My son does that - I didn’t know it was the same as hearing voices either to start.
I think he’s graduated to hearing actual voices now though - when he’s not well he laughs to himself a lot, so there’s some kind of inner dialog going on.
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Yes 20madonna, I agree, the only thing we could actually do to help was try to situate him in a way to reduce his stress. Living with us was causing him to flare up constantly. We moved him into a garage apartment over our unattached garage. Now he focuses his paranoia on us - it always focuses on someone nearby that he sees regularly, like people at work or neighbors where he lived. At one point in order to remain living here, when he still lived with us, he agreed to see a psychiatrist for one year. We were able to get his ssdi and ssi started during that period.
He needs to be where we can keep an eye on him. He presents a danger to others that he doesn’t realize. When he worried about his neighbors wanting to hurt him, he bought a gun to protect himself. Lowering his stress by having him by himself, not working, not having to deal with people on bad days has helped a great deal.
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There is so much stigma attached to all mental illness. Sometimes it seems that people believe it’s easier to cope with if they don’t discuss it. Thank you for being brave enough to see through that.
A very close family member of mine is living with the same symptoms. Suggestions of doctor visits to help find answers to quieting the voices go unheeded. It’s also a matter of believing that what’s being heard has origins outside of the mind. The best I can currently do is stay non-confrontational without allowing my own boundaries to be crossed. If rudeness becomes a part of the conversation, I make my boundary known and excuse myself from the conversation.
I so empathize with you. The helplessness is very painful. When I can accept that it is not a scenario in which I can do much besides continue to show love, there is a modicum of peace. Two minutes later, I want to fix it again.
Hope my experience helps you in some way. Contact me anytime! Sharing breaks the stigma down.
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Just read this, My son says he doesnt hear voices but he will say someone said something that they actually didnt say.
I went to GP appointment with him in November, then four weeks later he said that at the appointment the GP said "I know whats caused this and I feel guilty about it " I was shocked at that as I sat in on the full app and the Dr said no such thing!
I asked my son if the Dr had said that, then why didnt he question what he meant, my son said “i knew what it was all about, I knew what he meant”
My son also used to laugh out loud a lot alone in his room, I thought it was the tv always he was laughing at ., something funny on there. Not so sure though, also for years since about the age of 16 I would hear him sometimes talk out loud in his room, not long conversations but just talk. It never went on for long though just maybe a few words at a time.
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We actually attended Family to Family to find out how to help our son deal with what we thought was severe anxiety after he was fired. The leaders and other families worked patiently with us to help us see the actual problem. Trying to figure out if they were correct, we then tried to figure out if he was hearing voices (we still were clinging to the auditory hallucination from the meds belief) - this can be really hard to figure out even living with them, can’t it? Finally one day he was watching tv by himself and he laughed - such a delighted happy laugh- and he said “how do you know such things?”
He was clearly talking to someone and he really liked them.
After that we noticed that sometimes he left the room abruptly to go into the bathroom and talk “to himself”.
Fraulein, thank you so very much for the contact offer, sometimes without being able to share with someone, I begin to feel that I am in some sort of tower cut off from the world.
I know that your being there for your family member showing love is the greatest gift you can give them.
A few weeks back my son texted “why doesn’t Dad talk to me anymore?” The last time my husband said hello to our son he did $2600. worth of vandalism to his car.
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Jane57 You and slw are the first time I have had anyone say their son also hears people saying things they aren’t saying.
Our realization that something was seriously wrong with our son was when he told us we had just called him a “pedophile”. We were discussing what was needed to fight his being fired and I used the phrase - “send me the pdf” He was calm when I replied “that was not what I said or meant”. He said “yes, you did, you just didn’t know you did”. My husband and I looked at each other, our world tilted at that point. We just didn’t know how far.
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Just in case someone else reads this, I’ll detail things I saw early on that I dismissed.
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He’s been socially anxious since about 2nd or 3rd grade. When he was about 11/12, we were at the drive through window at the Dairy Queen. There was a younger boy sitting with his parents at the table inside by the closest window. Those people never looked our way. My son got very angry and said the boy was saying things about him. I thought he must have misinterpreted something and the anger was very out of character. I watched him, I didn’t see it again, so I let it go.
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After he had his first psychotic break at 15, he said he didn’t hear voices, but over the next couple years, he would come from his room into the rest of the house and ask me if someone was talking, sometimes if someone was talking about him. Sometimes, he’d be very sure, other times not. I took it to be he was hearing the TV or some other noise, and let it go.
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He would say people were talking about him when we’d go into a store, and looking at him, they weren’t, but again, I thought he was so anxious he was misinterpreting things. He would also do this in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, but he wouldn’t complain until after we left. He’d say I just wasn’t paying attention and that’s why I didn’t hear it - that I was never paying attention. I stopped reading at the doctor’s office at that point.
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One day, we went to Lowes. A couple men walked in kind of beside us, then veered off to the section they needed to go to. My son didn’t say anything then, but he was upset when we left and told me in the car what they had said about him. They did not look at him in any way & certainly didn’t say anything - I heard their conversation. That’s when I knew, something was bad.
I’ve only came to realize what I was observing was a form of auditory hallucination. I thought somehow it wasn’t as bad because he had to have a person to focus on, and he didn’t have voices telling him to do things. It’s crazy how I’ve managed to reason things away in an effort to think he’s not as sick as he really is, and even though I’ve known he has psychosis, I’ve still been in some form of denial for 12 years - until this year. I think my eyes are finally wide open.
