My other son wonders about my dad - the other side of the family tree. My dad would be fine one minute and ENRAGED the next minute. He was totally unpredictable. I remember as a child him being upset because my friend and I were whispering in the back seat of the car during a trip home from church choir. After dropping her off, I received an angry long lecture about how whispering can look like you are talking about someone.
We were just whispering because that’s what you did around dads back in the 60’s. I remember wondering if he actually thought we were talking about him.
All of my siblings have had addiction issues their entire lives. I now wonder if its self medication. One brother was prescribed some sort of med that he won’t reveal, the sister who knows, hints about it being a psych med.
I need to look at LEAP again and try it because I feel instinctively I’m saying the wrong things, asking the wrong questions. I have a terrible burning need to know what’s going on in his mind! Why is this SO important to me??? My ex says it’s not important to know what or why. He has the attitude “It is what it is,” and we’ve all heard that quote before I’m sure. But I can’t be that way. I’m very analytical and sorry, but it drives me crazy!
In hindsight, I wonder if half the people on both sides of our family didn’t have something going on.
A few people really did have a serious MI, mostly bipolar, but there was an awful lot of oddness & mood swings.
But, then again, I can be odd & moody myself, so maybe they all think I’m crazy too.
I know about most of the mental illness on my side but now I’m finding out some things about my ex husbands side. I always thought my father in law was bipolar with mostly mania. And he was so close to our son, I actually think he favored him above all the other grandchildren. I also believe he was capable of being very hard on our son because he wanted the best for him, wanted to really make a man of him when he was just a little boy, and because our son was sensitive and sweet, he thought he needed to be toughened up. I have this one memory that haunts me where he was still learning to ride a bike, Papa was so mean about it because he fell and I just let him brow beat a little boy! I kick my ass all the time for that!
And, I kick myself all the time for being the opposite.
My son was sweet & sensitive too, & if anyone had dared to try to even yell at him, I’d have been all over them.
My approach was to talk to him about whatever he did wrong - which he hated. Sometimes, I think he’d rather have been spanked & just gotten it over with.
Maybe, if I’d been stricter with him, or harder on him, or not tried to protect him from the world, it would have toughened him up some & made him more resilient.
No matter what we do, we’re always second guessing ourselves.
I think its a normal reaction to want to ask questions and understand why they think the things they think. Maybe we think if we could just say the right thing to them, they would suddenly understand and the whole scz thing would go away.
One clueless therapist way back in the beginning asked me if “something had happened” in my son’s past that his voices call him a pedophile. This was before I knew that scz is a bit of a specialization field. I told her “No, that’s what makes it crazy”. Scz thinking is irrational if it were rational, he wouldn’t be mentally ill.
When my son texted wanting to know what cat I was looking for in our back yard while I was sitting at breakfast . I thought great, a new hallucination.
About 30 minutes later a neighbor showed up at the door to explain why she was in our backyard earlier looking for her cat.
When stuff like that happens I think “yeah, whose crazy now?”
Early in this journey someone said that we will have gotten somewhere when the world will understand that mental health like physical health, can change.
So let me see if I can understand this LOL! Did your son merely mistake the neighbor lady for you?? I’m so sorry to laugh but really I’m totally confused. Did he think she was you at the same time he knew you were sitting having breakfast?? Do you even have a cat?? Good Lord! Who’s the crazy one is right!! Lmao!
He thought the neighbor lady was me, I thought he was having an hallucination so I’m doing all that Amador stuff texting responses to him - he loves cats, so he’s worried about an actual cat - that I think is an hallucination. The neighbor shows up at the door later to let me know her cat is up one of my trees.
I’m sure the expression on my face was priceless - I can’t even imagine.
I called my husband to update him, his response was an incredulous "So there was an actual cat and an actual person??!!
The lives we lead, eh? Yes, who’s crazy now - exactly.