Schizophrenia from the inside
A
schizophrenic walking down the street experiences the same things that
others feel, except the experience is quite different and can quickly
overwhelm them. What mechanics are causing that to happen?
To
investigate, let’s imagine yourself walking along a road. Cars are
passing but nobody else is walking except you. You are aware that
people look at you from the passing cars and this is normal. All
people, no matter what age, experience the phenomenon of others looking
at them. People are attuned to others around them. And somehow, even if
you can’t clearly see inside a passing car, you can still read across
the situation and gauge the feelings emanating from the people inside.
Being
able to glean information from people inside a passing car has amazing
implications about the physics of the real world. However to keep the
discussion focused, it is safe to say that each person can make
immediate assessments from others looking at them. Other people’s eyes
contain much information, even in relative darkness. Most people can
gauge danger or friendship from the most casual glance. For the
ordinary person, this experience is effortless and primary to all
social exchange.
To the schizophrenic however, the phenomenon is
quite different. The visual exchange that leads to ordinary feelings in
most people can act as springboard to exaggerated beliefs.
The schizophrenic sees the visual exchange as a vast opening into a world that may or may not actually exist.
Who’s
to say that hallucinations suffered by schizophrenics are not part of
some yet undiscovered physics? After all, it is a very unusual property
of light that allows us to see, let alone glean information from what
we just saw? Is it not also a strange property of physics that tells us
when somebody is looking at the back of our head?
Clearly people use very strange mechanisms to conduct the business of everyday life.
But
physics aside, the question is what mental process occurs in the
schizophrenic’s mind that might be different from others?
Let’s
say for example the schizophrenic exchanges a glance with somebody in
the passing car. To the occupant of the car, this is the normal
beginning of social interaction. The information is quickly filtered
and forgotten.
To the schizophrenic, the exchange might trigger a massive emotional response.
Social
interactions are essentially emotions at work, but the mind of the
schizophrenic is different. The schizophrenic is unable to quickly
filter and forget the exchange. Questions pour through their mind
seeking an answer for the exchange. How were they able to see eyes
inside a passing car? Do they have supernatural powers of
observation? Why did that person look at them? Was a message
being sent? Who sent it? What did it mean? Was this a divine
occurrence?
In desperation a schizophrenic can reach any number of seemingly irrational conclusions.
Obviously a schizophrenic is aware of themselves, and they understand that information was exchanged with eye contact.
And
too they might understand that information left their brain and entered
another person’s brain. And this actually does occur because people
exchange information by looking at one another. But the schizophrenic
brain diverges from normal. The schizophrenic does not have access to
normal social filters and therefore they can easily conclude that the
information leaving their brain is subject to open public record and
quite logically they conclude that other people are reading their
thoughts.
The conclusion that others are reading their thoughts
is not without some validity. After all, if the schizophrenic
looks ‘weird,’ then his or her social interaction may actually become
part of the open public record and subject of gossip. All of us know
that the 'stranger' a person looks, then the more people try to look at
them and get a reading. Nothing fascinates people more than the
irregular.
This hypothesis could be tested by exposing a
schizophrenic only to blind people and seeing if the symptoms
diminished. On the other hand, since people communicate across an array
of feelers, the schizophrenic may conclude that even blind people can
read their minds.
Returning to the original scenario with a
passing car, what occurred between two people was a single glance or
exchange of eye contact. To those people not involved in a
hyper-vigilance life, for example somebody experiencing threat from
others, the glance meant nothing. Who cares that somebody looked at
you? It doesn’t mean anything – yet it actually means everything
doesn’t it?
The first glance is the start of all social
interaction. It is critically important. The first glance is the
doorway to future friends and acquaintances. It is the measure of
shared understanding. It is totally necessary for interaction among
people, unless a person works and shops entirely by mail, phone or the
internet and doesn’t answer the door when deliveries arrive.
Down
inside the inner workings of each person’s brain, the eye-contact from
a single glance is used to make full assessments for life. It is the
sounding board of everyday life. Yet it is effortless and takes place
continually without mention. That’s why the ordinary person probably
feels that a glance meant nothing despite the truth being different.
The glance is the beginning of everything.
Seemingly contrary to
ordinary people, the schizophrenic is quite aware that a glance carries
huge significance. This was no minor thing that took place and they
know it.
