Tag: schizoaffective disorder

I appear too normal to be crazy

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, depression, mood disorders, psychosis

I talked with my psychiatrist yesterday about all that was going down. I didn’t give her specific details about what I was doing just on how I was feeling. She just wanted to make sure she knew that I knew that if something was up, I was to let her know. This was all via email and again today I tried to set up an appointment with her. Still no dice.

I have been thinking about what to write about next in my book and got nothing. A little bit about what I wrote in yesterday’s blog might make it’s way in. I don’t know. I am still mulling over writing the stupid constriction blog my therapist wants me to do only because it will give me something to do but the thing is, it has been so long since I talked about it, I have to research the terms so I am writing correctly. I would hate to have this piece and it just be an idea of what I think it is when in reality it has nothing to do with the actual definition. And other than defining what constriction is, I don’t know I can go beyond that. I might turn it into a psychache paper of sorts. But I don’t have the idea yet in my head. That is the toughest part about writing.

I started writing in my journal again. Since I have been blogging, I have gone away with the paper writing, except in my day journal when I bring it with me. I used to write in my night journal nearly every night and then it just got away from me. I figured my online blog would be sufficient. But there are some things that I don’t like to post online so I guess it is good that I still have the journal. I don’t know when exactly I started keeping two journals, one I carry around with me when I am out and the other at my bedside. I guess when I was sharing my journals with my therapist it started. But seeing as I rarely see my therapist anymore, I don’t share with her what I write. It’s tough just trying to get her to read one of my blogs that might be good for us. She says she just doesn’t have time, but I think it’s that she forgets. Then I have to read my blog entry to her to discuss it. It kind of sucks because I hate reading what I write. But it also is a good way of editing sometimes. I like to think that what I write makes sense when I type it but sometimes it doesn’t because I miss a word or combine two ideas in the same sentence.

It’s Friday and I have nothing planned today. I want to get some sun in my back yard and maybe fill the kiddie pool to soak my feet and splash around for a little bit. But it will be boring with no one else around. I can’t read outside as the glare just bothers my eyes. Speaking of reading, I am hating the Team of Rivals book that I am reading. The author is dragging out every minute detail of how Lincoln got elected, how he chose his cabinet, everything. No wonder this book is over 800 pages!! I get interested in it but after reading the back and forth of how Seward got to be the Secretary of State, I got pissed off and have not gone back to it. You already knew that he was the SOS so why draw it out?? Three pages of it!! If it wasn’t such a heavy book, I would have thrown it across the room.

On the same kind of note, my review for the pen pal book got a “helpful” rating. I am glad that it did. I never got one of those before. I hope it helps my friend out.

The voices were rampant last night. I couldn’t sleep despite taking my meds and I had to take the heavy guns to stop my thoughts from thinking. They just kept on wanting to talk or have conversations with them just to keep me up. I couldn’t stand it. Then soon as I would get nice and settled, a voice would start all over again. It’s a miracle I fell asleep last night. I really thought I would pull an all nighter. Then I had to keep my hands off my laptop for fear of writing another blog or just keep checking statuses on Facebook or play my games. I almost had to shut down the laptop so I wouldn’t go on as it was nearing 0200. But I finally fell asleep and didn’t wake up till 0830. I had some breakfast and then went back to sleep. So far the voices are settled but they can come back at any time. The worse part is that I have no one to talk to about this. It’s not like I can tell my sisters or even my mother about this as they don’t know I hear voices. I have kept it under wraps all my life. I made the mistake of telling a cousin about my voices and now she uses it as a punchline. I have not told anyone since. I appear too “normal” to be crazy. Sometimes I tell my cousin Joe but I don’t think he gets it sometimes. Hearing voices is difficult to explain to people. The best way to describe it is to say that the conversations that you hear in a lunchroom or at a Starbucks are in your head rather than out. Sometimes it’s just one conversation, sometimes it is just one voice that is above the others and they tell you what to do. Mostly I have three main voices and each one is different. All female, mostly but the mean ones are male. One will constantly criticize what I am doing. Why I am eating that, going this particular way, or just be annoying by asking me questions the whole time I am going some where. Then I have the voices that ask questions until I pass out. I have a full fledged conversation in my room or while I am walking. Over the years I have learned to tune them out so they are not distracting me. But sometimes when I am stressing out about something, they will come out and I will talk out loud to shut them up. Because I have just the three voices, usually, I can handle them. But when I get agitated, sometimes more voices will pop out, like they have the past few days. Usually medication keeps them at bay but sometimes they get commanding. And that is when I have to go to the hospital because I want to do what they say. This coupled with delusions that I am a messenger of god or something is bad. I once had Allah talking to me and he was telling me that I had to sacrifice myself so that the war in Afghan would end. I really believed him so was making plans to end my life so not to disappoint him. It was crazy thinking now but it wasn’t then.

