Paranoid Symptom: Distrusting Others and Feeling Disliked

If you read my recent post called "A Spiritual Truth I Found That Helps Me Understand My History", you will have picked up that I experienced massive quantities of very fearful jealousy, conjuring worst case scenarios into my mind about my then-lover. You will also have read that in her heart she began to love another in the same way she had loved me, and colluded with another in secret; an irony.

This has brought back memories of another fearful delusion and scenario. The feeling you get when you have suspicions that all of the people around you - acquaintances, let's say - secretly do not like you. Do not like you at all. This is a disconcerting feeling, and a very toxic emotional 'environment' for the mind. For me this was a profound and strong feeling. Another irony - in reality it wasn't far from the truth that I was disliked. Acting very strangely, showing up to smoke cannabis but not contributing to the cost of it, isolating myself, and irritating people with my mistaken beliefs. Plus there were clear signs that they feared me, a combination of stereotyping and being afraid seeing me act strangely, not knowing what to do about that. It is not excessive to say that they would have talked conspiratorially about me behind my back, frightened by my illness, laughing perhaps, and disgusted or annoyed by my lack of communal spirit and generosity. So much for that. It's not an excessive idea at all, it's human nature, though not so much on its generous and strong side. These were people who didn't know me at all, and within two days, I was acting strangely, saying things in a  way that wasn't normal, making no sense. These people were mere acquaintances with whom I was an unwelcome but strangely tolerated guest. Once I was thrown out of a room, for talking about God in a strange and charismatic way, fresh from personal religious experiences and full of fervour - and slightly 'unhinged'. Another time, I may have been ignored by my group of associates when I came and knocked on the door to share their cannabis; (I don't know for sure - a gray area, and gray areas are always painful, they are where anxiety grows). Another time I was discluded from a room, on the grounds that the few people in there had serious private business to discuss.
But there were many, many times when we were together and I was kind-of accepted.
Once I was so much in a haze of awareness that I was anxiously trying - and failing  -to discern whether a computer game I was taking my turn to play with in the group was on 'Demo' mode or not - was it? where they playing a trick on me? I even voiced my concerns. That's being way out.
There was never any outright rejection, it was all in my mind. Or was it? Ironically, as I said, I seemed to be somewhat disliked, irritating to very many of them, and very often I sensed little love from them.

My first year at university, having a major schizophrenic breakdown, living in a student apartment block that was built with no aesthetic value [my father said it was 'Kafkaesque', after the bleak, bleak, empty industrial world Franz Kafka pictured in his writing] - and on top of all that using a great amount of a psychoactive drug (that requires a benign 'set and setting'), becoming totally withdrawn and receiving very little warmth of love from those I associated with.

PS In terms of 'set and setting', emotionally the equation "YOU + Psychoactive drug = Trouble," when you  do not feel loved by the people you are around. Esoterically speaking, energetically speaking, "You + Psychoactive drug = Big Trouble" when you feel unloved and anxious - it is dangerous and places you on a slippery slope.

I look back at all this with surprise, having forgotten how bad it was. I think I do a pretty good job of capturing the tone of the scene here. A fairly tragic episode in my life, just from the social aspect. And to think of all the good will I spent on them during my hallucinations!! No gratitude for the ways in which I saved the world for them!!
I had a waking sense of one of them, more of a friend, being killed treacherously - a display of evil. I had another drama play out in my mind of another person, also more of a friend (to my mind an angel on Earth, a friend and guardian) being killed fighting - although I tried to 'help' him from a distance, in my mind.

There were many 'deaths' in those few months. I have revealed some horrible ideas; I'm sorry for any distress caused; but maybe you can identify with what I went through, so much. But, and it's a big 'but', you 'wake' up from hallucination and it's not real anymore, just strange painful memories left - this is good fortune, that it is not objectively real. I could cycle away from home, think my father had been killed, go home and find him happily tending to the garden. [My father 'died' several times! Maybe that was why it was not so hard when he passed on for real, through already having gone through it and been well and truly burnt out in it. - That's worth another post, - my near-totally 'griefless' emotionality I have these days].

Look back a few paragraphs and you will see that I regarded at least a couple of those individuals as friends. they showed me some kindness and warmth, one helped to rescue me somewhat from the ongoing process of withdrawal, by talking to me in public as if there was nothing strange about me. In truth, I did receive kindness and respect here and there, and I'm grateful for it; but also there was dislike from some others; one person defended my honour once. There was community but also an empty space between people. I didn't connect with any of the others in a way that I would recognise as a close friendship that made me truly happy.

