Schizophrenia Diaries » Family Members

Personal struggle with Schizophrenia

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:40:15 +0000

Hi, my name is Shyanne Powell I was born on september, 29 1990, when I was growing up my mom, grandpa, and I had tooken care and helped my granmother who suffered from schitzophrenia and other problems that were physical, I remember waking up every night to remind her to take off her oxegyn before she started smoking her ciggeretts, then in augest 4, 2004 we laid her to rest I was 13 going on 14.

After, I had started the eighth grade alot of things started to change both me and my so called friends but of course the whole time i was growing up i had no real friends who cared but that year is what kicked started everything after my grandmothers death it seemed like and felt like things had changed over night my sucidle thoughts had become worse and I had become paranoid about everything then, there was a night i whould never forget, i had gone over to a so called friends house me and her where thinking about starting a band so we desided to have a sleep over so i went over and once my mom left she asked me if i wanted to get high i said yes of course only because i was peer pressured, that night i went to sleep and was raped, after that it was nothing but halusanations and paranoia.

when i had tured 15 years old i had been idmitted for the first time, i was in and out of hospitles for 3 or 4 years my exsperiances at those places brought me more harm than good all i got was my thoughts and dreams washed away by telling me i whould not make it to graduate high school and i was indangered to be homeless then finally my finnal time in a hospital to one that i had been to seven or more times they had finnaly found the medacine that worked and its name is “clozerail” and once released i was put in a group home but the real test was when i had started school my senier year i had missed my other three years so i was pretty excited although it wasnt a normal school with sports or what not but it was pretty cool with the art classes i got into it but what made me irratated was when my case worker and team was trying to stop me from graduating on time which i did not listen i kept working then my voc rehab specialist tryed to convince my school princabule to have me stop
school for the rest of the year so i could get funding and graduate late , my princable did not go for it she thought it was crule so i continued my work and graduated high school on time with my class,

class of 2009

I always knew he was a bit ‘different’

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:32:54 +0000

A couple of years ago, my older brother was a quiet, shy, not so confident guy. Whenever someone asked me about my brother, I could never quite describe him. I would usually say something along the lines of.. a really nice guy, quiet, smart & a gentle giant. Paul was the quiet angel of our family, whereas I was the moody, screaming teenager.
I don’t mean to talk about him in past tense, like he isn’t here. He well and truly is, at age 24, still living at home with our dad, after my mum made him move out.
In about late 2006, he was diagnosed with Disorganized typed Schizophrenia. A shock to my parents, but not so much to me, as I always knew he was a bit ‘different’.
It all started with him hanging out with a group of friends he was close with since primary school. They had a band and played on weekends, usually at one of their houses. There they drank and I’m assuming smoked a fair bit too from what my brother told me. I never thought my brother would try that stuff, after the way my mother brought us up. She was very disapproving of drugs, I suppose like most parents, and he wasn’t the type to go against what mum had to say, or let her down.
He started becoming very withdrawn from his friends, he was chatting with them on Facebook & Myspace quite a lot, but just stopped, and stopped communicating with them.
This is when it all started.
He started saying really strange things, like ” My friend is plotting things against me” and “Do you think I could take over the world with facebook”, and he would just come out with the strangest things. Mum & I would just get so angry with him because I suppose we didn’t get it.
He started to walk around the house alot. He would just do laps of the house, open every single door and turn the heater up, leave lights on etc. Very very annoying. He also started to have about 5-10 showers a day, all half hour ones too.
He would walk around in a beenie, gloves and jacket on hot days. I knew there was something unnatural going on in his brain to make him act like that, I knew he couldnt help it, but it was just so frustrating. Where did my big brother go?
He would also study maths every day, he said it was because he needed to keep his skills up which he learnt in his Diploma of Engineering. This is definetely a good thing I suppose.
I always thought he was excellent at Math, as he used to teach me. But after recently reading his school reports, he actually had quite low scores in Math. But ask him what 100 minus 23 is and jhe ust wouldnt know, but ask him a really long algebra equation and I bet he would know how to do it. Strange huh?
After about a year of this kind of stuff and seeing counsellors etc, he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. Much to our relief, as I could better understand him, and know it was not his fault, but the illness itself.
Mum thought she understood. I know now that she just couldn’t deal with it anymore, so she asked him to move to my dads place, 5 minutes away. I guess it didn’t help that all of this started when mum had anothe rbaby with her partner or 6 years. She was trying to look after two kids at once I suppose. She still sees him once a week or so, but I wish she would care alot more and show him she loves him. I know she does, but I don’t know if he knows that.
So after two years or so, his condition has dramatically improved. He has finally got a job three days a week as a cleaner, something he knows well after working under my mums business. And he is also studying Literacy & Numeracy. I see him once every two weeks or so, but sometimes it can just be draining trying to make conversation and taking the lead in everything. I love my brother, but I just miss the way he used to be. He isn’t the same person anymore, he was my big brother, now I feel like his big sister.

