Reality

[Droopy]

What few people understand about mental illness is that it creates a false reality in your mind that seems every bit as real as the real reality and the mentally ill see this false reality as the real one and sometimes have no conception of what the real reality is. Follow me? I think that is true for all mental illnesses and not just ones that cause psychosis which is defined as losing contact with reality. Thirty percent of mentally ill people do not realize that they are sick. They have no insight into their illness at all. I was one of those 30% for about 10 years.

The clinically depressed person might be suffering from the delusion that life is not worth living. The manic person might be suffering from the delusion that he is Christ. The psychotic person might be suffering from the delusion that the voices are from aliens. All of those things seem very real to millions of people every day. It's no wonder that the mentally ill are so misunderstood. They live in a different reality than most people. Things that make perfect sense to them in their reality appear to us as, well, insane.

[DemExpat]

1. You are so right, Droopy,

it is impossible to know what one's delusions are while in the midst of unbalanced states of mind and feelings.

I also did not know that how I was reacting and behaving was not healthy or fair to others, I thought I "knew" what I was doing! I thought I was right in my assessment of things.

It took me over 10 years to discover the truth, or as much of the truth that I am capable of grasping.

DemEx

[Name removed]

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[Droopy]

10. Hi turtlensue

How did I come to realize that I was sick? It all came down to one very desperate action. I was going to kill myself. I saw no other way out. I thought that everybody in the world hated me and they just wanted me to die- even my own relatives except for my mother. I've always been very close to her and she had known something wasn't quite right with me for a long time, but she didn't know how wrong. I guess I was good at hiding things. I didn't speak much in those days. Had I been more outgoing my struggles might have ended sooner.

So I told my mother that I wanted to kill myself out of one final desperate plea for help. She told me that I needed to go to the hospital. That's when my recovery began and when I found out that I had a severe mental illness.

[Name removed]

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[EFerrari]

3. So true. It's true to a degree, I think, for everyone.

And as for insight -- it can come and go. It's really hard to be consistent when your insight waffles on you like that.

[mopinko]

4. and sometimes., especially if you are a mom, you get to be

a part of their delusions. right now my daughter, and her boyfriend who "knows everything about her, even her past, because she tells me everything" KNOW that she was beaten every day of her life by her psychotic mother. (she got spanked, not beaten, spanked, a couple of times in her whole life, tempted tho we were.) she also managed, at one point, to convince some longtime friends of ours that she was fine, but that i was poisoning them all so that i could get attention from doctors.
can't she just see some pink elephants and leave it at that?

[EFerrari]

5. Doug had me arrested when he was paranoid and on more

than one occasion. His stuff generally turned on whoever he was living with at the time. I got so I could figure out what was upsetting him by what I was accused of.

Pink elephants would have been much easier to deal with for both of us and also, decorative.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

6. Yes, but...

They tend to overwhelm the decor in any room. ;-)

[EFerrari]

7. They're nosy, too.

lol

[mopinko]

8. i do already have too many animals, anyway

the dog food bill is already to high.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

9. Besides...

Getting them paper-trained is a sumbitch, especially if you don't own a paper mill and if they have an accident indoors, that shoots a week for cleanup. ;-)

[no name no slogan]

12. Damn straight bro. It's this reality that most don't understand

I've lost several friends and close relationships because my reality didn't match theirs. It has taken my mother twenty years to realize that 1) I'm not lazy, 2) I really don't like being this way, and 3) It's not anybody's fault.

[Droopy]

13. "It's not anybody's fault"

My mom's hung up on that one. She seems to think that my illness is her or my dad's fault somehow. My folks weren't perfect parents, but I don't think anybody is. Every once in a while she will say something like "I don't know what could have caused it. I didn't do anything bad when I was pregnant with you. No drugs, no cigarettes, no alcohol." It's like she's working this over in her head trying to find a reason for my illness and she sometimes blames herself.

Every time she does that I tell her that it's nobody's fault. There's just a "bad brain" gene running in the family history and I was just one of the unfortunate ones that inherited it. Bad luck. There's nothing that could have been done to prevent it. There's nothing else that caused it. I tell her that every time she brings it up, but she still won't stop obsessing about it.

[Larissa238]

14. My mom is the opposite

She thinks either I caused my mental illness, or that the church that I went to somehow made me bipolar. But this is mostly out of denial, since she has untreated and undiagnosed bipolar (but come on, if you have been through a manic episode, you know what one looks like on someone else) so she blames me so she doesn't see that she has it. And she just has this thing where everything is my fault. Whether she knows anything about the situation or not, it's my fault.

*sigh*

At least we are on better terms now that we are thousands of miles apart.

[Droopy]

16. Sorry to hear that Larissa

It really helps to have a supportive family when you are struggling with a mental illness. I'm sorry your mom hasn't seen the light.

[Larissa238]

18. She won't realize it until she sees she has it as well...

and maybe not even then. Heck, she might even find a way to blame it on me, since to her bipolar can be caused by ideas or inanimate objects. I just really worry, since she is taking care of my 12 year old cousin who I'm 99% sure is mentally ill in some way. Just my cousin has nobody who wants to take care of her that is qualified to take care of her, and my family would fight tooth and nail to keep her away from a foster home.

I see the cycle going on again, and I feel helpless to change it. I am in no way able to care for her - I don't have the money, the patience, or the skills. And I don't want her dad hanging out at my house, stealing my stuff and drinking all the time (which is what my uncle does to my mom).

[hunter]

20. My mom is a combination of both...

She'll say just those words Droopy's mom does: "I didn't do anything bad when I was pregnant with you. No drugs, no cigarettes, no alcohol..." and blame herself, etc., etc., etc... but then, duh, to make it utterly obvious to everyone but herself that it's some kind of bad genes, she'll openly wonder why crazy people can't "be strong" like she is. Nope she doesn't need drugs or any other sort of mental health care, and anyone who does (like me :eyes: ) simply isn't being strong enough.

Mind you, when my mom is "being strong" she is utterly impossible to be with. My dad's the only one who can do it, and it's a miracle he hasn't thrown her off a boat into the cold dark somewhere. Crazy love, that. When my mom's not being strong she simply disappears. Whenever she's on some kind of even keel, which is often enough, she holds court, and everyone thinks she is wonderful, and they don't believe you when you tell them she can make even sane people bat shit crazy if they hang around long enough.

Total Alice in Wonderland. One thing I can say about my childhood is that it was never ever dull.

[no name no slogan]

15. Are you sure you're not my brother?

Your mom and mine sound exactly the same. She's finally starting to get it. She's as responsible for me having bipolar as she is for me having brown eyes.

I got some of her craziness and some of dad's. That's just how life goes. :)

[Droopy]

17. I bet a lot of parents go through that, nnns

Especially the ones that really care. It sounds like you have a good mom and that's important when you are trying to recover from a mental illness. Give your mom a hug next time you see her.

[EFerrari]

19. Doug's mom did. And the hardest sell for me when Doug

had a destructive episode was helping my own family understand that it wasn't something he was choosing to do. They had a hard time with that until they saw the violence disappear when his treatment was finally on track.