The Schizo-Stroller

Aaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhhhhh! Don’t ever say that to me! It is so fucking insincere.

Whenever I hear somebody saying it you see them leaning forward, meaningfully, nodding, caring showing you you have their complete attention… And you know they haven’t listened to a single fucking word you’ve said. I accept ‘ hear you’, I accept ‘How does that make you feel?’ and all the others, there’s something at least attempting a bit of sincerity there even if ultimately they may fail through, probably, no fault of their own.

But, ‘Absolutely’? Nooooooooooo, you can never ever understand me, sympathise with me, empathise with me, hear me absolutely, you are not me, it is impossible. Already in the semantics of your word you are lying to me. From that basis sincerity has been irrevocably destroyed.

Please, just don’t say it!

Language is a funny thing. Take the word ‘absolute’, then take the sentence ‘There are no absolutes’, it is a statement that is absolute in its meaning and so, as such, is a contradiction in terms. The word ‘absolute’ is purely an idea that doesn’t allow it’s own negation. But this concept stems purely from the fact it’s meaning within language which is the only way we can understand it, yet the word is an abstract term.

For example ‘God’ is the absolute, or we have absolute rights, or as used in mathematics. But what if there really are no absolutes. We cannot say so with out effectively contradicting ourselves, yet it is based on a word we understand in language that we have invented to explain what we can’t comprehend. So what if we misunderstood it. We have invented a word that can’t be negated yet doesn’t exist.

Language, wonderful!

Bad thoughts and good thoughts are like shop music, especially at Christmas, you may have a good tune in your head but as soon as you walk into a shop and they’re playing fucking ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ it’s wiped out. Bad tunes are invariably catchy, they’re middle of the road, lowest common demoniator, they’re designed to be but it doesn’t make it any good and they’re lodged their like a barnacle. They get stuck in your head until the next one comes along, like Dawkins’ fucking memes.

I find stupid/ bad thoughts the same, you can think as many intelligent, witty, wise thoughts as you like but they’re quickly lost or forgotten in the daily babble, the voices never pick up on them. But as soon as you think something stupid that’s it they latch on to it straight away and you are doomed to continue repeating said stupid thought for ever. I’ve even come to the conclusion that if a thought repeats it is by definition stupid. I’m convinced my voices are the mental equivalent of the tabloids, picking up on the lowest common denominator if it’s bad, stupid or can possibly be used against me they’ll jump on it and repeat it ad infinitum. ‘It was just a stupid mistake I confused elephant with relevant!’ I cry, but no, it’s ‘news-worthy’ tabloid style and I will suffer.

Looking for more blogs by Schizophrenics to add to the blog roll. I have found it quite hard to find many. Loads by people with Bipolar disorders (very interesting I must say), Depression and Personality Disorders but what’s happened to all the psychos?

Are we that disabled that we are unable to add the occasional mad rambling to the online world? According to a wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia) active psychosis is classed by study as the third most disabling condition you can have after quadraplegia and dementia. Great! That makes me feel so much better.

 Please let me know of other Schizophrenic blogs I may have missed out on.

In the middle of the breakdown that finally got me diagnosed, I was prescribed Chloropromazine, this was the first medication I was prescribed, whilst being treated at home and before I was finally hospitalised. It was an unmitigated disaster but it had amusing side effects (mentally, not physically) as it did nothing to lessen my symptoms, it just made me hyperactive and happy enough not to care that I was going insane.

One delusion/ experience was when I was get annoyed with the voices I was getting angry and shouting at them. I would hear another voice saying ‘Just say peace’. So I tried it.

Now although at times I can be a bit of a hippy, I’m also a seriously cynical cunt. And my mind insisted in associating ‘Peace!’ with a nuclear holocaust, that would really be the ultimate Peace! Not that it would be desired except by an insane Rapture obsessed zealot… I’m rambling.

So the upshot, that I couldn’t take saying ‘Peace!’ seriously and my medication was fucking me up, was that when I did, out of sheer exasperation at the abuse I was getting, say ‘Peace!’, I had the experience of a bomb going off in my head that quietened down the voices momentarily but, for some bizarre reason that I may never fully explain, it was accompanied by a sensation similar to melting ice cream dripping down my head, not unlike the schoolyard joke where you pretend to break an egg on somebodies head and run your head down their hair to simulate it dribbling down.

So when my voices (or anyone in fact, real or unreal) tells me to, or says themselves, ‘Peace!’. I smile wryly, and a bomb goes off, somewhere.

Hours of amusement but not much help to my mental health. Or is it?

In the last post I mentioned that i try not to listen to my voices for fear that they will be abusive. I also said I try to work out where they come from.

Sometimes I try to block out the voices but that doesn’t mean I don’t ‘listen’. Sometimes I just lie there and try to listen to what’s going on outside or to the silence, and as John Cage’s 4’33″ proves, there’s no such thing as silence. Often I’ll realise that the voices I’m hearing are a faint environmental noise such as me wheezing, or my watch ticking or a distant washing machine in another flat.

However this takes a lot of concentration and after a while I have to relax, I’m no longer focussing in on individual sounds and I have to let the world become white noise again, and so the voices are free to come back.

The funny thing is I listen to a lot of music that uses noise as an instrument and I find it strangely soothing. Perhaps it’s because I then actively listen to the noise. There is some form of control. Perhaps.

I often try to be aware of where my voices come from, what triggers them off. Try to work out what it is I’m thinking of or doing that affects them.

One of the things my voices often tell/ ask/ try to get me to do is listen to them. It may seem obvious that if I listen to them I understand them better, but, as always, things are not so easy in practise.

When your voices are abusive and they go on and on, the last thing you want to do is listen to them. When I feel a voice come on, or I hear someone shouting outside, I cringe inside. I’m already imagining the abuse I’m going to get and, yes, then it comes. Yet when I relax and listen half the time there’s no abuse. So am I creating the abuse by anticipating it. Or is my anticipation caused by the abuse I get. I say half the time, when I listen there’s no abuse, but that still means that half the time there is, so if I make the choice to listen I still am likely to hear abuse. So my natural inclination is still to try not to listen in anticipation of abuse.

The problem is compounded by the fact that if I only half hear, my paranoia makes up what is being said in retrospect and somehow my mind seems to assume it’s been abusive. This adds to the conviction that if I hear a voice it will be abusive. So adds to my fear and reticence to listen. And if half of what I hear when I listen is still abusive it doesn’t add to the positive reinforcement that would encourage me to listen.

It seems to be some kind of Catch-22, either I block out half the voices but all the rest are abusive or listen and still get half abusive voices. I’m sure there’s some game theory in there and one day I’ll work it out. But for now I’ll take the easy/ ignorant route and let time sort it out.