Ew

[scent of cedar]

we often discussed judgment and the place that had in the world of mental illness and substance abuse.


"the great way is open to those who have no preferences."

Much like the 'maybe yes, maybe no' of the Sufi story............I ask myself, how real are my judgments, my preferences, my assessments, my evaluations?

So much of it is learned, taught,........

Like that bumper sticker says, "don't believe everything you think."

My difficult child broke all of that down for me..........I've had to change much of my own thinking and look at her with different eyes.

Eyes not glazed over by my fear and judgment, angers and disappointments, sorrow and resentments............as you so aptly stated, oy fricken vey............

There is another quote, by Rumi--

"out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field
I'll meet you there."


Perhaps that's the field where we will meet our daughters,.......... someday.

Recovering? I agree. I don't understand it, and I don't know how to cope or respond to so much of what is happening to us...but we are not the only ones wondering about the blinding brightness beneath the pain, about the strange incidences of serendipity and synchronicity, about the shocking outcomes that turn out to be something else and take us in another direction, altogether.

Here is an interesting thing. A little over a year ago, when the school year was over, difficult child shaved her head for the summer. This was something she had talked about doing for awhile. She wanted to know who she was, what the world would be like, if she were not conventionally attractive, if she was no longer presenting herself as a woman-representative of established values. Having just seen her again, I understand that, wherever this journey has taken her...she went there fully engaged. She seems less the helpless victim of some "serious and pervasive" mental illness than a woman (...courageously?) exploring the validity of her own value system.

I was talking to her about the (now jailed) bad man. I heard myself saying things like, "No, we will never meet him. We want someone who can provide for you, someone kind, generous, bright, well-spoken. Someone with money, and a future. Someone like the person you were engaged to before all this happened." Her response was that this man gave her those things and more. That he gives her the time ~ and the opportunity ~ to catch sight of the sun breaking over the horizon, of surviving homeless in winter, of interacting with people who have only themselves and each other. Drunk, drug-addled, the street community thrives just under the radar, loyal to, and sharing what they have with, one another in a way those of us living "normal" lives never experience.

So, we wound up our little talk with me making the brilliant observation that a man with enough money would have his own plane, and could show her those things from a higher social strata.

Let's just say that by that time? Even I understood I wasn't batting a thousand. But I went down with banners flying.

:O)

Ahem.

Which brings me to your comments on judgment, judging, and mental illness, Recovering. I am a huge fan of Book TV. They interviewed a therapist a few weeks back, who has written a book about the futility of defining the nature of another person's manner of making sense of the world through the DSM I, II, or III. (?) (That cluster of diagnostic materials with which psychiatrists determine what mental illness they are looking at, and how to treat, and to charge for, it.) The therapist related allowing his patients to help him choose which illness they felt best represented their symptoms from the list of diagnostic criteria the therapist was using to charge the insurance company for the treatment he was supposedly giving the patients. It was the therapist's contention that what happens in successful therapy cannot be quantified or even, identified. The therapist went on to say that, given that psychiatric diagnoses are a seat of the pants thing, the medications prescribed are pretty much hit and miss, too. That the medications themselves are often responsible for creating problems as bad or worse than those they are prescribed to address. He raised the question, too, of heightened perception in those who are labeled mentally ill. And he too, wondered whether reality was real. And if so...whose?

In a way, it's like that story about one person whispering to the next the story he has just been told. By the time the story reaches the end of the table, it's barely recognizable. Yet, each person who passed that story on believed he was, pretty much, telling the truth.

While the therapist did not address this, I know that the Russian people once believed that mentally ill people had been touched by God; that they were seeing, from a changed perspective, a world as real as our own. (That could be where the term "touched" came from, I suppose.) Rasputin was believed to be such a one. And, oddly enough...he could do the darndest things.

It was an interesting presentation. If anyone would like to try to find it, go to the Book TV site. I don't remember the therapist's name, and have misplaced the paper I wrote his information down on.

Another interesting thing regarding our perceptions, and the judgments we then make, based on what we think we have seen, is this: I read somewhere once that mind altering drugs produce their effects by messing with our perceptions of time. Solely by messing with our perceptions of time....

Here is another thing. Bees see differently, see another band of color, than we do because they have the perceptors to see in the ultraviolet range. So, that other dimension of color has always been there. We just never had a clue. What else do we not know we are missing?