sleeplessness and mania

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, depression, mood disorders

I have been up since 0130. I have tried going back to sleep but it has been a useless battle. My throat is still hurting but I don’t see my primary until next week. I feel silly making an appointment a week apart.

I emailed my psychiatrist about the symptoms I have been having. I told her about the euphoria last week and now me not sleeping. I feel manic but I don’t have the euphoria to go with it. I also have been feeling under the weather still with this cold or allergies that I have. I am congested all in my head and my throat still hurts. I had therapy today and it was quite a treat. I couldn’t speak at normal volume because I still am hurting. I also told my psychiatrist I missed two days of meds because I couldn’t swallow. I still can’t swallow too good but it is better. Every thing doesn’t go down like rocks. So far I have not heard back from her and I am kind of worried when she doesn’t respond. I want to know what to do or if I should just do things on my own. I am really shocked that I only slept for about four hours with taking 1200 mg of Neurontin. That shit usually knocks me out for at least twelve hours.

I had my buffalo wings for lunch. I was so looking forward to them. I should have put them on broil for a few minutes to have them crispy but I was so hungry I said the hell with it. I have not eaten since yesterday. And I have been up for thirteen hours now. After I write this blog, I am going to try and take a nap. The Ativan I took a couple of hours ago has helped with the racing thoughts. I feel much calmer now but I still don’t see a sleep time in my future.

I had therapy today. That was fun. We mostly talked about me being sick and me being up for so long. I should have gone back to sleep this morning but I never did. I have been on my laptop and I finished watching “Lincoln” the movie. I started watching it last night but I fell asleep. This must have been around 9 or so. Then I wake up 0130 in pain. I texted my therapist most of the night giving her updates. I texted her at 0530 saying I was up and then again at 0630 the same thing. I gave up trying to go back I really did because it was morning anyways. But around 0930 I started to lose some gas so thought I would be able to snooze. Problem was my mother was not home and people were calling her non-stop. The phone just rang and rang, pissing me off. I finally got up to tell the idiot that she wasn’t home but they had stopped calling by the time I made it to my mother’s bedroom.

I have no idea what the hell is going on with my phone. Last week I was unable to make any calls going out. So had the sprint customer service guy go over my plan. I thought it was because I owed them money but I actually had a credit on the account. The guy asked if I got a new phone. I said no. I have had the same phone for over a year. He tells me to power it off and then power it on. I was grateful that he didn’t tell me to take the battery out because it is a bitch to take the cover off and put it back on. Once the phone was turned on, it says that it is connecting to the network activation like a new phone. I was like WTF. Just now I had a voicemail and it says that I have to customize my voicemail. HUH??? I got through the process like I have a new phone. So fucking weird I tell you. So I hope that now I don’t have any problems with my phone after all the updates and such. I still have all my apps and text messages, though I don’t remember hearing my old voicemail messages. Oh well. I don’t remember who called anyways.

The guy from the group psychotherapy called me. He wants to know if I am coming back or if this is it. I am going to tell him it is over. I can’t go back to the group because it just isn’t for me. I was getting wicked suicidal after each session so I know that it wasn’t working out like I had planned. I never felt that way with my other groups.

