How to convince my mom I'm ill

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So, my mom is having a hard time realizing how paranoia and hallucinations affects me. As in, functioning at school is much much harder and and in my real life as well.

I try to explain to her but she ignores it and says it’s all in my head.

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She’s just ignorant, that’s all. Probably in denial. See a doctor if you can.

It’s the human condition… .there’s no convincing another person how much pain you’re in.

My parents didn’t realize I was sick until I was in the poorly named “quiet” room screaming about ghosts and prophecy.

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she sits in on all my doctor appointments, all my diagnosis sheets, etc.

And she has a brother with the disease.

You’d think she would know by now

4

A) Does she have symptoms of her own? Does she deny that she has them?

B) Here’s a list of suggestions:

  1. Get a copy of these books, read them and have your family read them, as well. (Torrey can be a bit totalistic and unwilling to see exceptions to his “rules” at times, but most of his book is really worth the effort to plough through.)
    http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Schizophrenia-6th-Edition-Family/dp/0062268856
    http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Family-Guide-Schizophrenia/dp/1593851804/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=schizophren0c-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=XKLY6NWSWJSQ3VYN&creativeASIN=1593851804
  2. Get properly diagnosed by a board-certified psychopharmacologist who specializes in the psychotic disorders. One can find them at…
    http://doctor.webmd.com/find-a-doctor/specialty/psychiatry and https://psychiatrists.psychologytoday.com/rms/
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  3. Work with that “psychiatrist” (or “p-doc”) to develop a medication formula that stabilizes their symptoms sufficiently so that they can tackle the psychotherapy that will disentangle their thinking.
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  4. Psychotherapies for that currently include…
    DBT – http://behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm
    MBSR – Welcome to the Mindful Living Blog
    MBCT - Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy: theory and practice - PubMed
    ACT – ACT | Association for Contextual Behavioral Science
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  5. the even newer somatic psychotherapies like…
    MBBT – An Introduction to Mind-Body Bridging & the I-System – New Harbinger Publications, Inc
    SEPT – Somatic experiencing - Wikipedia
    SMPT – Sensorimotor psychotherapy - Wikipedia
    .
  6. or standard CBTs, like…
    REBT – Rational emotive behavior therapy - Wikipedia
    Schematherapy – Schema therapy - Wikipedia
    Learned Optimism – Learned optimism - Wikipedia
    Standard CBT – Psychotherapy | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness & scroll down
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  7. Get two or more of those “down,” and one can use the skills therefrom in this way to combat delusional thinking and emotional reactivity very quickly: 10 StEP – Pair A Docks: The 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing
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  8. If you/she/he needs a professional intervention to get through treatment resistance, I would use those search tools in item 2 above. Look for clinics that include intervention and treatment resistance services.
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  9. If you or your sz patient suddenly becomes manic: What to do when your depressed patient develops mania | MDedge Psychiatry?
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  10. Look into the RAISE Project at Google.
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  11. Look for mental illness clubhouses in your area (which can be hugely helpful… but may also pose risks). Dig through the many articles at Google to locate and investigate them.
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Check out the 10 stEP thing @notmoses linked to. If you’re in school then I’m guessing your able enough to do it well.

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Well in some sense these things are indeed all in your head. In the sense that they are subjective experiences. Yet that does not prevent them from being a huge pain in the ass as well.

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Sometimes parents have a hard time accepting anything is “wrong” with their child. I’ve worked with mentally and physically disabled kids for many years and have seen parents in denial about even some severely disabled kids. My own mom ignored me when I was in high school and told her that demons were telling me to cut my wrists and I was scared. She simply couldn’t handle it and chose to hope it would go away. Could you sit down with her and tell her how her denial makes you feel and that you need her support?

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Tell her you know its all in your head and that’s exactly the problem. Because it’s in your head and you can’t control it, you need support.

It took a while for my mom to get out of denial. The first book notmoses suggested is kinda hard to get through but the second one is excelent for family members.

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