Two more things, Recovering. There is a theory out there that everything we think we know about physics may be all wrong. No matter how they try, no unifying theory of why everything works the way it does can be found. I will find the site and post it for you here. The essence of what one group of physicists is saying these days is that everything is electric ~ including us. That nothing came from a Big Bang and is being burnt up and destroyed, but that all things are interconnected and powered by the mysterious, totally un-understood, thing we call electricity. ALL things. It has to do with magnetic fields and gravity and time too, and I don't understand the physics of it, of course. Interesting to think about, though. Especially when we remember how certain every generation has been that their truths are "right." The Earth is the center, the world is flat, animals, slaves, and females have no souls.... My Tai Chi instructor was a physicist. I asked him to review that site? He said they were full of it. (Ha!) Nonetheless, interesting to wonder about....

And here is the last thing that first comment I quoted from your post had me wondering about, Recovering. You know I have been reading the Joel Osteen materials. Well, this is a loose translation of what he has to say about us in the world: There is nothing you have to "do" right. Within you are the seeds of who you were meant to be and what you are here to do. Follow your curiosity, nurture your dreams, do your best. Be kind. Love yourself. You are more than you know. Believe it. Everything has to do with how we see the world, and ourselves, in the world.

How strange is that?!? Essentially, repeating the messages of Christ and Buddha and Confucious and the Dalai Lama and....

Add to that the true fact that, before we can victimize anything or anyone, we have to dehumanize it, we have to make it "other," first. That would be Holocaust, animals, indigenous cultures...war, in all its manifestations. Fights with the neighbors.

I'm just sayin'.

And then, if we see what is being done to our capacity to perceive by the "culture of scarcity" addressed in the Brene Brown materials....

:O)

How cool is all that, Recovering?!?

************************

I love the Rumi quote, Recovering. On my best days, I do feel that way ~ not only that I will meet her, and all of us, there in that place, but that we are doing something together, creating...something; that we have been there before and will be, again. Flash of recognition, and on we go, again and again and again.

But most days, I just see with my human eyes. Then, I am so glad for this site, and for all of us here, struggling to make sense of things we know so little about. I feel the courage in us, though. Sometimes, when the matriarchs post, I can feel that sense of stability, of wisdom and love and not so much surprise at the bad things that happen ~ like a faith in the ultimate rightness of things, whatever the outcome. It just kind of comes through, between the lines.

How interesting, that we should all be able to touch one another as we have, through coming together here, raw and open and in pain.

(And anonymous, the more practical Cedar reminds the dreamer. :O)

So, no matter how bad things look for us, individually or in the world...I am sometimes able to believe, because this site exists, and because of so many other things too, that "all will be well, and all manner of things will be well."

Thank you, Recovering, for risking. I got to be more real than usual for a little while this morning, too.

:O)

Cedar

Here you go.

"You have been educated in judgment, which is the essence of worship. Judgment always occurs in the past. It is past-thinking. Will, free or otherwise, is concerned with the future. Thinking is the performance of the moment, out of which you use your judgment to modulate will. You are a convection center through which past prepares future.

It is a balancing act."

Herbert/Ransom
The Jesus Incident

*************

The Universe responds to our intentions. Our thoughts and beliefs go out like prayers into the world.

I don't know where I got that one.

************

She was directly aware of the passage of History gently flowing through her in a mighty current, and of her own life welling like a wave in the flow of a vast tide.

Toynbee

****************

Perhaps, the phoenix cries, as it burns.

Charles Williams
Descent Into Hell

**********************

A bird cried jubilation. In that moment, they lived long. All minor motions were stilled, and only the great ones were perceived. Beneath them the Earth turned, singing.

Sheri S Tepper
the Revenants

********************

I live and love in God's peculiar light.

Michelangelo

************

Do no harm.
But take no ****.

:O)

**************

"Do you think the mystery of Love is only between those who like one another?" Sybil said. "Darling, you're part of the mystery, and you'll be sent to do mysterious things."

Charles Williams
The Greater Trumps

**************

Sybil remembered the crucifixions of her past, and by each of them, where she herself hung and screamed and writhed, she saw the golden halo and the hands of the Fool holding and easing her, and heard his voice murmuring peace.

