Experiences of Schizophrenia: Isolation, Color, Shape, and Sound

Living with Schizophrenia: Distorted Senses in Schizophrenia and Breakthrough Symptoms

The distortions in my brain can take many forms: In my hearing, vision, and the feelings in my body. They can cooccur in a blended sensory experience and aren't limited by the degree to which they cause me discomfort and distress and vary by intensity.

There are periods when the space around me takes on an aura of jagged shapes and sharp, searing colors. I walk around, and the buildings, concrete, green grass, and sky cause a feeling deep in my chest, telling me I don't belong. My surroundings feel like they've been replaced by a replica or an unsettling and uncanny false model. The Earth I'm thrust into is like serenity inverted—and in great disarray.

It's exhausting when the cracks of psychosis break through like this and take up so much of my time and awareness. I'm not sure how to feel or what to do. It's disorienting but not perilous to my safety. So, I wait it out and will probably have to sleep.

I get lost, similarly, when I talk to myself. My head crooks to the side unconsciously, fixed in a thousand-yard stare that can't be broken. I'm concentrating and removed from the world around me here—a sort of weightlessness as my lips rush in unintelligible, staccato-ed whispers.

Whatever I'm saying or thinking disappears as quickly as I speak and snap back into focus, and I have no recollection of my thoughts or speech.

Making the difficulty I have concentrating worse, I have trouble estimating the distance between me and the sounds around me. A dog barking outside may be as loud and distracting as a stereo or TV in the same room as me. Determining what to focus my attention on is challenging, and it feels like a "Where's Waldo" hunt to locate the origin of what I'm hearing.

Because I have trouble focusing on the appropriate thing, I often miss cues that would be helpful to be engaged while talking to a person. As a result, people think I'm disinterested or annoyed. But the truth is I'm embarrassed and fear asking people to repeat themselves and appearing to be foolish.

My parents, my brother Jordan, and my sister Rachael were alarmed by the times when I'd talk to myself early on at the time I was diagnosed. What to me is a function of self-soothing looked to them like I was talking to thin air, and I would bet their imagination could only fill in the blanks. I was deeply uncommunicative early on in my illness, as well. They'd ask who I was talking to sometimes, but I couldn't answer. I didn't know either.

I don't really have to worry about these embarrassing moments where my consciousness slips with my family at least. I've tried to maintain a greater presence at family gatherings and have found so much wonder and awe getting to know my nieces and nephews. I've always thought of myself as an outside actor, off to the side and taking up a temporary place.

Now that I've made more of an effort to join in, I understand what my role involves. My family has seen the changes occur, but they accept that the person they knew and what he's become. They see how my eyes have started to trail slightly. They may be alarmed that my body moves with a distinct jerkiness. Decades of antipsychotics and extrapyramidal symptoms have wrought havoc on my psychomotor control.

I still talk to myself, but instead of sheepishly hoping nobody notices (or, worse, asks me if I'm "Ok"), I accept that I'll always be a little odd in these ways. I no longer feel reduced to a cliché schizophrenic muttering to themselves and beating myself up later about it when I spend time around people I trust.

Experiences of Schizophrenia: Isolation and Connection in Schizophrenia

Negative symptoms have been most difficult for me. Blunted affect and flattened moods feel like a dull, vacant ache in my chest that can only be drawn out when I connect to the people I care about, making more effort to feel human.

I inevitably neglect the warmth and connection my family and friendships provide, though. And my ability to relate to others begins to deteriorate, and I start to withdraw from the things that keep me mentally healthy.

The content of my thoughts and emotions becomes obscured or absent in isolation, and it feels like I'm enveloped in a black, chilled radiation or walking through a hollow void. It's dark sediment that hardens and forms my body into a fixed posture of anxiety.

The cycle of cold isolation and finding warmth is a behavior I only know how to renew every few years. It's common schizophrenics and a repetition I'm more than familiar with.

Even still, I'm pulled by the endemic panic, fear, and paranoia that plagues people living with schizophrenia. And the disfigured, anxious person I don't recognize returns until myself or someone who cares helps thaw the agoraphobic stasis I self-inflicted.

Note to Self

Be quick to admit you're wrong and forgive others when they do the same. People may see it as nebbish, flimsy, or capricious, but that's a welcome alternative to living with regret or embarrassment at having been wrong and never admitting it.

Anyone who has a serious mental disorder (or even more, one who has found themselves in the psych ward) could use a little grace and forgiveness if not mercy. So, forgive yourself and others quickly as a matter of principle.