How many of you caring for loved ones (esp. those off of meds) notice that their sense of time is off? I don’t mean by an hour, but by weeks or even months.
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My daughter didn’t have a lot of problem with that, she just changed over from sleeping at night to sleeping in the daytime like that was normal.
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Yes, when I told my mom how long she’d been living with us she was shocked and was very upset about it.
She was never on meds longer than a week. She would always tell me they don’t work. Then when we would go to the doctors office, she totally seemed relaxed and almost normal. So I feel like the doctors didn’t believe me.
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So sorry your mom got upset when being told how long she’d lived with you. It probably scared her to realize her idea of time was off.
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Thank you. It’s the hardest thing to go through.
Yes, it is, and especially because a caregiver feels so alone during these struggles.
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Yes, I would ask her over and over what was happening and she wouldn’t say. I was getting so sucked in to it that i felt my own health being affected. Of course, i feel so guilty for not doing more. Thank you for listening
Please, do try not to feel guilty, you didn’t cause this illness, nor can you “fix” it. All you can do is try to make it better.
My daughter told me today that she had two sets of voices talking to her over the years: the first set was a group of kind women prior to 2013, and the second set was mean men (except for 1 or 2) in a group of 8 or more that visited her mind after the women “left”. She never talked to me about when her voices started until today. But I see now that when she couldn’t communicate in the “real” world, she was probably VERY busy communicating in the world in her mind.
She has been medicated now since 2019 and that was her turning point to being able to communicate properly and rejoin society. No one meeting her now has any idea of her past and her schizophrenia. It has been a long battle.
I was very lucky to have a series of small personal miracles that led to her getting on and staying on medicine. Things that I couldn’t have controlled or brought on myself: from police, to family, to courts, to sheriffs, to hospitals, to Baker Acts, to arrests, etc. It took a long time for me to let go of my guilt through all those years. To be healthy yourself, you must let go of your guilt. The only thing that anyone could do that is bad, in my opinion, is to do nothing at all to help their loved one: even kind words, kind thoughts, or prayers to help them, etc. Sometimes, that is all one can do. So please, let go of your guilt and do what you can, what your heart says you should do, to help her, even if it seems too little.
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Thank you so much. This makes me understand what was happening in her mind.
I’m glad I could help you in some small way. Take good care of yourself.
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