Charles Williams
The Greater Trumps

***************

And between our eyes and hands and mouths there now flows a constant stream of tenderness, a stream in which all petty desires seems to have been extinguished. All that matters now is to be kind to one another with all the goodness that is in us.

And every encounter is also a farewell.

Etty Hilesum
The Diaries of Etty Hilesum

 

[scent of cedar]

Here is one more:

So, let us begin. In the company of one another, and of the Dancing Spirit, let us enter the world of our own depths, our own mystery, our own promise. Let us give ourselves time to wonder and to wait. Let us be patient and gentle with ourselves as we start. And let us believe that in doing so, we are contributing to our own wholeness and the wholeness of the world.

Maria Harris
Dance of the Spirit

*********************

Whatever. Here are a couple more.

*****************

What others think of you is none of your business.

Don't know where I got that one.

************

We live happily indeed, among men who hate us, free of hatred; among men who are greedy, free of greed. Though we call nothing our own, we shall be like the bright gods, feeding on happiness.

Now, how could I not have written down where I got that one? I didn't, though.

******************

But the life force from God overcame the death force of my shame, and I lived.

Smedes
Shame and Grace

***********

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

Audre Lorde

************

Be old enough and patient enough for kinds of love, seasons of it; be quiet in your soul so that when happiness comes again, if it ever does, you will know.

Anne Rice
Taltos

 

[recoveringenabler]

Barbara, I am at work getting ready to leave to go to the market, acupuncture, prepare dinner, the usual kind of day...........and in pops your post, what a refreshing, interesting and REAL response..........I am enjoying your perceptions, thoughts and experiences immensely.

One good risk, deserves another.............

It brought to mind this statement an old friend of mine used to say all the time, which always made me laugh...........when we would have these kind of in depth discussions about life he would state that most of us live in a "reality by agreement." ...........As if we all had a meeting and decided to hate certain people, form 'cliques' where certain folks are excluded, define hatred and intolerance in the same way, ...........just take a collective judgment, something we made up, and make it real......whatever it is........ It made me look at things a little differently.

Like that William Blake quote,"if the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." We choose the limited view, the closed view, the small view...............we choose it, like we choose our responses to our difficult child's.


Barbara, I grew up with mental illness all around me, in fact, the majority of characters in my early life were way, way 'out there.' They behaved in bizarre and fascinating ways, which as a teen was so embarrassing I could hardly tolerate it then. However, as I got older (and had LOTS of therapy) I started seeing my siblings and my parents in a different light. The incredible straightforward honesty not covered up in social niceties, the remarkable ability to CREATE, music, art, poetry, architectural designs, my sister is an amazing artist and musician, my brothers too, as was my Dad. But, seriously, you wouldn't want to have lunch with any of them!! Not too much on the social scene..... but incredible in so many areas which if looked at from the frame of reference of "normal" these folks fall very short and would be open to intense judgment and criticism. For whatever reason, I have been quite intimate with what we call mental illness for my whole life...............and the colors, the richness, the depth and brilliance is staggering..........not often seen by regular folks, especially psychiatrists and the "system" where we are supposed to live in that reality by agreement where mentally ill folks are cast out, ridiculed, drugged and made to feel wrong and sick. So, yes, I agree with that therapist, we all want to be included and exclusion alone can make people sick.

I've tried all my life to be "normal" and still everyone around me thinks I'm eccentric or as my granddaughter says, "weird, not like the other parents or grandparents" Now it makes me laugh...............when I was younger, I tried harder to be more 'normal,' I sure as hell didn't want to go through what the rest of my family did.

I love the story of your daughter shaving her head, my my, how brave! I love her reasons for it too. And I understand how you would want your girl to be with a man who had his own plane, that protective mothering which overrides everything so we can make sure they are okay. It's good you're seeing your responses to her differently. Our daughter's are out there in the world orchestrating their own realities which have nothing to do with 'agreement'.............and we're busy in our mom worlds trying to 'accept.'

My daughter does everything upside down and sideways, refuses to do anything as I would or anyone would. There is a difference though with her, she has a side which lacks empathy and that hurts others, so I am not sure how to perceive that part. I'm still working on my own judgments about that. Now that I am out of the enabling part and she and I are learning to be separate and not enmeshed, I can see her a bit clearer. We'll see how that develops now.

