Krishnamurti And Thoughts On Thoughts

“Our chief concern is the transformation, the radical change, of the human mind....Unless that radical revolution, that psychological change, comes about, there will be no end to conflict, no end to suffering and all the violence that is going on throughout the world....This change cannot possibly be brought about without knowing oneself, self-knowledge....Unless one understands one’s self, the self of every day--what it thinks, what it does, its devotions, its deceptions, its ambitions, all its self-centered activities, its identification with something noble or ignoble, the state or some ideal--one is still within the field of the ‘me.’” ---Jiddu Krishnamurti

Yesterday I was reading bits and pieces of a book called God In All Worlds: An Anthology of Contemporary Spiritual Writing. I was trying to inspire myself to think more deeply about my belief in some form of higher power. Well, I wound up reading aloud into the tape recorder a quote by Krishnamurti. The quote begins: “Questioner: There are many concepts of God in the world today. What is your thought concerning God? Krishnamurti: First of all, we must find out what we mean by a concept. What do we mean by the process of thinking?....” And suddenly, I was caught up in his perspective. What is thought? After all I suffer from schizophrenia which is classified as a thought disorder and I’ve never really considered what a thought is. I promptly went to my collection of books and found a book called Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti. A while ago, I think before I got sick, I picked up this book and read through parts of it, even writing in the margins, as I sometimes do. Browsing through the pages it was obvious that I had spent some time with this book, but that I had forgotten most of it.

Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was an Indian philosopher and writer who developed a substantial following. He believed that the root of human suffering lay in thoughts. The radical transformation he often talks about (that he certainly went through when a young man) turns on self study and understanding. And so he studied himself and discovered that all thought was divisive and created conflict within him. Eventually he came to this conclusion: “The chaos in the world, the misery, the starvation, the poverty, the brutality, the violence, the mess that is going on, the madness that is going on, is created by thought.” (p.273)

It is true we are conditioned by our families and friends, by the culture we live in. It is also true that we condition ourselves with our own likes and dislikes. We are taught or teach ourselves to think in a certain way depending on our environment and there are invariably others who think the opposite way. There is conflict and the potential for more conflict. We maneuver our way around it and through it. The mind seeks security through its thoughts, but, as Krishnamurti writes, “Security is an illusion.” Security is an illusion and you have to wade through danger to get to the Truth.

Krishnamurti did not believe in Jesus or Buddha or any religious figure; he believed in Reality or Truth. For him, that was the higher power. But he saw that the very process of thinking got in the way of experiencing Truth. He saw that many people mistook words and language for Truth or focused on the messenger of Truth (Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, etc...) instead of the Truth itself. But what is Truth? What is Reality? How do we distinguish day after day and night after night between what is real and what is false? I think it’s safe to say that everyone gets lost through mistaken impressions and misinformation, but most of us hold to the same basic reality. We all know that fire is hot and water is wet; we know that children grow up into adults; we know the difference between “yes” and “no”. In fact, we know so many things that if we stop to name everything we know we would lose count of it. But in that vast sea of known things I think we, perhaps out of a kind of necessity, start taking too many things for granted. We take language for granted.

How many of us can remember back to when we were children learning our native tongue? What were we taught first? Our names and the names of our family members. Language and identity became deeply intertwined. I’ve heard of the “terrible twos” when children learn how to how to say “NO!” Then language became about will and will power. But ultimately language is about naming things and thus dividing things up. This thing is not the same as that thing, just as I am not the same as you. And yet is that the Truth? We forget when we name things that everything in our world, perhaps in the universe, is made up of the same stuff. Certainly there are all kinds of variations, but the basic components are what they are. This is true for life experience. My life is not so different from your life. I have experienced sadness and happiness and everything in between; so have you. And yet we are quick to notice differences instead of similarities. And language serves to foster this divisiveness. We are human beings and we live on this one planet and yet we divide ourselves into separate nations with separate types of language and separate religions or philosophies. And those very distinctions lead to one of the most terrible human activities: war. If we worked as one unit, there would be no poverty, no starvation, no war, even disease would be greatly reduced or restricted.

Instead we choose through our language and actions to divide and conquer rather than unify and share. I remember when I was in high school I had a knapsack to hold my books and on it I wrote down a quote from a song by Crosby, Stills and Nash: “If you smile at me I will understand because that is something everybody, everywhere does in the same language.” That is a truism, a genuine smile can open the way to a real communion in a way that words cannot. I can say “Hello, it is very nice to meet you” but if I don’t smile when I say it much of the meaning of the greeting is lost. I’d take a smile over a word any day. A smile is from the heart and is intuitive. A smile is inclusive and not divisive. A smile welcomes instead of instructs.

A Painful Legacy And Beyond

My father had a nervous breakdown in his mid thirties; I’m not sure exactly when, whether it was soon after my brother was born, or around the time that I was born several years later. I don’t know because my father doesn’t like talking about it and I’m uncomfortable prodding him. He said to me that his breakdown had nothing to do with my schizophrenia, but I disagree. Mental illness is mental illness and is part of both of our histories, like it or not. He spent two months in a hospital and two years in therapy, all talk, no drugs. Luckily for him, and the rest of us, that was enough to keep him stable and allow him to find a measure of success as a corporate advertising lawyer.

