Wishing I had saved it for a better time period.

Sadly, I don't have time to read it and watch it all right now .... hoping to return to this after work

I will return to 'my posts" this evening.

and that was without headphones (dont have any).

I think most of their auditory hallucinations are mostly garbled. and for some, what they can make out may have a violent tone

It makes my skin hurt.

...once in my youth and it was unbelievable.

Unfortunately, he committed suicide.

When he was in temporary remissions, he was the most civilized, talented, generous and kind person.

That was very difficult. My head started hurting almost immediately, even with the sound on low.

The info at the links was very informative and very interesting.

Thanks for posting.

If this gives even an inkling into what it's like to have Schizophrenia than all I can say is holy shit. I've spent days, even weeks, obsessing on my personal faults nonstop but that pales in comparison to what it must be like to have shit like this playing in your ears all day every day. I've a new respect for people who struggle with this diagnosis.

thanks for posting.

I hear insulting, nonsensical, and violent voices quite often each day . . . from the radio, TV, some customers, some of my least favorite family members, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum. And most of the time, I don't have the option of walking away or turning it off (with the exception of when I have control of radio or TV controls).

I ignore insults and nonsense I hear, and I know the violent suggestions or messages are wrong.

We all hear voices. For most of us, it's external with a little bit of internal dialog among our id, ego, and superego sides of our minds. The voices for a schizophrenic are simply less external, more internal.

So, isn't the *problematic* part of schizophrenia *really* the individual's inability to ignore things or exert self-control in response to violent suggestions?

You mean like telling a person with major depression to "just snap out of it and think happy thoughts?"

Having some experience with these things I know that the first thing that flies out the window is my ability to judge my own mental state.

When things get very bad I hallucinate too. This is associated with a lack of sleep. I don't sleep because of nightmares and night terrors, and this is a vicious circle that can only be broken with meds.

When these sleep problems are dealt with I still exist in a very dark place, so I take meds for that too.

It really has nothing to do with an "individual's inability to ignore things or exert self-control."

Practice won't make perfect, turning a frown upside down will not make a smile, and no amount of self-discipline or any other imaginary morality, religion, or trying to make me feel guilty or ashamed will drive that darkness away.

I take meds that have somewhat unpleasant side effects but they keep me somewhat functional. Nevertheless, I've quit meds because they made me feel dull or had other irritating side effects. Fortunately I have a relatively strong safety net of friends and family. But it's not difficult to picture myself wandering off into homelessness. (I did that a couple of times as a young adult. I'm the invisible sort of homeless person, not the sort who stands on street corners yelling obscenities at cars, or gets in your face with a cardboard sign demanding money.)

If I don't take meds then I return to my dark place where there is no good in this world and nothing worth doing but to satiate my relatively harmless and generally unproductive obsessions. Sometimes the obsessions have turned out to be useful and productive, allowing me long days of extreme focus (optimizing code, loading trucks, studying genetics...) but that's been a rare thing.

And, my question involving that particular thing was simply is schizophrenia characterized in part by trouble with "self-control in response to violent suggestions".

Much like part of the lay characterization of homicidal psychosis is trouble with self-control in response to homicidal tendencies.

Nowhere in what I've written have I ever suggested the mentally ill can get over their afflictions through self-control. You're totally misreading things.

We live in a violent, hateful, and judgmental society.

That's going to aggravate the problems of a few mentally ill people.

The rainbow-and-unicorn-mentally-ill are harmless. At my very, very worst, I'm still a pacifist. My flight response is much stronger than my fight response. I always wear shoes I can run away in.

But even the mean nasty paranoid mentally ill are generally harmless if they are not tuning into our racist, misogynist, fear, fear, hate, hate, gun loving society.

I'd much rather be cussed and spit at by some Bible thumping "whore of Babylon" Ezekiel street preacher than be shot by some hateful gun loving right wing radio listening freak.

Our society would be much better without the guns and hate mass media.

The Scientologists welcome the mildly afflicted, especially if they are capable of working and making money, but they boot the seriously afflicted back out onto the streets or isolate them if they are in too deep.

... over his actions when the voices were telling him to harm his partner was to run off into the woods in subfreezing weather. He nearly died. But he also said the reason he ran off was because the voices were so strong and compelling that he thought he might listen to them.... so he didn't feel he was safe to be around anyone.

Also, hallucinations are only part of schizophrenia. Some may be under delusions that are congruent with the voices they hear -- if they believe that ________ is out to kill them, and then the voice says "He's got a knife, he's going to kill you, stop him!" they may truly believe they were acting out of self-defense to strike. Or, may say they deserve punishment like Andrea Yates did, but still be deluded enough to think that going to jail the rest of her life for murdering her kids is better than letting them grow up to be sinners and go to Hell (part of her delusion was centered around the way the State would punish her, and she felt that she deserved the punishment for being a bad enough mother to raise such sinful kids).

A friend of mine has a brother with schizophrenia and from what I've seen, his trouble has nothing to do with an inability to ignore things or exert self-control.