My throat is still hurting me. It hurts when I swallow, it hurts when I try to clear it, and it hurts just doing nothing. My pain meds help take the pain away so I am happy about that. I just want it to go away NOW. I hate having a cold. And if that is what I have I will be overdosing on vitamin D until this goes away. Vitamin D boosts the immune system with a cytokine that actually helps respiratory infections. I did a lot of research with vitamin D when I was working with researchers so I know a little something about this awesome vitamin. I know that part of the reason I got sick was because I had stopped taking it. I didn’t mean to stop, I just forgot to add it to my pill pack.

I was going to work on my book today but I think I will work on my other project, my Lyrics. It is a compilation of songs that have meaning for me so I write the lyrics down and then I will write what they mean to me. I think it is a good exercise in writing, one that has not been done before, least to my current knowledge. I doubt that I will get it published because of copyrights and such but I can always keep the notebook I am writing in. the copyright people don’t have to know. I often wonder how artists and writers are able to go to the publishers and get the copyrights for their books. Kay Redfield Jamison is one of those authors that uses other people’s work in her books. I wonder if her editor helps her with that or if they contact the publishing company, because most of what she writes the people are dead. For example, she wrote about a letter that Edgar Allan Poe wrote. Pretty difficult to get his permission to publish in her book as he has been dead for over a hundred years.

Poe is one of my favorite authors. I have not read all his works. When I saw the Movie the raven, I revisited his works on the topics they were covering and they were quite strange and creepy. I couldn’t finish reading it. Rats eating a man because he was there with them. Gross! The rats didn’t kill him but the thought of them feasting on him because they were looking for food just freaked me out and I couldn’t read anymore because the man went insane. I forget the rest of the story but it wasn’t good. No my favorite Poe story is the tell-tale heart. I read that in my freshman year of high school and was a Poe lover from then on. I never got to read murder in the Rue morgue but maybe someday I will. I have a lot of time on my hands these days because I don’t work. But reading can be difficult to do at times especially when the depression is bad and you can’t think. I started a book, several actually, and have not finished one except for the books that I had to write reviews for. Even though I have the time, I just don’t manage it wisely. I rather be on Facebook playing my games than read. Though there have been times that I have been bored with Facebook and decided to read any ways. My mother thinks that because I am in my room all the time I am sleeping. She doesn’t know that I am working on my writing or reading or just being on the computer. She tells me that I sleep too much. HA! If only I truly did!! It’s now been almost fourteen hours that I have been up on four hours sleep. But even though I am tired, I know that I won’t be able to sleep. I am just too restless. My brain is not racing but it is over tired like I am. But I am going to try sleeping anyway so that maybe this cold that I have has a chance of spending less time with me.

Until the next time…

a little bit about my psychosis

by Midnight Demon, posted in psychosis, suicide, writing

My foot is burning. I just came from doing a little food shopping. Now all I want to do is sleep. I have not decided if I am going to eat today. I just have no inclination to do so as my stomach has not been the greatest the past few days. I don’t feel hungry. I just want to sleep. Maybe if I take a nap I will get hungry. I bought some Chinese food that I have not had in a while. I could make that or go to my go to, cereal.

I still have to refill my prescription for my antipsychotic. I really don’t want to as it’s thirty bucks and I am running low on cash. I have thought of not taking it but that could prove to be disastrous. I would end up back in the hospital most definitely. The voices have been held back and I am afraid that if I stop taking the meds I will regress.

