commitment to the mental hospital, my independent personality was a sliver of what it had been before the mental illness took over. As my husband drove me to the emergency room, the last shreds of what used to be me disappeared, replaced in totality by Pangea the Mermaid, the identity of the new inhabitant of my body. The old Kathy was lost forever.
Only strong medication administered in a mental hospital under constant supervision broke their thoughts from my mind. But as their claw-like grip on my mind receded, what remained in the room was not what used to be there. The thoughts that took over my mind also took over my identity, and the medication that wiped out Pangea never replaced it with the old Kathy. My former personality was destroyed first by the voices and then by the medication. The mind emerging from the tunnel isn’t the mind that entered it.
As you might imagine, this situation created an identity crisis of major proportions. I’m not the old Kathy, and neither am I Pangea. I’m someone entirely new. And that’s where therapy comes in. My therapist has slowly, over a two year period of time, helped me define and identify who this new person is. I hate to think about how empty my life would be without the help of my counselor. Her assistance in rebuilding me from scratch has made life worth living for me and my friends and family. Without her help, I would be in a horrible place- neither one nor the other. Now I realize that I’m not Kathy 1, and not Pangea. I’m Kathy 2, and that’s just fine.
Psychotic Wife Tests Marriage August 5, 2010
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Bipolar Disorder, Delusions, Hallucinations, Involuntary Committment, Mental Hospital, mental illness.Tags: Bipolar Disorder, Delusions, Hallucinations, Mental Hospitals, mental illness
5 comments
My nervous breakdown tested my marriage in a major way. I’m very lucky that my marriage has survived that horrible ordeal- at least for the present.
From the time the voices started in February to the time I was hospitalized in late May, the voices tried to convince me to divorce my husband of 25 years.
The first reason that the voices told me to divorce him was to protect my newly acquired $1.5 million jewelry collection. This collection included a supposedly “yellow diamond” ring acquired at Target for $20, which the voices assured me was actually a real yellow diamond ring worth a million dollars (not true) and an abalone bracelet that I bought from Goodwill that the voices said was an antique bracelet once owned by my Great-grandmother Mermaid and now worth $500,000 (also not true).
The second reason they said I should divorce him was that he was the real behind-the-scenes person responsible for locking me up in a mental hospital, and he was going to keep me there as long as he legally could (not true) and that my only chance of escape from my “prison” was to divorce him as soon as possible. So the first chance I got at the mental hospital I called my attorney to get the divorce proceedings started. But as the medication began to take effect, I lost the ability to follow through with my actions because I became lethargic and confused. Finally, as the medication began to cause the delusions and hallucinations to go away, I came to realize that my husband wasn’t really trying to keep me locked up, and that I really didn’t have a $1.5 million jewelry collection for him to go after.
After I returned home and began to realize the magnitude of the damage I inflicted both personally and financially, I became convinced that he was going to divorce me, and that he was just waiting for me to get well enough to divorce him. After all, why would he stay?
Besides the paranoia about what I perceived as my impending divorce, I was undergoing a major medication-induced identity crisis.
The reality was that Bob was free to divorce me at any time, and many less patient men would have simply walked away from me at numerous points. Some husbands would have left back in February or May, when I started talking about wanting a divorce, or in late May when I was spending tens of thousands of dollars. Others would have served me divorce papers in the hospital, as happened to some of my fellow patients. Still other spouses would have waited until I was on my feet again, able to take care of myself, before cutting the cord.
He put up with the trials of living with a woman going through a severe break with reality, including the delusions and paranoia that accompanied the break. He watched helplessly as an out-of-control woman who was legally still his wife but whom he didn’t recognize begin to dismantle his financial future by spending thousands of dollars on clothes and plants and even a $50,000 Lexus convertible.
Then, he suffered through the three weeks I spent at a mental hospital, unable to share that fact with anyone due to the tremendous stigma attached to that fact. As if the fact that I was at a mental hospital wasn’t shocking enough, he found the courage to visit me on a daily basis, despite my less-than-pleasant reception ( I thought he was holding me there on purpose against my will). He didn’t understand what kind of world I inhabited, but realized that I wasn’t really “there” when he visited me, but nevertheless suffered through his daily visits with me anyway. He watched as I tried to take up smoking. He listened when I continued to ask him for a divorce, even listening patienly as I gave him a piece of paper that represented a preliminary breakdown of the assets I planned to receive in our upcoming divorce settlement.
Even when he saw that I was not getting better, and when I ignored him when he visited, he still hung in there. He understood the very real possibility that my mind might be forever locked up in my fantasy world, unable to return to the real world. He realized that he might have to take care of me – what was left of me- alone, might have to raise our kids- alone.
My real road to recovery didn’t begin to materialize until several weeks after I was released. But as the medication that would bring me back to the real world began to take effect, the side effects from the medication were another nightmare. Depression, suicide thoughts, Parkinson’s disease symptoms, grogginess, fainting, constant crying, weight gain, and a myriad of other medication-induced symptoms became the norm. I couldn’t read, couldn’t drive, could barely walk, had balance problems, couldn’t comb my hair or peel a banana or make my bed. I was anxiety-riddled, having to have my days planned out to the last minute or I’d become miserable. I was almost totally helpless, and there was no guarantee that my physical health would ever return. He supported me through that horrible period without complaint. He was always there for me.
As my side effects slowly began to diminish over time, and as I again returned to the land of the living, some of the pressure is off. But without the love and support of him and my family, I would still be in the psychotic world, disconnected from reality, for the rest of my life. I’m one of the few lucky ones who has managed to find their way back.