And now after the eye-contact exchange, the
schizophrenic is awash with extraordinary feelings that they must act
on. Everybody responds to their feelings, it is imperative and you do
it without choice. You cannot close your eyes so that your feelings
disappear. Your feelings are always inside you and always working.
Instead
of being overwhelmed by feelings, most people learn practical social
skills that let them pass through the barrage of everyday feelings
without delay.
When a person doesn’t pass through those feelings,
and acts inappropriately for the situation, he or she is considered
immature or acting poorly.
Over time, the exchange of glances
among people will inform a person who acts poorly. These glances will
force them to change behaviors or at least disguise their behaviors. By
changing behaviors, the person is learning how to respond to their
emotions based on what feedback they receive from the larger group. In
this sense, people create an agreed reality by influencing which
emotions are appropriate to display. During the course of learning we
differentiate appropriate times to yell or cry. We learn to set aside
feelings in order to meet expectations and goals within society.
The
schizophrenic is not easily able to control their response to emotions.
Whether this is the actual disease, or a symptom of the disease is not
defined. The fact that the disease lessens its grip in older people
suggests that it is not a disorder of cognition. No matter the root
cause, the schizophrenic is unable to formulate proper emotional
responses, and that leads them to wrongly assess the social
interaction. This doesn’t mean that the schizophrenic is unable to
reason, it just means that their system of judgment is impaired and
they are likely to reach the wrong conclusion.
This implies that
schizophrenics can benefit from cognitive training, but it doesn’t
guarantee that the progression of the disease won’t erase gains.
Most schizophrenics direct their attention inwardly. They know they are different.
At
this point the story diverges somewhat. That’s because the disease is
different for each person. Some of the afflicted are stable functioning
adults. Some get worse over time. Some are drastically impaired by the
disease and will never recover. For some, the disease process allows
periods of stability followed by attacks that carve away a little more
of the person’s mind each time an attack is triggered.
The
commonality between all individuals struck with the disease is that
they seek resolution to their condition. Some people withdraw and close
off communication. They sit in darkened rooms and brood about imaginary
situations that crossed their minds that day. Others stand under a
freeway bridge and let the pounding traffic drown out the noise inside
their mind. After all when you are under a freeway bridge, it’s
expected that people will look at you and therefore you don’t have to
make assessments of the situation. It’s a perfect solution when each
mental confusion evaporates with the car as it disappears down the
street.
All schizophrenics are aware that something is different
about them. They have their antennae raised high to gauge how much and
when another person has noticed. The moment is crushing when others
recognize they are not performing at a known social level. They
naturally feel they are forever weakened and diminished from that
situation. It is something that seems impossible to recover from. This
is one reason why schizophrenics shun social contact and develop
strategies that shut other people out. This is also the mechanism
whereby some afflicted people develop deep-seated hatred of situations
and people.
But is that really irrational behavior? Or is it the exact thing you would do if it brought even a moment of relief?
The brain is both a marvelous and capricious companion that runs our lives ... without permission.
Some
people have an organized and dependable brain, while others operate
like layers of swiss cheese, and when the holes line up maybe they are
able to recall a detail, but if the holes are not lined up, then a less
reliable memory fills the space. And here is the problem ... something
must fill the space. The brain cannot be turned off, even at night,
unless certain medicines are prescribed. Nor can the brain be
fine-tuned to a different 'channel.'
Of course their are methods to
improve cognition of a problem, so a person with OCD can train
themselves to fight a trigger that caused repetitive hand washing etc,
but it requires a functional brain which schizophrenics do not have.
So is the schizophrenic brain really broken? Or is it operating on a scale we don't yet understand?
My
mother was not a schizophrenic, yet she talked about her antenna.
She got flash intuitions about things before they happened.
I too
was somehow blessed with the same intuitions, and sometimes they are
very accurate, and other times, utter nonsense as far I can discern.
But, and here is the point, they are accurate enough that I listen to
them and alter course because of them.
As I get older, and spend more time writing and less time interracting with people, most intuitions come while dreaming.
One
night, my dream showed something bad happening to my car. The next day
while driving, I was extra careful until I got home and absentmindedly
lost my car keys. My wife found them three days late in the front yard,
and I didn't remember going into the yard at all.
