Have you ever met a schizophrenic person?

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Lau does not sound to me to be dismissive. He made his own beliefs on the topic clear to his friend. This is a position of mutual respect; friends should not have to agree on all matters. If lack of dissent is unhealthy in a society, it probably works similarly in microcosm as well. And close to zero tolerance is fairly dismissive Remnant, even if from another viewpoint. Good point about shamanism, spiritual emergency. I have read one of the books of Joseph Campbell: Occidental Mythology, part of his "Masks of God" series. You have to love a book that begins with chapter headings like "The Serpent Lord" and "The Consort of the Bull" and ends with "The Cross and the Crescent," and "Europe Resurgent!" Despite the title it both drew on Israel and as far as east as Persia, and drew comparison with areas the focus of other books like "Oriental Mythology" with areas even further east like India. I have an elderly friend at church who has read more of Joseph Campbell's works. While an Anglican like me he is also a Freemason like my maternal grandfather (who was Presbyterian). Apparently it's believe in a supreme being and be male and you're in. Sorry if that sounds flippant to any Freemasons here; I greatly respect my friend, who is a scholar and a gentleman.

Lau: I believe you missed my point, entirely. I was checking that there had not been some misunderstanding going on. One way to drive away another person is to freak them out.

I may still be missing your point. For instance, I am not certain if you were "freaked out" (and thus, felt "driven away" by your cousin) or if you sought to "freak him out" and thus drive him away.

This thread was started by someone who seemed to be concerned about his own reaction to a friend with schizophrenia. I do not believe that a link to the pretty mumbo-jumbo of "Transpersonal States of Consciousness" on a fringe website is going to be much help to him.

I have been talking to schizophrenics for a number of years now. What I'm most interested in is recovery from schizophrenia. One means of reaching that recovery is education -- being able to understand one's own experience and having those around you understand your experience. Before you start thinking I'm one of those con artists out to scam someone, let me set you straight...

My own schizophrenic break was approximately five years ago. Because I did not know that what I was experiencing was considered to be psychosis in this culture, I did not seek medical care. Instead, I did the only thing I knew to do -- I went into the experience. I have never been hospitalized; I have received no formal therapy; I have received no form of psychotropic drugs, mood stabilizers, etc. I have made a full recovery. I have been working for 3.5 years. My relationships are all stable.

Therefore, when I link to a site on transpersonal states of consciousness, trust me -- it's because it's going to help someone although it may not be you, your cousin, or the individual who initiated this thread.

Agreed. But then I suppose we are all entitled to air our opinions... just maybe not quite so sharply.

AlexandertheSolitary: I have read one of the books of Joseph Campbell: Occidental Mythology, part of his "Masks of God" series. You have to love a book that begins with chapter headings like "The Serpent Lord" and "The Consort of the Bull" and ends with "The Cross and the Crescent," and "Europe Resurgent!"

Here's a quote you may enjoy Alexander...

Meantime, I remain somewhat dismayed to see that this thread countains countless examples of the weird, bizarre, violent, and unexplainable behaviors of "the schizophrenic". Perhaps I could respectfully remind those who might wish to perpetuate such stereotypes that if I knew nothing of the experience of Autism or Asperger's that it might look weird to me too; it might look frightening; it might look bizarre; it might look unexplainable.

It has been my experience that in every individual I've spoken with who experienced a schizophrenic break, there was a trigger first -- somewhere there was a loss, or a betrayal, or the shattering of a belief system. In my own case, my break was preceded by multiple losses as accompanied by trauma.

Most of the schizophrenics I've met are remarkably sensitive people. They can get confused within the process between inner and outer. Those who are able to understand that this is an inner process are less likely to act out. With rare exception, "schizophrenics" are not violent; most prefer to keep to themselves. They may not wish to share their experiences with those who would not understand but if they feel they can be heard as a human being who has had a powerful, overwhelming and often frightening or traumatic experience, they're usually quite capable of sharing.


See also:

- Spirituality and Trauma

- Away from the Sun

- DisOrdered


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Last edited by spiritual_emergency on 04 Mar 2007, 7:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I did not notice so many violent stereotypes; journeys to the spirit realm are not violent (unless you have a spirit-blade and slay demons). Admittedly I have not read all posts here. Thank you for the quotation from Campbell. Thank you for your thoughtful remarks on this subject.

You're most welcome Alexander. One individual did mention violence and unfortunately, this is a stereotype that seems to go hand in hand with the label of "schizophrenia". Most "schizophrenics" are not violent, although some are.

...journeys to the spirit realm are not violent (unless you have a spirit-blade and slay demons).

Best of luck on your journeys, Alexander. Keep your eyes open for Kali on the path.


