Help us communicate with our son

I know, it’s hard to use LEAP in every single communication, but to gain trust it is necessary.
I can still remember the silence in our NAMI Family to Family classroom when they told us the smallest changes could take years.

For us, that was years and years of the odd limited conversation that is LEAP.

I just listened to the off the wall stuff and tried to look like I was feeling empathy. Hardly anything they say is something you can build on (!) You listen and you listen and sometimes there will be a path forward. Our family members can do things quite successfully when they are working on something they want to do.

Years and years for us to improve our son’s situation and we never did get him to take psych meds.

When I first started using LEAP, I wanted to use it to steer conversations, we have had people who want to use LEAP to convince their family members that they have schizophrenia - as @megmeg pointed out, Listening and Empathizing are often as far as people get. The good news is that Listening and Empathizing will build bridges toward your son.

The tragic news is that some of our family members will only grow worse.

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So important to keep in mind!

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We picked Ben up today. He seemed more of the old Ben, talking about the universe, gods, spiritual planes and all the random things that flow through his mind. Neon colors, Gnomes…He had a lot to say this afternoon. He brought up on his own the topic of BPD borderline personality disorder and how many people suffer from it and he thinks he also has ADHD which he said he came to that conclusion while he was in there (doctor did not tell him that). I think our son does know he has an illness and when he brought up the topic of BPD that is when i said the meds they have him on are to help keep him from going back into psychosis and the goal we would like for him to work on is to not go back into psychosis because that leads to more hospital visits. He said yeah he knows. He also mentioned something about mental clairity on the ride home. Then when we arrived home and he sat on the couch for a few minutes he mentioned taking supplements and mentioned OMEGA 3 Fatty acids. I told him that was a good idea to take vitamin supplements so i think i will order him a bottle to see if he takes them. Was looking on youtube for other supplements for persons with his illness to see anything is worth trying. I myself take like 6 vitamins a day as i have been on a carnivore slash ketovoire diet for one year now and lost 100 pounds.

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Wow, a precious moment of insight. Whatever you have to tell him to convince him to stay on meds, please keep doing it! This is also the essence of LEAP.

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yes, as @kwillkat says, for whatever reason they say will take meds, that’s great, just so they keep taking them.

If he will see the meds are good for borderline, and he believes that is the issue, great.

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There are several threads here about supplements if you look in the search engine, that’s great he wants to try the omega’s.
I’ve thought about sending my sibling some of the supplements said to help with schizophrenia I’m just not sure how he would receive them at this point.
Congratulations on your weight loss ! my partner also follows a keto/carnivore diet . He is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and the keto /carnivore diet along with dbt therapy and exercise has helped keep him in a better place mentally .

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I’m not a lawyer, but schizophrenia is life threatening. Schizophrenics statistically have significantly shortened lifespans. My brother died at 56 years old from cancer and congestive heart failure, both a direct result of his “lifestyle.” He didn’t take care of himself not even one bit. All his teeth fell out in his 30s because he didn’t take care of them. My father sprang for implants (I told him it was a waste of money) and my brother was so neglectful that they fell out too! His jaw rotted away from neglect.

Any normal person would go to the doctor or dentist. Any normal person would do basic self care like brushing their teeth. It is typical that schizophrenics refuse to do even the basics of self care. How is this not life threatening?

A police officer explained the law regarding mentally ill person’s rights to to me. In my community, there have been mentally ill people wandering around like zombies for the past few years (since they added a train stop right by my house). They will pop out of a gangway and just start screaming at you. He said they have just as much right to be crazy in public as we do to be sane in public. I explained that somebody is going to beat them up or shoot them because their posture is extremely threatening; they just scream nonstop at anybody that will listen. He acknowledged that there are situations that warrant intervention because of the potential danger to themselves or others. But my takeaway was that the police are stuck being social workers and psychiatrists, and they are ill prepared for that role.

There are volunteers from a local church that reach out to the mentally ill and offer services. I listened to a transaction at the grocery store while I put my cart away. “Would you like to take a shower and put on clean clothes?” “No.” Can I help you apply for SNAP and Section 8?" “No.” “Well, what do you need me to do for you today?” “Gimme a cigarette.” And that was that. You can’t even help these people unless you force them to get help.

