Mental illness is frightening

[Mattymatt]

My family has a rich and sordid history of mental illness which makes life challenging. Unfortunately, I got the double dose, seeing as I am both Autistic and suffer from mental illness. Things took a turn for the worse last week. I started hearing voices and having racing thoughts and I would turn my head to see who spoke but nobody would be there. At first I thought it must be my imagination but I kept hearing my name being called and nobody's there.

So I had the dreaded conversation with my psychiatrist. At least schizophrenia generally develops much earlier in life. She was worried that it could be a mild onset of dementia. So, I've had Risperdal added to my antidepressant. My doc said it could take a couple of days to get to full therapeutic effect. The good news is that the thoughts have slowed down some, and knock on wood, I haven't heard any voices today.

This is truly frightening but I have a history of head injury and maybe life has caught up with me. My doc explained that the difference between dementia and schizophrenia is that with schizophrenia, you cannot separate fiction from reality. At least I know that the voices that I hear are not grounded in reality. I just wish it would stop but it's getting a little better.

 

[Autistamatic]

I hope it settles down soon Matt. You've had enough on your plate lately.

 

[Mattymatt]

I hope it settles down soon Matt. You've had enough on your plate lately.

Thank you, @Autistamatic.

 

[Bedlamite]

I once knew a fellow who confided to me that he at various times in his life experienced the audio receptions of a radio station. He was the treasurer of a POA while I was the chairman of the road maintenance committee. So I knew him very well since we had to coordinate together concerning POA funds and expenses. He was fully knowledgable about his affliction and I can attest that he was not crazy, mentally ill or schizophrenic. He stated that his physician told him that this type of affliction could sometimes simply be caused by a neurological infection or some other physiological complication. He was also told that if it did not constantly persist then don't worry about it.

 

[Mia]

Someone's thoughts on the subject:

The results of another study suggest that, on average, about twenty to twenty-five per cent of the waking day is spent in self-talk. But some people never experienced inner speech at all.
In his work at Durham, Fernyhough participated in an experiment in which he had an inner conversation with an old teacher of his while his brain was imaged by fMRI scanning. Naturally, the scan showed activity in parts of the left hemisphere associated with language. Among the other brain regions that were activated, however, were some associated with our interactions with other people. Fernyhough concludes that “dialogic inner speech must therefore involve some capacity to represent the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of the people with whom we share our world.” This raises the fascinating possibility that when we talk to ourselves a kind of split takes place, and we become in some sense multiple: it’s not a monologue but a real dialogue.

The Voices in Our Heads

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fixing-families/201304/critical-voices-shutting-them-down

 

[TheFreeCat]

HI Matt.

Mental illness is NOT just dialog in your head. Mental illness is a grinding madness. Do you know anyone with schizophrenia? It is a torment from hell and you WILL know if you are tortured as opposed to thinking.

I had a friend who killed himself over the torment. He was in the most exquisite torture for 25 years before killing himself.

Torture, not just a few chats in your head.

If you start to get very tormented, then you will know.

I hope you do not!! I hope it's just stress related mind-talk.

 

[tree]

@Bedlamite

What is a POA?

 

[Bedlamite]

Property Owners Association - Sometimes referred to as a Home Owners Association. It is a community sometimes gated and closed off with boundaries for security reasons. Usually every property owner contributes an annual fee for amenities and maintenance.

 

[Mattymatt]

HI Matt.

Mental illness is NOT just dialog in your head. Mental illness is a grinding madness. Do you know anyone with schizophrenia? It is a torment from hell and you WILL know if you are tortured as opposed to thinking.

I had a friend who killed himself over the torment. He was in the most exquisite torture for 25 years before killing himself.

Torture, not just a few chats in your head.

If you start to get very tormented, then you will know.

I hope you do not!! I hope it's just stress related mind-talk.

It got bad enough that I sought treatment for the condition. I know people that suffer from schizophrenia and can only imagine the torture it causes. I know I don't have it but the racing thoughts and voices are tormenting when trying to fall asleep.

 

[Bolletje]

I feel for you. I recently had a similar episode of hearing voices and having my thoughts race so much it was like my mind was a TV and someone else was continuously changing the channel. I was lucid enough to realize that I was hallucinating and dissociating, but it was very frightening nonetheless as this had never happened before.
I had a conversation with the psychiatrist and got started on a low dose of olanzapine aside the quetiapine I took for sleeping. My diagnosis for now is bipolar II with a tendency for psychotic disregulation when either on a mood extreme or when put under too much stress or receiving too many stimuli.
It makes me feel like I won the genetic lottery and I probably shouldn’t procreate.

 

[Mia]

I know I don't have it but the racing thoughts and voices are tormenting when trying to fall asleep.

Have had something similar happen during stressful or difficult times in my life. Began to identify the voices and thoughts with people I knew from the past, some of whom were from childhood, others my teenage years, others bosses, parents, teachers. As a result of
the way I've internalized many things over the years.

Taught myself some self-help techniques. Cutting off the thought mid-sentence, countering evidence to dispute of it, re-naming the thoughts. Ascribing names to each different dialogue or haranguing, have even cursed the thoughts.

