@hope
Worth also mentioning - my son’s psychiatrist said that the longer my son is in one place or at one job, the stronger the paranoid delusions will grow in that location.
That’s very interesting, my wife has never been able to hold down a job, always finding a reason to leave (usually another person she didn’t like), and always wanting to move to another place, another town after being somewhere for a year or two.
Yes. It’s why I have mixed feelings about my husband’s plan to retire ASAP and move to be close to family. I do think the family support would be helpful. But he also wants to move away from the epicenter of his persecution, and I think he will just eventually develop a new (or maybe a second) epicenter.
I do think its important to maintain a sense of humor - and the point @Maggotbrane was making was such a wonderful simple point(I did laugh out loud to read his post). At times I end up so focused on the schizophrenia I forget my son is still there.
When my son’s behaviors began noticeably changing, I alerted his other medical doctors and they responded that they didn’t notice any such issues. One actually stated she thought my son was a bit of a slacker and just needed motivation. My son was never a slacker - I firmly told her “this is not my son”. Side note- later - on the NAMI forum there was a parent named “thisisnotmyson” That parent did lose their son, hopefully, they have found some sort of peace and have been able to go on with their life.
I know I had trouble seeing my son was still there for a long time. Some realizations do take a while;) On this forum, a couple of years ago, one of the folks from the other forum posted that it was difficult for him to have his parents look at him and miss the old him. That hit home for me and I worked to make sure I was continuing to look at my son in the same way I always had. Actions made it reality and I began to see that my son was still there - and not just there- but there and working hard to figure out how to make his life work.
@Douknow, no one would listen to me for a very long time when I tried to make them realize something was going on with my son.
Early on my son always wanted to move - I couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t understand that he was the constant in the equation.
When the psychiatrist told me that my son gathers proof of his delusions the longer he is in one place - it was an eye opener. I wish someone had told me that earlier on, I would not have brought him home to live with us for such a long time.
Exactly. We know that a change will only work for so long.
One point I forgot to make is this absurdity isn’t anyone’s fault per se. It’s what I’d call a system failure of society’s making. People are acting ‘rationally’ and in their own interest, but the game has irrational rules. I wonder what John Nash would have said about it…
If you are familiar with “A Beautiful Mind”, before coming up with his famous Nash Equilibrium, John Nash invented a ‘perfect’ game called Hex, because he was frustrated with the game ‘Go’. The problem was even if you played the game with ‘perfect’ strategy you could lose. In his version if both players did not make a mistake, the best they could achieve is a draw.
The fundamental problem in the game of forced hospitalization is the danger to self or others threshold. Fine and dandy if anosognosia didn’t exist, but otherwise it’s a recipe for repeated failure or disaster— not success. I can walk you through the scenarios and the moves caregivers, the police and the mentally ill typically make and why, but these are all too familiar for anyone with experience with the system.
Soviet Russia had a penchant for diagnosing people they wanted locked up with ‘sluggish schizophrenia’ so I see how forced hospitalization can be problematic, but there must be ways to mitigate this sort of abuse.
You want a system that encourages making better choices and is tolerant to mistakes. What we have is the exact opposite— in the US at least.
Good perspective. Thanks for sharing this.
It’s easy to look for someone to blame and easy to settle on ourselves. There is really no way to blame anyone, including yourself< for the condition. It’s very complicated and as far as I’ve been able to read, no one really can definitely fix on a single event, person, place or thing to blame. And it’s of little or no value anyway. I wonder if you were in some way finding yourself at fault. Keep telling yourself that it is everyone’s fault and it’s also no one’s fault. And in the end it doesn’t help us anyway to decide that matter. The condition has to be managed and that is where our efforts can be most productively focused. You are a good person trying to do your best. Keep on trying.
I am trying to think of then tell my sz son one amazing thing positive thing he does once a day when we interact. It reminds me of what one of my kids kindergarten teacher said “it’s easy to comment on the things that need to be corrected but harder to remember to state what they are doing really well” . Just a thought.