For just about 12 hears I have suffered from several voice and tactile related issues. I am highly functional and have a good job. But my problem began when i was a student and at a time of high stress. At the time i was obessed with religion and was highly scrupulous as I had OCD when growing up.
Although I am relatively much better and have accomplished a lot since, the voices still remain. They usually say things that are related to what I think. They try to predict things. And they try to make me anxious when I try to make decisions acting as spiritual guides. That went on for so many years. Few years ago I decided to never listen to what they say or outright ignore them. But then I started feeling these sensations of pins and needles and some pressure on my neck…around my throat almost every night for not listening to them. I have tolerated this for a while…and throughout I have had burning sensations on my legs, pins and needles, olifactory hallucinations etc…
And this days, it has intensified a little. I am always of the belief that this can be defeated or overcome.
I am hoping that there is someone here who has been cured from tactiles. The voices dont bother me much, i usually tell them to f off. But I need the tactiles to stop.
Those somatic hallucinations can be a sign of an underlying health problem. It can also just be a hallucination as well but you might want to get a check up with a regular doctor. I suffer from it but am trying to go a holistic route to stop it so I guess I am a bit of a hypocrite by telling you to go to the doctor. I personally believe these somatic hallucinations are possible real health problems that people with SZ are extra sensitive to feeling. It can also depend on the person, but for myself I have reason to believe it’s a real underlying health problem without getting into too much detail. Like I said though, it could just be a hallucination.
I used to get some tactile hallucinations. I used to feel things undulating under my skin and I could see it undulating under my skin too so it was visual hallucinations as well. This occurred when I was married to a very physically and sexually abusive man and we were both living in poverty and we had a small baby and I was going to nursing school. So, extreme stress!!! I was actually experiencing hallucinations in every sensory sphere at the time. All I know is that when I graduated from nursing school and divorced that man, all my hallucinations stopped, for the time being. But, the paranoia continued. And that is without the help of medications.
various things helped over the years and then stopped helping:
sleeping on metal instead of mattresses or blankets, to avoid dust mites. (I now have a sheet of steel suspended over cinder blocks for a bed.)
eating nothing after 3pm, but no other diet restrictions during the day.
taking theraflu every night before bed - worked like a charm for several years, along with not eating past 3pm.
Discovered singulair about 15 years ago, my sister’s anti asthma drug. Helped like a miracle for a couple of years.
for several years it was not a major issue in my life, just a vague reason why I avoid dinners or sleep on a gym mat instead of a bed; but then, stressful job, drinking wine every night, it got worse to a new level - life threatening, with several visits to insane asylums and suicidal ideation - no sleep and uncontrollable itching and welts and hives all over the body; - during this period, tried several psych meds. Still taking seroquel 50 - 100 mg /night, quit all the other stuff shortly after starting as it didn’t help with the itching at all: Orap was one, with side effects and no help, Haldol worked but terrible side effects not worth it. Atarax just an ineffective antihistamine. Ativan helped me stay asleep in the morning a little longer without itching, ran out after one bottle though, so now, it’s 50 -100mg seroquel and one 300mg gabapetin tablet, along with possibly benedryl or nyquil, to get a few hours sleep. Tried other anti depressants and anti psychotics, but they all just make me drowsy with no effect on the itching.
tried all kind of extreme cleaning (on the theory it was bird mites, from birdmites.org) , tried pyrethrin twice (worked great,but you can’t do that every night). Tried ivermectin, for horses, on the theory this was internal mites. no help that I could notice.
Almost three years ago, in desperate shape - had lost 4 good jobs that year because of the itching - I started an extreme diet based on the theory of “leaky gut syndrome” / yeast overpopulation. Noticed a change immediately if I stuck to the strict diet - all raw veggies plus fish or chicken or beef for protein, but strictly no wheat, dairy, or sugar, or processed food.
for the past few years, the diet is the only thing that lets me sleep. Out of hunger I keep trying to reintroduce stuff, sometimes “getting away with it” for a few days to weeks, before I start itching uncontrollably again and have to tighten up the diet.
Currently I have the diet about as tight as it can get, and I only get a couple of hours sleep on 50 mg seroquel, getting up to take another 50 mg seroquel around 2 am, and up at 6am itching, so tired, but no hope of getting any more rest. Nothing left to eliminate from the diet: it’s about ten raw vegetables and a few fruits per day, with oil supplements and a piece of fish or chicken, all before 2PM. Because even a handful of almonds or a bite of birthday cake will be enough to have me itching so bad I want to be checked into a hospital (but of course I know they can’t help.)
Definitely a dietary component, some kind of food allergy, but it’s getting more and more sensitive, less and less controllable; but then there is definitely a psych component too. When I wake up in the morning or the middle of the night, I haven’t been itching for a few hours. I only get a minute of consciousness though, before the itching starts. Sometimes noises when I am trying to sleep will seem to actually cause the itches. Reading a novel sometimes causes a temporary wave of the itching that then subsides, or if it doesn’t I have to stop reading and take another antihistamine or nyquil. Coffee sometimes seems to directly cause it. Or coffee combined with reading. Just like when I have terrible sneezing hayfever allergies and I can’t drink coffee or tea or read, cause it makes it so much worse. And like allergies, once it gets past a certain intensity, nothing will stop it until the brain spends 8 hours asleep, and these days not even that, it starts up again in the morning.
On the occasions when the itching has “gone away” for a couple of days, it’s like it’s still there but so far in the background of consciousness you’d never notice it, like the war with bombs going off all over my skin - “like christmas tree lights” is a good description - fades away in the distance when the body gets it right.
I’ve been tested with allergies to gluten/wheat, and most other things. Off the chart in allergies to most trees and weeds and animals.
definitely a psych component,
and an extreme allergy component;
i’m in the point oh three percentile
.03%
of americans who didn’t lose their food allergies at age three.
the secret is
i also have infantile dreams,
monsters,
i think it’s possible
i was traumatized so severely in infancy,
that i never grew up.
kept to myself till age 17,
but they said
’gotta watch out for the quiet ones"
so i developed a simulation
of the human personality
but i have always known it wasn’t real all the way down
the marriages collapsed because of that,
and now i stay away from those kind of relationships.
and i had it managed,
like amonk
i live in a second floor tiny hotel room
my mountain hermitage,
silent all day at work but for typing like this,
and then today, TM, i made a big mess,
and atleast with the outlet of typing here,
i haven’t yet gotten myself in 72 hour hold.
the question is why i am stuck as an infant,
infant dreams infant allergies,
infantile imagination,
infantile emotion,
anyway, the reall question is how to manage it,
and the lesson learned today,
to add to the things that are too powerful for me,
one was dream yoga,
and now i know TM also.
googled it just now,
this is something many people have experienced,
some portion of us end up going into
"deep psychosis and hallucinations "
as a result of TM.
they will give me the money back
but they can’t get the bugs off…
I had two major ones when my psychosis started. First it was someone embracing me from behind, like trying to say “everything will be fine”. Second one was someone touching my shoulder.
I also have chills going through my body corelating to certain thoughts when I’m slightly manic I guess. (my diagnosis is bipolar)
Sometimes I felt like my bed was slightly moving under me like pulsating or something, I don’t remember it clearly.