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Schizophrenics include a lot of people who try to avoid violence while violent people chase them down, confine them if they can, and subject them to a lot of violence on a daily basis. They become famous for violence when they finally blow and do someone in who richly deserves it. Torturers richly deserve it.

Thank you! It is interesting that the various names of Shiva's spouse - Sati, Uma, Parvati, Durga, Kali have vastly different appearances and personalities, though probably logical given she is supposed to be the embodiment of the shakti or energy of a god who himself holds various opposites in tension. I have read much about Hinduism. Currently I am Christian. As a child I tended to mix this with Buddhism, at the same time as I was reading Greek mythology, Arthurian romances and Norse mythology, along with parts of the Old and New Testaments, as well as the works of Tolkien, C. S. Lewis,and Ursula Le Guin. No wonder I had a psychotic episode between grade six and year seven. The transition between primary and secondary school had nothing to do with it! :)

Seriously, I have enjoyed it all, more or less. Later in secondary school I had a severe problem with what I have called "a deplorable tendency towards idolatry in my attitudes to women." This is still an issue; I tend to be obsessive in unrequited love. There have also been times when I have been quite apathetic about religion. I have continued to be interested in reading about other faiths, including Islam.

Best wishes for your journey!

How were you planning it to go?

My way, of course.

A very good old friend of mine was diagnozed schizoaffective, unipolar depressive. They gave her this particular diagnosis mostly because they weren't sure what was wrong ith her, but the depression part is true. She's had depression issues basically her whole life, since very early childhood, and they're quite different (and more serious) than mine. She often says she simply doesn't want to exist and never has - and even I she did, she wouldn't know how to do it. She just creates imaginary worlds of her own and hides into them for days on end, because here in the real world she has nothing to cling to, as she puts it, no hobbies or interests or anything. Occasionally, she'll have these "crises", as she puts them, where she withdraws so much she stops taking notice of anything else, quits doing her university assignments, starts sleeping with her clothes and shoes on, etc., and usually chooses to go to the hospital again in the end. She isn't psychotic, and I have a feeling there's always a part of her that's aware what is happening, except she cannot help it. I don't think she's ever had any delusions or major hallucinations, only minor tricks of the eyes like seeing worms at the base of a cut onion bulb, or mistaking a yawning man on the bus for a monster, but this state of always trying to escape and withdraw must be very painful. She talked many times of wishing it would go away so that she could live in the here and now, but she doesn't know how to make that happen, or what to do when it finally does and the here and now is there for her.

She's a really gentle, sensitive person, and has a wisdom of her own. She has this insight into people and their intentions, or the subtleties of their emotions which I've never had. When I talk to her, I'm often amazed how much she knows - about life, about people, about the state of things in general. Except, as she would say, what's the use of it all when she can't enjoy life and wishes every day was over sooner so that there was less left to live? It's such a shame to see her this hopeless. I think she helps the people who know her much more than she realizes and I wish she knew that, was aware that she's not useless and has a place in this world. Recently, she's begun to self-injure during her crises - she'll scratch her arms with her nails until there are scars, and a few months ago she shaved off all her hair, - and it's worrying me very much but I don't know what to do.

She does have a few unpleasant traits that sometimes make it difficult to communicate with her. She seems to require a sort of extreme closeness to another person that is nearly symbiotic - doing everything together, even going everywhere together, knowing each other's thoughts and feelings and such. I have this negative reaction to that - I may be excessively candid but generally I have a wide private space, and I hate it when someone is invading it, the way she's been doing all along. I know that perhaps it's the only way she can relate to someone, and healing, for her, but it just doesn't work well with me. On the other hand, we've known one another since I was 16, but we basically know nothing about each other because all she's been talking about were her fantasies. She prefers to discuss them because she doesn't like delving into her own real feelings, and doesn't know how to get them across for the most part. It can be difficult - she'll sometimes be evidently very upset, but she won't explain why, and I usually get confused because I have no idea what's happening. When she does explain she often talks in these strange hints which she expects everyone to understand, but I don't. Sometimes it sounds like she ascribes a certain meaning to words and things which she perhaps thinks to be self-evident, but in reality, it's all her own and others may not know what she's talking about at all. She thinks I'm quite insensitive and imperceptive and "don't understand anything" when it comes to what people feel, including herself, and she may be right because I really find this very difficult.

Ixochiyo_yohuallan, you show too much insight for me to dismiss some of those statements the way that I often do as a habit.

I know that I go on about mystical things and about animals in response to something like this because I think that it helps people see what I see in terms that they might understand. Then again, since this is a time when I seem to be reevaluating some of my nonsense, I could be completely full of it.

