I live with the paranoia of the past. The meds help me not think about all the people thinking about me due to mistakes I made. God I was delusional and paranoid a year ago. Paranoid of past mistakes but I’ve learned to live with it. I’d like to relocate to eliminate it even more.
It makes so much sense for me to move…after all that’s happened to me. Just waiting for my dad to retire in January
I used to obsess over the stupid things that I’ve done while psychotic that caused me to lose all my friends, but my memories don’t bother me as much now. Time really is the only solution. I still think about these things from time to to time. I always will, they are part of my personal history, but time has made it easier to deal with.
1 Like
Im glad someone opened this thread. I never talked about this and i never read about this on other forums. I felt alone for so long, now i see im not the only one.
Its easier for me now. I wish non of this would happen to all of you though.
1 Like
I’ve done some really stupid things in the past. Most of it I discussed with my psychologist. But there are a few things I did that keep on haunting me. This is stuff I did even from before I got ill. Damn I wish I could erase those thoughts. If I should live my life over I probably make the same mistakes but the only thing I would change is to choose my friends more wisely. Some of my friends of the past was bad people who did bad stuff to good people and I witnessed a lot of that stuff. Today I’ve distanced myself from those “friends” for many years now. My life is better now without them crooked ones.
2 Likes
Whenever I remember a really stupid thing I’ve done, I get hit with a tidal wave of shame and embarrassment. My coping strategy is to tell someone else what I did, so they can chuckle and say it isn’t that big of a deal. When another person tells me it’s okay, I don’t feel so bad about it.
3 Likes
I like this. The best way for me to feel better about mortifying memories is to allow them to become a joke. It’s not going to work for all of them, but it might help you disarm your brain of some of its weapons against you.
3 Likes
Yes, most ppl have actually forgiven me… I’m the only one who’s still beating up myself mentally for not haveing been able to act more wisely.
But there’s still one person in my life who can’t contact me in the old way we did, it’s my older sister to whom I did a lot of stupid or weird stuff and I lost contact with her. I have no idea how she feels about me now, but she doesn’t express anything to me so I have no clue. Maybe she wants to stay away from me. Or from that psychotic weirdo. This is actually another thing that’s still keep bothering me.
It’s bothering me less and less as time goes by, and I think I can live with life without her for good. But if the reason why she stays away from me is due to all the stupid and weird things I did to her, then I couldn’t regret more.
The past does become smaller with time but it is in that way only that it can become amusing in a way as it is no longer so overwhelming as to bother us so much, but it still can pack a vicious sting if it is not respected and “kept” at a distance.
According to Soshana Felman (American feminist and theorist) there are three possible ways of how we are used or taught to deal with trauma/memories;
-medicalization
mythologization
-victimization
What does it mean. It means that society teach us, either to medicalize our emotions and feelings about past, silence it and suppress it as the medications do, or we make a big myths or narratives out of it ( such as religious memory, Exodus at Jews tradition or such) or we relate to them as victims of life, fate, family, whatever.
Neither of these is healthy.
What we should do, is to carefully and consciously go through memories, see them as they were, and move on. You can imagine it as closing an old book. It was - it is not anymore. Don’t let it medicalize you, victimize you and don’t make a myth out of it.
(Sounds easier than getting done…
.)
1 Like
I think humor can work as tolerance therapy. If people who love you can say (to use an example from my life), “remember that time you stood in the parking lot with a stick and chased cars away from parking spaces?” If they can laugh and let me know that it’s okay and that they love me, the sting vanishes.
But yeah, there are some things it won’t work for.
2 Likes
I still can’t forgive that some people made fun of me. Some friends laughed with me and that was different, others laughed at me. I felt the need to show those people that I’m okay now, but afterwards I felt guilty for putting myself in a situation of having to say I’m sorry for psychosis when it’s not my fault. I didn’t do anything wrong, just said and did really crazy stuff. One of those people said “Well, it’s funny” and I replied “It’s not that funny, its a disease.” … Did I take it to seriously? I laugh a lot at some stuff I did, other stuff just am ashamed of being that crazy and showing it to others without worrying about it. It’s a weird place to be.
1 Like
What do we have but the past to determine how we will go on, if at all, into the future.
No, I think there’s a huge difference between laughing at something that happened and is funny in retrospect, and laughing at someone currently suffering. If it was a friend who stuck with you and later said, remember when? That’s one thing. But I’d be upset, too, if they were laughing at me.
1 Like
It was horrible, when I went to meet her I only stayed for an hour and went to meet my true friends. lol… I was just so disappointed at her.
1 Like
All you can do is live your life the best you can and it’s sad to say… but you might have to let your sister go… it hurts… but everyone deals with their past pain in their own pace.
My middle brother avoided me for ages… (I did some pretty horrid things to him)
he even told people we weren’t related. Avoided all contact with me.
It hurt… it sucked… but there was nothing I could do… he didn’t want to communicate with me at all for a long time.
When I started getting better… when I started getting stable… just living my life… not worrying about it… he came back.
He used to be afraid of me… when he could feel I was no longer someone to be afraid of… he came back.
I know I’m lucky in that… but let her come to you when she’s ready… good luck and don’t stress it.
3 Likes
Wow you have superhuman levels of understanding!
2 Likes