Think I am muddying the waters! Did they like me, or didn't they? Yes, no, no more than yes, and in my mind they often unsettlingly did not like me.
I've seen this paranoia, from cannabis use, twice. When I became jealous, that lover also synchronously became distrustful of me, distrusting my intentions at a basic level; it was clear to me that she did not feel psychologically safe, that she did not trust my intentions, and there was nothing I could do to stop her. That was hard. It was plainly written across her face. Speaking to her, her mind was flooded with fear, in small ways that I suppose she thought were hidden. She had just come from an intensely difficult relationship, and presumably she still bore some injury that turned into full-blown delusional distrust.
The second instance of this cannabis distrust that I have witnessed was when, years later, I felt drawn to take cannabis again, and did so on one occasion; the set and setting were wrong for my friend. For me I was able to detach from mental disturbance, and this was refreshing and relaxing. [I have to state that I will never take cannabis again]. My friend grow obviously anxious, and voiced concerns about not trusting someone who had come into the room. There was a busy party going on in her house, and the door to the room we were in was open! Not exactly conducive to a relaxing change in reality. I could tell - it was obvious - that she fundamentally distrusted the person who had come in, someone who appeared to all the world to be friendly, her familiar housemate. I recognised at once her thought processes from outward signs. She fundamentally distrusted this person's emotions, who as I said was showing friendliness. Rather, should I say, she distrusted the intention of the person, the intention behind their emotion. In short, she thought they were lying, deceiving her in their behaviours in the most sinister way. That's basically cannabis paranoia, and it is very unpleasant, distressing, and can be an ongoing condition of perception. You end up a nervous wreck from it, shaking in shock from the horror of the emotions apparently being expressed.

Terrible distrust. You need a hug. You need to lie down and have a good sleep, wake up and be taken care of, take a bath and be given breakfast and kissed simply on the side of your face, you need to be returned to healthy feeling.

Imagine not trusting ordinary love! How terrible. And wearing. A virus in your emotions, turning all the world into a foreign, dangerous place. Combine this with social withdrawal, and you get a flash of the reality of how the person with schizophrenia perceives in their waking reality, you begin to understand how a person can be closed down in fear to the world, become very 'shy' and reclusive, suffering phobic levels of discomfort near others. The feelings have had enough! They condition you to avoid society. After all, who needs that level of psychological battery? We don't prosper in unloving environments, it's not good for us. Like the (poor) monkey scientists removed from its mother in early infancy, that then grew up to be terribly anxious and fearful, - withdrawn. Love is good for us. Spread the love. Awaken hearts, awaken your hearts, help others keep their heads above water and not go through this, - it's good for everyone when one is saved.



(I repeat:)

Love is good for us. Spread the love. Awaken hearts, awaken your heart, help others keep their heads above water and not go through this, - it's good for everyone when one is saved.

Relationships: Another Note On Life With Schizophrenia

During my second breakdown, I was avoiding my family, feeling that we were too close and that the closeness was oppressive. I didn't like being told what to do or not having the emotional privacy to be settled - it was unsettling feeling I was expected to call home everyday, knowing that some people call home once a week or less.

My breakdown was discovered when my family came to my home, where I had spent about six weeks in solitude, never leaving the premises.

My brother refused to close the door and sit down, so I became aggravated. Clearly he had detected that I was ill and became frightened. But I felt he had no need to be frightened. He looked scared. I became furious, silently motioning for him to sit down. He left and called the police.




That he called the police was all he could do, but it feels like betrayal [yes, present tense, feels like, still feels like].
I can say that my lucidity was underestimated throughout, although I was also 'raving mad', gone off the deep end in my beliefs. All the time I felt I had one foot firmly in clarity. As this is my blog, my brother isn't here to interrupt and contradict me! My family believe they literally saved my life in rescuing me, I say I was not going to kill myself and I would have left the flat soon to get more food (that angers me too, that they disagree with me.
But still, looking back, if I had been sane enough, I should have called the police myself much earlier and said I was having trouble, please take me to hospital.



