In Schizophrenia

In Schizophrenia things that normally are unreal become real - thoughts can become voices that seem to come from others and they torment you, often accusative and condemnatory. When I was very ill I found that sometimes I couldn't distinguish between what someone was actually saying to me and what my "voices" were telling me. Sometimes I would hear in my mind the same person who was speaking to me, but the "voice" would say different things; sometimes I really couldn't hear the real person because the voices were scrambling my brain so much.

A sufferer's nightmares come true as they enter a "dream-like" state and seem to have no control over what goes on in their mind. It's possible to believe all sorts of delusions - from "arsenic in their tea" to the fear that they will kill someone, or themselves. Vsual hallucinations may occur, you may see flashing lights, or more formed images demons perhaps.

A major fear for me, being mentally ill, is that I will not be able to express my thoughts. So the idea of telepathy becomes at once the most tempting and conversely the most frightening concept. It's so easy to fool yourself, through loneliness or fear to imagine someone can "hear your thoughts" or can "see" them. This becomes a nightmare when you think that you can also do this, and you seem to be on the receiving end of others' ideas. And when one's own thoughts are negative, particularly when one is ashamed of them, one resents the intrusion into one's "thought world", this can make one angry or frightened or both. The most debilitating aspect of the illness, apart from the fear, is pain.

Tim G

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