My brother showed signs of mental illness in his early childhood. As he got older he voiced his resentment at being forced to go to therapists; he thought, and probably rightly so, that his parents were the ones who should be in therapy. The truth is we all should have been in therapy because we were a moderately dysfunctional nuclear family. I say moderately dysfunctional because my parents were not physically or sexually abusive, though on more than one occasion my mother could be verbally abusive, in a knee-jerk unthinking way. Of course, she had her reasons. It was the 1960’s and she and my father were, in many ways, still ruled by the attitudes of the 1950’s. She stayed at home with the kids while he went out into the world and worked to provide for his family. It became clear to my brother and me that she pointedly resented being the primary caretaker. She wanted him to take on more of the responsibility.

My father’s breakdown must have set the stage early on. My mother was left to take care of my brother while my father stayed in the hospital. This was not what she had bargained for, but being dutiful and stubborn was part of her nature and she stood by her child and waited for the return of her husband. What did she think and feel during those two months he was away, knowing that their future was so uncertain? Once I broached the subject of my father’s breakdown (many years later when I was finally informed of it), but she stayed loyal to his privacy and chose to remain silent. But I know my mother well enough to say that she might have been more angry than sympathetic to his plight.

I was an accident (again something I found out later), which makes sense because why would my parents even consider having another child so soon after my father’s breakdown? This was over ten years before Roe Vs. Wade made early abortions legal and my parents were nothing if not law abiding. Where my brother was hyperactive, I was affectionate. Where my brother was deemed “emotionally disturbed” and sent quickly from public school into a progressive private school, I was crowned “normal” and sent to public school. Other than the fact that I had the annoying tendency to whine, I was, on the whole, a “good” child; I did well in school and was part of a small group of friends and I didn’t get into trouble. This allowed my parents to focus more of their energies on trying to cater to my brother and treat whatever was ailing him.

What was ailing my brother was that he had an emotionally withdrawn father and a sometimes overbearing mother and a whiney sister. He felt like he was some sort of scapegoat for our personal faults, both hidden and obvious. And, in some ways, he was, which is why he turned away from his family and towards his grade school friends. By nine years old he was hanging out and getting stoned. Later he would graduate to harder drugs: downers, speed, cocaine. He was a child of the 60’s, immersed in the music and politics of the times. And he was very bright despite his spotty academic record. He learned to overcompensate for that by becoming verbally assertive/aggressive. His room invariably looked as if a tornado had struck it, but his mind had order and he prided himself on having a good memory.

What he wanted was an athletic, outgoing father. Someone ballsy and engaged. But our father was intellectual rather than athletic and more controlling than brave. But he was also smart, knowledgeable and interested in history and politics. This was the tentative bridge between them.

I was bright, but not knowledgeable, artistic rather than verbal. My brother chose to verbally compete with our parents, sucking up knowledge, but I didn’t even try to compete with any of them. I was the youngest in the family and intellectually the least confident, but I was perceptive. I was detached enough to see the family dynamic; sometimes I was the peacekeeper and other times a lay therapist for my mother and brother who had a kind of love/hate relationship. I also was the one who defended my father when my mother and brother jointly attacked him.

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A few weeks ago I was talking with my father on the phone about his family and he mentioned that a first cousin of his probably suffered from schizophrenia. This cousin had threatened to harm his mother and then was hospitalized for most of his adult life. But that’s all the information that I got about him. My father then went on to paint a sensitive picture of his own Irish Catholic family where he had been, for the most part, the only child in a house full of adults. He even went so far as to talk about his father, who was both an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler. He said there was no liquor in the house, so his father would go out to drink and come home very depressed. The next day he would sleep a lot. My father and his parents lived in his father’s sister’s house along with other relatives and so there was a built in support system to take care of his father when he drank or gambled away money. My father said his family was warm and social but not overly intellectual. Still, despite my father’s obvious fondness for his family, he did not follow his Irish Catholic roots. Instead, he became anti-Catholic, intellectual and somewhat emotionally aloof. Instead of marrying a not overly intellectual woman and having a brood of kids, he chose an intellectually bright woman and had just two children. And instead of inheriting his father’s addictions, he had a temporary nervous breakdown and unwittingly may have passed on the traits that led to his children’s struggle with mental illness.

This is a lopsided portrayal. My father had his burdens to bear and he did bear them; he also did take care of his family and does to this day. My mother and brother might still argue with him over the way he takes care of us, but they can never say the his intentions were meant unkindly or that he’s a lazy, good for nothing bum. My father is a good man, just as my mother (who I have yet to discuss more fully) is a good woman. The mental illness in the family never interfered with them handing down to my brother and me a desire for honesty, intellectual curiosity and kindness. The drawbacks that we have inherited or acquired have not stopped us from being good people, thanks in a large part to our parents.

No Man Is An Island

“1. A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.” Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island, p.3

Is this what I’ve been doing? Seeking a happiness just for myself? Maybe so. I have been pulling away from personal involvement in the last couple of months, but I haven’t been happier. No, my psychotic symptoms are slowly creeping back into my thoughts. I have also pulled away from a belief in a higher power, not totally, but enough to set me adrift. And I have stopped going to Al-Anon meetings due to anxiety about driving at night, especially in the winter. In addition, I have nearly lost two online friends from neglect. It has been a subtle process, but unintentionally inconsiderate. Not like me. My heart has become numb and my prayers for others all but silenced. Is this really the direction I want to take?

