h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Now I'd like to come to what schizophrenia, and particularly the paranoid type, is. It is called a thought disorder – one's thinking is not orderly any more. There are many ways in which this can happen and in turn affect behaviour.

Usually schizophrenia only 'strikes' in late adolescence or early adulthood. I was fairly typical: my first bad psychotic break happened when I was 20 and at University.

But even before that, I was strange in certain ways. I know I've experienced traumas in very early life that haunted me all the time thereafter. By the age of seven I already had a very morbid mindset. I was starting to develop certain obsessions. By the age of eleven or twelve I had quite a number of strange obsessions. By the age of nine I was reading the novels of Stephen King … I was interested in horror from about six or seven. I was interested in the supernatural and the occult and read whatever I could get away with, and my parents were quite permissive when it came to that. I'm glad they were, because actually reading did in the end help me to deal with things. I generally believed what I read, especially I fervently believed in UFO’s and aliens and for a long time *wanted* to be abducted because my regular life was awful in my eyes.

And then there was the conspiracy theory stuff. In a conservative church we were preached about the Anti-Christ and how Satan would soon take over the world; from the politicians, Communism was also thrown in, and of course Communism was just Satan’s way of deceiving and enslaving all humanity. I took all of this extremely seriously. What I got from the pulpit was not enough; I went seeking all sorts of conspiracy theory books and magazines. By the age of sixteen I was quite an expert in conspiracy theory of the Illuminati/New World Order sort.

But this is not schizophrenia. Many people are interested in these things, or have these sort of beliefs, and they’re not schizophrenic. I wasn’t then, either. I had my strange ideas and interests and obsessions but I still was functioning quite well. I got good marks in school, and I had a few friends, and got along well outside school also.

But *something* might have been incubating through all of this. My mind was developing in very strange ways, I had some profoundly strange ideas, and my self-concept was also very weird. I was already living in a world very different from that of other people.

This is a cultural thing. The world *all of us* Afrikaners were living in back in those days was a very strange world compared to that of other people. That is still the case today. You can look at different cultures right now and they will seem foreign and alien compared with each other.

But I was developing into a 'culture' of one. I was very much at odds with other people in my views. I didn't really say it to them, and in my behaviour I passed for normal. In my head things were different, though. What was happening I can only now, in retrospect, realize. I was accumulating some completely contradictory ideas, *without* understanding and realizing that they were contradictory. In my own mind I was starting to get ripped apart. I wasn't who or what I thought I was. My own beliefs weren’t what I thought they were. There were things that were not logical, that made no sense at all, and I was unaware of this. But they were creating rifts in my mind.

This is now where schizophrenia starts. The word means 'split mind' … but not in the sense of a split personality. This means the mind in itself contains 'splits' and divisions. I like seeing this as a rift, on one side of which stands one part of the mind, while another is on the other, and instead of working together, the two go on and carry on separately. One's logical abilities for instance can function only in one aspect of one's thinking, while others are utterly illogical. And one doesn’t know this while it is happening.

This is how it is possible for an intelligent person to have beliefs so extreme a 'normal' person cannot even conceive how anyone might possibly hold them. In one part of one's mind one is logical but there's another part, or parts, that logic has no control over.

We still don't know what 'causes' schizophrenia. I still don't know why I went the route I did. I didn't know any better, and only later when all hell broke lose did I realize that anything was going wrong. I can't say whether the things I read and experienced influenced me towards becoming schizophrenic, or whether I read and gravitated towards certain things because I already had that kind of tendencies. And in the end having strange interests and experiences cannot fully explain the kind of breakdown that ultimately happens in a schizophrenic mind.

In my own mind I wasn't a flesh and blood person. I was a strange amalgam of ideas and impulses and I lived not in the physical world but a world of theories I had invented. There were in fact different 'worlds' that were to me more important than the real world, and the real world of which I was rather dimly aware, wasn't at all what I thought it was.

The breakdown happened when I was at university. I was studying physics, chemistry and mathematics, and these things contributed to the 'theoretical' world or worlds I had in my head. The world of concrete things and everyday experiences was separated from this world of intellectualized concepts for me. Now I started to read about all the strangest kinds of scientific theories; I was already into quantum mechanics when I was at school, and now I started on the weirder fringe theories. All of which contributed to the weird beyond belief concept of reality that I had. My self-concept also disintegrated; I had a number of different ideas of myself, including that I was an alien being who accidentally was born on Earth, or that I was literally every person and every thing that existed. The 'everyday' world and my 'everyday' self became of almost no importance to me. My mind had left the building. My body was on autopilot. "I" was off elsewhere.