When he's off of his medication, the brother is unable to distinguish between what most of us consider to be reality and what he is seeing, hearing, and experiencing within his own consciousness, such as believing a cat we saw in the yard was the devil. To my friend and me, that belief may have seemed silly. To my friend's brother, however, the malignant source of total evil in the universe was menacing him right there in front of his parents' house.

From what I've seen, it's very tragic (my friend's brother was a really good guy before his breakdown in college).

I was "asked" to take leave twice. As in "go away and don't come back until you've got your shit together. Don't make us expel you permanently."

My undergraduate science degree took nine years.

It was my good fortune that meds were improving at the time. Two strikes against me, and then better meds, I hit a home run.

Weirdly that was about the time Toyota started building modern automobiles. Before that all automobiles were crap. Have you ever driven an original Ford Mustang? Crap. Nasty pony car. Me and my brother bought one once for $400. A glorified Ford Maverick. My meds at the time were crap too.

Still, one of the deans of my college told me, paraphrasing, "Hunter, I think you should go on to graduate school. But not here." The bridges behind me were still burning and I was missing a signature from a department chair. I'd make appointments and she'd not be in her office. I don't think I was creepy, I was just a hot mess she didn't want to deal with. Then she flew away to teach in Europe for a year. So the dean signed off and let me graduate so they all could be done with me.

The first time I was "asked" to leave school it was for fighting with one of this dean's teaching assistants. I wasn't fighting, this guy was throwing stuff at me, starting with chalk, and then fat books. People fled and called the campus police.

Alas, I had the bad reputation, the campus police knew me. I stayed in my seat, I didn't throw anything back, but I'll confess I was the one who provoked it. Do not tell a delicate graduate student teaching assistant that the official U.S.A. data he is digesting for his PhD is "bullshit."

Later I had to take that class again because I'd flunked it and I passed with an "A." I'd learned to stay out of trouble, my best college lesson ever. Tell them what they want to hear. Then you can move on and do your own thing.

I think it would be possible to build a society where schizophrenia and other mental illnesses were mostly harmless and easily treated. Maybe not to the extent that people were fully functional, but at least to a place where those suffering were comfortable, secure, and mostly harmless.

I'm glad you persevered and made it through college despite such daunting obstacles blocking your way!

With regard to any visual or auditory hallucinations a person may experience, schizophrenia exists when the person:

Added from what you said (with a bit more definition): "Is unable to distinguish perceptively, cognitively, or intellectually the hallucination is NOT to be accepted as reality."
Then, what I said: "Is unable to ignore the hallucination."

I've known people, and I've personally experienced, hallucinations which can be heard and seen. But I (or others with the same kind of experience) retained the *cognitive* or *intellectual* faculty to understand it wasn't real and could be ignored.

I have only two examples of hallucinations in my lifetime. My most vivid was when I was on a long road trip by myself, and 18 hours into the drive I started hallucinating a passenger sitting in my back seat, whom I could see in my rear-view mirror, who kept saying every once in a while "let me out of the car". Cognitively, I retained my knowledge that I had started the trip alone and had NOT picked up anyone. I ignored it (but knew I better pull over and get some sleep).

Now, in my lay view, I would have been schizophrenic had I NOT been able to ignore the hallucination. And done something like tell it to shut up (as if I really thought it was there), or stopped the car to let it out.

From what I've personally seen and what I've heard of schizophrenic episodes in the news (such as a physician in OK who stabbed his 8-year-old to death because he thought the boy was the devil), there's much more going on medically and psychologically than hallucinating and choosing to ignore it.

But that's just my lay opinion as well.

I also have another friend who has a history with schizophrenia and has been hospitalized at least twice, so I draw a little from that experience as well. I know if he could choose to avoid such episodes, he would.

once said a shaman swims in the same dark waters that a schizophrenic drowns in.

He was basically saying the experience can be channeled into something manageable and perhaps even beneficial through following the strong discipline a shaman practices.

I've read many commentaries comparing the intense experience mystics describe with the schizophrenic's experience.

In fact, my friend who has been hospitalized is deeply involved with nature-based religions and has explored shamanism. It has helped (but has its limits).

So, I don't doubt there are positive ways to manage the experience.

Voices and hallucinations may be frightening and confusing when they start, but I've never heard any description of schizophrenia that says it takes away your intelligence or ability to control yourself. Schizophrenics who act out never say "the voice took control of my body" . . . they say "the voice told me to do such-and-such".

Big difference. Everyone has the capacity to ignore people telling them to do very bad things and threatening bad consequences if they don't, whether the potential instigator is imaginary or not.

based on what little I have seen with my friend and other things I've read.

But because I'm not trying to corner the market on the truth here and recognize the validity of different views, I'm cool with that.

Tell us about your experience, rather than about "some schizophrenics".

Walking around with a blindfold or being pushed around in a wheelchair for a few minutes is not at all like living with the same disability day in and day out. Many disability activists view them as downright offensive.

They hate that.

wow