It took me over a month, but I read a book called Party Of One: The Loners’ Manifesto by Anneli Rufus. Around the time I decided not to visit my parents for the holidays, I was also trying to imagine myself as some well-adjusted loner from Ms. Rufus’ book. I thought that I would like to be her kind of loner: she is married to another loner and has a couple of close friends, but spends much of her time alone, writing. But then she began railing against the stereotype of loners as being crazy and violent. The violent, crazy loners she called pseudoloners. In her view these were people who really wanted to be social and part of the group, but were outcasts and angry about it. Then she had this to say about the mentally ill: “Unkind as it sounds, the mentally ill are not as a rule enjoyable or even easy to be around. So most people avoid them. The outlook of an unsound mind is so singular that it cannot really be shared by others....Homeless or not, harmless or not, outside of institutions the mentally ill are pretty much consigned to lives of isolation. Not by choice in every case. A schizophrenic living under a bridge who murders a hapless passerby, believing it will forestall Armageddon, is not necessarily a loner.” (pp. 197-98) And suddenly, I, a mentally ill loner, was shunted aside by the author as not worthy enough to be part of her group. In using a homeless, violent “schizophrenic” as her example she proceeds to invest in the same stereotyping she says she is trying to obliterate. She is satisfied that she has vindicated herself from negative loner status in her manifesto, only to scapegoat another group, a group I undeniably belong to.

I asked my therapist this week if it was okay for me to be a loner; she said no, that I should have a few friends. For over a year I have bewailed the fact that there is no support group for people with mental illness where I live. Why? Because without a support group I sink into isolation. When I first became psychotically ill I withdrew from contact with others for several months until I had a psychotic break. Then I got my diagnosis and the voices hounded me not to stay alone. I was to find a therapist right away and support groups and I was to keep myself busy helping others from those groups. This I did for three years despite severe psychosis. And then I went back to art school. By this time the domestic violence support group had disbanded and I stopped going to Al-Anon (which were the only groups related to mental illness that I could find); I gradually stopped seeing the women who I had become friends with, had another psychotic break, began taking the anti-psychotic meds, came out of my delusions and paranoia while falling deeply into depression. I considered dropping out of school, but didn’t. It took me another three and a half years but I graduated. I will be three years out of school this May and ten years into my psychosis.

Am I being a hypocrite when I tell people on the NAMI Schizophrenia board to find a therapist and a support group? Definitely not. Except for two years, I have been in therapy from the beginning. And going to the support groups has helped me a great deal. The domestic violence support group got me in touch with women like myself who had been abused and Al-Anon with people who were friends and family to alcoholics. But neither group could address my schizophrenia. So I did what many other people living out of touch with groups and services did, I looked for online groups. I joined a group called VoiceHearers and began emailing a few of the members of that group. Eventually I left to find the NAMI site but kept in touch with one young woman. She is one of my online friends who I have been neglecting these last two months and at a time of crisis for her: she stopped taking her meds and had a breakdown and was forced to go into the hospital. I have not been a good friend to her.

And I wonder, have I lost the capacity to be a friend? Recently I have been emailing someone from the NAMI site. He said he could tell that I have trouble making and keeping friends and I can’t deny it. Despite my good intentions, I am not consistent or dependable. And lately it feels as if I have dug myself a hole that I can’t get out of, which is why I am writing here to reach out and try to make contact with others by sharing my story. My tale is a cautionary one. Too much of anything, including isolation, is not healthy for most people. I have chosen the wrong way and am now at a crossroad.

Hiatus

Just about four weeks since I last posted. Wow. I’m still okay, just going through some changes in perspective. I’ve been having trouble writing for this blog. I keep starting and stopping, second guessing myself. Still, I don’t want to abandon it, so I’ve decided to take the bull by the horns and write whatever I write: I’m 150 days into being cigarette free, but I’ve put on weight. Not a surprise. It means I have to start walking. Ah, but will I? I saw my psychiatrist yesterday and told him I had raised the Abilify by a quarter tablet. He had no problem with that. I saw my therapist ( after a six week break) and told her that I had been talking into a tape recorder in the interim as a form of talk therapy. I have half a shoe box full of 90 minute tapes and you know what? it helps, it really does. I am going to continue with it even though it will leave me with a shitload of tapes. I’m thinking about making some identifying notes to put into each case, so they’re not just an amorphous mess. I want to write a memoir and these tapes might help me to do that.

What is it about talking into a tape recorder and then listening to it? I think it’s harder to lie to myself when I talk out loud and it’s easier to spot inconsistencies in my thinking. Of course I get repetitive, but sometimes making myself aware of what I keep going back to is useful, either in getting something done, or in remedying some particular problem. Making a spoken record of myself gives me a reality check. And I find myself befriending myself; I like the person I hear, she’s not perfect, but she’s good enough. When the voices are telling me that I’m evil, I feel dark, closed up, even ugly and so I speak into the tape recorder and then listen to myself expecting to hear negativity, but that’s not what I hear. I hear a woman trying to be honest with herself and succeeding. I think the tapes work because they get that sticky stuff inside, out; they objectify the problem and make it more visible. Once you can look at a problem clearly, then solutions seem possible, even probable. Listening to the tapes is listening to a living past; I think I take my life less for granted as I document my patterns and progress. I know that all this is temporary, that change is the rule. And thank God (or whatever) that a negative perspective can’t stay forever, that pain can blossom into pleasure.