And still the thing is that this is not necessarily the problem. I am still like this in many ways. I am still convinced that the world is very different from how ordinary people conceive, perceive and experience it. My self-concept is still very weird. I still experience reality very differently. I still often feel like I'm all alone in an alternate Universe. But I now recognize the problems that mindset creates and I can do something about them. When speaking to people I can 'filter' my ideas into something they can comprehend (I hope). I understand other people better. It is now important to me to try. It's also important to me to think of my physical self. So I can at least to some degree take care of myself. But back then my mind was getting totally out of control, and I didn't care about the 'real' world or 'real' people or even my 'real' self.

So, I was getting some very weird and contradictory ideas; the supernatural, fringe science, conspiracy theory, fundamentalist religion, occultism – all got mixed together. I didn't see any of the contradictions and conflicts. My 'body' was going through certain things; I was at university and having to attend classes and 'experimenting' with factors of university life like binge drinking that weren't very good for me, apart from my studies I was interested in art and music and animals and plants and actually way too many things, I went through a period of excessive exercise and food intake and then later like I said I was hardly eating at all and neglecting my health, I was suffering from strange disease symptoms, I was experiencing difficulties like my bicycles that kept getting stolen, and things just got too much for me to cope with.

One person who's also traveled a path with schizophrenia says that it is basically a susceptibility towards breaking down. That's what happened to me: I broke down, and the breakdown took the shape of paranoid delusions. I started to believe a particular person was trying to sabotage my life. Instead of realizing that all these various factors were at work and that I was consequently having difficulty coping, I thought that just this one person had it in for me, and was trying to destroy me. And I started planning to retaliate. I even started to planning to kill this person, making it look like an accident.

That was when the part of me that still could think logically intervened in the only way that it could – forcing me to commit suicide. I had to stop myself at all costs from becoming harmful to others. I can safely say I think that I *did* commit suicide. What I did should have worked by all counts. I had twenty times the lethal limit of certain poisons in me. But *somehow* I survived. I did not know why and my speculations on that account fuelled yet more delusions later on. But never again would I let myself even get *close* to becoming dangerous to other people. Myself, that's another story.

This highlights something I wish to emphasize. What I experienced was a psychotic break. Most people, when thinking of the word 'psychotic', also think of the word 'killer'. And that is almost where I was headed. But I stopped myself by turning against myself. Most schizophrenics are not dangerous, and those that are, are more dangerous to themselves than to others. But there IS a danger. Psychotic people can turn violent for various reasons, these all being irrational. These people can see a serious threat where none exists. This is the real danger, and it's especially a danger where there's paranoia.

Paranoia is again not just a thing restricted to schizophrenic people. Ordinary people can be paranoid too. Paranoia is a 'shortcut'. Instead of identifying real problems, one invents an imaginary threat, and this is targeted. When this threat is eliminated the problems will be gone – that is the kind of thinking. In truth the threat is nothing of the sort and eliminating it will not solve anything – in fact it will create many more problems. But the paranoid mind solely focuses on this invented threat. It doesn't want to deal with the real causes of problems.

This is how things are for many people considered 'normal' … how much worse for people with paranoid schizophrenia! In their case the paranoia is a characteristic of the kind of mental breakdown they experience. While ordinary people can have their paranoias and still function, a paranoid schizophrenic person is so overwhelmed with paranoid delusions that s/he can no longer function adequately.

Also, while ordinary people's paranoid ideas usually have at least some kind of reasonable justification … they could defend it with arguments that kinda-sorta make sense … a paranoid schizophrenic person's delusions can be quite bizarrely out of touch with reality, and have no tangible evidence in support of them at all. A schizophrenic person can just 'feel' that something is so, or get a certain idea, and it suddenly becomes inseparable from reality.

So typically paranoid schizophrenic people can have ideas of being persecuted in very odd ways. They can believe the government is trying to control them or trying to read their thoughts with rays (hence the whole tinfoil hat thing). They can believe their neighbours are agents of some hostile force and are spying on them. They can believe their own parents are aliens in disguise. They can believe that they themselves are assassins that have been trained and mind controlled so as to have a different everyday identity that is unaware of their own true background. They can believe that a dog is God or a cat is Satan. They hear non-existent voices giving them commands or secret information or tempting or insulting them.

This happens because a schizophrenic mind has a tendency to find more meaning than actually is there. It finds order in chaos. It sees connections between things where none exists. Things that to a normal person seem to be coincidences or having no relevance are to schizophrenics signs, omens, indubitable proofs. Just like there are connections the mind ought to make but doesn't, there are connections the mind shouldn't make, but does.