personal story of my partner

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:27:50 +0000

i would like to aim this for all the partners and family members who live and share there lifes with the person who has become cruley cursed with SCHIZOPHRENIA.this evil illness is probably one the most challenging trying experiences to all involved,my partner of 8 years is a schizophrenic with personality disorder,when i first meet him i thought id meet the most loviest caring kind man that i could ever meet,he moved in with us after a few weeks and id never been so happy after lots of unhappy years.he was 42 and i 32 with two children aged 4 and 9 to who he was great.It didnt take very long till i started to see strange little stupid things,or he would answer me in a odd way which would confuss me but not him,he was a alcholic but not a drunk,he was allso on antidepresants and had been for alot of years,which i didnt think any thing strange i know lots of people who take them including myself in the past.this one night after about 6 months we went out and he got very drunk after we
got home he began to act very strange and talking and shouting out,but there wasnt anyone with him,when i asked him who he was talking to he bagan crying and acting like a young child,you going to live me if i say,:if you say what i asked,it took him a fews hours of crying and panicing behavior before he said IAM A FUCKING NUTTER you dont know what ive done and i hear voices…….i burst into laughter thinking hes just drunk and mucking about,untill i looked at him i assumed he was laughing aswell,but he wasnt,his face had change and allso his mood and his behavior, naw he was very aggressive angry and very frightning,this was not the person who i knew,i was very scared and started to cry asking him whats the matter,the more fear i showed the more he seemed to become worse with in a few mins he sat down and had a razor in his hands i was petrified i really thought i was going to die,i was so confused id never experienced anything close to this,all i could think to do was talk to
him very softly and loving and i held his hand and told him that i loved him very much and how happy iwas that id meet him and asked him to talk to me and what was going on to why he was acting like this he then began to self harm up his arms quite servere there was blood pouring out every where but he calmly carryed on cutting even though ibegan screaming and begging him to stop,he began rocking backwards and forwards asking me to stab him,he then got up and went into our kithen and picked up a big knife held it sharp point to his stomach and asked me to push it in then grabing my hand and tryed to make me push it into him,oh my god i thought what on earth happening i began shouting and screaming at quite aggresively i guess due to shock some haw i managed to grab the knife of him and he ran of to the bedroom crying.I Grabbed all the knifes in the kitchen and threw them out the window of our secondfloor, flat in a terrible state i wondered what he was doing in there i could hear
him once again talking to himself and crying i didnt have a clue what was going on or what to do or who he was,i went into our room and asked him if he would like a drink as iam having one,hea said yes please he was once again back to the child like ways he was to begin with and feeling very sorry for himself in a very winy manner just the same as a child of 4 would behave he was rocking back and forth with one hand up to face sucking on a few fingers, it was exactly as child.i made our drinks and sat next to him on our bed he still crying sayins sorry over and over again and kept saying that i was going to leave him again,i suggested we got into bed and go to sleep and well chat in the morning,i really was so confused and scared it was the only thing i could think off,and after that vodka was hoping hed pass out as i gave him it practicaly neat with tiny bit of coke.i was planing on sitting up all night or sleeping with one eye open.as he layed down i told him i loved him and he
replied back the same still crying and he said to me{iam going to die any}meaning himself,i sat up quike and asked him what he meant after half hour of asking him he started to fall in and out of conciousness and his eyes were going in the back of his head ibagan screaming and shakeing him shouting at him what has he done,i jumped out of bed and ran to find my phone i ran back to the bedroom round his side as i could only get phone signal by the window,thats when i noticed all the empty packets of tablets by the bed i phoned for a ambulance straight away whichcame within 10 min,at the hospital they gave him a stomach pump which was touch and go he was in a bad way,and i mad it all worse be giving him that huge vodka that he downed in one.As i sat out side that room were he was i didnt know what the hell was going on ithink i was in a state of shock and very emotional sad and confused and on my own i wasnt going to phone my mum and tell her even though i really needed her more than
ever,i know whAT she would say straight away ,and my dad would go mental and wont to kill him,i phoned his long term mate who he was very close to and asked him to come to the hospital as he was in being seen as he was very drunk,and nothing else.he arrived soon after and we began to talk i needed to know what the bloody hell that was all about and told him would he was doing,he was not surprised at all and quite calmly told me that he was a manic deppressive paranoid registered schizophrenic, and sayed i thought you knew…….my stomach and mouth hit the floor then it doomed on me that he could have killed me, and that ive been living with a tidking time tomb and my kids have been around this mad psychopath who was capable of any thing i had very little knowledge of the illness and assumed they were all mental and very dangerous and a liability,haw wrong was i,i left the hospital and went home on my own and broke down i cryed all night very confused angry disgusted with my self
and very mixed up.th e next day the hospital phoned saying he was asking for me,i didnt know what i wonted to do,Iknow what i should have done?thats ran in the opposite direction and never look back,but i couldnt it didnt feel right and that confused more,i had had fallen in love with him and he was Mr perfect,but i didnt really know he is he could have been any one on them.i went to the hopital and asked to speak to a psyciatrist or th main person who new about this,three and half hours of listening to him and a lot of sad shocking truths and how lonely and confusing this illness is to cope with and that its not mad people at all they cannot help it or even aware of it or do they know about the different personalities or behaviour changed they go through,but it was reasuring to hear there was medication to take and a normal life led,I naw had to decide my fourture ahead and if i was able to cope or handle the possibilities that could possibly lay a head ……that was 7 and half
years ago,no its not all been easy and its pushed me way to the limits and on the edge of a break down on more than one occassion.and as for him in that time 8 over doses 9 terrible terrifing episodes of psychosis and a lot of heard ache and hard work and as i write this hes in hospital having been sectioned,but i love him very much and he loves me hes my man who i could never be without and a wonderful kind loving person who adores my daughter…it breaks my heart to see the suffering and fear in his eyes that he must be going through and when the voices are telling him to do bad thing i see the agony and cant even start to think what my darling baby is going through i hate it so much that i cant stop them when he begs so much to make them stop…………..i would do anything at that point to help him