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Ben has been out of hospital five days and has so far been taking his meds but is reluctant every time. Says they poison his body. I keep telling him that the meds keep him from going back into the hospital. He seems to be a little better but still way delusional with all the celestial and universal things he talks about. Constantly talking now about a huge amount of things that make no sense to me or my wife but we just go along with it. He went out and bought some paint for his room and bathroom. He also bought a new ceiling fan for his room and a new mirror for his bathroom since the old mirror he removed from the wall because it had bad spirits in it. He says his room looks like a mental ward which is why he wants to paint it and his bathroom. Tried to get him to buy a very small tv for his room so he can watch his cartoons but he decided to order a samsung tabA tablet instead which i guess will do for now. Our goal is for him to get comfortable with his room and bathroom and not want to move out until spring next year after the winter is over. He has the finances to live in a one room apartment rent a room but we just have to pray he can stay on his meds long enough to get his brain into a better place. Finally got him to take a shower after three months! Dont know how long this stage will last, hopefully the meds keep him from going paranoid and into further acute psychosis.

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First, welcome to the forum. Let me say that I have now read all your posts, and while this stuff might seem unusual to you, not one word of it even raised an eyebrow because I’ve been through all of it with my brother Billy.

Billy had several cars in his life. Dad gave him his first car and took care of it for him. He was living with my parents at the time so it was easier for them to keep an eye on him.

In an impulsive act, he bought his second car, which he didn’t take care of and refused to repair until it stopped running. I had to go get his car and the brakes were so worn out that the piston had popped out of the caliper. I repaired it and did some other stuff so it lasted a little while longer (it helped that it was a Toyota).

After that, Dad gave him a car. He destroyed it in short order (ran it dry of oil and left it to be towed) and then I gave him a car. I tried to stay on top of the maintenance but he flat out refused to let me touch it unless it stopped running. I mean, all he had to do was drive to my house (3 miles) and let me fix it. He was too paranoid to let me do it. And when I did stuff like change the oil he would become enraged. He thought I was sabotaging him somehow in his hellhole of a paranoid mind. It was a real nice car and he killed it DEAD in 15 months. And that was somehow my fault too because I didn’t fix the visor.

Anyway, he would take off and drive for hours like your son does. He had no destination or plan. He would drive until the car was out of gas, then try to start it until the battery was dead, then call me SCREAMING that I screwed up his car and he was stranded 200 miles away and I had to come and get him. Of course I had to get the car towed etc and retrieve it. One time he ran the transmission dry and I ended up selling the car for next to nothing to a local service station. All of this was 100% my fault, according to Billy.

Destination nowhere BUT Billy told me some hair raising stories about his travels. He did some crazy things like picking up a 14 year old girl in a small farm town and going on a joyride. He said he let her drive his car 100 miles an hour and they got pulled over and Billy convinced the cop he was driving (or something) so he got the ticket. It’s a wonder that the girl’s father didn’t shoot him dead.

So if you think hair raising stories about your son are odd, trust me they aren’t. I’m sorry for what you’re going through, sorry for what you face in the future, but you are not the only one. Prioritize taking care of yourself because if you let him drive you crazy, there will be nobody that can help him.

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It’s a good reason to keep taking meds. Good idea to support his room makeover - hopefully the changes will bring him some peace. The delusions and possibly the visual hallucinations of “spirits” are a tricky problem.

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He hasnt had any hallucinations since leaving the hospital but the delusions still continue. He lives on another plan of reality. Hopefully he continues his meds and the current spiritual crap that he is going on about will subside. I think it has a little, now he talks about just weird stuff like back to the days when he was first diagnosed with SZ. I just put one coat of paint on his bedroom walls and he said thank you for painting my walls dad. That is a big change for him, he never says thankyou. He was going to leave the house to run grab a bite to eat, i asked him to take his meds before he left, he said he would take them when he returned because he did not want them to affect his driving. We will see,

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You are right. It seems like an ordinary thing, but the simple fact that somebody says “Thank you” means their minds are working normally.

Billy NEVER EVER said thank you. All he said is “Hurry up.” I painted his apartment once (since the landlord said he scared the painter away) and for two days it was hurry up hurry up hurry up.

So embrace the moments like this.

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I found that the longer my daughter stayed on meds the better she got. Thanksfully the once a month injection has been her lifeline to sanity. The months had a sort of cumulative effect on cutting down the hallucinations and delusions slowly bit by bit over the years. Some remain still to this day, however, the total benefits kept adding up until she knew to never go off her meds, to eat, sleep and do personal hygiene enough to not go out in clothes over 3 days old and her hair greasy from not showering, to hold various jobs until she’s had the same one now for 3 years, and to be able to keep her delusions and hallucinations in a “little box” in her head and not show them in public.

I hope that your son @Refueler1 will take his meds daily now. The goal to stay out of the hospital is a good goal to remind him of. For my daughter, the goal was to be able to work and earn money, and it is still her driving goal and why she stays on her meds.

Police and courts are tied down by following HIPPA laws so often can only operate on what they see that day.

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For our family’s experience, this was always and forever. Like two parallel universes - sometimes Mike would cross over and join us in our universe. He would have to work himself up to it and he would be exhausted afterwards.