I think in terms of mental illness, we are in the very early stages of understanding............perhaps we will be long dead before any real understanding and inclusion occurs on a cultural level. It reminds me of another quote, this one by by Arthur Schopenhauer, "All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third it is accepted as being self-evident." I don't believe we've scratched the surface of our understanding of mental illness or that "electricity" which connects us all that you spoke about. I think it was Einstein who referred to the Universal Field of Love............where he accessed his ideas and theories. Interesting to think that the 'electricity' energy connecting us all is.........love...........what a concept. I think I'll make that my reality.

 

[scent of cedar]

most of us live in a "reality by agreement."

we choose it, like we choose our responses to our difficult child's.

They behaved in bizarre and fascinating ways

The incredible straightforward honesty not covered up in social niceties

, the remarkable ability to CREATE,

I've tried all my life to be "normal" and still everyone around me thinks I'm eccentric or as my granddaughter says, "weird, not like the other parents or grandparents"

My daughter does everything upside down and sideways, refuses to do anything as I would or anyone would.

Now that I am out of the enabling part and she and I are learning to be separate and not enmeshed, I can see her a bit clearer. We'll see how that develops now.

I don't believe we've scratched the surface of our understanding of mental illness or that "electricity" which connects us all that you spoke about.

I think it was Einstein who referred to the Universal Field of Love............where he accessed his ideas and theories.

Interesting to think that the 'electricity' energy connecting us all is.........love...........what a concept. I think I'll make that my reality.

Reality by agreement.

This is true. A quick exploration of different cultures proves that we do create, together, a communal reality to define the world and ourselves in it. Here is a strange thing: that cultural exploration could take place in different neighborhoods of the same city. Different mores, different values, different ideas of right and wrong, success and failure.

Maybe, it is the overriding need for our chosen reality to be the correct one that is the root cause of the fear response, the root cause of the defensiveness that leads to enmity and war. War does not happen, every time. Sometimes, agreements are reached. For instance, people from the South and people from the North are all Americans, now. No one is certain what that war was really about, or why it happened. But it ended because if it hadn't, this country would have been picked off by a stronger nation, and would have ceased to exist, altogether.

Remember the Crusades?

Any war, really.

What fuels and fires them?

I heard something the other day to the effect that John Kennedy said he chose to make going to the moon a goal because it would unite and bring out the best in us. The same person wondered why we had never made eliminating poverty a goal. There is something preventing that. We are spending the money. We are devoting the time and effort in a piecemeal way. But somehow, things are getting worse, and we're all pretty much okay with that. Everyone is blaming everyone for why people keep needing the help that is just enough to keep them where they are. (This discussion was also on Book TV.)

Funny how, when you figure something out and write it down, it turns out to be something someone else already said.

:O)

Purpose is an interesting concept, too. This was the essence of the conversation difficult child and I were having, if you think about it. My purpose is for her to be safe and secure. (And give me something to show off about. :O) Her purpose is something else, altogether.


*************************

Ha! Recovering, there was a time when I could pretty much bet that my conclusions/actions/choices were not going to be the "normal" ones. I have tried to choose the strictest, safest paths I know, all my life. There are so many ways for things to be seen or understood. I would determine which of those things was the "correct" one, the "normal" one, and then, would proceed on that basis. It wasn't until everything fell apart and I threw in the towel and did what I wanted ~ challenged myself in ways that were important to me, in other words ~ that I began to trust myself and my judgments.

The other way hadn't worked.

In my secret heart, I believe we are ALL not normal.

Some of us just hide it better than others.

*******************************

Regarding Einstein's Universal Field of Love.... I think that is the choice and the teaching being presented in most spiritual belief systems ~ that the choice is one between an agape kind of love, or an agape kind of hate. Every artist to whom something wild in us responds, whether the medium be print or paint, sound or stone, reports "just going in" or "just opening up" to the event.

Was it Beethoven who was deaf and yet, wrote music which could describe, to the rest of us, what it is to be human?

Now, how did that happen.

****************

But I do know that, sometimes, difficult child is very afraid of what happens in her brain. She has trouble determining which reality is real, trouble knowing whether she is dreaming or awake, trouble knowing how to ride the emotional extremes that come out of nowhere, and change everything.