“Mom! why are you sending me messages?!”

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:08:13 +0000

“Mom! why are you sending me messages?!”

my schizophrenic mother

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:06:30 +0000

I am 22 year old and I have 2 married sisters and one single bro .I’m the youngest among siblings and all of them are living abroad.

My Mom is schizophrenic since even before the birth of my eldest sis who is now 34 year old. I don’t know how it all happened tht Mum got schizophrenic after she got married. I could never ask my dad and my sis neither ever told me how mum came into this disease.(Maybe she herself doesn’t know)

She takes medicines to cure the disease and these medicines she has been taking for almost about 15 years.These medicines I give her in the morning and before going to bed and she doesn’t know that am giving her these medicines. She is diabetic and hypertensed too and when I give her the medicines advised by the psychiatrist so long ago , I tell her that these are for diabetes and hypertension. If I ever told her that these were given by a psychiatrist then she would never take them.After taking these medicines she sometimes does feel normal for a few hours but then again soon starts shouting and screaming .In the begining she was taken by her parents to doc to get shocks which did help but mum didn’t agree to continue havin those shocks. Even now whenever I tried to take her to a psychiatrist she refuses to go. Even if she agrees to go yet she doesn’t take any shots or medicines they advise. All this has made my life terrible. I have no confidence to face people as mum acts so weird
before people . She yells all the time at home and dad also gets disturbed with it . she gets hallucinations as in she talks to someone while looking at walls or somewhere in the air. i can’t invite my friends at my place , I can’t talk to anyone so regularly on phone because her shouts are echoing all the time in the house. I have to spend most of my time with mom, no other activities , no fun.The building we live in has another family too whom i can’t meet or befriend with because they’re gonna ask me why ur mum acts so weird, because people here laugh at someone acting like this rather than helping. It’s so embarrassing for me when mum screams at the unseen character and the other family does notice it am sure.

