I think it will good to find sometime who is experienced in working with adolescents as well.
Sz over adolescences, but yeah
Its hard to believe the mind can actually do this. Though I do believe you Moonwalker. My son never tells us what his voices say or are like.
The voices probably don’t want him to. And thinking about going against their will can result in a form of psychological torture with the possibility of them tormenting you even more. Even if it’s not torment you have to live with them no matter what.
This is not to say things can change, but that’s one reason for being quiet
I probably waited 1.5 years from onset to say anything about my voices … to my wife.
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This was a very interesting video… there seemed to be conflicting voices heard…
This is something that my daughter described when she went to the hospital…
Voices telling her to end her life and voices telling her not to…
She also described the voices that would tell her negative things, the malignant voices, but there were the benign voices that would build her up.
It was like an internal struggle like this for her.
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It’s good that she has some positive voices. Some don’t. I had both but I focused on the positive ones and made friends with them.
At first the negative voices when she started hearing them acted benign, and told her that they were her friends… and then started turning on her.
I’ve heard from people that any voice can turn and to always be careful. Mine never turned. But they did get mad at me sometimes
Staying positive and thinking positive and guilting the mean voices to feel bad can help if your debating with them
Though some will say not to debate them and ignore them
She actually did say at the beginning she was seeing shadowy characters (the source of the negative voices) but she convinced us at the time that she wasn’t seeing them anymore (what the voices told her to tell us at the time…because they were saying that we couldn’t be trusted… and they were her only true friends.
She convinced us that she didn’t need any professional help at time… we had clues like this through the two silent years where she didn’t tell us how bad things were for her.
Looking back…it all seems so clear now.
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The idea of shadow people kind of scares me. I know people that see them along with other minor visual hallucinations. I’ve felt ghosts and seen them once and it freaked me out.
I don’t believe in ghosts, I just saw them and they did not look in good shape
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I don’t think what she had described to us as ghostlike more just shadowy without real form.
Yeah ghosts are definitely different.
So does she talk to you now about voices. It seems your well informed of what’s going on now.
We are going to a NAMI support group tonight. We did tell our son without medications he has to stay at his house… it’s his choice. Told him I think he should go to the Drs and try another med. He once was on Invega injections, and that seemed to work great. Now he says he doesn’t like shots Who does. We had a conversation that there are people with his disease that function quite well; they have families, kids, jobs, etc. He just has to find the right med. When he’s not on meds he destroys our house. He makes big holes in walls… We have so much repair to do. He’s probably doing it to our rental too, but I don’t have to look at it…
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Yes! When my daughter finally told me about the voices, she was very frightened because they told her that she must never tell me or bad things would happen. They threaten her often and don’t like her telling me stuff. She heard the voices for years before she finally broke down and told me. I had to beg her to let me know what was going on…It was such a sad day…I’m so proud of her strength.
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Yes, since the summer she started opening up about the things she has been experiencing.
The same with my daughter… she only opened up because some of her friends encouraged her to do so while doing volunteer work at a summer camp.
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These are individual situations each family has to work out. It is good that you are thinking ahead and preparing for what you “think” you would do. But do not back yourself in a corner. I do agree as someone posted, there “might” be a case to get a person out of jail (if you can), but I would want to have serious boundaries in place once she got out. For others, being in jail was what led to the person getting the help they needed. I have thought about some day paying for auto insurance month-to-month for my loved one (assuming he had a car) and if there was evidence he stopped taking meds, no more auto insurance. When you are providing resources, you have a lot more control!
It’s soooooo hard to set boundaries with those who struggle with paranoid SZ.
I have the same problems with 46-year-old son.
On meds, fairly balanced behavior, off a nightmare.
They really are so fragile.
How do we set boundaries so our own lives aren’t ruined?
I don’t think it’s about setting boundaries, sz needs to be flexible. People can be in very strange states of mind. It’s good to set a routine. Sz people love routine. Routine works
I’m a mom, not a counselor or therapist, but here are my thoughts as we have, in the last 6 years since our journey began, had these issues also. My short answer is no consequences, just unconditional love and problem solving. Here is my long answer. My son has had court ordered meds and has had meds forced on him - at that point he was very ill and hospitalized. Other times he would quit taking them, feel himself slipping into psychosis and did not want to experience that again and would start the meds.on his own. We have been fortunate that he has been pretty self aware of what is happening for the last few years, understands that it is an illness and relates the stability that he can experience to the meds, so in that sense I realize I am lucky. However, like I said, we’ve had our ups and downs. First, I never wanted to feed into the paranoia. I wanted to demonstrate that unconditional love by visiting him every day, loving him and supporting him. We never set a threshold that was an ultimatum. My goal is for him to be safe, loved, and stable. He won’t be those things if I kick him out. Each family is unique though. I don’t have young children and I have resources such as an understanding employer, a stable marriage, the ability to pay the bills, and decent cognitive function and stability myself. Were any of those factors different, my ability to keep the threshold for his behavior so low might very well change. My religion has been an influencing factor as well. I believe only love heals and that our prayers will be answered. My son has, in the last year or two, found solace in faith also. I do believe that we are on this journey together, for some reason we can’t fathom right now, but along the lines of spiritual growth and service to others. I hope that your family can strike that balance and maintain it - I guess that’s the tricky part. Listen to your soul and stay strong. This may not be fair, but it is our the hand we have been dealt. Unless there is a breakthrough in medicine, we will be loving and guiding our sons for the rest of our lives. I just go day by day, sometimes minute by minute, with love guiding me - you will get pushback from others - in the U.S we live in a very punitive culture. It doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong, it’s just a perspective, one that I don’t think applies to marginalized people experience something we can’t imagine.
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