So I’ve been getting into solo talk therapy but what else have I been up to? For a little while I was exploring the writing sites, Helium and Associated Content. I was excited by the prospect of being in the company of other writers and challenged by the wide variety of topics to write on. Soon I published an article. The problem was that I realized, after the fact, that the article was more of a first draft than a final piece. Be that as it may, that piece cannot be taken back and reworked. Welcome to the world of publishing, where final means final. A new concept to me, but then so was the idea of competing with others or trying to earn money from my writing. I write because I enjoy it and because it helps me, but here I was trying to take it to another level. I didn’t post another article and stopped going to Helium and AC, but I also stopped blogging. I was in transition and I veered off into yet another direction: looking for work from home. I thought, “people are earning some money from writing at these sites, but what else online could bring in income?” So I did some research and came up with three things: taking surveys, word processing and proofreading. I chose to pursue proofreading. I ordered a For Dummies book on it and then enrolled in two inexpensive online classes at another site called Universal Class. I chose Proofreading and Copyediting 101 and a refresher course in punctuation, spelling, grammar, etc... And so I’ve been studying these subjects for the past three weeks.

I think I might actually be able to learn the skills of proofreading and copyediting, which has given me a push of confidence. It suits me because it’s all about writing and reading, all about language, the art and craft of it, the sheer work of it. So I’ve committed to this, I’ve bought several essential reference books: The Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition), the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition) and The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B.White. And I’ve bought two workbooks, one for proofreading and one for copyediting. In addition to this I’ve been picking out useful books from my own collection, such as: The Elements of Editing: A Modern Guide for Editors and Journalists by Arthur Plotnik; Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss (a very popular book on punctuation); Fowler’s Modern English Usage (2nd edition), and Index to English (6th edition) by Wilma R. Ebbitt and David R. Ebbitt. I have been skimming through the last two books, but reading the first two. The Elements of Editing, in particular, has given me a distinct impression of what it’s like to be an editor. My latest find for reading is William Zinsser’s On Writing Well: An Informal Guide To Writing Nonfiction (4th edition). Ultimately, what I want to do is to write essays on subjects that interest me and then enter contests and/or try to get them published. I have been impressed with several writers, especially Joan Didion and Annie Dillard. My pile of books around the couch is expanding to include their works and essays by Montaigne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, H. L. Mencken, Lewis Thomas and Tom Wolfe, amongst others. I am moving away from watching television and films (though I would still like to do some of that) and into reading and writing instead. I think it is a good change. It reminds me of my college days at Barnard when my head was mostly in a book or writing a paper.

And I have been listening to recordings of my songs, writing down the lyrics and trying to relearn them. Most of the songs I never typed up or wrote down the chords. It’s led me to write a few new songs. All my songs are simplistic. My practice is erratic and so the quality of my voice and playing is likewise uneven, but I continue with it nonetheless. I think I see it as a spiritual practice; it lets me focus my thoughts and feel my feelings. Despite being a recluse or because of it, language and communication mean a lot to me. Songs and singing and writing are part of what keep me relatively healthy. They are therapy that might benefit others somewhere down the line. I hope so anyway. Where has this energy come from? Maybe the increase of the Abilify, I honestly don’t know, but I am pleased with it. May it last.

It was the I Ching that warned me not keep myself “aloof from people” and encouraged me to return to this blog. Every comment that’s been posted in the last month has meant a lot to me. It’s drawn me back here. The hiatus is over and it’s time to stay in touch.

Peace all, stay safe and find some joy.

Happy New Year

May 2008 be a good year for all of us.

I hope everyone had a safe and relatively happy holiday and New Year’s Eve and Day. I spent Christmas and New Year’s on my own and it was okay. I did a lot of cooking for myself and for my friend Richard and his family. Richard said that he prefers people cooking for him over giving him presents, so this year that’s what I did. I made carrot cake, a cocoa banana nut bread and a spinach lasagna using Edam cheese and ricotta. For myself I made vegetable paella and lentil soup with turkey kielbasa. Also Richard’s wife had him bring me some cookies, a plate full of food and on New Year’s day stuffed shells. Also Richard and his son did me a big favor and got rid of my old and decrepit couch and brought over another couch from my brother’s house that is in much better condition. No longer do I have a couch that is an eyesore. Maybe this year I’ll actually invite people over to my house.

I haven’t seen my therapist for over four weeks and I won’t see her until the end of this month when she gets back from her mid term vacation but in the interim I’ve been talking into a tape recorder and then listening to myself. It has been a surprisingly effective form of talk therapy for me. Though I talk to myself about my illness and reflect on my past, I’m reassured that I sound fairly stable. For the most part, I like the person I hear on those tapes; and so I also keep myself company.

I’m amazed at how much time I can spend alone and not fall apart. I’m still reading a book called Party Of One: The Loner’s Manifesto by Anneli Rufus. Ms. Rufus asserts that there is a sizable minority of loners and that these loners play an important part in society but are often disparaged. I’m not going to review the book till after I’ve finished it but suffice it to say that this author has made me feel less freakish for my reclusive tendencies. She’s made me realize that there are others like me, many writers or creative artists, who can go for days without seeing another soul and be content on their own. I know before I became psychotic some of my best times were when I was alone.

My schizophrenia complicates matters because there are times when I know I should be around people mainly in a support group setting. But the only way that is going to happen is if I take the steps to make it happen. For now, I go online to the NAMI message boards for schizophrenia and try to offer support. I also need support but I’m not very good at asking for it. It takes practice. So I’m trying to be a regular there, someone people can trust.

I’ve decided that I have to earn some money this year but I want to see if I can do it from home over the computer. There are some proofreading and copyediting jobs available and I’ve decided to try to learn that trade. I’ve ordered a For Dummies book on it which should arrive next week and I’ll study that and see if I have any aptitude for that kind of work. There is training also available for word processing work and medical transcription work. I’d also like to learn something about web design. I am so woefully ignorant about using the computer and it is high time that I get down to learning the basics.