Even when mum watches TV dramas, she associates all the stories to herself. For example if she sees a girl being murdered in a drama then she’ll assume tht this girl is she herself and then would worry that the unseen character is gonna kill her.

There is a lot , a lot, a lot to say. And I never share this thing with anyone. Don’t even have close friends cuz then they’re gonna ask me to let them visit me which is not possible because mum would keep yelling , how’m i gonna stop her shouting.

I think I have to live with it.

always_worried@yahoo.com

Still dealing with schizophrenic mother

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:54:04 +0000

Well.. as hard as this may be to talk about.. my mother has schizophrenia. She has been diagnosed with this disease since i was about 5 years old. I am now 19 almost 20 years old, and I am still dealing with this.

I do remember one of the first times she started having these voices in her head. When I was about 6 years old she asked me to come to her because she thought someone had put a recorder in my ear.. crazy I know..

Another incident was when we went to visit my nana and grandad and she left me there because she was having another one of her episodes and noone knew where she was for about a week or two.

My moms voice in her head is named Linda.. kinda creepy i know.. but after awhile I just accepted it.. She went to the mental hospital so many times when I was growing up I can’t even tell you how many times its been. She would go into outbreaks of just bawling her eyes out and claiming that people on the tv or the neighbors next door were out to get her and i of course would have to fight her for the keys to the car so that way she wouldn’t kill herself or anyone else. She would think that people from our own family were teaming up with this voice in her head to “get” her.
She would always claim that something bad was going to happen or that “linda” was controlling all of our heads and making us into different people. It was so wild.. and during all of this madness I was trying to be a teenager with friends. But, I hid it all. I held in the pain and the hurt and put on a big smile when i went to school because i didn’t want anyone to know that there was something wrong. I was even a very popular girl in school. I was a cheerleader all throughout high school. I ran track my freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year. I was very good at it too. I had many many friends, but none of them knew the secret i held deep inside.
Everytime my friends would ask to come over I would lie and say that they couldn’t because my mom said no or that someone was visiting and they couldnt’ come over. My mom was always an emotional wreck. I would come home and she would be crying on the couch or yelling at her voice. I would escape by sitting in my room with the music loud and the tv up. I can honestly say it made me very depressed because all i wanted was a normal mother like everyone else had. I remember looking up into the stands wishing that my mom could come and be normal to watch me run or cheer. It broke my heart. I remember many nights just clinging to my pillow wishing that things would be different. I did get a boyfriend my sophomore year and i eventually told him, the first person, about my moms disorder. He was of course in shock because yes i looked like the type of girl who was “perfect”. But i wanted to seem that way to people because i didn’t want anyone to look at me differently or feel sorry for me.
Anyways, i remember on several occasions my mom telling me she hated me. However, i knew it was because of her voice.. but for some reason those 3 words hurt. I needed someone to love and care about me. I had a stepdad and my dad lived in dallas. My stepdad didn’t know he would be signing up for this. He really just wanted out and he mainly took it out on me. We never really talked.

As of now I am trying my best to get through college. And not but 3 months ago I got a call from my uncle saying that my mom tried to commit suicide by overdosing on her medication. My stepdads brother however had walked in just as the medication was all hitting her and he called for an ambulance. My stepdad was out of town and I was in another town for college. She did live but as of right now is still not doing well. She likes to call peopel all the time like almost 20 times a day for each person in my family. It gets on their nerves as well as mine because all she wants to talk about is her voice and of course none of us want to her about it or listen to the person she has become. I dont’ know what to do anymore. I feel like she is my responsibility. Noone is my family seems to want to deal with her or care about her, and my stepdad wants to get out of it. I feel since she is my mother that i should help her, but i don’t know how and i don’t think i am emotionally stable enought
to help. THe only thing that has been keeping me going is my friends. But thats it.

So if you have a mother, father, brother or sister that have this horrible disorder i feel your pain and your not the only one. I know how it feels and it hurts.. but you have to keep strong and don’t let that person get you down.. you have to surround yourself with happy people and other family members to get through it.