Again, everybody does this to some degree, schizophrenic people just seem to do it more. All in all: in paranoid schizophrenia, paranoia is just a characteristic of the way the mind breaks down, and it becomes so bad that it seriously interferes with normal functioning and with happiness. There's much more to the whole problem than just the paranoia. But seeing as it is such a significant symptom of paranoid schizophrenia, paranoia is something I had to learn about a lot, in order to overcome it in myself. And I do think that what I've learnt can help with understanding the bigger problem of paranoia in the world.

But for now I won't talk of that. Next installment will follow soon.

I'm reading these journals, just not commenting because I'm *listening* to what you have to say

but as you can't see that, I thought I would post

Peanut

I found what you said really helpful, Willem.

I am reading too, Willem, and I am astounded at your grasp of your own problems, your ability to deal with them, and to articulate them so clearly.

Please do continue, but don't wear yourself out in the process - that is some very concentrated writing and thinking.

Websailor

My mum had a phase in life (not too long ago) where she developed paranoias about all sorts of things. She heard voices, she was convinced people spied on her (she once didn't talk to my sister but wrote her messages because she was convinced the surveillance staff for the former minister of defence who is a neighbour would hear every spoken word). Stuff like that. It was a very difficult time for all of us.

Thanks for sharing these thoughts, Willem. I am sure that there are other lurkers out there who will get benefits from them.

I am here, Willem.

I just don't know what to say at the moment


lil x

Very dear Willem,

You know our loving thoughts are always with you.

With a great deal of affection and so much admiration for your many talents and how you manage it. i do hope that we shall have the great pleasure of meeting you one day.

Christiane(AlsoRan 83) and Keith.

Friday 13th April, 2012 17.50 20`1

Hi folks, thanks for dropping by. Bel, what happened with your mom next?

My step Dad was never the most postive of people and typical of people round here has quite low expectations, but he was (is) hard working, loyal, kind, a great dancer and he loves my Mum and treats her right.

He began to lose his sight in bursts, which meant that he couldn't drive, then couldn't do his job. He has stuggled to accept the loss of vision, particulary the fact that he can no longer drive. He has other physical disabilities. All these things happened over a period of years. A bumpy ride.

He was angry and went through bouts of feeling very low, all of which was very understandable. Like many people of his generation he expected himself to 'just get on with it' and to address the physical aspects of his health and the practicalities of life, not the emotional and mental aspects of his well being

Because like I said not the most cheeriest person,the inability to accept the sight loss turned to bitterness, and as my Mum said he was a little 'fey', like his mother, we didn't cobble together all the signs that he was becoming very unwell, quick enough. Should have

He became convinced that people were stealing from him, talking to him through the computer and didn't like to go out because people thought he was a piedophile. He 'hid' this from us, we knew he was behaving oddly, we were concerned, tried to be supportive and urged him to get professional support but he was resistant and we couldn't force him

When he got to the point when he just couldn't keep a lid on it and started to have suicidal thoughts and lash out at people then we could get insistant.

He was diagonosed with severe depression put on meds, refered to a psychological consultant, a community mental health nurse and put on meds. The meds helped, taking those inital steps of talking to people at th assessment stage helped, having a loving family helped.

I loved him properly, not just cared for him, or felt very fond of him but felt a rush of love when he stood up in front of us and said that he recognised how ill he got and was and how he wanted to get well.

It was incredibly difficult for him to share his feeling and fears and I thought it was a really brave thing to do

While all this helped, he was by no means well, then my Mum became ill and incapacited for periods of time, everything was very up and down.

In a crisis the mental health heath are very responsive but after that if you are keeping afloat, then is just nothing, until the next relapse when they up your meds

There has been no support offered to address the underlying causes of his depression which are more complex that just the loss of his sight and that astounds me and I am really bloody angry about it.