But here is the thing: I am reading 112 Mercer Street: Einstein, Russell, Gödel, Pauli and the End of Innocence in Science. Each of these people was nowhere near "normal" growing up. The respect we give them today has to do with their professional achievements. Who might they have become in our over-labeled, over-medicated, all too permissive modern world?

Cedar

Thank you for an interesting discussion, Recovering.

:O)

 

[InsaneCdn]

Who might they have become in our over-labeled, over-medicated, all too permissive modern world?

And on the flip side... how many of their peers with similar challenges, never had a chance?
Not saying it's better now... just that you win on one front, and lose on another...

 

[scent of cedar]

sticky and snug, that feeling of not being able to move freely in our own lives...

step back, make every attempt not to judge (that can be REALLY hard) and continue to surround my daughter with love.............

We work and work to get detached and rather then a band playing and a parade, what happens is that one day, we simply respond differently

I am remembering DDD's comment that there would never be "innocent love" between herself and her difficult child, again. I remember that the reason the conversation on judgment began had to do with that interesting concept as it applies to our difficult child kids.

And even, to ourselves, as we go through this process.

Difficult, to turn that mirror back onto myself, but you are right, Recovering.

 

[recoveringenabler]

I have many reactions to your words Barbara. I think of so many artists, musicians, poets, actors,.......who have been labeled 'mentally ill' some who committed suicide, or went completely over to the 'other side' many whom created such beauty and such a brilliant landscape for us to view and be a part of...............and yet, like your daughter and most of my family, they were plagued with brains that also did them harm......and harm came to others too........

When I was a kid and watched my younger brother go through so much torment, (later diagnosed as schizophrenia) I had a recurring dream that he was trapped in a tiny dwelling in the middle of a vast corn field and I would spend the night running towards him trying to get to him to let him out. That dream sums up much of the way I felt personally throughout my life, trying to save.............trying to rescue.............trying to help..........my own "survivor guilt"..............(there is even a name for that.)

And now, Eleanor from the video you posted actually recovered from schizophrenia........remarkable..........the voices were her fears........

Perhaps much could be summed up as FEAR. Fear drives us and compels us to act in bizarre ways. Fear of something different, fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of loss of control, fear of death, fear of living, fear of not getting our share, fear of being alone, fear of being different, fear of being vulnerable, fear of criticism, fear of the dark................since 9/11 the statistics show that many more of us are medicated to allay our fears..............

There was a book, many moons ago, ..............the title was Love is letting go of fear............

Tom Robbins in one of his books I forget which one, said something like, "there are only two states in life, YUCK or YUM." (Fear and Love?)

Reminds me of that Native American Proverb about the two wolves inside all of us......."one is evil, anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, lies, inferiority and ego" (fear)..........."the other is good, joy, hope, love, peace, humility, kindness, empathy and truth" (love)........."the wolf that wins......the one you feed."

What Insane said is so poignant, how many of us don't make it through, don't conquer our fears, don't rise above our circumstances, don't get the chance to share our gifts............

Reality by agreement is a fierce container of judgment and fear to live within..............getting out of that is a triumph of unparalleled courage............makes me think of Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Mother Teresa................

Food for thought, some things to bring along on my day today...............choosing love today...........

 

[scent of cedar]

And on the flip side... how many of their peers with similar challenges, never had a chance?
Not saying it's better now... just that you win on one front, and lose on another...

You are right, Cdn. I just completed, and lost, my response to your comments. I am going to post what I can remember, because the conclusions I drew had to do with genius accomplishments, and with the speed of scientific advance ~ of advance on every level, really ~ in the past hundred and fifty years or so.

And with the strange lack of innovation in the past 50 years or so.

And with the question of whether we are (unsuccessfully) drugging our visionaries to "normal," today. (Which might explain, among other things, why, for some reason, we haven't been able to find an alternative to the internal combustion engine.)

In the post, I wondered how the parents of the visionaries (and as far as I know, there are, and never have been, any such things as "normal" visionaries) dealt with their difficult child kids. I concluded that they survived it all by what was in that time a more socially acceptable "detaching."

It was a great post.

:O)

I mentioned, in the post, the childhood weirdnesses of those scientists, musicians, writers, etc, who have changed our perceptions of reality. Michealangelo (whose name, for some odd reason, I cannot spell, this morning ~ not in the original posting, and not in this one), poor one-eared Van Gogh, Jung, Freud (self-evident!), Tesla, Twain, Mozart.

