paranoia

Schizophrenia and Love

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

Everyone’s deserving of love right?

There’s no one on this earth that deserves to be alone but for people with schizophrenia and other major mental illnesses, love and relationships can be incredibly hard to, not only build, but also sustain for a variety of reasons.

First, and I hate to say it but there still exists a pretty unshakeable stigma around the ‘schizophrenia’ label.

A lot of people associate that word with danger, instability, or even violence, and while the fact remains that more people with schizophrenia, in fact, happen to become victims of violent crime than perpetrators, the stigma remains.

In my own experience, I can remember being out on a first date with a woman who, with a straight face, asked me if I had ever killed anybody.

This stigma can be one hell of a red flag for a good number of people who have no experience or knowledge of the reality of mental illness.

Being someone with schizophrenia, I’ve seen this first hand and for a long time I just completely stopped mentioning it at all.

I would change the subject when I was asked what I write about, and I would steer the conversation away from any mention of anxiety or even depression.

Mental illness being one of my core personality quirks left very little to actually talk about as a result.

Another major hurdle to finding love as a person with schizophrenia is that, with my paranoid delusions, I find it incredibly hard to trust people enough to open up and become vulnerable.

Trusting someone fully can take me months if not years, and when you’re dating someone new there comes a point at which you have to open yourself up and get to know the person.

I was never able to get to that point because I could never grasp the possibility that someone besides my family had my best interests at heart.

I was terrified that they would hurt me or leave with no explanation and because of that I’d always break it off before anything got even remotely deep.

I am a wounded soul and I need to trust someone completely before I even think about opening up.

I can imagine this is the case for a lot of people with mental illness and it’s important to understand that if you love someone who’s sick, it can take time to form that trust.

Finally, in my experience of having to relearn how to function in society after a major mental break, social interaction still remains to be one of the biggest challenges of my life.

I’m always hyper aware of things like eye contact, how I’m moving, what I look like to people and the way that I’m forming my words.

Sometimes I get so caught up in trying to portray natural human interaction that I either come off as fake or just get too distracted in how I’m acting to even keep up with the conversation.

I know the answer is to just relax and be myself but for a long time I was confused about who myself even was.

It’s for this reason that I’m pretty deeply introverted and choose to keep to myself most of the time.

I get most of my interaction online where it’s safe behind a screen to be the person that I wish I was in real life.

The point of all this is to illustrate how hard it can be to find love as a person with schizophrenia or other major mental illnesses.

If it’s not stigma, it’s trusting someone or even just interacting in general.

To my fellow sufferers, I know you and I see you and I want you to know that you’re not alone.

And to those who love people with mental illness, be kind, be soft and take the time to be there for your person.

I can guarantee that if you do, it will be one of the most fulfilling relationships of your life.

The Persistence of Delusions

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

When you have to contend with delusional thinking, life can get hard.

Many times I’ve been so confused by whether or not something was actually happening that I made serious mistakes acting on those things.

I have hurt people and I have ruined friendships and relationships over my delusions.

I regret those things immensely and I have fought my delusions to the bone, time and time again, but here, 16 years later, I still experience thoughts that have no basis in reality.

Delusions are incredibly persistent and sometimes no matter how much work you do to combat them, or hell, accept them, they still come up and bother you, sometimes when it’s incredibly inconvenient.

A particularly insidious delusion I still have tells me that people hate me, that they’re judging every action I take and deciding actively to shun me and ostracize me.

Of course the reality is that people don’t actually care much about what anyone does and they’re mostly concerned about themselves, but still, day in day out, my brain tries to find reasons why people don’t like me.

As you can imagine, I’ve kind of folded in on myself and don’t really make an effort to meet people or even be around people because my brain is telling me that I can’t trust them.

To say the least, it’s caused me a lot of pain.

I continue to wonder why these delusions are so persistent even given my rigorous adherence to medication and therapy techniques and I think it’s because they play on your most deep seated traumas and insecurities.

Like it or not, that stuff is hard to come to grips with, and even when you think you’re out of the woods, it still creeps up and grabs you sometimes.

Over the years I’ve come to fully understand that my brain is, essentially broken, and like the people it tells me to avoid, I can never fully trust what it’s saying.

I’ve had to cultivate a sense of self that’s removed from the thoughts that are going through my head purely as a means of self protection.

It’s still easy to get lost in the fog of these thoughts, but when I realize that something I’m thinking is upsetting, I’m able to step back and evaluate the thoughts. 9 times out of 10, they’re irrational and have no basis in reality.

Realizing that is freeing, but I would still give anything to not get so lost.

My delusions though, have taught me many lessons, they’ve instilled a thick skin and they have been an integral part of what makes me who I am today.

Sure they’ve been inconvenient and many many times have been the bane of my existence but they’ve showed me things and they’ve taught me things not only about myself, but about the reality of human nature that would be difficult to learn in any other context.

It’s hard to be grateful for them but I am, and I know how hard it can be to live with them.

To anyone reading who experiences persistent delusions, I’m with you, remember, you’re not alone in this.

While they may never go away completely, you can learn the tools to help deal with them.

Therapy is your friend, self awareness is your friend and introspection is your friend.

I know what it’s like to live with this stuff and others do to. Also, your family and friends will always have your back no matter what your delusions tell you.

It’s ok to be haunted by stuff like this and it doesn’t make you weak and it doesn’t make you crazy.

