Tomorrow marks 7 months without a hospitalization. I can't believe how far I've come. I still have far to go but I am on the right path.
I think the most exciting thing to me right now is that my paranoia and psychosis have been gone for about a week. Just gone. Left my mind. Sayonara. Au revoir. Ciao. Adios.
I can't pinpoint a day that they stopped, because it took a bit of time for me to realize they were gone. All of a sudden, I was like "why is my mind so quiet?"
My mind has been quiet for the last week or so. No hallucinations or paranoia. It feels so different. I didn't even realize how rampant the hallucinations were in my mind until they were gone for a few days. For the past few months, I have had hallucinations and paranoia every day. You tend to get used to it. And you tend to blur reality and unreality. You start to believe the unreal is real.
If you've ever seen "A Beautiful Mind," it's a lot like that.
When I was having the hallucinations, I thought they were real. But now that they've been gone, I have started to realize that it wasn't happening. To think I spent the last few months "in an unreal world" is interesting to me. I want to celebrate the fact that I am almost done with my last semester of graduate school (for awhile) even despite being schizophrenic, even despite dealing with hallucinations and paranoia on a daily basis. I think that's something to celebrate.
It feels like my mind has been quieted. Silenced. The voices gone. The visual hallucinations gone. I am in reality again. My confusion has turned into relief. My paranoia has turned into peace.
A quiet mind.
Showing posts with label hallucinations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hallucinations. Show all posts
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Tales from a Hospital
A few months ago, I was catatonic... I hadn't slept, eaten or talk for three days. I remember the entire ordeal, but from a confused state. A state of total chaos.
What could bring me, a 24 year old biomedical engineer, soon to be neural engineer, to do that? To act in such chaos?
It all lies in the mind and mental illness.
To those who don't know, I struggle with schizoaffective (schizophrenia and bipolar), PTSD and Aspergers.
The mind and the brain are currently being rigorously studied and there is a current debate about how they work. At the same time that my brain was going haywire, I was studying the brain in the lab. It's almost as if I studied so hard that the wires in my brain went chaotic. Overdrive, I think.
The voices are something very interesting. When I heard voices in the hospital, they were voices of people I had talked to throughout different points in my life but their voices were clear as day, even if I hadn't talked to them in many years. The voices were the strongest when I was catatonic. They were tormenting me, calling me a liar and telling me nobody cared about me.
I thought for awhile that I was hearing the voices on an invisible earplug in my ear... I thought they were talking to me but were in another room. I kept looking in other rooms to see if they were there. I got in trouble a few times for going in other peoples' rooms.
When the medications started working, the voices slowly slipped away...
One of the most interesting aspects I can remember is that the reason I didn't eat for three days was that I thought the food was poisoned. All of the food they gave me looked like it was rotten. It actually looked that way; there were dark spots on everything and it looked disgusting.
Not only was I blessed with auditory hallucinations, but I also have visual hallucinations.
Plus paranoia.
A few months ago, I went to the police because I thought someone booby-trapped my apartment.
Paranoia and psychosis make you do interesting things.
What intrigues me as someone who has studied the brain and deals with such severe mental illness is how all of the different parts of the brain work together to cause such "organized chaos." The voices went along with the visual hallucinations and everything made sense to me. To an outsider, it makes no sense though.
The brain is very interesting...
What could bring me, a 24 year old biomedical engineer, soon to be neural engineer, to do that? To act in such chaos?
It all lies in the mind and mental illness.
To those who don't know, I struggle with schizoaffective (schizophrenia and bipolar), PTSD and Aspergers.
The mind and the brain are currently being rigorously studied and there is a current debate about how they work. At the same time that my brain was going haywire, I was studying the brain in the lab. It's almost as if I studied so hard that the wires in my brain went chaotic. Overdrive, I think.
The voices are something very interesting. When I heard voices in the hospital, they were voices of people I had talked to throughout different points in my life but their voices were clear as day, even if I hadn't talked to them in many years. The voices were the strongest when I was catatonic. They were tormenting me, calling me a liar and telling me nobody cared about me.
I thought for awhile that I was hearing the voices on an invisible earplug in my ear... I thought they were talking to me but were in another room. I kept looking in other rooms to see if they were there. I got in trouble a few times for going in other peoples' rooms.
When the medications started working, the voices slowly slipped away...
One of the most interesting aspects I can remember is that the reason I didn't eat for three days was that I thought the food was poisoned. All of the food they gave me looked like it was rotten. It actually looked that way; there were dark spots on everything and it looked disgusting.
Not only was I blessed with auditory hallucinations, but I also have visual hallucinations.
Plus paranoia.
A few months ago, I went to the police because I thought someone booby-trapped my apartment.
Paranoia and psychosis make you do interesting things.
What intrigues me as someone who has studied the brain and deals with such severe mental illness is how all of the different parts of the brain work together to cause such "organized chaos." The voices went along with the visual hallucinations and everything made sense to me. To an outsider, it makes no sense though.
The brain is very interesting...
Friday, April 26, 2013
The Voices That Speak
This is a poem that I just wrote that I felt called to write. It is a poem about my experience being psychotic and paranoid. I hope that it helps others to understand what it is like to have a mental illness.
The Voices That Speak
i look
they stare
they laugh
what do they know?
what do they see?
are they after me?
the voices speak to me
in whispers
in loud voices
confusion invades
the very essence of who i am
who are they?
i recognize their voices
voices loud and clear
near and far
pointing fingers
blaming me
killing me
i say the lord’s prayer
and forgive those who trespass against us
Lord, please make them stop
invasion of my mind
confusion in my soul
chaos in my being
i take the medications
want the voices to stop
desperate
want the people to stop killing me
slowly the voices fade
i escape
but not without a fight
they stop killing me with their words
their accusations
i emerge
and become whole again
the person i was before the voices
their voices become just a memory
the experience a distant nightmare
the confusion fades
the chaos ends
and i am me again
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