Nick thank you for starting this thread. I was actually just sitting here thinking some things through and thinking about starting a thread along these lines. Bear with me. Since my son came to live with me 8 months ago I have been writing what I call ‘My Book’ that I would like to one day have published and it is about my research and my journey with my son. Here is one of the paragraphs:
[It also discusses schizotypy, a watered-down version of schizophrenia that consists of a constellation of personality traits that are evident in some degree in everyone. It has positive and negative traits the same as schizophrenia. “Apophenia is a component of positive schizotypy, and involves a general human propensity (tendency) to see meaningful patterns when they don’t really exist. Apophenia is a natural part of human nature. Some examples include wearing good luck charms, seeing Jesus in toast, or mistaking random sounds for someone calling your name.”]
Personally I believe that we all have schizotypy. Another paragraph:
[His insight into his schizophrenia hasn’t changed. It’s rarely discussed. I don’t think it needs to be. Over the past 3.5 months I’ve had to evaluate and re-evaluate my opinions on schizophrenia or psychosis. If you read my previous chapter then I hinted to the fact that we all have certain human tendencies that border on schizotypy. My son doesn’t react, act upon or think about things that the rest of aren’t dealing with. He just does it on a bigger scale. Have you ever walked into a room and for just a moment out of the corner of your eye you thought you saw someone? Visual hallucination. Have you ever turned around to see who was calling your name and there was no one there? Auditory hallucination. Have you ever gotten the heebie jeebies? You feel like bugs are on you because you just saw one crawl across the wall. Tactile hallucination. Compulsive thinking about the afterlife and the supernatural. Maybe if I had done some research in my younger years I would not have spent a good portion of my life being afraid of death. As for the supernatural. I believe there is a world beyond what my eyes can see. I believe in God and ghosts and even the possibility of Fae (humanoid supernatural beings). I don’t think that I will encounter any of these things in my daily life but for some the possibilities are more real or my preconceived notions of reality is not allowing me to see what is in fact real. It’s a matter of perspective. Who’s going to admit that after watching a scary movie they have to resist the urge to look under the bed, just in case. I don’t because under my bed is stuffed full of boxes so what would fit? Hmm perhaps a ghost but I don’t sleep alone and that gives me more security. I do however on occasion make sure my closet doors are closed. No one likes it when their believes are questioned. I’ve had some tough conversations with my son where I find myself in a bind. I can either disavow my own beliefs, pretend I don’t believe in ghosts or psychic abilities, or I can open myself up to the possibilities that what he is seeing, hearing, feeling or believing in deserves more credit.]
I read your guys posts and I sometimes wonder if I understand as much as I think I do or if I’m way off. Or perhaps I for some reason didn’t develop schizophrenia even though I seem to have a lot of the traits that could have brought me there. I have, due to drugs, been in a situation where I talked with my then deceased mother. 9 or 10 years later I can still recall how real that experience was.
Sorry I’ve gone a little off topic. But you are so right in your observations. No one really has it all together. Everyone of us struggle day to day to keep our lives together and to find meaning. Very few people are working at a job that they want to go to every day. Very few people are actually as self confident as they pretend to be. Honestly if they were that self confident they wouldn’t need to prove it… We all have tunnel vision and think that our problems are worse then then next persons. We see them walk by and think wow they seem to have it together but we don’t see behind closed doors or know how much effort it is taking them to get through the day. No motivation… Not as uncommon as you would think.
Sorry if it appears that I am trying to downplay what you guys deal with. You guys deal with these symptoms on a much bigger scale than I do. Anyways my point is that even if you don’t know it I think that you guys are the true heroes in this live. Every day you put another foot forward, sometimes you take a couple of steps back, but that’s ok. Lead the way and hopefully the rest of us will be smart enough to follow. Sorry for the book 