I had always given him the benefit of the doubt because I have seen people be very unkind to him with my own eyes. And, even now, unless I’m there, I don’t always know what to believe, although what he tells me people say seems to get more bizarre. For example, about 2 years ago, he needed a lot of dental work, so his dentist recommended sedation dentistry with another dentist. They give you Haldon by the way, and they say it has amnesia-like properties, so even if you have a bad experience you won’t remember it. Well, it calmed him but did not knock him out or give him amnesia. He was OK by the treatment but swears the dentist told him he’d have been the perfect patient if he had boobs. I know that didn’t happen, but I couldn’t take him back - and we still haven’t completed all the work he needs. It’s top of my list as soon as we can get him somewhat well.
During those times, he either wasn’t compliant with his meds or they weren’t working well. I went through a long stage where I honored his wishes of trying to take as little meds as possible. I’m over it - he can’t continue to live half in and half out of reality. So, for good or bad, I’m going to do whatever I have to do to try to get him the help he needs.
Even now, his new meds aren’t working - either they were only effective in the short-term or he’s not on a high enough/frequent enough dosage.
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That’s so interesting slw, it’s funny how little things niggle us but we dismiss them as they aren’t noticeable enough or is it hindsight is such a wonderful thing.
What I noticed earlynwith my son , as early as 2 years old even was that he really couldn’t understand teasing, my friend and Imwould walk with our pushchairs together, the kids were about 2 , the little girl would delivery tease him by hold her hand onto his pushchair , he hated it and got so upset.
As he got older he backed off from friends, fault a fault with every single one of them, saying they ignored him etc etc. He became more and more withdrawn.
Last summer hecspey time at my parents , he said he heard my mum say " we will wait till he is asleep". She said no such thing.He also said my mum said “we don’t love you so just deal with it”. Again that upset her as she wo never say that.
He still mainstay he saw his dad sniff drugs about three yrs ago when they walked the dog. I said maybe your dad was rubbing his nose with his hand, nope he said he saw white powder fall to the ground, course he never. I asked why then did you not react if your dad was doing some so serious nasctaking drugs , he replied it’s up,to him, it’s his life.
My son has a delusion that people are going to frame him for being a peadophile, then was saying all the drs in the hospital were actually paedophiles.
It’s amazing reading some posts here which bring back memories not me. About three years ago before any of the delusions became apparent I found in my sons wardrobe a tennis shoe box containing a very expensive flashlight-torch. Personal protection spray that stained someone if sprayed at them, a pool type ball in a sock. Padlocks and keys. I was a bit disturbed and didn’t understand of it. He never took these items out the house though , he kept them in a box in his room.
Thank you for writing and understanding.
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It would scare the crap out of me for my son to have a gun. When we received guardianship, the judge also gave us the form to take away his right to own a weapon. But not his driver’s license. If he asks about a gun I tell him he cannot own a firearm.
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Vallpen, I thank you for listening. I am envious that you and many others have achieved being able to medicate your family members. When I feel unsure, I try to remind myself that our overall situation has come a long way from where it was before.
While it sometimes feels as though I have built a box to keep him in, I also can see that he is trying to make a life for himself, even if its rather limited. In December he asked about going to see a therapist, he said he needed to talk to someone. He has tried therapists before, this time he chose a therapist who specializes in CBT. Choices like that make me wonder. He has been told that he has schizophrenia, is it a coincidence that he chose this therapist or on a lighter days does he research schizophrenia? Is this progress or not? He has seen this therapist weekly since.
Maybe its just an opportunity to talk to someone. He has said before that maybe if he was just nicer to everyone they wouldn’t call him names.
The one time a doctor convinced him to try meds, he lasted about 5 days, we saw quite a difference. He hated the side effects and threw them away like the rest. The paranoia is useful for one reason, it keeps him too afraid to leave home for very long.
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My first real alarm bell went off when he called me his third year at college and told me his friends were mad at him. I asked why and he said “they say I never want to do anything with them anymore”. Odd for him as he always loved spending time with people, even as a baby. I remember sitting silently thinking after that call.
Is it denial? Maybe.
Now, with hindsight. I examine other memories. His sensitivity toward being slighted, even in kindergarten, he would be quite hurt if he thought a child was ignoring him. I think all the things I remember must have struck me as unusual for him at the time.
Sometimes I think when the schizophrenia really kicked into gear it was probably a busy day at our house while he was in high school. Either my husband or I probably reached up and closed a cupboard door our son had left wide open without even thinking about it even though he had never left cupboards open before.
Such an awful, awful disease. It showed up here and there taking quick peeps at us and eventually grew to take over his life.
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Mine always complains people are calling him a pedophile. One therapist I tried to arrange for him thought he had “done something” that made him think that. If they don’t have experience with schizophrenia, therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists are useless.
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The gun issue is the scariest thing about my son. I took the ones he had away from him and I search his apartment for weapons every chance I get.
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They are so easy to get ahold of. I guess that is a big fear if he were elsewhere.
We aren’t gun people so it totally freaked me out when he said he bought one. With his paranoia he could easily hurt someone thinking he’s protecting himself from something that’s not even happening.
How successful has the monthly injection been in comparison to older, more standard medication options?
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