Odd pondering about delusions

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Continuing the discussion from Son off Invega:

This sparked a conversation between my sis and I, that I’ve been pondering…

She was thinking of posting a bit about my days when I was trying to be a zen master. She was mentioning how confused she was during this time.

Previously, my brain had been obsessed with kidnappers and people who were after us to hurt us. I was in a deep state of panic often and was so afraid and beaten up by what I was hearing and seeing. But then something happened over time… and it became peaceful.

I was still fighting the delusion about becoming a zen master, I had shaved my head except for the long braid in back, and I was ready to live my life as a monk.

My sis had said… this new head circus adventure was just as hard to watch, but at the same time, my mind seemed at peace. I wasn’t afraid, I wasn’t upset any more, I didn’t have crippling panic episodes as much. So she really didn’t know what to do. I seemed happy… so should she in fact do anything?

But I was still not functional, in fact I was almost worse due to “meditating” (sitting very still for a very long time)

I was still living deep inside my head… but I was happy about it. So that made it much harder to pull me out of. Eventually she didn’t try and reality check with me, she didn’t tell the J-preservation unit… Yes, I was sort of freaking people out, and she thought for sure I’d start my own cult. But at the same time, I seemed so happy and serene and at peace with everything.

Hind sight is 20/20. Because after this long period of being ready to be a Zen master… I hit my worst patch of negative swing ever. So maybe that period of serene, calm and enlightened psychosis was my brain getting ready to shut down further.

So the conclusion is… should I ever hit that spot again… be that calm and happy while not making sense and trying to enlighten others… she should definitely let my crisis team know and do something to maybe head off the negative wax build-up before it has a chance to hold.

Just my pondering…

:coffee: :coffee: :coffee: :coffee: :coffee: :coffee:

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Thank you for your ponder… They do help me a lot.

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Half the battle is realising that the irrational thoughts are irrational. It’s where a therapist is good as a sounding block to tell you if they’re a bit out there…

…Mind you the battle to fight the thoughts when you know they are irrational isn’t exactly a peace of cake. But past therapy has help me there as well.

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James, Please be careful about deep long meditation. I have read a book written by a Buddhist master who did instruction work to his laymen followers. It’s a long correspondence between the student and the master. The student was practicing meditation regularly at home and she had some hallucinations after one year of practice. The master warned her by saying many Buddhist monks experienced this and only those who have a firm faith that nothing is real or persistent including self can go through this stage. (Sorry, I don’t know the English term for this Buddhist idea). The student survived in the end and reached enlightenment.

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Thank you for that… I don’t “meditate” like that any more. Back then it was me sitting in a dark corner, rocking and chanting for 8 to 10 hours at a time. My head circus sure did act up back then.

These days… I was given some 20 to 30 minute guided meditations on the Ipod. Just for stress relief and calming. It does help. It is guided and very gentle. It helps me cut a panic attack down to size… sometimes.

But it’s not an everyday thing and I have my sis around to help sort of nudge me back out of my head.

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Interesting story…a long time ago and long before my diagnosis, psych classes, and way before medication, I remember how simple life was- everyone was in on a conspiracy against me, to my knowledge, and I didn’t worry- I just felt angry and not much else.

Schizophrenia can be pretty bad.

I now look back at it and try to make sense of it- is paranoid schizophrenia necessarily maladaptive? I did very well in school, was in great shape. I simply believed that everyone was my enemy, which made me hypervigilant. I did very well as a martial artist in that state of mind, I beat almost everyone in my dojo, all of the students and instructors except for the head instructor, who I had a draw with. That makes me think that perhaps paranoid schizophrenia is some sort of adaptive trait to make people really effective at preserving their own life. I mean I was HIGHLY functioning- I had a 3.9 and kicked most of my Krav Maga instructor’s asses. I am short and was only 150lbs at the time too. I just had zero friends.

But really, how was that maladaptive? In primitive times (ask an evolutionary psychologist about what I am about to say), I was fit as hell. I could have easily reproduced in that state, albeit maybe by force. I know that sounds messed up, and it really is, but that is how cave-men did things a fair amount of the time, and our brains havent evolved in tens of thousands of years (ask an anthropologist about that). People still rape each other, and women are still attracted to alpha males. These days a CEO is an alpha male. Not too long ago, beating everyone else up made you an alpha male.

I know that is maybe the darkest and most disturbing post I have ever posted, but do think about it- I was fit by all means, and naturally, life is determined by survival of the fittest. Beating people in hand to hand combat and then performing complex tasks (like making A’s in college and exercising excessively) is quite similar to what our ancestors did to go on to reproduce and…well thats how we got here.

Just my morning pondering. A brutally honest one.

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I think it depends on the level… these days… my paranoia sort of works FOR me when planning a park or garden… no large hedges to hide behind, installation of good lights in remote parking lots… use small fences with trench hedges around park areas so it…

a. doesn’t look like a little prison yard for toddlers…
b. still makes it harder for a snatch and run.

That is most likely NOT maladaptive… but back when I was at my worst…

YES… breaking into the neighbors house at 1:00 a.m. to take my kid sis from a birthday sleep over because I was sure our neighbor was a child porn ring… THAT is maladaptive. Kidnapping her from a school yard because I was sure the teacher was a molester and brain washer… that was maladaptive.

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Yeah I think it depends on the nature of the delusions too. Also how well the individual keeps from acting out. For example, I acted out only once, and they sent seven cops to bring me in. They surrounded me and told me that I was coming with them for the night. Now I was not that far out of my mind to pull any ■■■■■■■■ on seven men with handguns on their belts surrounding me. But I did get taken to a nuthouse for a night, since I was drunk and on antidepressants, they put me in a crisis assessment center, for people on drugs, not the local mental hospital and certainly not jail. Luckily I was put in a room full of people on acid and some guy who was crashing off cocaine. Said guy coming down from cocaine high was middle aged, grey-haired and well dressed, wearing a christmas sweater. I felt like I was talking to Mr. Rogers.

But I had delusions about everyone being against me but told myself that they had to make the first move- which I learned in martial arts. When facing an equally skilled or more skilled opponent, let them make the first move. If they are not actually a fighter, just scrap them quick and dirty. “scrapping” is when you let your instincts take over and ignore formal training and just beat the ■■■■ out of someone. BJ Penn scrapped half of his fights, and he was the lightweight champion of the UFC at one point. Seriously, he just punched people in the head after knocking them down. He has formal training and he only used it half of the time.