My memory is failing

Ever since January this year my short and long term memory has been in decline. It makes community college much harder because I can’t learn well. How can I hope to transfer to the state university and do well when I can’t learn normally. Its so embarrassing, my little brother has already surpassed me in education. He is finishing his first year of college in Boston majoring in neuroscience. I am three years older and he has passed me. Now I can’t learn or grow anymore, all of the people my age have jobs or study and are more intelligent than me. All because of schizophrenia. I come from a family where education is everything. I am too slow to even retain information and learn. Now I am just a stupid semi-adult living in my parents’ basement who will never get out in the world or amount to anything. Two years ago everything was possible. I wanted to be a pharmacist, I was bright and motivated. Schizophrenia now has robbed me of my intelligence. I can’t even hold a conversation anymore. A year ago my memory was great and I was earning good grades. After a med change it has been a steady decline. I sleep 12 hours a day and have no motivation to get anything done. Schizophrenia really is a bitch.

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I could give one advice, back in the early 1999 when I started hearing voices, I noticed that my memory started failing, but I had a solution,I started maintaining more my paper notebooks, basically I wrote down my thoughts, intelligence and so on, and ever since I have been maintaining these notebooks, basically I can go back in time and read what I thought,which has turned out to be very useful. I have now over 30 paper notebooks in addition to some digital records. I also have many other records such as all email communications I had in America in the 1990s. You may try this method too, it can be helpful.

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I don’t think that will be very helpful for eduvigis. You guys are talking about two pretty different kinds of memory.

@eduvigis, try learning good study methods (they can really be a game changer). Try improving your concentration (it can be done). Try not to let stress get the better of you (very important). If you want to be successful in school as a schizophrenic, you need to have your symptoms under control and you need to give yourself time to recover. When I got put on the right meds, it still took me two years of trying hard to get better before I had improved enough with regards to concentration and motivation to be able to study again. I’ve not started officially yet, but I read about 2 hours every day. I’m probably going to have to read more when I start officially though.

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Here are two lists of study tips that seem to be pretty sound.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/08/27/study-techniques-that-work-and-surprisingly-dont/?utm_term=.77e6542b6295

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You may be right about these different types of memories, I have not really read any books for a long time, but years ago I also found it helpful to draw down some images from any books I read in my notebooks, By doing this it helped me to remember some drawings. In my diaries I can read how messed up my mind was years ago and so this is also helpful to see how I have progressed. Sometimes I think it was some other person who had written down some notes.

It is funny about this memory matter. Back in the 1980s I was very good in math in the university and I used to remember formulas without any problems and I passed some difficult classes with very high grades when others failed these classes, but today I can not remember a single formula, but again I have a method, I have a book series of technology and these books have all formulas.

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Then there are some matters I remember perfectly, these are images in my mind, for example in March 1987, 30 years ago, when it was still the Soviet Union and I was in Moscow and I, my sister and a Soviet Olga walked on the Red Square and my sister said to me that it was a costum to hold hands, but I did not do so with this redhead Olga, but I had had some sex with Olga in one building in some area of Moscow, that was then discussed in Hotel Inturist. The world is a strange Place.

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Math requires good reasoning and problem solving abilities, memory and abstract thinking. Many of us have hypoactive prefrontal cortices, meaning our ability to reason is inferior to those average healthy people. You were blessed to have such great functional intelligence at a point in your life when everyone was achieving so much and establishing their status in the adult world. I suppose God has a different plan for each of us.

There was a point in my life when I had lost my memory so much that I had difficulties to communicate in different languages, for example when in March 2000 I called at one number in Europe, they just commented how poorly I spoke my native language. I had almost completely lost my memory but it is coming back now.

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I know what happened to me in December 1999 in America. I received a telephone call and when I picked it up with my left hand I started receiving some brainwashing to the left side of my brain, but I slammed the phone down quickly, but still after this call my mind was totally confused and messed up and I started doing weird things. I think that I lost my abilities but they were not able to branwash me completely and I gained control over my life in a few days by practicing some math and thinking, but I lost my abilities to communicate. I have written about this call earlier, but my mind is clearer now and I have regained some of my communication abilities.

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In this image you can see what they, the CIA, took from me …they caused an injury in the left side of my brain … I have regained some of this ability back …

http://www.biausa.org/images/leftbrainrightbrain.jpg

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I admire your ‘focus on a solution not a problem’ attitude. Well done. I need to be more like that in my life…