All this must still have been bubbling under when I was hospitalised. When I saw my family, before treatment had got well underway, I bubbled over with resentment, talking 'at' them not to them. I voiced my concerns, that we were too close. The relationship stress had contributed to my breakdown.
I am normally a peaceable person, but here was all this anger coming out in an uncharacteristic way. Psychologically speaking, a remarkable change. I calmed down though with the longer I received the antipsychotic medicine.


I was speaking about self-harming when I entered hospital. I wanted to self-harm within the framework of a higher sense of purpose. I thought it would be good for the Earth; I thought it was right; I thought it would make me more powerful. I was quite happy with the fact.
I was very ill. Though I maintained lucidity, [I knew what day and date it was at all times] I was also delusional and communicated that frequently. Even after five weeks of medication I was still displaying some irrational obsessions.
Gradually though, my obssession with 'self-harming' passed away. This did not stop me having, because of my mother's and the ward sister's concern, someone sitting in my doorway at all times for the first week of hospitalisation. I was peaceful, there was no way of me harming myself, I had become ill through privacy issues... and there was someone removing my privacy. But they had the right intentions. It was psychologically painful. Fortunately, though I was aware of being supervised, I didn't know this was down to the concerns of my mother, or I would have been even angrier.


Back to my extraction from my home: my brother said I tried to hit him with a guitar. I know I feinted half a strike. I was angry, in a primal state - I was very sensitive to the fact that he and the police were intruding on my territory and I wanted to frighten them off. Yet still I could be reasoned with, though my speech was often delusional in content.



My main point in this post is not to communicate my frustration with the police or the hospital or my family, but to remark on the change of character I went through. I was given cause to be angry. I had been harbouring cause to be angry too. Then when my self-awareness was released by the psychotic break, out came an aggressive subpersonality to frighten my family. Never physically violent anger, just the interpersonal emotion. That undercurrent of anger was keeping me in my home all that time, was keeping my family at arm's length while I locked myself away.
Most hurtfully, my mother and brother came with flowers and gifts for me and I rejected their show of kindess completely. Thankfully this all was soothed away by medication, as I became more me again.

I could still do to have a more normal family life, with less contact, but that's for me to negotiate in a reasonable, and not resentful way. Only because I get tired out travelling backwards and forwards to meet up for family events, and this and being away from home for long periods is very disruptive to me. But I'll sort it out.
I am back on good terms with my family, but we all still remember and carry emotions about that time.


Thanks for reading.

Life With Schizophrenia

Hooray! I have now hit 50 posts on Diagnosis: Schizophrenia!

I have also initiated proceedings to link with schizophrenia.com, so if that works out, welcome to browsers from that site.



I wanted to write about my dad. This is a personal post [albeit on an anonymous blog!!].


Before I got ill was the best time of my life, among family, and then socially. I would like to concentrate on the family part.
It was the best time of my life, I was really close with my father. I was seventeen and we were working together on a renovation project. They were brilliant times, full of genuine shared excitement and true joy.
Then I went away from home for a while and came back sick. Then I went away from home again and came back sicker. I had to take time out from university and lived at home. Suddenly I was closed out. Money troubles and work troubles on my father's part made life hard for him, and he made my life hard too. Losing his temper that I didn't speak (because of the symptom alogia), and showing no or little affection to me.

This continued until he died in 2006. Clearly he was depressed because he couldn't understand his want of success on the work and financial front, and this accounted for ornery behaviour. But he gave me a hard time when I was vulnerable. Never physically violent, thank God, but psychologically hurtful, though from a lack of awareness that he was being anything other than benign, probably.
This is a problem, because when someone dies, you think well of them, in a natural way, yet sometimes I can't help looking back and remembering times that I could not think well of him for.

The way I see it, I was like the baby bird handled by a human, that the mother bird then rejects. I had a funny smell all of a sudden. I wasn't the same son anymore.

My mum tells me it was because I couldn't communicate with him, and that was something he couldn't bear.

And yet, thankfully, there is still love between us. But I know that others with schizophrenia may be able to identify with this, and also their relations too.

Luckily I stayed close to my mother, who showed a mother's loyalty in not rejecting me when I behaved and spoke strangely, and all due to my own choices (I became ill through smoking the illegal drug cannabis). I never told my father that I was ill because of the cannabis use, because I was afraid of his anger.


Now as they say he is with the angels and will see all sides of this situation. RIP dad.