My son stays in his room. He does not come out. His doctor says this is disease.
Many people with Schizophrenia tend to withdraw from everyone into themselves. It’s important to let him know that you’re there to help and support him.
Yeah voices can be pretty difficult to live with. Tell him he needs to distract himself and stop feeding them by listening. Give him hope that they can go away or be more controlled. It took mine about a year to get quieter. I had to construct a new frame of mind that they weren’t a part of. I’m so sorry your dealing with this. Just know there is hope.
I withdrew from everyone and sank into my own head. I was lucky that I had some family who content to just sit quietly with me and try to engage me gently when I was at my worst.
As everyone else has said on here… there is hope.
He went to a Mexican restaurant with me tonight. He did not talk to voices in there. He ate his food. Did not talk much . He thanked me for taking him. He talked to voices when we got home. I hope I did the right thing. Thanks for your responses. Y’all help me.
Spending some time with your son and doing some thing simple and together is never the wrong thing.
It’s good that he is waiting to get home to talk to the voices… he most likely couldn’t talk too much for the distractions… I didn’t talk much when I wasn’t doing well… but having my family still try to spend some time with me did make me feel better.
One thing that also helped me a lot was my family would go for small walks with me. There was a lot less pressure when it was a sandwich in the park… not as many people. But again… that’s just me.
I’m glad you had a chance to have a dinner together.
I tried to pick his favorite restaurant to divert from voices. I will try short walks. I am trying to help him divert from voices gently. I know crowds can make him nervous. I just want to try to divert with pleasant things. Thanks for your reply.
I guess this is best that you are spending some time with your son. Try to do it on daily basis if possible. Go for walk with him, talk about his stuff, do some cooking with him or read some book of his interest with him etc.
Try to ask him what he needs or wants to share. Be patient with the things which he would like to tell you as you may not relate yourself to most of them but he is going through this so it will be as real to him as unreal to you.
What age he is in?
@laurasvineyard, it sounds like you are trying your best to make your son comfortable. Kudos to you! Instead of whining, you are being proactive, and I think that says a lot.
Hi. My daughter prefers to stay in her room too. She does not like to do too much with me. Sometimes we enjoy going out to eat or to the store. Her voices have been very active lately. It is hard to watch her struggle.
Has he ever told you the kinds of things that help him when the voices are bad? My daughter told me that what helped her was reminding her to use her “coping strategies” and she made a list of them for me that I put on the fridge. She really did try to use them a lot and it kept her out of her room quite often. I’d just ask her if she felt like doing X,Y,Z and sometimes she’d get irritated but she would try and do them for as long as she could. This is a strategy I use a lot, I ask her how she would like me to help her. She actually comes up with some really good ideas, which makes her feel more in control and like she has choices, reminds her she can do other things than isolate (or whatever it happens to be that is not healthy for her), and reaffirms to me that my creative, daughter who wants to heal and enjoy life is still there even when she’s struggling.
I think taking him out to a restaurant was a great thing to do. It proves he can control himself. And it’s just all-around good to do as many so-called"normal" things that he can manage. I know for myself that when my family includes me in “normal” activities it is VERY good for me. Makes me feel part of society.which is way better than the opposite. Maybe next trip should be to the library or to a museum.We have a serious disease but it is proven that “having fun” is therapeutic. If he can’t force himself to go next time, just give him time. Try and wait until he’s ready.
But actually successfully going to out to eat is a big deal. Good for him. When I was very sick, I spent the eighties in hospitals, group homes, and semi-independent living. I was fresh out of the hospital but all these places regularly took us on outings. Out to eat, happy hour at local restaurants, the beach, museums, parks, hikes, camping, canoeing, record stores, etc. I was kind of neutral about the places we went. It was mandatory to go so I took it in stride and now looking back I can see it helped keep me in touch with society.