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Morning. Yeah it is exhausting having when talking to our son. The thoughts that come out of his mind are just so out there that you don’t even know where to begin to reply or even to try and explain anything to him. We just let him talk and try to go along with his thoughts then when we give him advise or instructions we go slow and see if it registers with him. He will agree on some things then abruptly change his mind or forget. Totally frustrating. Yesterday around 2pm my wife texted me at work saying “The old Ben is back” meaning he was verbally abusive to her. He wasnt yelling but he started spouting off profanities and other strange things accusing her of odd things and again mentioned having to take medications. He then asked his mom to go with him to the cell phone store to pick up his new phone and to grab some food. She said no and he left. I arrived at home and started to finish working on his bedroom painting and then on his bathroom when Ben arrived at home an hour later. I showed him what work i had completed then told “asked” him not to speak to his mom like he did. He said he had a lot of things going on in his head at that time. I asked him to apologize to his mom. He went into the living room and apologized and told her he had a lot of things that in his brain going on at that moment. At least the constant driving around the city for hours and hours has subsided. Think he will go out for 3 hours then come home for another three hours then back out for a couple hours. He still has insomnia most nights. Gets maybe two hours. I didnt hear him up and pacing the floor last night and he is still asleep so i think he got at least 6 or 7 hours of sleep. I was talking to him about his sleep yesterday and asked him how many sleep hours per day he thought he was getting, he said 7 or 8. He has no sense of time. He only gets 2 or 3 hours. I told him as much and said i could hear him walking around and moving things at night to early morning. I asked him to take a natural sleep vitamin and he said NO, as usual. He said sleep medications are big pharma poison and so on. Don’t know why so many mentally ill people think medications are poison. He has a telehealth phone call with his new VA psychiatrist this morning at 9:30 am. We have reminded him to be home this morning for the phone call so hopefully he doesn’t drive off and forget. I hate to keep reminding him of things as i dont want to trigger him but,

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I think all the driving helps them clear their minds or get away from the delusions for a short time. Billy used to drive, drive, drive; hundreds of miles with no destination.

I also noticed that sometimes riding in the car would calm him down. He’s be agitated before we would leave but calm right down once the car was moving.

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My husband and I remember this particular hell so well. On weekends we used to go golfing in the rain in 40 degree weather to get a break from Mike’s psychosis. First sign always was Mike (used to be called “Jeb” in the older threads, I was so worried he would find this forum) he would stop sleeping. When we would realize he had stopped sleeping the feeling for me was like a rollercoaster started to go up a hill on its way to a big drop.

We barricaded our bedroom door so we could have a peace of mind (even though he never physically touched us, we grew more afraid of him) and we ran loud fans so we could sleep through the noise of him being awake in the house.

We built the guesthouse over a detached garage. Your son is terrified of spirit/evil hallucinations, our son was terrified of his dad. Not long after Mike had moved into the guesthouse, my husband saw him on the golf course and waved to him. The next morning we woke up and found my husband’s “dream” car and his drive to work car had been keyed extensively by Mike. Mike said my husband had yelled names at him and embarrassed him on the golf course.

The auto body guy was surprised we didn’t file for insurance coverage. We told him a neighbor did it and his parents were going to pay for the damage.

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Wow. Well Ben hasnt gone so far as to do much damage except pull the bathroom mirror off the wall and throw it away because he thought there was a spirit demon in the mirror. He damaged his own truck driving it into our Halloween display because it was satanic and he pulled out in front of traffic and was T boned in the drivers side because he was trying to get spirit out of his head. Today has been a day, the Invega and Lithium he is taking a week on after his hospital stay is not helping with the manic psychosis for sure, he has been complaining all day about sprits are doing bad things to him and trying to break his spiritual neck.

Are you sure he is taking the meds?

yeah he is taking them in front of us. We have his meds on our dresser and he comes in the our bedroom to take them at night. He had his VA teleappointment today with the new nurse practitioner psychiatrist. He hates the VA so it did not go to well. The psychiatrist mainly talked to my wife and i as we explained Bens background to her. She changed his meds over to Seroquel which is supposed to come in the mail tomorrow. Starting at 150 mg then following week up to 300mg. Hopefully he stays on it long enough to get him out of his current psychosis where he is living in an alternate universe. He told the psychiatrist all he wanted was a “trauma medication for BPD”, she tried to explain his options for meds and told him he would need to come in for blood test. He got totally upset and walked off yelling that he was not getting any blood test blah blah blah. So she talked to us and said at some point he will need to come in for a visit so she can do a face to face evaluation in six weeks, hopefully by then his mind is closer to this reality and he wont be such a butt head when he talks to her.

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