While I was ordering books on Amazon.com, I saw an ad. It said something like: earn money writing short articles. The site is called Helium . I recommend any writers out there check it out. It’s a large site with a message board and if you’re diligent it seems you can actually earn some money. It’s competitive and there’s a rating system. There are tons of topics to write on and I’ve been having fun checking it all out. It’s a good place to meet other writers and possible employers. The articles that are written are not long, between 400 and 1,500 words an article. I’m not real familiar with the site yet but I have posted one article. I’m hoping it will spur me into a practice of regular writing. If I could earn some money too, I would be very happy but I’m not counting on it. What I want to do is to improve my writing to the point where I’m willing to submit some work to various publications. As it stands I’m a beginner, a newbie. More on this site as I get to know it better.

Doing Better

Thanks Christina for being concerned about me. I’m doing better now. I increased my Abilify by a quarter tablet. I did it without consulting my psychiatrist because I felt self conscious but I will call him tomorrow and let him know. I wish I knew him better but our relationship is pretty superficial. I see him for about 10 minutes every three months basically in order to get new prescriptions. He’s the only psychiatrist I’ve ever had. In fact, he’s the one who diagnosed me when I was in the hospital overnight in 1998. He’s a short but dapper looking Indian man, polite but firm and sometimes I can’t understand what he’s saying because of his accent. Before I got insurance he was very generous about giving me free samples of Zyprexa and Risperdal and I was grateful to him for it. My impression of him is that he knows his stuff but I don’t really know him. All I know is that his wife is also a doctor and that he has a son who is a senior in high school and was a key player on the high school soccer team coached by my friend Richard. I also know he is one of the few psychiatrists in this area and that he travels to several towns each week. Richard says Dr. N. is a workaholic and he might very well be but I don’t really know. Still I wish it was my therapist who did the prescribing of medicine for me because she’s the one who actually knows me and my story.

When I started experiencing some psychotic symptoms right around Thanksgiving, what I really needed was a support group to go to but there are none close by. In fact, I’ve never been to a support group specifically for mental illness since I became psychotic over nine years ago. The closest I’ve come is Al-Anon but that’s only a partial fit. This is because I live in a poor, rural area. And now my anxiety has become bad enough that I don’t want to drive at night which means I’ve stopped going to Al-Anon. I realized that I will have to move to some city/town with public transportation, good therapists, support groups for mental illness and possible job opportunities. I’ve started doing some research online and so far I’ve found two possible places but moving is something that I know won’t happen for 2-4 years. And I need a support group now. I’ve written about beginning a support group before but never got motivated enough to actually start the process. Ideally, I would have personal experience with a NAMI support group and then get training from them to start a new group but then if I had access to a support group in the first place I wouldn’t need to start a new group.

I really believe that a support group in my town would benefit not only my town and the schools here, but this general area. Yes, I think it’s a great idea but can I be the instigator? I’ve picked out where I’d like the meeting to be but I’d have to get permission from the local minister. I got her email address online and I’m planning to contact her after New Year’s Day. I’ll have to sell my point to her which is no mean feat for a recluse. And part of selling my point is telling her my story and then meeting with her.

This Fall I learned that at least one student here has been hearing voices. I also was very saddened to hear that a teacher committed suicide by jumping into Niagara Falls. A simple support group could help lessen people’s suffering and might have prevented that teacher’s death. But I have to be willing to not only ask for help but to follow through and put myself out there. And I feel shy and afraid to do it but if I’m going to be here for a couple more years I’m going to have to at least try mainly because I need the help to remain stable and recovering. I can’t keep up this self-isolation, it’s just not healthy and I know it and it’s just too easy to do it living where I live.

Speaking about self-isolation, I cancelled my trip to visit my parents in Florida for the holidays, so I’ll be on my own for about a month (my brother’s staying with them till mid January) and without a therapist till the end of January (it’s her mid term break). Why did I cancel? Mainly because I felt I couldn’t leave my cats alone for two weeks, especially the oldest one who is around 17. I should have realized this early and adjusted my plans to visit my parents for one week instead of two but I didn’t. Then I began feeling more psychotic and anxious and just wanted to stay home this year. My parents were not happy when I told them. For one thing, I don’t get to see them that often and for another thing, they don’t like the idea of me being alone for Christmas. But they’ve resigned themselves to it and I will go visit them in March for my mother’s 80th birthday.

Since I raised the anti-psychotic I’ve been feeling a lot better. Being alone isn’t getting me down right now. We had some really bad weather but it didn’t hit us as badly as some other places. I was expecting two feet of snow, a blizzard, but got more freezing snow and Richard came and snow blowed my driveway. He came inside afterwards and had a beer and we talked. That was real nice because I haven’t talked to him for a while and I do like him a lot. He’s always been kind to me and a really good friend to my brother. He and his wife have left an open invitation to dinner in the next couple of weeks. I really should go but my instinct is, as usual, to stay home. But, I’ll see, I might change my mind. I baked Richard a bunch of chocolate chip cookies because he said he prefers people to cook for him than to buy him presents, but I would like to make a spinach lasagna for him using Edam cheese, ricotta and parmesan. I used to have the recipe but I think I can figure it out.

Now, to get myself out of the house this week. I did some online shopping for my family and they should be getting those presents in the next few days but I’d still like to do some shopping for Richard’s family. I’d like to send something to Pam and J.P. (J.P. where are you? how are you?).