The first thing that occurs to me is that your friend is very deeply wounded. She definitely exists in a different space where maybe it should be perfectly clear to you what she means if you can work out a translation map. I live in a different space and it's perfectly clear to me what I need to keep me warm enough but it's hard to explain to people who haven't shared that experience. Human isolation from nature becomes a proof of the second law of thermodynamics, that a system that is not replenished with energy will lose energy to its environment no matter how tightly sealed it is. That is because the energy that we can use comes in packages that are large enough to readily seal out of our human environment but it leaks out little bit by little bit, invisibly, immeasurably, and woundings hasten this decay. Much of "morality" seeks to exclude that energy and hasten the decay of our "animal" energies. This causes the sickness. In some people it's like what they call "schizophrenia." In others, it's rage. It could be both in the same person.

That's my explanation of what I see, and to me it is obvious and self-evident. I've said things that were even simpler and even more self-evident, more sensible, in other places and there was usually someone who could come along and put a stamp of rejection on such statements, as if they had the right to filter information for all of society. They have made me feel like I didn't want to exist, and that they definitely should not, they are anomalies like demons.

A person like your friend cannot be forced to come into her own, and when she does, it is likely that she, like anyone else who goes through this, will leave a trail of what appears to be damage to herself and others. If she has been deadened enough, she will be very dependent at the same time that she denies dependency. If she doesn't simply slip away, she may eventually adopt the pose that she is an authority on everything and find someone who doesn't understand the tricks that she pulls to keep herself on top as a parasite. Don't think that I'm bashing her, I spent more than ten years doing that myself, acting a lot like a neurotypical and not understanding what I was doing until I'd already hurt people, and wishing that I had never existed when I realized this. It is even true that I was behaving morally, but it wasn't right.

Your friend sounds like someone who can see where it's going. To me it's like a prolonged childhood, where a person with what should be a normal learning curve should be past all those stages by the time they reach puberty, but I know that I've been with a lot of negativity that disrupts learning by teaching things that aren't true, replacing the real world with false worlds. Your friend seems likely to be living in a world that is more true to her than the "real" world that she has been offered. Thinking back on my own experiences when I was around the age of 20, there are still a lot of unconventional, "unacceptable" truths that I believe in then and believe in even more strongly now. The only difference is in my ability to relate them to the real world.

Some of us wind up seeing visual interpretations of what the mind's eye sees. From my perspective there is a good reason for this. It is because a lot of things that people go through are actual attacks against their personal integrity and personal safety, and self defense isn't just a right, it's an obligation, a duty. I say it this way to cut past the "it's just a defense mechanism" sort of thinking. A lot of people feel contempt for the defenses of others and that tells you something about those people. Mental defense mechanisms tell you the truth any way that they can. Hallucinations are one of those ways. I have always been able to keep the hallucinatory material from interfering with my technically real-world vision. Others can't. This kind of vision is in some form a necessity.

Males generally have an easier time generating their own energy by exercise because they can usually walk the streets or the woods if they live close enough to wild areas, but females are much less likely to feel safe walking alone. Females may tend to use promiscuous sex for the same purpose, and of course males do if they can. Many members of either gender parasitize others for energy by use of sex or power games. This explains the "give a little and take a lot" type of relationships. From other things that I have seen, even religion-based "moral" behavior is based on this kind of parasitism, and the "immoral" sort of relationships are far more equal between a man and a woman or two partners of the same gender. When they learn how, they can heal each other's wounds. It's when issues get in the way that they can't do this thing that comes naturally.

I have been diagnosed even if I don't believe in the diagnosis, but I have to tell you that I have always had some kind of intelligently constructed paradigm that explains a lot of what I go through. People don't usually understand sharing themselves with others, saving themselves for marriage and all that, but I'm not even talking about sex. It's more like sharing warmth, the way that one person may not have enough heat to survive the cold that can penetrate several layers of blankets but two persons do, or the way that one person has enough warmth to save the life of another while keeping himself alive. Animals understand this perfectly and they even understand that this is not sexual behavior but the reason why puppies sleep in a pile. Humans get nervous and upset and say "it's perverted" or just get creeped out when it's nothing more than, very literally, keeping yourself warm on a cold night. In extreme cases it's treating hypothermia and frostbite. It reminds me of a journal article from about twenty years ago that I read, about how some of the caloric requirements of young African children were met by snuggling against their mothers, since their food intake didn't account for it but the shared warmth did. It actually works both ways. Clothing helps regulate the loss of physical energy from the body, too. "Modesty" becomes a lot more understandable when it involves the loss or retention of vital energy.

I'm not schizophrenic. I'm just cold and lonely.

Please forgive me if I have written too much of my own experience into this.