Another time,
a dream had somebody knocking at the front door. In the dream I stepped
outside to talk to the strange man, when suddenly a second man walked
up a nd he got mad about something. The jolt of fear caused me to wake.
Next
day, a strange man did ring my front door. And I peered out the window
instead of opening the door. Then suddenly I saw a second man who was
going around door to door with the first man. They were offering
prayers and conversion, but I studied the second man from a distance
and thought he looked like a hair-trigger fellow.
No matter if my
dream intuition was an accurate forecast of events, I acted as if it
was largely because those things have been very accurate in the past.
What
about people who intuit something terrible has happened to a loved one?
They just know down-to-the-bone that something bad happened miles away,
sometimes across differnt states. Hopefully their intuition was wrong
that moment, but stories like that are not uncommon or considered more
that peculariar. The public doen't clamor for protection from such
peheomenon, and generally the person does not require medical
intervention for adnormality.
One more story from my own experience.
A
number of years ago I took nighttime art classes at the Glassel School
in Houston. I always wanted to be an 'fine' artist, until I failed all
measure of talent and eventually coming to rest several years later as
a graphic illustrator on my own website.
Back then however I was
painting pictures every night, one night painting a large profile
portrait of a man in his 30's. It was just an image I pulled out of the
air, I wasn't looking at a model or picturte of someone. The man was a
disturbing figure, not much differnt than my usual attempts.
Then
a few nights later after class, a ratty-looking van was pulled directly
behind my work van, blocking me in. My trailer hitch was muissing, and
somebody was inside the other van, in the cargo space moving around in
an aggitated manner with the lights on and doors pulled nearly closed.
I
rushed back to the school and got the security guard who returned with
my trailer hitch, telling me the fellow in the ratty van was a
schizophrenic, and that he was accusing me of 'taking his picture.'
I said, I haven't taken his picture, I don't even know who he is.
The guard told me the guy was a photography teacher at the Glassel, and they had 'called his mother.'
The following day, I picked up a staff book and looked for the teacher's picture.
His staff picture LOOKED EXACTLY LIKE the portrait I painted.
I was floored by the implication.
Here
was a schizophrenic, who could feel me painting his likeness, albeit
without me being aware I was actually painting someone real who I had
never seen, or if I had seen him at the school, it would have been a
quasi-conscious notice of somebody walking by.
I burned the
picture next day, maybe to give both of us relief. I felt very bad for
causing this, whatever it was. And I regret painting the picture, but
most I regret not telling his mother and the school what happened.
Of
course what use is it telling somebody's mother, or some entry-level
secretary. We're all locked away from influencing anyone at the
'decision' level, which is probably why there is so much disconnect in
this country.
In the end, this occurance happened, it affected lives, and there was no official 'de-briefing' of the events or feelings.
Suppose
however, this event proves that schizophrenics are connected to other
people at a much broader level than the rest of us understand?
You
know the old joke that a schizophrenic is walking down the street
talking to another schizophrenic waking down the street a mile away. It
might be true, and what we see as very strange behavior has at some
point a truth that we simply can't understand. I don't know.
For
those who have powerful afflictions of the disease, they live in a hell
of sorts where they are alone and fighting for every step. These people
wake up each day terrified that they will become worse today than
yesterday. This level of affliction becomes apparent to everyone
because the schizophrenic becomes more and more disheveled in
appearance. It becomes impossible to do everyday routines because the
person is just trying to stand upright against the blizzard of auditory
and visual hallucinations.
The remedies probably make no sense
to those people around them, and the worse a person is afflicted the
stranger the remedies may appear. But to the schizophrenic, the remedy
becomes their grasp on reality and it is the only place they can stand
against the withering affects of the disease.
Naturally they
begin to destroy themselves inwardly. It’s difficult to say whether the
disease manifests negative feelings about oneself, or if that becomes a
self-imposed pattern. because they ‘didn’t get it right’ and you
are taught from birth to ‘get it right.’ Even gentle prodding by the
most protective parent is telling the offspring to ‘get it right,’ and
much celebration follows successful accomplishment. The schizophrenic
doesn’t get it right and they know it. It’s a horrible feeling.