I still withdraw from people, even on treatment. I’m unsure if I should tell them I have Schizophrenia or not. Some part of me says everyone has the right to know, then again because of all the negative press around the disorder I’m slightly scared to admit it because of how people might react around me. Like they wouldn’t bother to get to know who I really was, they would just assume I’m a violent person who sits and talks to myself…How long has it been since his diagnosis? He may feel ashamed of it, if he doesn’t fully understand what having Schizophrenia means and he may be angry or ashamed of the disorder. If that is the case then he needs to know it will be okay. He needs to know he has a support system at home that will help take care of him and he doesn’t have to go it alone. It may be hard to reach him at first but just keep trying.
When I first started coming around I avoided people as much as possible because I was trying hard to distinguish what was really around me and what wasn’t. Once I felt I had somewhat of a grasp on this I would start to socialize more, but I’ve never been an overly social person. Kind of the awkward geeky kid that sat in the corner and stayed to herself. I think that was more from being teased so much growing up but I don’t know.
I love to be with my son. I don’t want to get on his nerves. I am with him 3 days a week. I have to work out of state. I whine when I have to leave him. I pray god gives me a job where I can stay with him and my mother. I try to do fun things with him and mama. He is 30.
The people on this website that help others with this disease and caregivers are my Heroes. I am learning to be a caregiver. He was diagnosed 2 years ago. He graduated from college. He battled a lot. His father that treated me like a queen and adored him committed suicide.
My daughter would get irritated with me a lot when her symptoms were bad. Some of it could not be helped, she was irritable and I don’t blame her and I could not do anything and she’d get angry, part of it was the voices and they things they were telling her, like I had cameras watching her. Who wouldn’t be angry about a violation like that (although of course it was not true). Sometimes the voices said things that made her angry. She’d be sitting there and this look of anger would come over her face because of other things they would say-mean things. But sometimes it was because I was doing things she didn’t want me to do, like ask her how she was feeling, if she had plans for self harm (she self harmed ALOT) trying to get her to use her coping strategies. But I couldn’t stop, because I needed to have an idea of where she was at. I would rather have a daughter ticked off at me than a deceased daughter.
Seeing our kids struggle, feeling helpless, not knowing if you’re doing the right things and making them better or worse is really, really heartbreaking and hard. It can get better with time! You just have to do the best you can for them moment to moment.
I am off for two days. I bought my son some new clothes I got his favorite supper. He still seems to be dealing with voices. I am going to do something with mom and him today. I thought we would get my moms favorite meal sn take him to enjoy if he can. I appreciate your responses. We are not alone.
I had experience too many voices with my son on Ambilify and the voices would interfere with conversation on phone, thinking the neighbors were talking about him and even voices saying that they killed me. He switched to sereqoel and we can have a conversation again on the phone without him saying he’s hearing voices all the time. I know he here’s voices at times when he gets nervous or anxiety but it’s not to the extreme .
When I’m heavily fighting the voices I get very irritable because I’m just being bombarded with noise in my head. It doesn’t matter who you are, if I have one thing about you that I find irritating if I’m under psycosis the amount I can put up with just lost my train of thought sorry.
I’ve been having issues today staying focused. I wrote a long scene in my story…I use Scrivener to actually write my novel but I will switch over to MS word to pick up typical grammar issues, then paste the edited version back in Scrivener to keep everything organized and well I paste it back into the document, got to typing another scene, copied something else without thinking after closing word, and lost all of the original typing. I know it sounds a bit confusing. I’ve tried typing a novel with just word but it’s hard to keep large documents like that organized, one time I had copied and pasted several scenes more than once and well the method I do now works pretty well…it’s the first time I’ve screwed up on it like this and it just has me annoyed.
Not to mention my muscles are incredibly stiff and sour today making my overall mood low. Part of it was sleeping crooked the other part I think may be from my medication. I don’t know. I’ve just had a pretty rotten day all and all.
sohare, I get it, needing multiple apps to accomplish something - one will provide one set of functionality you need, the other provides another set of functionality, neither of them provide both!
I did much better dealing with my son during psychosis this last weekend. When he started yelling at the voices, I just said, I can deal with this because I know you are not talking to me (He will say, 'You this, You that, which makes it hard not to think he is talking to me), but I would appreciate it if you would be more quiet. Didn’t stop his psychosis, but at least it kept us from getting mad at each other.