Is your family ashamed of your illness?

Mine is i think more than i am actually. They all have no addictions (besides maybe food) and no illnesses either and they seem more ashamed of it than i am.

They do not have a clue what schizophrenia actually is.

mind don’t really either. There too busy with there lives.

Mine are indifferent rather than ashamed. They don’t talk to me about my illness except for my brother very occasionally. Then he refers to schizophrenia even though i haven’t had that diagnosis for a long time.

My family thinks there are cures that help procritasize me for!

I was very lucky with this regard. My parents are both teachers and have seen kids far worse then me. I don’t know if they were ashamed. They were heart broken and ashamed about some of the stuff I did; but I never felt ashamed of.

My parents are pretty quick acting. They were pretty open about what was going on with me. We don’t sit around and discuss SZ very often.

There is one room in their house that we kids used to call the thinking room…
“You just sit in there and think about what you just did/ said young man”…

That sort of room. No window, no T.V., tan walls. That’s the room where after your allowed to “think” Mom sits in the wingback chair and Dad paces and we all got the “Here’s how it’s going to be from now on” talk.

They will have me sit down in there NOW, when they want to discuss SZ and meds and treatment and “any new information for the crisis team.” It’s the only part of the house my SZ and past addictions are discussed in any great detail. Everywhere else in the house SZ and drug addiction doesn’t really exist.

I don’t think that is out of shame. I think my parents and some of my other family need that door. When that “thinking room” door is open, it’s all about the SZ and the drug use or addiction or anorexia.

But when that door is shut… we’re in daily lives… it’s all about daily lives. We usually discuss books.

My mum isn’t and is very open about it my dad however never talks about it and never told his side of the family when I was in hospital for 9 months he still hasn’t told them which makes things very difficult as I come across as odd and get mocked, I don’t think they’d understand anyway but at least they wouldn’t laugh at me! Ironically he’s a mental health nurse i think he would talk about it if i opened up to him but issues go both ways.

My nan and aunt just see me as a tragic case and both want to know the gory details so they can tell their friends for sympathy (I’m not joking they are both codependent and need the attention that illness brings they both have physical ailments which seems to satisfy that need but always ask rather random questions) they don’t know my diagnosis as my mum refuses to give it to them, when I was in hospital they never saw me and never talked about me or asked my mum anything, they left her on her own to cope with me which is why my mum never gives them details now because its too late to be interested.

I don’t think they’re ashamed but they just see me as the tragic case ‘oh she WAS so beautiful, WAS so intelligent and bright, WAS so artistic’ they talk about me in the past tense. Not to matter I’m still artistic, doing well with my degree through distance learning, yes I’m doing it part time and it will take me another 3 years to complete but so far I’ve got a 2:1 grade, I’m also losing weight but they don’t seem to think any of this as relevant! I love them but wish they’d accept me for who I am now as a person and not just see me as an illness.

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no not at all. they have told their friends and they have done their level best to help me. i just wish i could b a better daughter for them. my parents r very supportive i think and i don’t know how to repay that understanding. i wish i could.

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my mum and dad have got there own problems just now and i dont want to add to that, i dont want to discuss it with them and they dont really want to hear it,

if i was staying with them it would be different but i tried to go back and stay with them and lasted about 3 days, it was hell lol, i just wanted out, luckily i managed to get somewhere really quick, i was lucky i guess until i got made homeless and put in temporary accomodation

i tell them if anything has changed and keep them informed of what is happening but thats about it, the rest of the time i just try and get on with it, talk to my p/doc every now and then and if i really need to see someone i will drop in at my resource centre.

i dont think they are ashamed of me tho, obviously they would rather i didnt have an illness but thats the same with everyone i guess, nobody would want this. so i agree with them on that.

my family are very kind and supportive and not ashamed inwardly but they hide my illness from others because having sz is a taboo in society.

The ones I spend time with don’t seem to be. They are impressed by how highly I function, given that I was very schizophrenic at one point but didnt lose my scholarships and kept above a 3.0 and exercised. Now im on meds and my maternal uncle talks to me a lot about recovery, he has had to overcome some of his own problems in his life so we have good talks. My family mostly sees it as miraculous that I managed to function and didn’t lose years of productivity to schizophrenia, which most people do. I actually have a pretty bad case of paranoid schizophrenia, but I have the treatable non-deficit type so meds have really made me close to normal.

I am in remission now so it’s not really a problem anymore…I just need to keep applying myself in school and leave schizophrenia behind me. My meds have me virtually symptom free…but schizophrenia is treatable, not curable. I still have a delusion cross my mind or a hallucination now and then. But I used to be completely delusional and I hallucinated every minute. I still don’t get how I made As and Bs while really crazy…I remember hallucinating while taking tests and having to ignore the voices telling me wrong answers, lol. Professors would just throw in insults about me in the middle of lectures…Everyone in public talked about me and I was convinced that everyone was watching me and knew who I was…I just couldnt figure out why.

I don’t know what my family thinks. When my parents were alive I didn’t talk about my illness with them and they didn’t ask me about it. I only see my brothers and sisters about once a year. We don’t talk about schizophrenia.

Peace be with you Ridgerunner