Einstein.

Do any of us know of a visionary in any field who was not, technically, by today's standards, emotionally ill?

Mathematicians, maybe. But don't you suppose they could all be placed somewhere in the autism spectrum? And therefore, today, medicated to "normal."

What I concluded is that the monied classes loved but were frustrated by their difficult children, but had the wherewithal to educate and support them until they hit their stride or wound up in asylums. Among those without money, the kids weren't educated. They wound up in asylums and poorhouses ~ or, they emigrated.

A large percentage of them came here, to America.

I am feeling much different about my difficult child daughter, this morning.

And very, very much differently about psychiatrists, and psychiatric medications.

There was something too, in the post, about what it felt like to go through treatment facility after treatment facility, what it felt like to have our family examined with a fine tooth comb, what it felt like to believe that "they" knew what was wrong (which there obviously was, whether the "experts" could find it or not) and would help us know how to help difficult child ~ only to learn, after way too much money ~ that what they said wasn't true, that what they tried, or told us to try, didn't work, and that, since the time we had paid for was over, so was their interest in, and commitment to, difficult child.

The psychiatric medications difficult child is supposed to be taking now change her into a zombie. She isn't seeing visions anymore ~ but then, she isn't seeing much of anything else, either. She no longer takes them. Could this have been the fascination with living on the streets? That, though they might beat her half to death, no one labeled or tried to change her?

I wondered whether any of us knew of anyone who had been "cured" by psychiatric medications.

Given the sense of "incredible lightness of being" accomplished through the Osteen materials, I wondered too, whether anyone knew of anyone who had been "cured" through a spiritual means. I think we all know, or know of someone, who has.

Without psychiatric medications.

So anyway, that was the gist of the post.

You made an excellent point. Cdn.

Cedar

 

[scent of cedar]

Recovering, you are so beautifully human.

Your brother must love you so much.

Barbara

 

[InsaneCdn]

Do any of us know of a visionary in any field who was not, technically, by today's standards, emotionally ill?

Yes.
But the rest were/are developmentally different. And "they" can't really medicate away developmental differences, the way "they" do with mental illness. So... the mathematicians, and the high tech gurus, and such fields, still continue to make forward advances.
At least... the ones who survive our current education system, do.

I'll stop there, or this will turn into a rant.

As for why we don't have an alternative to the internal combustion engine... that would be a whole different rant, but there really are reasons.

 

[DammitJanet]

This post has become so interesting! As far as that idea in therapy, I couldnt agree more. I hate therapists who want to pigeonhole someone based on what the diagnosis is. My former therapist, the one who actually got me to believe that therapy could help, just worked with the person as they came to her. She never once told me that because I had borderline we had to do DBT. We both read the book on that and sometimes worked parts of it into our sessions but most of the time she just let me lead the times we had. If I needed to talk about how hard things had been when I was a child then thats what we did. If I needed to talk about the here and now, that was what we did. I dont think I will ever meet someone like her and that is what is keeping me from finding another therapist I can connect with.

None of us with the same diagnosis represent in the exact same way. Most people who meet me in person dont even realize what is going on inside me. Like my avatar says, Im crying inside and nobody knows it but me.

 

[scent of cedar]

Possible to clarify, Cdn?

Do you mean developmentally different in the sense of accelerated? I would agree that those who have changed reality for the rest of us displayed wide-ranging intelligence and curiosity. But then, there is the stereotype of the "mad" scientist, artist, mathematician. So, is that kind of genius a more focused variant of what we term insanity?

True, that mathematicians and high-techs are changing reality. The mathematicians in ways I don't understand, the high-techs through enabling instant communication over vast distances. Time itself has been negated, to a degree, here in the interconnected internet world. Facebook posts come through translated. Language and custom are no longer the barriers they once were.

Humor, and integrity, turn out to be universal.

Who would have thought.

I agree that there may be other reasons we are still using the internal combustion engine.

:O)

 

[InsaneCdn]

Do you mean developmentally different in the sense of accelerated

Nope.
Aspies and High-Functioning Autism (HFA). Not the "brilliant" brains, but the "think outside the box" brains. People who see the world differently, and are "stupid" enough to prove that things CAN be done differently. People who don't care about what anybody else things about their failures... or their successes. The "Benjamin Franklin" types... (not that we can prove that he was on the spectrum, but... he wasn't "insane", he was just extremely "different")

 

[scent of cedar]

Most people who meet me in person dont even realize what is going on inside me. Like my avatar says, Im crying inside and nobody knows it but me.