I am not having a good day. I had a difficult session with my therapist. We were talking about my roots of suicidality and I didn’t like going back there. It stirred up things I rather not deal with but now I have to deal with. It doesn’t feel cathartic. It just feels horrible. Remembering what I went through as a kid. It just sucks. People thought that because I was a good kid, I didn’t have problems. They couldn’t have been more wrong. I was dying inside. I just wanted to die and yet I couldn’t let anyone know or my ass would get whooped. I tried to play it off as a happy kid as much as I could but at night it was just me and the voices. We’d talk for hours until I fell asleep. I had different voices growing up, mostly female and a few male. I had to keep them a secret too. I couldn’t talk to them openly like I could while I was in my room. This went on from the age of five to now. I still talk to the voices, especially when I am stressed out. Sometimes they are my sounding board. Sometimes they are mean to me by criticizing everything I do. They would always do it in school while I was taking a test but I could never talk back to them. They were the adults and I was the kid so I had to be quiet. I could only talk to them when I was in my room. And still do. I rarely talk to them when I am with another person. When I read they are the voice that narrates the words for me. We have a symbiotic relationship. I can’t survive without them and they cannot survive without me. I take meds to control the voices and sometimes they are too quiet and I cannot function. There has to be a murmur of voices for me to function. It has always been this way. When there isn’t, I just shut down. I can’t think. I can’t write. I can’t read. I can’t do anything.

The medication that I am controls the bad voices so they don’t interfere with the good voices. I just realized that I skipped the last few days. Shit. I hope that I don’t have negative consequences because of this. It will really suck to have to go back to the hospital. I just emailed my pdoc so hopefully she will give me an answer soon. I am not having bad voices now but that doesn’t mean that I won’t. I am just having some weird movement symptoms, like my arms and legs feel like they are elastic bands and I have to keep moving them so they don’t snap. That is one of the side effects of this medication. I don’t like it but Ativan keeps it in check.

vocabulary of suicide

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide, suicide attempt

Suicidal words

Hopelessness, psychache, lethality, perceived burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness, press, perturbation, fearlessness and competence.

These words encompass suicidality. It has been shown that most of the people that are suicidal feel this way and then act on the pressure of these feelings and commit and act of suicide. When someone feels all of these at once, it is a terrible feeling. Some people might only feel a few of these things and still be suicidal. Some people will feel these things and just be depressed.

Hopelessness, the feeling of being lost in hope, that nothing is ever going to change, that things will always be the same no matter what.

Psychache is defined as despair, anguish, hopelessness, guilt, worthlessness, and psychological pain one feels. It is like pain in the heart that no one else can feel. Your heart feels heavy and you feel like a burden because of it. Nothing soothes this pain. No medication can touch it. And suicide seems like the only answer for this type of pain and anguish.

Lethality, the degree to which someone is at risk for suicide. Whether it be a loaded gun or a few bottle of pills or some cuts on the wrist. This is what determines how suicidal a person is and how they are going to act. If the risk is high and eminent, involuntary hospitalization is called for. If the risk is low, then more contact is need and assessment at every visit.

Perceived burdensomeness, the idea that you are a burden to those around you but in reality you are not,

Thwarted belongingness, the idea that you don’t belong anywhere and feel the need to belong somewhere. It is a very awkward and lonely place that hurts very badly. Everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere or to something and when that need is not met, they feel detached and alone.

Press, similar to stress. It is as if the building of the press is similar to the pressure of a volcano ready to explode. It can lead to further perturbation and make things worse.

Perturbation, the need to feel or do something to ease the pressure and anguish and despair they are feeling and to feel better. It can lead to want to do something but the idea is that you need to do something to relieve the pressure of the feelings on your chest.

Fearlessness, the absence of fear. In this regard, it means that people may be fearless when trying to take their life, like a type of Russian roulette.

Competence, the meaning is the level of competence to carry out the means for their suicidal plan. Examples include rope for hanging, gun handling and shooting, knowledge of drugs, etc. High competency is a high risk factor.

All these elements can lead to a suicidal crisis. It is imperative that these elements be asked about on a consistent basis. Talking about the pressures of work or home life is important. If someone is saying they are a burden and wish they were dead is a huge tip off that something is going on and the elements I have just described are in full play. All of the elements depending on their degree, is an important indicator of how suicidal a person is. Merely asking about being suicidal is NOT enough as most suicidal individuals fear hospitalization or a thwarting of their plans and therefore will not be honest about their intention to commit suicide.

copyrighted 2013, Collerone, G