You have help and you’re gonna be ok, I promise.

What Separates Paranoia and Anxiety?

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

If you suffer from paranoid delusions you’ve probably heard it time and time again that your paranoia is just social anxiety, and while there’s a function of anxiety in your delusions, paranoia seems to be a deeper, more sinister animal.

It used to bother me to no end when people would tell me my paranoia was social anxiety. I’ve had an innate fear of people since day one with my illness, and when people would say that, it felt like they were minimizing the intensity of what I felt and for that I became reactionary.

Mind you social anxiety is a huge problem for a lot of people and I don’t aim to lessen that, it’s just that paranoia is, at least I like to believe, kind of like a step above normal anxiety.

Paranoia is the delusion that the people around you are going to hurt you in some way while anxiety is just the worry that they won’t like you or that you’ll embarrass yourself.

It’s very easy to see how they can be confused with each other.

In my experience, paranoia is like walking around downtown and knowing that the people around you have motives purely to hurt you and to cause you harm in some way. because of that you have to remain hyperaware of your surroundings, you have to see and evaluate everyone and everything within eyeshot to determine whether it/they have the potential to mess with you, and you have to situate yourself in a safe space among this situation to keep tabs on them and any obstacles that may limit you from exiting.

Social anxiety on the other hand feels duller, more like just a worry that you’re not a part of the group and that you don’t fit in somehow.

I guess what I’m saying is that, for me at least, the difference between the two is the notion of imminent danger.

I fully acknowledge that other people might not see it this way and have an entirely different experience of the two as well.

I equate paranoia more with post traumatic stress disorder, in that you were hurt or irrevocably changed by a situation you found yourself in. One that, hence the name, caused a significant measure of trauma. I feel as though paranoia is a function of being on constant guard for that same or similar trauma.

What’s the point though? Why does this matter? Mainly, the healing for anxiety and the healing for trauma based disorders differs so it’s important to be cognizant of the things you are experiencing and feeling.

It’s important that you recognize what steps you need to take in order to handle the situation correctly, in a way that minimizes severity in order for you to push through until the time comes where you can leave the situation.

That said, social anxiety is a beast all it’s own and I applaud people who live and deal with that in their daily lives.

It takes an immense amount of strength to live with mental illness regardless of your diagnosis or the symptoms that you suffer with.

It’s important though to get the right treatment for your particular brand of crazy and with the help of a psychiatrist and a counselor, that treatment can be correctly determined.

No matter what you’re dealing with though, I want you to know that your experience is valid. You are important and you deserve to feel comfortable.

Regardless if it’s anxiety or paranoia, you’re allowed to be afraid and you’re allowed to get out. Your mental well being is and always will be the most important thing.

Is Recovery Possible?

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

I was diagnosed schizophrenic in 2006, it’s been almost seventeen years now that I’ve lived with this devil on my shoulder, and the verdict is, unfortunately, still out on whether or not I’ve fully recovered.

I still have days, weeks, months where I feel the brunt of my mental illness, but for all intents and purposes, I suppose I present normally to the outside world.

That is, if you met me today, would you be able to tell that I have schizophrenia? My loved ones say no but I still feel every odd slight, every weird little idiosyncrasy that hints at something majorly wrong behind the curtain.

That may be just anxiety rearing it’s ugly head but there are moments where the reality of my diagnosis is made keenly apparent to me.

I still struggle tremendously with paranoia, the notion that someone is watching me, dissecting every move and action I take to find something to hurt me or to use against me. I’ve said before that if there were Oscars for real life I’d win for best actor every year. Acting though, is not something that I like to do, especially for the benefit of any suspected character who has decided to act in bad faith. I want things to flow, I wanna be natural and easy but unless I trust you inherently, I’m not letting down my guard.

As you can imagine this has been a pretty big lynchpin when it comes to things like job interviews, dates, or even merely just making new friends. Sadly, If I don’t know you, chances are, that I’m terrified of you.

With all this said, it seems pretty clear that I’m not entirely recovered from my illness doesn’t it? That’s the standard I set for myself. I will be recovered when I can feel at ease around people I don’t know. It’s hard to say if that will ever truly happen.

I’ve often looked at my illness as a second life, removed from the life I had before I was diagnosed. Interestingly, I’ve equated the last sixteen years to being a second childhood, if that makes sense.

I was thrust out into the world after being told everything I thought I knew was fake and I feel as though I’ve had to rebuild my sense of being and my personhood from scratch, zip, zero. This being the sixteenth year I’ve had schizophrenia, I am now essentially a sixteen year old in the way I feel I’m interacting with the world.

I don’t really know how else to explain it other than a hard reset and a total and complete system reboot and rebuild.

Will I ever fully recover? That remains to be seen, but for now, I’ve got the things I need, and I’m comfortable with my life and the way it’s gone.

It seems strange, but I remain thankful that I was given this mental illness. It’s taught me some very, very valuable lessons. It’s given me a razor sharp self awareness and understanding of who I am as a person, and it’s forced me to give regular and rigorous introspection a major place in my life.

It has also taught me empathy, perhaps more so than I want. I understand that on a deep level, everyone is constantly evaluating and judging themselves and that everyone, regardless of circumstance, deserves respect and care.

So is recovery even fully possible? I don’t know, but I’m steadfast in improving myself in anyway I can as the years go by and honestly, normality is probably an illusion anyway.