I’ve been listening to my old songs from 1995 to 1998 and writing down the words. I joined a song writing forum online but haven’t yet posted a song for a critique. Time to go back there. And I’ve been playing guitar and singing. I’m gradually improving. I have this one song I wrote about Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and I keep going back to it but it’s kind of a mess. The rhymes are a bit off though they sing okay and the music is too repetitive but I have to do something with it. Actually, many of my songs are just fragments of a song and need reworking, but I’m more connected to them than I have been in a while.

I hope all of you have been doing well, staying safe and relatively happy. I’d love to hear from you.



(106 days without a cigarette.)

Belated Update

The reason I haven’t been writing here is that I’ve been posting on the NAMI schizophrenia message board a lot. But what I need is to find a balance between posting on message boards and writing this blog. I think my psychotic symptoms may be getting worse. I’m starting to feel a little paranoid and just uncomfortable in a way that’s hard to explain. I see my therapist on Thursday, so I will talk to her about it then. I think my symptoms started getting worse when I began distancing myself from my belief in a higher power. I think for my mental health that I personally need to foster my faith. I haven’t been praying lately, so tonight before I go to sleep I will start praying again for family, friends, people in general and the voices too. I’m not sure why I stopped because I always feel better when I pray for others. And being pretty isolated praying cuts through that isolation. When I pray I feel loved and loving, safe at least for a while.



Christina Bruni has brought up in her blogs her need to send out a positive message to people who suffer from schizophrenia and to their loved ones and I think she is right, but I’m afraid I’m still caught up in the psychosis. My blog is a personal journal and will show some of the negative sides of schizophrenia. I don’t mean to bring anyone down but it’s important for me to try to be honest about my experience with this illness and this is the only way I know how to be right now. So while I cheer Chris on, I have to struggle along behind her. She has worked hard in her recovery and I admire her example. I hope some day I can be as far along in recovery as she is.



I went to the NAMI schizophrenia board to cut down on some feelings of isolation and to offer help to others, but strangely I’ve felt isolated even there. I started writing about my belief in the existence of aliens. I still believe that I am telepathically connected to them, that they are “the voices”, but I know I sound delusional writing about it and I wonder--is it good for me to continue believing this? Or should I tell myself that schizophrenia is a purely biological illness and that the voices are just some kind of mistaken impression, an auditory hallucination? It would be a great comfort to believe that and people who recover do believe it as far as I can tell. Also can you recover and still hear voices (or have auditory hallucinations) because I have no way of knowing whether this is permanent or not. When I’m depressed I give in to the belief that they will never go away. But I’ve also heard, I think from one of Christina’s blogs, that a certain percentage of people stop hearing voices by the time their in their 50’s. That would be amazing. Sacred silence. Well, I can continue to take my medications and go to therapy and hope that that’s what is in store for me.

Why have I been feeling isolated on the NAMI message board? Maybe because everyone is very polite and won’t challenge any of my beliefs when I almost wish they would. Not to fight and spread ill will, far from it, but to deepen my understanding and maybe change my perspective. I started a thread called Living With Voices (I think) and invited anyone to talk about their voice hearing experience. About four people said they heard voices and I struck up a good dialogue with one of them, a very nice man who believes now that his voices are just hallucinations. And I found myself wishing I could be like him. Today another very nice man emailed me and we then chatted on Yahoo Messenger but both of us are convinced that the voices are real, each with our own particular slant on the particulars. But what good does that do us to believe in something that hurts us?

I hope we do become better friends. He is suffering so much and so are others and I want to be able to help him and them. Do I reinforce ideas that are ultimately harmful when I say I believe the voices are real? It would seem so. But it also starts to cut through the feeling of being so isolated. I mean I don’t talk to anyone about my beliefs except online and sometimes to my therapist. But while I’ve been writing too much on the NAMI board about aliens, I’ve also been feeling more psychotic and detached, not a lot, but enough for me to notice. One thing you learn to do when you’re trying to recover from psychosis is to be sensitive to any danger signs--an increase in voices or their negativity, delusional ideas, paranoia. It means that if the symptoms persist or get worse that you have to engage in some kind of action: talk to the psychiatrist and increase the dosage of your med, talk to a therapist, find a support group on and off line. Lately I’ve been talking into a tape recorder as a form of private talk therapy and it isn’t perfect but it definitely helps. Talking aloud can be a powerful tool and then listening to a recording is very revealing of who you are and what it is you really believe. It’s spontaneous talking and in that way an honest portrait of yourself. And it’s good to have a spoken (in addition to a written) journal to refer back to and try to get a reality check when you need it.

I want to get back to doing craft work, mainly crocheting, friendship bracelets/ and hemp jewelry. I know it will calm me down and focus me, plus I’ll have created something which is a great feeling in itself. I just have to get back to basics. Craft work and listening to audiobooks are other mental health tools. Singing and playing guitar, reading, painting. Getting creative.

On Self-Esteem

“Self-esteem has two interrelated components. One is a sense of basic confidence in the face of life’s challenges: self-efficacy. The other is the sense of being worthy of happiness: self-respect.” Nathaniel Branden, The Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem, p.26

“High self-esteem is intrinsically reality oriented....In tests, low self-esteem individuals tend to underestimate or overestimate their abilities; high self-esteem individuals tend to assess their abilities realistically.” ibid, p. 46

Self confidence and a belief that one is “worthy of happiness” are, according to Mr Branden, the cornerstones of self-esteem. Mental illness attacks self-esteem undermining self-confidence and repeatedly challenging the idea that one is worthy of happiness. Those that survive severe mental illness at some point have to fight for their right to exist. Along with fighting for the right to exist comes the fight to believe that one is not “evil” or “a loser” but essentially good and equal to others who are good. For many, this is an ongoing battle sometimes fierce other times mild. It is this battle with the unseen and often unknown that pulls the sufferer away from reality and balance. Everyone needs to strive towards a healthy self-esteem but especially the mentally ill. But how do we as victims of psychosis have confidence in and self-respect for ourselves after experiencing various kinds of hell on earth?