His baseline for quality of life is coping, keeping afloat, I think it can and should be better than that, that even at in these later years resolution and fulfillment is something that is achievable

He was ready for the challanges of talking therapy but it just wasn't on offer. Stable on meds, feeling better (not feeling 'well') and job done or so it seems

Sorry very long post

Hello Peanut, thank you very much for sharing that story of your dad. Of course a big reason why I'm writing this is to help people, all people who read this, understand mental health better. To be able to RECOGNISE such problems quickly, before they become big and bad. Also to speak of how people can be helped. As you say the current medical world thinks in terms of medications but actually there is SO MUCH that people can do for people suffering from mental problems, so many ways in which they can help and support them. Once a person is in the grips of full-blown paranoia, there is very little that can be done. Not nothing ... I feel such people can still be helped by those around them. But when paranoia is deeply entrenched it is resistant to change ... the person will by then not even trust his/her loved ones to be able to help OR to understand. But if people's loved ones pay attention and can see the signs when they're still small, then they can give much more help with 'rectifying' paranoid views. This has to be done with extreme sensitivity though. The very idea of 'rectifying' people's views is a minefield. The very thing is that there is not one single correct view of reality. People with alternative views may turn out to be right. But what we need to look for in paranoia are ideas that clearly have no justification in terms of consistencty with more-or-less-what-reality-seems-to-be, OR with logic; ideas that are damaging, paralyzing to a person, seriously detracting from his/her happiness, and potentially harmful to others.

I am incredibly serious and dedicated to this cause AND what you folks must realise is that the obstacles I'm facing are huge. I say again, this is a minefield and in my vulnerable condition I'm venturing into it with the aim of trying to help others. Other people have tried and failed so many times, how could I succeed? But I'm going to try and persevere even if it gets me killed. I'm up against an entire society, an entire WORLD that doesn't know and doesn't want to know or care about the importance of mental health. A world that will only see the problem when it's already too late to solve it. A world that finds it easier to dismiss people as 'crazy' and to stuff them somewhere they can't see them, or even ignore them when they're right out in the open, instead of trying to help them to face their fears and control their emotions and actually become productive and happy people. I mean, if such people are helped, they could actually make very worthwhile contributions to our world - like Vincent Van Gogh and so many others. But that's too much to ask. It's easier to condemn people than to help them, but *WHO'S REALLY HELPED BY THAT?* To me, THAT is crazy, but in the meantime, I must consider myself crazy because I'm outnumbered.

So much for society helping me with my paranoia.

But there are ways to help people. FIRST AND FOREMOST: positiveness. Positiveness in every way... not artificial positiveness but sincere and honest positiveness. Not all-praise, not ignoring problems. A realistic and committed recognition of problems coupled with a realistic and committed belief that problems can be solved with effort and the right approach. I hope to have much, much more to say about this - but for now, please think about it.

What you say in your last post is bang on

Here in the UK I have seen progress made in destigmitising mental illness and a shift in attitudes, in terms of treatments, in the provsion of health care services and on a societial and individual level of understanding and awareness of mental illness and wellness

I am not saying we are there yet, there is still a long way to go in terms of understanding and adequate provision of appropriate services, support and education

So we need people like you flying the flag Willem and there is a mountain to climb, but remember you are not up against the world, you have us standing alongside you and progress is being made in the world

I meant last paragraph, sorry,

I agree with Peanut, that in the UK understanding and care of mentally ill people has improved considerably, but unfortunately there are just not enough professionals with the right training to cope with so many cases. Returning military personnel makes the need even greater, but as always the money does not appear to be there, or the training.

Of course the money COULD be there, it just needs re-routing from the countless idiotic, fashionable 'causes' that seem to get all the money they want.

Sadly, the first line of defence against mental illness of any kind is to just pile on the medication, then more, and more till half the problems are medication induced, rather than intrinsic to the person.

Thanks for writing both of you.

Websailor

Oh, and Willem, I can understand you feeling that way, but the entire society, and the WHOLE world is not ignorant or unsympathetic, it just seems that way from your perspective, or maybe it is more prevalent in your country.

People do run away from things they cannot comprehend but it doesn't necessarily mean they are bad people.

We stopped hiding people away here many years ago, shutting dozens of big impersonal psychiatric hospitals but unfortunately did not put a suitable replacement in place first, so many are 'lost' to society.

Keep writing, it will help us understand, and maybe help you to release some of your feelings.

Websailor

Hi Elektra,

I have not heard from you for a while...I hope you are both well.

With much affection.

I wonder how to set up a correspondence directly, so I do not appear to just "barge in.... " I have forgotten how to do it!!.

With affection!!

AlsoRan83 and Keith.
Christiane
Monday 16th April 2012 15.50 GMT

Hi, Christiane. We're fine, thanks.

To send Elektra a personal message, click on her name. This will take you to her Personal Space.

Then click on 'Leave a Message'.

Dmitri

Very dear Dimitri,

thank you so much. I am now tired out - have been busy and suddenly saw your name and thought I wanted to talk to you both. !!

Go well, I shall do it tomorrow when my brain has recovered...!

Christiane and Keith.

Monday 16th April, 2o12 16.30 GMT