Was once paring an apple and a particularly nasty voice from my childhood taunted me, I even recognized the voice from the particular way it spoke. This voice indicated that I was going to cut myself badly, immediately rebuked it quite strongly, and didn't cut myself. That voice has never come back.

The years that I've worked at ridding myself of some particularly nasty inner dialogue has worked. It has less of a hold on me, and makes for less chaos now. On occasion it does return, but quite rarely.

 

[Fino]

When hearing voices, are they as clear and external as any other voice or does it sound different in some way?

 

[Mattymatt]

When hearing voices, are they as clear and external as any other voice or does it sound different in some way?

Yes, they sound clear and external as if someone is standing next to me and talking. Freaks me out.

 

[Loren]

This might not be related, but, if I experience a significant lack of sleep, I have visual hallucinations, and, on the rare occasion, would experience auditory hallucinations, including hearing voices, although, not repeatedly, as you have described. In my case, there was a definitive pattern between lack of sleep and hallucinations. Just thought I'd mention it. I hope you experience continued relief and your symptoms subside, significantly/ completely.

 

[Fino]

I'm sorry!

That's always been one of my biggest fears, but, actually, after reading all these comments it doesn't sound quite as bad as how I imagined it.

Not that it's not bad, I have no intention of minimizing anyone's suffering. The way I thought of it before, for some reason, was that hearing voices basically meant the end of your life and you'd inevitably have your life consumed entirely.

The reason I asked what I did before was because I occasionally "hear" something, but it's not external, it's like a thought that's louder than the other thoughts and not in my own voice. It's weird, but it's not this, probably seizure-related.

I hope you're happy and comfortable soon!

 

[Catalyst]

I'm bipolar type 1 and can even remember having occasional hallucinations as a kid. My bipolar was so overwhelming by adulthood it completely took over my life. Hallucinations and racing thoughts (both visual and auditory) when hypomanic/manic as well as lots of chaos, and suicidal thoughts or just lack of motivation to do absolutely anything when depressed. I only started realizing my autistic traits when I was stable.

 

[Catalyst]

HI Matt.

Mental illness is NOT just dialog in your head. Mental illness is a grinding madness. Do you know anyone with schizophrenia? It is a torment from hell and you WILL know if you are tortured as opposed to thinking.

I had a friend who killed himself over the torment. He was in the most exquisite torture for 25 years before killing himself.

Torture, not just a few chats in your head.

If you start to get very tormented, then you will know.

I hope you do not!! I hope it's just stress related mind-talk.

It does not have to be that intense to be considered mental illness. It just has to be out of the norm. When we think of mental illness, we do think of the severe schizophrenics and bipolar people. But that's the extreme of mental illness, not the in-and-all of mental illness.

 

[Bedlamite]

This might not be related, but, if I experience a significant lack of sleep, I have visual hallucinations, and, on the rare occasion, would experience auditory hallucinations, including hearing voices, although, not repeatedly, as you have described.

In some cultures sleep deprivation is a method to obtain an altered state of consciousness. The technique is purposely performed and accomplished to create an affect naturally and without the use of psychotropic drugs. In these cultures the mind is regularly explored and the activity is not considered abnormal. However, here in our western culture, altered states of consciousness is considered by psychiatry as a mental illness.

Psychotropic substances have played a major role in the development of our philosophy and thinking throughout the world. What a lot of people don’t realize is that psychiatry up until the 1950’s and the field in general had no concept that neurochemistry played any role what-so-ever in emotion and behavior which today seems really bizarre. The discovery of psychotropic drugs and their potent effects on the human psyche and in expanding conscience awareness practically occurred simultaneously with the discovery of serotonin, a molecule in the brain. Upon examination of serotonin and various psychotropic substances, some of which are formed by the pineal gland and found in the brain, it was found that the atomic structures of all these substances were closely correlated. It was at this point that science began to postulate that neurochemistry plays a role in brain chemistry and behavioral states. But psychiatry and all its related branches of R&D (research and development) remained “closed minded” because of their strictly structured paradigms. Paradigms that consider and treat only the physiology of the mind (physical aspects of the brain) and the body. Paradigms that harbors solely to the use of mainstream pharmacological drugs which, of course, is controversial. Psychiatry and all its proponents are still living in the stone age.

“…the model that we’ve been working under in psychiatry and the behavioral pharmacology model is just wrong, its backwards actually. That consciousness is primary in the universe and matter is a result of it” – Leanna Standish, ND, PhD

 

[Bolletje]

In some cultures sleep deprivation is a method to obtain an altered state of consciousness. The technique is purposely performed and accomplished to create an affect naturally and without the use of psychotropic drugs. In these cultures the mind is regularly explored and the activity is not considered abnormal. However, here in our western culture, altered states of consciousness is considered by psychiatry as a mental illness.

To be fair, experiencing altered states of consciousness when sleep deprived or using psychotropic drugs is considered physiological and not pathological. It’s only considered a symptom of mental illness if said altered state occurs without those triggers, or if it lingers way beyond the normal duration (say, a drug-induced break from reality that lingers long after the effects of the drugs have worn off)

 

[Decameron]

> In some cultures sleep deprivation is a method to obtain an altered state of consciousness.

Please don't try sleep deprivation, it can be extremely dangerous.