I suffer from poor self-esteem but I’m a survivor and though I get tired I still fight each day to recover a sense of balance so that I can be a confident, creative, life affirming individual. But while I fight the fight I lose perspective. I doubt myself and unknowingly I reinforce the belief that I do not deserve to be happy. I need to question my doubts. Why don’t I deserve to be happy? I look at all the mistakes I’ve made in my life that have culminated in severe mental illness and I think I must be responsible for my own downfall. If only I had made better choices maybe I never would have gone down the path of mental illness. But really did I or does anyone deserve the torture of psychosis? I don’t believe so. And yet, somewhere inside, I must believe that I am the exception. I give in to my insecurity and depression. I sabotage my efforts. I get overwhelmed by what I should be doing but don’t do. I isolate myself from others.

I don’t do this intentionally. I do this out of habit and because I don’t have the awareness yet to take another course of action. In the philosophy of the twelve steps there is something called the Three A’s: Awareness, Acceptance, Action. Reading this book on self-esteem is yet another attempt out of many to wake up to what it is I do and what it is in my power to change. In the first year of my delusions and paranoia the voices used to say cynically “Remember to forget” and “Forget to remember”. I still suffer from this negative programming. I find myself learning something and then forgetting it. Hence, I am out of necessity repetitive. I value awareness even as I struggle to achieve it. I do see it as the first step. Without awareness there is nothing and no possibility for constructive change.

But still I’m avoiding the basic premise for self-esteem and that is that I deserve to be happy. If I don’t reinforce this idea then I won’t intuitively reach for it. After surviving the hell of active psychosis I learned to be grateful that I was no longer suffering acutely. The more grateful I felt, the less I suffered. I found times of contentment. Still, I couldn’t exactly call myself a happy person. I wasn’t miserable and sometimes I felt good but I knew and know now that I am not truly happy. And part of why I stay in this not quite happy state is that I don’t take the time to consider what it is that would make me happy. Or rather I have some idea (a clean house, creative work, a friend) but I don’t take the practical steps needed to make my idea of happiness a reality. I don’t take the time to visualize myself as a successful person. I accept a kind of limbo existence, sort of okay and sort of not okay.

I have to unlearn the lessons my illness so painfully taught me. I have to learn to respect my courage, endurance and honesty in the face of overwhelming odds. I have to teach myself that I deserve love and happiness.

Darkness Visible

Tonight is the first snow of the season. I’ll wake up tomorrow to a white world, the first I’ve seen in months. It will be beautiful but I’ll be looking to see if the roads are clear. I go to see my psychiatrist for my prescriptions. I see him every three months. This visit lasts maybe ten minutes. He’s a nice man (the only psychiatrist I’ve ever seen) but I don’t feel comfortable talking to him about my illness. I just don’t know him that well. But lately I’ve been thinking about asking him about anti-anxiety medicines. I’ve been thinking a bit too much lately about death.

I finished reading Darkness Visible. Styron writes about death, his desire for it, friends who succeeded in committing suicide and other famous suicides. He stresses that the word depression does not cover the intensity and misery of acute depression. Many of his descriptions could also describe acute schizophrenia. I’m writing through the fog of a poor memory and dulled feelings but I remember some of what he writes about. I, too, felt suicidal and took time to consider how I would kill myself. He stopped himself and went into a hospital (which he said really helped him) and I just waited it all out while increasing the anti-psychotics to the maximum dose. It was so hard to go to my psychiatrist then because he (sensibly) raised the dose gradually and I had to wait and wait until I finally began feeling better. Now that I remember it, it was a drug called Provigil that finally snapped me out of the worst of the depression. My doctor prescribed the Provigil to counteract the soporific effect of the Zyprexa.

I was so miserable. I remember going out to eat with my brother and crying at the table part way through the meal, something I never did with him. Part of why I was crying was that I knew there was little he could do to help me, my isolation at the time was so complete but I needed to reach out anyway. It was like calling out in the dark. He was kind and gentle and said I could come visit him anytime. Ultimately I knew I had to work it out. For a while there the only thing I could do was lie down on the couch and listen to hours and hours of audiobooks ( I couldn’t watch tv or read much), sometimes I crocheted while I listened. I listened to stories. I needed to get out of my life and into the fantasy of some other more interesting, less painful life or lives. The pain still broke through but I fought against it. To listen and rest or to listen and crochet was enough to keep me in the world. The highlight every two weeks was getting more audiobooks from the library.

Darkness Visible is a short book but it is a good book. At one point Styron says that his experience of incapacitating depression was almost indescribable, elusive but here in writing this book he takes the courageous approach and not only shares with his public the fact of his illness but tries to describe the experience to the best of his abilities. And he has knowledge, skill and talent working for him. This is a book I want in my personal library and I recommend you read it. The book was published in 1990.

Does he succeed in making darkness visible? He touches on it and writes well about it but there seems to be so much more that needs to be said. I’m collecting memoirs from people who have suffered from mental illness. The more memoirs, the better. As Styron points out mental illness is individualistic rather than uniform. The world needs people to speak out about their experiences with mental illness, so we can get past the stigma and move towards better and better treatment, maybe even a cure.