My son’s journey through madness

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:45:55 +0000

My son’s journey through madness
Words fail to express my deep sadness
An adorable, young child
Good life, every reason to smile
Madness could only hide for a short while
Until insanity slowly filters inside
My innocent, sweet boy’s mind
Strange voices, fearful images hide
Behind racing thoughts, like rollercoaster ride
Heartbroken mother, prays by his side
As insanity follows like a shadow in the sun
Medication and hospitalization, fuels him to run
As other teens minds are free to have fun
I realize my son’s journey through madness, has just begun.
So I pray, with tears pouring down like rain
For my son to heal from this internal pain.

V.K.A.

older brother attempted suicide

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:42:23 +0000

My life ended and began on the day my older brother attempted suicide. He called me, crying, saying goodbye. I was across the country, unable to do anything but beg him to change his mind. He hung up on me and left me to crumble in confusion and agony.

Paranoid dad

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:40:59 +0000

I do not know what people with schizophrenia actually go through. Around the attack of 9/11 my dad (a lonely truck driver) started to act strange. He told me the terriosts were out to get him. He said they knew him. I was scared, then again I thought maybe just maybe he was joking. Around thanksgiving I went to his house. He did not want to turn on the lights, He just sat in the dark. He said they were after him. I again thought he was joking or hoped so. He also claimed to have a chip implanted in his head and said he heard a ringing. He said the television was sending him messages. At this time I did not know of schizophrenia. My grandmother wanted me (because I am the oldest child) to have him sent away to a mental health center, she then told me of an aunt I never knew who suffered from schizophrenia. She is now in a mental health center to this day. I never could put away my dad. I have cried many nights. I know this has to be what he is suffering from. He seems to have better
days now. sometimes he slips when we are in a conversation and I have to leave. I have talked with him once about it. He said he is not crazy that everything is true that happens to him. I am now in college in a psychology class. I have chose the topic of schizophrenia to do a research paper on hoping I can get a better understanding. This website is wonderful I have some insight on the daily struggles of this disease. I wish I knew how to help my father, that is kind of what I hope to gain from this research paper. If anyone has any answers that can help me that would be wonderful thank you.

personal environment and schizophrenia

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:34:08 +0000

Everyone’s experience of mental illness is different: from the person cursed with it to the person who brought them into the world to the person who might have unknowingly tipped them over the edge at some point. So my experience may only be helpful to comfort someone, as it will be comforting to feel like my experience is being shared. My brother has what we call schizophrenia, a mental illness which he developed apparently when he was 13, and had for ten years before it was recognised. I believe a lot of the difficulty in understanding and dealing with a disease is related to the environment you live in. Obviously a healthy body is a healthy mind, so we may say an environment where there is ganja, pills, coke, heroin, mushrooms, LSD, crack, ether, ketamin, excessive amounts of alchohol and cigarettes is not the kind of place you would expect to find a healthy mind. These things were there in my life and in my brother’s, and were not used sparingly. Another healthy bodily
requirement is space, freedom, the freedom to exercise, the freedom to scream and run free, and to not care what happens when you do. We live in a school where there are many facilities, many fields, many reasons to smile if only we werent cut down and judged when we did. An institution is a dangerous thing when its leaders or founders dont understand human nature, and so my leaders frowned on me when i went for a swim, shouted at me when i picked apples on the roof of a shed, and still couldnt let it go when i’d left the school. Results, results, results. When we care for results, we do not care for people. And so the teachers who got bullied by the headmaster, then bullied the boys who went to the school, and a lot of them could hack it having come from afar to the school, and where they would return every holiday. But for Will and I this was not the case, we would walk across the road, and into our house to meet our father, a teacher at the school, and spend the holiday in the
midst of the teachers, finding occasional solice in smoking a joint with someone else who was unlucky enough to be trapped there, but rarely feeling free.

When you mix this with a complete lack of women (another healthy element to any man’s life, in whatever capacity) and a complete lack of money, and an invented social heirarchy which meant that you really felt you were above the people in macdonalds although deep down you knew you werent, there is no doubt that it is completely understandable that my brother is schizophrenic, and completely confusing why i am not. So when i asked myself last night why i cower away from emotional reactions to things people have said to me, i know it is simple. Where i have learnt my life, good human values do not exist. This “blog” is not enough to do justice to the vast world of one person’s life, let alone two. But i hope in reading this that someone may find some hope or comfort in the fact that we are not alone down here in the depths of thought and distress and that there are so many paths back up to the surface, although some are booby trapped, and some are just bloody difficult.