Thank you, Skotti. If I may ask without giving offense...do you know whether the pain you feel has to do with being misunderstood by others, or does it have to do with frustration at not understanding what is happening inside yourself?

I think one of difficult child's strongest fears is losing touch with reality and not knowing what that means. While I don't know for sure, it seems to me that she fears these episodes as much because they are abnormal as she does because of what she actually sees or hears. For instance, she dreampt of a man bringing pancakes the other day. She was upset, when she woke up, that the people she was with had eaten all the pancakes. Turns out, of course, that there had never been any pancakes.

So, they made pancakes for dinner, and left some out for the man.

When she told me about the dream, I said I thought that was her grandfather. My father. He loved pancakes, and he loved difficult child.

No more fear of that particular imagery.

I know there have been more frightening things, things that difficult child doesn't tell me about. I wonder whether the fear component comes from that uneasy feeling "this isn't normal", and whether that fear feeling changes the emotional tone of whatever it is she is seeing/hearing.

I wish it didn't have to be so scary, for her.

Cedar

 

[scent of cedar]

Cdn, Einstein was described exactly that way, as a child. He was never expected to amount to much. He did not do well in school. You might enjoy 112 Mercer Street, Cdn. They have it at the library. Not a one of those brilliant men discussed in this book was "normal." The one who led the most normal life married a stripper. She kept him sane, kept him connected to reality. It's an interesting book.

Here is another interesting factoid you may already know about. The man who understood the spiral structure of the DNA molecule was not trained in that field. I think he may have been the janitor. I could be wrong on that. In any event, the reason he "got" the spiral structure was because he had not had "reality" trained into him through higher education.

Cedar

 

[DammitJanet]

Of course I cant answer for your daughter but I often feel no one really understands me, not even my family who have known me forever. You would think by now that hubby would know certain things...like the fact that I have a very bad period in June because that is the month I was raped at 18. Nope, he is still confused when I tend to have a harder time. It also happens to me at Xmas. I love buying the presents but on Xmas day, its all I can do to be there when the kids open the presents then I want to escape to my room and hibernate.

I have also had those visions that I know arent real. The worst of them came when my kids were very young and I thought I saw blood dripping down the walls and I was convinced it was my kids blood. I also saw faces in the flowered curtains in the bedroom. That was a bad time for me and I was too afraid to tell anyone about it for years and years. Later, right after my meningitis I also had some strange delusions. I used to think my pots and pans were talking to me and the canned goods were doing it too in the grocery store. Thankfully that didnt last too long. I do think that was due to my brain injury.

As far as me crying inside, well its because no one really does understand me or even pay much attention to me. Lots of times I feel like a piece of furniture that people would only notice was missing if they went looking for it.

 

[SuZir]

do you know whether the pain you feel has to do with being misunderstood by others, or does it have to do with frustration at not understanding what is happening inside yourself?

I think one of difficult child's strongest fears is losing touch with reality and not knowing what that means. While I don't know for sure, it seems to me that she fears these episodes as much because they are abnormal as she does because of what she actually sees or hears.

I'm not Skotti, I don't have personal experience and even my 'source' has different diagnosis than your daughter. But this is something I Have had some long talks with my son. He has some dissociative and depersonalisation and derealisation symptoms that to me sound extremely freaky and rather severe but according psychiatrists are more in the moderate side. (If you look threads I have started, I had the few last spring about these. I think dissociation etc. is mentioned in topics of most of them.)

For him the fear of losing his mind/touch to the reality, becoming crazy was the worst. And he did try to hide those symptoms from everyone the long time, because he was scared to end up being diagnosed with mental illness. When his psychiatrist was able to make him believe he isn't 'going crazy', the symptoms themselves have become much easier for him to handle. He almost seems to consider them just nuisance at times, nothing much worse than getting something in your eye or stubborn hiccup. And that attitude has helped him a lot with dealing with them and helped with his functionality and made him much less avoidant of things that may trigger these symptoms or anxious about symptoms maybe coming to bother him in worst possible times.