A Brief Note

I did two things today, I read the first 17 pages of the William Styron memoir Darkness Visible and I saw the film SICKO by Micheal Moore.

I know of William Styron because I read a very good book of his years ago called Sophie’s Choice. There was also a very good film done of it starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. I recommend both, but I picked up Darkness Visible at the library because it is an account of his experience of severe depression. I hadn’t known that he had suffered from mental illness. It’s a short book, a mere 84 pages, but so far he writes convincingly of the first major symptoms of his illness. He writes of “panic and dislocation, and a sense that my thought processes were being engulfed by a toxic and unnameable tide that obliterated any enjoyable response to the living world.” (16) He also writes about sleeplessness and “confusion, failure of mental focus and lapse of memory.” (14) This breakdown occurs while he is in Paris in 1985 about to get a $25,000 award. He makes it through the award ceremony, lunch and a publicized visit to a newly opened museum for Picasso but just barely and that is where I stopped...

I have experience with severe depression, mainly during the months after I came out of my major delusions. I remember feeling suicidal because of it. So I can identify with the image of thoughts being engulfed in a toxic force but for me that toxic force was most especially the schizophrenia. The depression just made it much harder to function. I almost dropped out of school. It’s weird, I still get depressed but it’s qualitatively different from before. I was so raw then, just coming out of my third and final psychotic break. Now, despite the blues, despite the anxiety I have more hope than I did then. There is some fragility but no more being devastated. This is an important difference to me.

More on this and SICKO hopefully tomorrow.

Hillary, Iran and Iraq

I didn’t start out picking Hillary Clinton over the other democratic candidates for president. In fact I felt ambivalent about her. But lately I’ve been turning more in her direction. I found out this week that she is the frontrunner and likely to get the nomination. This surprised me somewhat. Frankly, I didn’t have confidence in the American public to support a female candidate. I want to support a candidate who has a strong chance to win against a republican candidate. And whoever does get the nomination is the one I will support. I just watched a recent democratic debate with all seven candidates and I thought Ms. Clinton held her own fairly well. I’m willing to give her a chance in the next couple of months by paying closer attention to her. Does it matter to me that she’s a woman? Yes, it does. I think it’s long overdue. I think more qualified women should represent the population considering that about half the population is female. Hillary Clinton is in a unique position of having been the first lady of a popular (obviously not by all) president. She is thoroughly familiar with life in the White House and life in the Senate. Her husband is a very bright and capable man who could be an invaluable support to her as the first female president in U.S. history. I’m not saying she’s perfect but if she’s got a chance to defeat a republican administration, she’s got my vote. And I’m not saying that democrats are perfect but compared to Bush and his associates they are quite a few steps in the right direction. And the hard fact is that the U.S. is a two party system (independents don’t cut it yet), so there isn’t a lot of choice. Sometimes it’s a question of going with the lesser of two evils. Other times it’s just common sense.

All this speculation about the Bush administration pushing for yet another war, this time with Iran, is very disturbing to me. We are already overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan and under protected at home. Hillary and several other candidates stressed the need for diplomacy which I think is essential whenever interacting with another country, especially a potentially hostile one. Get to know the opposition, especially the cultural orientation, be respectful but firm and learn to compromise if it’s necessary. Iran says it wants uranium to create nuclear energy for their country and not to have a nuclear bomb. Many Americans are highly suspicious of this. The fear is that Iran, an anti-Western country, will become a nuclear power and will supply muslim terrorists with nuclear weapons, especially terrorists in Iraq. The facts are that Iran is supporting the insurgents in Iraq and I can see why people are nervous over the association but the utmost caution is needed for this very delicate situation, not threats of war.

Iran is a very ancient country, 5,000 years old. It’s not surprising that it should be a conservative culture considering its long history. In comparison the United States is a newcomer, powerful, foreign and intrusive but lacking in historical credentials. I think Iran deserves a certain respect. It has a rich past and a vital present but I do not believe in the current regimes religious and cultural repression of its people, especially women and young people. But it is not my country or my culture. As a pacifist I don’t believe that they should be supporting the Iraqi insurgents but neither do I think that the U.S. should be in Iraq aiding and fighting in foreign civil wars. Both sides are irresponsible in resorting to and supporting violence. When the irresponsible rule wars and repression and civil rights abuses are planted in fertile ground. And violence rains down openly and covertly.

My family are democrats but they are not pacifists. They still believe that war is sometimes necessary. Even my brother states plainly that while beginning a war in Iraq was a big mistake that we have to stay until the area stabilizes which might not be for a long time. I don’t voice my opinion on this to him because he would become derisive and argumentative but I think we should leave. We stirred up a hornets nest and now the Iraqis are fighting each other and us and it’s a horrible mess. I can see how some Muslims could look at the U.S. government and army as being presumptuous, intrusive and arrogant. I hate thinking of the American soldiers over there getting killed or being maimed because of a misguided patriotism. They shouldn’t be there. It’s not their country or their culture (and I’m afraid too many of them are still ignorant about the people, customs, religion, language). I want them to come home. They have not succeeded in eliminating terrorists, quite the opposite they have given terrorist sympathizers a focus to fight with and a place to organize. And it is the Iraqi men (for they are the ones doing the fighting) who are perpetuating civil war in their country to the point where the only viable solution seems to be to cut the country into pieces. I’m horrified by the death and destruction but I’m also disappointed in the human spirit that makes killing and maiming a legitimate approach to conflict, still.