 

[scent of cedar]

Thank you for sharing to both Skotti and SuZir.

Skotti, those are the exact kinds of things that happen to difficult child. When she was staying with the woman before she left to live on the streets with the bad man? The woman told difficult child she had been talking to the canned goods ~ and getting upset with their responses! difficult child then realized that what she had been doing was abnormal.

How awful, not to know.

I'm so sorry that is happening to you, Skotti. It's just not fair. How can we be expected to make sense of things, or trust ourselves?

On the other hand, husband sees patterns and faces in everything. The difference is, I suppose, that others can see the faces created by the shadows too, once he points them out. And they don't move. And they don't talk to him.

I'm wondering then, if it's just a matter of degree?

SuZir, that your son feels differently about the things he sees or hears, once fear of being abnormal is not so great a component. That has to tell us something about why the things some of us see and hear so clearly get nasty. Didn't Eleanor, the lady in the TED talk about schizophrenia, say something similar?

Something to the effect that she learned to talk to the voices quite firmly, from her strong center?

Cedar

 

[scent of cedar]

For those interested, this is the link to speculation about the inception and composition of the Universe:

www.thunderbolts.info/wp/

Keep in mind that my former NASA physicist Tai Chi instructor says these guys are all wet.

Cedar

 

[recoveringenabler]

Barbara, in response to your statement "I am feeling much different about my difficult child daughter, this morning. And very, very much differently about psychiatrists, and psychiatric medications,"............... I remembered something I hadn't thought of for many years..............In 1977 I fell into a deep depression, unknown origin, first time in my life and as it turns out, the only time.....I had already been in therapy, but the depression was so different and difficult I went to a Psychiatrist for the first time. Previous to this period of time I had no symptoms nor did I share my family history with the Dr. since at that time in my life, I had not gained the insight and (now) obvious conclusions about all of the mental illness. Within 10 minutes, she (the Dr.) told me I was a "manic depressive" personality (they had not yet changed to bi-polar) and needed to see this well known Dr. who specialized in that disorder and I needed to be on medications. She took out a handful of sample medications which she said I needed to take until I got in to see this guy. Bear in mind that I was deep in this depression, it was a very dark place inside me............so I was definitively looking to get out of that feeling and get back to living again as soon as I could.

I went home and placed all the medications on my night stand, but didn't take them. I don't really know why. I'd heard of this therapist in the town I was in, who was also a pastor in a church and he was very well regarded and had much success. I got an appointment to see him. I had not taken the medications yet. During my first appointment with the pastor/therapist, he said two important things to me, one was that he thought rather then a chronic depression, he said in his opinion I was having a 'spiritual experience, an awakening'...........and the other thing he said was that I was incredibly hard on myself and when he said that his eyes welled up with tears and he said he found that so sad that I would be that hard on myself. That empathy he displayed towards me along with a new kind of spin on things made me choose him to do therapy with. Interestingly when I returned to the Psychiatrist for my follow-up, not having taken the drugs, and told her I was choosing to go with the other therapist which I felt was a better fit, she got irritated with me and said something I've never forgotten, she said, "well, it seems you think you can pull yourself up with your own bootstraps..........." to which I said, 'Yes, that's exactly what I believe.' Even in the throes of depression I thought that was an odd thing to say to me.

I worked with the Pastor for a couple of years, he was a phenomenal therapist, he 'saw' me, he acknowledged me, he listened to me, he had so much empathy...........within a few weeks that depression lifted..............but more importantly I was now on a clear path, one I was actually already on, but now it had a name, the Pastor helped me to define what I was doing and who I was............. I was on a "spiritual" path, I was searching for 'meaning', I was looking for answers..............that was and is who I am, the essence of me. BUT, what if I had chosen to take those medications,, go to the famous Doctor who specialized in manic depression..................where would I have gone? Who would I have become? Not to say Psychiatry does not have it's place, or that medications do not have validity, I am not saying that at all............I am simply telling a story about an experience I had and a choice I made which given the discussion we are presently having, has some significance, at least for me.

Choices. Our daughters are making choices. If I take my judgments away, that's all they are. Perhaps it's acceptance we are all searching for.

My sister refused medication too, like your daughter she did not like feeling like a zombie. She used her art, her creativity, her music, her poetry to stay in balance. She found meaning in what she could create.